China Seas

by John Harris

  ‘All the muddle of the last two years is being blamed on him,’ Nadya Alexsandrovna said. ‘There’s talk that he’ll be asked to abdicate.’

  ‘Will that mean Russia will go out of the war?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ A flicker of worry crossed her face. ‘But discipline in the army’s broken down, I’m told, and there’s a lot of talk about the French Revolution.’ She shrugged. ‘Still, that changed France from a decadent monarchy to a military power.’

  ‘It also directed its energies against Britain,’ Willie pointed out.

  ‘Oh, William, why are things so difficult?’

  ‘Are they for you?’

  ‘Money becomes valueless. What is the hotel like? They tell me the servants have become sullen and unwilling to help.’

  ‘I haven’t been there yet,’ Willie admitted. ‘I went straight to your office.’

  She turned a radiant face to him. ‘You must stay the night,’ she said. ‘It’s a huge place and there are only the servants and myself.’

  A small warning bell rang in his mind, but he put it aside.

  ‘If there’s a revolution, are your servants reliable?’

  ‘I doubt it. But so far there is no revolution and Moscow, where it will undoubtedly start, is a long way away.’

  They ate alone, Willie talking all the time about the political situation, Nadya about new objets d’art she had found for Abigail. She laid the valuables out for him, exquisite things mostly, that sparkled and shone.

  ‘Do you notice anything about them?’ she asked.

  He looked at her, puzzled.

  ‘All small,’ she said. ‘All things that will go into the pocket. A lot of them are turning up. It’s clear what’s happening. People are leaving Moscow and Petrograd. They can’t go west because of the war and the trenches so they are taking the train here. They’re afraid of what’s happening. They’re leaving their houses and they’re packing their cases and trunks not with clothes but with things they can sell. I see them every day – in the restaurants and cafés. People with distant looks on their faces because they’re staring into the distance, seeing things they don’t understand.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Chiefly the end. A different way of life. You can see them asking themselves if they’ll be able to survive because, if the revolution comes, they’ll lose everything and they’re afraid they’ll not be able to live without it.’

  She was in a curious mood, solemn, brooding, almost mystic, almost as though she could see into the future.

  ‘Why don’t you leave?’ Willie asked. ‘Set up again in Shanghai? We could help you.’

  She smiled and laid her hand on his. ‘My place is here.’

  ‘What if the revolution comes?’

  ‘I’ll be safe.’

  ‘Whose side would you be on?’

  ‘I’ve learned not to take sides. Not to give favours. Not to expect anything. They can’t object to me if I have no politics. And if they don’t object to me, I shall be able to carry on business. I’m told they even favour equality for women. Women soldiers. Women politicians. Women in business also, I expect.’ She gave a little laugh, but it was nervous and brittle as if she were afraid suddenly. ‘I may marry one of their commissars.’

  ‘Not talking like that, you won’t.’

  ‘No. I won’t.’ She leaned against him weakly and he knew her fear was of him, not of any revolution. As he put his arm round her, she turned her face to his, still nervous of him. He kissed her and, without even thinking, she kissed him back. But then she drew her head away sharply.

  ‘Nadya!’

  As his arms tightened about her, she didn’t move, shivering a little as his hands touched her, moving lightly over her body. There was a warm animal fragrance about her and a curious oriental opulence that caught at his senses. Abruptly, with a little gasp, she turned in his arms to face him.

  ‘Oh, William,’ she whispered, ‘why are you so much married?’

  He knew that he had gone too far and ought to have drawn away, but there was a forthright sexuality about her now she had managed to hide until then, and it drew him on. As he tried to kiss her again, once more she turned her head away.

  ‘Let me stay,’ he urged.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want to.’

  He pressed his lips against her cheek and she gave a little gasp and turned her face to his.

  ‘Oh, William!’

  Her body was against his and he felt his blood pounding. ‘Let me stay,’ he said again.

  Eventually, her head turning, struggling vainly to refuse him, she went limp in his arms, her face buried in the curve of his neck.

  ‘Please, William,’ she whispered. ‘Be kind. I’m lonely. And I’m afraid. But yes. Yes, yes, yes! Please don’t go away from me tonight.’

  Mallinson was pleased with Willie’s report and said so in a long congratulatory letter. But Willie was indifferent. He was suffering from a raging guilt at what had happened. He knew it was his fault and he was ashamed of himself, yet somehow he felt he had not done the wrong thing. But the thought that he had betrayed Abigail nagged at his conscience. His wife was faithful, God-fearing, law-abiding and good. She never asked him questions, was never suspicious, never devious. Above all, she was his wife and the mother of his children, and he had cheated her.

  What Mallinson felt meant nothing to him and he tried to absorb himself in work. Luis Da Braga in Yangpo was wailing that General Chang had been replaced by yet another new general, Ho K’Ai-Kok, and he handed a telegram over to George Kee to send. It was longer than the first one. ‘Transfer squeeze,’ he said. ‘Am joining you.’

  This time Abigail insisted on going too, and he didn’t question her decision because somehow it salved his uneasy conscience. She had said nothing and, though she had showed delight at the small treasures he had brought back and the promise of more to come, he guessed she had her suspicions.

  ‘Will it be safe, Willie?’ she asked.

  ‘Soon make it safe,’ he grinned and, borrowing the brush and ink with which Thomas tried to write Chinese characters, produced a note in the manner of an Imperial edict for her to carry. ‘This woman is the favourite niece of Woodrow Wilson, supreme warlord of the United States. For every finger that touches her, one thousand heads will roll. Tremble and obey.’ He stamped it with every stamp he possessed and attached red ribbon from her workbox to it with sealing wax, which he marked with a crest from the back of an old teaspoon.

  ‘If they ask for your passport, give them a visiting card,’ he said. ‘I’ve got away with it more than once. They never argue.’

  She laughed. ‘What about the children?’

  ‘They have an amah to look after them and a house full of servants, and George Kee’s wife will keep an eye on things.’

  When they arrived in Yangpo there was little sign of trouble, though the German concession was beginning to look neglected and many of the stiff sentries who had always been on show had disappeared, probably dead in Flanders. In spite of the occasional groups of Ho soldiers wandering along the bund, shabby, ill-clothed and always ready to bully the Chinese, there appeared to be little military movement in the area and no hostility towards the foreigners. General Ho, Da Braga said, was established with his yamen to the north of the city, surrounded by officers, cars, women and eunuchs, counting the money he had raked in and fumbling half-heartedly towards the south of the river. Of the previous incumbent of the area, there was no sign.

  ‘Gone to Hong Kong,’ Da Braga said. ‘Took the ferry downstream, with a few of his women and a chestful of gold. He’s all right.’

  There had been one or two sporadic outbreaks of shouting along the bund and the matshed roofing of the market place had been set on fire.

  ‘Quite a spectacle,’ Da Braga said dryly. ‘Ho’s soldiers in brass firemen’s helmets marching to the blaze, swinging their arms and singing to a military band trying to play Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay. They didn’t put out the fire.’
r />   One of Ho’s soldiers had been murdered by an infuriated coolie sick of his bullying, who had promptly been shot dead by a sergeant, so that the incident immediately drew an angry crowd that had rampaged round the city centre for two hours. The Sarth house was untouched, however, like those of their neighbours, but Abigail stared about her and at the bowing Chinese servants with a manner that was distinctly uneasy.

  ‘I’m nervous, Willie,’ she said.

  ‘Nothing can happen,’ he encouraged her, but in his heart he knew her instincts were strong and that she was rarely wrong. Something was happening to China. There was no longer any law and order because there was no government powerful enough to enforce it, and he had a feeling that eventually someone would rise who would be powerful enough to draw all the dissident generals together to throw out foreigners like himself.

  The following morning they heard a group of Chinese merchants had been executed on the bund for objecting to the worthless banknotes printed by General Ho, and wailing women were at that moment retrieving their bodies.

  ‘Trouble,’ Da Braga said laconically.

  They all looked quickly at him. Apart from a far-from-unusual riot and a far-from-unusual series of executions, nothing seemed to have changed. There were always riots and always executions, but there was an undoubted atmosphere of ill-omen about the city so that they felt they ought to make preparations for what was coming. But what was coming? Though they could feel in their bones that something was coming, neither Willie nor Abigail knew what.

  The year ended in a sort of frustration which reached out all the way from London to Shanghai. Unaffected personally by the war, they could still sense the despair in Europe that the slaughter in France seemed to be getting nowhere, and they returned to Shanghai tired and faintly dispirited, beset by worries they had never expected when things had gone so well for them. In addition, Willie was unable to put Nadya Alexsandrovna from his mind and was always guiltily feeling that Abigail was watching him. The time he had spent in Vladivostok had been encompassed in a hectic few days. Nadya Alexsandrovna had not gone near her office and Willie’s business had suffered, and the guilt made him wretched as he thought of the faithful Abigail praising the things he had brought back with him, even while she suspected that something had happened.

  His spirits were low and the guilt refused to go away, and when one morning, as he appeared in his office and George Kee followed him in, he was immediately alert for disaster.

  Kee didn’t normally enter his office without being asked, but this time his face was grave and Willie began at once to search his conscience and set up half-formed excuses in case it involved Russia.

  As it happened it did, but not in the way he expected.

  ‘The Tsar’s abdicated,’ Kee said.

  ‘What!’ Willie’s head jerked up. ‘When?’

  ‘Two days ago. He was returning to Petrograd from his headquarters and the railwaymen stopped the train. He was dragged back to headquarters and advised to go. The Russian monarchy’s ended.’

  Three

  For a long time, Willie sat motionless at his desk, staring at his hands, hardly hearing what Kee was saying and guiltily aware that his thoughts had turned immediately to Nadya Alexsandrovna.

  He forced himself to show some interest. ‘Can’t say I’m surprised,’ he said. ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘It started with strikes, it seems,’ Kee said. ‘Petrograd was paralysed. No transport, gas, water or electricity. All shops closed, no newspapers. A street demonstration turned into a riot and then into a revolution.’

  ‘Who’s running the show?’

  ‘A council of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies.’

  ‘Is it happening anywhere else?’

  ‘There are reports of burnings and murder all over Russia.’

  Jesus Christ on a tightrope, Willie said under his breath. And here I am in Shanghai where I can do nothing to help. What Nadya had prophesied had come to pass. Everything she had said would happen, had happened.

  ‘Go on, George. What about the Tsar?’

  ‘Virtual prisoner, they say.’

  ‘And the war? Are they out?’

  ‘They expect to pursue the war with greater vigour.’

  ‘That’s what they said in Vladivostok, George. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Neither do I, sir. By the way, I heard this morning that we’ve lost the Atherfield Hall. Torpedoed in the Indian Ocean.’

  Willie sighed. The war had hit the Sarth Line hard. The Dahinda had been commandeered to supply troops at Gallipoli – just round the corner, the Navy said, from India – and, returning to Bombay after disembarking a battalion of soldiers, had distinguished herself when torpedoed. One propeller smashed, the other’s shaft bent, her gun supports destroyed, the 4-incher on the steering house split, her main steam pipe broken, her aerials brought down, the watertight bulkhead between the shaft tunnel and the engine room buckled, she had still made it to port under tow. Heroism didn’t help a lot, however, because she was now in dry dock being repaired and, with the loss of the Winifred Whitehead in the first hours of the war and now the Atherfield Hall, the Sarth Line at the moment consisted of four ships, the everlasting and indestructible Lady Roberts, a newly acquired 2,000-tonner called the Chinta, and the two small coasters, Shamara and Kum Kum Kiuw. There had been another one for a while, the Shu Ting, acquired early in 1915 from the fleet of a man who had sold everything to go to England to join the army, but she had been sunk near Cape Town by a German raider and the previous owner had been killed in his first battle on the Somme. The bloody war, Willie decided, was intruding into all their lives.

  Photographs continued to appear from England, where Edward, now growing tall, was at Dartmouth Naval College and planting vegetables in the grounds with other boys in his spare time to help feed an embattled country struggling against the ravages of the U-boats. At least, Willie thought, his family was safe. Edward was in England, but well away from the bombing German Gothas, Thomas was still in Shanghai at school, absorbed in Chinese customs and beginning to speak Chinese like a native. His daughter, Polly, was growing fast, and he still had Abigail alongside him.

  He forced himself to come back to earth. ‘We’ll need to know what’s happening in Vladivostok,’ he said. ‘Try to find out, George.’

  He was itching to go and see for himself, but there was too much to do. The news from Russia had thrown Shanghai into uproar. Many of Willie’s competitors had had a lot of business there, and they were running about like mad ants trying to sort something from the confusion.

  For a long time he was occupied with reports and transaction dates and with checking what was happening, thankful to learn that Kee, who had been carefully watching his interests, had not despatched anything to Russia for some time. But he was restless. Other businessmen were taking ships north round the Korean Peninsula to attend to their interests in Russia through the only available opening, Vladivostok, and they brought back reports of total chaos, of the spread of the revolutionary feeling even to Vladivostok, the outermost point of the Russian empire. Some cargoes sent north had vanished en route altogether and corruption was rife. Vladivostok, they said, was becoming packed with refugees.

  ‘There’s some dissatisfaction with the present revolutionary government,’ Emmeline’s husband, Henry Moberley, was saying loudly in the Club. ‘Chap called Kerensky. They say he favours the Tsar too much and that his Soviet of Workers’ Deputies is in the hands of the same old gang. But it seems there’s a new chap now, called Lenin, the Germans slipped in to stir things up and force Russia out of the war. It’s going to get a lot nastier than it is at the moment.’

  For six months, Willie forced himself to keep his restless feet still because the Chinese were taking the liveliest interest in what was happening to their northern neighbour, whose position was very similar to their own. Both countries were large and backward compared with the industrialised nations of Western Europe and both had endured humiliation at
the hands of the Japanese, so that, anxious to put their own house in order, they watched with concern what the new rulers of Russia were doing.

  He could see the problems.

  China had declared war against Germany by this time, but no one imagined she could contribute much beyond labourers to work with the allied armies or that it meant much beyond protecting themselves against the voracious Japanese. Besides, China was still ravaged by her own internal politics. Small revolutions constantly arose in one part or another of the vast countryside and were put down with horrific cruelty, the details of which always drifted down to Shanghai. Twice more the warlord controlling the area round Yangpo changed, and twice more Willie had to transfer the squeeze that was paid to prevent trouble.

  Yangpo was changing fast. The road that divided the concessions from the old Chinese City still remained, sanitary and stodgily European on one side, insanitary, smelly and uproariously Chinese on the other. More buildings were rising, round grey tanks of the oil companies had sprung up and there was a succession of new tall buildings along the bund. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank had pushed up an imposing office block of shining white stone with marble facings round a massive wrought-iron door, and Sarth’s, Wishart’s, Mason and Marchant’s and Wissermann’s had been joined by one or two others.

  Union Jacks, tricolours and Stars and Stripes flew from the flag staffs as a protection from the warlords, but there were pleasant houses and gardens and well-paved roads now in a well-lit stretch of the bund, complete with a European club and tennis courts. The British Concession was the senior concession and therefore on the right of the other concessions which stretched in a narrow strip for three miles downriver, so that you could visit five countries in a hired rickshaw for a few pence, running over smooth British roads, between towering British buildings and solid British credit. The French concession, guarded by tiny Annamite soldiers, was not as tidy, but the trees, if not so well cared for, were shady and, though the buildings were not so pretentious, they were in brighter colours and the smells of cooking and coffee were better. The Russian, German and Japanese concessions similarly reflected their countries, the Russian with a barbaric magnificence and rich ornamentation, as if the Russian aristocracy were still in residence, the German concession autocratic and bombastic-looking. The Japanese streets were similar to the Chinese but more tawdry and gimcrack, with a huge yellow barracks for the soldiers, whose officers trailed long sabres between tiny serious traffic policemen quick to whack any stray wandering Chinese across the shoulders – not cheerfully and in friendly fashion like the Sikhs, but as if to impress them with who was master. They loved to show their authority, and small stiff-faced men enjoyed halting rickshaws and taking names, a habit which was countered by the British by giving false Irish, Scots or Welsh names containing hardly any vowels and enough consonants to baffle any nationality in the habit of using a different alphabet. It was like living in half a dozen countries all at once.