Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  A moment of silence from the journalists. Followed by a moment of indecision. Which was more important – the outbreak of a Europe-wide war or a horse race? Jack Belden solved the crisis. As a functioning alcoholic he could concentrate on two things at once. ‘Let’s hear the news,’ he stated, simultaneously adding, ‘Come on you dirty nag’ as his main bet Print Bank Notes fell off the pace.

  ‘It seems Herr Hitler and Herr Henlein may have made a mistake,’ reported George. This caused instant attention and instant silence from everyone in the press box.

  ‘What?’ said James Bertram. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Well,’ said George, ‘you know Konrad Henlein of the Sudetenland is a very stupid man, and Hitler ordered him to reject anything Beneš offered him?’

  ‘So what did Beneš offer him?’ asked Vernon.

  ‘Ha,’ said George. ‘Beneš is a very clever fellow. He told Henlein he could have the Sudetenland.’

  ‘And Henlein,’ added the acute Jack Belden, ‘what did he say?’

  ‘Well, as a very stupid man, he did exactly what Herr Hitler had ordered him to do and turned down Beneš.’

  ‘Turned down the Sudetenland?’ cried Izzy.

  ‘HAAAAAAAAA!’ roared Belden in triumph, ‘HE JANXED THEM!!!,’ simultaneously noting that his side bet Pineapple Bun With Butter now appeared to be in the lead.

  ‘Hitler must be eating the carpet,’ cried Izzy, briefly reconciled to the faltering Everyday Lettuce.

  ‘And what’s the reaction elsewhere in Europe?’ questioned Vernon.

  A bookie was screaming his odds just below their box.

  ‘Fuck off,’ bellowed Belden at him. Jack was large and the bookie small. The bookie moved his pitch.

  ‘It seems to have turned the whole situation on its head,’ said George. ‘Czechoslovakia used to be seen as the big unreasonable one, bullying its minorities; now it’s Henlein and his master who are being unreasonable, belligerent. Everyone’s seen through the ruse and is feeling sympathy for Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘Poor little Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘I can imagine what the reaction is in Downing Street,’ said Vernon, smiling and drawing on his cigar. ‘Chamberlain must be furious. His whole Runciman strategy is in ruins. What’s the British press saying, George?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said George, ‘but the Reuters wire is headed “Chamberlain backs the wrong horse”.’

  Talking of horses, Izzy’s attention was suddenly snatched back by the race. His favourite, Everyday Lettuce, was now not only wilting but had actually expired. It lay on its back, legs in the air. Two butchers’ carts approached at speed.

  A low-flying aircraft with a misfiring engine passed overhead and spooked both Jack Belden’s front runners – Print Bank Notes and Pineapple Bun With Butter. Both hared off towards Wuhan.

  Which left Ralph Shaw’s Wine, Women, Poems and Perfume and Vernon Bartlett’s Happy Dragon Go Go as the only two left in contention. While Ralph leapt up and down in ecstatic frenzies his floozy Wanda calmly powdered her face in prospect of his finances being considerably more liquid in the next few days. Vernon, who wasn’t really that interested in horse racing, calmly looked on, puffing his cigar.

  At the last second Ralph’s steed tripped and spilled his jockey all over the ground, Wanda ceased powdering her nose, and Vernon’s nag rode on to triumph – and the butchers’ knives.

  ‘Yes,’ said Vernon sagely, adjusting his buttonhole, ‘I always back a horse whose name begins with H. And jolly good news from Czecho!’

  *

  Donald asked Hu if she’d work with him full time as his assistant, sterilizing and preparing his surgical instruments for theatre, aiding him in the actual operations. He admired her dexterity and intelligence and adaptability. Hu, fascinated by Donald’s work, immediately spoke with Li Dequan, General Feng’s wife, asking if she could give up her job vetting refugees arriving at the camps. Knowing Hu’s keenness for nursing and healthcare Li agreed. Hu’s assistant was almost as competent as she was. Refugees were still pouring into Wuhan as the Japanese drew ever closer, but many were now being quickly fed, clothed, medically checked, fumigated and then shipped straight upstream to Chungking to be sorted out there. Those who instead continued walking on the long trek westward – amid the streams of coolies and carters and soldiers also on the roads – were now being fed and watered and sheltered and medically checked at regular government way stations along the routes. Things were at last being organized.

  The two women smiled, wished each other well and went their separate ways. Such swift meetings and partings had become part of the fabric of Wuhan.

  With Spider Girl now being expected to provide various bicycle parts for the traction workshop close to the hospital, Hu helped her on her forays to the Bund in the mornings. Hu bought the food, Spider Girl haggled over bicycle parts, other mechanical detritus, and second-hand welding equipment. Having organized the transport, Spider Girl and Hu would then sit on the tailgate of the wagon chatting and laughing before it dropped Hu off at the hospital – plus spokes – and continued with Spider Girl to the workshop where the traction frames were being welded together. Being a highly intelligent country girl and sharing her father’s passion for all things mechanical, Spider Girl soon got involved in the problems and pleasures of assembling the frames and traction pulleys and ratchets (adapted from bicycle chains and sprockets and cogs), and even picked up the rudiments of welding. Which meant that the actual process of cooking increasingly fell by the wayside. And the meals themselves, when she had time, were being prepared by someone whose oily hands and dirty clothing were less than hygienic.

  But all these mighty complications are for the moment mercifully ahead of us.

  Today Spider Girl was very excited. Because today was the day she’d been promised a visit to the hospital to see Donald at work. She wasn’t excited at the prospect of seeing the butchery – as we know, she was already well experienced in that side of life. What fascinated her was the chance to watch Donald at work.

  All through her life she had been interested in watching skilful people working, seeing how they observed and calculated things, then practically applied that knowledge to the job at hand. Her mother running a complex family. Her father working on some machine or calculating the order of harvest, the timing of lifting and then drying and then storing the various crops. Fang the Builder staring at the stones lying in front of him, constructing in his mind where each individual stone would end up in the completed building. Or watching Agnes puzzling again and again over the wording in one small part of an article.

  Nobody ever really realized how carefully Wild Pear Blossom watched them all.

  She was standing in the operating theatre. The soldier, with an abdominal wound, was already lying on the table and his gut and wound was being cleansed as much as possible by Hu. Hu smiled at Spider Girl as she worked. Spider Girl watched fascinated. Then Donald came in, cleansed hands held upward to dry, bow tie immaculate. Hu washed her hands and brought Donald’s sterilized equipment on a tray to his side. She sterilized the instruments next door in pressure cookers sat on Bunsen burners. Maninda joined Donald opposite him as his junior. Two burly attendants held down the patient’s shoulders, another his legs.

  It started.

  The soldier’s entrails were swiftly sewn together, the damaged gut excised, the wound being disinfected and bound up, the patient removed, table disinfected, hands washed, next patient on the table, sterilized instruments brought in as everyone washed their hands, wound disinfected, the whole process starting all over again. Pretty soon the arrival and departure of the patients merged into a blur.

  It was not the wounds Spider Girl noticed, the pain, the groans, the blood. Instead she stared at Donald’s concentration, his fluency and economy of movement, the skill and speed of his hands as he flicked and drew and sliced, the deftness and decision of his knife work, the swift dexterity of his sewing. And how all his movements were juxtaposed and or
chestrated with the movements and actions of Maninda and Hu; the way the attendants understood and foresaw the rhythms and jags of the patients’ pain and strongly but gently restrained them.

  And above all Spider Girl stared at his bow tie, which she had scrupulously washed and dried and ironed the night before. It positively shone as with his scalpel and knife Donald Hankey – like Achilles on the plains of Ilium – waded his way through the blood and bodies and gore before him. But unlike Achilles, Donald’s face was not wrathful, proud, arrogant, as any person with his skills and virtuosities would have every right to be. Instead it was quiet and modest and concerned, always showing his appreciation of his fellows’ work with grunts and smiles and congratulations, listening continuously to them, their suggestions and point of view, making a joke when things got grim and a murmur of restraint when things turned silly. On the battlefields of the operating theatre Donald Hankey was the verray parfit gentil knyght.

  Just like her father!

  Spider Girl walked home. She was a mass and conflict of emotions. She did not really understand herself at this moment – a highly unusual state for her to be in. She had started getting these strange feelings in parts of her body she’d never really taken any notice of when she was a child. She had started to bleed – she’d asked Hu about that. And hair was starting to grow in places it had never been before. She really must remove the hair she’d felt growing on her upper lip. And whenever she saw Donald or was in his presence she’d started having thoughts and feeling feelings she’d never known existed.

  Maybe it was the influence of all the Shanghai detective novels she was reading. Their most evil villains, to which she was always most strongly attracted, were invariably red-faced, sweaty Englishmen. Donald didn’t have a red face, but he certainly sweated a lot!

  *

  Back home Spider Girl, already unsettled, walked straight into the midst of some full-blown domestic hysteria – concerning her!

  Freda had discovered a whole stash of bottles, filled to the cap with her used bath water.

  What was going on, she wanted to know? What was this servant girl daring to do, bottling her private bath water? This was outrageous! When was Agnes going to put her foot down?

  Such behaviour was not likely to intimidate Spider Girl, who drew herself up to her inconsiderable height, straightened her back, and prepared for combat.

  Agnes put a stop to that.

  ‘Spider Girl,’ she asked, ‘why have you been bottling Freda’s bath water?’

  ‘Because it’s valuable.’

  ‘What do you mean, it’s valuable?’

  ‘What is she saying?’ asked Freda, who still spoke very little Chinese.

  Agnes ignored this.

  ‘Why is it valuable?’

  ‘You have not been paying me enough money recently to pay for our food or Miss Freda’s bath water. I do not object to this. You use your money for worthy things like buying bandages for wounded soldiers.’

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t paid your wages recently,’ said Agnes, ever the punctilious socialist.

  ‘That does not matter. You owe me no wages. I am your slave. But it is my responsibility. And sometimes I have to chip in money to help buy bicycle parts for Donald. No one has any money.’

  ‘What is she saying?’ demanded Freda.

  Both of them ignored her.

  ‘So,’ continued Spider Girl, ‘clean drinking water in Wuhan being so expensive, and fetching such a high price that many poor people cannot afford it, I thought that I could make some money by using Miss Freda’s used bath water to sell drinking water at a cheap price.’

  Agnes looked at Spider Girl. What a skilled negotiator she was. She knew several trade unions that could make use of her.

  ‘In fact,’ continued Spider Girl, ‘with the taste of Miss Freda’s perfumed soap in it, I am able to sell it at a slightly higher rate as a European water, whose perfume brings good luck and long life. I then buy our food from its profits.’

  ‘You’re a rogue,’ said Agnes, and burst into laughter.

  ‘I’m an honest girl,’ rejoined Spider Girl. ‘Look, I have brought you a bottle of wine out of my profits,’ she added, taking one out of her basket.

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ demanded Freda.

  Agnes described exactly what had been going on.

  ‘This is outrageous,’ said Freda. ‘I feel personally violated. Servants should not be allowed to behave in this terrible manner. They need disciplining. They should wash their hands and clothing. I’m sorry that I am acting in such a bourgeois manner, but there must be standards! She’s bought bottles of wine out of my bath water!’

  For a second Freda thought about this.

  Agnes looked at her very hard.

  The bottle of wine stood on the table between them.

  Then Freda’s face started to wrinkle, crumble into a smile, followed by laughter, guffawing, and finally shrieks of laughter.

  And after several bowls of wine that night Freda made the fateful decision to accompany Agnes to the Last Ditch Club.

  *

  Following President Beneš’s swift-footed humiliation of Herr Henlein and Herr Hitler and especially of Mr Neville Chamberlain – the Runciman Mission had been abandoned tout court – the mood in the Last Ditch Club was extremely positive. Repeated toasts were drunk to the crafty Czech president, and headlines were triumphantly read aloud from newspapers from all four quarters of the earth which had somehow washed up in Wuhan.

  Agnes, well raddled, had always – for reasons completely mysterious to her – fancied the ice-cold Peter Fleming. He attracted her as a cobra attracts a mongoose. So, when he refreshed his ice-cold martini at the bar, she tried a bit of gentle ribbing.

  ‘Reckon that’s one in the eye for your beloved prime minister, Peter. The Sudetenland is staying Czech.’

  Fleming considered her.

  ‘Germany and the Sudetenland are one nation – united by race, by a common language and contiguous borders. Nothing can stop them reuniting.’

  ‘Yes, but…’ continued Agnes.

  Fleming cut her dead, returning to his chair with his martini, a neat twist of lemon on top.

  George Hogg was made of sterner stuff – in his Quakerly way. Amid this raucous conviviality he’d attempted to put the opposing point of view. That what had happened was a bad, a dangerous thing. That whereas once Hitler was only going to take a small portion of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, now he was so angry and humiliated that in his rage he would probably take the whole country, and then others after it, whether they had German populations in them or not. And after the behaviour of President Beneš Chamberlain would likewise feel so angry that he would refuse all help not only to Czechoslovakia but also to all those other countries. The very thing Chamberlain wanted – to rid his country of all these European entanglements through a deal with Herr Hitler so Britain could get back to its traditional job of trading with the rest of the world – was being offered him on a plate.

  His repeated arguments were met with hostility, in some cases extreme hostility, but since everyone was in such good spirits because of the news (and the horse racing) no fisticuffs ensued.

  George returned hurt and bewildered to his chair close to Fleming. Emotion was something he did not understand at all. As a child he’d been taught it was the most dangerous of all human qualities. It led all too often to violence. All things must be worked out and resolved through debate and pure reason. The pure reason of God.

  ‘Hard luck,’ said Fleming.

  ‘They wouldn’t listen,’ said George.

  ‘Halfwits.’

  Once again George was feeling flickerings and darts of emotion, of anger within himself. He swallowed, but he could not stop them.

  ‘They wouldn’t listen. I tried and tried…’

  ‘Arrogant fools. I mean, they all assume that Hitler wants war. The man spent four damn years in the trenches. A man who’s seen the horrors of war like he has is the las
t person to go marching into another war. Stands to reason. All he wants is the return of all those German possessions and peoples stolen by the bloody Treaty of Versailles.’

  ‘That Woodrow Wilson,’ muttered George.

  ‘George,’ said Fleming, leaning closer, ‘the reason all these bloody lefties here want a war is because that’s what their boss Stalin wants. Stalin wants a war between Britain and Germany so that when both sides are exhausted he can march in and take the lot.’

  George looked around the room. Fleming’s right, he thought, a lot of these people are communists, or at least extreme lefties. Far more left than me. How do I stop them and their lust for war?

  Fleming watched Hogg nibble at the bait he’d moulded so cunningly about his hook. All that was needed was one swift jerk.

  ‘By the way, George…’

  ‘Peter?’

  ‘I’m off for a while. Got to take a quick trip to London. My editor wants a word at The Times…’

  ‘I see,’ said George.

  ‘We two must stick together. You know, keep up the fight for peace and common sense. Sing from the same hymn sheet, so to speak.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘So I was wondering – just so I’m right up to date when I get back, understand who’s been saying what in this little leftie hothouse – if you could maybe keep a few notes on who’s saying what to whom about war, so the moment I’m back we’ll be able to resume our little crusade against these damn warmongers. I’ll know exactly the right arguments to deploy.’

  George looked at Fleming. Fleming looked sincere and caring. George still felt anger within himself. Would he be agreeing to this just because he was angry? George quietly suppressed his anger. He reconsidered Peter’s request. He came to the same conclusion.

  ‘I’ll do it. For the cause of peace.’

  And he meant it.

  Agnes had left the club so that she could escort Freda to it and introduce her to the members. Freda had insisted on taking another bath, so Agnes had had to make the journey from apartment to club twice. As they were arriving Fleming was leaving. Fleming opened the door for them with a flourish of faux gallantry. Agnes ignored this and walked straight past him. Freda, on the other hand, more uncertain and insecure, mini-moued at him and bobbed a semi curtsey.