Unbearable Lightness of Scones

58. At the Tanglin Club

They took a taxi from the front of Raffles, ushered into the car by the Sikh doorman with his large handlebar moustache.

“He reminds me of somebody,” said Elspeth. “Somebody with a moustache…”

“The Duke of Johannesburg,” said Matthew. “Remember – we had dinner at that restaurant near Holy Corner and then went to the Duke’s house. Remember?”

Elspeth looked at him blankly. “When?”

Matthew was astonished that she did not remember, and was about to express his astonishment. They had gone out to Single Malt House and one of the Duke’s sons had played the pipes and… Wrong woman. It had been Pat, not Elspeth.

His hand shot up to his mouth instinctively. “Oh…”

“I really don’t remember meeting a duke,” said Elspeth. “I’m sure I’ve never met a duke. I would remember, surely. After all, it’s not an everyday thing. There aren’t all that many of them and it’s the sort of thing one would remember – even if the duke himself was not particularly memorable. Some of them are quite dull, I understand.”

Matthew, keen to cover his mistake, was happy to move the conversation on to dukes in general. “I suppose that some are. But then, there are some who are quite interesting. The Duke of Buccleuch, the one who died not all that long ago, was an interesting man. And a very nice man too. You wouldn’t really have known that he was a duke, just to look at him. And he did a lot of good work.

“And then there was the Duke of Atholl. He was a very good bridge player. He had a private army, you know. A sort of ancient historical privilege. The only one in the country. But he never declared war on anybody. Not once.”

Elspeth stopped him. “But the Duke of Johannesburg…”

“You would have thought,” Matthew continued quickly, “that having a private army, one might want to use it. But he never did. It’s rather like having a nuclear weapon – you have it, but you can’t really use it.”

“But, Matthew, who’s the Duke of Johannesburg? I’ve never met him. I really haven’t. Are you sure that we went there for dinner?”

Matthew realised that he was trapped. But at that exact moment, just when he was about to confess that he had made a mistake and that it was somebody else who had been with him that evening – and, after all, there was no shame in that – it was well before he had even met Elspeth and he was entitled, surely, to a past life – just at that moment the taxi-driver, who had been following the discussion with some interest in his rear-view mirror, chose to make a pronouncement.

“Maybe breakfast,” he said. “Maybe breakfast, not dinner.”

Elspeth threw an amused glance at Matthew, who raised a finger to his lips.

“Maybe,” said Matthew to the driver. “Maybe.”

The driver nodded. “Anyway,” he said, “we’re nearly there. This is the Tanglin Club. See. This is a very good place.”

They drew up in front of an elaborate, wide-eaved building, surrounded by lush trees and shrubs, a small slice of jungle allowed to flourish in the middle of the gleaming city. Matthew paid the driver and they walked up to the front door.

“That dinner,” he said. “That dinner. I’m sorry; I was getting things mixed up. I went with somebody else. It was Pat. My last girlfriend.”

Elspeth looked away. “I knew,” she said. “But I wish you’d told me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Matthew. “I really am. I didn’t want to hurt you. It’s just that getting one’s wife mixed up with one’s girlfriend is not a very tactful thing to do… on one’s honeymoon.”

Elspeth laughed. “Oh don’t worry about that, Jamie. Let’s just forget about it.”

They were almost at the door. Jamie? But there was no time to go into that.

“Will you recognise him?” Elspeth asked. “If you haven’t seen him for… what is it? Fourteen years? Something like that?”

“I think so,” said Matthew. “He looks fairly like my old man. And if he’s still got that middle parting then he should be pretty recognisable.”

They went through the wide entrance doors and found themselves standing in a broad, panelled lobby. At the far end, a staircase swept up to the first floor; to one side two young women sat demurely at a high mahogany reception desk. The overall feel was one of a solid opulence over which a blanket of deadening silence has descended.

Matthew walked over to the reception desk and announced himself. The women smiled. “Your uncle is waiting for you in the Tavern,” said one of them. “My colleague will show you the way.”

The Tavern was a fair imitation of what an outsize English pub might have looked like before the invasion of electronic gambling machines, muzak, and cheap, chilled lager (and the culture that went with that particular brew). It was entirely deserted, apart from one table in the centre of the room, where they saw a tall, dapperly dressed man with a centre parting in his thick head of slicked-down hair. Next to him was a small Chinese woman in a dark dress, a smart red leather handbag resting on her lap.

The waiting couple rose to their feet as Matthew and Elspeth made their way over to meet them. Matthew’s uncle spoke quietly, his voice rather hoarse, like the voice of one who has just risen from his bed in the morning and not yet cleared his throat. Matthew saw a cigarette holder lying on the table, without a cigarette in it. It was the cigarette holder he remembered: black, with the mother-of-pearl band.

The woman was introduced as Jack’s wife, Maria. “My wife is Catholic,” said Jack. “I, of course, am still Church of Scotland – after all these years. We have a number of Presbyterian churches here, you know. And a few Presbyterian schools too. What’s the name of that place, dear?”

“Pei Hwa,” said Maria, in a high-pitched, rather sing-song voice. “Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School.”

“That’s it,” said Jack. “And there’s another one too. What’s its name again?”

“Kuo Chan,” said Maria. “It’s a secondary school. Two schools. One primary. One secondary.”

“Oh yes,” said Matthew, and then, brightening, he said, “Elspeth is a teacher. Or rather, was one. She taught at a Steiner School in Edinburgh. Then we got married.”

“Jolly good,” said Jack.