2
'YOU'RE LUCKY TO GET THESE QUARTERS.' Mason threw his topee onto the bare mattress and strode with a tread that shook the floorboards to the shuttered French windows, through which the sunlight shone in blinding slits. The Chinese servant in white jacket and trousers, who had met them deferentially at the entrance to the mess, let Denton's trunk down carefully with a groaning sigh and stood expectantly, his quiet, slant-lidded eyes glancing respectfully from Mason to Denton.
Mason was unbolting the shutters. He turned, his half-smoked cigar between his teeth. 'Must get you some of the local cash,' he muttered. He pulled a handful of change grudgingly out of his pocket, selected a tiny coin and with a 'Here!', held it out for the servant, who fumblingly caught it as he let it go.
'Give the boys the odd cent or two, it oils the wheels,' Mason advised Denton loudly as the servant left the room on slippered feet, pocketing the coin. 'Don't overdo it, though. The blighters get greedy in no time. You can change your English money downstairs.' The bolt on the shutters moved with a squeak and he swung them back, then unlocked the doors behind them. They opened onto a large veranda which ran the whole length of the room.
'You've got a sitting room next door. View of the harbour from both rooms, look. Bathroom's back there.' He seemed better-humoured since the execution, strolling round the room and humming, looking about him appreciatively.
Denton went obediently out onto the veranda and looked numbly out. Two floors below was the street they had come along, teeming with rickshaws, those strange large wheelbarrows, and people hurrying up and down, many of them women with parasols over their heads. Here and there a donkey moved, loaded with heavy panniers, a man leading it or goading it from behind. He saw a sedan chair carried by four bearers on long swaying poles, everyone giving way to it as it passed. He looked up over the roofs of the low houses opposite. There the river glittered in the sunlight, sailing ships, junks, steamers and warships moving silently and slowly over the oil-smooth yellow waters. On the other bank there were long, low buildings - warehouses, he supposed - with the black jibs of cranes rising austerely over them.
'Yes.' Mason came and leant over the parapet beside him. 'You're lucky to have these quarters.' He flicked his cigar butt out into the air, watching it arch slowly, spinning, down into the street. It landed beside a coolie trotting past with two baskets swaying from his springy shoulder pole. 'I only had one room when I started.' He sounded momentarily resentful of Denton's better fortune. 'Old Smithy waited over a year for these quarters, ever since he was a griffin, and then he only lasted three months.' He pushed his weight off the parapet and strolled back into the shade of the bedroom. 'That's what we call the new chaps by the way, griffins. It's a racing term. Young and green, that's what it means. No offence.'
Denton nodded absently. He was recalling the execution, the thud of the blade striking the man's neck, the spouting blood, the helpless flapping limbs. He still felt shaky and weak. He knew that if he spoke, his voice would tremble.
'Yes, old Smithy....' Mason was gazing reflectively round the room. 'Silly fool got cholera.'
Denton listened now with a new, apprehensive interest. Then a sudden movement on the ceiling by the gas lamp caught his eye. It was a little greenish lizard, like a miniature dragon, flickering along then suddenly freezing. 'Er, what's that?' he asked anxiously, imagining it might be poisonous or carrying cholera germs. He was right, his voice was trembling.
'What? That? A tjik-tjak. Quite harmless, they catch mosquitoes. Only their damn droppings fall on your sheets sometimes. Seem to like white for some reason, the little brutes.... No,' Mason resumed his interrupted thread, 'Say what you like to him, you could, old Smithy would not take precautions. This is your sitting room, by the way. Not much in the way of furniture yet, just a couple of armchairs and a table - you'll have to get curtains and covers and all that sort of stuff yourself. No,' he surveyed the bare sitting room, gloomy and musty behind the unopened shutters. 'Silly bastard thought he'd be all right if he only wore a stomacher. Would not take advice. Ate anything, drank unboiled water, went anywhere.' He shrugged, loosening the brass buttons of his tunic. 'Marvel he lasted as long as he did, when you come to think of it. Only died last week. Still, he got it in the end, all right.' He laughed, a short harsh laugh of retributive satisfaction. 'You got a stomacher, by the way?'
'A stomacher?' Denton asked diffidently. 'What's that?'
Mason's eyes widened with almost petulant surprise at Denton's ignorance. 'A cholera belt! Didn't they tell you that in London? Well, you can get it with your kit later on. I'll show you the tailor's. It keeps the chills out, that's half the battle against cholera. But the thing is, you've got to watch the food and water too. Only old Smithy, he would know best.... Still, there you are,' he shrugged disclaimingly, his jacket falling apart at last as the lowest, straining, button popped open. 'There, that's my stomacher.' He gave a proprietary pat to the wide felt band that girdled his swelling paunch. 'You can get one when they kit you out, after you've seen the chief. Brown's his name. Deputy assistant commissioner. I'll take you along to see him presently, after you've had a wash and brush up.' He reached with two fingers into his fob, hauled his watch out again, and frowned down at it, holding it away from him in the palm of his great red hand. Denton glanced shyly at the stomacher and the vest beneath it, moist with sweat, and at Mason's heavy chest, in the middle of which a little jungle of curly reddish hair grew, spreading right up the base of his bull-like throat.
'Yes, in about an hour.' Mason closed his watch with a snap. 'Don't know why he couldn't make it later.' He turned to leave. 'Old Smith's things are being auctioned this afternoon, by the way. You could get his furniture if you want it. It's the usual thing when a fellow dies, auction his stuff off. Help to pay his chits and things. Well, I'll leave you to it. I'm off to have a nap. Night duty last night, see? Need a bit of kip. Give me a knock if I don't turn up by ten-thirty. I'm just next door to you.' He took his topee from the mattress, set it rakishly on the side of his head and sauntered out, leaving the door swinging open behind him.
Denton closed the door softly and looked round the room, his hand still clasping the brass handle. The glare from the unshaded veranda dazzled his eyes and the cries from the street rose up strident and raucous. He closed the door, closed the shutters and leant back against them. Above the bed, a greyish-white mosquito net hung, tied in a loose, bunchy knot. On the white-washed ceiling, its cornice garlanded with cobwebs, were several of those little green lizards - what had Mason called them? He eyed them warily. Either they darted rapidly, or else they were immobile, as if glued where they were. They never moved slowly. The very way they turned their heads was swift and jerky, even the way their flanks moved as they watchfully breathed.
Somewhere down the corridor a door banged, and he heard Chinese voices, a man's and a woman's, shrill in argument. Otherwise the building was still and quiet, and the voices died like the chatter of birds round an empty pool. There were several faint rectangular patches on the walls, darker than the surrounding paint, where pictures must have hung. For an instant he saw the twitching, pumping trunk of the pirate framed in one of them. He looked quickly away to his homely, battered tin trunk, focussing his eyes on the large dent in the lid by the handle. There was sticky sweat on his neck, on his wrists, all over his body.
For a moment he wanted to climb onto the bed, pull the mosquito net down round him and hide behind it like a child. He imagined himself lying there with the net like a filmy wall all round him. Then he thought of Smith. Perhaps Smith had died on that mattress, with the screen of the net round him? Death by cholera, death by decapitation - was that China, the land he'd come to? But the mattress was new; Smith couldn't have lain on it. Probably they'd burnt the old one. He took a deep steadying breath and took off his tie, jacket and waistcoat before bending to unlock and unpack.
He laid his clothes tidily on the mattress, trying not to think of Smith or the pirate. There was a cupboard of bare, yellowish-varnished wood in the corner. When he opened the door, he caught his breath - two large, metallic-brown cockroaches about three inches long scuttled out over his shoe and disappeared behind the back of the cupboard. After a moment he went to wash his hands at the wash-stand in the bathroom, pouring water from the jug into the basin beside it. There was no soap, no towel. He splashed his face and dried himself slowly on his handkerchief. As he glanced at his lean, pallid reflection in the heavy wood- framed mirror, its glass cracked in the top right corner, he glimpsed his Adam's apple above the parting of his loosened collar. He had nicked it whilst shaving that morning. Now there was a clean little scab over the cut. He touched the scab gently and then without warning he was helplessly imagining the executioner's sword slicing through his own neck, just there, where the scab was, slicing through the skin and bones and muscles, through all the veins and arteries, in one savage stroke which seemed for all its speed to go on and on, always cutting and cutting again. He closed his eyes tight and shook his head, only to see the stiffened grimaces of pain and fear on the heads nailed to poles that Mason had pointed out to him as they left the execution ground.
He shuddered and walked back to sit miserably, not on the bed where his clothes were neatly piled, but on his empty trunk. How far away from England he was now! England, where he had packed those same clothes tidily into the trunk! How far from the P&O liner, with its civilised routine and order!
A mosquito was whining monotonously by his ear. He took out his watch and wound it. He had set it to Shanghai time by the ship's clock the night before. Forty-five minutes still to wait.
3
DENTON TAPPED HESITANTLY on Mason's door at half-past ten, and heard a slurred, morose acknowledgment. Ten minutes later Mason -appeared, heavy-lidded and taciturn as he fastened his jacket, and they took another rickshaw, this time by a direct route, to the deputy assistant commissioner's office in the Customs House on the Bund. The Customs House was like the Town Hall at Enfield, Denton thought, with a tall square tower and a clock, its solid Englishness reassuring. Mason led him through an outer office, where Chinese clerks sat watchfully silent at tall wooden desks. 'There's the door,' he nodded offhandedly. 'Got some work to do. Come to my room when you're finished. Number eleven, down the corridor.'
Denton tapped on the dark wooden door. After a moment, a calm, abstracted voice called out, 'Yes?' He turned the polished brass knob and went in.
A bald, bulbous-browed man with sallow skin sat writing at a large desk by the open window. The thick ring of hair round his head was a woolly grey, and he had a heavy drooping moustache. A punkah swung gently over the desk, creaking like the timbers of a ship. 'Yes?' Mr Brown asked again, stroking his moustache as he wrote.
'I'm Denton, sir.'
'Who?' Mr Brown dipped his pen in the ink well, then looked up inquiringly. 'Ah yes, of course. Mr Denton.' He shook the ink off the nib, examined the tip fastidiously, knitting his strangely scanty grey brows together, then laid the pen down, gesturing to the upright chair facing the desk. 'I was expecting you fifteen minutes ago,' he said precisely, glancing pointedly up at the mahogany-cased clock ticking on the wall beside his desk.
'Mr Mason brought me,' Denton murmured apologetically. 'I didn't know what time....'
'Ah yes.' Mr Brown stroked his moustache ruminatively. 'Met you off the boat, didn't he? What was it, the Orcades?'
'Yes sir.'
Mr Brown tilted back his head, gazing down his nose at Denton's crumpled collar. 'Pleasant trip?'
'Oh yes, sir, very pleasant thank you.'
'Good,' Mr Brown stroked his moustache again and tilted his head still further back, staring broodingly up at the punkah for more than half a minute, as if he were puzzled by its gentle flapping motion and didn't quite trust it. He seemed to have forgotten Denton was there.
Denton glanced uncomfortably at the topee hanging on the lowest branch of the hatstand behind the desk, then back at Mr Brown as he cleared his throat. Despite the heat, his high winged collar and cravat, his linen jacket and the mauve silk handkerchief tucked in his breast pocket were all creaseless and unsullied.
'Mason's shown you your quarters?' Mr Brown was asking. 'Quite satisfactory? Good. You can have tomorrow to get fitted out and settled in. Report for duty on Thursday morning. In the meantime, I....' His voice faded as his eyes narrowed faintly and he glanced up at the punkah again. A crease of annoyance appeared in the loose sallow skin of his forehead. Denton followed his upward gaze with respectful puzzlement. The wide, cloth-covered board had stopped its creaking motion and hung above them like a giant windless palm.
Mr Brown banged the bell on his desk imperiously three times, and after a few seconds the punkah started swinging again. The cool air fanned Denton's face and stirred the papers on the desk, so that they fluttered like leaves in a gentle breeze. 'And in the meantime,' Mr Brown resumed, 'here are some pamphlets regarding the duties you will be expected to perform, which I advise you to study attentively.' He passed a bundle of booklets, neatly tied with yellow tape, over the desk. 'I shall examine you orally on pamphlets three and four on Wednesday at 10 AM.'
'Yes sir.'
'The first two pamphlets merely give general information and so forth.'
'Yes sir.'
'That does not mean they can be disregarded.'
'No sir.'
'If your answers are satisfactory, you can start accompanying one of the established officers on his rounds.'
Denton looked down at the grey cover of the top pamphlet. There was a dark ring-stain on the corner and he imagined some previous probationary officer placing his glass there late at night while he swotted anxiously for the next day's examination.
'You will be expected to make some headway with the Chinese language, too. No doubt you have been told that? You will find a list of approved tutors in the mess. You may choose any one. Your fees will be paid by the service, of course. The details are in the first pamphlet.'
Denton nodded, glancing down at the ring-stained cover again, as if he expected to see the details there without having to open it.
'Your salary is paid in arrears,' Mr Brown went on, 'If you have not yet arranged a bank, I suggest the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank or the Chartered Bank. Both British and thoroughly reliable.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'They are on the Bund, of course.' Mr Brown's light blue eyes met Denton's for the first time with disturbing directness. 'Your contract is probationary at present, as you know, but with application, Mr Denton, I see no reason why you should not be substantiated at the end of two years.'
'Yes, sir, I'll try.'
'Stranger things have happened,' Mr Brown added obscurely, stroking his moustache ruminatively again. Just above his lip the flowing hairs were stained a dark yellow by tobacco. 'Mrs Brown and I would be glad if you could join us for dinner next Tuesday,' he said at last, as if the ruminative pause had been to consider whether Denton merited the invitation. 'Will that be convenient?'
'Oh, thank you sir. Yes, very convenient. Er, about what time?'
'Mrs Brown will send you a card. We usually dine at 9 PM.' He turned his head to glance at the clock again, then adjusted the papers on the desk. 'Well, that will be all for now, Mr Denton. Your quarters are quite satisfactory, you say?'
'Oh yes, sir,' Denton stood up. 'Very satisfactory.' He thought of his clothes still lying on the bare mattress.
'I don't suppose you've seen much of the city yet?'
'No, sir. Although we did see, I mean ...' Denton hesitated then went on. 'I mean we passed, er, an execution on the way from the ship.' His voice hushed slightly as he said 'execution,' and the image of the head swinging round on its queue swept over his mind.
'Really?' Mr Brown's scanty eyebrows rose. He took up his pen and examined the nib again. 'I would hardly have thought that was necessary,' he murmured. Then he leant forward, opening the file he had been writing in when Denton entered. 'Well, then, Thursday at ten o'clock.'
'Yes sir. Thank you, sir.'
He glanced up as Denton opened the door. 'Ten o'clock precisely, Mr Denton.'
4
BE WITH YOU IN A MINUTE.' Mason too was writing at his desk in his own, smaller, office. 'Got to finish off these damn reports. There's a paper over there, if you want to have a look at the local news.'
Denton sat down obediently in a cane chair beside the window and picked up the newspaper. The indemnity for the Boxer rebellion had definitely been agreed, the North China Daily News announced on its front page. The Dowager Empress had received the new German ambassador in Peking. In Shanghai, the American consul had given a reception in the international settlement to celebrate Independence Day.
Mason's pen scratched on while he grunted and sighed at his desk, occasionally muttering irritably under his breath.
'What does Bund mean?' Denton asked timidly when he saw Mason leaning back in his chair, sucking the end of his pen.
'What?'
'Bund?'
'Sort of embankment place. Indian term, originally. Got all the good-class buildings in it. Consulates and banks and the big hongs and so on. Not to mention the Customs House, of course.' He yawned, scratched his scalp with the end of his pen, examined it, and then leant forward to write again with a sigh. 'Shanghai Club, all those places. Bund is Hindi, actually.'
'Have you been to India?' Denton asked, impressed by Mason's knowledge.
'In my time,' Mason grunted, frowning as he wrote, as if to discourage further questioning.
Denton turned the page. Twenty-three pirates apprehended in Bias Bay had been handed over to the Chinese authorities. He read on quickly, to push away the blood-stained images that immediately leapt into his mind. Under Wanted Known, Ah Chew, ladies' tailor, announced immediate attention and promised 'instant visitings.' Church Services were listed in a solemn little ornamental border -
'Oh, that'll do for now,' Mason growled, shoving back his chair. 'Come along, let's go back to the mess. Time for tiffin.'
5
MASON KICKED HIS WAY through the crowded, clashing shafts of the badgering rickshaws and settled into one further away from the gate, leaning back sweating under the canvas canopy. 'Never take the first one,' he advised Denton loudly, 'They always charge more.' He took off his topee and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
It was noon, the heat stared balefully at them from the cloudless sky, from the narrow, parched streets, from the flat walls of the houses. The coolie pulled them along bumpy, rutted alleys and beside stagnant little canals, stinking with refuse. Stalls and dark cave-like shops lined every street. Coolies with long bamboo carrying-poles, women with crushing loads of stones in baskets on their backs, children, dogs and whining beggars pressed noisily all round them. Occasionally another European passed in a rickshaw or a sedan chair, eyes narrowed like theirs against the heat and light.
'Where d'you come from?' Mason asked suddenly, taking another cigar out of his tunic pocket. This time he did not offer one to Denton. 'Enfield? Near London, isn't it?'
The rickshaw lurched into a pot hole and Mason fell against Denton. 'Blithering idiot!' he shouted at the coolie. 'Why don't you look where you're going?'
The coolie's head shook briefly in apology. Or was it incomprehension, or mere helplessness?
'Look-see! Look-see!' Mason called out threateningly. 'You damn well look-see, or I'll kick your behind!'
The coolie shook his head again, hunching his shoulders abjectly. His subservience seemed to mollify Mason. He gave a satisfied but still warning little grunt and leant back again, lighting his cigar. 'What got you into the Customs service?' he demanded, tossing the still burning match aside as he settled himself more comfortably in the seat.
Denton edged along to make more room for him. 'It was an accident, really,' he began.
'Hey, look at that,' Mason interrupted, nudging him with his elbow. 'Not bad, eh?'
A sedan chair was being carried past by two bearers. The curtains were open and Denton caught a glimpse of a doll-like oval face with quick, dark eyes and rouged cheekbones framed by shiny black hair. Mason twisted round as the chair swayed past, his eyes gleaming as they had at the execution. 'Not bad, at all, eh?' he sighed as he turned back, blowing out a long jet of aromatic blue smoke. 'That's what makes being here worthwhile.'
Denton looked at him inquiringly, puzzled.
'Sing-song girl,' Mason explained obscurely. 'They make a fortune. Cost it, too.'
'Sing-song girl?'
'That's the translation.' He said something in Chinese. 'Sing-song girls.'
'Oh, they're singers?'
Mason glanced at him sideways. 'That's one of their accomplishments,' he agreed, preening his moustache with his knuckle and pursing his rosy lips into an ironic little smile. 'Here we are. Hop out, you're smaller than I am.'
They walked together up the stone steps of the large building that Denton had scarcely noticed when he first saw it, his eyes still numbed by the execution. It was an imposing building, he recognized, in the same style as the Customs House. Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Officers' Mess he read over the entrance, feeling a faint lift of pride that he belonged to it.
'Let's change your money first,' Mason nodded across the lobby. 'At the desk over there. Then you won't have to rely on me to pay the rickshaw boys.'