Limehouse Nights

by Thomas Burke

  “Tai Ling, you speak no truth!”

  Tai Ling sprang up, and his hand flew to the waist of his cotton trousers, and flew back, grasping a kreese.

  “Tai Ling,” repeated the voice, still in Chinese, “I say you lie. I am the father of li’l Malligold’s babe!”

  At that moment, anything might have happened, had not two shirt-sleeved waiters slipped dexterously between the claimants, and grasped their wrists. Tai Ling’s face was aflame with as much primitive emotion as an Oriental face may show. But his first rage died, as another voice came from the bead curtain at the rear of the little cluster.

  “Tai Ling, Wing Foo, you both speak no truth. For Malligold has told me even this evening that the child is mine!” And the third claimant thrust a vehement face through the curtain, and swam down among them. “I,” he cried, his hands quarrelling nervously at his bosom, “I—I am the father of Malligold’s man-child!”

  The glances of the three met like velveted blades. For one moment tragedy was in the air. Knives were still being grasped.

  Then Tai Ling began his conquering smile. It was caught by the crowd and echoed, and in another moment light laughter was running about, with chattering voices and gesturing hands. The waiters released their hold on the prospective fathers, and the three competitors sat down to a table and called for tea and sweet cakes and cigarettes.

  One must admit that Marigold’s conduct was, as the politicians say, deserving of the highest censure; but, you see, she was young, and she needed money for this business—her first. Some small amounts, it appeared, she had managed to collect from Wing Foo and his friend, but neither of them had done what Tai Ling had done so magnanimously. You would have thought, perhaps, that by all the traditions of his race, Ling would have been exceedingly wroth at this discovery of infidelity on the part of one who had shared his bed. But he was not. He sat at the table, and smiled that inscrutable, shattering smile, and in fancy he folded Marigold within his brown arms. His was an easy-going disposition; human kindliness counted with him before tradition and national beliefs. A sweet fellow. A rogue himself, he did not demand perfection in others. No; the infidelity did not anger him. The only point about the business that really disturbed him was that there should be others who aspired to the fatherhood of this, Marigold’s first child, and, he believed, his.

  So they sat and talked it over, and when they parted, and each went his way into the night, to tell his tale, Tai Ling went to the Poplar Hippodrome to drown his perplexity. There he witnessed the performance of a Chinese juggler, who blasphemed his assistants in the language of Kennington Gate, and was registered on the voting list at Camberwell as Rab M’Andrew. After sitting in the hall for some hour and a half, his ideas were adjusted, and he went to the house where Marigold was, and gently charged her with what he had heard. She fell at once to tears and protestations and explanations, and desired to go away from him for ever. She had not meant wrong; but … she did not know … and she had so wanted the money … and …

  Well, he would not let her go. He caught her back, and thrust his forgiveness upon her; and the whole affair ought to have ended in disaster for both of them. But it did not, as you will see.

  The next morning, there was a new development. The story of the café conversation was racing about Limehouse and Poplar, when it came to the ears of one, Chuck Lightfoot, a pugilistic promoter. Now parenthood is not an office which the Englishman lightly assumes, but Chuck straightway butted in, and demanded to know, with menaces, what was the matter with his claim. It wasn’t that he was specially anxious to father the child. Indeed, the success of his claim, and the resultant financial outlay, would have seriously disconcerted him. It was just the principle of the thing that riled him. Damn it, he wasn’t going to stand by and be dished by any lousy scarleteer of a yellow devil; not much. He asserted further that by reference to dates he could prove many things which went far to establish his claim; and, finally, if anyone wanted a fight, they’d only got to ask for it.

  Apparently no one did; for Tai Ling went about with that smile of his, and shook all seriousness out of them. During the week he called a convocation at the house where he had installed Marigold, and where she now lay, and there they gathered—three yellow men, proud, jealous, reticent, and one vehement white man, hot-eared, inarticulate, and still ready to fight the lot of ’em. Clearly a mistake had happened somewhere. There had obviously been a miscalculation on somebody’s part, to say nothing of a regrettable oversight. But whose child it was remained for proof.

  There, then, Marigold lay in a comfortable bed, comfortably attended, awaiting her time; while four men, only politely recognising each other’s existence, sat below and wrangled for the honour of the fatherhood. Was ever a woman in so shameful and so delicious a situation?

  At about four o’clock on Saturday afternoon, it happened. …

  News was brought downstairs. The child was yellow-white, with almond eyes, and it was unmistakably the child of Tai Ling.

  Three of the claimants faded away before Tai Ling’s sweet obeisances and compliments, like wind over the grass; the third went raucously, with fierce gesture and trivial abuse.

  Now in Tai Ling’s heart was great joy, and he ambled about that house, in his sleek little way, doing delicate, pretty things which no white man could have done or conceived. Seldom has a wooing and matrimony, so conducted, led to the house of bliss. But that is where Marigold and Tai Ling are living.

  One day, when the baby Yoto was six weeks old, there arrived at the house six clusters of white flowers and six scented boxes—one for Marigold, one for Yoto, and one each for the three disappointed claimants; and, these love-gifts were duly delivered by Tai Ling himself to the recipients, all of whom received them sweetly, save Chuck Lightfoot; and what he said or did is of no account.

  Tai Ling and Marigold are still in West India Dock Road, and very prosperous and happy they are, though, as I say, they have no right to be. Yoto has now a brother and a sister, each of whom is the owner of a little scented box. Visit them all one day, at the provision shop, which is the third as you pass Pennyfields; and they will tell you this story more delicately and fragrantly than I.

  Gracie Goodnight

  Gracie Goodnight had the loveliest hair that ever was seen east of Aldgate Pump—where lies that land of lovely girls and luxurious locks. It was this head of hers—melodious as an autumn sunset—that turned the discordant head of old fat Kang Foo Ah, and made it reel with delicious fancies, and led him to hire her as a daily girl to clean up his home and serve in his odoriferous shop.

  It was legendary in Limehouse that old Kang Foo Ah knew a thing or three. When he took that little shop in Pennyfields, business was, according to those best qualified to speak, rotten. Yet now—in the short space of eighteen months—he had a very comfortable fortune stowed away in safe places known to himself. Where his predecessor and his rivals laid out threepence and made fourpence, Kang Foo Ah would lay out threepence and make sixpence-halfpenny. As he stood behind his counter, with the glorious-headed Gracie, nimble-fingered and deft of brain, at his side, he would smile blandly upon her and upon his customers; his hands, begemmed like a Hatton Garden Jew’s, folded across his stomach. He positively exuded prosperity, so that its waves seemed to beat upon you and set you tingling with that veneration which the very wisest of us feel toward material success.

  Everything of the best and latest was in his shop. There were dried sharks’ fins, pickled eggs, twenty years old, bitter melons, lychee fruits, dried chrysanthemum buds, tea, sweet cakes, “chandu” and its apparatus, betel nut, some bright keen knives, and an automatic cash register; while on the walls were Chinese prints, The Police Budget, strips of dried duck and fish, some culinary utensils, and three little black bottles of fire-extinguisher, with printed instructions for use, which showed that Kang Foo Ah was doing so well that he had insured his premises with a respectable fire insurance com
pany.

  Oh—and, of course, there was Gracie Goodnight; perhaps the happiest touch which earned for Kang’s store the reputation of having always the best and the latest. The boys, yellow and white and black, would come to the store and spend more money than they could afford on cigarettes which they didn’t want and dried fruits which they couldn’t eat; and Gracie would throw out casual invitations to come again and bring a friend and have a cup of tea in the little curtained room at the back, where she served or sat in converse of an evening.

  So they came again, and the bank balance of Kang Foo Ah … did it not grow and flourish exceedingly, like the green bay-tree? It did; and as he grew fatter and more prosperous, so, like all mankind, he grew more independent, insolent, overbearing. In a current phrase, he began to throw himself about. In another current phrase, equally expressive, though less polite, he began to make himself a damned nuisance. At times he was simply unbearable; yet there was none in Chinatown to stand up to him and put him back in his place. They endured him meekly, because he was successful and they were not.

  The honour of putting him to bed was reserved for an insignificant gentleman, not of Chinatown, who resided on the borders of Poplar and Blackwall. He kept the Blue Lantern, at the corner of Shan-tung Place, and it was a respectable house; he had often said so. Now as Kang Foo Ah had never yet known any to stand up to him, he foolishly began to believe that none ever would do so. He overlooked the fact that he had never yet matched himself against the landlord of a London public-house. …

  This story properly begins with Kang tumbling into the private bar of the aforesaid house, and demanding a gin and rum, mixed. The landlord declined to serve him. Kang called him pseudonyms.

  Then the landlord spoke, wagging an illustrative finger as one who makes the Thirdly point in his Advent sermon.

  “Look here,” he said, “I don’t mind you coming to my ’ouse and getting drunk. No. But … what I do object to is yer getting drunk at someone else’s ’ouse, and coming ’ere to be sick. Now clear out, old cock, and toddle ’ome. A lemon-and-bismuth, and you’ll be top-hole in the morning. Off yeh go.”

  Kang caught the bar with both hands, and leered in his slimy way.

  “Kang Foo Ah fine fellow …” he began; but he was cut short.

  “Listen,” said Boniface. “Shall I tell you what you are? Yer a perfect dam nuisance to any decent ’ouse. That’s what you are. A perfect dam nuisance. Yeh never come ’ere but what yer drunk. Never. Yeh may be a very clever chap, and yeh may have lots of money. But yer a damned nuisance, and it won’t trouble me if I never see yer fat face in my ’ouse again. And that’s telling yeh. Straight. Yeh know now, doncher? Now beat it, else I’ll sick the cops on yeh. Beat it.”

  In the phrase in which the only onlooker told the story, Kang was properly told off. He slithered and gibbered for a moment; then he was propelled by the shoulder, through the swing doors, to the cold pavement beyond. His voice could be heard in protest.

  “Fairly got the monkeys,” said the landlord to the only onlooker, as he returned to the bar. “Fairly got ’em. ’Ear what he called me?”

  “Got the monkeys?” echoed the only onlooker, who had never forgotten that he had once been refused credit by this house. “I should think ’e would get the monkeys. Anyone’d git the monkeys wiv you talkin’ to ’em like that. Got no tack, you ain’t. Bin and lorst a good customer, now, and all because of yer swank. Didn’ you tell ’im you’d be glad to miss ’is vacant face? Didn’ you say ’e was the stink what comes out of Wapping at night? Didn’ you say ’e’d make a bug sorry ’e was masheeshing around in the same bed with ’im? Course ’e got the monkeys. Who wouldn’t? You oughter learn tack.”

  Yes; Kang Foo Ah had got the monkeys. He had them so badly that when he returned to the shop in Pennyfields, and caught Gracie in the act of nicking a few dry cakes, he discharged her. He did not discharge her with any great exercise of “tack.” He merely bellowed upon her to go; and when she stood looking at him in dumb wonder, he grabbed her by the shoulders, pinched her neck, tore at her lovely hair, and thrust her bodily over the step into the narrow street, even as himself had been flung by the keeper of the Blue Lantern. He tossed her hat and jacket after her, crying:

  “Go, thieving girl! Go, robber. Daughter of a dog … Go!”

  Now in, Gracie’s heart there burned a very savage flame of self-respect. She was fond of herself, and her trim little person and her wondrous hair were to her sacred things, not lightly to be mauled by anyone, and certainly to be held pure from the loathly yellow hands of a Chinky. But what fed that flame with furious fuel was Kang’s roared accusation of Thief. All Pennyfields—Chinks and whites—turned out to hear and to see. They cackled and chi-iked. All heard the wretched name. Many saw the violent expulsion, and late-comers arrived at least in time for the fun of seeing Gracie retrieve her hat and jacket from the puddle where they had fallen, put them on, and march away crying frightful things upon her employer, and throwing, deftly, a piece of road mud so that it spread, pancake-wise, over his window. None moved to help her or to sympathise; they were either telling or hearing the tale; and, beautiful as she might be, she was now a figure for ridicule, a thing of no account, cast down and unheroic. They had patronised the shop for her smiles and her chatter; but now she was absurd, and her physical charms availed her nothing in this moment of undignified distress. They stood around and laughed. They pointed fingers, and their mouths went wide at the pathetic, screaming, stamping little figure, whose flying hair, ruffled clothing, vociferant hands and impotent indignation gave her momentarily the air of a pantomime dame.

  “I’ll git back on him. Christ, I will!” she cried, and kicked a furious foot in his direction as she swept like a baby tornado into West India Dock Road. She’d fix him, good and plenty. She’d learn him to fire white girls out like that. She’d learn him to put his slimy hands on her neck, and to mess his fingers in Gracie Goodnight’s hair. She’d show him what. You wait. Not to-day, perhaps, or to-morrow, but she’d get him all right, before long. She’d put it acrost him for calling Gracie Goodnight a thief. She’d show the nasty, dirty, slimy, crawling, leery old reptile how he could catch hold of a decent girl with his beastly, filthy, stinking, yellow old fingers. Not half, she wouldn’t. …

  Of course, she had stolen. Admitted at once. But would anyone but that fat old beast take any notice of a mouldy old cake? And then to sling you off without notice. And in that way, too—putting his hands on you and throwing you out. And then chucking your things at you in the gutter. Oh, my word … but he’d cop out.

  He did. …

  Gracie cried herself to sleep on her solitary and doubtfully clean pillow that night, after much hard thinking. Two days later, after a consultation with a few pals at a near corner, she came to the loud conclusion that pride was all very well, and all that sort of thing; but after all, you’d got to live somehow. She would, then, sink her pride, and go and ask old fat Kang Foo Ah to take her back and give her another chance. It was known that the two days had marked a distinct drop in the takings of the store, especially in the little curtained room at the back where tea and cakes were served of an evening. Probably he’d be glad to overlook it, and take her on again. She would go that night; and she let all Chinatown know of her decision to ask pardon of Kang.

  That night she went. It was a reasonably clear night, for Limehouse, and the lights of the Asiatic quarter glowed like bright beads against their mellow backgrounds of ebony and olive. A sharp breeze from the river rushed up Pennyfields, and shop signs were swaying, and skirts and petticoats were being blown about, teasing the yellow boys with little peeps of delicate stocking and soft leg. Gracie came along with her friends, holding hats and bowing before the wind. She had brought her friends because, she said, she felt rather kind of squiffy about the job, and it would sort of buck her up if they went with her. Besides, you never knew: he might fly at her again.

&n
bsp; The expected happened, as it usually does. Kang Foo Ah was again in a bad mood. He was seated behind his counter, gazing ruefully at the little tea-room, now empty of voice and light laughter and revenue. A large white-shaded lamp stood firmly on the counter, and, for the rest, the shop was lighted by two Chinese lanterns which hung dreamily on the wall.

  To him went Gracie, bold of bearing but knocking at the knees. Outside, in the narrow roadway, her three friends—two girls and a lad—stood to watch the fun and, if need be, to render assistance. They saw Gracie go in and address her master. They saw him start up and wag a severe head. They saw Gracie press the argument, and move to the side of the counter against the lamp. Words passed. The old man seemed to grow angry; his gestures and his lips were far from friendly. Gracie leaned forward with a new argument. His face darkened, He answered. Gracie retorted. Then his great arm shot swiftly up. Gracie jumped back with the fleetness of a startled faun. Her muff caught the white china lamp. It went with a crash and a rush of flame to the floor.

  The oil ran, and the fire flew up to the counter where the dried skins hung. In five seconds the shop window was ablaze. Gracie screamed. The old man roared; and they both screamed again, for, in jumping backward, Gracie had struck with the feather of her hat one of the pendulous lanterns which, thus agitated, had fired itself, and the flaming paper had dropped on Kang’s side of the counter, where were candles and an oil-tank.

  Pennyfields, through the voices of Gracie’s three friends, screamed too, and swiftly the shops and the lodging-houses were cleared of their companies. Over pavement and roadway the yellow boys crowded and danced and peered, while Gracie stood still, her hands at her glorious head, screaming … screaming … screaming. …

  The massive dignified Kang Foo Ah roared and capered, for he was imprisoned in the narrow space behind the counter, and fire was all about him. The doorway was blocked with mad flames; exit was impossible there; and the oil-tank at the other end shot random spears in every direction. Gracie, with crouching limbs and hands clasped in a gesture of primitive fear, crept back and back. They were lovely hands, white and slim and shapely, and even as he danced and howled, Kang wondered why he had driven them away from his counter. The boy friend outside made a gallant effort to dash in to her, but smoke and flame easily beat him off.