‘If we had a population twice our size we’d be starving and dying of thirst,’ retorted Laurie.
They went around the town and had a rickshaw ride in the stifling heat, though there was a pleasant breeze as dusk fell. They visited the Raffles Bar and finally returned to the hotel the worse for wear.
Wallace gave the presentation another run through and manipulated the overhead projector slides. This was useful as he found two of them had got out of order. He found that his diction was slurring a little, so he ran through it again and pronounced himself satisfied. Then he turned in at 1.00 am.
The meeting was in session when Wallace arrived at the Convention Centre, this was the morning session and there would then be lunch followed by his own presentation. There was a separate room allocated for visiting performers, there had been a Chinese comedian at dinner the previous evening. Wallace was somewhat intrigued to know what direction the humour of a Chinese comedian would take, and resolved to ask Laurie later.
Wallace was placed between the President and the Past-President, and had to agree with Laurie that the latter would definitely have been associated with the original edition of the offending cartoon and was thankful he had altered it.
‘I gather that there are some problems within the insurance profession,’ Wallace said to the President as a conversation starter.
‘Yes, we are presently having difficulties, in Victoria in particular, with the collapse of a large insurer,’ said the President. ‘They had been undercutting for years which affected all of us as we had to cut rates to obtain new business or save some business connections, now they have gone we have a period of adjustment. We’ve also had severe bush fires that encroached upon some suburban areas last year. There are other factors of course.’
‘I heard about an insurer that collapsed when somebody embezzled most of its funds.’
The President nodded.
‘There was also the case of another UK company where someone bought the Australian branch but it collapsed shortly afterwards. Both of these discrepancies occurred some years ago now. Regrettably there have been other cases, they have not helped the industry at all.’
The conversation moved onto Wallace’s presentation, he was feeling nervous, as he usually did prior to a presentation, and began to perspire. The screen was not in view but was behind the curtain on the stage. The overhead projector was in sight and – as at 8.00 am – worked all right. He checked in his pockets for the spare light globes, they were still there.
There were many faces in the audience that were clearly from the local scene, and some that were from Indonesia and the Philippines. Wallace was not sure whether these countries had private insurance industries or whether the business was run by the state so he asked the question.
When the meal was finished and the coffee cups were in evidence, the President rose to his feet.
‘Could we ask you to vacate the room, gentlemen and re-convene at 2.30? This will give time for the furniture to be shuffled around and the room prepared for the presentation to be delivered by Mr Wallace.’
As Wallace entered the bar of the hotel later that night he felt as if he were walking on air. After the presentation people had come up to shake him by the hand and congratulate him upon a job well done. As he stood at the bar, and later when seated at a table quaffing drinks with Laurie Frazer, Dick Prowse and others, people sought him out and made kind remarks about the delivery and presentation.
Everything had gone well and in the main the jokes had gone down well – apart from one which he had hastily slurred over when it was clear that laughter was not forthcoming. This happened in most presentations, that joke or aside that had brought the house down the last time could fall like a lead balloon the next. As the French would say, spreading their hands out in Gallic resignation: – c’est la vie!
Wallace was royally entertained until late that night, when he finally turned in he slept the sleep of satisfaction that is only born of a task well done.
It was hot and sultry when Wallace disembarked at Jakarta, even hotter than it had been in Singapore. He decided to take a taxi to the hotel. If ASIO or ASIS was going to hire his services then they could pay for the privilege. He was beginning to entertain feelings of dissatisfaction with Bramble, although these jobs were simple and were little more than messenger drops or pick ups, there was always the fear at the back of his mind of being apprehended. He had never forgotten the case of GrevilleWynn, a businessman who had carried out odd jobs of a similar nature for MI 6 when he went overseas on trade assignments. He had carried out one job too many and had been arrested at a trade exhibition. He finished up in the Lubyanka Prison for a lengthy term until he was eventually swapped for some Soviet agent M.I.5 had previously apprehended and jailed.
He told the driver to head for the Hotel Indonesia and settled back in the rear seat. Bramble had told Wallace to call in at the Australian Embassy, a natural enough place to call if he was in the city on business. He had been told to book an appointment with a local Jakarta agency who would allocate an assignment that would assist contact with their courier. It was best that the assignment came from an outside agency even if it was pre-ordained, the embassy did not wish to be directly involved. At the embassy Wallace was to see the Military Attaché who would brief him as to what was expected.
As the cab threaded its way through the streets he was struck by the vast numbers of people, the streets and pavements seemed to be packed with humanity. He was also aware of a slight smell of rotting vegetation. The grandfather of one of his colleagues had visited Jakarta many years before; he had said that the smell had reminded him of the stench of the trenches of the First World War. After many years it was far better now, but Wallace could see what he had meant.
The areas passed through were a mixture of high rise buildings and shanty town, not unlike Singapore where modern developments were banishing the old style buildings that had been there for centuries. That the new architecture was interesting there was no doubt, and similar edifices could be seen anywhere from Paris, Sydney, New York and London.
The cab finally entered the centre of the city and pulled up outside an impressive building with a glass facade. Wallace clambered out onto the pavement and superintended the dumping of luggage at the feet of the porter, handed the cabbie a note which he accepted and then drove off with a crash of gears before there was any question of giving change. The cases were loaded onto a trolley and were forced through to what appeared to be crowds of pedestrians to reach the front entrance.
‘Wallace,’ he said tersely to reception, they ticked off his name and the porter was handed a room key, they entered the nearest lift and went up to the 9th floor.
The room was good, maybe better than the room recently vacated in Singapore. Wallace resolved to eat meals within the hotel as he had no wish to contract the Jakarta Dribbles because of unwise eating. He remembered Clive Passay, an old friend who made frequent trips overseas servicing boilers, saying that in foreign climes one ate only in the best places, and even then one was not immune. Diarrhoea and Jakarta, he alleged, were synonymous and if troubles of that nature were contracted the best policy was not to cough or sneeze. Happiness, as Clive remarked on his return from one of his various overseas trips, was a dry fart!
He
