China Seas

by John Harris

  Because of its unique position at the mouth of the Yangtze, the river that ran through half the provinces of China, it seemed to Willie that they ought to have an office in Shanghai. The place had always been an important centre and, once the British had been granted the right to trade there, the swamp and mud between Soochow Creek and the walled Chinese town had begun to grow into a city. The French and Americans had followed and eventually the original tract of land had grown into a Western oasis.

  In winter there were sleet and snow and fogs that drifted in from the sea to chill you to the marrow. In the summer there was an oppressive heat that lay like a blanket over the place, with steamy sunshine and dripping humidity which nothing could ever drive away. But the bund was already growing into a commercial centre with banks, clubs and offices, a place of business houses and godowns, its pavements thronged with pedestrians, businessmen, hawkers, silk sellers, professional letter writers, shoeshine boys and beggars. Along the Bund, every vehicle that had ever been invented moved – sedan chairs, palanquins, ancient carts, rickshaws, horse-drawn trams, even an occasional noisy motor car, all moving alongside the river where the ships arrived with their cargoes. Vessels of every shape and size covered the water like a heaving mat – sampans, tramp steamers, lighters and junks, their sterns like castles, carrying silks, muslins, tea, peanuts, wood, vegetable oils, ironware, glass, paper and ivory.

  There were already wealthy men in Shanghai and Willie, startled at the way his bank balance had grown, was beginning to have ambitions to be part of them. Above all, Shanghai was the doorway to the winding, meandering Yangtze and all the concession ports upstream where business was to be done. Chinese-owned factories were often nothing more than derelict sheds or houses where the Chinese labourers worked round the clock, grateful for the meagre wages they received and a daily ration of rice, cabbage and fish and somewhere to sleep. Most of them almost starved, though a few made fortunes by working with the European companies that were being set up. And what was best of all, over all the misery and the affluence there was a policy that nobody asked questions.

  Sarth’s was a small firm, not to be compared with the great hongs that existed, and at first they operated from a small room which eventually became two rooms, and before long a whole building. Life was exciting and full of incident, but eventually it had to be faced that money was coming in excitingly fast and Willie could not be in two places at once, so that he needed someone to run the Shanghai end of his business when he wasn’t there.

  It took him forty-eight hours to find a plump Chinese by the name of Lun Foo, who agreed to act as his agent. Not employed by Willie but working for him, Lun Foo was responsible for seeing that goods were shipped or unloaded and despatched to distant cities or across the seas to Europe. The opportunities for such men were dazzling and as soon as it had become known that Willie was seeking such a person he had been besieged by a dozen of them, all offering their services. Lun Foo had seemed the best of the lot, though Willie guessed he was as rapacious as all the others and that the coolies he employed would be on a starvation wage. But that was the way things were done in China and, since he would never be able to change it, he accepted it without question. He had objets d’art to leave China for Europe as well as Shantung silk, wood oil, tea, and peanuts, and the usual cargoes of cheap tinware, cutlery, tools and cotton to bring in. He was more than satisfied.

  But then he saw Lun Foo with a man called Yip Hsao-Li, a small slender man who liked to consider himself westernised and wore European suits, but who had a reputation that seemed more than a little unsavoury and contacts with the criminal secret societies that worked the back streets of the city. He was a cheerful enough villain, always smiling, and he had no qualms about approaching Willie to do business.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to work with me, Mr Sarth,’ he suggested.

  Guessing Lun Foo had put him up to it, Willie immediately began to wonder if he was as honest as he’d thought, because Yip was in the same line of business as himself and he had heard he also dealt in opium and even in girls. When he discovered he was Lun Foo’s brother-in-law, he even began to wonder if Lun Foo were not only open to bribes but had actually been placed in Willie’s path to provide information for Yip.

  There was nothing he could prove, but he was well aware by now that that was the way China functioned. Every houseboy had a makee-learn apprentice, and the makee-learn apprentice sometimes had a smaller and younger assistant to do the jobs the makee-learn boy didn’t like. Even the British gunboats that kept order upriver had Chinese civilians aboard to do the scrubbing, wash the decks, serve the meals and polish the brass, and they too had their makee-learns, so that there were almost as many unofficial Chinese aboard as sailors, all living in the tiller flat because there was nowhere else for them to sleep. It was the same in the home and one man Willie knew, going to his basement unexpectedly to look for a suitcase, found it inhabited by a dozen of his houseboys’ relations. Influence was ubiquitous and ‘squeeze’ entered everything; it applied to the pencils in the office, the salt in the kitchen, the aspirin from the chemists, the houseboy who wouldn’t let the tailor in without receiving his cash. Even the coolie who emptied the night soil buckets to sell as fertiliser, had to pay for the privilege. Everybody wanted a cut.

  To protect himself, Willie employed a seventeen-year-old boy called George Kee, whose Chinese father had married a Frenchwoman. He had been educated at an English school, was good-looking, good-natured, reliable and apparently honest. In addition to English, he spoke excellent French and Shanghainese and Willie quickly promoted him over the other clerks with their Chinese mannerisms and pidgin English until he ran the office alone and with considerable efficiency.

  ‘One thing more,’ Willie said after six months of watching him work. ‘In addition to being chief clerk, you’re also my personal assistant with a salary to go with it. You’ll know what I’m up to, but there’ll be no title, so don’t start using one. I want it to remain just between you and me. When I’m not here I want you to keep an eye on things – especially on old Lun Foo. I rely on your discretion. Got it?’

  Kee smiled. ‘Yes, sir. I’ve got it.’

  When he returned to Peking, Willie found Abigail holding court to a dozen women, most of whom he knew to be the wives of Legation officials, wealthy businessmen or bankers. He did his duty, passing the time of day, pretending to be interested, listening to their gossip, then, as they sent for their chairs and departed, he found Abigail kicking off her shoes and stretching out on a chaise-longue in the salon.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he demanded. ‘How come you’re so popular all of a sudden?’

  Abigail smiled the small secret smile she kept for the occasions when she knew she was one up on him.

  ‘The Empress,’ she said. ‘I was invited to the Forbidden City for another visit with her.’

  ‘You were?’ Willie’s eyes bulged. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘We drank tea, and talked about children.’

  Calmly, indifferently, as though it were an everyday occurrence, she gave Willie the details, the yellow chair which had come for her, the horn-blowers and bannermen who had preceded her, the audience chamber with the Empress sitting as they chatted behind the gauze curtain that was part of court protocol.

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Sharp. She’s a wicked old woman. She gave me a photograph of herself.’

  She produced a picture of the Empress in all her robes, surrounded by five of the ladies of her court. ‘The one on the right’s the Empress Lung Yu,’ Abigail said. ‘She’s young and very pretty and she’s the wife of the Emperor, though it’s obvious that neither she nor he counts for much. It’s Old Buddha makes the decisions.’

  Willie gestured about him. A forgotten pair of gloves lay on a table, a small prayer book brought as a gift, a few personal cards, all from Legation wives.

  ‘What about all these?’ he said.

  ‘They invited themselves. They wanted to
know what she had to say.’

  ‘It’s not long since they were terrified that she wanted to have their throats cut.’

  Abigail giggled. ‘It’s the atmosphere of depravity and murder that fascinates them,’ she said. ‘A few have been to palace receptions but none of them have had tea with Old Buddha on their own. They feel a new leaf’s been turned.’

  ‘Has it?’

  Abigail smiled. ‘No. But the Court’s worried. There’s an anti-dynasty movement about.’

  Willie was still staring about him, at the empty tea cups, a misplaced fan, the photograph, the empty plates that had contained cakes and biscuits. ‘Some of that lot couldn’t stand us a year or so ago,’ he said.

  ‘It’s different now. How did your trip go?’

  ‘Everything’s fixed.’ Willie gave her a slightly bewildered look. ‘Ab, we’re making money. Hand over fist. Don’t you think we ought to forget these antiques, these Chinese artefacts and things? There’s a lot more money in imports and exports. China’s a big country and they need things. They sell cheaply because they produce things with coolie labour on a starvation wage which we can sell at high prices in England. We’re wasting our time with these other things. We should drop ’em.’

  ‘No, Willie.’

  ‘They’re small fiddly things. Not simple enough. Not so much profit as straightforward goods.’

  She still resisted. ‘People regard us as experts now,’ she said. ‘They even come to me for advice. We should keep it that way. Something may go wrong.’

  He saw there was sense in what she said. Like his wife, Willie was far from slow to learn and, while other Europeans around him basked in the calm that had followed the Boxer Rising, he had noticed that new feelings were afoot and there were malcontents anxious for a change from the dictatorial decrees of the Imperial Court. Dangerous, even lethal, ideas were being discussed openly and disseminated by the Chinese periodicals which were being smuggled across the continent by travellers and circulated hand to hand.

  ‘There’s talk of “Ko-Ming”,’ Abigail pointed out. ‘Originally it meant the transition from one dynasty to another, from one ruler to the next. But it’s now being freely translated and used in a different sense altogether. It now means revolution.’

  It was then that Willie realised that the expression, which he’d heard but not fully understood, was being applied chiefly to the activities of a man whose name was being heard more and more often, a Cantonese Protestant by the name of Sun Yat-Sen, who had studied in the United States and Hong Kong and had practised medicine in Macao. He believed in China for the Chinese and his followers were multiplying. Once he had come within an ace of being executed and his prestige among the Cantonese was enormous.

  The business at Yangpo began to flourish at once. Da Braga was an honest man. Plump, olive-skinned and with a nervous smile, he had appeared in China not long before Willie and still seemed uncertain whether he belonged there or not. He was a shrewd businessman though, and was always ready to welcome Willie with a brandy bottle on his desk. Other firms began to notice Yangpo, among them a French firm and an American firm called Wissermann’s, then, to Willie’s surprise, another godown appeared just along the Bund with the name Wishart above the door. It was obvious that others beside himself had noticed the possibilities of making money in the concession ports and a few enquiries revealed that old Wishart was dead and that it was Emmeline who was now running the show. He’d heard some time before that she was married – to the latest of a string of clerks and one this time, he heard, whose skills belonged to the bedroom rather than the counting house and was giving her trouble from time to time.

  Business continued to increase, but what Abigail had advocated began to seem sound sense, because not only did small artefacts find their way from the Court to her for her appraisal, but she was also now being sought out by European collectors, some of whom appeared from London or New York seeking her advice.

  Things were changing, though. The Russians had taken advantage of the Boxer Rising to occupy Manchuria and now threatened to move into China proper, and, as Abigail had said, immediately all the other burglars who were living off China, seeing their own interests in danger, sprang to the defence of their victim. British and German soldiers advanced northward, the British Yangtze naval squadron sailed to Taku and Japan sent troops to Korea. Faced with such strong opposition, the Russians stayed north of the Great Wall, but the threat still remained and, fearful of her interests in India, to everyone’s surprise, Britain engineered an alliance with the Japanese that was clearly aimed at keeping Russia quiet, both sides offering to remain neutral if the other should find herself at war with Russia. The tension built, and for Willie the result was surprising.

  There was rioting at Yangpo, but it was not political and not the doing of Sun Yat-Sen. Chiefly it was frustration by the Chinese who felt that their country was being snatched from under their feet. There had been tension for some time as students from downriver roamed the streets shouting slogans, against the dynasty for giving their country away against the foreigners who were taking it, and the trigger was a Russian merchant, a man with a title who had doubtless been in the habit of flogging his serfs back in Russia. He whipped a Chinese servant in a fit of drunken rage and within an hour there was a mob at his door and the windows of his house were smashed. The Russian was smuggled to the river and aboard a British gunboat, but for several hours the mob rampaged up and down the bund beating up any Chinese who dealt with the foreigners, even the rickshaw boys who pulled them in their wheeled chairs. The place was not yet organised to combat the disorder and there were not enough Sikh policemen, while the Chinese troops simply disappeared and were probably even helping as the night erupted into flames and darkness. A warehouse was set on fire and the Russian’s car, a Hispano Suiza, one of the first petrol-driven vehicles to appear outside Shanghai, was turned over and set on fire.

  Listening behind the barred doors of the warehouse because it was impossible to get to the hotel, Willie began to ask himself if he’d been wise. He had even planned for Abigail to accompany him to Yangpo, but fortunately she had put him off.

  ‘I can’t,’ she announced. ‘I’m pregnant again.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘What do you expect, the way you chase me round the bedroom?’

  Willie had always thought the business of having a family consisted of one child after a decent interval and then, after a long gap to get used to the idea, perhaps another.

  ‘At least it’s legitimate,’ Abigail had said, and it was true that it had required the handing over of a sum of money in Yangpo to produce a marriage certificate to show they had been married there, nine months and ten days before the birth of Edward Caddy Sarth, instead of the seven months and two days which was the actual figure. Willie had held up his hands placatingly. ‘All right,’ he had said. ‘It’s all right, Ab. I understand. It’s fine with me. I’ll go on my own.’

  Now he was wondering why he’d come at all.

  By morning, the noise had died down and there was only a shamefaced guilt about the place. Charred walls and blackened timbers rose out of the smouldering debris. The Russian, well guarded now by policemen and personal bodyguards, was studying the burnt-out wreck of his motor car, and a few coolies, mouths agape, were staring at the damage that had been done. Others, scowling and sullen and without doubt the guilty ones, watched from corners.

  Abigail had been dead right not to let Willie give up the antiques business. That could safely be conducted through agents and now that they had made their contacts, the objets d’art, the carpets, the paintings, the manuscripts, the jade, the ivory figures, came in on their own. They would be living on a knife-edge for a long time, he suspected, and business that involved goods such as coal, tea and metalware might easily have to be abandoned at any time in the event of a major upheaval, simply because of their weight, whereas Abigail’s treasures could almost be carried in their pockets.

  A small processio
n came past – soldiers, a few Chinese peasants and a couple of students with their hands tied, a wooden collar on their necks. With them was a bare-chested man with a red hat and sash. Across his shoulders he carried a huge curved sword with a red tassel on the handle.

  ‘Prisoners,’ Da Braga said. ‘Caught during the riot.’

  ‘What’ll happen to ’em?’ Willie asked.

  The Goanese shrugged and helped himself from the brandy bottle. ‘They’ll execute them,’ he said. ‘This afternoon.’

  Willie nodded. There would be no trial. Merely an accusation, a pointing finger, and then the nerve-wracking wait for death.

  ‘I’m going to the hotel,’ he said. ‘To shave and clean up.’

  Yangpo’s smells were those of a feudal village. Its walls were twelve feet thick and crowned with weeds and along their base on the river banks was all the town’s refuse, dumped there to await the spring flooding of the river to carry it away. The streets were full of what had once been elaborately carved latticework, now decrepit with disrepair, and the crowding people surged round deep holes in the pavement where stone locks had been stolen to make bases for household stoves.

  The hotel was drab, with a picture of Edward VII over the desk to show how Westernised it was, but the roofs were of corrugated iron and chickens scratched in the entrance for the scraps thrown from the dining room. Willie was in his room wiping his face when there was a knock on the door. Still without the stiff collar that gave him respectability with the Europeans and face with the Chinese, he opened it, expecting it to be Da Braga. Instead it was a woman. She was in full fig, in what looked like her best dress, a brocaded coat, and a flowered hat, a fox fur round her neck against the cold, her hands in a fur muff.

  Willie stared, wiped his face, and stared again.

  ‘Emmeline,’ he said. ‘Emmeline Wishart.’

  ‘Emmeline Gummer now,’ she corrected him. ‘I married Russell Gummer a year ago.’

  Willie tossed aside the towel and reached for his collar and tie. ‘You’d better come in. It’s a good job it’s Yangpo and not Golders Green, or the neighbours would start talking.’