The Ginger Griffin

by Ann Bridge

  Her thoughts were diverted at this point. She had reached an open space of dusty dead-looking grass, round which several groups of ponies were walking, led by Chinese grooms in nondescript trousers and black sateen jackets. So these were China ponies! They were absurd—so tiny! Like children’s ponies for sale at Stow market. And so stocky and short-necked. But here and there was a shapely one, with a faint look of breed about it. One or two groups now left the circular track round the manège, and were led off towards a gateway in a red brick wall; Amber, always drawn by horseflesh as by a magnet, followed, and found herself in a large yard, surrounded on all four sides by solid brick-built stalls and loose-boxes. Several ponies stood against the north wall, tied to rings; down the centre of the yard ran a sort of open-sided barn, with a small building at one end of it. Outside this building, on a wooden chair, sat an old, slender and completely bald Chinese, wearing jódhpores, a black jacket and velvet slippers, smoking a little black and silver pipe. At the entrance of the ponies he took his pipe from his mouth, and without otherwise moving, emitted a loud stream of what appeared to be curses of the most violent sort. The mafoos in charge of the ponies replied in accents equally loud and violent, but set quietly about the business of unblanketing and grooming their charges. Now the old man noticed Amber; he at once rose to his feet, bowed deeply and addressed her as Missy. He spoke English of a sort, and talked a great deal about how well he knew Mastah Ha-lee-san—it was some time before Amber realised that this individual, whose ponies so welly good, was her Uncle Bill. The old man was anxious to do the honours of the stable, and showed her several ponies by the wall which he said belonged Ssu-ch’in-ch’ai—seeing that this conveyed nothing to Amber, “Mastah Haw-to-lee” he brought out triumphantly. He yelled at an underling, who ran to raise a stone slab in the floor of the central barn and hauled up something on the end of a string from within; the underling then approached Amber with a grimy little bundle of butter-muslin, which contained neatly peeled carrots. The old man indicated that she was to give these to Haw-to-lee’s ponies; she was doing so, asking their names, happy and contented again in the safe world of horses and those who dealt with horses, when Haw-to-lee himself appeared.

  “Ah, Miss Harrison! Is Wang introducing you to my string? Good. I’ve just come up to see about this fellow’s shoes. They shoe atrociously here, you know—atrociously, on the whole.” Hawtrey now entered into an examination of the shoes of a large and rather ugly pony, hideously mottled about the face in purple and white; he and Wang kept up a flood of highly technical conversation, half in Chinese and half in English, while Hawtrey made asides to Amber at intervals. “This fellow Pertinax came from your uncle’s stable—he didn’t much want to let me have him, but I ride over a stone heavier than he does, so I need a weight-carrier…. No, Wang—pu-shih! Nakö fah-tzu pu hao! Now show that hind foot.” While two mafoos scuffled with Pertinax, who had no wish to exhibit his feet, Hawtrey continued to discuss the pony. “Old Bill calls all his stable after newspaper men, because he says all China ponies are half rogues!” He gave a cheerful high giggle. “Mind!” He caught Amber by the shoulder and pulled her unceremoniously to one side, as Pertinax lashed out. “He does that—he’s a stubborn brute—Pertinax is just the name for him. But those chaps call him Hua-ma, the Flower Pony.”

  “Why on earth?” Amber asked, looking at Pertinax’s hideous face.

  “Oh, those spots all over his head. Anything spotty is Hua—the same as small-pox,” said Hawtrey airily. “Now, Wang!”—a further examination. “He’s not fast enough to race,” to Amber—“but he’s turning into a decent paper-hunt pony. Do you ride at all, Miss Harrison?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Amber.

  “Capital—that’s really excellent. I hope you’ll let me mount you sometimes, till your uncle comes back. It would be the greatest pleasure. This fellow now, the Gazelle”—he led Amber up to a graceful creamy pony with dark points—“he’ll do you splendidly, you know.” Amber liked the look of the Gazelle, though wondering secretly, as all Europeans wonder when first confronted with the China pony, whether her feet would not touch the ground when she was mounted on him. Hawtrey continued to show her all his ponies, with much conversation and a certain rather naive complacency; he was somehow much nicer among horses than he had been at lunch among people, though she was still amazed at the number of times he said everything—by the time they left the stables she found it quite easy to imagine him with his friend Ban-to-bu. As they walked down a curving drive towards the Counsellor’s house—“How did that old man—Wang is he?—know that I was Uncle Bill’s niece?” Amber asked. “I’ve only been here a day.”

  “Oh Lord, he’d know all right! The Chinese know everything,” said Hawtrey. “Don’t know how, but they do. So do all the other people, as a matter of fact. Living in a Legation is like living in a film studio, you know, with the sound recorder going all the time. ‘The night has a thousand eyes, and the day a million!’” He laughed, clearly expecting Amber to laugh too; for a wonder, she recognised the quotation, and did. “That’s Rupert’s, as a matter of fact,” he said, as he left her at her door.

  Amber went into the house thinking again about Benenden—Hawtrey’s last remark had brought him back to her mind. On the whole she thought him rather disappointing—he was so bitter and violent, not in the least like a poet, a happy collector of visual nuggets. As she went upstairs and took off her things she found herself still wondering why he was so bitter. But as Hawtrey recrossed the compound his thoughts were more varied. He hoped to God that that old scoundrel Wang really would do what he was told and not what he thought best about Pertinax’s forefeet. He hoped to God the Minister hadn’t heard that ass of a new archivist say “Righty-oh” to him over the telephone; and settled exactly what he would say after tea to the said archivist. He decided not to go to Mimi’s cocktail party after all, but to stay and finish that draft and get Yee Hsing round to alter those new jódhpores at the same time. Blasted fool for making them so loose! Finally he thought of the girl he had just left. She seemed rather nice—anyhow she wasn’t an absolute man-eater, so far as you could see, which was one mercy; and not a crashing highbrow either. He’d certainly give her a ride. In fact he found himself hoping quite actively that old Bill wouldn’t get well and come back too damned soon.

  Chapter Six

  “NOW, for Sunday, dear lady, there’s a little plan. Rothstein wants me to take you all to lunch at his villa at P’ao-ma-ch’ang, before the paper-hunt. Quite a good thing to do, you know—one meets everyone, and his cook is first-class. And one must support le sport: it holds people together, it really does hold them together a bit. I always say the Diplomatic Body would go to pieces in a week without golf and the paper-hunts!”

  So Sir James to Joanna over a cocktail. Joanna asked who the amiable Mr. Rothstein might be?

  “Oh, a Hamburger, and a great racing man. He’s in alarm-clocks,” put in Sir James in parenthesis and explanation. “But he’s been here twenty years and he knows a great deal—a useful felloh, quite, you know, on occasion. His wife is English. No, nobody you would know. But she’s a harmless little person. And they have this cook. These Sunday lunches are his little weakness—an amiable weakness, you must confess! You’ll come, then? You and Nugent, and the—ah—the consular young lady!” He bowed to Amber. “Excellent. I’ll collect you after Church.”

  “And you’re lunching with us tomorrow?” said Joanna, as the Minister rose to take his leave. “I don’t know what you’ll get—the boy said he was giving us roast tailor!”

  Sir James laughed. “Tailor—very good! Now let me see—what would that be? Oh yes, teal, of course! They’re in now. Excellent.”

  From December to early March the lives of those who ride ponies in Peking are dominated by the Sunday paper-hunts. These take place at or near P’ao-ma-ch’ang, the suburb close to the race-course, where all race-owners, and plenty of others beside, have a villa or a temple, and keep their stables; it is, in fact
, the centre of that sporting life of Peking to which Sir James Boggit attached so much importance. The main feature of these paper-hunts is that there is no paper. The winner of the previous week’s hunt merely lays a flagged course over eight or nine miles of open country, along which are constructed jumps consisting of mud walls or fences of kaoliang straw; round this course he conducts the field, giving a couple of checks; after the last check the field races home down the “run-in,” for the two cups, a light-weight and a heavy-weight cup. There are roughly three types of riders: the competent owners, who ride their own ponies and are always well up—of such were Leroy, Hawtrey, Harry Leicester and Count Herman; the young and penurious men who are too poor to keep ponies of their own and ride those belonging to stout race-owners with cigars, like M. Rothstein (this class was always referred to by Hawtrey as “the hired assassins”); finally a motley crowd of rather indifferent riders on still more indifferent mounts who for one reason or another feel that they gain face by riding.

  On Sundays, therefore, a general exodus takes place to P’ao-ma-ch’ang by car; lunches are consumed in the villas and temples, and then the paper-hunt is witnessed by a large crowd. The onlookers stand and shiver in a cruel wind, up to their ankles in sand, watching a cloud of dust disappear; after a prolonged interval the cloud of dust reappears, and they have the fun of seeing whether their husbands, sweethearts or jockeys will fall or be rolled on at the last two jumps or not. After which everyone drinks cherry brandy, the two cups are handed out by some woman, the lottery tickets are drawn and the proceedings close till next Sunday, when they begin all over again.

  Most of this information was imparted by George Hawtrey to Miss Harrison on the following Sunday, when she and the Grant-Howards, escorted by the Minister, appeared at M. Rothstein’s luncheon. The house was a new, garishly painted villa, set down baldly on the naked earth without any apparent attempt at a garden, and flanked by a large range of clay-walled stables; the icy wind caught their faces, hands and ankles as they left the car, and made them shiver. They were ushered into a room nearly as bare and ugly as the surroundings of the house, where some forty people were already drinking cocktails, and met their host, a large man with a peculiarly kindly and pleasant, if somewhat heavy face. It was suffocatingly hot, and the noise of forty people, screaming as they only scream in a low-ceilinged room, was deafening: the Grant-Howards suffered various introductions, and Amber, left standing rather lost, was distinctly relieved when Hawtrey came and took her under his wing to go in to lunch. He was dressed for riding; an orange leather waistcoat exactly the colour of his hair was a conspicuous feature of his costume, and the riding clothes emphasised with a touch of gallantry the real splendour of his height and build, as set sails emphasise the splendour of a ship. Lunch was served in another room, as bare and ugly as the first, and as cold as that had been hot; the food was marvellous, as Sir James had foretold—the champagne incredibly profuse. Hawtrey made it his business to instruct Amber in the various personalities seated at the vast table—giving instruction apparently afforded him a peculiar satisfaction. “That little abject on your right,” he hissed in her ear as they sat down, “is Mimi’s husband, de Bulle. He’s going to ride today for the first time; watch him—he won’t eat a bite!” Amber cautiously regarded her neighbour. He was a small fair Frenchman with a timid expression, whose hands trembled slightly as he helped himself to hors d’œuvres. Hawtrey pointed out their hostess, a big cheerful blonde—“that’s Dolly Rothstein, sitting opposite to Dickie Roberts—he rides for them, you know. They say she was a barmaid, but she’s a jolly good sort.” Amber despaired of remembering even a third of all the information she was given; she listened with half an ear, and looked about her. Madame de Bulle was carrying on a quite blatant and very noisy flirtation with Count Herman; further up the table she noticed Mrs. Leicester looking unwontedly animated, talking to a dark and extraordinarily handsome man. “Who is that next to Mrs. Leicester?” she asked.

  Hawtrey hawed—he seemed slightly embarrassed. “That’s Bruno,” he said at length.

  “What is he? a diplomatist?”

  “Oh Lord, no—he’s a Bessarabian—in business.” He lowered his voice. “It’s supposed to be tobacco, but actually he’s made his thousands out of selling rifles to the various war-lords. Of course Bessarabia signed the Arms Embargo like all the other Powers,” Hawtrey hurried on, giggling slightly, “but in point of fact no one observes it but us. It puts us in a damned awkward position, too. The Transalpians sold Wang a dozen commercial aeroplanes last year; Harry Leicester happened to see them unloaded, and they all had bombing attachments! So very commercial! Last month Li—that’s the Marshal, you know—asked us if we wouldn’t sell him some. He specified the bombing attachments.” Hawtrey giggled again. “Of course we told him we couldn’t authorise that, and he was frightfully miffed. Poor old Leroy had a fearful job trying to explain to him about the Arms Embargo. ‘But the Transalpians sign it too,’ he said, ‘and they sell to Wang, my rival. If you are my friends, you sign it and sell to me!’ He believes now, of course, that we are really backing Wang.”

  After lunch, the whole assembly hustled into their various cars, and bumped off along sandy roads to witness the paper-hunt. Villas as bare and ugly as Monsieur Rothstein’s stood about in the fields—here and there the grey wall of a temple overhung the road. At the foot of a hillock tufted with small bare trees and crowned with a green-shuttered house, which Sir James pointed out as his country residence, they came to an open sandy space, where the cars stopped and everyone got out. Mafoos were leading blanketed ponies up and down, whistling to them; men in greatcoats and riding-boots stood about smoking; the sand, ankle-deep, got into Amber’s and Joanna’s shoes; it was intensely cold. At this point Benenden joined them, muffled up to the ears and looking very chilly.

  “Hullo, Rupert, aren’t you riding?” Nugent asked him.

  “Not me—I leave that to Joe and Leroy,” replied Benenden. “They’re our die-hards. Look, there they are.”

  The riders were now mounting, and Hawtrey and Henry Leroy were both visible among the crowd—Leroy’s big black head covered with a fur cap with ear-flaps, Hawtrey conspicuous by his orange waistcoat. He was riding Pertinax. Dickie Roberts was among the “hired assassins” on a graceful piebald. Harry Leicester came by on a strangely coloured pony, café-au-lait with dark brown points, like a Siamese cat; he waved to the group. Bruno was talking to Lydia Leicester, who stood patting his pony’s neck; Amber noticed the unfortunate de Bulle wrestling with his mount, a fidgety chestnut, whose bit was obviously hurting its mouth; she guessed that he had made the usual mistake of the nervous amateur and had got his curb too tight, a precaution which generally leads to discomfort if not disaster. The chestnut’s uneasy shufflings presently brought him quite close to where she stood with the Grant-Howards, and now she could see the pony mouthing and wriggling his constricted jaw, and the agonised dismay on the rider’s face. This was more than she could stand. She went over to de Bulle. “Your curb is too tight—let me alter it,” she said.

  “’E bulls,” gasped de Bulle—he was a Lorrainer, and spoke with a curious Teutonic burr; “c’est mieux ainsi, Mademoiselle.”

  “No—he’ll pull much less if I loosen it,” said Amber firmly, and taking the bridle in her hands she worked at the bit. The chestnut lashed out at her, and a mafoo came running up—he held the pony’s head and Amber loosened the chain. “There!” she said—“now you’ll both be more comfortable.” And indeed when the chestnut’s head was released, he stood more reasonably.

  “Merci infiniment,” said de Bulle. “Ze worst of zese China bonies is, zey bull zo!” he added as he moved off.

  Benenden glanced curiously at Amber when she rejoined the group. “What were you doing?” he asked her.

  “He’d got his curb ludicrously tight,” said Amber. “I just loosened it.”

  “Do you know a lot about horses?” Benenden enquired.

  “No, not a lot, but
I know that much,” said Amber.

  “But how did you know it was too tight?”

  “I could see—it was hurting the pony’s mouth.”

  “I believe you do know a lot about it,” said Benenden, looking rather quizzical.

  “Rupert, what is all this about? What exactly is a paper-hunt?” asked Joanna, in a confidential tone.

  Benenden proceeded to explain, at some length. “I expect it will be a loathsome course today,” he continued, “because Stefany won last Sunday. He’s a crack rider; he used to jump for the Hungarian international team, and he sets a course according! Hullo, they’ll be off in a moment.”

  The riders were indeed getting their ponies into line, and the spectators moved away to one side. A man in a tweed suit exhorted the competitors to keep level; eventually the Master blew his horn rather faintly, and off they went—down a slope to a large ditch, over it, and sharp left-handed between two flags; almost at the turn was a low mud wall, a thoroughly awkward jump: Amber saw Pertinax refuse twice, before Hawtrey cudgelled him over, and the whole troop disappeared in a cloud of yellow dust.