China Seas

by John Harris

  Chiang had still not left when June came and a meeting of Shanghai businessmen called by the Chamber of Commerce was advised that, even if he did move, it was unlikely that he would get very far. The US Consul-General felt that the opposition to him was too great, while the British Consul-General, who had always considered his post in Shanghai was in its way as important as the embassy in its backwater in Peking, outlined his views at a meeting of the British Residents’ Association at the Country Club. ‘We are under no threat,’ he said. ‘Most of the fears are founded on rumour and pure imagination, and I would advise people to continue with their jobs as before.’

  With things quiet again and Abigail in Japan on the trail of Japanese netsuke and into antiquities, it seemed a good time for Willie to make one of his biennial trips to Hong Kong. The fog and low cloud which were common in the spring would be over and the south-west monsoons would have set in, and Da Braga could be relied on to look after his affairs in Yangpo. He and Willie had worked together for a long time now, first merely as friends, then as partners in the Yangpo concern, and Da Braga was never likely to let him down. All it required in the event of trouble was to organise a few coolies and everything could be saved, because they had been running their stock down for some time, just in case.

  Despite her insistence on staying in Yangpo with her husband, Polly had finally agreed to move down to her parents-in-law in Shanghai until after the baby was born. It wouldn’t be difficult for Elliott Wissermann to get down to see her from time to time and with his parents, her own parents, and all her friends and their families, there would be plenty of people to help her pass the time. Abigail was expecting her before the month was out and was intending to get back from Japan in time to greet her.

  ‘I’ve got business in Hong Kong, George,’ Willie told Kee. ‘I shall be going on the Apu Shani and coming back on the Lady Roberts. I’ll be away for a week or so.’

  Kee’s expression was blank. ‘I’ll look after your interests,’ he said.

  ‘Good boy, George.’ Willie slapped his shoulder. He was always a little more noisy, a little more friendly, when he was going to Hong Kong. He was aware of it, and put it down to guilt, but there was nothing he could do about it. He always promised himself that next time he’d be different, but he never was and he decided he was a pretty poor deceiver.

  ‘I shall want to know if Chiang moves,’ he said. ‘That’s important and it’ll be urgent. If he moves north he’ll pass through Yangpo and I want to be there when he does. I’m not having his bloody soldiers looting my property. Where’s my son’s ship, by the way?’

  ‘Just downriver, sir. At Hankow.’

  ‘Good. It would be nice to have him handy. Don’t forget, George. I want to know. At once.’

  Not that he expected anything. Chiang, he felt, talked more than he acted and the alliance of the northern warlords ought to be more than a match for him, because he would be a long way from his base in Canton, while they would be on home ground.

  The Apu Shani looked more like a battleship than a passenger carrier, with wire mesh and barbed wire round the wheelhouse and engine room hatch, and a machine gun mounted on the wing bridge. With the unsettled state of the country and the uncertainty of the future, piracy in the China Seas had suddenly increased, with armed launches coming out from among the islands that dotted the coast. Only the week before the coaster Shang Shu had been attacked and set on fire, and the navy were still searching for the pirates’ lair, while the police were making heavy enquiries in and around Shanghai and Hong Kong.

  As the ship was about to leave, a big American car drew up and Yip Hsao-Li stepped out. A servant handed him an attaché case and he turned to head for the gangway. Then another man stepped from the car and Willie saw it was Zychov.

  Zychov! For God’s sake, Zychov!

  For a moment he was tempted to get hold of the captain – his own captain – and have Zychov thrown off the ship. But then he paused. He knew Zychov was a coward, a man whose interest lay only in himself, and Shantu was twenty-seven years ago now and nobody remembered it. And was it really for that he hated Zychov? Zychov had been very young like himself at the time, and young people panicked easily in danger. Or was it more truthfully because he was afraid of his connection with Nadya, because he was afraid he might reclaim her?

  As he calmed down, he began to wonder if his hatred over the years had been justified. There were a lot of men he disliked, but he had learned to cope with the problem. No man in business could afford to have enemies, any more than an officer in one of the armed services could. It was his job, as it was theirs, to deal with the situation.

  In the end he decided not to bother, but, nevertheless, the thought of Zychov going to Hong Kong spoiled the trip. Was he going to see Nadya? Was he after more money? Was he trying to come between them? Willie rejected that idea at once. Zychov couldn’t possibly have learned of Willie’s interest and, as Willie well knew, Yip always had business in Hong Kong. Recently, he had hit hard times and the story was going the rounds that it was because he traded with the Japanese. Even the Balalaika had been affected. The Japanese officers liked to use it and the management was finding it hard to find chefs, waiters, hostesses, bouncers and hat check girls because the students were putting on pressure.

  Feeling he couldn’t bear the idea of meeting Zychov on deck, Willie sent the steward for a bottle of whisky and arranged to take all his meals in the big first class cabin that had been reserved for him.

  The foredeck was lined with small fawn-coloured humpbacked bullocks due for the slaughterhouses of Hong Kong, and stacks of pigs in crates of split bamboo, all quietened with a dose of opium. There was a mist over the sea and the sun looked like a burst pomegranate, tinting the waves pink, and a fat Chinese was fanning himself in the heat. As they left, a typhoon warning was received, indicating heavy weather moving from the Philippines towards Swatow. At least, he thought, fingering the big revolver that went everywhere with him, it would keep the pirates quiet.

  Islands and headlands faded past like ghosts, the sea melting into the sky, and the first dawn was one of emerald, sapphire, jade and hyacinth. The first class fans churned the stale air even as the wind came like the whimper of some lost wild animal, eerie and faint. The sea was growing lumpy and the ship began to surge, the decks wet with spray. There was a clamminess about everything and leaking in the caulking of the deckheads began to show as stains on the roof of Willie’s cabin.

  The weather grew wilder, a high wind sending bucketfuls of flying fish across the deck to the delight of the Chinese crew, but the following morning it was unexpectedly calm again and the temperature had risen, though the Chinese were laying out the scraps of maggoty pigskin which they used as medicine against seasickness. The deadlights remained down and the captain gestured at the horizon, where black clouds were spreading across the sky, and before the day was out the ship was driving her bows down into the sea so that the whole forward end disappeared in foam and spindrift and Willie was reminded uncomfortably that that was exactly what the Blue Anchor liner, Waratah, was supposed to have done in 1909 when she had disappeared without trace. The wind by this time was like a living thing, solid, muscled, flattening the skin on the face and pushing the eyeballs back, and the ship was reeling in a waste of tortured grey water veined with driven foam.

  They arrived in Hong Kong with the saloon wrecked and the chairs torn loose and careering about with the apparently lifeless bodies of the steward and the pantry boy. One passenger was dead, two hands had gone overboard and there were bruises and scalds in the stokehold, to say nothing of the loss of all the cattle and pigs.

  With streets awash, Willie struggled to his hotel, the hall of which was besieged by drenched people sheltering from the wind. As the ship had docked, there had been an uncanny silence as the eye of the typhoon passed over, but then the rain had slashed down again, driven by the screaming gale which slashed down doors and forced its way through locked windows. Bending palm tree
s looked like umbrellas blown inside out and a huge and ancient deodar outside the hotel collapsed with a crash.

  Staring at it bitterly, impatient to reach Nadya’s flat, Willie was obliged to watch as the bund disappeared under two feet of water, which swirled into department stores and cut off the hotel as it rushed into its front entrance and out at the back. For safety’s sake, he had never written to announce his impending appearance, but with electrical supplies cut, it was impossible to telephone and he had to sit in the bar, terrified she might vanish to India or Malaya, where she was now beginning to do business, before he could get in touch with her. Reports came in of water washing away the homes of the poor on the hillsides, of whole slopes sliding down, carrying buildings, people, vehicles and animals with them, trapping men, women and children in the wreckage. Police, fire brigades and troops had long since been called out for rescue work.

  Two days later, two whole days of being unable to telephone, or even to check that Nadya was safe, he learned it would be possible to reach her. Leaving the usual message about where he could be contacted if anything turned up from his Shanghai office, he had the hotel call a cab and set off with the wheels awash.

  He found Nadya with her assistant and a Chinese youth she had hired drying out her carpets. The humid air of the typhoon was still with them and Nadya’s face was shining with perspiration. It was impossible not to be impressed with the energy with which they all worked, and he couldn’t resist taking off his jacket and piling in, too. She didn’t say much, merely smiled, grateful for his help, and directed him to moving a glass-topped counter so they could lift the saturated carpet.

  ‘Where’s your stock? Were you looted?’

  ‘No. I put it away. It’s in the safe.’

  They got the carpet up and hanging in the small space at the back of the shop where she kept the boxes and the old furniture, and they were walking on bare boards.

  ‘It’s a disaster,’ Willie decided.

  She shook her head. ‘Not as bad as I’ve seen. We can recover because we’re allowed to recover. There was no recovering in Russia.’

  The rain was still falling, the street outside a grey river pock-marked by the heavy falling drops, so they locked up and the assistant and the Chinese youth disappeared, cowering under a black umbrella, the boy with his cotton trousers rolled up over his calves. The rooms upstairs were dry, though everywhere seemed to have soaked up the moisture because even the air was wet, but Nadya made tea for them and they sat together drinking it, both in damp sweat-stained clothes, their faces streaked with dirt, their bodies aching with the work they’d done, talking desultorily without the energy to make much of the conversation.

  ‘Have you lost much?’ Willie asked.

  ‘Nothing. But the carpet’s ruined, of course. I shall have to buy a new one.’

  ‘I’ll pay for it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I insist. It won’t cost much.’

  She bent over him and kissed his forehead. As he tried to grab her she slipped away, went to the desk and produced a cheque. It was dated some time back, but it was for a thousand pounds.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘It’s what I owe you.’

  ‘You owe me nothing.’

  ‘This is what I borrowed to start here.’

  ‘It wasn’t a loan. It was a gift.’

  ‘No, William.’ She eyed him sadly, a wing of hair hanging over her face as she tucked the cheque into his breast pocket and kissed him again. ‘It was not a gift. I can’t accept gifts of that magnitude. I am not a kept woman. I am Nadya Alexsandrovna Kourganova, and I was born a baroness. I have enough pride left not to live on someone else’s generosity.’

  She was in a strange mood, and what was troubling her kept him at a distance. After dark the rain stopped and as the street cleared they called a cab and managed to find a restaurant where they could eat. The curious mood persisted and she seemed deep in thought most of the time.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Willie’s words were sharp and brittle. In his mind was the thought that Zychov had reappeared.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Business good?’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Then what’s troubling you?’

  She managed to hedge and change the subject but, when the cab dropped them at her door, she told the driver to move away a little and wait.

  ‘Why does he have to wait?’ Willie demanded.

  ‘He’ll, be needed.’

  ‘We’re not going anywhere.’

  She had slipped inside the door and half closed it behind her in front of him, barring the way. The action surprised and annoyed him.

  ‘Don’t I come in?’

  ‘I need to think.’

  ‘What about? I’ve always stayed here.’

  ‘I’ve got to think about it.’

  ‘There’s someone else?’

  ‘No. No one else.’

  ‘I find it hard to believe that nobody’s noticed you.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been noticed.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘But not by anyone who matters. They often try, but I put them off. You are the only one, William.’

  ‘Then why can’t I come in? Has that bastard, Zychov turned up again?’

  ‘No. He’s not been here.’

  He didn’t know whether to believe her or not and started wondering if he had somehow managed to contact her while Willie had been marooned in his hotel.

  ‘He’s here, I know. He was on the Apu Shani. I saw him come aboard with Yip.’

  Again she denied that she’d seen Zychov.

  ‘Then what’s it all about?’

  She was silent for a moment then she looked at him straight in the eyes. ‘Not very long ago I met your wife, William. She’s far too good a woman for me to double-cross her.’

  The words staggered him. ‘We’ve already double-crossed her,’ he said, beginning to grow angry.

  ‘Then it’s time we stopped.’

  ‘She doesn’t know.’ He wasn’t sure of this fact, but he felt he needed some sort of lever.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Did she say something?’

  ‘No. And I don’t think she would. You have a good woman, William. I think you should return to her.’

  He stared at her suspiciously. ‘There is someone else.’

  ‘No, there’s no one.’

  ‘You really mean it?’ He still couldn’t believe it, any more than he could understand her motives.

  ‘Yes.’

  For a moment he couldn’t take it in, then suddenly anger took hold of him. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘After all I did for you!’

  ‘What did you do for me, William?’ She was curiously lacking in emotion. ‘You got me out of Russia. But thousands of people were snatched from the clutches of the Cheka, usually by people who didn’t know them and never met them again. I was only one of thousands who were rescued and you were only one of the thousands who did the rescuing.’

  ‘We were lovers!’ He’d made the plea before and somehow this time it sounded stale.

  She seemed to think the same. ‘And am I supposed to feel in your debt for that, William?’ She was still not angry, just unbelievably, shockingly, reasonable. ‘I provided you with trade. I made money. You made money. Surely we don’t have to remain forever in debt.’

  ‘You needed me then. And not just for business. Don’t you need me now?’

  ‘I’m older, William. The storm goes out of the emotions. And I think of your wife. I have thought constantly of her. She doesn’t deserve it. Though I still want to be your friend.’

  ‘It’s not a friend I want!’

  While the taxi waited down the road, they continued to argue, but she remained adamant, and in the end talked him into a reluctant acceptance. Angry, frustrated, he finally decided that it was doubtless only temporary and that eventually there would be a letter on his desk, apologising and begging him to return. As he left, she kissed him gently.

  �
�This is how it must be,’ she said.

  As he kissed her back, not with passion but, he thought bitterly, as a friend, he saw a taxi had halted across the road. From the window Yip Hsao-Li was watching them with interest.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Sarth,’ he said smoothly, his wide smiling mouth full of gold teeth. ‘I must tell your wife I saw you. I am looking for porcelain again and need to visit her. She’ll be most interested.’

  He waved cheerfully and the taxi moved off.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Nadya asked.

  ‘Yip,’ Willie rapped. ‘Partner to your husband, and just as big a bloody twister.’

  Without another word, he turned up his coat collar and stalked angrily to his taxi. ‘Cathay Hotel,’ he snapped.

  At the hotel, he strode to the bar. It was late and, because of the weather, the place was empty. The barman was just considering closing when Willie arrived.

  ‘Whisky-polly,’ he snapped. ‘Double.’

  When it arrived he sat glaring at it, his feelings towards Nadya bitter. Again and again, he thought ‘After all I did,’ but when he considered it, he was reminded again and again that most of the giving had been on her part and his rescue of her from Vladivostok was no more than many other men had done for many other women – even whole families – who, as often as not, were total strangers.

  Then, staring at his glass he remembered Yip Hsao-Li’s veiled threat to tell Abigail what he had been up to in Hong Kong. The fact that he’d been up to nothing because he hadn’t been allowed to get up to anything wouldn’t mean a thing. Whatever Abigail had thought previously, she could hardly ignore the information, because Willie had never told her of his visits to Nadya and that alone was sufficient to show his guilt. He knew she occasionally met Yip when he was after porcelain and he had no doubt that Yip would carry out his promise. He was noted as a gossip, and a vicious one, too, and he had no liking for Willie, who had more than once refused to do business with him. Christ, he thought, just let Yip start talking, and that would really put the cat among the bloody pigeons!