Gai-Jin

  “Ho there, Bosun!”

  The grizzled man was panting by the time he was near enough to the window. “Cap’n Marlowe’s compliments,” he said, gasping. “Will you and the … and the Lady please step aboard.”

  Struan let out a whoop of joy. He sent for Ah Soh, told her to wake and dress Angelique quickly. Then, quietly, he said, “Listen, Chen, and don’t interrupt or I shall be like a firecracker …” and gave him instructions what to pack, and what to order Ah Soh to pack and to bring the trunks aboard Prancing Cloud at sunset. “Missy and I will dine aboard and sleep aboard and you two will stay aboard also, and return to Hong Kong with us …”

  Chen was overjoyed. “Hong Kong! Ayeeyah, Tai-pa—”

  “… And both of you will keep your mouths shut tighter than a fly’s anus or I will ask Noble House Chen to remove your names from the family book.” He saw Chen go grey. He had never used the threat before. The family book was every Chinese male’s connection to immortality, to their ancestors in the mystic past and to far-off descendants, when he himself would be considered a distant ancestor, and beyond. Wherever a Chinese was born in the world, he was written into his ancestral village records. Without that he did not exist.

  “Yes, Master. But Ah Tok?”

  “I’ll deal with her. Fetch her.”

  Chen went for the door. She was outside it. He fled. She strode in. Struan said that he had decided she would follow in the next boat and that was that.

  “Oh ko, my son,” she said, her voice honeyed. “What you decide for your old mother is not what your old mother decides is best for herself and her son. We will go home. We will be silent. No stinky foreign devils will know. Of course all civilized persons will be interested in the plot. We will go home together. Do you take your whore with you?” She stood under his tongue-lashing, ordering her never ever to use that word again—or else.

  “Ayeeyah,” she muttered as she left, her words dying away gradually, “your old mother won’t call that whore your whore again but all gods bear witness, if not whore what do I call her? Whore is the correct name. Is my son daft … ?”

  When he saw Angelique his anger evaporated. “My word!”

  She was wearing riding clothes, boots, long skirt, tight at the waist, waistcoat and cravat and coat and hat with a green feather, gloves but no riding crop. “I thought this best, darling, for boating,” she said, smiling gloriously.

  “Welcome aboard.” Marlowe was at the head of the gangway, looking splendid in uniform.

  Before stepping onto the deck, Malcolm awkwardly hung on with his left hand, Angelique holding his sticks, and raised his top hat formally. “Permission to come aboard?”

  Marlowe saluted and grinned. “Welcome, you both are most welcome aboard. May I?” He took Angelique’s arm, weak from the intensity of her smile and the cut of her jacket that dramatized her figure, and led the way to the bridge, forward of the funnel. He waited until Malcolm was settled in a sea chair. “Cast off, Mister Lloyd,” he said to his Number One, Davyd Lloyd. “Quarter ahead and steady as she goes.”

  Pearl eased off her moorings under power. “Soon as we’re clear we’ll up speed,” he said. “Admiral’s ordered us to conduct steam trials in sight of the flagship.”

  Struan’s happiness vanished. “In sight of him? We’re not going out to sea, out of sight of land?”

  Marlowe laughed. “I suppose he likes his ‘children’ on a short leash. It’ll be fun, I promise.”

  Then we’re aboard, but not aboard for the right reason, Struan was thinking—the bastard’s a sadist! And if the Admiral had been aboard he felt sure he would have killed him quite happily. Well, not really, but I’d like the bugger dealt with. He’ll wish he had helped me. When I get back I’ll reverse everything and be a thorn in his nose he won’t forget.

  Meanwhile what do I do now?

  There was so much going on that Marlowe and Angelique did not notice the despair he strove to conceal. The frigate was making way through the fleet, not a few sailors and officers from the other ships noticing Angelique, and, some of them, the fine way Pearl was being conned. Aboard the French flagship, the twenty-gun paddle steamer they passed close to, sailors whistled and waved, appalling the British officers.

  Good God, Marlowe thought, what bloody bad manners and awful discipline! All the same he watched benignly as Angelique waved back, to a chorus of whistles and catcalls.

  To distract her, Marlowe said, “We’re going to make speed trials, Angelique, under steam first and then sail. Have to strain the new mast, test her, you won’t remember but we lost our mainmast in the storm. You see …” He chatted away, explaining this and that, answering every question she felt obliged to ask.

  For herself she feigned interest, really wanting just to be quiet, to feel the sea wind ruffle her hair now that she had taken off her hat and was basking in the new freedom, wanting the wind to broom away the ever present stench of Yokohama that was so much a way of life here, and in Hong Kong, as to be hardly noticed now, to gaze ahead and dream of the Channel and blue seas and the fine coast of home, going home. We French desire our land so much, whereas the English seem to be able to make themselves at home anywhere and really don’t need England, not like we need France….

  “We’ll hove to at noon,” Marlowe was saying, so content to be Captain of Pearl, “and I’ve arranged tiffin in my cabin and there’s a bunk if you wish to siesta…. ”

  The morning passed nicely. Every half hour the ship’s bell rang the changes and even Malcolm was dragged out of his despair as the ship went from one end of the bay to the other, twisted and turned and rushed ahead and went into reverse. “In a moment, we’ll stop steaming and it will be all sails ho!” Marlowe said.

  “I do so prefer sail,” Angelique said. “The engine noise is really so distracting. Sailing is so much more pleasant, don’t you agree, Malcolm, chéri ?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Malcolm said contentedly, his arm around her waist, holding her against the tilt of the deck.

  Marlowe said, “I agree too, so does almost every man in the British Navy. Of course we still have to sail most of the time—can’t carry enough fuel and coal’s so filthy! But on a dirty night when safe harbor’s just ahead in the teeth of the gale, or the enemy twice your size with twice the cannon but he’s sail and you’re not, you bless old Stephenson and British engineers for giving you the blessing of going against the wind. I’d take you below but as I said, there’s coal dust everywhere and noise.”

  “I’d love to peek. May I?”

  “Of course. Malcolm?”

  “No, thanks—you two go ahead,” Malcolm said. He had been over engine rooms of their own steamships since a boy and engines had never interested him, only their efficiency and cost and amount of coal they consumed.

  Before leaving the bridge Marlowe checked the lay of his ship and the wind. They were three quarters of a mile offshore, well away from the fleet and the merchantmen. “Number One, you have the conn. When we’re abeam the flagship, stop steaming and all sails ho, course due east.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Malcolm watched Marlowe lead Angelique to the midships gangway with a pang of envy at his light step, at the same time amused by the infectious charm he poured all over her. He relaxed in his chair. The sea and the sky and the wind and the space had taken his gloom away. It was good to be afloat, wonderful to be part of such an efficient, well-kept and proud fighting ship, grand to be comfortable and safe in a sea chair and his mind had given him different plans to cope with tomorrow and the days after.

  Joss. I’m not going to worry about anything, he promised himself. Remember your oath and the new era!

  After Gornt arrived in Yokohama like a gift from heaven, Malcolm had thanked God for the reprieve and had sworn, if Gornt’s information was what he claimed, that forevermore he would just do the best he could, and be satisfied with that. With enough information to smash the Brocks, he was certain beyond all doubt his mother would rush to his side
. Angelique was all that mattered—and being tai-pan, but not only in name.

  That same night he had been impelled to look in the mirror. It had to be done. Some power forced him to regard himself for the first real time in years, to really study himself deeply, not only his face.

  At length, he thought: This is what you are, you’re still badly hurt inside, you can’t straighten up too well, your legs don’t work as they should, but you can stand and you can walk and you will improve. The rest of your body works, and your mind. Accept it. Remember what Mother and Father kept telling you since you were a child: “Accept your joss, that’s what Dirk would always say. Dirk had half a foot shot off and that didn’t stop him; Dirk was shot and cut a dozen times, almost killed at Trafalgar as a powder monkey; almost destroyed by Tyler Brock half a dozen times. Accept your joss. Be Chinese, was Dirk’s advice. Do your best and devil take the hindmost!”

  His heart began pounding. Dirk Dirk Dirk. God damn Dirk Struan! You’ve loathed having him thrown in your face, you’ve always been petrified you’d never measure up to his impossible image. Admit it!

  The reflection did not answer. But he did.

  “I’ve his blood, I’ve his Noble House to run, I’m tai-pan, I do my best, but I’ll never measure up to him, I admit it, God curse him, that’s the truth! That’s my joss.”

  Good, his reflection seemed to say. But why hate him? He doesn’t hate you. Why hate him like you’ve hated him all your life—you’ve hated him all your life. Haven’t you?

  “That’s true, I hate him and always have!”

  Saying it aloud had shocked him. But it was true—and all the love and respect a sham. Yes, he had hated him, but suddenly, there in front of the mirror, he no longer did. Why?

  I don’t know. Maybe it’s because of Edward Gornt, maybe he’s the good spirit who’s unlocked me from my past as he wants me to unlock him from his. Hasn’t Morgan poisoned his life and his mother’s and father’s? Not that Dirk poisoned mine, but his spectre came between Mother and Father and poisoned them—wasn’t that their joss, that Father died hating him, and as much as Mother openly worships him … in her heart she hates him for not marrying her.

  There on the bridge of the frigate, he remembered the cold sweat soaking him, then later drinking some whisky, but not the other stuff, rupturing that obsession there and then, knowing another truth: he craved it, and was addicted.

  Too many truths faced. Not easy to face yourself, the most difficult—and dangerous—task a man can do, must do once in his life, to be at peace. I’ve done it, like it or not.

  “Number One,” the young signalman said to Lieutenant Lloyd, his telescope trained on his distant counterpart. “Message from the flagship, sir.”

  Two decks below, the engine room was a dungeon of heat and throbbing noise and dust and blackness and stench that was pierced with squares of blazing coals as half-naked stokers opened furnace covers under the great boilers to shovel in more coal or rake the embers to receive more coal, and then more.

  Angelique and Marlowe were standing on one of the overhead iron grilles, the air swirling up filled with the smell of coke and fire and burning oil and sweat and steam. Bodies below sheened with sweat, big-bellied men with muscles bunched, their razor-sharp shovels screeching along the iron deck into the coal bunkers to come back full, a deft throw and the coal scattered in a level bed to fire at once and be replenished.

  Aft, the pounding engine shone with care and oil, more men using long-nosed cans to squirt oil into joints, others cleaning with swatches of cotton waste, others tending dials and pumps and valves as the engine drove the propeller shaft against the crush of the sea. Jets of steam from valves, more oil and cleaning and constant attention to pistons and levers and cogs and more coal and Angelique found it vastly exciting—those below oblivious of them.

  Proudly Marlowe pointed and explained over the roar and she answered with a nod and a smile from time to time, holding his arm lightly to steady herself, not hearing a thing or caring to listen, possessed by the engine room that seemed to her a masculine Valhalla where machines were married to men, now part of them, primitive yet futuristic, slaves tending their masters and not the other way around.

  Unnoticed the signalman came up behind them and saluted. Not being heard he came forward, saluted again and broke her spell. He handed Marlowe the written message. Marlowe read it quickly, then nodded and shouted at the man, “Acknowledge!” He leaned over to Angelique. “Sorry, we have to go now.”

  At that moment signal bells from the bridge sounded below. The engineer officer acknowledged the order. Men rushed to close cocks and open others, leaning on levers and checking dials. As steam power came off the huge driving shaft and the engine began to slow, the noise lessened and the stokers leaned gratefully on their shovels, their chests gulping air heavy with coal dust and wrung out the towels they wore about their necks. One man turned on the bunker and cursed it, still drowned by the roar, and opened his trousers and pissed on the coals in a jet that ended in steam to the laughter of the other men. Marlowe hastily took her arm and guided her away, up the gangway. One stoker noticed her, then another and before she had gone, they were all staring at her departing figure, silently. When she had gone out of sight, one of them made obscene movements to more laughter mixed with a sudden, sad silence.

  On deck the instant lack of noise and breathing in the sea air made her feel quite giddy for a moment and she held on to Marlowe. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Thank you, John, that was, well, extraordinary.”

  “Oh?” Marlowe said absently, his attention on sailors in the rigging and on deck hoisting and adjusting sails. “I suppose it is, the first time. At sea, in a storm it gets rough down there. Stokers and engineers are a race apart.” He took her over to Malcolm. “Sorry, have to leave you a moment.”

  He went below to his cabin that was aft. The Marine sentry saluted as he passed. The ship’s safe was under his bunk. He unlocked it nervously. The message from the Admiral had read, “Activate sealed orders, 1/A16/12.” In the safe were the ship’s log, codes, money for pay, pay book, punishment book, manuals, manifests, receipts, Naval Regs and several sealed envelopes given him by Flag this morning.

  His hand shook slightly, finding the correct one. Is it the Return to the fleet, prepare for War, he expected? He sat at the table that was surrounded by seats screwed to the deck, and broke the seal.

  “It was extraordinary, down there, Malcolm. Ghastly in a way, all those men down there, astonishing—and if it’s like that in a small ship like this, what would it be like on a big steamer—say like on the Great Eastern?”

  “It’s astonishing, Angel. I saw her launched on the Thames the last time I was in London, four years ago, when I finished school—my, was I glad to have done with schooling. She’s completely of iron, four thousand tons burthen, the biggest in the world by far and built to carry emigrants, thousands at a time, to Australia. It took weeks to launch her—they did it sideways, a complete cock-up and she almost sank. Poor Brunel who designed and built her went broke many times, the companies he floated did. She was ill-fated, caught fire on her maiden voyage and almost gutted—and that killed him. Damned if I’d sail on her—ill-fated she is, and was, from the first plate laid …” He saw Marlowe come on deck and frowned. Now there was no humor on the man’s face.

  The Bosun rang eight bells. Noon. “I have the conn, Number One,” Marlowe said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why don’t you take Miss Angelique for’rard, she might like to see some of our deck cannon close up.”

  “Gladly. Miss?”

  Obediently she followed him down the gangway and along the deck. He was short, freckled and her height. “You’re Welsh, Mr. Lloyd?” she asked.

  He laughed, his voice singsong. “Welsh as the hills of Llandrindod Wells that is my home, look you.”

  She laughed with him and, leaning against the tilting deck, whispered, “Why am I being sen
t off like a schoolgirl?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, Missy.” She saw his deep-set brown eyes look back and then they were turned on her. “The Captain wants to talk about lunch, no doubt, or asking him, your man, if he wants to use the head, the toilet. Man talk,” he said, and the eyes smiled.

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “The Captain is the Captain. Now, cannon, Ma’am!”

  Her laugh trilled, the sailors nearby were warmed and Marlowe and Malcolm on the bridge heard her too and turned to look. “She makes a pretty picture, Malcolm.”

  “Yes, she does. You were saying. Tiffin?”

  “Does that sound all right? The cook’s first class on his apple turnovers.” The menu was to be fish stew, chicken and salt-pork pie and dumplings, cold roast chicken, cheddar cheese and apple turnovers. “I’ve a couple of bottles of Montrachet ’55, chilled, that I’ve been saving against a special occasion, and a Chambertin ’52.”

  “You live rather well,” Malcolm said, very impressed.

  Marlowe smiled. “Not really, but this is a special day and, to tell the truth, I scrounged the Chambertin—it was my Old Man’s favorite. The Montrachet, he gave me a couple of cases when I came out.”

  “He’s Navy?”

  “Oh yes.” The way Marlowe said it expressed surprise that the question needed to be asked. “He’s Commander in Chief, Plymouth.” He hesitated, began to talk and stopped.

  “What’s the problem? We’re ordered back?”

  “No.” Marlowe looked at him. “I was given several sealed orders this morning, along with written permission to bring you aboard and to be back by sundown, without fail. A few minutes ago Flag ordered me to open one of them. I wasn’t told to tell you about it but I wasn’t told not to. Perhaps you’d explain. The message said ‘Should Mr. Struan ask a peculiar favor, you may, if you wish, grant it.’”

  The world stood still for Malcolm Struan. He did not know if he was alive or dead and his head reeled and if he had not been sitting he would certainly have fallen over.