As if by Magic by Angus Wilson

Author:Angus Wilson [Wilson, Angus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1973-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

*

The fear that Hamo had experienced as he clattered through the scrub-wood in escape from the uncles’ dream-feast, the sense of their malevolence bombarding him from the trees, of their pursuit through the labyrinthine descent from the fortress bungalow, did not entirely leave him when his aeroplane took off for Kuala Lumpur. Erroll talked of Janey Dare’s curry and afters, and compared them with Gillian Fail’s version of sukiyaki ceremony and even with May Latimer’s T-bone and starters. He then sketched a comedy short based on the bazaars. In which two drolls (likely English lads) fell tip over arse again and again.

Then, seeking to dispel Hamo’s continuing dark brooding, he went on to speak of “Magic” so praised everywhere, jealously a little in Japan perhaps, grudgingly a little in the great Los Baños, but with awe and gratitude in Hong Kong and Taiwan and Thailand and Indonesia. Then he ventured to criticize the workings of the labs even in the mighty U.S.A., in giant Japan or the great Philippines. “Oh yes, the gear’s all right but let them come back when they’ve learned how to us it as the tart said to the well-hung apprentices.” Finally, he chose another muse. Well, he said, with some effort in breaking through the Great Barrier Reef, and what were they like, the lads of Indonesia, different he supposed from the Bangkok lot, the sister-boys on bikes in miniskirts and frilly blouses! Oh yes, he’d heard about them from a G.I. in a bar—bastards those G.I.s too, shouting their big mouths off—telling how, when he felt her up and found it was a boy, he’d beaten him up, and he, Erroll, had told him he was a dirty fucker and, if he’d seen him at it himself, he, Erroll would have bashed him so much he’d have wished his old mother had died a Virgin in old Virginney. The Filipino boys looked a hot lot, he thought, though you heard ugly stories of night-life in Manila. But not, he supposed, for those like the Chief who knew how to look after themselves. And treat others right.

At first Hamo felt every heat flush from anger to embarrassment, from shame to affection, at this first open speech on the tacitly understood, unmentioned subject from his faithful follower. He ached to respond as it had clearly cost Erroll much to bring it out. But he simply could not open his mouth to speak. But, at last, Erroll’s shock-tactic words blew him out of his depressed inertia. He knew what he had to do. He took out his silver pen and his leather writing-case and very neatly penned a letter:

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