by John Harris
‘I’ve never danced in my life,’ Abigail said.
‘Time you learned.’ Beginning to feel the effects of the drink, Willie was all stern manliness. He pulled her to her feet and they tried to waltz. It wasn’t easy in the crowded room, especially since the orchestra wasn’t playing a waltz, but it was pleasant to have his arm round Abigail’s slim waist. She was light on her feet and managed to follow him after a fashion, her eyes never leaving his face, her expression faintly puzzled and doubtful.
Eventually, as the drink flowed more and more, a noisy free-for-all started, everybody jostling each other, and touched by the drink, Willie finally brought the house down by trying to teach Madame how to do the military two-step, learned at the Balham Methodist Church social evenings. The gathering had become a celebration by this time, the Chinese totally indifferent to the nationality of the two visitors.
Abigail was weeping with laughter as Willie returned to her and she leaned heavily against him, choking over her mirth. The party seemed to go on forever until Willie, watching the dancers, became aware that Abigail’s weight against him had become heavy and inert. He looked at her in alarm and it dawned on him she was asleep. He tried to rouse her, but it was impossible, and he realised that, unused to alcohol, she was drunk. He began to wonder what on earth he was doing to do with her. They had nowhere to go because, caught up in the hilarity, they had forgotten all about accommodation.
The Madame approached and spoke to him. He didn’t fully understand, but he caught the drift of her words. She was sympathetic and seemed to be indicating the stairs. She gestured with her arms as if she were lifting something and it dawned on Willie that she was indicating he should carry the sleeping Abigail. Getting his arms round her, he staggered to his feet and followed her, surrounded by murmured sympathy from the girls and the watching men. Stumbling up a narrow winding stone staircase, he was shown into a room where there was a wide bed on which a grubby blanket was spread. Madame indicated it and he laid his burden down.
Refusing the money he offered, Madame indicated that she had enjoyed the evening and closed the door behind her. Staring down at the sleeping Abigail, Willie moved round the bed. It was constructed of timber with wide strips of leather, and was as hard as a board. He wondered what he should do. He could hardly leave Abigail alone in case someone entered and, thinking she was one of Madame’s girls, tried to climb in with her. Yet he could hardly sleep with her. She would be shocked and horrified. He decided he’d sleep on the floor and began to drag off her worn shoes, but she made no sign that she was conscious of it, so he sat on the edge of the bed to drag off his own cracked boots, wondering how hard the floor would be. The matter was taken out of his hands. What he’d drunk was making him unsteady too, and he overbalanced with one boot still on and the other in his hand and flopped down alongside the sleeping girl. He was too tired and too drunk to be bothered to move, so he simply dropped the boot on the floor, turned on his side and closed his eyes.
Coming to consciousness, Willie was aware of grey daylight coming through a small window covered with wax paper. For a minute or so he had no idea where he was. The ceiling consisted of beams, and the whitewashed walls, where a couple of lizards clung, were covered with dirty fingermarks. Then he realised someone was on the bed with him, and turning, he saw Abigail alongside him, her face full of apprehension.
He sat up abruptly. She didn’t move, lying stiffly, her hands across her chest.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
Then he remembered. ‘Madame said we could sleep here,’ he said. ‘I was going to sleep on the floor, but I fell asleep here instead.’ He indicated his foot still in his boot. ‘I didn’t even take my boots off.’
She was still lying rigidly, staring at him nervously.
‘It’s all right, Ab,’ he reassured her. ‘I didn’t do anything. I promise. Nothing happened. I never laid a finger on you.’
‘Why not?’
He stared at her, and she tried to explain. ‘I thought something always happened. I thought that was why men slept with women.’
Willie’s face cracked in a grin. ‘It never crossed my mind,’ he said.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked again.
‘Quite sure. I wouldn’t do that, Ab.’
‘I thought men were lustful. “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation…the flesh is weak.” Matthew, 26, 41.’
‘It isn’t all like that,’ Willie explained. ‘Some men respect girls. I do.’
He thought briefly of Emmeline, but pushed her hurriedly out of his mind, consoling himself with the thought that all that had gone on between them had been Emmeline’s doing, not his.
Abigail said nothing for a while then she sat up slowly, examining herself, as if she were checking that her clothing had not been disarranged. Then she passed the back of her hand across her forehead.
‘I have a headache,’ she said.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Willie admitted. ‘The way you were knocking back that stuff.’
‘Was I drunk?’
‘A bit.’
‘Did I do anything foolish?’
‘Only fall asleep on me. I carried you up here.’
She said nothing for a long time, then she gave a little hiccupping giggle. ‘It was funny, wasn’t it, Willie?’ she said, and he realised that probably never in her whole life, thanks to her upbringing, had she ever known the pleasure of genuine laughter.
‘Yes it was,’ he agreed. ‘We laughed a lot. You laughed a lot.’
She frowned. ‘I haven’t ever laughed much, Willie.’
‘Time you started.’
‘My uncle considered it sinful to laugh.’
‘Laughter’s always worth a guinea a box. Having a good laugh’s better than any medicine.’
She nodded, frowning as she did so. ‘I must laugh more,’ she said.
Willie grinned and put his arm round her shoulder. ‘Leave it to me, Ab,’ he said. ‘I’ll teach you.’
Seven
British troops entered Fansan during the morning, with the Americans just behind. The day was hot, with shimmering heat waves hanging in the air, and in their heavy uniforms they were half-blinded by perspiration. They had fought a battle at Yangsun and another at Hosiwu before pushing on to Matou, Changchiawan and Fansan.
As Willie and Abigail ran forward to meet them, the officer in the lead held up his hand and the column behind, heads down, marching blindly, stumbled into each other before they came to a halt, cursing and panting in the heat.
The officer waited with is hand on his revolver as Willie moved forward, then he jerked it out and pointed. ‘Stop,’ he shouted. ‘Halt there, Chinese!’
‘Fat lot of good that would be if I was Chinese,’ Willie snorted. ‘I wouldn’t have understood, would I?’
The revolver lowered. ‘Who’re you?’
‘Willie Sarth. From Peking. This is Abigail Caddy.’
‘Is she from Peking, too?’
‘No, sir. She’s from the Mission at Shantu. We set out to rescue ’em. We’re all that’s left. Just the two of us.’
‘What about the rest?’
‘Massacred.’
The officer seemed to have some difficulty believing Willie. ‘Shantu’s well north of here,’ he said.
‘We walked. Trying to escape. We saw the junks and came to meet you.’
Other officers had now joined the first, then a man with red tabs on his collar appeared, and in no time they were whipped to the rear and found themselves facing a tall old man with sagging cheeks and a drooping white moustache. Since he seemed to tell all the others what to do, Willie decided he was a general.
‘How were they in Peking when you left?’ he asked.
‘Tired. They’ll be more tired still now. We left over a week ago and we’ve been wandering around ever since.’
‘Are they still fighting?’
‘I don’t know,’ Willie admitted. ‘There weren’t a lot of ’em and there were a lot
of Boxers.’
As they spoke, another senior officer in a different uniform, a man with a clipped moustache, glittering eyes and a jaw like the prow of a battleship, cantered up.
‘What’s holding us up?’ he demanded.
The first man turned. ‘Ah, General Chaffee,’ he said. ‘We have here someone who got out of Peking.’
‘It’s fallen?’
‘He doesn’t know.’
‘We need to find out.’
‘I suspect we do.’
The man with the white moustache indicated the ironjawed officer. ‘This is General Chaffee, leading the American contingent,’ he explained. ‘I’m General Gaselee leading the British contingent. The Russians are just ahead.’
‘We bumped into them. They said you were coming.’
‘We are indeed.’ Gaselee turned to an officer alongside him. ‘Frank, see these two young people are fed and then we’ll talk.’
Later, full of food and clad in British army shirts, they sat in a tent as the relief force occupied Fansan. The day was being spent resting, regrouping and waiting for the riverborne supplies to catch up. With two reasonably easy victories under their belts, the relief troops were heady with visions of glory and loot. The abandoned compound of an American mission had been chosen as suitable to set up a market for the buying of local produce, but an American missionary, attached to the staff, objected bitterly.
‘You’d do better, General, to have nothing to do with these savages,’ he said. ‘What you ought to do is make a gigantic bonfire of the place. It will teach the Chinese the lesson of their lives and the people in Peking will see the glow at night and know we’re coming.’
Gaselee glanced at the American general alongside him. ‘I think,’ he said gently, ‘that perhaps we should not. There are three hundred and fifty million people in China and we have no wish to antagonise them all.’
Rumours were rampant that Peking had succumbed and officers suggested that their approach would cause the death of the diplomats and civilians in Peking.
‘That’s always a possibility,’ Gaselee agreed. ‘But to the best of our knowledge, the defenders are still fighting and the patrols have reported no signs of organised resistance ahead of us.’
They picked Willie’s brains about the approaches to the capital and the plan that was outlined was that each nation’s troops should direct its assault at a different gate in the city walls and that they would bivouac three miles outside for the night before the massive co-ordinated assault took place. The plan’s simplicity appealed, chiefly because no single detachment would get in another detachment’s way, and there would be no nationalistic recriminations.
The following day was gloomy, a lowering grey sky pressing down, the air thick and oppressive in the enervating summer heat. From the direction of Peking they could hear the crash of rifle fire, rolling over the intervening distance like thunder, and they learned that the Boxers had launched a last furious attack, hoping to overwhelm the defenders in one crushing onslaught before the relief arrived.
Moving out in parallel routes towards the city through a downpour of luke-warm rain, each column headed for its predesignated gate, the British on the left with the Americans on their right, then the French, the Japanese and finally the Russians. Abigail was riding in one of the British waggons, a sergeant alongside her with orders to see that she was not troubled by the attentions of the troops tramping past, their eyes full of lust. Willie was up with the leading files in the not very sanguine hope that he might be able to lead them into the city.
Maintaining order soon became impossible. The rain had turned the fields into a quagmire and the soldiers slipped and fell in the thick mud and their rifles became clogged and jammed. The heat was appalling and all the time the irrigation ditches criss-crossing the line of march further disrupted the approach. Villages, pagodas, temples, all caused detours, and sunken roads scattered the troops even further. As the advance began to become disorganised, when the order to bivouac was given three miles from Peking everybody flung themselves down to regain their breath, their ears full of the distant rattle of musketry.
‘The Chinese have got in,’ someone said.
‘They were always in,’ Willie pointed out. ‘It’s a Chinese city.’
There was a deluge during the night, and Willie fought vainly to stay dry and obtain sleep. At midnight rifle fire started from the direction of the Tung Pien Men gate, the American target, and they learned that the Russians, advancing ahead of time, had found an opening and had become trapped between the inner and outer gates of the city walls in a courtyard constructed for that very purpose.
The attack signaled the beginning of the race to be first into the city. The French turned up in the wrong place, the Japanese relied on artillery, and the Americans scaled the wall with ladders and ropes near the Tung Pien Men gate. Humping a rifle once more and sweating and drenched in the rain, Willie was with the British as they pounded through the Hsia Kuo Men gate. At the other side, they came to a full stop, in the deserted streets of the Chinese city, south of the Tartar Wall, which cut them off effectively from the besieged Legations on the north side in the Tartar City.
As they clustered together, nervously staring about them, the officers, determined not to allow the impetus to slow and the initiative to be lost, urged them to push forward. They moved rapidly at first until the eerie silence that engulfed the place slowed them down, and they began to inch forward cautiously in the shadows, using doorways, walls and corners to protect them from an unexpected fusillade.
‘It’s a trap,’ an officer alongside Willie said. ‘Where the hell are the Boxers?’
As they turned the corner, they came in sight of the vast bulk of the Tartar Wall looming ahead of them. Three flags, American, British and Russian, hung lifeless in the still air.
‘They’re still holding out,’ the officer said.
‘No.’ Another officer halted him as he began to move forward. ‘Listen.’
The silence was deep and no sound came from the Legations.
‘That can only mean one thing. They’re all dead.’
Gaselee appeared, riding through the jostling men. ‘What’s holding us up?’ he demanded.
‘I think there’s no hope of finding anyone alive, sir.’
‘What about those flags?’
‘A ruse, sir? To lead us on?’
Gaselee studied the flags. He was an old man and he looked tired, but he shook his head. ‘There’s no choice. We push on.’
There was a surge forward, but there was no means of climbing the walls, no sign of life on them, and no sign of an entrance. Willie pushed forward.
‘General, sir. There’s an opening over here where the canal comes through. Right next to the American Legation. At the other side, the road leads straight to the British Legation.’
‘You sure, young man?’
‘Yes, sir. I know it because that’s the way we came out when we left for Shantu. It stinks a bit, sir, but–’
‘Never mind, young man. Show us.’
His heart thumping, Willie led the way towards the seven-foot tunnel they had used for their exit. The smell alone directed them to the entrance and, as they halted again, a man appeared on the wall high above and began to signal with a pair of blue and white flags.
‘What’s he say?’
A signaller read the moving flags.
‘“Come in by tunnel”, sir.’
‘Tell him we’re already on our way.’
Indian troops, tall men in turbans, wrenched away the rotting iron grille and plunged forward. Above them they heard shouts and yells as Americans and Russians united in a charge to drive the Boxers from the Chien Men, and Sikhs, naked to the waist, their long hair flowing, their legs thick with slime, their faces gaunt with weariness, began to appear on the north side of the wall. As they swarmed out on to a set of tennis courts waving their rifles, they heard a low cheer and saw men coming towards them. There were a few last shots as t
he Chinese bolted and, rounding a corner looking for somewhere familiar, Willie found himself face to face with what must have been the last pocket of resistance. For a second, he found himself gazing at furious yellow faces surmounted by strips of red and realised he was staring straight into the blunderbuss muzzle of a gingal.
‘Oh, Christ!’ he yelled and dived over a low wall just as the huge gun went off. A rusty nail caught him in the behind and carried him the rest of the way, while the remainder of the charge of scrap iron, nails and bolts swept aside half a dozen Sikhs before the rest of the party plunged forward with their bayonets and wiped out the gun crew.
Lying on his face, his trousers wet with blood, tears of pain running down his cheeks, Willie listened to the noise die down until he could hear only the cries of joy at the relief. Then he heard a female voice that he recognised as that of Sir Claude MacDonald’s wife, high pitched, sure of itself and confident.
‘General Gaselee,’ she was saying. ‘How good of you to come!’
Someone started to yell, then there was a call for three cheers and the hysterical yelling started again. Willie was convinced he was drawing his last breaths and – what was more – was going to draw them alone and unnoticed. At the other side of the wall, he could hear men lifting the bodies of the Sikhs who had been killed in the last desperate discharge of the ancient gun and realised that, hidden as he was, nobody was aware he was there.
‘Help,’ he called out. ‘I think I’m dying.’
Sitting up in bed in the hospital, much of it emptied of wounded now that, with the arrival of the Relief Force, other places had become available, Willie found himself staring at the face of Sir Claude MacDonald. Behind him was General Gaselee, with General Chaffee and other officers of various nationalities.