Peking Picnic

by Bridge, Ann;

  ‘Oh, in your pockets – anywhere out of sight,’ said Mrs Leroy briefly. Miss Hande was pinning her handsome rings carefully into the lining of her neat jacket, and Lilah finally disposed of her trinkets in her vanity bag.

  ‘Lead away, Laura,’ Derek urged.

  To reach the long terrace which led across the upper levels of the monastery towards the exit on the further side, they had to descend a few steps into a small court, and then follow a broad marble staircase which led down in a series of sharp right-angled turns, sunk deep between high banks covered with flowering shrubs. All close together, and in silence, the party moved swiftly down this staircase, up which, straggling and chattering, they had come less than an hour before, on their way to the lunch that they had never eaten. The last abrupt turn was only a few steps above the terrace itself – as they rounded it they came on a group of T’ao-pings, gathered in a bunch a few yards ahead, disputing over some trivial piece of loot which they had picked up.

  ‘Come on, walk straight past them as though you didn’t see them,’ said Mrs Leroy low and urgently.

  But the party was too large and undisciplined to obey. Besides herself not one of them, except Derek, knew the strange virtue of an appearance of resolved and purposeful action on the vacillating and inconsequent Chinese mind. Involuntarily they paused. ‘Can’t we go round some other way?’ Miss Hande asked. She was shaken by the horrible scene she had just witnessed; and these men, too, had bayonets, and were quarrelling loudly, menacing one another with yellow fists. Her hesitation was natural enough, but it was fatal.

  ‘Nonsense, come on,’ said Laura firmly, and continued to walk forward. After another second’s hesitation Miss Hande and the others followed. It was too late. The T’ao-pings had seen the check, the argument; they had smelt irresolution, fear perhaps – the things by which they live. With the idle instinct for terrorising which they love to exercise, they sprang up and barred the way, brandishing their rifles. And then someone gave a little scream.

  But for that scream they might still have got through. Derek and Mrs Leroy, accustomed to this sort of thing, were walking steadily forward; a very remarkable expression of ostentatious good humour, mingled with determination, which Vinstead had never seen before, set like a mask on both their faces. It is an expression which those who live much among the Chinese in troubled times come to know well, and to dislike the sight of most heartily. But at the sound of that slight scream a still more noticeable expression appeared on the faces of their opponents – the delighted grin of armed power in the face of helplessness; silly, cruel, half-animal. When they saw that grin Derek and Mrs Leroy knew that they were done. She stood still, murderous hate in her heart against the unknown emitter of that fatal little cry. ‘We must go back,’ she said over her shoulder, without turning her head; ‘turn round and walk slowly back up the steps.’ And to the grinning T’ao-pings before her she observed, smiling pleasantly, ‘Pu yao chin; tsai-chien’ (It doesn’t matter – goodbye), and turned and walked slowly after the others.

  For some moments the soldiers remained nonplussed by this sudden change of front, and the party reached the top of the steps undisturbed. A horseshoe-shaped door led off out of the small court at the top, on the opposite side to the entrance to their own pavilion. ‘Shall we try that?’ said Derek, pointing to it. ‘We may be able to get through up here, and drop down on to the terrace further on.’

  ‘All right, let’s try,’ said Mrs Leroy.

  ‘I’ve forgotten my camera!’ said Vinstead suddenly. ‘I’ll follow you,’ he called as he darted back to the island pavilion.

  ‘Damn the fellow!’ said Derek. ‘Come on, Laura – he’ll catch us up.’

  ‘No – I really think we had better keep together,’ said Laura. Her mind caught a sudden flashlight picture of the Professor’s tall lean figure in the hands of a group of grey monkeys. ‘We’ll wait,’ she said stubbornly. She had no time to analyse her feelings about this picture, but acted on them decisively. The little party stood still, uncertain and impatient, in the small court at the top of the steps, watching for Vinstead’s reappearance. ‘Let’s go and hurry him up – I saw his wretched camera under the table in the lunch place,’ said Lilah rather contemptuously, and moved off towards the corner court. The others followed her. Perhaps if Laura’s mind had not been obsessed by that picture, she might have considered the unwisdom of their all reassembling in a dead end, from which there was no other exit, but she went with the rest. Vinstead was groping and peering round the inner court – the camera lay where Lilah had said. She picked it up and called to him, ‘Here you are.’

  ‘Oh, thanks!’ he said; ‘stupid of me.’

  ‘Very!’ said Derek under his breath. ‘Now come on,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Oh, look!’ That soft breathing note of Judith’s came for the second time that day, and it was ominous in Laura’s ears. Before she turned her head she really knew what she would see. The narrow entry passage beyond the island pavilion was full of grey uniforms, blocking it from wall to wall. They were fairly trapped.

  Derek’s explosive, ‘Oh, damnation!’ was the first sound made by any of the party. To Vinstead’s amazement, the next moment he turned to Mrs Leroy with an apology; he had not hitherto shown any special care for niceness of language in her presence.

  ‘Never mind, this time,’ she said. Then she turned to the rest and spoke low and rapidly, but with a tone of authority which he had not heard since he left the army. ‘Listen, all of you. Whatever happens, no one must show alarm or resentment. Do you understand? Whatever they do. Look cheerful and polite. Don’t talk much among yourselves, and don’t laugh. Just keep quiet and look unconcerned. Now I’ll talk to them. Have you got a card, Derek?’

  From a note case in the breast pocket of his shirt Derek produced a card. On one side was written:

  M. Derek Fitzmaurice,

  Premier Secrétaire à la Légation de Grande Bretagne.

  Laura turned it over. On the back a single line of curious characters stretched across it from side to side – his style and title in Chinese. ‘Good,’ she said, and holding it in her hand she advanced upon the grey group in the entryway. Derek went with her.

  In a parley even with bandits, in China, certain formalities are to be observed. Mrs Leroy, again with that disturbing and disagreeable expression of good temper on her face, asked for their general. It appeared that they had no general. An officer, then – her tone was equable, but a little haughty. They had no officer. Then, their Number One. She was, she explained, from the Ying-kuo-fu (British Legation) and this Great Man (indicating Derek) was the San-ch’in-ch’ai, or Third Envoy. Obviously, therefore, they could only profitably speak with the Number One. The T’ao-pings indicated that the Number One was elsewhere – they pointed down towards the lower courts. Then, let him be fetched, said Mrs Leroy. Holding Derek’s card vertically, she showed it to the gang. Here was the p’ien-tzu, which showed his rank. They all peered at it curiously, but it was clear that only one or two could understand it – these read it aloud, several times over, to their companions.

  A slight uncertainty now showed itself among the T’aopings. They jabbered among themselves, while Mrs Leroy returned, still with her air of good-tempered hauteur, to the rest. Eventually they came up to the group, and counted them over on their fingers – six. Then four or five of them went on into the inner court, where the pavilion was, and examined it thoroughly. Finding nothing to interest them, and walls at least fifteen feet high all round, with no means of exit, they returned to their comrades, and after further discussion several went off, and the rest, to the number of seven or eight, sat down in the entry passage on guard. For the moment the foreign party were left to themselves.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  WHEN ANYTHING SO legendary as being briganded does actually happen to ordinary people in real life, the first feeling is almost always one of quite flat surprise. ‘This has happened to us!’ Fear comes later. It comes all right, but not at f
irst. On the contrary the surprise, especially in the young, may be not untinged with a certain adventurous satisfaction. And then the further reflection follows, ‘What will happen to us?’

  It was so with the party at T’an Chüeh Ssu. Since the moment of their first seeing the soldiers enter the court below, the whole thing had passed so rapidly that when they finally found themselves boxed up in the corner courtyard they had to adjust their minds to the astounding fact that they really were prisoners, and that their own volition no longer completely controlled their actions. That group of under-sized yellow-faced men in the dirty uniforms, who now squatted in the entryway, some examining the sores on their feet, while others rather ostentatiously cleaned their rifles, could prevent them from leaving if they tried to walk out – could, and certainly would. Those same rifles gave them complete power to enforce their will. And the question then rose to the surface of each mind, ‘What else will they do, or make us do?’

  Accordingly, they began to question Mrs Leroy. Her knowledge of the language and long experience of the country naturally placed her to some extent in the position of leader, and to her they looked for information. ‘What did they say?’ ‘What will they do?’ ‘What happens now?’

  Laura could not give them much satisfaction. The Number One was being sought for. As to what would happen when he came, Heaven knew! You never did know, with T’ao-pings. The only constant factor about them, the inevitable certainty, was that they always wanted money. ‘They may be content with robbing us, or they may hold us to ransom, if they don’t think the risk too big.’

  ‘But I thought you said they never interfered with foreigners,’ protested Miss Hande.

  ‘Almost never. It isn’t usual. Especially so near Peking. But this seems a very large gang, and they’re in pretty desperate straits, by the look of them. I haven’t asked yet, but I’m fairly sure they’re some of Wang’s three battalions who’ve recently been disbanded, and if so they’re probably almost starving.’

  ‘But surely they won’t dare to interfere seriously with you? They know you come from the Legation. It would be madness,’ said Vinstead.

  ‘It would have been madness a few years ago to touch any British national,’ said Laura gloomily, ‘but is it now? Look at the murders they’ve got away with lately – Captain Briggs, the Gowers, Miss Angus.’

  ‘What happened about them? I’m afraid I don’t know,’ said Vinstead.

  ‘Feeble protests to the Chinese Government on our side, and insolently hypocritical replies on theirs,’ said Derek bitterly. ‘And there it ends. Your life depends now out here on your own ingenuity, not on any protection you get from your Government.’

  ‘I wish Henri were here,’ said Laura fervently.

  ‘By Jove, yes!’ said Derek.

  ‘Why on earth Henri?’ Judith asked, and Vinstead, who was wondering exactly the same thing, waited with interest for the reply.

  ‘Oh, because the French won’t stand for this sort of thing, and the Chinese blooming well know it,’ replied Derek. ‘If old La Roche were to get some fingers sent in to jog him up over a ransom his answer would probably be a couple of aeroplanes or something of that sort. But in point of fact he doesn’t get them. When did anyone last hear of a French national being shot up? Except missionaries, of course, who come at their own risk.’

  ‘And just why is that?’ Miss Hande inquired, putting up her lorgnette.

  ‘What I say – the French make it too jolly uncomfortable for the Chinese. Kidnapping Frenchmen is simply too unremunerative for words, whereas we’re a perfect gold mine, safe as houses.’

  Vinstead was surprised at the bitterness of this outburst. And a certain emphasis was lent to Fitzmaurice’s remarks by the fact that he, Vinstead, was himself at the moment in the position of the kidnapped. It was very different to reading about someone else in The Times. He felt that his views of Government policy would probably undergo considerable modification if it lasted very long. But his profound English instinct for treating serious matters lightly triumphed for the moment.

  ‘Well, I shall insist on having my fingers sent direct to the Foreign Office,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ll be able to arrange that for me,’ turning to Laura. ‘I’d like the Secretary of State to open them himself.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that,’ said Derek, giggling, ‘they’d come to him in a nice red box, with a neat memorandum from someone like me explaining how improbable it was that they really were your fingers – or fingers at all, in fact. Laura,’ he went on, ‘what about taking a nose round and seeing if there’s any way out of this blooming place.’

  ‘All right,’ said Mrs Leroy. ‘You go, and we’ll sit here and show ourselves, otherwise they may come with you.’

  Vinstead and Derek accordingly nosed for some time, while the ladies sat in the outer court by the island pavilion, in full view of the guard – but the operation produced no result. There were no doors in the back walls of the buildings which enclosed the inner court in front, and they reported the monastery wall behind as impossible to climb; it was far too high and steep to get up.

  ‘Well, now, you sit here,’ said Laura. ‘I want to go and dodge my pearls. Have you got a knife, Derek?’

  Taking his knife, she and Miss Hande repaired to the inner pavilion. There she slit open the stitches of the hem of the right leg of her shorts for an inch or so, and using a safety pin as a bodkin, threaded her pearls through the hem and fastened the snap. The string exactly fitted the shorts. Miss Hande observed the operation with the deepest interest. ‘Well, isn’t that smart?’ she remarked at length.

  ‘I always put them there,’ said Mrs Leroy. ‘I advise you to pin your rings inside your lining, too.’

  Miss Hande thought this smart also. A portion of the sewing of her jacket lining was cut, and Laura helped her to pin her rings to the inside of it, under the breast pocket, where the pins would not show. ‘They’ll hardly find them now, even if they search you,’ she said, with satisfaction.

  ‘Why, you don’t say they will search us?’ exclaimed Miss Hande.

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Laura. ‘And remember, if they do, you have got to treat it as a joke, and make no resistance. It’s your one chance.’

  ‘Why, for mercy’s sake! But I’m an American citizen! Surely, if you tell them that they won’t touch me? Our relations with the Chinese are so marvellous – they’ve always been perfectly cordial; quite different to other nations.’

  ‘I’ll tell them gladly,’ said Laura, ‘but I’m afraid you won’t find that international cordiality helps much with bandits. Wholesome dread is the only consideration which affects them. Now if you were French there would be something in it, as Mr Fitzmaurice says. By the way, was it you who screamed a little, when we first met them, down on the terrace?’

  ‘No – I vurry rarely scream,’ said Miss Hande, with most convincing flatness.

  ‘Mmm – then it must have been Judith,’ said Mrs Leroy. ‘Well, don’t scream, anyhow – not even if they threaten to shoot.’

  ‘Why not?’ inquired Miss Hande, with impartial interest.

  ‘Oh, they like it,’ said Mrs Leroy, ‘and it pokes them up. Come on, we’d better go back.’

  On their return to the outer courtyard Lilah announced her intention of going to the pavilion and disposing of her trinkets, which bulged and chinked rather in her vanity bag. ‘I shall find a crack in the wall or something,’ she observed, ‘and leave them there till we go,’ and wandered off, very coolly, to look for a suitable place.

  The rest made themselves as comfortable as they could on the small wicker chairs and stools from round the lunch table, which they placed in a patch of shade in one corner of the court. There, rather huddled together, because the patch was small, they discussed the next move in low tones. Since they could not get out themselves, the obvious thing was, if possible, to get word out. The only chance of this was to bribe one of the guards to take a note to Chieh T’ai Ssu – supposing he knew the way, which
, as Laura pointed out, was very doubtful. Their total funds, they ascertained, amounted to twenty-three dollars between them. No one had any paper, but Vinstead produced a minute copy of Housman’s Last Poems, and on the flyleaf of this, Laura wrote:

  ‘For Touchy. All six impounded at TCS – Bs’ intentions uncertain. Jump alive. L.L.’

  ‘I think that will do,’ she said, after reading it over. ‘Even if an English-speaking T’ao-ping lights on it, it won’t help him much.’

  ‘I shouldn’t put “all six”,’ said Derek, ‘numbers are just the one thing they might understand.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. That won’t do. What shall I put?’

  ‘Whole bunch,’ suggested Judith. This was accepted, and the correction made. Vinstead reluctantly agreed to part with his little book, on Mrs Leroy’s pointing out to him that a book was so much less like a note than a note.

  But it was no good. The most careful procedure in bribery was observed; one T’ao-ping was detached from the rest by Laura, much as a dog cuts out a sheep from the flock; and Derek was told off to offer him ten dollars to carry the book to Chieh T’ai Ssu and give it to Nei, the English Great Man, it being thought that Derek’s limited knowledge of Chinese would avoid awkward explanations. The T’ao-ping selected, however (who had ringworm of the scalp, but whose feet and slippers had appeared sound to Laura, who chose him on those grounds) was either deaf or mentally deficient. He seemed quite unable to take in what was required of him, even when Laura, rather reluctantly, joined in the explanations. He merely reiterated, ‘You from where come?’ over and over again, and had obviously never heard of Chieh T’ai Ssu. When in desperation they showed him a five-dollar note, hoping that this would stimulate his intellect, his simian screech of rapture brought all the others crowding round. The note was rescued with some trouble, but the attempt had to be abandoned.

  So there they were, no better off than before. There was no sign of the appearance of the Number One. Once or twice some more grey-clad figures came up and exchanged remarks with the group in the entryway, and then moved off, aimless and shiftless, after staring curiously at the foreigners. And once Judith, who was sitting on the outside of the group, and could therefore see furthest down the passage, vowed that she saw Niu appear for a moment and signal to her. He was not in his white coat, she said, but in black trousers and ‘a sort of jacket’, but she was sure it was Niu. Derek had sprung up and moved out from behind the wall, to get a view – but the figure had gone. ‘He nipped off at once, when the T’ao-pings turned round,’ Judith said. Derek looked at his watch, ‘Two o’clock – no wonder I’m hungry,’ he observed. ‘Damned old brute – he might at least have left the lunch behind, and we could have had something to eat. What sort of signal did he make?’