16
JOHNSON WAS TEACHING Denton snooker. Lining up his ball carefully on the black, Denton swung the cue gently. The ball kissed the black on the wrong side and rolled smoothly away into the pocket.
'You lifted your head,' Johnson explained consolingly. 'You lifted your head as you hit it. Otherwise you might've got it.' He sipped from the beer he'd placed on the edge of the table, smacked his lips, and leant over to make his shot. The cue slid easily forward over the crook of his finger and thumb, the ball seemed to run inevitably towards the black, there was a click and the black sank into the pocket.
'Well, if we could have a table down at the Woosung forts next week,' Johnson said encouragingly as he finished his beer, 'you'd soon get the hang of it.'
'What's it like down there?' Denton asked. 'I saw them when I arrived, but I couldn't really make much out.'
'Just a guardpost really. We go down there to make sure they don't discharge contraband before they get into the harbour.' He paused as one of the boys approached and muttered to him. 'Where?' Johnson asked, glancing round towards the door. 'All right, bring him up to my room.'
He turned back to Denton with a faintly excited smile. 'One of my informers wants to see me,' he said quietly, as if he didn't want the others to hear. 'Come along, you might find this interesting.'
Denton followed him up to the second floor. At first glance, as Johnson turned the gaslight up, Denton thought the room was completely bare. But looking round again, he saw three straight-backed wooden chairs, which reminded him of a schoolroom, and a watercolour of a sailing ship pinned to the wall. Still, the room was cheerless. There weren't even any curtains. He felt obscurely that its featurelessness was in keeping with the level, monotonous landscape of Johnson's character.
Johnson gestured to the chairs, neatly placed against the wall. 'Make yourself at home,' he said. But as he remained standing himself, Denton merely smiled, then went across to the painting. It was of a three-masted ship with many sails, all billowing before the wind. The sky was blue except for some fluffy, yellowish clouds, there were sea-gulls curling round the mastheads and flecks of white foam on the choppy blue water.
'How d'you like it?' Johnson asked behind him.
'Very nice.'
'Did it myself.'
'Really?' Denton felt he ought to show added interest now, and he stepped nearer, peering at it closer. The figurehead on the bowsprit was a mermaid with golden, wavy hair that fell loosely down round full round breasts with little red nipples. He was slightly shocked. All the mermaids he'd seen before had had ringlets that decently obscured their nakedness. He couldn't reconcile this immodesty with what he knew of Johnson. But perhaps it was all right in art? he wondered doubtfully.
'See the mermaid?' Johnson asked with innocent pride. 'Life-like, eh?'
'Yes. Yes it is,' Denton agreed hastily, looking instead at the row of portholes running along the vessel's side.
There was an almost inaudible rapping on the door. Immediately, a short, lean Chinese slipped inside and closed it. He glanced briefly askance at Denton, then stepped swiftly to the corner, where Johnson followed him. They began speaking in quick, furtive whispers. Denton watched the man's queue twitching as he shook or nodded his head in reply to Johnson's slow, careful questions. It was as though he was trying to convince Johnson while Johnson was sceptical and dubious. He was dressed like a coolie in a cheap, patched black tunic and wide floppy black trousers that ended above his ankles. On his bare feet he wore rope sandals, and Denton noticed how his toes kept curling and uncurling all the time, as though they were squirming with uneasiness. After some time, Johnson counted some notes out into his hand, snapping each one cautiously between his finger and thumb. The man's lips worked silently as he counted the money in time with Johnson. He stuffed it into a pocket inside the waist of his trousers and left, glancing briefly at Denton without expression. There was a white scar on his temple.
'Three o'clock tomorrow morning,' Johnson said, putting his wallet away. 'A cargo of salt. Not very big, but worth catching. Want to come? It's right down river, past the forts.' His faintly nasal voice was still mild and even, as though he was merely inviting Denton to another game of snooker.
17
THE JOURNEY DOWNSTREAM took over an hour. They travelled in the same launch that had taken Mason and Denton to the Alexander the First, with the same chubby coxswain, whom Johnson called 'Lolly' in a tone that was at once familiar and colourless. Standing with Johnson in the prow, where the thick warm air fanned their faces, Denton kept patting and feeling the weight of the revolver he'd draw from the Customs House armoury. 'Not that we ever use them of course, but....' Johnson had said in his drab, monotonous voice.
Two Chinese Customs men with ancient rifles and wild-looking swords squatted in the stern of the boat, chatting loudly with the coxswain. The light from the boiler, glowing on their high-boned cheeks and slanting eyes, gave them, Denton thought, a lurid, sinister appearance. Sparks like little fireflies occasionally darted over their heads in the black smoke streaming from the funnel, and the sparks seemed to increase the fierceness of their looks. Yet all the while Johnson talked on in his amiably inexpressive voice about the hikes he'd taken round Shanghai last winter. As if they were only out for a picnic.
Soon after they'd passed the dark, broken heaps of the forts at Woosung, where the solitary yellow light gleamed on the smooth silk of the water, the launch slid slowly into a little creek and lay still with its engine scarcely turning. There were two hours to wait. The humid heat weighed on Denton's lids. He kept dozing off, despite the dull throb of tension in his stomach, to wake with a startled jerk as his head, loosening on his neck, lolled to one side or the other. The Chinese Customs men and the coxswain were all quiet now and seemed to be asleep. Only Johnson was still alert, humming softly to himself as he watched from the bow.
Denton slithered from one half-awake dream to another until Johnson's hand on his arm awoke him. Johnson's head was cocked on one side, his eyes turned up as though he was listening. Denton listened too. At first he could hear nothing except the run and slap of the water against the boat's hull, but then the soft plash of oars and a steady creaking sound carried faintly across the river. His stomach lifted. There was something menacing about that repeated creaking and plashing.
Without a word the two Chinese had risen together in the stern and gripped their useless-looking rifles. Johnson hissed to the coxswain and a second later the engine rattled and clanked. The deck shook and quivered as the launch thrust out of the creak at full speed. Almost immediately ahead were two sampans, low down in the water. The oarsmen were frantically trying to reach the bank before the launch closed on them easily, and when they saw it was hopeless, they gave up leaning on their oars as the launch came alongside them. The coxswain called out, translating for Johnson, and in a few minutes the sampans had been taken in tow, while the two smugglers sat dejectedly in the well of the launch, bound back to back.
Denton felt let down. It had all been so quick and ordinary.
'They can row quite fast with that single oar, can't they?' Johnson said pleasantly. 'If we'd left it much later, they'd've got clean away.'
Denton glanced at the nearest prisoner. His face in the flickering light of the boiler was leathery and grim. It seemed all shadows below the eyes, as if the cheeks had been hollowed out by hunger or disease. His lids looked inflamed, the whites of his eyes bloodshot. The man stared out vacantly over the river, while beside him the two Customs men were playing a game with little narrow playing cards no wider than two fingers, laughing boisterously. The coxswain listened, grinning widely, turning his head now and then to join in the banter.
Johnson was lighting his pipe. 'What will happen to those two?' Denton asked him.
'Oh well, you can't tell with a Chinese court.' He drew and puffed, the tobacco glowing bright and dull in the charred bowl of his pipe. 'Depends if they've got any pull, really.'
'But isn't there a set penalty?'
'Anything from death to being in the cangue for a bit. That's like the stocks, the cangue.' Johnson looked at his pipe, pushed the smouldering tobacco down and placed the moist stem back between his teeth. 'It's shame really, isn't? They're probably opium addicts, have to smuggle to get the money for their opium.' He shrugged with detached resignation, still as uninvolved as if they'd been talking about a picnic spoilt by rain. 'Bit of a shame, but there you are.'
Soon he was wondering aloud about the possibility of taking a trip to Hankow at Christmas, with the bounty from the capture. 'You can have some lovely hikes round there, you know, when the weather's cooler,' he said equably. 'Have to watch out for bandits, of course.'
Denton only half listened, gazing again at the prisoners' faces. They didn't look as though they'd have much pull. His eyelids drooped treacherously. How sore and heavy they felt. How sticky his skin was, despite the gentle fanning of the air. As he rubbed his eyes, he was reminded of the bloodshot eyes of the prisoner nearest him. He glanced at him again. The man's eyes stared out blank and motionless over the dark water and the dark, empty fields. As though the darkness had got right inside his eyes, inside his head, Denton thought. Johnson's voice flowed on uninterruptedly while Denton only half-listened. Then suddenly, as if a light had gone out, the misty shapes before his tired eyes were blotted out by sleep.
18
Dear Mother and Father,
Thanks for your letter. Sorry to hear Father has not been well lately. I hope it will soon clear up. I have more or less settled in here now, although some things still take a bit of getting used to. The food and climate affected my stomach for a time, but I am keeping well, apart from a few minor upsets.
You should see my quarters. They are rather grand, as I think I told you on my last letter. I have my own bedroom, living room and bathroom. The living room and bedroom have verandas and you can look over the houses opposite to the river and docks. I obtained some curtains and chair covers complete with antimacassars in an auction in the mess. They used to belong to someone who has now gone home.
The new work has kept me rather busy. It is often interesting. The port here is actually the third largest in the world. We have to inspect all the ships before they are allowed to unload cargo or sail. Sometimes we get meals on board, and then it is always in the first class saloon, which is often pretty grand!
I actually took part in the arrest of some smugglers last week! We caught some people in sampans (small boats) who were smuggling salt, after waiting in an ambush for them until three in the morning. Very exciting, my first capture! You get a bonus of 10% of the value of any contraband you catch, but I don't suppose I'll get much of it this time as I was really only taken along for the experience of it. But next time perhaps I'll make a real haul.
You would be amazed at the number of well-to-do people there are here. I had dinner with the deputy assistant commissioner a week or two ago. He lives in a grand house with lots of servants, and I had to get evening dress for it. There were a lot of good class people there. The table seated twenty-four!
I have offered to join the choir in the Anglican cathedral. It is supposed to be the largest and best in Asia. So I shall be able to keep my voice in practice. I met the Dean after service last Sunday. He is friendly and I am going to have tea with him the first Saturday next month. He does not know any of the clergy at Enfield, though. He has been out here fifteen years.
There is a native city and an International Settlement (mainly run by the British of course!), and a French Concession in Shanghai. The native population is about three quarters of a million and the whites altogether about twelve thousand. The French Concession is supposed to be rather scruffy, by the way. I have not seen it yet, except from the river.
The enclosed photograph shows me in my full working uniform. How do I look? I am having lessons in Chinese, which most people say is impossible to learn. But we get a special increment if we do learn, so I am going to try!
Must close this now to catch the next ship.
Love from
John.
PS Just received your letter posted in July. Glad to hear Father is better. Had a nice letter from Emily in the same post.
Denton placed his pen in the ink well and leant back as he read the letter through. He had taken his shirt off, but his skin was still moist with sweat. His forearms felt slippery against the grainy wood of the desk.
He read the sentence. They used to belong to someone who has now gone home with a little satisfied pursing of his lips. He imagined himself casually mentioning it to them a few years from now, when he returned bronzed and senior in rank to marry Emily.
'You remember that letter when I said I'd got some things that used to belong to someone who'd gone home? Well, I didn't want to worry you, but actually....'
He slipped the photograph into the envelope, folded it and slid the letter in after it. Sealing the thick creamy flap and writing the address in a hand that was larger and bolder than usual, he reflected how little he'd really told his parents. But then he couldn't very well tell them of the dark and deadly side of things - they'd only be upset and worry. He couldn't tell them that he'd seen a man's head chopped off, that he slept in a dead man's bed and wrote on a dead man's desk, that corpses floated in the river and were netted like fish every morning, that beggars held up dead babies to pluck your heart strings. He couldn't tell them of the girl in Mason's room, of the 'honey boats' that carried the nightsoil up to the farming villages at dawn, the nightsoil that was packed round the vegetables he subsequently ate, boiled of course, in the mess.
He pushed back his chair and put on his shirt. There were some things one just didn't tell, he thought, with a touch of pride at his own manliness, one simply had to pretend.
Tell who, pretend to who? His parents, or himself? Or the whole world? It wasn't until he was halfway down the stairs, tapping the hard, sharp edge of the envelope against his palm, that the disturbing question occurred to him. And then, after a moment's dim and uneasy pondering, as he reached the tiled lobby, it was the impropriety of the grammar that lingered in his mind, not the question itself. 'Tell whom,' he muttered under his breath. 'Pretend to whom.'
19
THE WEEK AT THE WOOSUNG FORTS passed slowly and vacantly for Denton. There was so little to do, it was like seven Sundays, he thought. Only without church. When they were not inspecting the junks and barges that infrequently put in for Customs clearance, Johnson would go wandering round the old stone buildings, many of them creeper-covered ruins that hadn't been touched since the British captured the forts in the opium wars sixty years before. Although it was late September and the sun was lower in the sky, the steamy heat seemed just as relentless. Yet Johnson would scramble tirelessly over fallen parapets, peer through crumbling gun embrasures and explore overgrown paths, even at midday when the sun was fiercest and his clothes were drenched with sweat. At first Denton went along too, unwilling to seem unsociable; and, despite the heat, he too enjoyed exploring the place, especially when they followed tracks that led to intensely green paddy fields with peasants working in them, or to placid fish tanks, or sudden little temples, half-derelict and no bigger than a room, in which sweet-smelling joss sticks from some unknown worshipper were still burning amongst the cobwebs and litter. But Johnson's insistently monotonous voice and interminable commentaries on everything they saw began to grate on him more and more. There was nothing, no matter how obvious or insignificant, that escaped Johnson's laboriously detailed explanations. 'That butterfly only lives for six days,' he would announce as Denton watched the fluttering spread of its gorgeous wings among the leaves. 'It lays two hundred eggs.' Or 'That's a joss stick. They burn for over an hour.' Denton had only wanted to stand and look, to absorb the scene through his senses, his imagination, to feel it working on him through the silence and the heat, but Johnson would be counting the bricks aloud or calculating how long ago the joss stick must have been lit.
So he began to make excuses. He had letters to write, he would mutter a little awkwardly, or his Chinese to study. And Johnson, unperturbed, would walk off alone along one of the almost overgrown paths, taking his sketch book with him.
'What's happened to those two smugglers?' Denton asked him as they sat at tiffin one day in the bare but cool stone hut that served as their mess. Johnson had just come back from one of his 'hikes,' his face red and glistening with sweat.
'Oh, I haven't heard. It usually takes a few months at least before they come to trial. I'll have to give evidence then, unless they're satisfied with my written report.' He shrugged, picking up a shred of chicken with his chopsticks, which he was patiently teaching Denton to use. 'You never can tell, they might be off scot-free by now. I might never hear of them again. And it'll take at least a couple of months before I get my bounty for the salt, too. Won't be much, of course, but I should be able to hire a boat to get me up to Hankow.' His jaws munched slowly and regularly - rather in the way he talked, Denton thought. 'Hope it comes through before Christmas. Look, try picking up a bean with your chopsticks. Like this. That's a good test of your skill.'
Denton felt a little prick of disappointment and hurt that Johnson unquestioningly assumed the bounty would all go to him, but he tried to reason the smart away. After all, he told himself glumly, as the bean kept slipping off the tips of his chopsticks, his fingers aching with the effort to control them, after all, he'd only gone along to watch, he'd been no help at all, so why should he expect any of the bounty to come his way? He laid his chopsticks down on the plate almost sullenly while Johnson methodically, obliviously, demonstrated with his own how you must hold the bottom one tight with the crook of your finger and thumb against the middle knuckle of your second finger.
'Have you got any plans for Christmas?' Johnson asked casually. Denton sensed an invitation was in the offing to join Johnson on his trip to Hankow and inwardly he resisted it. He looked away uncomfortably as the boy took the plates, guilty over the chagrin he felt about the bounty, guilty that Johnson's blandly persistent friendliness was so tedious. Could it be that overbearing, immoral Mason and wordly-wise Jones secretly interested him more? 'There was some talk about going on a houseboat and doing a bit of shooting,' he said vaguely, continuing to avoid Johnson's mild, solicitous gaze. 'Mason and Jones were talking about it. I don't really know of course. I might be on duty, I suppose.' He glanced apologetically at Johnson's still perspiring face.
Johnson's brown eyes glimmered in their depths, but then he nodded and smiled wryly, almost as if he'd expected all along that Denton wouldn't want to join him. After a few moments' silence he set off for the river bank with his sketchbook, the wry but not unfriendly smile still on his lips. Watching him walk away with his firm, energetic stride, Denton thought remorsefully how solitary he looked, recalling too that he never seemed to be with anyone for long. In the mess he would join a table and converse in his affable yet lifeless manner, and then, when the meal was over, he would be left sitting there by himself. And in the billiards room or the lounge, it always seemed the same - eventually he would be left alone while the others had formed groups with their backs towards him. Was that why he'd been so friendly to him, because he was shunned by all the others?