Читать книгу Shanghai - Christopher New - Страница 25

ON SATURDAY AFTERNOONS, if he wasn't on duty, Denton would write his letters home, a long one to Emily, a shorter one to his parents - he had no one else to write to. He wrote every week, even when he found he had nothing to say. Perhaps it was only to relieve the heavy loneliness of those dull, blank hours after tiffin, perhaps it was merely to cling on to the links with them that he sensed were slowly weakening. Often, ransacking his brains for new bits of information, he would gaze out from the veranda towards the Bund, trying to conjure up their faces - especially Emily's - amongst the forest of masts and funnels, as if the sight of the ships that sailed to England would work some magic on his imagination. But he couldn't picture Emily clearly any more, her face was fading in his memory like an old photograph. He could no longer imagine them taking up where they'd left off with her shy farewell kiss on deck of the Orcades. He could no longer visualise her joining him in Shanghai - not next year, not the year after, not at all, except in some vague fantasy in which her face was dim and misty, the surroundings unreal. Despite himself his letters to her began to sound hollow even as he wrote them. And yet she could be brought back vividly and painfully by some sharp splinter of memory or a chance thought or word. If only she would write more often!

Sometimes he would be disturbed in his writing by the sound of a woman's voice laughing on Mason's veranda. Perhaps Mason's baritone would answer the woman teasingly, and then there might be a silence, a hush almost, followed by a little smothered scream of laughter from the woman. Denton would get up again and pace the floor, muttering indignantly. Yet at the same time he felt a prurient, thrilling desire to peep from his own veranda at the woman on Mason's.

Was it the same woman? What was she wearing? Not Mason's revealing tunic again? But it was when the voices quietened later and there was no sound or stirring for an hour or two in the somnolence of the afternoon that the distraction was, curiously, as its worst. Purge his mind how he would, the same lascivious images would come back again and again in that suggestive silence, images no less sinful for being vague and ill-informed. He imagined the girl he'd first seen there, soft, filmy clothes slithering off her shoulders. He saw her on the bed, a bed just like his, her breasts rippling as she raised her arms to embrace Mason and pull him down on top of her, her lips parting for his, her black hair spread like a fan on the pillow beneath her. Or was it not Mason he imagined sinking down on her softness, but himself? He jerked his mind guiltily away from all these images and forced himself back to the dull dead words on the page in front of him. He could go on determinedly with his letters, and yet his mind would still stray, he would still catch himself gazing dreamily at the wall, his head slightly cocked, listening for the first drowsy sounds of their awakening.

Then at last it would come, the lazy, unhurried yawning of Mason on the veranda again, his languid murmurs followed by the girl's brighter replies. The street below would be throbbing with the usual noises - hawkers, coolies, rickshaw boys and bearers of sedan chairs, servants, cooks, beggars, masters, mistresses and children, all talking, laughing, shouting and complaining in their quick, shrill voices. But in all that clamour, his keen ear unerringly picked out the low, playful or indolent voices of satisfied lust next door.

Sometimes he took Emily's last letter out and read it through, to return his mind to purer thoughts. But while his eyes were scanning the words he now knew almost by heart, his imagination would sidle off to titillating visions of the Chinese girl's swelling breasts, her round brown nipples, the smooth flat paleness of her belly and the exquisite darkness between her thighs.

It was on one of those Saturdays early in December, when the sun was so weak that it was welcome now and Denton would actually seek it in the room, pulling his chair closer to the window, that Ah Koo came in with his laundry. Denton was sitting, unfinished letter in hand, gazing out over the veranda at the paling blue of the sky as the sun went down. He was half-consciously listening for the awakening sounds from Mason's room. After the usual giggles and laughter there had been a silent stillness there for over two hours. Denton had even begun to wonder whether they'd slipped out and stealthily crept away - as if they knew he was listening, or cared if they knew! But then they came, the mutterings and sighs and yawnings, the easy, indulgent murmurs. He looked down at what he'd written with an effort of concentration, but his eyes were soon unfocussed as he strained to hear.

Ah Koo cleared his throat loudly and swallowed. 'Master wantee young gir'?'

'What?'

'Wantee young gir'?' He stood with Denton's pressed shirts neatly folded over his arm. 'You wantee, I bring. Very young. First time gir'.'

'No.' Denton frowned indignantly, his cheeks tingling.

'All same Mr Mason. I bring young gir' Mr Mason, he not likee, send away. I bring you other one gir', very goo'. Mr Mason same same you?'

'Certainly not!'

'Not wantee?'

'No. Not wantee.' His confusion had robbed Denton momentarily of even the simplest Shanghainese and he stumbled into the pidgin he was trying to grow out of.

'Wantee young boy?' Ah Koo's face seemed utterly impassive. Nothing moved in it except his mouth. There was neither disgust nor gloating in his eyes, nothing but the faint shrewd glimmer of inquiry. He might just as well have been asking where the shirts over his arm should go. 'Not wantee gir', not wantee boy?' he asked, shaking his head faintly.

'No.' Denton turned away. A low, throaty giggle sounded voluptuously from Mason's veranda, almost as though the girl had heard Ah Koo and was doing her best to help him corrupt Denton. Mason's voice muttered something, then he laughed.

'You wantee, you say,' Ah Koo said, unabashed, as he opened the wardrobe and put the shirts carefully away. 'All same same Mr Mason. He very likee. Say Ah Koo bring young gir', I bring chop-chop. I bring you same same. Never mind boy or gir'.'

Denton had ostentatiously bent his head over his letter again, but now he turned round and spoke in carefully rehearsed Shanghainese. 'I do not want girl, I do not want boy.'

Ah Koo listened to him from the door, his corrugated face still impassive. 'You wantee, you tell Ah Koo,' he said. 'Japan gir', Chinese gir', Portugal gir'. Ah Koo bring chop-chop.'

A few days later, Mason paused by Denton's table in the mess, where he was sitting with several other young inspectors. 'Ah Koo's a bit worried about your health, you know,' he said, leaning on the back of Denton's chair.

'Ah Koo?'

'Yes. Wonders if there's something wrong with you.' He surveyed the expectant, grinning faces all round the table. 'Says you don't care for girls.'

Denton looked back at his half-empty plate silently, feeling his cheeks beginning to flush.

'Perhaps you prefer boys?' Mason suggested. 'Only Ah Koo said you weren't interested in them either.' He laid his hand companionably on Denton's shoulder.

'You know perfectly well I'm engaged,' Denton said, his voice wavering between a show of amusement and a show of indignation. He wanted to shrug Mason's hand off and yet at the same not to antagonise him - rather to treat his teasing casually, as though he was indifferent to it, or even faintly amused himself. After all, it is only a joke, he told himself uneasily.

'We know perfectly well you say you're engaged,' Mason answered, winking at the others. 'But some of us are beginning to wonder if that isn't an excuse. In any case, even if you are engaged,' he straightened up, brushing his moustache with his knuckles and glancing significantly round the table again, 'you need to get a bit of practice in, don't you? I mean it might be years before she comes out here, mightn't it? You wouldn't want to disappoint her, would you?' And while he basked complacently in the sniggers that rippled round the table, his heavy hand patted Denton's shoulder amicably as if to assure him that honestly, he was only joking.