Читать книгу Shanghai - Christopher New - Страница 7

MASON KICKED HIS WAY through the crowded, clashing shafts of the badgering rickshaws and settled into one further away from the gate, leaning back sweating under the canvas canopy. 'Never take the first one,' he advised Denton loudly, 'They always charge more.' He took off his topee and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

It was noon, the heat stared balefully at them from the cloudless sky, from the narrow, parched streets, from the flat walls of the houses. The coolie pulled them along bumpy, rutted alleys and beside stagnant little canals, stinking with refuse. Stalls and dark cave-like shops lined every street. Coolies with long bamboo carrying-poles, women with crushing loads of stones in baskets on their backs, children, dogs and whining beggars pressed noisily all round them. Occasionally another European passed in a rickshaw or a sedan chair, eyes narrowed like theirs against the heat and light.

'Where d'you come from?' Mason asked suddenly, taking another cigar out of his tunic pocket. This time he did not offer one to Denton. 'Enfield? Near London, isn't it?'

The rickshaw lurched into a pot hole and Mason fell against Denton. 'Blithering idiot!' he shouted at the coolie. 'Why don't you look where you're going?'

The coolie's head shook briefly in apology. Or was it incomprehension, or mere helplessness?

'Look-see! Look-see!' Mason called out threateningly. 'You damn well look-see, or I'll kick your behind!'

The coolie shook his head again, hunching his shoulders abjectly. His subservience seemed to mollify Mason. He gave a satisfied but still warning little grunt and leant back again, lighting his cigar. 'What got you into the Customs service?' he demanded, tossing the still burning match aside as he settled himself more comfortably in the seat.

Denton edged along to make more room for him. 'It was an accident, really,' he began.

'Hey, look at that,' Mason interrupted, nudging him with his elbow. 'Not bad, eh?'

A sedan chair was being carried past by two bearers. The curtains were open and Denton caught a glimpse of a doll-like oval face with quick, dark eyes and rouged cheekbones framed by shiny black hair. Mason twisted round as the chair swayed past, his eyes gleaming as they had at the execution. 'Not bad, at all, eh?' he sighed as he turned back, blowing out a long jet of aromatic blue smoke. 'That's what makes being here worthwhile.'

Denton looked at him inquiringly, puzzled.

'Sing-song girl,' Mason explained obscurely. 'They make a fortune. Cost it, too.'

'Sing-song girl?'

'That's the translation.' He said something in Chinese. 'Sing-song girls.'

'Oh, they're singers?'

Mason glanced at him sideways. 'That's one of their accomplishments,' he agreed, preening his moustache with his knuckle and pursing his rosy lips into an ironic little smile. 'Here we are. Hop out, you're smaller than I am.'

They walked together up the stone steps of the large building that Denton had scarcely noticed when he first saw it, his eyes still numbed by the execution. It was an imposing building, he recognized, in the same style as the Customs House. Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Officers' Mess he read over the entrance, feeling a faint lift of pride that he belonged to it.

'Let's change your money first,' Mason nodded across the lobby. 'At the desk over there. Then you won't have to rely on me to pay the rickshaw boys.'