China Seas

by John Harris

  ‘It wasn’t insured,’ she said bitterly. ‘My insurance company refused to cover anything up here.’

  They could hear the drums and the gongs and the sporadic shooting and, slipping into town, dressed in a Chinese tunic and black trousers, as he had years before in his attempt to rescue Russell Gummer, Willie managed to contact the officer in command of the shore party from one of the British gunboats.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s the end,’ the officer told him. ‘We’ve just heard on the wireless that Hankow’s gone. The Chinese have occupied the British concession and the British government are going to accept the fact that it’s impossible to maintain such places so deep in a hostile country. There’s talk that they’ll let Kiukiang go, too. They’ll have to. And if they do, everybody else will let their concessions go as well. The navy’s sending up more passenger vessels and I’d advise you to leave. We’re expecting two more gunboats tonight.’

  It was obvious that this time it was different. There had been uproars and riots before, but, while the others had been only skin-deep, this one, Willie sensed, came from deep down in the Chinese soul. The wounds this one would administer were going to be more than just scars on the flesh. They’d be mortal. This time the Chinese were not just protesting, they were lashing out.

  He carried out the plans he had made with Da Braga, altering them considerably when he realised they would have to carry everything they wished to salvage themselves. There were no cars because there was no petrol, and no rickshaws or porters because they daren’t move in face of the hatred for the Europeans.

  Towards midnight, there was a hammering on the door and, going to open it, Willie found himself staring into the face of his son. Behind him was a burly chief petty officer. Both of them were armed.

  Willie snatched them inside and for a while there was a noisy excited reunion.

  ‘Ant arrived early this evening,’ Edward said. ‘I think it’s the end, Father.’

  Abigail shrugged. ‘It won’t ruin us,’ she said.

  Willie produced drinks for everybody and Edward raised his glass. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? All my life I assumed Yangpo was as British as India or South Africa. Now it’s going to be Chinese again. I came to tell you we’ll be escorting families to the river from eight tomorrow morning. Be ready.’

  ‘Thank God there are no small children.’

  ‘I’ve been in touch with Elliott already,’ Edward went on. ‘He’ll be along with Poll as soon as it’s light to join you all, and then I think you’d better set off.’

  It was strange for Willie not to be giving the orders but to be receiving them from his own son. Edward was tall and good-looking and was now a full lieutenant and spoke with the authority that seemed inbred in all naval officers.

  When he left with his petty officer, Willie and Abigail made a last round of the house. Again and again they picked up something they had treasured for years, meaning to take it with them, then discarded it – even a favourite red Peking rug Abigail had had since their marriage – knowing that they wouldn’t be able to carry it. It was in the early hours before everybody settled down, sleeping in beds, on chairs, on settees, on the floor, a house full of people, including Da Braga’s sons, neighbours from deeper in the concession, a group of French people who wished to be nearer the river – and Emmeline. Her face was gaunt and grim and she spent most of the evening opening and shutting her suitcase to make sure she had everything. She had not grown older gracefully and was embittered by the loss of everything she possessed.

  As they lay together in bed in the darkness, Abigail’s hand sought Willie’s.

  ‘Things are turning out differently from what we expected, aren’t they?’ she said.

  He tried to sound confident. ‘We’ll get over it,’ he insisted. ‘We’re not finished yet.’

  Turning to her, he kissed her gently, still uneasily aware of guilt. ‘I love you, Ab,’ he said, meaning every word of it.

  ‘I know.’

  Their lovemaking was gentle and tender but was marked by more passion than for a long time. Afterwards, as they lay quietly alongside each other, their skin filmed with perspiration, Willie’s anger against what he considered Nadya’s ingratitude, even treachery, caught him again. With it came another wave of guilt, so that, before he knew what was happening, almost against his will, he found himself confessing everything to his wife.

  ‘I think it was because I was lonely,’ he explained. ‘I was missing you and she was like you. It wasn’t planned. It was never planned. It just happened. At first, it was just business between us. And then there was this thing about her being stuck in Russia and in danger from the Cheka. I had to get her out, Ab. That’s how it occurred.’

  Even now, he wasn’t being entirely honest because the affair had started long before Nadya had been in any danger, and he had to push the truth behind him into the shadows. ‘I wish it had never happened,’ he said.

  For a long time, Abigail said nothing, lying quietly alongside him. She made no attempt to withdraw her hand from his and for a time even seemed indifferent to what he was trying to tell her. Hardly daring to breathe, he was about to force her to say something when she spoke.

  ‘I knew, Willie,’ she said. ‘I knew all the time.’

  He felt faintly shocked, staggered that she had been aware of what he had been up to yet had never complained, never tried to stop him, even faintly indignant that she had made no attempt to hang on to him or save him from his own stupidity.

  ‘You knew?’ he said. ‘How?’

  ‘Most women know these things. It’s a sort of instinct.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stop me?’ His humiliation burst out of him. ‘Oh, Lor’, Ab, why? What a rat I’ve been!’

  She reached for him and pulled him to her. ‘No, Willie. No. You’re never that kind of man. It was something you were caught up in. These things happen. They can come to anyone.’

  ‘How can you forgive me?’

  ‘You’re my husband,’ Abigail whispered. ‘And I was taught to forgive.’

  Her generosity made him feel worse, especially since he was aware that if Nadya crooked her little finger at him, he’d still probably go hurrying to her side. It was puzzling. He loved Abigail. Of that he was sure. He loved her for her honesty, her decency, her loyalty, the truth in her. But he also loved – or had loved – Nadya, too, though for an entirely different reason.

  Unaware that he had made a sound, he gave a low groan of despair as he tried to find the answer. Assuming he was suffering from remorse and guilt, Abigail enfolded him in her arms.

  ‘It’s over, Willie,’ she said. ‘Just go on loving me. Forget everything else. We must always be together now.’

  The morning was cool and as the first light arrived the naval patrols appeared. The town looked old and grey and they could still hear the mob, but there were landing parties along the bund from the gunboats, each consisting of a few sailors under the command of a sub-lieutenant or a midshipman. Wearing fixed grins to show they weren’t afraid, they stood immovable wherever the mob collected, targets for filth and brickbats and abuse, their rifles held in front of them, not threatening but also not budging.

  Facing them there seemed to be half the population of China, screaming abuse and waving carrying poles, sticks and pick handles looted from the burning godowns. ‘Out, King George,’ they were yelling. ‘Shoot, white pigs! Shoot!’

  The front of the crowd seemed to be all young girls, their faces contorted with hatred, their hands wrenching at their blouses to expose their yellow bodies.

  ‘Shoot! Shoot! Kill us, English!’

  ‘Jesus–’ the words came from a sailor whose uniform was covered with human ordure – ‘just look at them knockers, Dusty! Pity we ain’t better friends.’

  The line of rifles lifted and the bluejackets gritted their teeth, immovable under the showers of dung, decaying vegetable matter and dead cats and rats. The pagoda that dominated the bund, its roof shining under the morning dew, lif
ted above them as the party made their way to the water’s edge. Someone had tried to set it on fire and smoke was still coming from its door. The shouting they’d heard all night had quietened now, but they could still hear the occasional crackle of sporadic shooting. Idols and dragon symbols were flourished at them as they stumbled along, part of a large group, escorted by sailors. The faces that stared at them were ugly with hatred and coolies with snot-smeared faces were making messy sacrifices with chickens and goats as they passed. The British, American, French and Japanese flags had all disappeared, all torn down, set on fire or daubed with filth, and one group of students was occupied with making a bonfire of portraits of President Coolidge and King George V.

  The streets were full of smoke and wet ashes. Chinese wearing European dresses over their rags were running from looted shops and two coolies were smashing a heavy cast-iron grating edgewise down on to the nose of an abandoned car. Defiant-looking militiamen hung about on street corners, and a bunch of students shouted their fury from behind the placards they carried – DAM EYE , KING GEORGE; GO HOME, POISOER OF CHIA. The Chinese, Willie reflected, never managed to get their English letters correct.

  Around them telegraph wires hung in loops above pavements strewn with broken glass, broken stones, torn paper and blowing chaff. Near the landing stage, another motor car burned fiercely, sending up a column of black smoke. For the Europeans it was a new and frightening feeling to have the bitterness and hatred directed towards them. They had always been indifferent to the strong feelings growing in China and regarded the rise of nationalism as nothing to do with them. Now the hatred was like living through the era of the Boxers all over again. As they passed the end of one of the streets, they saw a militiaman struggling with a girl. Her tunic hung in tatters round her waist as she was dragged away between the houses, a harsh dry scream coming from her throat.

  Further along the bund, more militiamen were hurling stones at people who had traded with the Europeans. Godowns were nothing but heaps of smoking timbers and scorched bricks stinking of roasted grain. A feeling of horror hung over the doomed town and the enormous crowds spread like an ugly fungus along the river’s edge, everybody shouting and throwing things at the gunboats. Most of what was thrown splashed harmlessly in the water, but the gunboats’ crews had rigged hoses with which they kept at bay the sampans that circled them full of yelling students with banners. The market was a burned-out ruin, the breeze slapping the broken roofs in a soft clapping. Shattered earthenware, water jars, pots and rice bowls were trampled into the dirt and the metal workers’ booths were empty in a debris of sheet metal and rusty chains.

  Just ahead of them as they stumbled along was an English doctor who had run a small hospital in a weird ornamental building near the bund surrounded by willows and smelling of ether. He had given years of his life to it, but now he had abandoned it without a backward glance. Occasionally they passed cars standing outside European houses being loaded with possessions, but there were no drivers and the Europeans were having to do the loading and driving themselves.

  The news that the British government was about to give up their concessions had brought the whole city out to cheer at the humiliated foreigners. Not a single coolie had come forward to offer his rickshaw, and the Sikh policemen just weren’t enough to keep order. Every white man carried his own luggage, every white woman carried her own small children. There were no servants, no amahs, nothing, as they moved to the river, losing face with every step, humbled in front of the Chinese, the women fighting back the tears, their children wailing with terror, some of the men bloodstained where they had been hit by a flung brickbat.

  ‘We shall be back,’ Wissermann said.

  ‘Not on your life, lad,’ Willie said grimly. ‘For the first time they’ve realised there are enough of them to chuck us out neck and crop.’

  Chiang and his Communist propagandists had shown the Chinese that, simply by joining hands and marching together, they could tear up treaties, and guns and flags meant nothing.

  Edward was waiting for them by a little wooden jetty the navy had taken over and the sailors began to stuff people into the boats which kept appearing, handing children into them one after the other, passing them to tense, dry-eyed mothers, trying to make them comfortable, trying to give confidence with smiles and jokes. As they packed the terrified people aboard, more arrived. By this time, an enormous crowd of refugees had assembled by the little landing stage. Not far away a warehouse was burning, the roar of the flames deafening, the smoke depositing little smuts of soot over the gathering people so that they grew dirtier by the minute. Further along, the water’s edge contained corpses and there were two men floating in the shallows who had been shot.

  The Sarths’ party waited at the back of the group they were with, trailing behind because Emmeline was unable to manage the huge suitcases she had insisted on bringing with her.

  ‘Please keep up, Ma’am,’ a bearded petty officer begged. ‘It’s all we can do to keep an eye on all of you.’

  Emmeline refused to be hurried and the petty officer tried again. ‘Do you need all that luggage, Ma’am?’ he asked. ‘We was told that there was to be nothing but hand luggage and not much of that.’

  Emmeline gave him a look of sheer hatred and, in the end, shouldering his rifle, the petty officer attempted to take one of the cases from her. She snatched it back at once, as if getting her possessions to the boats herself were a matter of pride, and for a moment or two there was a silent tug of war until the petty officer gave up.

  They reached the jetty at last and joined the queue. Emmeline flung down her suitcases and, squatting down, began to open one of them and move things around inside it. Standing with his hand on his revolver, Willie watched his son push Polly on board the waiting boat, then Da Braga’s sons, and he was just about to follow with Abigail, when she broke free.

  ‘Emmeline needs help.’

  It was Willie’s feeling that Emmeline had thrust aside all offers of help, but Abigail refused to listen and turned back. Edward didn’t hesitate. Filling the remaining seats in the boat with other people, he ordered it away and it began to move into the river towards the passenger steamer waiting in midstream with its gangway down.

  It seemed to take a long time before the next boat arrived and the crowd pressed forward, screaming abuse. Seeing the big revolver in Willie’s belt, one of the Chinese girls stripped off her blouse and then her trousers and stood stark naked in front of him, thrusting her belly forward, her yellow skin shining in the sun.

  ‘Kill me English bandit,’ she screamed. ‘Kill me, so our people will avenge me.’

  The boat finally grated alongside the jetty and even then Abigail found it hard to persuade Emmeline to budge. Finally, all three of them moved forward and Edward motioned them aboard, smiling a fixed smile, his eyes everywhere at once. Packed in like sardines so they couldn’t move, with Abigail huddled next to Emmeline holding a single leather bag containing the few treasures she had considered worth removing, they waited for the rest of the boat to be filled.

  Abigail had her head close to Emmeline’s and for a moment they looked like sisters discussing what to wear at a dance. Emmeline was scowling, but Abigail’s face was calm, as it always was, compassionate and full of gentleness.

  ‘It’s going to work out all right,’ Willie heard her say. ‘This will all die down before long and, even if it doesn’t, you still have your properties in Shanghai.’

  ‘They’re worthless!’ The words were spat out with all Emmeline’s familiar bitterness.

  Abigail was still murmuring encouragement as Willie turned away, standing on the jetty with Edward, staring about him, his hand on his revolver, his eyes alert for movement. As the boat finally filled, Edward touched his arm.

  ‘All right, Father,’ he said. ‘Get aboard.’

  Willie nodded, not arguing. ‘Good luck, son,’ he said.

  As the boat pushed off, there was an unexpected burst of loose firing from a mac
hine gun hidden among the buildings. A few bullets hit the water alongside the boat and he saw Edward duck, bent double, and remain like that, his head down, one hand on the ground. Horror-stricken, Willie thought he’d been hit, but then he saw him rise and straighten up with his men, and the shooting died as suddenly as it had come. The boat was crowded and he saw Abigail up in the bow, her arm around Emmeline, talking earnestly to her. Staring back over the stern, he could still see his son’s tall figure backgrounded by the lifting smoke from the burning warehouse.

  There was no shooting as the boat drew away from the jetty and made its way into midstream, but then a single shot came. Several heads bobbed automatically, but Willie didn’t see where the bullet struck. Then, as they approached the waiting steamer he became aware of some sort of disturbance at the other end of the boat. As he turned to see what it was, he heard a wail and recognised the voice at once as Emmeline’s.

  Sweet suffering J, he thought savagely, what in hell was she up to now? Then, through all the bobbing, turning heads, he saw she was trying to stand up and that there was blood on the bosom of her dress.

  ‘Where are you hit, Ma’am?’ the petty officer in charge of the boat yelled and she let out another wail.

  ‘Not me,’ she yelled. ‘It’s not me! It’s her!’

  And then Willie saw that Abigail’s head had drooped. Her figure, still held upright by the people crowded round her, was sagging, and the whole front of her clothing was red and glistening in the watery sunshine.

  ‘Just a stray bullet,’ Willie spoke bewilderedly. ‘And they’re such rotten shots! They probably weren’t even shooting at us. Just one in the whole boat. How it missed everybody else I don’t know.’

  He sighed. He had often thought of the irony of things but this was the irony to beat everything. He’d been terrified of Yip telling Abigail of his association with Nadya, but that had been removed when Willie’s bullet had hit him in the throat; and now, it seemed there had never been any need at all to be afraid because now Abigail was gone, too.