Part Four

One

The first cool wind was blowing from the mountains to the north, and though the day was clear, a nagging breeze that was noticeably colder came across the field, rattling the ropes of the marquees and billowing the panels. The wings of the Farman lifted and sagged as it snatched at them, and Wang appeared for the first time wearing a quilted coat.

Towards midday, Lao’s car came down the dirt road, drab against a grey sky, dragging a plume of yellow dust after it, and rattled and banged across the field to where Sammy was working over the wrecked Fokker with chilled fingers. With him, Lao had Kee, a suitcase full of Shanghai dollars, and Peking medals for Ira, Sammy and Cheng.

He looked pleased with himself. With Kwei’s air force gone and no fear of danger from aeroplanes, Tsu’s troops were on the march east already. Kwei had expected a great deal from his brand new Russian-supplied air force and, his nerve broken by his losses, his troops constantly harried from the sky, he backed away so fast his vaunted artillery was left behind and lost and, as his troops vanished into the wooded area towards Hwai-Yang, there was no longer any need for flying. With Tsu’s grip on Tsosiehn immediately firmer, all the parades had stopped overnight and the students had suddenly discovered the importance of examinations. The flags and the placards had disappeared and the mob had become earnest-faced coolies again, going about their business in their blue cotton rags and conical straw hats with no sign of disaffection.

‘Everything is going our way,’ Lao said gaily. ‘The Warlord of the South-West is gaining followers every day. Even Chiang K’ai-Shek will not be able to withstand him now.’

Ira glanced at Sammy. They all knew Lao was seeing things through rose-tinted spectacles because, whatever was happening in Tsosiehn, the three Chiang columns that had headed north from Canton during the summer had not been defeated. Preceded by political agents who had destroyed loyalties and beliefs ahead of them, they had toppled one warlord after another, and city after city to the south of Tsosiehn had been captured. No matter how strong he had become, it would be the Baptist General’s turn eventually, because the Chiang troops were frighteningly efficient with their smart new uniforms and well-cared-for weapons, and they had orders not to murder or rape, and had pledged themselves to lower rents and put down banditry so there’d be no need for the hated foreign gunboats on the river. The discipline in itself was enough to recommend them to the harassed peasantry and the Kuomintang’s foreign policy appealed to the jingoistic students, and there had been a feeling in the air for a long time that it would not be long before all the hated warlords were finally removed from the scene. No woman had ever been safe from their men, no matter what her wealth or class, and there were always wailing girls, and headless bodies on the garbage heaps along the river bank, surrounded by flies and waiting for the spring tides to wash them away.

Whether he believed what he said or not, however, Lao seemed delighted by the turn of events and was inclined to be jovial as he took out the medals.

‘No one has been forgotten,’ he said gaily. ‘They are pure silver and worth a great deal of money.’

Ellie’s lip curled. ‘There never was a medal that was worth all the lives they cost,’ she said.

Lao shrugged and pushed the suitcase forward. ‘The General regrets,’ he said, unperturbed, ‘that the full amount is not there. It was a very large sum to get hold of and there are no banks in this province. Of course, no one expected three machines to be destroyed at once, but he will send the rest as soon as he is able to lay his hands on it. Mr De Sa will have to arrange it because they are unwilling to despatch large sums of money so far up-river.’

When he had gone, Sammy pinned his medal to his chest and strutted about, saluting everyone in sight and pretending to be Tsu. The coolies collapsed in hysterical laughter and Lawn grinned boozily from the tent where the wrecked Fokker had been dragged, while the pupils marched round the field in a mock parade, followed by every one of Wang’s children down to the smallest and a few sightseers from Yaochow, shouting and blowing flutes and letting off fireworks in celebration.

They had a party at the bungalow that night to celebrate. Mei-Mei put on a mass of Chinese dishes, and they all stood around – even boozy old Lawn – drinking Chinese wine. It was a hilarious affair with Ellie in great form, showing an unexpected ability to play the Jew’s harp and getting merry enough on samshui to insist on giving Ira a victory kiss in front of all the others. As he grabbed hold of her and put on a big mock love scene amid cheers, he recalled isolated little events of the past weeks and it dawned on him that she must have been in love with him for some time now, even before Fagan was killed, and the knowledge left him with a humble guilty feeling.

 

The party had gone on well into the night, but, in spite of heavy heads and threatening weather, Ira and Sammy left in the old thirty-hundredweight the following afternoon to look at what remained of General Kwei’s air force.

They found the two scouts first, surrounded by soldiers in ill-fitting uniforms who were beaming all over their faces, full of elation at Ira’s victory. There was nothing left of one of the Camels but a ruined Le Rhône engine, a few scraps of burnt wood and canvas and a bent wheel, lying among the scorched wreckage of the farm where it had crashed. The farmer was poking with a stick among the smouldering beams and blackened stones where his livestock had roasted to death, but he and his family had eaten well of charred pig meat and he seemed quite content with the money Ira gave him as compensation. A platoon of Tsu soldiers had dragged the body of the pilot to one side, making no attempt to cover it, so that it lay near a flattened bush, a charred unrecognisable thing smelling of burnt flesh.

The second Camel seemed to be spread across two fields, with the remains of one wing almost a quarter of a mile from where they found the tail surface. The Le Rhône was not badly damaged and they gave the sergeant in charge of the soldiers picking among the remains a Shanghai dollar to place a guard over it until they could arrange to hoist it on the lorry. Another few dollars made sure that nothing would be stolen and every scrap of wreckage collected.

The pilot lay under a sheet of canvas nearby, a tall good-looking man whose face was unmarked apart from flecks of blood from the nose and ears. Silently the sergeant handed Ira a wallet. Significantly, there was no money in it, but there was a New York driving licence bearing the name of Leon Lucas Sergieff and a photograph of a girl sitting on a cart with what appeared to be an American farm in the background, all there was apart from a letter written in Russian and signed with an unreadable name, to show who Leon Lucas Sergieff was or why he was in China.

The De Havilland lay crumpled on the edge of a field seven or eight miles to the east near Hakau and not far behind the lines, looking like a great wounded bird as it sagged across a rivulet that ran round the back of a broken empty farmhouse. There was the usual group of soldiers looking for something to steal, and along the road a hundred yards away, a steady stream of men was heading south-east with a few guns, and a great deal of ox-cart traffic carrying supplies.

Soldiers cooking their rice nearby indicated with delighted signs and gestures that both the pilot and the observer had been alive when the machine had landed and both had been captured.

‘Talk much, Mastah. Tell officah fly-machines Kwei no have got. All finished. All gone.’

They thanked them for the information and began to climb over the fuselage. The fabric was torn by bullet holes and branches, but the longerons appeared to be unbroken, and though one wing was a crumpled wreck, the other appeared to be only slightly damaged; and Ira prowled round it, his eyes glinting suddenly as he lifted the torn fabric to run a finger over the splintered ribs of silver spruce.

‘Sammy,’ he said slowly. ‘I think we can repair this machine.’

Sammy looked startled. ‘Lor’, Ira, you seen them wings?’

Ira gestured excitedly. ‘Only the port side’s smashed, Sammy. If we can salvage them as they are, we can reconstruct ’em. The starboard set’s hardly touched. We can use ’em as a model for the other set and, with a new undercarriage, it ought to fly again.’

Sammy was gaping at him and he went on enthusiastically. ‘I flew these things for a while in 1918 and I know a bit about them. And, Sammy, I helped my father build his old box kites. I know what to do.’

Sammy still said nothing and Ira laughed. ‘The engine’s an American Liberty,’ he said. ‘Four hundred horse, Sammy, with cylinders like beer barrels. Big enough to lift a hell of a load. And I think it’s sound. With Heloïse, we don’t even have to take it out to move her.’

Sammy was staring with his mouth open at the De Havilland now, and Ira could see the ideas forming in his mind, the enthusiasm growing as he considered possibilities and rejected impossibilities.

‘Ira,’ he said slowly, ‘if we repair her, she’s ours, isn’t she? Ours. Not Tsu’s.’

Ira grinned. ‘Yes, Sammy. Ours.’ The idea was heady and exhilarating. ‘We can rig a sheerlegs right here and we can lift her and rig a temporary undercart to tow her away. Labour’s no problem and, Sammy, we’ve got the money to do it with now, and no flying for General Tsu because there’s nothing to fly against any more and winter’s coming. We’ve got months to get the spare parts and repair her before the spring.’

Sammy was grinning too, now, and Ira went on eagerly.

‘We can get Eddie Kowalski to get hold of propellers, parts and a set of plans through the De Havilland agent in Shanghai and, between us, we ought to be able to work out what’s to be done. What do you think?’

Sammy’s eyes were shining. He drew a deep breath and the words burst out of him enthusiastically. ‘I think we can do it, Ira,’ he said.

 

They drove home through a thin rain as though the hounds of hell were after them. To their surprise the farmhouse at Yaochow was deserted and they saw that everyone – pupils, coolies, Ellie and Lawn – was standing in a group near the ditch at the far end of the field where they could see broken spars and the big box-kite tail of the Farman sticking up in the air in a pathetic pile of splintered spruce and torn white linen like a gracefully crumpled eggshell.

‘Someone’s busted the Longhorn,’ Sammy said at once, the disgust plain in his voice.

The Peugeot detached itself from the group and came towards them. Ellie climbed out, her face flushed and guilty and curiously diffident in front of Ira.

‘I guess we’ve lost the Longhorn,’ she said at once. ‘Sung landed it in the ditch. Lawn says it’s a write-off.’

‘How’s Sung?’

‘He walked away from it. I’m sorry, Ira.’

For a moment there was silence, because the old Farman had served them well, then Ira glanced at Sammy and grinned.

‘Any landing you can walk away from’s a good landing,’ he said. ‘I don’t give a damn. We’ve got a better machine now than any Longhorn and it belongs to us, not Tsu.’

Sammy had climbed out of the lorry and was throwing ropes and timber and tackles into the back with the wheels they’d bought from De Sa months before. As Ellie stared at him, bewildered, he swung round, grinning.

‘The two-seater Ira forced down yesterday, El,’ he said. ‘We can repair it.’

Excitement flared in her eyes. ‘Honest?’

Ira grinned. ‘Honest. And Tsu’s too busy in the east to worry about us and very happy because Kwei’s on the run. We’ve got the whole winter to get it flying and only five pupils to worry about.’

‘Four,’ she corrected. ‘Sung decided he’d rather go back to being an infantryman. He left an hour ago on Cheng’s bicycle.’

Ira grinned again, in no mood to quibble about losses. ‘Let’s call it three, because Cheng’s on his own now, and we’ve got to salvage that De Havilland before those thieves of Tsu’s strip it for firewood.’

As he began to grab for tools and cooking implements, Ellie swung round and dived for the farm building.

‘Hold your goddam hosses,’ she said. ‘I’m coming with you!’

 

As they headed east again, Heloïse clanking behind the lorry, they began to pass a straggling column of troops on the march towards Hwai-Yang, ill-clad and carrying unfamiliar banners and umbrellas, and wearing everything from spats and boaters to furs, shabby, badly armed and out of step, all of them gaping in awe at Heloïse. General Choy, realising he was on a winning ticket, had joined in the campaigning at last, while Tsu, his sphere of influence expanding again after Ira’s unexpected success, was reported already to have his yamen and his concubines at a country home levied from a Hwai-Yang merchant. Peter Cheng had had a story that he was already printing worthless Tsu dollars to exchange for gold with which to pay off his debt to Ira, and had even set up a bank and was forcing the local merchants, under the threat of decapitation, to trade with him so that he was rapidly gathering in every scrap of money in the district.

Until the victory, Cheng had insisted, he had been for a long time having secret dealings with Shanghai bankers and had had a tug with steam up waiting downstream to whisk him to the coast, but with success in the air, he’d changed his plans and was preparing once more to move into Hwai-Yang and get a grip again on his province.

The rain cleared miraculously and that night a glow in the sky to the east indicated buildings on fire, and rumours came in from Hakau that Hwai-Yang had fallen again. General Kwei had retreated further east, they heard, and the mob had swept to the waterfront, and the city was in a turmoil, with no one in authority. A few Japanese merchants were reported to have been killed and the British gunboat, Cockroach, had been sent up from Shanghai to remove any of the American and British missionaries who wanted to avoid the fighting.

 

They reached Hakau at first light after a difficult journey when the old lorry had persisted again and again in casting its drive-chain, and bumped across the fields with Wang bouncing up and down in the back with the timber and the ropes and the wheels. Loading the salvaged Le Rhône and anything else that could be repaired or sold, they shoved the snouts of the two old vehicles between the straggling troops again to where the wreckage of the De Havilland lay.

The Tsu sergeant had long since vanished with his men and one or two local coolies had stripped some of the linen from the wings for their own use, but apart from a few scattered fragments of wood that had been stolen for firewood, it remained as they had left it.

With the fighting safely to the east now near Hwai-Yang, the area was quiet again round the wrecked and deserted farmhouse. There was no sign of the farmer and Ira guessed he’d been snatched up long since and shoved into uniform by some marauding warlord, and his wife dragged along for the entertainment of the troops.

One of the coolies scratching around the wreckage told them there had been no troops past for some time, apart from deserters from Kwei’s defeated army who were still hiding in the woods and living like bandits, unspeakably cruel, unsuperstitious and highly dangerous. A gang of them had wiped out a neighbouring village a week before but they had now moved north into the hills and nothing had been seen of them for some time.

Removing the wings was harder than they’d imagined because wood had splintered and metal sheered and twisted in the crash, and they were forced here and there to saw through spars to get at the big bolts at the wing roots. Using coolie labour from Hakau, however, they chopped down three tall pines and erected a sheerlegs and began to slacken off control cables and bracing wires, and unscrew turnbuckles and nuts. It took them the best part of the first day, even with Heloïse’s brute strength, to prepare the way and all the next day to remove the wings, swing them clear and lay them out on the grass.

For safety, they removed the splintered propeller and stood back, grimy, tired and aching, but unable to stop smiling as Ellie produced rum and hot coffee from a little paraffin stove. Sammy was sucking a split thumb and Ira was wiping away the perspiration from an oil-streaked face. Ellie looked up, smiling at their looks of satisfaction.

‘I guess we’re in business,’ she said.

They paused only long enough to swallow the coffee then Sammy clambered on to the dust-spattered engine and began to examine it.

‘Nothing wrong with it, Ira,’ he said gleefully. ‘Nothing at all, as far as I can see. Gilt-edged, tip-top condition. A bit of strain on the shaft, maybe, because the prop hit the mud, but she’ll stand a lot more work – a hell of a lot more work.’

Sleeping in a tent under the gaudy moonlight that lit up the knobbly mountains in weird tortured shapes, they were surprisingly happy despite the discomfort as they rerigged the sheerlegs over the nose of the machine and jacked it into position again so that Wang could build a crude undercarriage, and eventually, using the wheels they’d acquired from De Sa, they cautiously lowered it again and watched it settle, then swung the twisted tail unit round and attached it to the back of Heloïse.

‘What about the wings, Ira?’ Sammy asked. ‘Suppose some bastard comes along and uses ’em for firewood.’

‘He won’t while I’m here,’ Ira grinned. ‘You take the fuselage and the Le Rhône to Tzetang. We can easily move it from there to Yaochow. Take Wang with you and leave him to keep an eye on it and come back.’

As Sammy clanked off, trailing the quivering fuselage, Wang sitting high on the engine, blank-faced and self-important before the Hakati coolies, it began to drizzle but they ignored it to collect the rest of the fragments of wing and place them in a neat pile.

By the time they had sorted out the splintered pieces and placed them alongside the huge wings, and the last of the coolies had left for Hakau, the evening had set in. The cicadas were tuning up but the stillness was immense, and a bronze light was coming through the trees to lay golden stripes across the wet grass. In the distance, they could see the mountains and above them great dark towers of rain cloud that looked almost solid in the dusk. Apart from the unroofed farmhouse nearby there was no sign of habitation anywhere on the bleak landscape.

As darkness fell, they saw the glow in the sky which showed where Tsu’s troops continued to press eastwards. A cool breeze was lifting the tent flap as they ate corned beef and sipped scalding coffee from tin mugs, and outside they could hear the last drowsy mutterings of the birds.

Sitting on his bed-roll, Ira looked across at Ellie on the camp stool. There had been a new kinship of spirit between them now for some time, based on the firm belief they both had in independence. Ellie’s hands were grimy with oil, her short blonde hair untidy, her eyes tired. She had torn her shirt on a sheered bolt as they had pulled the wings free, and he could see her skin through it, and there were oilstains on her breeches, but she seemed satisfied and deeply happy.

‘It’s going to rain,’ Ira said. ‘Let’s hope we finish before the weather breaks.’

She nodded, not speaking, and began to clear away the mugs, and it was almost dark and drops of water were tapping at the tent as they lapsed into a silence that was tense and nervous, as though each of them was in the presence of a stranger. Ellie seemed lost in a morass of her own thoughts and her eyes were uncertain suddenly. Ira, too, was aware that beneath the brittle shell of their companionship unexpected currents flowed.

It was raining more heavily now, the drops tapping rapidly at the canvas in a nervous light-fingered way that seemed to highlight the tension, and Ira drew a deep breath, finding the silence unbearable.

‘It’s sometimes hard to realise that this is me,’ he said, speaking abruptly. ‘Here, in China, doing what I am doing. It’s only six years since I came back from Russia, full of schemes to set up an air carrying company.’

Ellie looked up. ‘Six years ago,’ she said, ‘I’d just gotten myself married to Ches Putnam and was looking forward to living happily ever after. I was young enough then to think I might.’

Ira gestured uncertainly. ‘Is it OK to talk about it now?’

She managed a laugh. ‘After being with Pat all that time? Yeah, it’s OK.’

‘Wasn’t it ever the same with Pat?’

She shook her head. ‘We just leaned on each other, that’s all. We’d all been living in the same house, so we just went on living in the same house. It seemed the most sensible thing to do.’

It was quite dark outside now and they were still talking by the light of the lamp when Ira lifted his head, listening.

‘Someone coming.’

He reached under his blankets for the Smith and Wesson he’d carried ever since his arrival in China. The voices outside were Chinese and they could hear the clink of weapons over the whisper of the rain. Quietly, he bent down and released the curtains at the back of the tent. The noise of the rain seemed to grow louder.

‘Outside,’ he said softly.

They had hardly slipped free when they heard shouts and a shot roared in the darkness. One arm round Ellie in the wet grass, Ira thumbed the safety catch off the revolver and, as a figure came hurtling round the tent, he pulled the trigger. For a fraction of a second, they saw a Chinese face distorted with rage under a wet bus conductor’s hat with a broken peak, then the Chinese fell back heavily against the tent, which collapsed under him, the canvas wrapping round him like a shroud.

There were more shouts and two more Chinese, both with rifles, began to scramble for the road. Ira fired at them, but they didn’t stop running and the third man freed himself from the tent and bolted after them, uttering little yelps of fright.

The silence as the yelling died was immense.

‘Who were they, Ira?’ Ellie asked in a small breathless voice.

Ira was rummaging among the wrecked tent, throwing out blankets and leather coats so they could sleep in the cabin of the lorry. ‘Deserters,’ he said shortly. ‘From Kwei’s army, I expect.’

The rain was falling more heavily now, hissing and rustling in the grass as they threw their possessions down alongside the De Havilland wings, and Ira became aware of the breeze that was chilling them both to the bone.

‘Ira,’ Ellie wailed suddenly, ‘I’m frozen.’

He thrust a torch at her. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Grab what you can. I’ll get a fire going in the farmhouse there. I expect it’s full of fleas but it’s better than this.’

While she scrambled among the ruins of the tent, he climbed inside the shell-smashed building and began to wrench up splintered beams. Half the roof had survived and there was dry straw below it.

He got a fire going at last, the rain hissing and spattering as it hit the flames, then Ellie came stumbling through the door with an armful of blankets and, spreading them on the straw, crouched over the flames, hugging herself.

Ira flung more splintered beams on the flames and turned to her as they roared up. She was shivering and her teeth were chattering.

‘Get your clothes off,’ he said. ‘I’ll rub you down.’

He took out a brandy flask. ‘Here, have a swig at this.’

He thrust it at her and made her take a couple of heavy swallows then, in the light of the flames, she pulled off her clothes and he rubbed at her naked body with a damp towel until she began to yell. Her breath was aromatic with the brandy as she laughed in his face.

‘Warm now?’

‘Sure I’m warm. How about you?’

He grinned, heated by his exertions, and she reached for a blanket to put round herself, and began to hang her clothes in steamy strings near the fire. Then she pulled off his shirt and began to work on him with the towel, but he brushed it aside, staring at her.

‘I’ll dry you,’ she said.

‘Damn drying me.’

The towel dropped and she stared at him wide-eyed over the top of it. He took it from her slowly and as he reached for her she caught at his hands, but not to put them away. As she pulled him to her, mouthing little suffering sounds in his ear, he felt her flesh warm against his and the contact made him feel giddy, and as they sank to their knees, the night was shut out and their mouths began to search eagerly for each other.