China Seas

by John Harris

  Why had she done it, he wondered. Was it gratitude because he had nursed her, or because she needed to feel needed? Or was it simply because she needed love and Willie was still a strong man whose muscles had not sagged and whose hair showed very little grey; because she was lost and lonely and because his was the only white face she had seen for months?

  Last fling, old lad, he thought to himself. After this, the old wheelchair and crutches.

  She moved slightly and he found she was looking at him, her eyes soft, then she turned on her side, her face in the curve of his neck, her lips moving against his skin.

  ‘I’ll never forget you,’ she whispered. ‘Never.’

  ‘Rubbish. I’m an old man.’

  ‘You’re not old.’

  ‘Not a day over ninety.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  Willie didn’t answer because he knew he was silly. Love happened like a whirlwind. It changed you and changed the world around you into a kind of heaven. He gestured weakly. ‘I shall miss you, Sue-Lynn,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve been in love with you for ages. It would be impossible not to be after all this time.’

  For a while she remained motionless, then she gave a sudden shudder that shook her whole frame and her hand clutched his. As he drew her to him, her eyes were full of tears. She moved her head in a little troubled gesture and tried to explain her feelings.

  ‘I didn’t think it possible for anyone to love me,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘No, it’s true. I never allowed them to. I was too conscious of what I was, of the need to help China. There’ve been other men, of course, but they didn’t love me. They merely wanted me.’ As she tilted her head to rest her cheek against his, his hand moved round the back of it so that his fingers were in the softness of the hair at the nape of her neck.

  ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘We’ll be away from here soon and you’ll find someone. There must be hundreds who would want you, given the chance.’

  In silence, they packed up their few belongings, wondering as they did so how they had managed to live through the winter with so little. The junkmaster was growing fidgety as they climbed aboard. He watched them gravely for a while, then he grinned and produced a meal of chop suey and rice wine.

  There was no cabin to sleep in but there was a corner on deck where they could sit. Eventually the crew appeared and the coolies began to march up the gangplank with sacks of rice and bales of hides, singing in the high-pitched, two-noted tune that accompanied all working coolies in the Far East, a sad resigned song like the humming of insects, rising and falling, the two notes never ceasing as the men jogged back and forth with their loads.

  Dragging a few sacks forward, Willie made a corner for them out of the wind, and they sat and watched as the occasional steamer slipped past, its siren giving off a deep booming note, then the junk cast off and moved into midstream. The next thirty-six hours were spent dozing in the shelter of the rice sacks, Willie with his arm round Sue-Lynn, the fitful sun warming their bodies as they talked.

  ‘I seem to fall in love a lot,’ Willie admitted. ‘But I do my best to stay married. I’ve been married twice.’

  She seemed surprised and he explained. ‘My first wife was killed,’ he said. ‘Eighteen years ago. I’d known my second wife some time and married her some years later.’ He didn’t explain the relationship they’d had because he felt she’d disapprove. ‘I have three children, all grown up, and five grandchildren, two of them like you, more Chinese than anything else.’

  As he spoke, he wondered what had happened to them all. They had been cut off from civilisation for months now, totally unable to send a message. Doubtless by this time in Chungking he was considered dead, caught up in the unexpected Japanese attack, and a message must have been sent off to his family to that effect. He wondered what Nadya had thought when she received it.

  He found he still loved her, despite falling in love again with Sue-Lynn. It was something he had managed to do before and it didn’t surprise him, just left him wondering how it was possible. The fact that it was, however, was quite unalterable and he tried to accept it.

  ‘What will you do now?’ he asked. ‘Go back to the States?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I shall go north.’

  ‘To join the Communists?’

  ‘They’re honest.’

  ‘That’s only because they’ve not been in power yet and haven’t learned to be corrupt.’

  ‘They may be different from Chiang and I must take my chance.’

  He thought of the strict morality of the Communists he’d met, their self-righteous rigidity of thought, the narrowness of their behaviour.

  ‘It would be a terrible waste,’ he said.

  At Canton they went ashore, to find the Royal Navy was back. The Duty Officer refused to believe their story and insisted on them seeing a more senior officer. Even he was sceptical until Willie talked of Edward, whom he knew, then he began to take an interest in what they had to say and Willie managed to get in touch with the consul who loaned him enough money to cable home.

  Soon afterwards they were taken downriver to Hong Kong, where the Royal Navy were in command once more. By a miracle, the Lady Roberts had just arrived from Australia with one of the first batches of returning people since the war had ended. Yeh was on the bridge, talking to a Chinese compradore and arranging for a cargo of cotton to be taken aboard, and he couldn’t believe his eyes as Willie walked up the gangplank.

  But, as usual, his expression was as fixed as if it were nailed to his face. ‘I expect you want to get home in double-quick time,’ he said. ‘Do I forget the cotton?’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Willie said. ‘We’re still concerned with profitability and our financial position was strong and broadly based when I last heard of it. Let’s keep it that way.’

  That evening, Willie found a waterside restaurant remembered from before the war and he and Sue-Lynn ate and drank enough to he happy. As they left, they stood on the bund watching the lights, neither of them able to say the words they knew had to be said. Eventually, Willie signed.

  ‘It’s time I went,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I must go, too.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll catch a train to Hankow or somewhere like that, then go up into Shensi.’

  ‘To become a Communist?’

  ‘To try to help China.’

  ‘I shall never forget you, Sue-Lynn.’

  She smiled. ‘And I’ll never forget the old man who took such care of me.’

  They didn’t say much more. They kissed quietly, a farewell kiss without passion, then Willie turned and walked up the gangway to the deck of the Lady Roberts. At the top he turned and stared back. Sue-Lynn was walking to where a few rickshaw coolies were smoking. He saw one of them rise to his feet and speak to her, then he turned and picked up the shafts. Sue-Lynn climbed aboard and the rickshaw moved off. She never looked back and Willie stared after her until she disappeared into the shadows.

  Part Six

  1945–1949

  One

  With the end of the war, the whole Far Eastern world was upside down. Stateless people still filled every port, airport and station, trying to find their way back to families who thought they were dead, Japan was still reeling from the atom bombs, China was in turmoil again, and there were problems for the British in India, for the French in Indo-China, and for the Dutch in the East Indies. Nothing was working properly. Telegraph, telephone and postal communications had been smashed or disconnected, and in the chaotic conditions still existing Willie’s cable had not reached Australia. And, just to make matters worse, while the Lady Roberts’ ancient engine pounded as stolidly south as it ever did, her radio gave trouble and it was impossible to send a message ahead.

  Puzzled to find there was no one to meet him as the ship docked, Willie didn’t wait to telephone but caught a taxi to his home. Nadya was in the garden w
hen he arrived and he noticed she looked pale and there were grey streaks in her hair that made him realise just how old he himself had become. She didn’t notice him at first as he appeared in the drive, then he saw her frown, look up, pause and look up again. This time her expression changed to one of blank astonishment. A moment later she was running to meet him.

  ‘William! William! We thought you were dead!’

  ‘It takes more than a war to kill me,’ he said, his arms round her.

  Her hand went to his face as if to make sure it was real. ‘I can’t believe it. What happened? Why did you never write?’

  ‘Where I was, there was no post.’

  ‘Oh, William, we must tell Polly. She’s still here.’

  Polly arrived like a tornado with the family and for ten minutes it was impossible to say anything coherent as they hugged him and flung questions at him. Nadya watched with sad eyes.

  ‘You look tired, William,’ she said. ‘Tired and old.’

  The comment reminded him of Sue-Lynn and he brushed it aside with a smile. ‘Just hungry chiefly,’ he said. ‘It was always cold and I was always half-starved.’

  ‘Elliott went into the navy when he recovered,’ Polly said. ‘Desk job, of course. But he’s here. He’s here in Sydney waiting to be discharged.’

  ‘Then you’d better get him round tonight and we’ll celebrate.’

  The party was riotous. Willie played the piano – as badly as usual – and the neighbours all appeared to add their good wishes and congratulations. But behind all the noise and laughter, Willie couldn’t help thinking of Sue-Lynn, rigid in what she considered her duty, her face bleak and expressionless, heading north towards Hankow to join the Communists. He knew he would never see her again and somehow it made the future a little greyer.

  By the beginning of the following year, Willie was beginning to feel the urge to visit Shanghai again. It had been his background for so long he needed to find out what had happened. It was no longer the centre of his business because he had transferred the head office of the Sarth Line from one end of their main shipping route to the other and branched out anew from there, but he had spent so much of his life in Shanghai he couldn’t ever ignore it.

  Secretly, he also half-hoped he might pick up news of Zychov. It was something that he hardly dared admit to himself. He had never forgotten him and held him responsible for so much that had happened, the long months he had had to spend in virtual poverty in the mountains, Sue-Lynn’s typhus, all the starvation and misery he’d seen, something which now perhaps took precedence over all the other hatreds.

  Polly’s husband, Elliott, anxious to see if anything could be salvaged from Wissermann’s holdings in Shanghai, arranged to go with him.

  Outwardly the place hadn’t changed much, and, curiously, exactly the same sort of people as those who had run it before it fell to the Japanese were back in control, though now there were Chinese representatives on the Council. The same atmosphere prevailed, a slightly hysterical atmosphere of apprehension now, though, because those who had emerged from the Japanese prison camps to regain their places in Shanghai society had discovered something they had not been aware of while they had been incarcerated. A change of great significance had taken place, because Britain, America and France has signed a treaty abrogating their extra-territorial rights, so that the International Settlement, which had given protection to the foreign devils for so long, had come to an end at last. Chiang’s troops were totally in control and the men who had trooped out of the concentration camps had found themselves aliens in what they had always thought of as their own city.

  Only the belief that China would need Western expertise more than ever and would be unable to do without them sustained them in the loss, but the old happy-go-lucky community where sixty-three different races had managed to live and do business together, the wickedest, the most exciting city in the world, where two civilisations met and morality had been irrelevant, had gone for good.

  Willie’s first call was to see his son, Tom. Fan-Su had returned long since and he had just reappeared from the north, after spending most of the war as an interpreter and intelligence officer with the Communists. He looked older and a little tired, but he was lean and handsome, intelligent in a way that the more forthright Edward was not, a scholar, an academic with a job now as a lecturer at the university and hoping before long to be running his own department.

  He talked of his time with the Communists with enthusiasm, certain that they, not Chiang, were the hope of China.

  ‘Ever meet a Dr Sim?’ Willie asked innocently. ‘An American.’

  ‘I met a few Americans, but not many,’ Tom said. ‘They weren’t very popular, because the States supported Chiang. What was he like?’

  ‘It wasn’t a he,’ Willie said. ‘It was a she.’

  Thomas looked at his father. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I never did. Did you know her?’

  ‘I worked with her for a long time. She decided to join the Communists.’

  ‘God help her,’ Thomas said. ‘She’ll be frozen out in no time.’ He paused. ‘If nothing else happens first. They’re a pretty unforgiving lot. They’ve learned to be.’

  It left Willie with a chill round his heart, and he tried to change the subject. ‘Did they convert you?’ he asked.

  Thomas smiled. ‘No, Father, they didn’t. Quite the contrary. They’ll make something of China in the end but I shan’t like the way they’ll go about it. They’re quite ruthless in their determination to make her a nation and, while you can’t argue with that, a lot of people are going to be hurt in the shaping of it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be wiser to move? A man with your qualifications could get a job at any university in the world.’

  ‘I signed a contract. I have three years to do. After that, we’ll see.’

  ‘You could join my business,’ Willie pointed out. ‘Edward’s thinking of doing so. He’d be useful with his knowledge of ships and you’d be useful with your knowledge of the East. We could make Sarth’s important between us.’

  Da Braga was still in Shanghai, stiffening a little with age, his limp more pronounced, but still running Shanghai Traders with George Kee. Throughout the Japanese occupation, with Kee keeping well out of sight, he had handled the firm so that it had not suffered too much. Though British and American concerns had been taken over, business ventures run by neutrals had been left untouched and Da Braga had always claimed to be a Portuguese. Though the Japanese had seized the title deeds of British properties, Shanghai Traders had been left with enough to build a future and had already started making money again.

  As he always did, Da Braga fished out a bottle and they sat at the desk with George Kee and Elliott, swopping stories.

  Mason and Marchant’s seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth and Emmeline had disappeared with them.

  ‘Nobody has any further news of her after she went into a Japanese concentration camp in 1942,’ Da Braga said. ‘I heard Zychov was with Chiang’s troops.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘He turned up here when the war ended but he left again in a hurry.’

  ‘You know he organised the gangs in 1927 to get rid of the Communists for Chiang. But you’ll remember he welshed on the money he was to have paid them, and Yip’s friends would like to meet him. I gather he’s a senior officer now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Willie said. ‘He is. And filling his bloody pockets as usual.’

  Business, Da Braga said, was not easy. Shanghai was exhausted after four years of Japanese ‘co-prosperity’ and he was faintly depressed by its condition but not without hope. No useful constructive work had been done and many plants had been closed down for lack of raw material or fuel. With the exception of a few profiteers and speculators, the standard of living had declined and British investments had deteriorated, been liquidated, shut down or robbed.

  ‘But there was no Japanese bombing,’ he said cheerfully. ‘And none from the Allies until the last months of th
e war. Even then only carefully selected targets. None of the major factories, wharfs warehouses or railway stations were badly damaged. We’ll get going again.’

  Business up-country was a different kettle of fish, however.

  ‘Partisan warfare’s raging again,’ he pointed out. ‘North of the Yangtze, Chiang’s control is shaky and his hold on the railways is feeble. He’s already retreating on his bases at the coast. This place’s just waiting to see what’s going to happen. The Communists aren’t so inclined as he is to give assistance or provide passes to us.’

  As the Communist hold increased, Chiang, it seemed, was beginning to realise he dared not push far into Manchuria because the soldiers he was facing now were equipped with Japanese weapons the Russians had made available after the surrender.

  ‘And even better weapons of American manufacture which they captured from the Nationalists,’ Da Braga pointed out. ‘Everything favours them now. There’s no longer any pretence of reforms. What’s happening is a full-scale revolution. And it promises rewards for the poorest.’ Da Braga gave a grim smile. ‘Among them revenge.’

  ‘And are the peasants responding?’ Willie asked.

  Da Braga smiled again. ‘Of course. And now there are men who know how to use them. The Communist Chinese People’s Liberation Army is already gaining new recruits, a lot of them Nationalist deserters. It numbers as many as the Nationalists now.’ Da Braga took a sip of brandy and sloshed more into Willie’s glass. ‘What’s more, they’re all totally committed. A lot of Chiang’s old comrades have begun to see the writing on the wall and they’re finding pretexts to disappear.’

  Leaving Da Braga closeted with Kee, Willie took his bag to the hotel where he was staying with Elliott Wissermann and set out to explore his old haunts. It had been a very confused period after the Japanese had left, with hundreds of former internees in the city suffering from beri-beri, malaria, dysentery and heart trouble cause by malnutrition. Thousands of desperate Chinese peasants, many dying of cholera but often armed with knives and hoes, had tried to get into the shelter of the city with the starving soldiers and bandits who had been living in the devastated countryside around. They had been prevented by Kuomintang troops wearing American uniforms and riding in American tanks.