Shanghai Secrets

by Sulari Gentill

  “And who were these chaps?”

  “Self-appointed defenders of something, I expect.”

  Wilfred shook his head. “Bloody hell, Rowly, your friend Kisch has left you in a fine mess.”

  “This isn’t Egon’s fault.”

  “The devil it isn’t! This is the third time you’ve been assaulted in the last two weeks! It’s only a matter of time before you’re seriously injured.”

  “It’ll pass, Wil. I’ll be more careful, and people will calm down.”

  Wilfred shook his head. “Ernie might have been hurt this time.”

  Rowland let his head fall back against the chair and closed his eyes. He was all too aware that his nephew had witnessed three thugs pummel him into the ground; that Ernest might well have been hurt if he’d left the car. “I’m sorry, Wil. I really am.”

  Wilfred removed his spectacles and polished the lenses with a handkerchief. “Rowly, I know you’d do everything in your power to protect Ernie—God knows you’ve proved that—but this is simply getting out of hand. This current animosity towards you may pass, but right now, it means neither you nor anyone around you is safe. Not Ernie, not Mother, not even your layabout Communist friends!”

  “I’ll speak to the police.”

  “Kisch is making monkeys of the police, Rowly. They will not be kindly predisposed to you.” Wilfred pointed at his brother. “Bob Menzies is determined that you should answer for your part in this Egon Kisch affair, one way or another.”

  “As I said, Wil, I’m not sure who those chaps were, but I’m fairly certain Robert Menzies was not one of them.”

  “Don’t be smart, Rowly.”

  Rowland stared at his gin. Wilfred was right. He’d made an enemy of the Commonwealth attorney-general. Menzies had not taken his own failure to keep the Communist peace advocate from setting foot in the country well. And like many people, he believed Rowland had betrayed his country by helping Kisch get in. It was probably only due to Wilfred’s influence that Rowland Sinclair had not been charged with anything thus far. But that could change. There were, he knew, Federal Police surveilling his house even now, watching for any transgression for which they may conceivably arrest him.

  Wilfred lit a cigarette. “I want you to go to Shanghai.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to go to Shanghai. It’s in China.”

  “I know where it is! Why the dickens do you want me to go to China?”

  “Sinclair Holdings is represented in Shanghai by the legal firm of Carmel and Smith. Gilbert Carmel is an old chum—we served together in France.” Wilfred smiled fleetingly. “Kate and I have been planning to take the boys to Shanghai—to introduce the baby to his namesake, and so I can meet with some wool brokers.”

  “You want me to accompany you?”

  “No. I want you to go in our place.”

  “Me?” Rowland put down his glass and stared at his brother. He had always maintained a studied disinterest in the machinations of the Sinclair fortune; the maintenance, expansion, and control of which had traditionally been Wilfred’s remit alone. Over the years, Rowland had simply signed whatever Wilfred told him to sign, content to allow his older brother to do whatever he saw fit with the Sinclair assets. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m afraid I am. I can’t leave at the moment.”

  “Surely there must be someone else you could send.”

  “These chaps can be easily offended.” Wilfred’s explanation was characteristically blunt and brusque. “Believe me, you’d be the last man I’d send if your name wasn’t Sinclair.”

  Rowland tried to extricate himself. “Wil, I don’t know anything about wool markets—how on earth am I supposed to negotiate?”

  “Under no circumstances are you to negotiate, promise, or agree to anything. Say as little as possible.”

  “But—”

  “Your purpose is to hold our place in these meetings,” Wilfred said. “Just listen and be pleasant. For God’s sake, don’t sign anything.”

  “Wouldn’t you be better sending someone who understands the—”

  “If I actually intended to do business—yes. But, for now, I simply wish to assure our potential trading partners that I value them enough to send a blood relative.”

  Rowland’s brow rose. Blood seemed a dubious qualification. “Who are these potential trading partners?”

  Wilfred said nothing for a moment. “The Japanese. As you know, there is talk of a trade embargo against Japan.”

  Rowland hadn’t known. Whilst he was more aware of international politics than he had once ever wanted to be, his attention had been focused on Europe and not the East.

  Wilfred continued carefully. “I am not predisposed to conducting business that may be counter to government policy, but neither do I wish—for reasons about which you need not concern yourself—to show my hand.”

  Rowland’s eyes narrowed. Wilfred Sinclair had always operated the grand machines of commerce, in which any part Rowland played was at most a tiny cog. It made him wonder. “You’re sending me as some kind of political subterfuge?”

  “I am sending you because it is not in our interests to commit either way,” Wilfred corrected. “I don’t intend to inform them in advance that you will be attending in my stead.”

  “Why?”

  “Best they don’t have time to devise some strategy about how to deal with you.” He paused and then added impatiently, “Take your unemployed lefty friends with you, if you must.”

  The suggestion roused Rowland’s suspicions. Whilst Wilfred’s opinion of Rowland’s friends had softened in the last year, he was unlikely to propose they accompany him on a business trip unless it was to make sure that Rowland went. “Why do you want me out of the country, Wil?”

  “Don’t be absurd, Rowly. Although, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go abroad if only to give Menzies an opportunity to calm down.”

  “I didn’t break any laws.”

  “That’s a matter of perspective.” Wilfred exhaled. “I would go to Shanghai myself, but Kate needs me here.”

  “Kate?” Rowland asked, alarmed. His sister-in-law rarely made demands on Wilfred. “Is there something—”

  Wilfred shook his head. “Issues with her father’s estate. The Bairds are circling for an almighty stoush. I can’t get away.”

  Rowland nodded. There was nothing Wilfred would not do for his young wife and sons. It was the soft underbelly of the otherwise impenetrable Wilfred Sinclair. And it was this that caused Rowland to relent, albeit unenthusiastically.

  “Very well then, I’ll go to bloody Shanghai. But if I ruin us all by accident, remember that this was your cockeyed idea.”

  Wilfred nodded. “Good man.” He opened his mouth to begin but stopped. “Go and get yourself cleaned up, Rowly.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “I’ll have your housekeeper organise some coffee, and then we can get to work.”

  “To work?”

  “There are a few things you should be across before you go, or else you may well indeed ruin us all.”

  “Can’t it wait? I just—”

  “Don’t whine, Rowly. You’re a grown man, for God’s sake. We don’t have much time—you’ll have to leave soon.”

  Rowland groaned. His head was pounding as it was without a crash course on wool or economics or whatever else his brother had in mind.

  “I’ll say hello to Ernie,” Wilfred continued, “and inform your friends that you won’t be joining them for dinner.” He frowned. “Perhaps we should call a doctor and have you checked over.”

  “No need, I’m fine.” Rowland stood, resigned. Resistance was obviously going to be futile.

  He met Edna Higgins on the staircase. In overalls, with her hair tied up and a stray smear of clay on her cheek, the sculptress had obviously been working, although her hands were now cl
ean. She held the sixteen-millimetre Bell and Howell movie camera Rowland had recently given her for no reason in particular but that he’d hoped it might suit her. Rowland was a man of such means that generosity needed no reason. Edna had embraced the new medium with a child-like zeal, filming their day-to-day lives at first—Rowland and Clyde at their easels, Milton skylarking, even Lenin, the greyhound, and the cats that lived at Woodlands House. She’d recorded Egon Kisch’s speech at the Domain and his private visits to Woodlands House. In the last few weeks, she’d graduated to making short films, persuading the men with whom she lived to take roles in her productions, which, despite jeers and complaints, they had done with good humour.

  She stopped mid-step, able to look directly into Rowland’s face by virtue of her place on a higher tread. “Again?” she said, raising her hand to gently touch the darkening bruise on his temple.

  “I’m all right, Ed,” he said, smiling. “I just haven’t had a chance to clean up.” He looked down the stairs. “Wil’s here.”

  “You go up,” she said, frowning. “I’ll bring you up a compress, or a poultice or something, for your face.”

  “That’s very kind. But don’t trouble yourself. Wilfred is expecting me back directly.”

  “Expecting you back where?”

  “The library.”

  She grimaced. “Is he cross?” The sculptress had lived long enough at Woodlands to be familiar with Wilfred Sinclair’s preference for the library as a venue for battle.

  “No more than usual.”

  Edna turned Rowland’s face to look more closely at the bruise. She noticed the blood on his collar, the tear in the shoulder of his jacket. “We’re going to have to do something about this, Rowly. This is the third time…”

  He grabbed her hand and squeezed it as he proceeded up the stairs. “Don’t worry, Ed. Wil has a solution.”

  * * *

  Wilfred Sinclair spent most of that evening educating his brother on the very basics of the wool trade and commercial negotiation. He coached Rowland on words and phrases of which to be wary, and those he should use in order to appear interested without committing to a course of action, the broad principles he could enunciate to avoid answering a direct question, and the judicious use of the term “utmost good faith.”

  “Bloody hell, you’ll want me to kiss babies next!” Rowland muttered.

  Wilfred ignored his grievances. He was relentless in his instruction. Indeed, he seemed to be relishing the opportunity, and eventually Rowland said as much.

  For a moment Wilfred did not reply and then said, “When I came back—after the war—I always imagined that we would run the business together, Rowly.”

  “Really?” Rowland didn’t hide his surprise. Wilfred might as well have said he’d expected his brother to join the Royal Ballet.

  Wilfred sighed. “I understood, of course, that you had oats to sow—you’re not the first young man to…paint.”

  Rowland smiled.

  “But I always hoped that eventually you’d settle down and show an interest.”

  Rowland’s brow rose. “I’m afraid I’ve been something of a disappointment then.”

  “More a frustration than a disappointment.” Wilfred sat back in his chair and regarded Rowland thoughtfully. “You’re barely thirty. It’s not too late.”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “You’re a Sinclair, Rowly. You can’t ignore who you are.”

  “I know. It’s why I paint.”

  The task of briefing Rowland to Wilfred’s satisfaction took most of that night. By the time Rowland was allowed to retire, he had at least an idea of the nature and size of the Sinclair holdings, and quality of and quantity of its wool clip, both seasonal and stockpiled. Rowland could not understand why he needed to know anything at all, given that he had been forbidden to make any commitments or enter into any agreements. But Wilfred was determined that he should nevertheless seem competent to represent the Sinclair marque. Perhaps Wilfred hoped that his efforts would somehow ignite a real interest. Perhaps he had not yet given up on the idea of Rowland working at his side.

  By the next morning, preparations and necessary arrangements were already underway so that appointments in Shanghai could be kept. Passages were booked and trunks packed. Rowland’s Aunt Mildred was persuaded to move temporarily into Woodlands House to keep his elderly mother company.

  Elisabeth Sinclair had resided with Rowland for the past year, though she believed him to be his brother, the son she’d lost to the Great War. Rowland had long learned to live with this malady of his mother’s mind and heart. Despite her age and background, Elisabeth relished the bohemian company he kept and had somehow come to regard them as her contemporaries. Consequently, she was less than happy with the proposed companionship of her sister-in-law.

  “Millie is so old,” she complained.

  “Aunt Mildred is two years younger than you, Mother,” Wilfred reminded her.

  “Nonsense!” Elisabeth would not have it. She had recently decided that she, like Edna, was twenty-eight years old. Rowland and his friends did not try to convince her otherwise, and nothing Wilfred said would change her mind.

  Eventually, however, she was reconciled to “looking after Millie” for a couple of months. Elisabeth Sinclair had, after all, been raised with an understanding of family duty.

  Edna and Milton decided immediately that they would accompany him to Shanghai, though it amused them that Wilfred Sinclair would send the black sheep to trade wool. The sculptress saw the expedition as another chance to explore the world, in the company she most liked to keep, and perhaps, this time, to capture their travels on film. She was, in any case, glad to quit Sydney for a while. Milton simply sensed adventure in the sudden call to Shanghai.

  Clyde, too, was inclined to join the sojourn to the Far East, but for the job he had taken just the week before.

  “Maybe I can catch up with you,” he said somewhat despondently.

  “Just resign,” Milton urged. “It’s not the Sistine Chapel.”

  “I can’t. I said I’d do it.” As much as he did not relish being left behind, Clyde was man of his word.

  “What’s the job?” Rowland asked. He hadn’t realised Clyde had taken on a new commission. “Is it a portrait?”

  Clyde looked embarrassed. “Murals. I’m painting murals.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “For the new amusement park they’re building at Milsons Point. Luna Park,” he mumbled. “They’ve hired a few artists to paint murals around the attractions.”

  “What exactly are you painting?” Edna asked, intrigued.

  “Monsters.”

  Milton sniggered.

  Edna shoved the poet. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ve been assigned the mural at the entrance to the ghost train.” Clyde folded his arms defensively. “It’s honest work. I can’t just leave them in the lurch.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Rowland agreed. “How long will it take you to finish this monster mural?”

  “Two weeks, perhaps three.”

  Rowland frowned. Wilfred was insisting they leave as soon as possible. “What if I help?”

  “That’s a tremendous idea, Rowly!” Edna jumped to her feet. “I can help too.”

  “I’m not sure they’ll allow—” Clyde began.

  “You just tell them that Rowly and I are your assistants,” Edna directed. “We’ll have your mural done in a few days, and you can sail with us.”

  Clyde hesitated. He looked at Rowland. Edna didn’t care about painting one way or another but Rowland was wealthy enough to confine himself to works of fine art, to paint only those subjects that inspired him. “Are you sure, Rowly? It’s a mural…in an amusement park.”

  Rowland shrugged. “A gallery by any other name.”

  Chapter Three

&n
bsp; LUNA PARK NEAR SYDNEY BRIDGE

  PROTEST AGAINST PROPOSAL

  “Lack of Aesthetic Taste”

  SYDNEY, Tuesday—“The people of Sydney have a deplorable lack of aesthetic taste,” said the acting president of the Parks and Playgrounds Movement (Mr. A J Small) to-day, when as a member of a deputation to Mr Ryan, Honorary Minister, he protested against the granting of a lease of the site of the Harbour Bridge workshops at Milson’s Point for the establishment of an amusement park. The lease was granted recently to Messrs Phillips Bros, of Melbourne.

  Mr Small said that it made him despair of local government when he heard that a council had consented to the introduction of a cheap-jack show.

  The honorary secretary of the moment (Dr. C W Bean) said that the proposal was akin to putting Coney Island under the Tower of London.

  —Argus, 1 May 1935

  * * *

  Rowland consulted the plan Clyde had drawn up. The mural was taking shape more quickly than they’d dared to hope. Clyde was an excellent foreman, directing Edna and Rowland’s contributions to the fresco in a manner that took advantage of both their stature and strengths as artists. Rowland’s height meant that he could reach the upper edge of the painting with little difficulty, and his natural style allowed him to block in general shapes at speed. Edna was happy to sit cross-legged on the ground to paint the lower detail. Although she was a sculptor, or perhaps because of it, Edna painted with a particular eye for dimension and perspective. Clyde managed the middle territory himself and sequenced the specific areas of work so that they were not tripping over one another.

  When the amusement park’s representatives raised concerns on the third day that the mural was too frightening for a children’s ride, Clyde had responded calmly, instructing his assistants to put broad smiles on the faces of every monster in the composition. The result was distinctly unnerving—werewolves, phantoms, and vampires grinned down from the wall like they were sharing some ghoulish joke—but after only four days, the mural was nearly complete.

  Rowland dabbed a highlight on the upswept brows of the vampire. They were simply enjoying themselves now, including personal touches into the detail of the composition for their own amusement.