Shanghai Sparrow

by Gaie Sebold

  Published 2014 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN (epub): 978-1-84997-668-8

  ISBN (mobi): 978-1-84997-669-5

  Copyright © 2014 Gaie Sebold

  Cover art by Tomasz Jedruszek

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  To all the women whose contributions to the sciences never made it into the books, and to those who will come after them:

  “Never doubt that you can change history. You already have.”

  Marge Piercy

  London

  EVELINE DUCHEN SIPPED her tea, ladylike as all get-out, and smiled at the cook.

  Ma Pether would’ve killed her if she knew Evvie was actually in the house. “Scope the place out,” she said. “Look over the grounds if you can see ’em, see who’s about, how many servants. Check where the back doors and windows are, and whether there’s cover. You know what to look for.” What she hadn’t said was, “Wait till a maid comes to shake the rugs out and go up to her bold as brass pretending to be looking for work, get invited in for a cup of tea and sit gossiping for an hour.”

  But this way was so much better! Heart fizzing in her chest with excitement and satisfaction, Eveline accepted another slice of cake. “Ooh, this is lovely. I don’t s’pose you could give me the recipe, my Ma’d love to make this.” Eveline was used, by now, to ignoring the brief stab she felt at the thought of her mother. She told herself she didn’t even notice any more.

  “You can read?”

  “Yes ma’am, my papa taught me. He was a clergyman.” He had actually been a schoolmaster, and she barely remembered his face.

  The cook nodded solemnly, adjusting the black mourning band on her arm that Evvie had spotted as soon as she came in. “I lost my George just a few months back.”

  “I’m ever so sorry to hear that.”

  “Your papa taught you manners too, I see,” the cook said. “Most of ’em around here – cheek! And young men,” she said, looking meaningfully at the skinny maid, who blushed and hid her face behind the candlesticks she was polishing. “Not like where I’m from. She’s a good girl, if she’d only keep her mind on her business.”

  The maid went even pinker and polished furiously.

  “Where’s it you’re from, ma’am?” Evvie said.

  “Dorset.”

  Eveline nodded, carefully stowing the cook’s soft burr in her mind for later reference.

  “Lovely down there,” the cook said, looking blindly out the soot-grimed window at the passing legs and feet, seeing other sights long gone, “but we had to come to London for the work. Still used to see a lot of the Folk, back home, too... well, them that’s left. I don’t know, you hear things, but I always liked seeing ’em about, and they never did me no harm.”

  Eveline kept her face carefully neutral. She had her own opinion about the Folk.

  “Ooh, I don’t know about that,” the maid said. “Bogles and nixies and what-all. And they play dreadful tricks, I heard.”

  “‘On slovens and fools and them that breaks rules,’ we used to say,” the cook said. “And speaking of rules, if that’s your young man coming down the steps, miss, I’ll thank you to tell him we don’t allow followers. At the very door! What the mistress would say...”

  Evvie glanced up to see a set of dark blue trousered legs coming down the area steps and, atop them, a brass-buttoned dark blue coat. A policeman, a bloody peeler! If he saw her face... oh, Ma’d have the hide off her. She leaned forward and whispered to the cook, “Can I use your... you know?”

  “Out the other door, on the left. Mind the latch, it sticks.”

  Quick as a ferret, Evvie was out the back door. She turned around and pressed her ear to the kitchen door, heard the cook’s gruff tones. See him off, Evvie thought; go on, cook! This is a respectable house!

  But the cook laughed. Obviously the peeler had some charm about him. Now what? Evvie glanced around her: to her left, the privy, and what looked like the door to a coal cellar. Steps down to an overgrown garden – good cover, Ma’d be pleased – but there was a great bank of shrubs and nettles before the wall at the end of the garden. She wore the neat, inconspicuous clothes of a respectable maid-of-all-work, part of Ma’s stock (Ma had more costumes than a travelling theatre). They were well enough for moving about without drawing attention, but if she tore them getting over the wall, there’d be hell to pay – and no telling who might be walking past on the other side, ready to raise hue-and-cry after her.

  Besides, if she disappeared the minute the peeler turned up, there was every chance it might put the wind up them. She could imagine the conversation now: “Oh, where’s that nice lass who was here looking for a job... funny she disappeared just as you arrived,” “That’s odd, sounds like suspicious behaviour, that does, let’s have a description of her...” and then she’d be in enough hot water to drown a coach-and-four.

  She slipped into the privy and pulled the door shut – she could blame the sticking latch if they thought she’d been in here too long. Her brain ticking away like clockwork, she bit her lower lip and stared at a spider-web, where a fly buzzed furiously as it tried to escape its fate.

  EVVIE PEERED THROUGH the kitchen door; the peeler was a youngish fellow with ginger side-whiskers, his uniform jacket somewhat strained about the middle and his wide leather belt on its last notch. Evvie hovered until he was looking at the giggling maid, and the cook was looking towards the door.

  She stepped as though to come in, glanced at the peeler, and threw the cook a wide-eyed gaze like a trapped rabbit. Then she ducked her head, and crept up to the cook, still keeping her eyes on the ground. “Thanks very much for the cake, ma’am. I gotta go, I promised myself I’d try another dozen streets today,” she said, in a rapid half-whisper, still shooting glances at the peeler.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t get you a place. At least let me put you up some of that cake to take away, we’ll never get through it all, not with the family out in the country till next month,” the cook said, giving her a curious look.

  “Oh, no, really...”

  The cook took her wrist in the firm grip of someone who spent hours of her life kneading dough. “It won’t take a moment,” she said sternly, and led Evvie through into the scullery.

  She leaned back against the countertop and folded her arms. “Now, miss,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll tell me what all that was about?”

  “All what, ma’am?” Evvie said, flicking glances towards the door.

  “You look like you seen Satan and all his devils in that kitchen. You in trouble?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am.”

  “Because you were looking at that bobby like I don’t know what. I’ve a good mind to go back in there and...”

  “It’s just I know him,” Evvie said. “From a place I used to work. He came round after one of the maids there, and she... well, she ended up turned out.” Evvie glanced significantly down at her own flat stomach. “I heard them outside one night, she was crying, begging him to do right by her, and he just called her a bad name, hit her and walked right off. And him a policeman!”

  “Oh, ho,” the cook said. “Like that, is it?”

  “Only I’m afraid he’ll recognise me,” Eveline said. “He’s the sort to make trouble, just to
shut me up about what he done.”

  “Don’t you worry about that.” The cook swiftly wrapped the remaining cake in a bit of clean muslin and thrust it into Evvie’s hand, then pointed. “See that door there? You go through that, and along a bit of hallway with a black-and-white floor, and let yourself out the front. That piece of worthlessness that calls himself a butler won’t trouble you, he’s fast asleep in his pantry with the paper over his face and some of the master’s best beer in his belly, I’ve no doubt. And I’ll deal with young Mister Brass-Buttons, I’ve seen off tougher than him.”

  “I hope your girl is all right.”

  “She’s due off for Whitsun, like the rest of us – I’ll take her home along of me, keep an eye on her.”

  “You’re ever so kind,” Eveline said. She stood on tiptoe and kissed the cook’s cheek.

  “Get along with you,” the cook said, smiling. “Right.” She took a deep breath, pumping up her considerable bosom until her starch-stiffened apron creaked, and headed back towards the kitchen.

  Eveline slipped out of the house, grinning to herself as she heard raised voices coming from the kitchen behind her. She moved swiftly away, and the voices were soon drowned out by the clatter of hooves and the rumble of wheels, and the chuff-chuff-chuff of a steam hansom. Briefly louder than everything else, above it all, a zeppelin throbbed slowly overhead on its way to the Beddington aerodrome, dignified as an elderly duchess looking for her seat at the opera.

  Never mind that she’d disobeyed – Ma’d be pleased as punch after this. Eveline could give her the layout, she’d made sure a nosey copper was given short shrift that would have him far less interested in hanging about, and she knew when the staff would be away. Always better if the staff were out of the way; Ma wasn’t a one for violence, but it didn’t mean someone wouldn’t do something stupid and maybe get hurt.

  Eveline wasn’t bothered about respectability – the respectable world had spat her family out and left them to rot, and cutting a coin or two from its coat-tails bothered her not at all. But she didn’t like violence, and she wouldn’t be party to murder, not if she could help it.

  After this, she might get some extra food, or even a word or two of the praise Ma doled out as parsimoniously as she did everything else. But whether she did or not, Evvie knew she’d made a fine job of it. She began to hum the tune to a filthy music-hall song, and dawdled towards home as a smeared red sun struggled to burn its way through the ever-present smog.

  Shanghai

  “THERE! NOW THAT beastly horse had better win, that was my best glove.” The woman – the wife of one of Shanghai’s many prominent businessmen – took her friend’s arm. “I do think betting actual money would be far more exciting.”

  “Oh, no, too vulgar. People might take one for any sort of person,” said her friend, adjusting one of the several thick diamond bracelets that adorned her wrists; a present from her husband, and, unknown to her, only slightly more valuable than those he had recently bestowed on his latest mistress, a sixteen-year-old Eurasian girl.

  “Who is that young man?” the glove-gambler whispered behind her fan, watching a slim, upright figure moving through the racetrack crowd.

  “He’s attached to the Consulate, I believe. Hopeforth, I think. Something like that.”

  “He’s rather dashing, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, really, Elizabeth.”

  “Well, he is.”

  “Yes, dear, but that doesn’t mean one must notice him.”

  The roar as the horses were released for the last race covered the rest of their conversation. Thaddeus Holmforth, whose preternaturally sharp hearing was no great advantage in such circumstances, straightened his already-rigid shoulders. Betting, in public, in a place like this – and they were British! They should know better. One couldn’t expect much from the French or the Germans or, certainly, the Americans.

  The personal insult was nothing. But they represented the Empire, and should, like Caesar’s wife, be above both suspicion and vulgarity.

  Holmforth himself did not bet, nor was he greatly interested in horses; he came to the races only in order to maintain an agreeable appearance. The Chinese, of course, bet like maniacs... but then, they were a degenerate race, in Holmforth’s view. If only his countrymen – and women – would set a better example!

  Of course, these were riches of the most nouveaux. Shanghai was a regrettable example of what happened when business was allowed to take over and good government was sidelined. He had had hopes, at the beginning of his posting, that he might play some small part in things here... but China would have to be left to other men. He had a greater prize in mind, though China would be instrumental in grasping it.

  And his contact would be arriving at his apartment shortly. Holmforth did not bother summoning a rickshaw – he could travel more quickly on his own feet.

  He moved swiftly along the Bund, where the great banks and manufactories swelled and gleamed, fat with money from steel and tea, opium and porcelain. Shanghai roared and stank, chattering with a dozen languages and two dozen dialects. He had learned to ignore most of the noise, though he clenched his fists unconsciously as he walked.

  His looks were European enough that the locals gave him a respectfully wide berth. A velocipede growled past him, the driver clearing the way with his whip. An addled scarecrow in rags barely escaped its wheels, crawled to the mouth of a nearby alleyway and collapsed. The poor are always with us, but few of them are much use. They needed a firm hand, to be of any worth. But here, they scrambled like dogs on a dunghill, working for scraps until they dropped, opium-riddled, to death.

  Of course, they might be lucky enough to obtain a position with one of the great houses, helping their masters create the glittering social events with which Shanghai abounded. To some, Holmforth would be invited; a ball, perhaps, but not dinner. A charity concert – his money was, after all, the same colour as everyone else’s. Where concerts were concerned, he almost always found a reason to stay away. He hated music. If it was bad it hurt his ears, if it was good... it was unbearable.

  Holmforth’s rooms were adequate; he did not care much for such things. His houseboy was reasonably efficient and apparently discreet, which was all that mattered. As the boy – a man of fifty with a manner so self-effacing he was nearly invisible – made him tea, Holmforth paced, checking his watch every few moments, and stared out of the window into the pullulating mass below.

  He need not have hurried. He should have remembered these damn Orientals had no sense of time.

  Eventually, a rickshaw pulled up outside the building, its ragged and skeletal driver slumping in the shafts. A shiver of anticipation rippled through him.

  The figure that emerged from the rickshaw was small, wearing an immense coolie hat that gave him something of the appearance of an animated mushroom. He paid off the driver, and a few moments later Holmforth heard the creaking of the stairs.

  Holmforth opened the door carefully, cane in his hand. The man who entered bowed, taking no notice of the cane. Beneath the coolie hat he had a calm face with a slight, permanent smile.

  “Well?” Holmforth said. He spoke Cantonese well, having a knack for languages. He avoided pidgin, finding it uncomfortably clownish.

  The man bowed again, and extracted from his sleeve a roll of rice-paper.

  Holmforth took it, pushing the teapot out of the way, checked that the table was dry, and unrolled it.

  Mechanisms curled across the page, carefully drawn in deep blue ink. Holmforth read the notations with growing excitement. There was something here, he knew it. He concealed, with ease, the surge of triumph that rose in him; he had learned young not to show his feelings, and if this smiling devil knew Holmforth was pleased, his price would go up.

  “Have you seen Wu Jisheng operating the machine? Does he do it himself?”

  “Yes, I have seen him getting into it. But it is not complete. If you will forgive...” He bent over the page. “This, here, is done. But these
, this – none of this exists. He is trying to obtain the materials he needs. But since the recent troubles, he is having difficulty.”

  Holmforth tapped the page with one finger. This alone would not be sufficient to convince his masters. He needed to have a working device, not these hints, suggestions. He needed his own operator, too. He already had someone in mind.

  And it would have to be done here, in Shanghai. He had neither the resources nor the influence to simply appropriate the device, though once he had proved its worth, that should not prove difficult.

  The opium wars had broken open China like a child’s piggy bank, but much of the coin had been scooped up by the fat fingers of merchants, instead of going into the Empire’s coffers where it belonged. This... this was a real prize. If it could be proved to work. But not yet. Not until Holmforth had all the pieces in place.

  He had to ensure that Wu Jisheng did not get any farther, for the moment. And he must not draw the attention of the Imperial court.

  “Should it seem that he may start to obtain what he needs,” Holmforth said, “I would like things diverted. Delayed. Can you arrange that? Nothing to draw attention – simply ensure that any supplies he orders for the work are diverted. That should not create difficulties.” He was well aware of the healthy trade in ‘lost’ goods that somehow ended up in the households of local mandarins.

  The man bowed, and waited.

  Holmforth gave him silver, a substantial portion. Not Her Majesty’s money, but his own. “Twice as much again, if I am pleased with the results. Return in ten days.” That should be time enough.

  With one final bow, the man was gone.

  Holmforth seldom smiled, but he did so now. He stared out of the window, no longer seeing the surging crowd. First, he would book passage home. He would take a zeppelin, though it probably meant a refuelling stopover in Africa, which he loathed; but hang the expense. There was no time to waste. His fingers prickled with impatience.