Two

‘Willie, you are mad!’

Da Braga stood by the door of the office watching Willie, unable to understand why he was willing to risk his neck in what seemed a wildcat rescue. He, Da Braga, would never have taken such a risk. But, he had to admit, there was something about Willie that was different from other men. He was quick-witted, intelligent and brave, always willing to take a chance for business, never able to miss an opportunity, a merchant adventurer out of his time, willing to go into the vast interior of China in a way few others did.

‘I’ve got to go, Luis.’

It was a matter of honour in a way, because Willie was often assailed by the thought that he had treated Emmeline badly. He hadn’t, he knew, almost the other way round, but it was something that would probably never go away.

‘Are you expecting rewards from this woman?’ This was the only reason Da Braga could think of, because Willie wasn’t in need of money and Emmeline was still good looking. ‘What will she give you in return?’

‘Business.’ Even this wasn’t true because Wishart’s had never pushed trade towards Sarth’s and he didn’t think they ever would, but he had to make some excuse.

‘Are you sure?’ Da Braga asked.

‘I’ll make sure.’

‘Is that all?’

‘It’ll do.’

They were still talking when the scratching came at the door. The servant Emmeline had sent was a small man with a twisted back, a grey wisp of beard and a pigtail. Willie stared at him, wondering if he could be trusted. If he disappeared into the maze of streets in the Chinese City, it wouldn’t be difficult to betray him. Did the old man have strong feelings against the Europeans like the students? Did he resent the way they had taken over his country?

Willie drew a deep breath and pushed a cigarette at the Chinese who bobbed his head, grinned and lit up, puffing quickly and filling the office with smoke. Taking off his jacket, Willie slipped into a blue coolie’s smock and picked up a wide-brimmed woven hat. Shoving the heavy Russian revolver he carried with him into his belt, he gestured at the Chinese.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

The Chinese bobbed his head again and tossed his cigarette through the door. ‘Can do, Master,’ he said. ‘We makee quick, I think.’

It was bitterly cold, the night brilliant with frost, and they moved along the bund, their heads down so that the flaring torches stuck into the walls would not catch their faces. Yangpo was a strange place. In the spring there was a yellowgreen mist of new leaves along the banks with patches of pink and white flowers whose perfume sometimes even overlaid the smell of the winter’s rubbish, but in the autumn it could be chill and damp and in the winter there were dull skies and misty rain, with the mountains behind black against the steely sky, and the river shrunken to grey channels between the sandbars.

As they moved among the piled refuse, a thin stream of coolies moved past them, one of them carrying two severed heads on a pole, and eventually, by the execution ground, they came on a huddle of wailing women crouched over a group of bodies, engaged in the grisly task of sewing more heads to headless trunks.

‘Cannot meet ancestors without heads,’ the old man said gravely. ‘Very bad loss. Lose face.’ He gave a sudden giggle as if he’d appreciated his unintentional joke.

Nearby, a group of coolies waited with coffins, but nobody had eyes for the two figures shuffling past. The executions had taken place that afternoon, the dead men lined up in a row on the edge of the river by the Chinese soldiers to be examined by the headsman. Willie had watched it all through the window of Da Braga’s office. Eventually, the men had been led to a line of white stones by the road and made to kneel, then, one by one, a soldier had reached over them from the front, grasping the pigtail to drag the head down and forward. As the executioner had leapt forward with a shout and the huge shining blade had come down, the snick had been audible even in Da Braga’s office, the severed heads rolling across the road.

Now and again, they passed a huddled figure, asleep or dead – it was hard to tell which, and nobody cared much – sometimes a coolie with his carrying pole still on his shoulder. They entered the city through the great studded gate in the river wall and, groping their way by the faint light of hanging lanterns, the dim bulk of the city black against the sky, they stumbled in and out of crooked streets.

They could hear the remnants of the mob baying a few streets away, a few high-pitched shouts and once the crash of glass. Willie’s eyes were everywhere, on the look out for treachery. He still didn’t trust the old man, but so far he had given no indication of hostility. Several times he heard rats squeaking and once several of them ran across his feet. The place was ominously quiet, with every door and window shuttered and barred after the rioting. There were puddles filmed with ice and the smell of drains, ordure and rotting rubbish.

The Chinese turned into a street that was wider than the rest and gestured ahead. ‘Master come,’ he said. ‘The Street of Flowering Almond.’

He stopped at a plank door and began to scratch at it. It was opened almost at once by a young man in a quilted coat. Behind him was a girl, small and pretty, her jetty hair done in wings on either side of her face.

‘You come for Mastah Gummer?’ the young man said.

Willie nodded and, as the door opened wider, they pushed inside.

‘Where is he?’

The Chinese gestured towards a plank door. Gummer was in the room beyond, sprawled on a string bed, stark naked, his mouth wide open, his eyes closed, stinking of whisky. Willie stared at him furiously.

How in the name of God, he thought, was he going to get such a man to safety? Gummer was strong, muscled and powerful, his big dark-skinned body covered with black hair. No wonder he had suited Emmeline. No wonder she wanted him back.

‘I shall need help,’ he said. ‘You have brothers?’

The Chinese nodded.

‘Fetch them.’

The Chinese shook his head. ‘No come.’ He was obviously terrified.

‘This is your sister?’

‘My sister, Mastah.’

‘If he’s found here, it’ll be death for her. You too. The students will kill you. Fetch brothers. Plenty money. I give.’ He showed the money in his hand. ‘For Chinaman. For helpee.’

The Chinese stared at Gummer’s big body in terror, unable to see how he could be smuggled away.

‘Coffin,’ Willie said. ‘Buy coffin. Plenty coffin on bund. Bring here. Understand? Old uncle dies. Must be buried. Got it?’

The Chinese nodded.

‘Right. Chop chop. Quick. Go.’

As the Chinese disappeared, the door closing softly behind him, Willie stared at Gummer, hating him for the trouble he was causing him. The girl, standing in a corner, her arms round herself, hugging herself as if she were cold, watched him, her eyes fearful.

‘You love?’

She shook her head and gestured with her fingers to indicate that the affair between them had been one of money only. For a moment, Willie sympathised with Gummer because the girl was delicate-looking, frail, gentle and very feminine. Perhaps she supplied what Emmeline failed to supply. From his own experience, he knew Emmeline was a domineering lover, and perhaps Gummer had decided that what he got from her wasn’t worth the security of being her husband with a business behind him.

Eventually, the young Chinese returned. There were four men with him and they were carrying a coffin.

‘Tell Chinamen uncle die,’ he said.

‘Good. Shovel him in.’

Holes were bored in the coffin lid and it was unscrewed and Gummer stuffed inside, wrapped in a blanket, his clothes packed around him. It was Willie who crossed his hands on his chest.

‘Screw him down,’ he said.

It wasn’t going to be easy because, if Gummer recovered his senses he’d wonder where he was and it wouldn’t do to be found carrying a coffin with the body inside pounding on the lid to be let out. At least Gummer wouldn’t suffocate.

‘Right. Let’s go.’

Money was distributed and they made ready to leave. Hoisting the coffin up was difficult because Gummer was heavy, but they got it on their shoulders and began to march solemnly down the narrow street. A coolie coming towards them flattened against the wall and bent his head in respect for the dead as they passed. Returning to the bund, they arrived at the place of execution just as the women finished their grisly task and began to stuff the bodies into the coffins the coolie’s had brought. Solemnly, they waited in the shadows until they could join the little procession and move off after them. A few coolies and students watched silently.

The last of the unrest was dying away. Hardly daring to breathe at the front of the coffin, Willie pushed stolidly ahead. Behind him the Chinese muttered, terrified of being found out. At one point, above the yelling in the town, he thought he could hear muffled thumps and scratches near his ear and wondered if Gummer had recovered consciousness and was trying to fight his way out. Praying he wouldn’t start yelling, he continued to plod forward and eventually the imagined bumps and shuffles died away and he decided he’d gone to sleep again.

At the end of the bund, while the little procession went one way, Willie’s group went the other. Nobody seemed to notice and they passed on towards the European quarter. As they reached it, a Sikh policeman stepped forward, his hand raised.

‘Get out of the way, you fool,’ Willie snarled at him.

‘You cannot come here, Chinaman.’

‘Yes, I can, you bloody idiot,’ Willie snapped. ‘This is a rescue. There’s a white man in here. I’ve fetched him out of the Chinese City. If we don’t get him somewhere safe and open him up, he’ll suffocate.’

The Sikh was obdurate and, desperate, Willie wrenched off his hat and stared at him. ‘I’m Sarth,’ he said. ‘William Sarth. That’s my godown there. Let me past.’

The policeman was finally convinced and they covered the last few hundred yards in a hurried shuffle. Da Braga was waiting as they appeared, and he opened the wide door so that they entered almost at a run. Panting, their breath hanging in little steamy puffs on the cold air, they put the coffin on a pile of crates and Willie sent the hat skimming out of sight.

‘Screwdriver, Luis.’

As they lifted the lid, the stench rocked them back. Gummer had obviously recovered consciousness and been sick.

‘Get him out.’

They lifted the fouled naked shape out and laid it on the crates. ‘Fetch a bucket of water.’

Disgusted with Gummer, hating the trouble he had caused, Willie was not in the mood to be gentle. Taking the bucket from Da Braga, he sloshed it over the naked body, fully expecting Gummer to sit up spluttering, swearing and offering to knock somebody’s head off. He didn’t move.

‘Willie–’ Da Braga’s eyes widened. ‘–I think–’

Willie stared at him, then at the Chinese standing round him, their mouths open. Then he grabbed for Gummer’s wrist and felt it. There was no pulse.

‘Willie,’ Da Braga muttered, ‘he is dead.’

‘He was alive when we shoved him in,’ Willie said.

‘He is not alive now.’ Da Braga put his hand out to feel for a pulse in Gummer’s neck. He turned to Willie and shook his head.

‘He couldn’t have suffocated in that time,’ Willie said. ‘There were plenty of breathing holes.’

Da Braga leaned forward and, forcing open Gummer’s mouth, put his finger in and hooked out a set of false teeth.

‘He didn’t suffocate, Willie,’ he said. ‘He was sick and he choked on vomit and his own false teeth.’

 

Because of the heat, they buried Gummer the same afternoon, in the same coffin in which he had been rescued from Flowering Almond Street.

They carried the body in a horse-drawn cart to a small strip of ground at the back of a mission church near the Chinese cemetery, run by Pastor McEwan, the man who had married Willie and Abigail. He wanted to know what denomination Gummer belonged to, arguing that he couldn’t be buried by him if he were not a Presbyterian. His shock of grey hair made him look fanatic and a little mad.

‘How did he die?’ he demanded.

‘He was drunk.’

‘Then there’s no place for him here!’

‘Don’t talk bloody silly,’ Willie snapped. ‘He’s a European and he has to be buried. What do you suggest we do? Stick him on the bund and let him fade away?’

In the end McEwan agreed on a modified service. Emmeline seemed indifferent and Willie even suspected that she was probably glad to be rid of her troublesome husband. There were plenty of other men who could fill her bed or occupy her counting house.

McEwan was waiting for them by the church, which was built in a style that was half Glasgow-Presbyterian and half Chinese. The graves behind carried a similar mixture of names, varying from that of the Rev. Archibald Munro, who had died in 1894, to that of Lee Chen-Si, a child who had been knocked down by a horse.

They had to wait until he had conducted the service for one of his converts and had to stand in the cold while the family sang a hymn and recited the Lord’s prayer.

 

‘Arthur, which art in Heaven,

Harold be thy name,

Thy kin done come,

Thee Willie Dunn…’

 

Listening, Willie wondered how much it meant to them.

In the Chinese part of the cemetery with its strange cupola-like headstones, they could see paper streamers fluttering in the wind on the burial mounds to keep away evil spirits. A student, the son of a wealthy merchant, who had been killed in the rioting, was being buried there and a vast procession was snaking in from the road, with lanterns, gongs and a band discordantly playing ‘Colonel Bogey’. There were dragon kites, bouquets of flowers, models of favourite pets, a solemn portrait of the dead boy and a notice announcing his virtues printed on it in Chinese characters in gilt paint.

Paid mourners in grubby white clothes, moving in traditional attitudes of grief, were clearing their throats and spitting ready to give tongue as they edged to the grave, followed by musicians blowing throaty sighs from instruments like hand pumps. Pigeons with reeds in bamboo tubes attached to their backs were released in a cloud of drifting feathers to add the wailing sounds of the lutes to the din. Solemn Taoist monks, in mitre hats and carrying horse-hair fly swats and prayer scrolls, brought money, lacquer boxes, songbirds and effigies of dragons to accompany the dead boy to paradise.

Pastor McEwan stared coldly at them as they moved among the burial mounds with their yellowing skeletons in rotting coffins where the rain had washed away the soil, and refused to proceed until the noise had died down. ‘Pagan music,’ he said. ‘I can’t bury a Christian soul with that going on.’

Eventually the gonging, blaring and wailing died and, as the Chinese peasant spectators turned round, their heads along the dividing wall like coconuts at a fairground shy, he sniffed and proceeded with the service.

‘For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God and His great mercy…’ The high-pitched voice, scraping at the nerves, seemed totally lacking in emotion. Stiff in his best suit with his high starched collar, Willie stood alongside a silent Emmeline, who was dressed in a black alpaca coat run up in a couple of hours by a Chinese tailor and worn over a grey dress. He was wondering if Gummer had ever been to church; if he believed; if, in fact, the ceremony really mattered any more to him than the one for the converts.

He had not been back to the hotel long when he was called to the door of his room. The old Chinese who had led him into the city was waiting there for him with the reception clerk. He held an envelope and a large wrapped parcel.

‘Missee send this for Mastah,’ he announced.

Willie nodded and tipped him, wondering what Emmeline was up to.

The envelope contained money and a note saying it was to repay what he had handed over to bribe the Chinese. The wrapped object was a lacquered bowl which he recognised at once as Ming.

He sat with it in his hands, staring at it, knowing it was worth a small fortune. The note with it said simply, ‘In gratitude. Always my love. Emmeline.’

He jumped up at once, guessing what she was up to. Having got rid of Gummer, she was taking advantage of the absence of Abigail to get her claws in him again.

Rewrapping the bowl, he marched out of the hotel, called a rickshaw and had himself driven to Emmeline’s new house. As the rickshaw stopped in front, he saw a curtain move upstairs and knew she was waiting for him.

The servant who let him in bent low in a kow-tow. ‘Missee upstairs. Massah follow.’

Stamping upstairs behind the Chinese, Willie found himself let into a bright sunny room furnished with a carpet from North China in blue, white and pink. Since getting her hands on her father’s money, Emmeline had never stinted herself and there was a chaise-longue, an armchair and a dressing table. The curtains were of gauze and moved slightly in the breeze. Through the door, Willie could see into the bedroom, where there was a huge bed, with a canopy where the big mosquito net was furled.

Emmeline appeared almost at once. She was in white lace, with a flowing kimono-like garment over her shoulders, and her pale face was touched with colour. He guessed she had taken trouble with her appearance.

He got down to brass tacks at once and placed the Ming bowl on the dressing table among the flowers. ‘That thing’s worth a fortune, Emmeline,’ he said.

‘I know. I couldn’t think how to repay you for what you did.’

‘I didn’t do much. Your husband died.’

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘It might have been. Though, at the time, I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it. Perhaps we ought to have brought him out face-down. But then he’d probably have died of suffocation.’

‘You did what you had to. You were wonderful, Willie. I’ll be eternally grateful.’

‘I still can’t accept that thing.’

‘I must reward you for what you did.’

‘Tried to do. I didn’t succeed. You can put business my way instead.’

‘Of course. We’re old friends, Willie. I can always do that. In fact–’ she hesitated, ‘–there’s something you can have straight away. There’s a collier, the Lady Roberts, full of best Welsh coal, at Port Arthur. He–’ the contempt she felt for Gummer showed in the word ‘–he sent it. I bought it for the naval squadron at Shanghai, but, with the trouble growing between the Russians and the Japanese, he thought he could get more for it up there. But the Russians wouldn’t touch it. They bring their own, they said, on the railway from as far away as St Petersburg. Make me a reasonable offer, Willie, and it’s yours. All you have to do is collect it.’

‘Port Arthur’s no place to visit just now,’ Willie pointed out. ‘Not with the trouble between the Russians and the Japanese boiling up.’

‘You can have it cheaply, Willie. I’ll be glad to get it off my hands. Obviously now that he’s dead, I’ve got to give all my attention to Wishart’s and I’ve got to make sure he hasn’t done anything else stupid. Give me a cheque now and it’s yours.’

‘You don’t buy ships and cargoes like that,’ he protested. ‘You need papers.’

‘I’ve got them, Willie. They’re all here. He brought them with him. Proud as can be of what he’d done.’ She snorted. ‘He was useless! You’d make a profit if you got it down to Shanghai for the Navy.’

‘If fighting starts, I might not.’

‘I talked to the consul before I came up here. He assured me fighting won’t start before the spring. Wars never start before the spring, he said. He said I had plenty of time. But now I haven’t. I’m needed here, and then down in Shanghai. For all I know, he’s bankrupted Wishart’s.’

Willie paused, he liked the sea and was fascinated by ships. He always had been. Even at Wainwright and Halliday’s he had always spent more time than he ought in London Docks, trying to catch the whiff of the river, inhaling the smell of rope and tar and tallow. He’d always fancied being a shipping magnate and, while owning one ship hardly put him in that category, at least it was a start. But he still couldn’t believe she was offering him such a bargain. It was unlike Emmeline and he found it hard to understand.

‘How much do you want for her?’

‘Morgan’s sold five steamers earlier in the year, 30,000 tons altogether, at cost price, subject to annual depreciation at five per cent for every year in service, making a total price of £200,000, with another £200,000 for good will and trade. You could have the Lady Roberts for eight thousand all in, coal and good will included. Just the thing for operating out here, Willie.’

The figure she suggested was not high, but it would use every bit of his spare capital. It was also important, it was clear, to get up to Port Arthur and take the ship over at once before the trouble that had been threatening between Japan and Russia broke, or he’d find himself in trouble with the amount of capital it tied up.

He weighed up the pros and cons for a while, not certain that he wasn’t making a fool of himself. But the appeal of being in shipping was great and he found it hard to resist. His mind was racing, as he did quick sums in his head while trying to present Emmeline with an unperturbed front.

‘I’ll take her,’ he said. ‘When do you want your money?’

‘Now,’ she said. ‘I’m in need of it.’

‘Not doing so well?’ he asked, alert for rumours of a fading business. Fading businesses meant cheap goods for sale and he was not one to miss an opportunity.

Emmeline gave him a sideways look. ‘You mind your own business,’ she said.

‘My cheque good enough?’

‘I’ll cash it straightaway. If it comes back at me, the sale’s cancelled.’

‘It won’t come back,’ Willie said. ‘There’s enough to cover it.’

Only just, though, he realised.

 

The following day as he climbed from his bed, a vivid streamer of sun swept the sky, then it deepened to red and another streamer ended in the flaring flashpoint of the sun as it raced up in a blinding glare from the river. It looked a good omen.

He had spent half the night doing sums and had come to the conclusion that he could just manage the sale that had been proposed, so long as he got up to Port Arthur at once to claim the ship before the Russians or the Japanese did. Emmeline gave him the papers and he insisted on studying them carefully before he handed over the cheque. They seemed straightforward. Two thousand tons dead weight, modern triple expansion engine and apparently sound. He’d heard that P & O had bought up a line recently to act as feeders for their European trade, so perhaps they might like to use his ship to feed their China Seas trade. Based at Shanghai, he could move between the East Indies, India, Indo-China, Japan, the Philippines, even down the Pacific to Australia and New Zealand. He had been exporting and importing long enough already to know the possibilities.

‘I’m grateful, Willie,’ Emmeline said as he handed over the cheque.

She was standing in front of him, close enough for him to smell the perfume she was wearing, the lace over her bosom brushing his jacket. She paused. ‘It’s such a pity we parted all that time ago, Willie.’

Willie frowned. ‘Lay off, Emmeline. We’re doing business not hopping into bed.’

‘We were lovers once.’

‘Emmeline, I’ve got a kid and another on the way.’

She gave a romantic sigh. ‘To think it might have been mine, Willie.’

‘Emmeline, cut it out! I’m off.’

She put a hand on his arm and, as he swung back to her, she pushed close against him. ‘I’ve always loved you, Willie. I’ve never forgotten what we were to each other.’

‘You didn’t give a damn!’ he snapped. ‘You just wanted me in your bed!’

Her voice dropped a couple of octaves. ‘You were very good in bed, Willie.’

He began to grow angry. ‘Christ, Em, we’ve only just stuck Gummer under the sod.’

‘He was never any good. It was the greatest mistake of my life marrying him. He wasn’t a gentleman like you, Willie.’

Gentleman, Willie thought. That was something he’d never claimed for himself, though, judging by some of the white men making fortunes out of China, he supposed he’d as much right to the title as any of them.

‘Don’t go, Willie.’

‘I have to.’

‘Stay and have tea. Have a drink.’

‘Emmeline, for Christ’s sake–!’

She had her arms round him now, her large firm bosom resting against his chest. He felt the chaise-longue behind his knees and collapsed on to it, Emmeline on top of him. Her fingers were already trying to unfasten buttons.

‘Jesus Christ on a tightrope!’

With a heave, he jerked himself free and she landed with a bump on the floor, knocking over a table and a vase of flowers. She glared up at him, her bosom heaving. She had undone the buttons of her blouse and he had a bird’s-eye view of a pair of splendid breasts.

‘It’s all right, Willie. It’s all right. I want to. I want you to.’

‘Well, I don’t!’

As he headed for the door, she scrambled to her feet and stood with her back to it. ‘I’m yours, Willie!’

‘Don’t be so bloody melodramatic!’

‘Take me!’

He wrenched her out of the way, spinning her round so that she lost her balance and fell on to the chaise-longue.

‘For Christ’s sake, Emmeline,’ he snarled. ‘Grow up! I’m a married man and you’ve just become a widow.’

As he slammed the door behind him she was just reaching for the overturned vase and he heard it crash against the other side of the panelling. As he clattered down the stairs, the Chinese manservant was waiting at the bottom, a look of bewilderment on his face. As Willie shot through the front door, he heard Emmeline scream. It was a scream of rage and frustration and she was still screaming as he told the rickshaw coolie to take him back to his office.