China Seas

by John Harris

  Down by the river it was different. It was there that the godowns and working offices existed, and cheap bars had been opened for sailors, offering girls and cheap booze. Concession wives never went there, only their husbands, but for the most part even they left it to their agents and compradores, and preferred to remain in the fan-cooled offices further along the bund.

  The news that a second revolution in Russia had overturned the first and that affairs had taken a more bitter turn made it impossible to sit still. George Kee found himself despatching telegrams from the office to A N Kourganov in Vladivostok, outwardly concerning business but in fact trying to encourage replies that would produce reassurance. From time to time little packages arrived for Abigail, brought always by the hand of some businessman or ship’s captain returning from the Russian port. Business had not stopped, but it was changing and, nowadays, as the ships came in, there were refugees aboard as well as cargoes. The new revolution had taken Russia out of the war and the new bitterness against the aristocracy that had lost it was driving the first terrified people to safety. The refugees were mostly members of the nobility and wealthy merchants who had suddenly found themselves dispossessed. None of them seemed to lack for comfort or money, however, because they had made sure that they had got away in good time – and with most of their possessions – but they were loud in their complaints and brought Shanghai up to date with what was happening.

  It seemed that, with the end of the war, anti-revolutionary armies – often composed of ex-officers and loyal troops – had sprung up in various parts of Russia determined to wrest back control of the country from its Bolshevik rulers. There were armies in Murmansk and Archangel in the north, another in the south hoping to move north from the Crimea, and yet another being raised in Vladivostok to drive along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The volunteers who were being raised were hoping for help from Britain and France and were disgusted that it had not arrived. Then, with the cold, dirty waters of the river ruffled by the wind under the long arms of the cranes and the seagulls hanging in the air above the junks and lighters gathered round the anchored ships, a stern-faced Russian admiral called Kolchak arrived in Shanghai from a post he’d held in Japan, to bring order to the advance from Vladivostok. The Czechs, whose original few volunteers for the Russians in 1914 to bring down their Austrian oppressors, had now grown to an army corps, held the Trans-Siberian railway line, and he was intending to incorporate them into the army he was raising and take advantage of their control of transport.

  Willie watched quietly as government officials, national representatives and a few important taipans tried to meet the Russian admiral. Among them was Gerald Honeyford, but, like the rest, he failed to obtain either friendliness or information.

  ‘I could tell ’em what he intends, George,’ he said to Kee. ‘There are dumps of war material in Vladivostok. Provided by the Allies to help the Russians fight Germany. It’s his intention to take ’em over.’

  ‘And then what?’ Kee asked.

  ‘Advance on Moscow, rout the revolutionaries, restore the monarchy, and bring Russia back to her place among the powers of Europe – with himself running the show.’

  Kee looked doubtful and Willie smiled. ‘That’s how I feel about it, too, George,’ he said. ‘But either way there’ll be fighting. We’ve offered to send troops and so have the French, the Japanese and the Americans. It looks as though the war’s about to start all over again at the other end of Russia and with a different enemy.’

  It was more than he could do to remain indifferent. There was business in Vladivostok and he personally had contributed to the piles of supplies with Hong Kong- and Shanghai- made army pattern packs, kitbags, water bottles and harness. With British factories working at full blast to supply the troops in Europe, the War Office had handed contracts anywhere they could and Willie was anxious to know that his goods had arrived.

  There was also the need to know what had happened to Nadya Alexsandrovna. He was a sailor as well as a businessman and sailors were always sentimental as far as women were concerned, but for some time there had been no reply to his telegrams and he had a feeling she was in trouble. Somehow, he sensed he was receiving signals by some sort of telepathy, and was so convinced, in fact, he made up his mind to go and see. He made his announcement to Abigail that evening as they finished dinner.

  ‘I’m going to Vladivostok,’ he announced. ‘There are things there that have gone missing, and a lot of money’s involved.’

  Abigail studied him gravely. ‘I thought we got everything to safety.’

  ‘So did I,’ Willie lied. ‘But there’s more than we expected. That bloody rogue, Lun Foo, worked hard at it and I notice his damned brother-in-law, Yip Hsao-Li, seems richer every time I see him. He doesn’t do it by working at it either, and we know it isn’t opium, so it might well be my property. I’ve got to go up there to find out what happened to it.’

  ‘Can’t George Kee go?’ Abigail asked. ‘He’s very intelligent.’

  ‘Too young.’ Willie turned away, unable to face her with his lies. ‘I’ve got to go myself.’

  ‘And me?’

  ‘You’re in charge, Ab. As you always are when I’m away.’

  For the first time ever, there was a protest. ‘I got the impression that George could handle everything.’

  ‘He can, but he needs your experience. Besides, what about the children?’

  ‘As you said not very long ago, the house is full of servants and they’re old enough now to look after themselves.’

  ‘I’d rather you were in charge.’

  Abigail’s eyes were grave and her expression blank. ‘See if you can bring more of your little “treasures” back from your friend,’ she said quietly.

  Other Shanghai businessmen were going north, too, and the fact that he was intending to go to Vladivostok was no secret.

  ‘Vladivostok, Sarth, I hear?’ Henry Moberley, Emmeline’s husband, asked as they stood alongside each other at the bar of the Club.

  Willie answered neither yes nor no, merely smiling over his glass.

  ‘Things are happening up, there,’ Moberley said. ‘This feller Kolchak’s set to move along the Trans-Siberian Railway already. They say he’s going to rescue the Tsar.’

  ‘Good luck to him,’ Willie said.

  He didn’t like Moberley and he’d heard that Wishart’s were in difficulties again. Moberley liked spending too much and Emmeline had begun to lose interest in him.

  ‘Hear they’re doing all right in the south, too,’ Moberley went on. ‘Pushing the old Reds back. If they can get that lot from Murmansk to push at the same time, they’ll all arrive outside Moscow together and that’ll be that.’

  ‘They couldn’t do it,’ Willie said flatly. ‘The Russians aren’t made that way.’

  As usual, he planned to travel on his own ship, this time a newly acquired former Japanese ship called the Shinonome. She was old but just what he wanted for the job and, concerned with business punctuality, he had had the engines overhauled and had converted her to carry passengers.

  The early sun was touching the tips of the ships’ masts in the river when he turned up on the quayside to go aboard. He was surprised to find Moberley just ahead of him. Like everyone in Shanghai, Willie knew everybody else’s business and he hadn’t heard of Wishart’s doing much trade in Russia.

  ‘Travelling together, old boy,’ Moberley said.

  Most businessmen liked to cling together on their journeys, but Willie had never joined their drinking sessions en route, preferring to remain alone and keep his own counsel. He gave Moberley an icy look. ‘I’m travelling with me,’ he said shortly. ‘You can travel with whom you like.’

  Vladivostok had changed again. The cobbled streets beneath the onion-shaped domes of its churches were full now of penniless refugees who had fled from western Russia as the revolution had started. They had found themselves stranded without funds, because the White Army was printing its own roubles and there was a
lot of speculation in currency going on.

  There were also a lot of Russians wearing new uniforms, their officers with epaulettes like boards on their shoulders, but the streets below the flat-fronted Gothic façades contained a whole new lot of nationalities, all, like Willie, trying to establish a new base for themselves either in trade or merely to live – Chinese and Levantine merchants; Cossacks in fur caps; women on the make; Jews; mercenaries of all nationalities; enemy prisoners of war now freed by the revolution and waiting to go home. In addition there were enormous numbers of the old Russian aristocracy, such as had been passing through Shanghai in steadily increasing numbers, on their way to Constantinople, Prinkipo, Rome, Paris, and all stations beyond as far as the United States. They were still arrogant despite the disasters that had struck them, but, unlike those who had reached Shanghai, some of the unluckier ones among the latest batch were living in tiny cluttered rooms smelling of the creosote with which they tried to discourage the lice that swarmed everywhere. Because of the overcrowding, smallpox was chasing diphtheria and typhus was chasing cholera.

  Terrified of a spread of Bolshevism to their own countries, the allied governments had finally stepped in to back Kolchak and there were uniforms from Britain, America, Japan, France, Italy, China, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia on the streets and rumours of more to come because a miracle had happened. The Bolshevik forces were being driven back in the south, the troops from Murmansk and Archangel were also on the move, and Kolchak’s army was driving slowly along the poorly defended Trans-Siberian Railway.

  Guns, horses and crates of arms were being landed, but Willie didn’t bother to check whether his own consignment had arrived safely but headed immediately for Nadya Alexsandrovna’s office. She rose as he entered, her face grave at first, as though she had decided she must show no emotion, but before he had been in her presence a minute, her pretence had disappeared and she was in his arms.

  To his surprise, she was in no need of help. He had thought they were so close mentally that they had been able to communicate through the air waves and that she had been appealing for his assistance, but she seemed well and safe and the business not only seemed to be doing well but was actually thriving under the new impetus given to it by Vladivostok becoming one of the centres of an anti-Bolshevik push.

  She made no further pretence of doing any work and, turning her affairs over to her clerks, they headed for her house by the sea. There was no talk about a hotel and she showed him at once to a room alongside her own, excited and overjoyed by his presence and unable to take her eyes off him. ‘Oh, William,’ she said. ‘It’s been so long.’

  ‘Too long,’ he agreed gruffly, his happiness at being with her marred by his sense of treachery to Abigail.

  They dined together in the town that evening. Restaurants were still open, though nobody seemed to know what to charge because White roubles were conflicting with Red roubles and nobody was certain what either was worth. A band in a corner played Stenka Razin, a Russian ballad that seemed to have caught the interest of the foreign contingents, and they held hands across the table, Nadya’s eyes shining, Willie uncertain and nervous.

  A soldier stood up and in a clear voice began to sing, his glass in his hand. When he finished, he shouted ‘Na Moskvu,’ ‘On to Moscow’, and threw his glass at the wall, and the whole restaurant burst into frantic cheering. With some doubt, Willie eyed the people around him, all of them flushed with enthusiasm and pink-faced with pleasure. Somehow, they didn’t look like winners.

  ‘It will be marvellous when Moscow is free again,’ Nadya said.

  Willie looked at her quickly. ‘You’d like to go back there?’ he asked.

  She looked at him frankly. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, yes, yes! It’s been so long. And now there is no Tsar.’

  ‘This lot want to restore him. They want to rescue him.’

  She smiled. ‘Russia will never accept him. The Romanov autocracy is finished. We will accept nothing but a constitutional monarch as England has.’

  ‘Suppose,’ he said quietly, ‘that it goes wrong?’

  ‘It can’t.’

  ‘Nadya, it can. It can. What then?’

  She smiled and squeezed his hand. ‘I shall still be here. I have not made a move in any direction yet. No one knows what I think. For generations in Russia it has not been wise to let people know what you think. I shall still be in business, waiting to trade with Sarth’s, waiting for my William to come and sign the contracts.’

  They went back to her house and there was no pretence about them sleeping separately. They made love gently but passionately. Afterwards she lay with her head on his chest.

  ‘They say Russian girls are trying to marry British and French and American soldiers,’ she said. ‘Because they think that when they leave they’ll be able to go with them. I am not taking out an insurance for my future.’

  ‘No.’ Willie grinned. ‘Just signing contracts with Willie Sarth.’

  She laughed, confident of the future, not only of the Kolchak adventure but of Allied support and of Willie’s continued interest.

  ‘I miss you,’ she admitted. ‘Dreadfully. But there is always the sweet and bitter relief of being able to cry and the knowledge that loving is enough. But to keep it alive, you have to remember – and always with a most painful tenderness. I can manage, my William, so long as you come from time to time.’

  The days shot past. Two days after Willie’s arrival a ship anchored in the bay and, as she was warped alongside and the gangways were thrown down, men in British khaki scrambled to the quayside. Willie recognised their badges as those of the Middlesex Regiment and they seemed to bring a faint taste of home, so he found himself cheering with the rest of the spectators. Nadya was clinging to his arm and as the last man stepped ashore, she kissed him.

  ‘Help for poor Russia,’ she said.

  ‘They will achieve nothing,’ a voice behind them said and Willie turned to find himself looking at a policeman who was watching the disembarkment with a sour expression. He was a big man with a flat face, a pale skin and Mongol eyes.

  ‘Russia can manage her affairs without the interference of foreigners,’ he growled.

  ‘You sympathise with the Bolsheviks?’ Willie asked.

  ‘I’m no Monarchist.’

  Willie smiled, determined to avoid trouble, then, as they turned away, he realised that standing just behind him, wearing a black overcoat and fur hat in the increasing cold was Henry Moberley. He gave Willie a knowing smile and raised his hat as they passed.

  The following day Willie saw Moberley again, eating in the same restaurant, and he suddenly began to wonder if he were being watched. Why otherwise had Moberley come to Vladivostok? Wishart’s had no business there. Was Emmeline up to something?

  The same policeman was on duty on the docks as Willie left.

  ‘Running away?’ he asked with a sour grin.

  ‘I’m coming back,’ Willie said.

  ‘Mind you don’t get a bullet in the back, Tovarich.’

  ‘Yours?’ The man’s manner irritated.

  ‘It could be.’

  Nadya clung to him as they pushed through the sightseers, trying to hold back the tears. As he went up the gangway and turned to wave to her, she made the sign of the Cross to him. As he climbed to the deck, Moberley was leaning on the rail, watching.

  ‘Hello there, Sarth,’ he said. ‘Had a good trip?’

  As the ship docked in Shanghai the news came that the war in Europe was over. Immediately, the Navy started firing maroons and Very lights and the Chinese started setting off firecrackers. The streets filled with both Europeans and Chinese and it was hard for Willie’s taxi to fight its way through the crowd.

  Abigail was waiting for him, breathless with pleasure. In her hand she held Edward’s last letter, dated October and stating that he was now a midshipman in the cruiser Cardiff, at Scapa Flow and waiting for a last crack at the German High Seas Fleet.

  ‘But it’s
over, Willie,’ she said, her face pink with happiness. ‘He’ll not be in danger any longer.’

  ‘I guarantee he won’t be thinking that way,’ Willie said dryly. ‘I bet he’s disappointed he hasn’t had a chance to show what he’s made of.’

  It was hard to fit into a routine again. Vladivostok had unsettled him and he suddenly wasn’t sure what he wanted. His business was thriving. There was money in the bank. His son was safe from the dangers of war. His children were growing up, his daughter now entering her teens, Thomas already curiously Chinese in his outlook as he absorbed the Chinese languages and dialects and the Chinese customs. But Willie was restless.

  Was it age? They said that men got the itch after several years of marriage. But he didn’t want any itch. He loved Abigail and trusted her, and he enjoyed having her around. Yet he could never quite throw off Nadya Alexsandrovna. Angry with himself, he tried to make sense of it all. Did he want both of them? All that talk he heard regularly at the Club about man being a polygamous animal – it was one of the regular clichés that pompous asses like Gerald Honeyford were always trotting out – was a lot of rot. Yet was it?