Wherever I went ashore, be it St John’s or San Francisco, Liverpool or Valparaiso, it seemed Dorothea’s face was the one I searched for. Savannah too. Looking back, even Marcia bore a passing resemblance: dark hair, dark eyes, a sweet, seductive smile. But none of the ones I briefly courted – even less the ones I bedded – could hold a candle to the original.
Many were the times I picked up my battered copy of Great Expectations – first of a collection of novels – and thought about that afternoon. I did not seriously expect to meet Dorothea again but, having joined White Star to further my career, in the spring of ’82 I was assigned to a ship heading for Hong Kong.
It had been a tough couple of years. With a lot to learn about steamships, I began my time over again as a lowly 4th Officer. The familiar creaks and groans of a wooden ship were exchanged for the heartbeat of reciprocating engines and the hollow ring of an iron hull. For all its sooty grime, its knack of leaving black smears across decks and passengers alike, coal was an expensive commodity. So when the weather was favourable we used sail. But coal gave us steam, provided power to the steering gear, power to winches to haul up the anchors, lift the sails, wind the ropes. We even had steam-powered derricks to handle our own cargo. Most important factor of all however, steam drove us on through those head-on Atlantic storms.
The engine room was a brutal place, the men who worked there a hard lot. They had to be. If it was common for sailors to fall to their deaths from the topgallants, in feeding the furnaces of steamships men collapsed and died from the heat. And burns – so many burns. You could tell a fireman from a sailor any day of the week – not just from the pallor of his skin, but the scars on his face and arms.
It was an education, working my first steam ship. If I never forgot my first sight of the Britannic from the wallowing Lizzie Fennell, the first time I saw an engine room working at full stretch was a revelation. Everything aft was pounding steel – so close, like the snapping jaws of some mechanical monster – tended by engineers on narrow walkways, adjusting valves, monitoring dials, greasing rods. Hissing bursts of steam as the ship rolled first one way, then another. Adjustments all the time when she started to pitch. Amidships, the big scotch boilers – hot, so hot – and forward, the furnaces where men heaved and shovelled in a glowing, ceaseless battle to make more steam.
It made me think a sailor’s job was easy. Instilled respect, too. Made me understand what it meant when we up top asked for more speed.
By the time I was promoted to 3rd Officer, I felt I was getting a hold on the job. Even so, in the spring of ’82, it was a surprise to be promoted again and detailed to join SS Coptic in Liverpool. Less than a year old, combined sail and steam with some fine passenger accommodation, she was bound for San Francisco and Hong Kong, and expected to remain in the Pacific service for two years.
An exciting prospect. I ordered 2nd Officer’s uniforms and told myself I was keen to see how the island colony had changed. But the thrill of anticipation was more fundamental. Dorothea, rather than Hong Kong, was at the heart of it.
~~~
Even by the shortest route, via Cape Horn and Peru, the voyage from Liverpool to San Francisco took three months. Some weeks later, having crossed the Pacific, I saw at once that since my last visit the little colony had expanded all directions, while the busy harbour was more crowded than ever.
This time there was no hanging around for a berth. As a passenger ship, Coptic took on a pilot, steamed boldly past the anchorage and docked on arrival. The central quay was alive with people as we came in, the noonday air buzzing with excited voices. It seemed half Hong Kong’s population had turned out to welcome us in. After an official reception that evening, the Captain’s plan to throw the ship open to visitors promised to be a success.
The Governor arrived to greet the Captain and senior officers, and, with an entourage consisting of Hong Kong’s most important officials and their wives, they were entertained to a buffet-style supper in the Saloon. Once the speeches were over, our musicians – a string quartet – played some lively airs while the guests enjoyed their coffee. Afterwards the Governor’s party was given a tour of the ship.
I was stationed on the bridge. Behind the windows of the chart room to be precise, with the large-scale chart of Hong Kong open on the table, pretending to be making some corrections with the aid of the latest Admiralty notices. In reality, of course, I was simply waiting for the Old Man to arrive and take over the show.
If I’d spent many idle moments wondering about Dorothea – whether she was still there, married, a mother, even – I have to say the shadow of her father, David Lang, was never far behind. I imagined his position as banker and bullion dealer would warrant an invitation to this little shindy, and with that in mind I’d polished my buttons to a blinding shine. I looked forward to the pleasure of meeting him eye to eye and reminding him who I was. No longer a boy to be dismissed, but a man on his way to the top.
With eyes and ears on the alert, I waited for the tour to reach the wheelhouse, ready to scan the gathered faces as the Old Man began his little speech. I’d often heard him giving passengers a similar lecture, and he was right, a chart was just what it seemed: a map in reverse. Instead of land features, it showed the coast and settlements in simple terms, reserving its detail for what lay below the sea, the shallows, the wrecks, the coral reefs and hidden rocks. And most important of all for a ship entering port, the markings of the deep-water channel which allowed safe access to the harbour.
Hearing voices, I stepped back as they entered. I scanned the half dozen male faces behind the Captain: hale, bright-eyed, flushed with whisky and good food, none was familiar to me. Some were gathered before the windows, peering in as the Old Man indicated the chart and the harbour’s unusual features. Above his deeper tones I could hear female voices, but my view of the open bridge was obscured. As the men moved on to the next place of interest, I saw the Chief Officer smiling down at one of the ladies, ushering her along; and then, amidst laughter and the swish of silk skirts, I saw her. Unmistakably Dorothea. No longer a girl but a woman, creamy skin accentuated by dark curls swept up from a slender neck.
Our eyes met. Wide-eyed for a split-second of disbelief, she frowned – no more than a slight drawing together of fine black brows – as though she did not quite believe she knew me. In answer to my ever-broadening smile, there came a tremulous response. My heart pounded. Did she know me? Had I changed so much? I supposed I had in more than a decade. I saw her glance up at Chief Officer Hines, whose piggy eyes lit on me with astonishment.
She asked a question, he replied, and then she was suddenly beside me, and on a breathless greeting said, ‘Mr Smith – it is you! But how different you look, how…’ She laughed, still not sure, I think, that this man before her was the boy who had dared to bring her to book over her first disastrous love-affair.
With her hand in mine I was beyond words, as dizzy with disbelief as she appeared to be. ‘This is too, too extraordinary, Mr Smith. What a strange coincidence that you should be aboard… I never thought…’ Again she shook her head, as though civility forbade putting into words what she truly thought, that she never imagined me a man in a well-tailored uniform.
‘I must introduce you to my husband, he’s…’ My heart plummeted as she glanced around, but the husband she sought was not in evidence. ‘Ah well, never mind, later will do…’ And so we stood and gazed, each, I think, rather liking what we saw. I must have said something during that brief meeting, but my only recollection is of Hines glaring at me over Dorothea’s shoulder, indicating that this particular interview had gone on far too long.
‘We’ll meet again, I’m sure. You must come up to the house. That is,’ she added, glancing appealingly up at Hines with those melting brown eyes, ‘if they allow you some leave while you’re here.’
‘Oh, I’m sure we can grant him a couple of hours,’ Hines replied dryly, giving me a look that said he would find the means to scupper it if he could.
‘And you must come too, Mr Hines,’ she added with a smile. ‘We’ll have a little party.’ At that she extended her hand for me to bow over, bestowed a heart-stopping smile and was gone.
My limbs went weak. I leaned against the chart table, unable to believe the reality of the last few moments. And then I started to laugh.
Wearing an anxious smile, 3rd Officer Cooper poked his head round the door. ‘So what was all that about?’
It was a question that was to be repeated later by others, and to all such enquiries I remained discreet. ‘Not sure. My first trip catching up with me, I think.’ Of course, they imagined it had been some kind of courtship, a serious flirtation at the very least. How could I explain? And why would they believe that my acquaintance with Dorothea had consisted of just one afternoon, the result of a tragedy? I could hardly believe it myself.
Each time I pictured her face, a thrill went through me – and that upset my equilibrium even more. She was married, which was no surprise – but if I’d not led the life of a monk in the last few years, as far as I knew adultery had never been one of my sins. That I found myself contemplating it was disturbing.
~~~
Dorothea arrived for the open day with a group of lady friends. As navigating officer I was stationed on the bridge as before. I repeated the Old Man’s lecture on charts, we chatted with Cooper – but just as I seemed to be making headway, Hines, damn him, edged his way in to escort the ladies on the rest of their tour.
Later, I learned we’d all been invited to a little soirée at Dorothea’s home that evening. There was just one problem: I was Officer of the Watch, so was unable to accept.
Hines could have changed it for me, but, ‘Your night off is tomorrow,’ he said with a smirk, and that was that. I burned, but refused to beg. A White Star man from his days as an apprentice, our Chief Officer resented the fact that I had previously been a sailing shipmaster and had risen to my present position with apparent ease. Hines the Swine was forever reminding me that steamships were different, and that I could not assume anything, either about the ships or the company. Well aware of that, I found the only reply worth making was to do the job, do it well, and prove him wrong.
Cooper and the 4th expressed sympathy, but there was nothing to be done. Later, a flotilla of chairs borne by coolies carried the lucky few uphill to Dorothea’s soirée, while I spent time walking the ship in the moonlight, exchanging an occasional word with the watchmen, and trying to suppress a furious resentment. The younger lads arrived back around midnight, having been to a few bars on the way back, but there was no sign of the Chief Officer. He’d left with them, they said, but with jealousy burning in my breast I pictured him doubling back and laying siege to the beautiful Dorothea. It was hardly a comfort to hear that her husband had been present – Cooper said he’d left the party before any of them.
From 4:00 in the morning, the next 24 hours were mine in their entirety. I went to bed when I came off duty but barely slept. In possession of Dorothea’s address, I debated whether to send a note, send flowers, or just turn up. Perhaps, considering her marital status, I should just forget the whole thing. By breakfast time I was morose enough to feel the latter was the only course to take, but then, just as I was about to return to my cabin, a note arrived for me.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she wrote, ‘that you were unable to attend last evening. My friends were looking forward to renewing your acquaintance. Kind Mr Cooper said you had leave from the ship today. I wonder would you like to see something of Hong Kong with Eliza and me? Afterwards we could have lunch here. That is if you have no firm plans. It would be such a pleasure to talk in more informal surroundings…’
She went on to name a time that she and her friend would be on the quay, little more than an hour hence, which made me think Cooper had been frank with her about Hines and yesterday’s disappointment. Well, I thought happily, it leaves no time to be coy. And with that I showered and changed into fresh whites, presenting myself on the quayside within moments of their arrival. Dorothea was driving a pretty little pony and trap, with just enough room for three.
Formality in such close quarters was impossible. Elation at being ashore for the first time in weeks was heightened almost unbearably by close physical contact with a woman who’d invaded my dreams for years. Aware of Dorothea almost to the point of embarrassment, I gave vent to my high spirits with comments and witticisms as we bowled along the waterfront. Within minutes we were chatting and laughing as though we’d known each other for years.
Dorothea took us along the coast road to a wild but rather sad place, where a tumbling stream ran down to the sea. Here and there, on the slopes of a steep valley, the crumbling remains of grand houses stood like ruined monuments to Hong Kong’s early days. Fever, she said bleakly, had killed off most the inhabitants. She indicated the cemetery as we passed, a few tombstones overgrown with creepers and flowering shrubs. It looked as though an age had passed, but I knew it could not have been more than thirty years.
The air of melancholy prompted a recounting of more personal losses: Eliza’s husband, a silk merchant, had been killed in China the previous year, while Dorothea’s father had died just a year after her marriage. Having expressed my condolences, I said, quite truthfully, ‘I’m sorry not to have met him again.’
Perhaps my tone gave something away, for Dorothea gave me a quizzical look. ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘my father was a remarkable man. He built the business from nothing, you know.’ A moment later she said, ‘My husband, Curtis, manages things now.’ Since her married name was Curtis, I thought it odd she should refer to him by his surname, but she carried on to say that he’d left the party early last evening to board a boat for Canton.
‘Why Canton?
‘Silver,’ she explained. ‘We buy the silver from China and ship it here – and from here it goes to London.’
It seemed Dorothea’s husband spent much of his time in China, while her brother Nicholas still handled the London end. Privately, I wondered about the marriage – about her presence here with me, if I’m honest. I could not imagine such freedoms in England. Neither of the ladies mentioned children but although I was curious, I felt it would have been tactless to ask.
Climbing the valley, admiring the grand views, we took a circuitous route back to Dorothea’s home on the Peak. Trees had grown, almost obscuring the entrance, so it took a moment for me to recognize the place. Inside, it was as cool and spacious as I’d once imagined, and heightened awareness made it strange to be in David Lang’s old home. Only in a lesser way did I wonder again about this man Curtis. Would I be content to manage my father-in-law’s business, and live in his house? I thought not.
A table was set on the veranda overlooking the rear garden, and lunch was served by two male servants. Shortly afterwards, Eliza was preparing to leave. After a clear morning, rain was expected and she wanted to be home, she said, before the heavens opened. I felt it was a prompt for me to leave too so I rose to my feet, only to be stayed by Dorothea, who claimed lightly that we had never finished the conversation begun all those years before.
The topic I recalled was not one I wished to revive, and in truth nor did she. She ordered fresh tea and we returned to our seats beneath the deep veranda, content for a while to take in the view of the harbour, with the hills of Kowloon beyond.
Clouds were darkening, reminding me of the day we met. For a little while silence hung between us. Not entirely comfortable, since we were no doubt thinking along similar lines, although from differing points of view. What did we know of each other? Not much, although the background to our acquaintance enabled us to make certain judgements. Already, as a girl of eighteen or twenty, Dorothea had been the kind of beauty who cuts a swathe through the ranks. Her father had said as much. Back then she’d been unaware of it, possessing an innocence that both touched and confused me; perhaps because in those days I was innocent too.
She knew, of course, that I had been attracted to her; just as I’d known in retrospect that she had been attracted to me, despite my youth and lack of finesse. That the spark had never been extinguished was clear from our meeting the other day. After a few hours in her company, however, I could see that life had sullied the innocence; there was a brittle edge to her humour, too often a downward turn to what should have been a pretty smile.
I guessed at an unhappy marriage with too much time in which to brood. I wondered if she saw me as a temporary balm, an adventure to lighten the tedium of her days? Well, that was the way the situation pointed. Whether it was right, what the servants might think, how she would explain it away did not come into it. The air was taut between us, and instinct demanded some kind of resolution.
I turned to look at her, pale against the shadows in her ruffled cotton gown. Rosy lips moved in a slow smile as she extended her hand. I took it, at once aware of the wedding ring. She felt my hesitation and the smile became down-turned as she withdrew her hand – and the ring. Nothing could have made things clearer, but I noticed how easily it slipped off, and wondered if she did that often.
‘Please don’t ask.’
‘A mistake?’
She shook her head, looked vulnerable for a moment, and then as the rain began to fall, great swathes of it obscuring the harbour, her teasing smile returned. ‘Had the weather been more clement,’ she said, ‘I’d have suggested a tour of the garden. But as it is…’
Servants came to clear away. We rose at once as rain lashed the house, retiring indoors to watch the tempest. I regained her hand, startled by the renewed shock of contact. The morning’s suppressed desires leapt afresh between us, her eyes and mouth presenting an invitation I could not refuse. That first light kiss demanded more, but Dorothea drew back, curling her fingers tight between mine, hurrying me along the veranda to the eastern side of the house.
Louvered screens opened into a room she called her boudoir, a place she kept to herself. A desk, an easel, an embroidery frame were things I noticed later; at the time I saw only a day-bed strewn with cushions. She closed the screens, turned, and was in my arms at once. The kiss I’d hungered for filled the void with stars.
I remember the rain drumming on the roof; softness of flesh beneath the taut material of her gown, small hard nipples beneath my hands, buttons which needed her deft fingers to free. The gown fell in a pool at her feet, leaving just a clinging shift. In the half-light as she unpinned her hair, she looked to me like a creature from some other world, a nymph or naiad come to steal my life, my soul. I gave it willingly, clumsily fumbling with jacket buttons, my skin so hot and damp I needed help to push the heavy linen from my shoulders. She smiled, running her hands over my chest and back, reaching up to pull my head down to hers.
I buried my fingers in her hair and drew her against me. In the moment before we sank onto the bed, she whispered, ‘Love me, love me…’
And I did, in every mortal sense of the word. She set fire to my senses in ways that no other woman had ever done. I’d had encounters before – but that’s all they were. A meeting, an agreement, the briefest dalliance followed by physical release. Such transactions serviced a need it would be hypocritical to deny. But for me that first time with Dorothea might have been the first time ever: like a boy in my eagerness I even made a fool of myself. We laughed about it afterwards. Then some comment of mine made her ask about my very first experience, and I found myself telling her about San Francisco years ago, about the middle-aged Madam who had decided she would initiate me into the delights of the flesh. Not a happy memory.
Imagining her first time to have been with her husband, naturally I did not ask, but whatever her experience had been in the years since, she was not naïve and did not pretend to innocence. Indeed, my instinct to take control of the proceedings – so sadly cut short – was overturned by her frank but gentle insistence that we do things her way. In the end she taught me not just how to make love, but how to be a lover.
~~~
The more we were together, the more I hungered for her. But we were not often together. In port while we discharged one cargo and loaded another, I had my duties to perform. Mostly though, I was free after four in the afternoon, and on Coptic’s first visit to Hong Kong, Dorothea’s husband was away. We found a small hotel on the outskirts of the port, the kind of place where missionaries stayed en route to China. I rather feared running into one of our passengers, but not enough to halt my intent. There Dorothea would come to meet me, her garb as sober as any Nonconformist preacher’s wife. Well, as we often joked, we were nonconformists of a kind.
Twelve days, three of which were wasted in the beginning, one at the end. In all we were together seven times. As the days ran out the passion intensified. Our meetings became a bonding of flesh quickened by desire, our partings a tearing that left me aching and bereft.
Leaving her, I was like a man press-ganged into service, as heart-sick as any young husband forced to return to sea and leave his wife behind. But of course, she was not my wife, and the thought of her husband returning from Canton, eager to reclaim his rights, drove me almost mad with jealousy.
For twelve days I’d had little sleep but hardly seemed to need it; on the way to Yokohama, whenever I was not working or eating, I fell into my bunk and slept like a dead man. Even waking, I felt exhausted. Not even Hines’s sarcasm could rouse a response. Eventually, he left me alone.
Sailing with the weather rather than against it, we made a much shorter voyage from Yokohama to San Francisco, but never had the Pacific seemed so wide. I did my watches, crossing off the days like a prisoner. We reached Frisco by mid-September to say goodbye to one group of passengers and welcome another. According to the Purser, the Americans this time were more of a mixed bag, merchants keen to establish themselves as middlemen, and missionaries eager to plough the heathen fields. Both saw China – long forbidden to outsiders – as virgin territory, and the tiny British colony of Hong Kong as the stepping-off point. The bulk, however, were simply keen explorers, planning to head up the Pearl River to Canton just for the pleasure of seeing a strange land for themselves. To my surprise, several of the missionaries and even more of the tourists were sensibly clad women travelling without escorts. I admired their bravery while wondering what the Chinese would make of them.
With every beat of the engines on that return journey, I urged the ship forward. Despite its name the north Pacific was far from peaceful and it took another month to reach Hong Kong. At last by mid-October we were back. Knowing nothing of Dorothea since I’d been away, for days I’d been in a fever of anxiety, running through a variety of scenes in which our love-affair had been found out, her husband enraged to the point of violence. What if that were true? Would I be able to see her? And what if she’d simply changed her mind, decided I wasn’t worth the risk: what if she wanted to end it?
As before, the quay was thronged with people as we berthed, the air buzzing with anticipation. While sailors made fast the stern ropes, I scanned the crowd. People were waving and calling. I thought I heard my name. Forced to return to the task in hand, I was already plotting and planning how speedily I could get ashore when suddenly I saw her on the edge of the crowd. She waved and my spirits soared. My answering grin set the seamen laughing.
Changing in my cabin an hour or so later, one of the stewards tapped on the door and handed me a note. It was from Dorothea. ‘Meet me tonight if you can – our usual place…’
And so it began again.
~~~
In the beginning she’d begged me not to ask about her husband. But after a tortured absence I had to know where I stood. Our passionate reunion was a balm that lasted no time at all, and later, as we lay together in the closeness of that tiny hotel room, the words, the questions, came tumbling out.
‘Is he at home, your husband? Where does he think you are?’
She drew away, studied me in surprise. ‘If you mean, is he here, in Hong Kong, then yes, he is.’ She paused, held my gaze. ‘This evening he could be where he said, at the Hong Kong Club, but he’s probably elsewhere, with his mistress.’
‘His mistress?’
‘Yes. She’s a Chinese woman, quite well-born, I understand – he met her in Canton, brought her here some years ago.’ Sighing, she turned away, reached for her robe. ‘Everyone knows. Of course, they pretend not to.’
Absurdly, I was shocked. ‘Does he know – that you know?’
She shrugged. ‘Probably. We keep up the pretence that I don’t. If either of us were to acknowledge it, the house of cards might just fall down.’
Not understanding, I asked what she meant, and she began to explain about the business her father had created. David Lang had come to Hong Kong when the Chinese first granted the British permission to trade from the island.
‘He was in Macau,’ she went on, ‘during the first of the opium wars, working for a silver merchant – that was where he met and married my mother. Mama was Portuguese – her father was a trader. It was quite dangerous then – they were always on the move between here and Macau, having to pack up at a moment’s notice, lodging with friends until things calmed down. Or acting host when friends were under threat. Exciting times, I gather,’ she added dryly.
‘But when all that nonsense about the opium settled down and Canton became more open, Daddy set up on his own, here in Hong Kong. He’d buy silver from the Chinese and ship the bullion back to London to be sold. The business just kept on growing…’
As she talked, I realized how little I’d known about her. How very few questions I’d asked, how little she had volunteered. I hadn’t even known her mother was Portuguese.
‘Curtis came to us from Canton not long after you and I first met,’ Dorothea went on. ‘He became Daddy’s right-hand man. Then, as Daddy’s health started to break down, he relied on him more and more.’
She bent to turn up the lamp, poured some tonic water into a glass and sipped at it. ‘I suppose there was always something between us,’ she said slowly, as though speculating on the matter, ‘although I never took him seriously because he was so much older…
‘But then Daddy spelled it out. The China trade had made him wealthy, but fever and the climate had weakened his heart: he was paying the price, he said, for worldly success. Yes,’ she sighed, ‘Daddy became surprisingly pious in his latter years. Anyway, he wasn’t well, his heart was weak. He said that when he died, he wanted to leave the Hong Kong business in safe hands – for my sake as much as my brother’s.’
I understood then what her father’s concerns must have been, that when he died the unmarried Dorothea would own half the business and, once married, Dorothea’s husband would control it. So she needed a sensible alliance, otherwise all that David Lang had worked for – with the valuable core here, in Hong Kong – would be at risk.
‘He was very matter-of-fact,’ she went on. ‘It was rather frightening. There he was, telling me he was about to die, and in the next breath planning the future as though only the business mattered. He was my father and I loved him,’ Dorothea declared with sudden break in her voice. ‘He’d always protected me, but suddenly he was talking of death and dying…’
She left my side, paced the room, her shadow moving behind her like a ghost. ‘The right man for the business was Curtis. So he was the one to marry.’
I tried to assimilate that and failed. ‘But did Curtis want to marry you?’
Amused by my thoughtless protest, she laughed; but it had a bitter edge. ‘For that kind of fortune? My dear, wouldn’t you?’
I thought then what an innocent I was, with a mother I’d considered ambitious because she wanted her little shop in Hanley, and had manipulated my father into buying it.
I knew nothing.