Noble House

  Dunross glanced back at Robin Grey. “You haven’t changed at all.”

  “Nor have you,” Grey said, then turned to Pennyworth. “Ian and I met in London some years ago, Sir Charles. It was just after the war. I’d just become a shop steward.” He was a lean man with thin lips, thin graying hair and sharp features.

  “Yes, it was some years ago,” Dunross said politely, continuing the pattern that Penelope and her brother had agreed to so many years ago—that neither side was blood kin to the other. “So, Robin, are you staying long?”

  “Just a few days,” Grey said. His smile was as thin as his lips. “I’ve never been in this workers’ paradise before so I want to visit a few unions, see how the other ninety-nine percent live.”

  Sir Charles Pennyworth, leader of the delegation, laughed. He was a florid, well-covered man, an ex-colonel of the London Scottish Regiment, D.S.O. and Bar. “Don’t think they go much on unions here, Robin. Do they, tai-pan?”

  “Our labor force does very well without them,” Dunross said.

  “Sweated labor, tai-pan,” Grey said at once. “According to some of your own statistics, government statistics.”

  “Not our statistics, Robin, merely your statisticians,” Dunross said. “Our people are the highest paid in Asia after the Japanese and this is a free society.”

  “Free? Come off it!” Grey jeered. “You mean free to exploit the workers. Well, never mind, when Labour gets in at the next election we’ll change all that.”

  “Come now, Robin,” Sir Charles said. “Labour hasn’t a prayer at the next election.”

  Grey smiled. “Don’t bet on it, Sir Charles. The people of England want change. We didn’t all go to war to keep up the rotten old ways. Labour’s for social change—and getting the workers a fair share of the profits they create.”

  Dunross said, “I’ve always thought it rather unfair that Socialists talk about the ‘workers’ as though they do all the work and we do none. We’re workers too. We work as hard if not harder with longer hours an—”

  “Ah, but you’re a tai-pan and you live in a great big house that was handed down, along with your power. All that capital came from some poor fellow’s sweat, and I won’t even mention the opium trade that started it all. It’s fair that capital should be spread around, fair that everyone should have the same start. The rich should be taxed more. There should be a capital tax. The sooner the great fortunes are broken up the better for all Englishmen, eh, Julian?”

  Julian Broadhurst was a tall, distinguished man in his mid-forties, a strong supporter of the Fabian Society, which was the intellectual brain trust of the socialist movement. “Well, Robin,” he said with his lazy, almost diffident voice, “I certainly don’t advocate as you do that we take to the barricades but I do think, Mr. Dunross, that here in Hong Kong you could do with a Trades Union Council, a minimum wage scale, elected legislature, proper unions and safeguards, socialized medicine, workman’s compensation and all the modern British innovations.”

  “Totally wrong, Mr. Broadhurst. China would never agree to a change in our colonial status, they would never allow any form of city-state on her border. As to the rest, who pays for them?” Dunross asked. “Our unfettered system here’s outperforming Britain twenty times and—”

  “You pay for it out of all your profits, Ian,” Robin Grey said with a laugh. “You pay a fair tax, not 15 percent. You pay the same as we do in Britain and—”

  “God forbid!” Dunross said, hard put to keep his temper. “You’re taxing yourself out of business and out of c—”

  “Profit?” the last MP, the Liberal, Hugh Guthrie interrupted caustically. “The last bloody Labour Government wiped out our profits years ago with bloody stupid profligate spending, ridiculous nationalization, giving the Empire away piecemeal with fatuous stupid abandon, disrupting the Commonwealth and shoving poor old England’s face in the bloody mud. Bloody ridiculous! Attlee and all that shower!”

  Robin Grey said placatingly, “Come on, Hugh, the Labour Government did what the people wanted, what the masses wanted.”

  “Nonsense! The enemy wanted it. The Communists! In barely eighteen years you gave away the greatest empire the world’s ever seen, made us a second-class power and allowed the sodding Soviet enemy to eat up most of Europe. Bloody ridiculous!”

  “I agree wholeheartedly that communism’s dreadful. But as to ‘giving’ away our empire, it was the wind of change, Hugh,” Broadhurst said, calming him. “Colonialism had run its course. You really must take the long-term view.”

  “I do. I think we’re up the creek without a paddle. Churchill’s right, always was.”

  “The people didn’t think so,” Grey said grimly. “That’s why he was voted out. The armed service vote did that, they’d had enough of him. As to the Empire, sorry Hugh old chap, but it was just an excuse to exploit natives who didn’t know any better.” Robin Grey saw their faces and read them. He was used to the hatred that surrounded him. He hated them more and always had. After the war he had wanted to stay in the Regular Army but he had been rejected—captains were two a penny then with decorations and great war service, while he spent the war a POW at Changi. So, filled with anger and resentment, he had joined Crawley’s, a huge car manufacturer, as a mechanic. Quickly he had become a shop steward and union organizer, then into the lower ranks of the Trades Union General Council. Five years ago, he had become a Labour MP where he was now, a cutting, angry, hostile back-bencher and protégé of the late left-wing Socialist Aneurin Bevan. “Yes, we got rid of Churchill and when we get in next year we’ll sweep out a lot more of the old tired ways and upper-class infections back where they belong. We’ll nationalize every industry an—”

  “Really, Robin,” Sir Charles said, “this is a banquet not a soapbox in Hyde Park. We all agreed to cut out politics while we were on the trip.”

  “You’re right, Sir Charles. It was just that the tai-pan of the Noble House asked me.” Grey turned to Dunross. “How is the Noble House?”

  “Fine. Very fine.”

  “According to this afternoon’s paper there’s a run on your stock?”

  “One of our competitors is playing silly buggers, that’s all.”

  “And the bank runs? They’re not serious either?”

  “They’re serious.” Dunross was choosing his words carefully. He knew the anti-Hong Kong lobby in Parliament was strong and many members of all three parties were against its colonial status, against its nonvoting status and freewheeling nature—and most of all envious of its almost tax-free basis. Never mind, he thought. Since 1841 we’ve survived hostile Parliaments, fire, typhoon, pestilence, plague, embargo, depression, occupation and the periodic convulsions that China goes through, and somehow we always will.

  “The run’s on the Ho-Pak, one of our Chinese banks,” Dunross said.

  “It’s the largest, isn’t it?” Grey said.

  “No. But it’s large. We’re all hoping it’ll weather the problem.”

  “If it goes broke, what about all the depositors’ money?”

  “Unfortunately they lose it,” Dunross said, backed into a corner.

  “You need English banking laws.”

  “No, we’ve found our system operates very well. How did you find China?” Dunross asked.

  Before Sir Charles could answer, Grey said, “Our majority view is that they’re dangerous, hostile, should be locked up and the Hong Kong border sealed. They’re openly committed to becoming a world irritant and their brand of communism is merely an excuse for dictatorship and exploitation of their masses.”

  Dunross and the other Hong Kong yan blanched as Sir Charles said sharply, “Come now, Robin, that’s only your view and the Comm—the, er, and McLean’s. I found just the opposite. I think China’s very sincere in trying to deal with the problems of China, which are hideous, monumental and I think insoluble.”

  “Thank God there’s going to be big trouble there,” Grey said with a sneer. “Even the Russians knew it,
why else would they get out?”

  “Because they’re enemies, they share a common five thousand miles of border,” Dunross said trying to hold in his anger. “They’ve always distrusted each other. Because China’s invader has always come out of the West, and Russia’s always out of the East. Possession of China’s always been Russia’s obsession and preoccupation.”

  “Come now, Mr. Dunross,” Broadhurst began. “You exaggerate, surely.”

  “It’s to Russia’s advantage to have China weak and divided, and Hong Kong disrupted. Russia requires China weak as a cornerstone of its foreign policy.”

  “At least Russia’s civilized,” Grey said. “Red China’s fanatic, dangerous and heathen and should be cut off, particularly from here.”

  “Ridiculous!” Dunross said tightly. “China has the oldest civilization on earth. China desperately wants to be friends with the West. China’s Chinese first and Communist second.”

  “Hong Kong and you ‘traders’ are keeping the Communists in power.”

  “Rubbish! Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai don’t need us or the Soviets to stay in Peking!”

  Hugh Guthrie said, “As far as I’m concerned Red China and Soviet Russia’re equally dangerous.”

  “There’s no comparison!” Grey said. “In Moscow they eat with knives and forks and understand food! In China we had nothing but rotten food, rotten hotels and lots of double-talk.”

  “I really don’t understand you at all, old boy,” Sir Charles said irritably. “You fought like hell to get on this committee, you’re supposed to be interested in Asian affairs and you’ve done nothing but complain.”

  “Being critical’s not complaining, Sir Charles. Bluntly, I’m for giving Red China no help at all. None. And when I get back I’m offering a motion to change Hong Kong’s status entirely: to embargo everything from and to Communist China, to hold immediate and proper elections here, introduce proper taxes, proper unionism and proper British social justice!”

  Dunross’s chin jutted. “Then you’ll destroy our position in Asia!”

  “Of all the tai-pans, yes, the people no! Russia was right about China.”

  “I’m talking about the Free World! Christ almighty, it should be clear to everyone—Soviet Russia’s committed to hegemony, to world domination and our destruction. China isn’t,” Dunross said.

  “You’re wrong, Ian. You can’t see the wood for the trees,” Grey said.

  “Listen! If Russia …”

  Broadhurst interrupted smoothly. “Russia’s just trying to solve her own problems, Mr. Dunross, one of them’s the U.S. containment policy. They just want to be left alone and not surrounded by highly emotional Americans with their overfed hands on nuclear triggers.”

  “Balls! The Yanks’re the only friends we’ve got,” Hugh Guthrie said angrily. “As to the Soviets, what about the Cold War? Berlin? Hungary? Cuba, Egypt … they’re swallowing us piecemeal.”

  Sir Charles Pennyworth sighed. “Life’s strange and memories are so short. In ’45, May second it was, in the evening, we joined up with the Russians at Wismar in northern Germany. I’d never been so proud or happy in my life, yes, proud. We sang and drank and cheered and toasted each other. Then my division and all of us in Europe, all the Allies had been held back for weeks to let the Russkies sweep into Germany all through the Balkans, Czechoslovakia and Poland and all the other places. At the time I didn’t think much about it, I was so thankful that the war was almost over at long last and so proud of our Russian allies, but you know, looking back, now I know we were betrayed, we soldiers were betrayed—Russian soldiers included. We got buggered. I don’t really know how it happened, still don’t, but I truly believe we were betrayed, Julian, by our own leaders, your bloody Socialists, along with Eisenhower, Roosevelt and his misguided advisors. I swear to God I still don’t know how it happened but we lost the war, we won but we lost.”

  “Come now, Charles, you’re quite wrong. We all won,” Broadhurst said. “The people of the world won when Nazi Germany was sma—” He stopped, startled, as he saw the look on Grey’s face. “What’s the matter, Robin?”

  Grey was staring at the other side of the room. “Ian! That man over there talking to the Chinese … do you know him? The tall bugger in the blazer.”

  Equally astonished, Dunross glanced at the other side of the room. “The sandy-haired fellow? You mean Marlowe, Pete—”

  “Peter bloody Marlowe!” Grey muttered. “What’s … what’s he doing in Hong Kong?”

  “He’s just visiting. From the States. He’s a writer. I believe he’s writing or researching a book on Hong Kong.”

  “Writer, eh? Curious. Is he a friend of yours?”

  “I met him a few days ago. Why?”

  “That’s his wife—the girl next to him?”

  “Yes. That’s Fleur Marlowe, why?”

  Grey did not answer. There was a fleck of saliva at the corner of his lips.

  “What’s his connection with you, Robin?” Broadhurst asked, strangely perturbed.

  With an effort Grey tore his eyes off Marlowe. “We were in Changi together, Julian, the Jap POW camp. I was provost marshal for the last couple of years, in charge of camp discipline.” He wiped the sweat off his top lip. “Marlowe was one of the black marketeers there.”

  “Marlowe?” Dunross was astounded.

  “Oh yes, Flight Lieutenant Marlowe, the great English gentleman,” Grey said, his voice raw with bitterness. “Yes. He and his pal, an American called King, Corporal King, were the main ones. Then there was a fellow called Timsen, an Aussie … But the American was the biggest, he was the King all right. A Texan. He had colonels on his payroll, English gentlemen all—colonels, majors, captains. Marlowe was his interpreter with the Jap and Korean guards … we mostly had Korean guards. They were the worst….” Grey coughed. “Christ, it’s such a short time ago. Marlowe and the King lived off the fat of the land—those two buggers ate at least one egg a day, while the rest of us starved. You can’t imagine how …” Again Grey wiped the sweat off his lip without noticing it.

  “How long were you a POW?” Sir Charles asked compassionately.

  “Three and a half years.”

  “Terrible,” Hugh Guthrie said. “My cousin bought it on the Burma railroad. Terrible!”

  “It was all terrible,” Grey said. “But it wasn’t so terrible for those who sold out. On the Road or at Changi!” He looked at Sir Charles and his eyes were strange and bloodshot. “It’s the Marlowes of the world who betrayed us, the ordinary people without privileges of birth.” His voice became even more bitter. “No offense but now you’re all getting your comeuppance and about time. Christ, I need a drink. Excuse me a moment.” He stalked off, heading for the bar that was set up to one side.

  “Extraordinary,” Sir Charles said.

  Guthrie said with a slight, nervous laugh, “For a moment I thought he was going for Marlowe.”

  They all watched him, then Broadhurst noticed Dunross frowning after Grey, his face set and cold. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Mr. Dunross. I’m afraid Grey’s very tiresome and a rather vulgar bore. He’s … well he’s not at all representative of the Labour echelon, thank God. You’d like our new leader, Harold Wilson, you’d approve of him. Next time you’re in London I’d be glad to introduce you if you’ve time.”

  “Thank you. Actually I was thinking about Marlowe. It’s hard to believe he ‘sold out’ or betrayed anyone.”

  “You never know about people, do you?”

  Grey got a whiskey and soda and turned and went across the room. “Well, if it isn’t Flight Lieutenant Marlowe!”

  Peter Marlowe turned, startled. His smile vanished and the two men stared at one another. Fleur Marlowe froze.

  “Hello, Grey,” Marlowe said, his voice flat. “I heard you were in Hong Kong. In fact, I read your interview in the afternoon paper.” He turned to his wife. “Darling, this is Robin Grey, MP.” He introduced him to the Chinese, one of whom was Sir Shi-teh T Chung.


  “Ah, Mr. Grey, it’s an honor to have you here,” Shi-teh said with an Oxford English accent. He was tall, dark, good-looking, slightly Chinese and mostly European. “We hope your stay in Hong Kong will be good. If there’s anything I can do, just say the word!”

  “Ta,” Grey said carelessly. They all noticed his rudeness. “So, Marlowe! You haven’t changed much.”

  “Nor have you. You’ve done well for yourself.” Marlowe added to the others, “We were in the war together. I haven’t seen Grey since ’45.”

  “We were POWs, Marlowe and I,” Grey said, then added, “We’re on opposite sides of the political blanket.” He stopped and stepped out of the way to allow Orlanda Ramos to pass. She greeted Shi-teh with a smile and continued on. Grey watched her briefly, then turned back. “Marlowe old chap, are you still in trade?” It was a private English insult. “Trade” to someone like Marlowe who came from a long line of English officers meant everything common and lower class.

  “I’m a writer,” Marlowe said. His eyes went to his wife and his eyes smiled at her.

  “I thought you’d still be in the RAF, regular officer like your illustrious forebears.”

  “I was invalided out, malaria and all that. Rather boring,” Marlowe said, deliberately lengthening his patrician accent knowing that it would infuriate Grey. “And you’re in Parliament? How very clever of you. You represent Streatham East? Wasn’t that where you were born?”

  Grey flushed. “Yes, yes it was …”

  Shi-teh covered his embarrassment at the undercurrents between them. “I must, er, see about dinner.” He hurried off. The other Chinese excused themselves and turned away.

  Fleur Marlowe fanned herself. “Perhaps we should find our table, Peter,” she said.

  “A good idea, Mrs. Marlowe,” Grey said. He was in as tight control as Peter Marlowe. “How’s the King?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since Changi.” Marlowe looked down on Grey.

  “But you’re in touch with him?”

  “No. No, actually I’m not.”

  “You don’t know where he is?”