Gai-Jin

  Edward is good for me, she thought, looking up at him—not that he will ever replace my Malcolm, that’s different.

  “You all right now?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you, my dear. Hurry back.”

  He kissed her proffered hand. “Take care, Ma’am.” His glow made him even more boyish.

  “Don’t forget.” She had asked him to tell Tess that she hoped one day they could meet as friends. “It’s important.”

  “Yes, it is, and I won’t forget and I’ll be back before you know it.” For those nearby he added louder, “I’ll see that your shopping list is taken care of, never fear.” A final little pressure on her hand and he leapt onto the slippery deck without a care, hung on with one hand, last aboard. The Bosun tooted, shoved the throttles Full Astern and backed into the chop. Gornt waved and then, not wanting to be indiscreet, went into the cabin.

  “Pretty girl,” Hoag said, thoughtfully.

  “Yes, suh, a Belle to end Belles.”

  Both men watched the jetty recede. “Have you ever been to India, Edward?”

  “No, never have. You been to Paris?”

  “No, never. But India’s the best place in the world, best life in the world for Englishmen, you’re mostly that, aren’t you?” In his mind Hoag could see himself arriving at her family house that was behind high walls, brown and dusty outside but inside cool and green, the sound of the water fountain mingling with laughter that permeated the main house and the servants’ quarters, together with friendliness and the peace possessed by everyone because of their utter belief in birth and death and rebirth, in never-ending succession, until through the mercy of the Infinite they would reach Nirvana, the Place of Heavenly Peace. Arjumand will be there, he thought—oh, how I hope I can find my way there too.

  His eyes focused on the jetty, on Angelique and others, all people he would probably never see again. Now Angelique waved a last time then strolled over to Maureen Ross who was waiting by the lamp. I hope they become friends, he thought, wondering about them. In a moment, they and the jetty became part of the night. Angelique’s correct to bend to Tess, he thought, not that she had any option. Absently his fingers made sure her affidavit was safe in his pocket.

  Sad about Malcolm, tragic. Poor Malcolm, diligently working all his life for something he would never have, would never be. Malcolm Struan, the tai-pan who never truly was—all his life like a snow-blind man in a blizzard searching for a white tent that was never there.

  “Sad about Malcolm, don’t you think?” But Gornt was no longer beside him. He looked around and saw he had gone on deck and, his back to Yokohama, was watching the Belle ahead, hatless, the wind ruffling his hair.

  Why the smile, and what’s behind it? he asked himself. So hard and yet … Something strange about that young man. Is he a king in the making or a man bent on regicide?

  Most people on the jetty had wandered off. Angelique was beside Maureen near the lamp, watching the Belle and disappearing cutter. Soon they were alone but for Chen and Vargas who were talking quietly with one another, waiting to unload the cutter, should it be necessary and, unasked, to chaperone the two women.

  “Maureen …” Angelique glanced at her. Her lovely smile faded, noticing how unhappy her newfound friend looked. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Well, no, it’s … really, dinna concern yoursel’. It’s … it’s just that I haven’t seen Jamie all day, he’s been busy and, and I had something important …” The words trailed off.

  “I’ll wait with you if you like. Even better, Maureen, why not come with me? Let’s wait in my suite and watch from my window. We’ll see the cutter in plenty of time to meet her.”

  “I think I’d … well, I think I’d rather wait here.”

  Angelique firmly took her arm. “What is it? What’s the matter, can I help?”

  “No, I din’na think so, dear Angelique. It’s … it’s just that … it’s just that …” Maureen hesitated again, then stammered, “Oh, God, I din’na want to burden you but his, Jamie’s, his—his mistress, came to see me this afternoon.”

  “From the Yoshiwara?”

  “Yes. She came to kowtow, to bow, she said, and tell me not to worry because she’s looked after him perfectly and she wanted to ask in future should she present her bill to me monthly or yearly.”

  Angelique’s mouth dropped open. “She did?”

  “Yes.” Maureen looked green under the oil light and stuttered, “She also said that if there was anything I wanted to know about … about … about ‘Jami’ as she called him, ugh!, about his bed habits, positions and so on, as I was a virgin and wouldn’t know these things, she’d be happy to oblige in detail because she was a professional of Second Rank and promised to give me a picture book called a ‘pillow book’ and she would mark his—his specialties but not to worry because Jami was well practiced and his … his, she called it his One-eyed Monk was in perfect order. There, now you know it all!”

  Angelique was flabbergasted. “Mon Dieu, you poor dear, how awful! But … but she speaks English too?”

  “No, an almost incoherent mixture of gibberish and pidgin and some of Jamie’s words but I understood her key points perfectly well indeed. It—it seems she’s—she’s been his doxy for a year or more. She was tiny, no’ at all pretty, no’ five foot and I said, I didna’ know what to say so I remarked on her size, how small she was and the hussy—the hussy guffawed and said, ‘P’renti big ’nuff, Jami, tai-tai, on back fit awe’ same, heya? You ’rucky womans.’”

  “Oh, mon Dieu!”

  “Quite. What do I do?”

  Angelique found her own head buzzing. “You could … no, that wouldn’t do …”

  “Perhaps I could … no, I canna’. It’s too much …”

  “What if you …” Angelique shook her head. Impotently she stared at her and at that moment Maureen looked at her, each seeing herself in the other, the same shock, revulsion, repugnance, contempt, fury written clearly on both faces. For a moment they were frozen, then Angelique snickered, in a second Maureen did the same and then they were choked with laughter.

  Chen and Vargas peered across at them, the peals of laughter mixing with the waves on the shore and those that battered the pilings. Angelique wiped away these, the first, good laughter tears she had had in such a long time. “His One-eyed …” Again they were convulsed, shrieking with laughter until their stomachs hurt and they hung on to one another.

  As suddenly as the laughing fit arrived it went away. An ache remained. “It’s funny, Maureen, but not funny at all.”

  “Yes. Not funny,” Maureen said heavily. “I feel … I want to go home now. I thought I could deal with the Yoshiwara—Jamie’s no different from other men—but I canna’, I know that now. I canna’ face this life where … where the Yoshiwara is and will ever be and like it or no’, Angelique, in a year or two the bairns, the children, arrive and a few years after he’ll think us old, whoever he is—and we will be old, our hair will be grey and teeth fall out and whoever he is he will turn away. A woman’s lot is no’ a happy one. I wish I was aboard Atlanta Belle now, going home, no’ here, no’ here. I’m going home anyway, soon as I can. I’ve decided.”

  “Think about it, don’t tell him tonight.”

  “It’s better to say it tonight. That’s … it’s better.”

  Angelique hesitated. “I’ll wait till we see the cutter, then I’ll leave.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be sorry to leave you, now that we’ve met. I’ve never had a real friend.” Maureen put her arm in hers, and looked back at Atlanta Belle.

  “Ayeeyah,” Chen was whispering disgustedly in Four Village dialect that he and Vargas spoke fluently. “Why can’t those two whores be sensible and wait indoors until the cutter arrives, then we don’t have to wait in the cold either.”

  “Jami won’t be pleased to hear you call her that!”

  “Fortunately he doesn’t speak this dialect, or even Cantonese, and anyway I wouldn’t call her whore
in front of him or any foreign devil—though that’s what we call all their women, as you know—nor would I use such blunt words around them. I’d use ‘Morning Flower’ or one of a thousand other names which we both know means ‘whore’ but foreign devils think means ‘Morning Flower.’” Chen chortled, warm in his long padded jacket. He looked up at the sky as the moon came briefly through the overcast. “That Morning Flower thinks she’ll be Jami tai-tai.” Again he chortled. “She never will be.”

  “No, not after today,” Vargas said gloomily. “She’s the right size for him, time he was married and it would have been good to have children here.” Vargas missed his own, six of them, that he had left with his two wives in Macao until he could afford a house of his own here. “What about Missee-tai-tai and this Shanghai Gornt? Will he increase her money?”

  “If he does it will be for his benefit not hers. What I want to know is what’s in those papers?”

  “What papers?”

  “The ones Lun saw when William tai-pan was dozing by his fire. The ones from Long Pointed Nose. Dew neh loh moh that Lun can’t read French. Willum tai-pan was in plenty shock, so Lun said.”

  “What would Pointed Nose send Willum from the grave?”

  Chen shrugged. “Trouble for Missee-tai-tai. Perhaps it was about Dark of the Moon, eh?”

  “That’s only a rumor.”

  Chen said nothing, keeping that secret as Noble House Chen had ordered after Malcolm’s death. “Whatever happens, Tess tai-tai will grind Missee-tai-tai and the Shanghai foreign devil into dust.”

  “Oh? What have you heard?”

  Chen rolled his eyes. “Tess tai-tai is tai-pan now, that’s what Noble House Chen says—he told us in the last mail and to beware. Did you ever hear of an Empress giving away power once she’s got it? Any woman, for that matter? Never in all our five hundred centuries of history. She’s tai-pan now, according to Noble House Chen, and he should know.”

  “I thought Shanghai Albert was to be tai-pan.”

  “Never. She’ll grind him into dust too—Old Green-eyed Devil forced him and his brother on the Noble House. Rumor is Tess tai-tai hates them because they are secret bastards of that foreign devil missionary’s daughter—the one of Many Lovers by Green-eyed Devil himself.”

  “Harbor Master Glessing’s wife? Mary Sinclair? Never!”

  “It could be true, she made One-Leg Glessing wear a green hat a dozen times.”

  “Made him a cuckold? That’s another legend,” Vargas said, guarding her reputation like all her ex-lovers. Now she was in her forties, used, but still as hungry as ever, he thought, the opposite to Tess Struan who abominates fornication and drove her husband Culum to drink and other women. “Tess tai-tai should have married the tai-pan—and not his son Culum. He could have lubricated her majestically, which was her real lack, and still have more than enough left for Second Wife May-may and Third Wife Yin Hsi as well.”

  “True,” Chen said, “then we’d be strong with lots more sons to follow, and not weak and fleeing from One-eye Devil Brock.” He added ominously, “Noble House Chen is worried.”

  “Sad that Number One Son Malcolm died as he did.”

  “The gods were out that day,” Chen said wisely. “Listen, you kowtow to the foreign devil god, has he told you why gods spend more time out than watching over our affairs?”

  “Gods are gods, they only talk to one another … look, Belle’s leaving …”

  Maureen said, “Atlanta Belle on her way, Angelique.”

  Godspeed, Angelique thought, squinting against the slight wind, the ship only a vague shape.

  “And there’s the cutter.”

  “Where? My goodness, your eyes are sharp, I can hardly see her.” Angelique gave Maureen’s arm a friendly squeeze. “I’m sure you and Jamie will …” She saw the color had gone out of her. “Don’t worry, Maureen, it will be all right, I’m sure.”

  Maureen muttered. “I dinna think I can face him now.”

  “Then … then you run off, I’ll say you had a headache and will see him tomorrow that will give you time to think, it will be better tomorrow.”

  “Tonight, tomorrow, my mind’s made up,” Maureen said.

  Both women watched the cutter’s riding lights becoming steadily more visible. In a little while they could make out the tall figure of Jamie in the cabin lights. He was alone.

  Angelique said, “’Night, Maureen, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “No. Please stay, I canna’ do it alone. Please stay.”

  The cutter was barely fifty metres from the jetty. They saw Jamie lean out of the window and wave. Maureen did not return the salute. Behind them the oil lamps were fine along the promenade, and in the big houses and warehouses that had remained untouched. Somewhere men were singing. Over at the French Legation Vervene was playing the flute. Maureen’s eyes were fixed on the approaching man. Again he waved, then swung on deck. “Maureen!” he hollered, clearly so happy to see her.

  Angelique glanced back at her and saw Maureen’s eyes soften and knew she was forgotten. Rightly so, she thought, and smiled to herself. Maureen will weep and rave and swear she’s leaving but she won’t, she’ll make him suffer, but she will forgive him and never forget and stay—she’ll stay because she loves him—how silly we women are.

  Quietly, unnoticed, she walked away, glad to be alone.

  The night was pleasant. In the bay the bells were sounding the hour. Out to sea, beyond the headland her emissary was launched aboard Atlanta Belle on his voyage of conquest, a voyage of no return for both of them. And for the enemy, the Woman of Hong Kong.

  Edward will squeeze that awful woman and we’ll live happy ever after, we’ll spend more than two months every second year in Paris, we’ll summer in Provence and I will start a dynasty—with five thousand guineas of my own, I’m an heiress, and every sou I spend will remind me of her.

  How silly of Edward to think I would ever, could ever be her friend, would ever want to be.

  That woman’s vile. I will never forgive her for the things she did and wrote. Illegitimate, eh? I will never forget that, and we will be revenged, my Malcolm and I, for all the anguish she caused us, him and me. We will be revenged on that hag.

  I like that name, she told herself, smiling. That’s one of my new secrets. That’s what I knew she was from the first moment I met her, and during the few times we met and times we dined, barely talking to me, always disapproving of me, much as I tried. She’s a hag. Even though she’s thirty-seven. She is and always will be Hag Struan to me.

  Angelique was eighteen and a few days over six months old and she walked into the Struan foyer under the entwined Red Lion of Scotland and Green Dragon of China and up the great staircase and into her own suite. There she bolted the door and then, so happily, went to bed—to sleep snug.

  Seven days later, at his request, Yoshi met Sir William and the Ministers at Kanagawa and soothed them, content that Anjo had again fallen into his trap to use a big stick that was no stick at all—though equally astonished the gai-jin had not sailed away from the devastation. His salve was to be a meeting with the Shōgun, as soon as the Shōgun returned.

  And when would that be? Sir William asked, and he replied, I will arrange it quickly, overruling the tairō if need be, he’s so sick, poor man, though still tairō. Meanwhile I trust the information I require for our possible future accords will be ready soon and that my counsel will be considered?

  Forthwith H.M.S. Pearl was sent to Kagoshima with a formal demand to Sanjiro for an apology, reparations and the murderers handed over or identified. Sanjiro dismissed it as impertinent. The following week, with Sir William and his staff aboard the flagship, the battle squadron sailed—H.M.S. Euryalus, 35 guns, Pearl, 21, Perseus, 21, Racehorse, 14, Havoc, Coquette, and the paddle sloop Argus, 9—and shortly anchored in the neck of Kagoshima Bay, out of range of the shore batteries that were protected in fourteen forts on both sides of the bay. The weather turned bad.

  As conditions worsened, Sa
njiro vacillated. For four days. At dawn on the fifth day, the rain and storm heavy, three foreign-built Satsuma-owned steamers anchored off the town were seized and scuttled, and some soundings taken. At noon all shore batteries commenced firing and Admiral Ketterer gave orders to engage. In line ahead, the flagship leading, the fleet steamed into the uncharted waters. As each came into range of the forts the ships poured broadside after broadside into them, the returning fire much heavier than expected.

  An hour after the battle had begun Euryalus swerved out of line. Unwittingly she had been steered between a fort and a target area the shore gunners had ranged to a nicety, and a round shot had taken off the heads of her Captain and Commander on the bridge, standing beside Ketterer and Sir William, and a 10-inch shell exploded on the deck, killing another seven sailors and wounding an officer. Pearl led in her place. Near sunset Perseus went aground under the guns of a fort but Pearl dragged her off without loss.

  The engagement continued until sunset. Several forts had been damaged, many cannon destroyed, some magazines blown up and rockets fired into Kagoshima. No ships lost, the only deaths so far those aboard the flagship. That night Kagoshima burned as Yokohama had burned. The storm increased.

  At dawn, with no letup in the foul weather, the dead were given their sea burial and re-engagement ordered. Euryalus led. That night the fleet once more anchored out of range, all ships intact, morale high with plenty of ammunition in reserve. Kagoshima was gutted, most batteries damaged. At dawn, in gale-force winds and driving rain, to the disgust of most aboard and over Sir William’s protests, Ketterer ordered the fleet to return to Yokohama. Though far out of range, a few shore guns still fired defiantly at their wake.

  Ketterer claimed it a victory, the city had been burned, Sanjiro humbled and, most important, the fleet was unharmed—weather had made his decision necessary, he maintained.

  In Kyōto, the moment Ogama of Choshu heard that Kagoshima was destroyed—with Sanjiro reported killed—he launched a surprise night coup, code name Crimson Sky, to regain total control of the Gates, lured into another trap of Yoshi’s design. At once Yodo of Tosa and all fence-sitting daimyos joined with the Shōgunate against Ogama—better a weak Shōgunate guarding the Gates than a single, all-powerful Ogama. So the coup was put down, Ogama forced out of Kyōto to retreat to Shimonoseki and his Straits, there to lick his wounds, swearing vengeance, particularly on his erstwhile ally Yoshi. And to prepare for war.