The Boy with Blue Trousers

by Carol Jones

  The Boy with Blue Trousers

  ALSO BY CAROL JONES

  The Concubine’s Child

  THE BOY WITH BLUE TROUSERS

  Carol Jones

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Carol Jones, 2019

  The moral right of Carol Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781786699855

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781786699862

  ISBN (E): 9781786699848

  Cover design: Kari Brownlie

  Images: iStock/beemore

  Head of Zeus Ltd

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  www.headofzeus.com

  For Vincent

  Contents

  Also by Carol Jones

  Welcome Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Prologue

  The handcart was almost too heavy to lift. It bumped and wobbled around mullock heaps, skirting gaping holes, threatening to spill its cargo onto the pockmarked earth. Steadying the cart, the youth braced for the descent into the gully. In the distance, campfires flickered like fireflies amongst the tents, whilst ahead the bush beckoned.

  Dark. Silent. Secluded enough to hide a secret forever.

  The gully’s banks were ridged with erosion where an army of miners had been at work, shovelling and sluicing with water dragged up from the creek. Makeshift plank bridges spanned the depleted creek as it trickled through the diggings. The gully wasn’t deep but its banks were steep. The handcart was heavy and its load uneven. One false step and the cart would escape, hurtling over uneven ground to fling its contents into the water.

  The youth paused, searching the night sky. But the skies of this southern land had never offered any heavenly guidance. They were alien, just as the land was alien. Wild and brown, populated by outlandish creatures and unfathomable men. Dry and dusty, with grey-leaved trees that shed bark in long, curling ribbons. A land that resisted order and thrived on chaos.

  Although his arms were hard from the backbreaking work of mining gold, he started down the slope uneasily, taking one stuttering step then another, his blue cotton trousers hemmed with dust. But the cart dragged him forward, intent on yanking him from his feet. Gathering speed, it rumbled over a ridge of earth before becoming briefly airborne so that its contents shifted, sliding sideways, threatening to topple cart and youth in an untidy heap. Straining every muscle, he twisted his forearms, battling the dead weight of cart and cargo. Then, in a semi-crouch, he used the power of his legs to halt the runaway cart.

  Breathing hard, he rested halfway down the gully’s bank, the cart stable for the moment. But its contents had moved so that one blue-clad leg dangled over the edge, the foot bare and covered with scratches. He grabbed the leg by the ankle to place it back where it belonged, finding the flesh still warm, its heat sending a jolt through his arm.

  Cradling the leg, he felt a dense mass fill his throat, as if everything that had happened in the past year was rising up to choke him. His gaze lingered on the figure curled up in the cart – arms crossed haphazardly over chest, a single braid draped about the neck – and he felt hot tears well. How had it come to this? How had they found themselves so far from the ordered groves and rice paddies of the mighty Pearl River? Why had the gods of the Celestial Kingdom abandoned them? And how had they come to hate each other so?

  They had been friends of a sort once.

  1

  Pearl River Delta, China, 1856

  Already that day Little Cat had picked three baskets of mulberry leaves and reeled three taels of silk. One weary arm cranked the reel, while the other managed the complex task of transforming simmering cocoons into a single continuous thread. Yet no matter how nimble her fingers, or how sharp her eyes, her hand still grew raw plucking spent cocoons from boiling water, while her eyes strained from teasing out the gossamer fibres. Silkworms were ugly, insatiable beasts. Their silk was a hefty burden for a girl of seventeen. And she had done more than enough for one day.

  That decision made, she reeled the last silk from the cocoons, removed the pot from the stove and doused the coals. She set aside the basket of cocoon husks to feed the fish and stood stretching tired limbs. Outside in the small courtyard, sunlight leaked through clouds, turning the air warm and sticky. She was lucky that the worn, gummed silk of her tunic did not cling to her body like damp cotton. It was said that river mud and persimmon juice made it waterproof. It also made for an arduous process of mashing, dyeing, smearing and drying so that the outer side of the fabric was glazed black to repel water while the inner side turned a matt, muddy brown. No wonder Ma hadn’t made her a new set in so long.

  Second Brother would be finished at the fishponds. Perhaps he was even now down by the riverbank, plunging his feet in the cooling waters as minnows darted about on the sandy bottom. She too was in urgent need of a wade in the river. Her feet were feeling particularly warm from proximity to the charcoal stove, and her forehead was dotted with sweat from the steam. She walked to the edge of the veranda, listening for signs of activity elsewhere in the house. But there was silence from the kitchen and only the low rumble of snores erupting from Grandfather’s room. Her mother must have already set out to the mulberry grove for the evening harvest. Her father would be paddling back from market. Elder Brother would be tending the newly hatched worms in the worm house, chopping leaves and sorting the dead from the living. If she was quick, Little Cat could be down by the riverbank before anyone had a chance to forbid it.

  She stepped out from the shelter of the veranda and faced the door to the alley. High brick walls surrounded her on all sides, crowned
by a roof of curving clay tiles. Behind her, three main rooms faced south, protected by the veranda from the summer sun. One room faced west, another east, while a wall the height of two men enclosed the small courtyard to the south. Sometimes, when she had been trapped too long inside, she imagined the baked earthen bricks crumbling to dust and blowing away, or melting to mud from summer’s torrential rains. But then her entire family would be left with nowhere to sleep and only she would be safe in the girls’ house with her friends. What kind of unfilial daughter was she to think such selfish thoughts?

  ‘Little Cat!’

  Her breath caught in her throat as her mother’s voice echoed faintly up the alley between rows of houses. She could tell that her mother wasn’t happy. She considered answering, like a good daughter would, but then Ma would expect her to trudge out to the mulberry grove and spend the last hours of daylight picking leaves for ungrateful worms. If she were a paragon of filial piety like the sons and daughters in the shan-shu stories, she would defy robbers to pick mulberries for her mother. She would wrestle tigers to save her father. But she wasn’t. Anyway, she would only be defying worms, not robbers or tigers, so it hardly counted as heroic. She might as well not bother. She thought of all the other things she could be doing – trading punches with her brother down by the river, listening to gossip in the girls’ house, even daydreaming under the nammu trees – and she began searching for somewhere to hide. Ma had the nose of a moon bear and could sniff out any hiding place in the house.

  ‘Little Cat! Where are you?’ Her mother’s voice rose higher as she scolded so that she sounded like a discordant erhu. ‘I told you to come pick leaves when you finished the last basket of cocoons.’

  A few moments more and it would be too late; her mother would arrive in the courtyard with her sharp eyes and the trusty bamboo stick she used for scaring away snakes. Yet the house was so small that there was only one place where she could be sure to escape her mother’s notice, one place where Ma had never thought to look. One place no one would be stupid enough to hide.

  She scooted over to the well and dangled her legs over the edge. The well wasn’t wide, scarcely one arm’s span in diameter. The last time she had hidden here she was ten years old and her father was chasing her with a rush broom for trying to pee standing up like her brothers.

  ‘Little Cat!’

  Hesitating for only a moment, she leaned forward to grab the rope that was tethered to the ground and slithered inside, supporting her bodyweight with her arms. She had strong arms from picking and reeling and lifting stone training weights with her brother. Still, it was a tighter squeeze than she remembered and all that was keeping her from falling was an ageing length of rope. Perhaps this wasn’t such a clever idea, after all. She almost regretted her decision, for there was scarcely room to brace her toes against the slimy bricks and she could hardly bend her knees. She inched further down, scraping her shoulders against the rough masonry until her head was an arm’s length below the rim. Then wedging her back against one side and her feet in the cracks between bricks on the other, she held on for her life.

  ‘Where is that body itchy girl?’

  Hearing her mother so near, she shimmied down a little further and held her breath. There was always the danger of a stray giggle to give her away, or a loud splash if she put a foot wrong. The well was shallow but she didn’t want to find out just how shallow, for she might get a nasty surprise. She listened as her mother upturned baskets and searched under beds, disturbing Grandfather so that he woke with a snort. She clattered from room to room, muttering curses before finally giving up and stomping across the courtyard and back into the alley with a heartfelt, ‘That girl will be the death of me yet.’

  Although her toes and legs were screaming at her to release them, Little Cat counted one hundred breaths, not daring to move, for her mother was as tricky as she was nosy. When she felt safe enough to look up, she discovered that the clouds had dispersed, opening a circle of sky above her head, a circle of perfect blue that was suddenly blocked by a dark silhouette. She braced her shoulders for a beating, at the very least a tongue-lashing.

  ‘One day you’re going to fall in and then we won’t find you till you stink up the well and spoil the water like a dead rat.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Goh Go. Help me out. My toes are falling off.’ She sighed in relief at the sound of Second Brother’s voice. She wasn’t bothered that he likened her to a dead rat, for he had called her worse many times.

  ‘How long have you been down there?’ he asked as he stretched out a hand to help her.

  ‘Long enough.’ She wormed her way upwards, bracing her back against the well wall and pulling herself up the rope. Then she adjusted her feet and repeated the process until she was close enough to grasp one of his hands. Between the two of them they hauled her up and over the lip of the well and onto the dusty ground.

  ‘It wasn’t so tight last time,’ she said, as she picked herself up from the dirt and dabbed at the dirty marks on her tunic.

  ‘Fai mui. You eat too much rice. Girls should bend like a willow branch.’

  ‘Maybe inside girls with golden lilies for feet and hands like magnolia petals.’ Not girls like her who laboured in rice paddies or mulberry groves. Their hands were scraped and brown from the sun. Their feet walked many li each day. Their toes hadn’t been broken and curled under like hooves so that they swayed when they walked. How she would hate to be one of those inside girls, forbidden to visit temples with her friends or enjoy the visiting opera troupes. Perhaps their golden lilies might fetch their parents a higher bride price but she would rather chop her feet off altogether. At least they would no longer hurt.

  Her twin was staring at her tunic with a smug smile and a glint of laughter in his eyes. ‘Ma won’t be happy. You tore your tunic, little sister. Double punishment for you.’ These days it was always ‘double punishment’ never ‘double happiness’ for her. These days she was always in trouble for one thing or another while Goh Go was the dutiful son.

  ‘Where is Ma?’ She twisted her head over one shoulder in a futile effort to assess the damage to her tunic. Perhaps she could repair the tear before her mother noticed it was there. Then again, she wasn’t very handy with a needle. Her stitches straggled more untidily than pigeon footprints.

  ‘Probably out harvesting leaves by now. I passed her on the way here.’

  It wasn’t fair. Why was she always the guilty one? Why didn’t her mother ask Goh Go to help, since she passed him on her way to the grove? Why did her twin get to rest when he finished shovelling shit to the fish, yet she had more chores to do? He was only thirty minutes her elder but it might as well have been thirty years.

  ‘You could have helped her,’ she said through gritted teeth. She felt like shouting but that was another thing she was chastised for regularly.

  ‘Picking mulberry leaves is for women and children,’ laughed her brother. ‘Hauling nets is men’s work.’

  Ever since their father began training him to maintain the ponds and repair the dykes, Goh Go had adopted a superior attitude. Once, they had done everything together – picked leaves, fed worms, planted the winter vegetables – but increasingly he took every opportunity to remind her of their differences. To show off his muscles and his place in the world. To separate himself from her. As if he couldn’t wait for her to be sent away. To be sent to live in another village with a stranger. To become part of another family. To become someone else. To un-twin her.

  ‘It doesn’t take brains to haul a net. That’s why it’s called men’s work,’ she said, and punched him in the stomach before he could deflect her hand.

  ‘Don’t start something you can’t finish,’ he responded with a sidekick to her shin. She grunted with the impact, knowing she would find a bruise there tomorrow. She had grown so much this last year that her trousers barely reached her calves. Ma was sure to notice the bruise and interrogate her. Yet another thing to get her into trouble.

  Goh Go
removed his bamboo hat and flung it to the ground, baring his shaved scalp to the sun. Then he secured his queue around the top of his head and they faced off, feet hip-width apart and pointing slightly inward, as they had done so many times in the past. Her brother grinned and brought his hands into a fighting stance. He held his left arm close to the body, elbow bent, in the subduing hand position, the other rolling through a series of familiar motions. She joined him so that their arms appeared to twirl around one another as they searched for an opening in the other’s defence.

  ‘You’ve been practising without me,’ he said, and she couldn’t decide whether he said it with approval or otherwise, for his narrowed eyes registered nothing but opportunism.

  ‘I have too much time on my hands and you are always too busy,’ she said with a laugh, and feinted an attack. But that laugh turned to a grunt as he deflected her attack with a winged arm and jabbed her chin hard with his other fist.

  ‘That hurt!’ she said, rubbing her chin reproachfully.

  ‘It was meant to. You wonder why I rarely spar with you any more? Someone needs to teach you to stop fighting or no one will marry you. How will our parents find a family willing to take a daughter-in-law who is always fighting and arguing?’

  ‘I don’t need anyone to marry me.’ Her words were scornful but her feelings were hurt. She wished hurt feelings were as easy to ignore as a scraped knee or a sore chin.

  ‘Sooner or later you have to grow up, Little Cat. You have to stop behaving like a boy. You have to stop fighting and become a woman.’

  But it was her twin who had taught her to fight. It was he who practised on her the arts he learned with the other boys. It was he who bought the martial arts manuals and pored over them with her in the mat shed behind the worm house. It was he who mastered the techniques of kung fu by beating up his sister. And now he wanted her to stop? She didn’t want to stop.

  She fought the urge to cry by renewing her attack. Claws out, teeth bared… like the fierce little cat of her nickname.