Peking Picnic

by Bridge, Ann;

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Laura asked.

  But he didn’t ask a question at once – he pondered in silence as they strolled along.

  ‘I think she probably has a temper,’ he said at length, rather unexpectedly. ‘I like what that stands for, but I don’t like it shown.’ Laura laughed. He gave her arm a little shake in rebuke. ‘She’s got a sort of strength,’ he went on, thinking aloud, ‘and that can be a bad thing. She looks sometimes as if she might be ferocious.’

  ‘Why do you like her?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Her eyebrows!’ he said at once. ‘And she’s very alive, Laura – so honest and quick. She asks the most amazing questions, and gives the most amazing answers. There’s none of the usual fencing with her. It’s rather refreshing. But I wonder if she’d ever learn any savoir-faire.’

  Laura rather wondered this too. ‘It wouldn’t come very natural to her,’ she said.

  ‘Do you think she likes me?’ he asked, turning round on her suddenly.

  ‘Ask her – she’ll tell you.’

  ‘Ooh’ – he made a long sound – ‘that’s being so crucial. I wish she’d show one a bit, in the ordinary way. She gives one no lead – you know, shoulders and all that.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose she will give you that. You mustn’t expect those manners from her. You’ll have to meet her on her own ground.’

  ‘But what is her own ground?’ he asked. ‘That’s just what I want to know.’

  ‘Well, I suppose her own ground is really my ground, more or less,’ said Laura. ‘You know what that is well enough.’

  ‘Oh, you!’ he put an indescribable note of affection into the word. ‘Your ground, blessed Laura, is all background – you never ram it down anyone’s throat.’

  ‘What a mixed metaphor!’ said a high merry voice out of the darkness close by – Touchy’s voice, they knew it at once. They had wandered down on to the terrace again as they talked, and were nearly at the further end. ‘Ramming a background down somebody’s throat!’ went on the voice, and through the gloom they saw La Touche, strolling with Mrs Nevile. The sound of drums at intervals, and of a strange continuous chanting, which had been faintly in their ears for some time, rose loudly ahead of them. ‘We’re going to see what all the noise is about – there’s some sort of jamboree going on,’ said Touchy. ‘Come along.’

  All four together walked to the end of the terrace and out into the confusion of courtyards beyond, following the sound in the darkness. They found themselves at length in a sort of broad paved lane, with small buildings on the right and one large one on the left. A yellowish light streamed out through the open doors, round which a small crowd of servants and donkey boys had gathered; the near resonance of the music told them that they had reached its source. Making their way gently through the crowd, which gave them passage with ready courtesy, they mounted a few steps to the doors and looked in.

  They saw a hall, long and high – so long and so high that the further end and the open space under the roof were lost in shadows. Almost opposite the door, close to but not touching the further wall, stood a sort of altar, lit up with painted horn lanterns; red columns at the four comers supported a baldaquin over it. Touchy whispered that it looked like a very high four-poster bed, as indeed it did. Round this erection sat seven figures on tall wooden stools, two at a side and one at the further end, between the altar and the wall. The six at the sides were dressed in robes of pale blue and pale pink satin, worn and faded to the most dreamlike delicacy of tone, and smothered in silver embroidery of an inconceivable richness. But at the further end the strangest figure of all sat alone. They could only see him as low as the breast, the altar hid the rest. His robe and sleeves were of white satin, so covered with silver thread that the stuff was barely visible – and on his head was a great lotus flower in satin and silver, with lace-like silver edges to the big curved petals. With eyes half closed, his ivory-coloured face as sealed and expressionless as a mask, he intoned, at regular intervals, some chanted phrase; as he ceased, the six others, without pause, joined in an antiphon, sustained for a couple of minutes; they ceased, the lotus figure resumed, paused, and their antiphon followed his voice as before. Regular as the recurring beat and fall of waves on a shore, the strange chant rose and fell, rose and fell – nasal, impersonal, prolonged – in an Eastern mode quite unlike any European music. Down against the wall to the right of the altar, in the shadows, an old man in a black cap and a tattered black cotton robe crouched on a low stool near a brazier; now and then he put out one hand and beat a few strokes on a drum beside him. A pan of water stood on the brazier, and a teapot in a padded wicker cover beside it; while they watched, the old man took off the pan and refreshed the teapot with the contents; then he rose, teapot in hand, and walked round the altar, pausing by each figure in turn to fill the small porcelain bowls which stood before them with steaming tea.

  ‘What are they doing?’ whispered Nina.

  ‘I believe it must be some sort of ordination service,’ Laura whispered back; ‘I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never seen one before. These will be the postulants for ordination, I expect.’

  ‘Judith must hear this,’ said Derek. ‘Music’s in her line.’

  ‘Yes, and fetch the others too – especially the Professor and Miss Hande,’ whispered Mrs Nevile urgently. Derek nodded and slipped out through the crowd.

  The crowd, however, was not whispering. Smoking and conversing, not noisily, but normally and pleasantly, they thronged round the door, leaning aside occasionally to spit with a loud hawking sound. One or two strolled into the building, and then strolled out again, casually. There was a complete absence of any outward sign of awe or reverence. On the other hand, the fumes of garlic were very strong. ‘Could we go in, do you think?’ Nina whispered.

  ‘Yes, come on,’ said Touchy.

  They went in. Low wooden benches stood against the plastered walls on both sides of the doors, and they sat down on one of these. A figure shifted to give them room, and looking round Mrs Nevile saw the Iberian Minister, his yellow boots thrust out in front of him, sitting beside her.

  ‘How long will it last, do you think, Excellency?’ she asked him in French.

  ‘Unfortunately I ignore completely the length of these ceremonies, Madame,’ he replied. ‘I would wish to know, for I count to sleep here.’ He pointed to the shadowy further end of the hall. ‘Mes boys ont installé mon lit là-bas,’ he explained. He pulled out an enamelled watch and looked at it – the hands pointed to ten o’clock. ‘I wait still an hour,’ he said firmly. ‘If they have not finished then, I walk with my bed, like the gentleman in the Saint Évangile.’ Touchy laughed softly. ‘I wish we could smoke,’ he said.

  ‘But of course one can smoke! Regardez donc ces messieurs là-bas!’ The Iberian pointed to the benches to the left of the door, where they now saw that several Chinese sat smoking quietly. ‘It makes absolutely nothing to them, that one should smoke in their church!’ he chuckled. And, indeed, when Touchy took out his cigarette case and handed it to the ladies, the old man who attended to the drum and tea part of the service shuffled up nimbly, bringing a live coal from his brazier in a pair of tongs to light their cigarettes – having done so, he begged one for himself and lit it in the same way.

  ‘Do ask him what it’s all about,’ said Nina. But the old man had gone back to his seat. Unmoved, as if asleep, the figures at the altar continued to intone their rhythmic alternating chant, oblivious of their surroundings – a sound so ancient, so remote from the twentieth century that it was like the past made audible. Presently there was a little stir round the door, and the rest of the party looked in. Nina beckoned, and they too entered and sat down on the benches. Vinstead took a seat by Laura. ‘This is most interesting,’ he murmured; ‘do tell me what’s going on.’

  Laura explained. She believed the figure with the lotus crown to be the ordaining priest, ‘the lotus is the symbol of Buddha, as you know,’ and the six others to be postulants f
or ordination, who were probably in the early stages of becoming bonzes. ‘Later on they have pastilles of incense burned on their heads, till it burns into the skin,’ she said, ‘but I’m not sure if that happens at this service or at a later one.’

  ‘Not really? How grim!’ said the Professor, scanning the faces of the candidates. ‘There’s our friend,’ he said suddenly. ‘Look – the end one on the far side.’ Laura looked, and recognised the young monk whose beads they had rescued on the way up. Above his pink embroideries his face wore a look of dreamy ecstasy as he chanted with the rest.

  ‘What do they say?’ Vinstead asked. ‘Can you make it out?’

  ‘Hardly a word – they drone it so. And I believe the language of these chants is very archaic; I shouldn’t understand it if I did hear. My husband would.’

  At this point a noise rose from the entrance, where some disturbance seemed to be taking place. Voices were raised outside; heads were popped in and withdrawn; the word ‘Li-t’ou’ (within) was heard several times. Then up the steps and through the crowd strode a tall figure in blue, leading a small donkey by the halter; right into the hall of ordination he came, leaving his ass among the bystanders at the entrance – the small grey noses of other donkeys were visible, pressing in at the doorway behind him. He came to a stand before the group of foreigners.

  ‘Why, it’s Shang!’ said Mrs Nevile.

  Shang it was, in an agony of contrition and despair, with all his ten asses and their drivers. He poured out a flood of anguished explanation, his charming deeply wrinkled face twisted with emotion. He had been at Mo-yu Ferry – from twelve o’clock he had been there, with his best donkeys, ‘tengcho pen chin’ (waiting long time) till seven-thirty, when he had learned from some peasants that the Ying-Kuo-jen had crossed by the Moshih-k’ou Ferry and gone on to Chieh T’ai Ssu with other lü (donkeys). So he had come to explain – and here he was, with his men and animals; ready, he said, to take the T’ait’ais back to the ferry, or to T’an-Chüeh Ssu – anywhere! It was to Mrs Nevile that he addressed himself, but the General answered. He explained that the donkeys had been ordered for Mo-shih-k’ou Ferry; the party had found none, had had to order others, to wait, to pay other men – what was done was done. Shang’s protests grew passionate. It was for Mo-yu Ferry that Lin had ordered the lü, ‘he tell me this place!’ The money was nothing – Shang had lost face. Nina and Laura both intervened; it was really possible that Lin had made a mistake; Shang should not be condemned out of hand. In the end he was given seven dollars, a dollar a day being the rate for one ass and his attendant man – there were ten men and ten donkeys, but the three dollars were a sort of fine for failure. Shang pocketed the money, beaming; this restored his face. Smiling, bowing, he withdrew; a satisfied murmur of ‘Hao!’ (well) arose from the crowd without – showing clearly, as Touchy remarked, that they had given him at least three times as much as he deserved.

  Unmoved, even by the presence of donkeys and the voices of bargaining, the singers continued to sing, rapt and immobile. Judith was trying to note down the tune on the back of a visiting card, but the rest of the party became a little bored. Touchy suggested an adjournment to the terrace. Quietly they all slipped out, leaving the Iberian Minister patiently invigilating his bed. His enamelled watch still showed half an hour to go. ‘Bon repos, Excellence!’ mocked Nina softly as she left him. ‘You have a lovely serenade!’

  ‘Mon Dieu, Madame, quelle religion!’ he groaned resignedly, recomposing himself to wait after his bow of farewell. Vinstead, pausing for a last look from the door, saw him take out a long cheroot, and the old tea-maker shuffle across to light it; the latter scrounged a cheroot too, and the fumes of Manila tobacco mingled for a time with those of incense at the ordination of the six priests.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IT WAS TOUCHY who suggested some singing when they were back again on the terrace. Touchy had quite a good tenor, General Nevile a fine bass; and these two, with Mrs Leroy as alto and Mrs Nevile as soprano, were in the habit of doing a good deal of solid and conscientious part-singing. They were all sufficiently good and sufficiently keen to sing for their own pleasure at all sorts of odd times and in all sorts of odd places, and struck now without fuss or preamble into ‘The Silver Swan’. Vinstead, leaning back on a cushion against the balustrade, listened with surprise and pleasure to the excellence of their rendering of one song after another. The moon was just rising behind the little bell pagoda, and filled the sky on that side with a golden glow, against which the shapely massed boughs of the white pine stood out black and distinct – the light, not powerful as yet, was just beginning to bring the terrace and the buildings behind it back to life. The songs rang out with the peculiar and penetrating charm of harmonised voices in the open air, and as the growing light touched out the strange shapes of roof and shrine and carved marble stairway, Vinstead thought how odd it was to be listening to Elizabethan madrigals and English folk songs in such a setting. His mind savoured fastidiously the contrast between the English voices and the well-known time and words, and the strange and ancient chanting to which he had been listening just before.

  Then Judith sang. The effect on her hearers was instantaneous, especially on Vinstead and Henri Delache, both in their way connoisseurs. This was the real thing, not an amateur show; effortless, steady, strong, the girl placed note after note with an assurance, a purity, a control which, with her flawless enunciation of vowels and consonants, lifted her singing almost on to the impersonal plane of instrumental music. Laura saw Henri stiffen up with attention, almost visibly cock his ears like a terrier, and then remain poised, delighted, the critic suspended in appreciation; in the ever-strengthening light she saw the Professor, too, rouse himself, arrested by the quality of the singing – examine it, as it were, critically, and then sink back, satisfied, on his face the expression of pained beatitude so familiar among English music lovers. Something in his attitude of deliberate surrender reminded her of Aubrey listening to music. So he, when the opening bars had satisfied him, used to sink back with closed eyes, on an uncomfortable seat in the Queen’s Hall or, more often, in an armchair in his room at Christ Church, his immensely expensive gramophone carefully adjusted, to listen. How well she remembered those evenings in his room – the firelight playing on the pale panelling and the tea things on the hearth; the little bronze horse on the mantelpiece in front of the cloudy background of the Hebridean sketch; the books; the sense of ease and warmth and deep satisfaction. How rare it was, the mutuality that existed between her and Aubrey – the easy interchange of outside shots in the way of ideas, the quick comeback of his mind at hers, the ready appreciation of each other’s best. She used to sit in that room, watching him, while the music spoke its impersonal version of life. The Schubert seemed to be summing it all up, in its own universal and eternal way – making the place and the time, her and Aubrey, and the bronze horse and the firelight on the panels, part of all achieved understanding and mutual pleasure in all minds at all times. Long moments, out of succession – most serene when she had been, as at first, still free enough to feel no need to grasp them, to press their essence out, but was content to let them flow over her, under the spell of the music’s timeless peace.

  Perhaps the strangest quality of that strange thing, music, is this power it has of translating the personal and immediate for us into the universal and eternal; or, working backwards, as it were, of bringing the universal, the whole meaning of things, with arrowy immediacy and certainty into our personal knowledge. And as we thus see our own problems and experience, our immediate apprehensions of life, clothed with the aspect of eternal truth, they take on for us a different importance, a new weight; they are revalued in the serene terms of a celestial currency – they look otherwise than did our old defaced personal coinage of silver and copper. And this change of values is effected in us by music so swiftly and smoothly; the solvent slips into our being without friction of argument or dogma to arouse our irritable wills. No prose, no preacher, cou
ld so drive these certainties home.

  Something of this change, this vision, reaches everyone when music speaks. And when Judith Milne sang on the terrace at Chieh T’ai Ssu, Laura was faintly aware of this influence, disturbing yet serene, at work about her as well as in her. Judith stood easily by the leaning pine, one hand resting lightly on its trunk; her shadowed face was barely visible, but her voice poured out beyond the shadows, into the moonlight and up among the shrines, carrying truths beyond her speech. It was a soprano, with that untouched perfect purity of tone so seldom found, and still more rarely left by teachers in girls’ voices; cool, impersonal, clear as the high voice of a boy. The skilful training which had placed the voice so perfectly, and given it power and control, had for a wonder left this precious quality untouched. ‘Mais c’est formidable!’ Henri whispered, leaning across to Laura. ‘She must be professional.’ ‘She is – but don’t talk,’ Laura whispered back.

  She sang two or three folk songs, first, and then Lilah asked for ‘Bright is the Ring of Words’. ‘You know it doesn’t go well without accompaniment,’ said Judith, but sang it nevertheless. As her voice drew to the lovely close:

  The lover lingers and sings

  And the maid remembers, –

  Laura looked across at Annette Ingersoll, and thought she knew why Lilah had asked for that particular one. The girl was listening with parted lips, stirred, troubled, and yet soothed – there was a look as of dawn breaking in her face. Oh yes, the maid remembers all right – she would remember, poor maid, that shadowed scene, and Henri whispering beside her. Henri asked for something French. Unhesitatingly Judith broke into, ‘Bonjour, Suzon!’ with its delicious infection of happiness and lighthearted love. Derek was smiling appreciatively at the close. But she went on to ‘Rose et Blanche’, and his face changed a little as she sang: