Читать книгу High Road to China - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 6

1

‘So far I’ve shot only one man.’ Eve Tozer patted the gun-case beside her as if it were a vanity bag containing all she needed to face the men of the world. ‘Elephants are easier.’

‘Of course.’ Arthur Henty kept his eyebrows in place. ‘Did you kill the, er, man?’

‘One couldn’t miss at ten yards. He was a perfectly ugly Mexican who was trying to rape me.’

‘Ten yards? That was rather distant for rape, wasn’t it?’

‘He was trouserless. His intention was distinctly obvious, if you know what I mean.’

Henty hung on to his eyebrows from the inside, wondering if one could dislocate one’s forehead. He was a tall balding man in whom the bone was very evident, as if the skeleton had already decided to shrug off the flesh; but his eyes were bright blue, shrewd and amused, and he had no intention of stepping into an early grave. Not while women as attractive as Eve Tozer presented themselves to his gaze. Even if that was as far as the presentation of themselves went.

He had never met Bradley Tozer’s daughter until he had gone down to Tilbury this morning to escort her from the ship that had brought her from China. Several people in the Shanghai head office of Tozer Cathay Limited had written him that she was every inch her father’s daughter and now, with a glance at the gun-case on the seat of the car, he was prepared to believe they were right. He studied her, wondering what the perfectly ugly Mexican had thought of her as, trouserless and lance pointed, he had rushed towards her and the fate worse than he had anticipated.

Eve was staring out at London as it slid by outside the car and Henty looked at her closely, yet managed not to stare. It was a trick he had learned in ten years up-country in China, where the stranger’s gaze could never afford to be too frank. He saw a girl above average height with a figure that would attract men less violent and point-blank than the unfortunate Mexican. She was dressed in a beige silk travelling suit with tan stockings and shoes that, even to his inexpert eye, looked expensive and hand-made. The skirt, he noticed, was of the fashionable length, just below the knee; his wife Marjorie was always trying to educate him in such trivialities. But he also noticed that she was wearing her dark hair cut unfashionably short and there was a touch of rouge on her cheeks, something that Marjorie would have labelled as ‘fast’.

‘It is six years since I was last in London.’ Eve looked out the window of the Rolls-Royce as they drove along the Embankment. Grey skies and a thin muslin drizzle of rain had not kept the August Bank Holiday crowd at home; the English, she guessed, were as dogged about their pleasures as they had been about winning the war. England was still settling uneasily into the new peace; during last year’s summer holidays, she had read in The Times, there had still been a disbelief that the long agony was really over. This long holiday weekend, however, the citizens were determined to enjoy themselves, come what may. Buses, bright in their new postwar paint, rolled by; on their open top decks passengers sat beneath their umbrellas, teeth bared in resolute smiles. Excursion boats went up and down the Thames, their passengers bellowing ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown’ as they went past the Mother of Parliaments. A newspaper poster said, Woolley: Duck, and Eve wondered at the strangeness of the English language as spoken in England.

‘What’s a woolly duck?’

Henty frowned in puzzlement, looked back, then laughed. ‘That’s Frank Woolley, one of our more famous cricketers. He scored a duck. Nil runs.’

‘Oh. Some time, not this trip, I must go to see a cricket game. When we were last here, Mother wanted to see one, but Father wouldn’t hear of it. Said it was too slow for him. Instead we went to Wimbledon. We saw Norman Brookes beat Tony Wilding in the men’s singles. I remember I fell in love with Tony Wilding.’

‘He was killed in the war. At Neuve Chapelle. My two brothers were killed there, too.’

‘Was that where you got your, er, wound?’

‘No, on the Somme.’ Henty tapped his stiff right leg with his walking-stick. ‘The bally thing plays up occasionally. When it rains, mostly.’

‘You shouldn’t have come all the way down to the ship.’ But she turned away from him, looked out the car window again. She could shoot animals without a qualm and had shot the rape-minded Mexican and left no mental scar on herself; but she felt helpless in the face of other people’s suffering. ‘That was a beautiful summer, 1914, I mean. I read that they are calling it the long golden summer, as if there’ll never be another like it.’

Perhaps there never will be, thought Henty, but not in terms of weather. It had been a summer, he mused, which even some people not yet born would look back to with nostalgia. But he had looked up the weather records and they had shown that it had not been a ‘long golden summer’: that had occurred four years before, in 1910, the last season of the Edwardian reign, of a king meant for pleasure and not for war. But memory, Henty knew, had its own climate and regret for a time gone forever created its own golden haze. So people now believed the sun had been shining through all the months and years up till August 1914. Suddenly his leg began to ache. But he knew it had nothing to do with the rain or the shrapnel still lodged beneath his kneecap.

The Rolls-Royce turned up towards the Strand and a few moments later pulled into the forecourt of the Savoy Hotel. It was followed by the smaller Austin in which rode Anna, Eve’s maid, and the luggage. Henty, who did not own a car and usually rode in buses and taxis, knew he had done the right thing in hiring the Rolls-Royce in which to bring his boss’s daughter up from the ship. He had been warned that Bradley Tozer expected nothing but the best for his only child; and, Henty had remarked to himself, evidently Miss Tozer took for granted that only the best was good enough for her. At least she had made no comment when he had escorted her off the ship and down to the car. The Rolls-Royce was good enough for the Savoy, too: a covey of porters and pages appeared as if royalty had just driven up to hand out grace and favour pensions to the common herd.

The head porter showed no surprise as Eve handed out her gun-case: it could have been that American ladies arrived every day at the Savoy with their guns, Annie Oakleys every one of them. He passed the gun-case on to a junior porter, then took the small lacquered wooden box which Eve pushed at him.

‘Tell them to be careful with that. My father would have my scalp and yours if what’s inside that box should be broken.’

‘Yes, miss,’ said the head porter, wondering if the father of this dark-haired beauty could be a Red Indian; but miffed at the suggestion that anything, other than perhaps the guests’ virginity, should ever be broken at the Savoy.

Going up in the lift Arthur Henty said, ‘I’m sorry your father couldn’t come with you. I was looking forward to seeing him after so long. It is almost seven years since I said goodbye to him in Shanghai.’

‘He hasn’t changed.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ Henty ventured and was relieved to see Eve smile.

‘He still believes China belongs to him.’

Inside the suite Eve moved to the windows, opened one of them and looked out on the river, dull as unwashed quartz under the grey skies. It had stopped raining, but it was still a miserable day. A day for going to bed with a good book or a good man. She smiled to herself: her Boston grandmother would have commended her for the first thought and banished her for the second.

Henty studied her again, the heiress to the Tozer fortune, legatee of that part of China which her father thought belonged to him. Tozer Cathay had been started in Shanghai in 1870 by Eve’s grandfather, a windjammer captain from Boston turned merchant. Rufus Tozer had died in 1903 from a surfeit of bandits’ bullets while estimating a price for a repair job on the Great Wall of China: or so the company legend went. His son had run the firm ever since, had built it into the major competitor for trade in China of Jardine Matheson, the British firm that, until Tozer Cathay began to develop, had thought that it owned China.

‘How do you feel about China?’ Henty himself had loved it and its people, but he knew his leg would never allow him to go back there and take up his old job as a traveller. He had been grateful when Bradley Tozer had made him general manager of the London office.

Eve shrugged, turned from the window. The reflected light from the river struck sideways across her face, accentuating the slight slant of her eyes and the high cheekbones. Years before, Rufus Tozer had taken home a half-caste Chinese bride and Boston, already feeling itself invaded by the Irish, had resented this introduction of a possible further invasion, this time by the Yellow Peril. Since then, however, Pearl Tozer, having conveniently died at the birth of her son, had been forgiven and forgotten for her intrusion into decent Boston society: after all, her son had grown up to play quarterback for Harvard, gaining both All-American selection and a bride who was a distant cousin of the Cabots. Pearl’s granddaughter, grown to extraordinary beauty, was admired and, though given to such eccentricities as big-game hunting, piloting an aeroplane and smoking cigarettes in public, was still considered more acceptable than the Irish.

‘It’s not my cup of tea, if that’s the appropriate metaphor. I get upset by poverty, Mr Henty, and there is so much of it in China. I like to see happiness everywhere.’

He hadn’t thought she would be so shallow-minded and his voice was a little sharper than he intended it to be. ‘The Chinese are happy. Things could be better for them, but they are not un-happy.’

‘You think I’m shallow-minded for making such a remark, don’t you?’

Henty hung on to his eyebrows again. He should have recognized that she had probably inherited her father’s almost uncanny perception. But he was not a cowardly man: ‘Your remark did suggest that to me. I apologize. Perhaps we had better talk about something else. What are your plans while you are in London this week?’

Eve smiled, forgiving him. He was right, of course: she was shallow-minded. At least if that meant preferring happiness to misery. ‘I want to do some shopping at Harrods and a few other places. And Father wants me to order him some shirts at Turnbull and Asser’s. They have his measurements. How long will they take to make them?’

‘Two, three days, no more. I have tickets for the theatre every night – you can take your choice. Chu Chin Chow – ’ Then he, too, smiled. ‘But not if you don’t like China.’

She shook her head. ‘I’d like to see some of the new matinée idols. I’m mad about good-looking men, Mr Henty. Does that shock you?’

‘Not really,’ said Henty, wondering if she took her gun when she went in pursuit of good-looking men. ‘I understand it’s a perfectly normal thing with young girls.’

‘I adore you, Mr Henty. You try to sound like a stuffed shirt, but you’re not, are you? I read about a new leading man, Basil Rathbone. I’d like to see him, no matter what show he’s in.’

He held up a fan of tickets. ‘He’s in a new play opening next week, one by Somerset Maugham. I’ve included it amongst these.’

‘You’re perfectly slick, Mr Henty.’

He took it that that was a compliment: he was not up on the latest American slang.

Then the luggage arrived, supervised by Anna. She was a tiny Chinese who had been born in New York and had hated every moment of the three months she and her mistress had just spent in China. She had a New York accent but a Mandarin attitude towards servants less than herself. And in her book hotel porters were much less than the personal maid to a millionaire’s daughter. She clapped her tiny hands in tiny explosions and fired off orders with machine-gun rapidity. The two porters, silent and expressionless, Leyton Orientals, but boiling with thoughts about Yanks and Chinks who were mixed together in this midget witch, carried the trunks and suitcases into the main bedroom of the suite.

Eve took the small lacquered box from the page-boy who had brought it up and put it on a table. ‘When I left Father he was heading for Hunan to look for the companion piece to this. It’s a jade statue of Lao-Tze, the Taoist god. I believe there is one something like it in a museum in Paris, but Father says if he can get the pair of these, he’ll make all the museums and collectors sick with envy. You know what he’s like about his collection.’

Indeed Henty knew. On their trips into the Chinese hinterland all Tozer Cathay representatives were expected to keep an eye out for any items that might prove worthy additions to the famous Tozer collection.

‘Isn’t it risky, carrying it with you? Wouldn’t it have been safer to have shipped it straight home to America?’

‘That was Father’s original idea, but then he became afraid it might be stolen on the way. I persuaded him to let me bring it with me. I – ’ For the first time she looked embarrassed. ‘I wanted to prove I could be useful. I owe my father a lot, Mr Henty.’

Henty felt at ease enough to be frank: ‘I understand he thinks the world of you. So perhaps the debt is mutual.’

‘You’re perfectly sweet, Mr Henty.’ She smiled, then shook her head, nodding at the gun-case lying on a sofa. ‘He took me tiger hunting in Kwelchow this summer. He didn’t want to go, he was frightfully busy, but I wanted to go and he took me. He’s been doing that ever since my mother died, spoiling me terribly. He’s a kind man, Mr Henty, too kind. At least to me.’

Henty was glad of the qualification, though he couldn’t detect whether she had said it defensively. Bradley Tozer had no reputation in China for kindliness; he hunted business with all the rapacity of an old China Sea pirate. Henty guessed there would be few people in China who felt they owed Bradley Tozer anything.

He was saved from an awkward reply by the ringing of the phone. Eve, a lady who, despite the admonitions of her maternal grandmother, could never resist the temptation to answer her own telephone, picked it up. It was the reception desk.

‘A gentleman to see you, Miss Tozer.’

‘A gentleman? English?’ Basil Rathbone, perhaps? Eve was not so spoiled that she didn’t have girlish dreams occasionally. ‘Did he give his name?’

A hand was obviously held over the mouthpiece downstairs. Then: ‘Mr Sun Nan. A Chinese gentleman.’

Eve looked at Henty. ‘Do you know a Mr Sun Nan?’

‘No. Is he downstairs? I’ll go down and see what he wants.’

Eve spoke into the phone again. ‘Mr Henty will be down to see him.’

She put down the phone, but almost at once it rang again. ‘I am sorry, Miss Tozer, but the gentleman insists that he see you.’ The tone of voice suggested that the Savoy reception desk did not approve of the cheek of a Chinese, gentleman or otherwise, insisting on disturbing one of the hotel’s guests. The hand was held over the mouthpiece again and then the voice came back, this time in a state of shock: ‘He insists he see you at once.’

‘Send him up.’ Eve put down the phone once more and stopped Henty who, leaning on his stick, was already limping towards the door. ‘You had better stay. This Mr Sun evidently has something important he wants to tell me.’

‘If he’s selling anything or wanting to buy, he should have come to the office. Let me handle him.’

‘No, leave him to me,’ Eve said, and Henty suddenly and ridiculously wondered if Mr Sun, whoever he was, might meet the same fate as the unfortunate Mexican.

Mr Sun Nan was brought up to the suite by one of the reception clerks, as if the hotel did not trust pushy, demanding Orientals to be wandering around alone on its upper floors. He was ushered into the suite, a smiling li-chi of a man who seemed amused at the attention he was being given.

‘A thousand apologies, Miss Tozer, for this intrusion. If time had allowed, I should have written you a letter and awaited your reply.’ He spoke English with a slight hiss that could have meant a badly-fitting dental plate or been a comment on the barbarians who had invented the language. ‘But time, as they say, is of the essence.’

‘Not a Chinese saying, I’m sure,’ said Eve.

Sun smiled. ‘No. I only use it because you will be the one to profit by our saving time.’

Henty introduced himself. ‘If you have anything to sell or wish to buy, you should be talking to me.’

Sun smiled at him as he might have at a passer-by, then looked back at Eve. ‘It would be better if we spoke alone, Miss Tozer.’

Henty bridled at being dismissed and Eve stiffened in annoyance at the smiling, yet cool arrogance of the Chinese. ‘Mr Henty stays. If time is of the essence, don’t waste it, Mr Sun.’

‘I was warned you might resemble your father in your attitude.’ Sun gave a little complimentary bow of his head, then the smile disappeared from his face as if it had been an optical illusion instead of a friendly expression. ‘The matter concerns your father. He has been kidnapped.’

Through the open window there floated up from the Embankment the cheerful mutter of London on holiday: the ordinary, reassuring sounds that made Eve think she had not heard Mr Sun correctly. ‘Did you say kidnapped?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ The smile flickered on his face again, but it was no longer apologetic or friendly; Sun smiled as a relieving movement to relax what was indeed a badly-fitting dental plate. ‘My master has him in custody and will kill him on 21 August by your calendar, eighteen days from today. Unless – ’

Eve went to the window and closed it, shutting out the ordinary, locking in the macabre. The clouds were lifting a little, but there was no break in them. She caught a glimpse of a plane high in the sky to the west: it had just written a giant O in dark smoke, an empty circle barely discernible against the grey sky. The pilot’s effort at sky-writing on such a day seemed as ridiculous as what she had just heard Mr Sun say. She turned back into the room in a state of shock.

She heard Henty say, ‘Is this some frightful joke by Jardine Matheson? If so, I think it’s in deucedly bad taste.’

‘It is no joke, Mr Henty.’ But Sun smiled at the thought of Jardine Matheson’s being involved; he thought that was a joke. ‘My master is a very serious man at times. If he says he will kill Miss Tozer’s father, then he certainly will.’

‘You said unless.’ Eve had to clear her throat to get the words out. ‘Unless what?’

‘You have a small statue, I believe. Of the god Lao-Tze riding on a green ox – ’

Surprised, puzzled, Eve gestured at the box on the table. ‘It’s in there. But it belongs to my father – ’

Sun shook his head, face stiff now with impatience and denial. He was a Confucian, but he had a more immediate master, the tuchun, the war lord, in Hunan who laid down timetables which had no place for etiquette and ritual. ‘It belongs to my master.’

‘Where did your father get it?’ Henty asked Eve.

‘He bought it from some provincial governor. General Chang something-or-other.’

‘Chang Ching-yao,’ said Sun. ‘My master’s enemy. My master has the twin to the statue. He owned both of them, but Chang stole one of them from him. Open the box. At once, please!’

Henty grasped his stick as if he were going to use it for something other than support for his leg. ‘This has gone far enough! I think we had better call the police – ’

‘It would be foolish to call the police.’ The hiss in Sun’s voice was even more pronounced now. ‘My master does not recognize any other authority but his own. Even in China.’

‘Miss Tozer, you can’t let him get away with this! How do we know this isn’t some bluff to swindle you out of that statue? The cleverest swindlers in the world are the Chinese – ’

Sun bowed his head again, as if he and his countrymen had been paid a compliment. Then he took a gold watch and chain from his pocket. He was dressed in a dark suit that was too tight for him and he carried a black bowler hat; he looked like a civil servant, a non-white from Whitehall. He looked at the watch, then held it out on the palm of his plump hand.

‘Do you recognize this, Miss Tozer?’

Eve took the watch: it ticked like a tiny gold bomb in her hand. ‘It’s my father’s. I gave it to him last Christmas.’

‘Your father was captured the day he arrived in Hunan province, two days after you left Shanghai on your ship. I travelled overland to Hong Kong and the intention was to speak to you there. Your ship was supposed to spend four days in that port.’

‘We were there only two days. The schedule was altered for some reason or other. None of us minded,’ she said irrelevantly; then added very relevantly, ‘At the time.’

‘I caught another ship and followed you, but at each port I just missed you.’

‘You could have sent a wireless message to the ship.’ Eve, assaulted by reason, now believed everything she was hearing: no swindler could be so cool about his facts.

‘How to word it, Miss Tozer?’ Sun smiled again, as if admitting even the cleverness of the Chinese would have found such a code beyond them; he marvelled sometimes at the stupidity of white foreigners, whose minds never seemed to work as quickly as their tongues. ‘My master wants secrecy. If I had sent a wireless message, even if you had believed it and not thought it a hoax, you would have contacted the authorities in Shanghai, am I not correct?’

Eve nodded, and Henty said, ‘You said something about – how long? eighteen days? – in which to return the statue. Return it to where – Hunan? That’s absolutely impossible, you know that.’

‘I regret the limited time allowed, but I am afraid there is no way of changing my master’s mind. If I do not have the statue back with him on the day appointed, I too shall be killed.’ Sun was abruptly grave, as if the thought of his own possible death was suddenly a surprise to him. Then he shrugged away the possibility: he was that acrobatic philosopher, an optimistic fatalist.

‘Why is there such an absolute deadline?’ Henty asked. ‘Can’t you ask your master for an extension?’

Sun shook his head. ‘The only wireless in Hunan is controlled by Chang Ching-yao. I should have told my master before this that I had missed you, had it been possible. I have been in a veritable state of frustration ever since I took ship at Hong Kong. What to do? I kept asking myself.’

‘How did you manage to arrive here today then, if you were always so far behind Miss Tozer?’

‘My ship went to Constantinople – I caught the Orient Express from there. A very funny name for a train, one that stops over 4000 miles from the real Orient. But very comfortable and full of very strange people. It saved me several days getting here.’

‘It hasn’t saved us enough to get us to Hunan in eighteen days.’

Eve looked at the watch in her hand. Somehow she knew, with a sickening feeling of certainty, that it was all the evidence she needed to know that her father had indeed been kidnapped. But with despairing hope she said, ‘What if I don’t believe your story, Mr Sun? You could have stolen this watch – ’

Sun Nan produced a piece of folded notepaper from the inside of his jacket and handed it to her. As soon as she unfolded it she recognized the handwriting, bold, assertive even while it asked for her help: Eve darling, These fellows, I’m afraid, mean business. Give them what they want. And don’t worry. Dad.

‘I don’t understand why the Shanghai office hasn’t cabled us your father is missing,’ said Henty.

‘Mr Henty, China hasn’t changed since you left. Up-country, two days out of Shanghai, and you could be on the other side of the moon as far as keeping in contact.’ She turned back to Sun Nan. ‘Will your master, whoever he is, really kill my father if he doesn’t get back that statue?’

‘I’m afraid so, Miss Tozer. He does not value lives highly, especially those of foreigners. He often jokes he would have made a very good imperialist.’ He smiled, but Eve and Henty did not share the joke.

‘What about you? Do you value foreigners’ lives?’

Sun spread his hands. ‘I value my own. I am a humble messenger. Does the telegraph boy carry the burden of every telegram he delivers?’

‘Good Christ, now he’s spouting bloody aphorisms!’ Then Henty hastily looked at Eve, wobbled on his stick. ‘I’m frightfully sorry. I usually don’t swear in front of ladies – ’

‘It’s all right, Mr Henty. Everything is bloody at the moment.’

Eve felt choked: with helplessness, fear, premature grief for her father who was about to die. She had felt grief before but that had been bearable; her mother, gone suddenly with cancer, had been spared what the doctors had said would otherwise have been a long lingering death. But Bradley Tozer, for all his adventurousness, had always seemed to her invulnerable. Though they had often been separated in the years during and since the war, she living in America with her grandmother and he coming home from China on his annual visits, she had never thought of life without him. The bond between them had never been severed or even frayed by distance. Distance …

‘How far is it from London to Hunan by air?’

‘By air?’ Henty’s eyebrows went up this time as if he had had a sudden spasm; then they came down again in a puzzled frown. ‘By aeroplane, you mean? But there’s no aeroplane service that far. The furthest it goes is to Paris.’

‘I can fly. Father and I have our own machine back home. We usually fly from Boston down to our winter place in Florida. We were planning to do so next month.’ She heard herself already speaking in the past tense; and tried to sound more resolute. ‘We can buy a machine here and fly to China. How far is it?’

‘I don’t know. Seven, perhaps eight thousand miles as the crow flies. But you wouldn’t be flying as the crow flies. It’s out of the question, Miss Tozer – ’

‘Nothing is out of the question, Mr Henty, if it will save my father’s life. Unless you can think of an alternative?’

Henty thumped his stick on the carpet in frustration. ‘No, I can’t. But such a flight – ’ He trailed off helplessly.

‘Some men – what was their name? Smith? – flew out to Australia only last year.’

‘Ross and Keith Smith. But there were four of them, they had an engineer and a mechanic and they flew a Vickers Vimy bomber. Even so they took longer than eighteen days. A month at least, I think. And another half a dozen chaps have tried to follow them and got less than half-way.’

‘China is not as far as Australia and the Smiths were not as hard pressed for time as I am.’

‘I wish there were some other way – ’

‘There isn’t,’ said Eve. ‘Where can I buy an aeroplane?’

2

Extract from the William Bede O’Malley manuscript:

George Weyman always said he could read my sky-writing better than he could the handwritten notes I used to leave for him in our office. Perhaps that was because he suffered from what we now call dyslexia; or perhaps it was because the only sky-writing contract we ever had was for Oxo, the meat extract. Or more correctly, nearly had. Because at the time I am writing of, we were no more than on trial. The first sky-writing had been attempted by an American way back in 1913, but nobody had yet come up with a formula for keeping the smoke coming consistently out of the exhaust pipes of our machines. Letters kept breaking off in mid-stroke; if the world at large had been able to read Mr Pitman’s shorthand we might have been successful. There were plenty of advertisers waiting to use our services once we proved, as it were, that we were not illiterate. That summer we had been approached by a sweets manufacturer who wanted his name, plus a gumdrop in green, sketched above half a dozen seaside resorts. The producers of the motion picture Why Change Tour Wife? had also been in touch with us; they wanted the name of their film in purple smoke and that of the delectable actress, Miss Gloria Swanson, in red, hung, as one of their publicity men described it, on God’s marquee. The thought of Miss Swanson in cirrocumulus across London’s sky had excited me, but reason had forced us to say no to them. There was no point in taking on a 35-letter contract when I still hadn’t succeeded in spelling out Oxo.

This weekend was our last chance and our luck was running its usual course. George and I had stood in our shed all morning watching the rain; as soon as it stopped I took off. The clouds were still too low for good sky-writing, but that couldn’t be helped. The writing, if I managed to get it out of the exhaust, was going to be just that much lower to the ground. The shortsighted citizens, if not the executives of Oxo, would be pleased.

I finished the first O, shut off the smoke and took the Sopwith Camel up to begin the first stroke of the X. But half-way down the stroke I knew our luck had finally run out; there was nothing but a dribble coming from the exhaust. I did a half-loop and climbed back up again, rolled over into another dive. But it was no use: Oxo was no more than a giant cypher in the sky, drifting west towards Berkshire, a county not noted for Oxo drinkers. I cursed the smoke mixture, the weather and God Himself and headed back towards earth and bankruptcy.

I took the Camel down over the Thames towards Waddon aerodrome near Croydon. I passed over the Oval. Surrey was playing Notts that day and play had started; spectators sat around the ground in their raincoats and watched the flannelled fools on the mud-heap out in the middle. I hoped Surrey was batting and I waggled the Camel’s wings as an encouragement to Hobbs and Sandham. Cricket is, or was then, a peaceful game; but none of the cricketers down there knew the peace I sometimes felt up here in the sky. Excitement, too; but mostly peace these days, as if the air was my one true element, the one to be trusted. Debts were never airborne with me, nor any other worries. That gave the sky a certain purity, if nothing else did.

Waddon aerodrome came up on my starboard wing and I banked to go in, making sure there were no other machines with the same idea at that particular moment. I could see four or five machines at various heights around the aerodrome; they would be the joy-riders, ten minutes for ten bob. There was a control tower at Waddon, but they had little control over you if you chose not to look in their direction. It was the days before the bureaucrats began cutting up the sky into little cubes with aeroplanes’ markings on them. Too many damned people flying these days. Egalitarianism should never have been allowed to get off the ground.

I came in over the long sheds of the Aircraft Disposal Company. I always wanted to weep when I thought of what stood there beneath those long roofs. Hundreds of aircraft, like birds that had died at the moment they had spread their wings for flight. Pups, Camels, SE5a’s, Bristols, DH4’s and 9’s, Handley Pages, even some Spads and Nieuports: the no-longer-wanted chariots of a war everyone was trying to forget. The Aircraft Disposal Company had brought them all here when the war had ended. It had been expected there would be a rush to buy them, everyone wanting to be airborne on the euphoria of peace and a cheap aeroplane. But it had turned out that the wartime pilots had other, more pressing things to do with their money. Such as getting married (what use was a Sopwith Pup to a couple intent on adding to the postwar baby boom?), buying a house if you could find one (the housing shortage wasn’t a recent invention), emigrating to Canada or Australia: money went no further in 1919-20 than it does now. There’s just more of it now, that’s all, like promiscuity. The satisfaction with what you get hasn’t been increased.

There were a few of us who felt no immediate need of a wife, a house or a new country. I had no nostalgia for the war, none at all. But two years of tossing an aeroplane about the sky, uninhibited but for a natural desire to avoid German bullets, had worn threadbare any yearning for what the editorial writers were then calling the fruits of victory. Already they, the fruits not the editorialists, looked speckled. Though come to think of it, what those editorialists wrote had the sound of second-hand words in which they didn’t truly believe, the harangue of men caught at a corner where they weren’t sure from which direction came the echoes they could hear. In that year the Roaring Twenties was still just a distant whisper. In the meantime some of us flew aeroplanes, ignored our debts and called Waddon home.

There were two landing fields at Waddon in those days, separated from each other by a public road, Plough Lane. I put the Camel down on the grass of the field called Wallington, holding it against the cross-wind. Landing was usually no problem, if you watched the wind; but taking off, a cross-wind could sometimes flip you over on your back. You don’t get that sort of thrill these days in those damned great cattle trucks they call jumbos. I swung the machine round at the end of the field and taxied back towards the level crossing over Plough Lane, feeling as I always felt when I came back to earth, deflated. I’ve heard it likened to post-coital blues, though personally I never felt any such blues till I was too old to be coital.

I crossed the road, waving a royal hand to the envious and resentful motorists and cyclists waiting beyond the gates, and taxied towards our shed near the ADC’s hangars. George Weyman was waiting for me, ready to put the Camel away as he always did. George still flew, but he was the mechanic of the two of us and he looked after our single machine as if he, and not the Sopwith Company, had given birth to it. He loved it as an aeroplane, but he also loved it as our only asset.

‘Someone has just been on the telephone,’ he said when the Camel was safely stored away in the shed that was its hangar, our office and our home. We could not afford a telephone and I knew he must have been called over to the ADC’s office. ‘Chap named Henty. He said you would remember him, Arthur Henty.’

‘We were in the same battalion together, before I transferred to the RFC. What did he want? Not some bloody regimental reunion, I hope.’

‘He said something about wanting to buy an aeroplane. Or maybe two.’

‘We’re not going to sell him the Camel,’ I protested in anticipation. ‘We’ll pay off our debts some other way.’

‘What other way? I saw what just happened to Oxo.’ He nodded up towards the sky. The O I’d written was now just a flat dim vowel in the greyness. ‘You’re not thinking of taking up joy-riders, are you? They’ll expect a seat, not be standing out on the wing.’

George Weyman was a big man with a high voice and a low boiling point. He never went looking for a fight or an argument, but somehow he seemed to spend half his time swinging his fists to defend a point or holding someone down to force an argument down his throat. He was prickly with prejudices and one had to be careful one didn’t rub against them; which was not always easy to do, since they seemed to cover the whole spectrum of human bias. So why did I choose him as my friend and partner? Because he was loyal, honest, good company when he wasn’t arguing and the best damn aeroplane mechanic I’d ever come across.

‘Did Henty say why he wanted to see me? If he wants a machine, why doesn’t he just go over to the ADC?’

‘He said he’d like your advice as an old army mate.’

‘Henty would never use the word mate.’

‘Righto. Friend. He said he’d be down within the hour. What are you thinking about? You’ve got your swindler’s look again.’

I was staring across at the ADC’s sheds. ‘How many cheques do we have left in our cheque-book?’

‘Four. There’s just one snag. We don’t have any money in our account. They closed our overdraft on Friday.’

‘Today’s a bank holiday. If I write four cheques, who’s going to be able to call the bank to see if there’s any money in our account to meet them?’

‘What are you going to write four cheques for?’

‘Deposits on four machines. We’ll give Henty a choice – you said he wanted a machine, perhaps two. You said he also wanted my advice. My advice will be to buy from us, not the ADC. We’ll be more expensive than the ADC, but he won’t know that.’

‘I don’t know how you got your commission as an officer and a gentleman. I was only a bloody sergeant and I’m twice the gentleman you are.’

‘You’re wrong, chum. Honesty has nothing to do with being a gentleman – that’s a myth put out by gentlemen. Simmer down, George. I’m not about to do something they can send me to Wormwood Scrubs for. All I’m going to do is put our name – ’

‘Your name. Not mine.’

‘Righto, my name. I’ll sign the cheques and leave them with the ADC. If Henty buys a machine, or two, I’ll cancel the deposits on those he doesn’t want. I’ll get him to give us his cheque today and we’ll be down at the bank in the morning when it opens to deposit it to meet the cheques we’ve paid out. Now what’s dishonest about that?’

‘It’s not what I’d expect of a gentleman, that’s all.’

‘That’s because you’re not a gentleman. You socialists always expect more of us than we claim for ourselves. You secretly wish you had our honest hypocrisy.’

Half an hour later we saw the Rolls-Royce pull up outside our shed. It came down the perimeter of the field as if the chauffeur wasn’t quite sure that he wasn’t going to be attacked by the aeroplanes coming in and taking off. Arthur Henty got out, steadying himself with a walking-stick. He turned and helped out a girl. Even through the dirty windows of our office one could see she was a stunner, an absolute beauty. I know I’m looking back through a rose-coloured telescope and the girls of an old man’s youth always have an aura about them. But Eve Tozer was not only beautiful, she had what was later known as It or, still later, sex appeal; and she also had what is now known as class. Even through the grime of that office window and the rheum of an old man’s eyes, I can still see her that afternoon fifty years ago and still remember the feeling that, up till then, I had only experienced when looping the loop. And not in bed.

‘Holy Moses, did you ever see such a girl!’

‘They’ve got a bloody Chink with them,’ was all George said. He was only slightly prejudiced against women, but he had a consuming aversion to all the world’s populace who weren’t white, especially those outside the Empire. ‘We’re not going to sell any machine to him! Those buggers want to conquer the world.’

‘Let me do the talking, George. Just don’t declare war on China till we hear what Henty has to say.’

We went out to meet them. A Chinese had come round from the passenger’s side of the front seat and stood by the rear door behind Henty and the girl. As we walked towards them I whispered to George, ‘The Chinaman looks like a butler. Stop worrying about the Yellow Peril.’

Henty introduced himself and Miss Tozer, ignoring the Chinese, and came straight to his point. ‘Miss Tozer needs an aeroplane for a long-distance flight, O’Malley.’

The O’Malley was a measure of the sort of friends we had been. We had been fellow officers sharing a mess and several trenches together, but he had been wounded and demobbed before we had been through enough to get down to first-name terms. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘I saw that piece in the Illustrated London News on your attempts at sky-writing. I cut it out and kept it. One likes to keep track of chaps one knew in the army, y’know.’

It wasn’t a liking of mine, but I was glad it was one of his, if it meant he brought Miss Tozer to meet chaps he’d known in the army. ‘How long is the flight you’re planning, Miss Tozer?’

‘To China.’ I felt George start beside me. ‘I’d like to leave tomorrow at the latest.’

‘Are you serious?’ said George, starting to boil. ‘We don’t like having our leg pulled.’

‘I’ve never been more serious in my life, Mr Weyman. I am an experienced pilot, I know what I’m attempting should have more preparation than a day’s notice allows. But I just don’t have the time. I am flying to China because it is urgent, terribly urgent, that I get there by a certain date.’

‘How soon?’

She looked at Henty, then back at us. ‘21 August. I’ll need an aeroplane with maximum range and a good cruising speed. One that will carry myself as pilot and a passenger.’

I glanced at Henty and he shook his head. ‘Not me. Mr Sun Nan.’

The Chinese behind them stared at George and me. I almost said inscrutably, but there was a certain nervousness about him, tiny cracks in his mask. ‘Does Mr Sun Nan fly?’

‘No,’ said Henty. I became aware that he and Miss Tozer did not want to take me and George into their confidence. This flight they were talking about was no eccentricity, no madcap adventure by a bored rich girl; they were far too serious for that, too strained-looking. But I was certain that Miss Tozer, for all her claims to being an experienced pilot, really had no idea of what lay ahead of her. Henty must have seen the sceptical look on my face, because he went on, ‘On our way down here I’ve been talking to Miss Tozer about taking a second machine and pilot with her.’

‘Mr Henty vouched for you as a pilot and a gentleman,’ said Miss Tozer.

George coughed and ran his hand like a crab over his mouth. I wasn’t sure that Henty knew anything about my value as either a pilot or a gentleman; but he was one of those, now almost all gone, who believed that if a man came from a certain class he was taken as a gentleman until proven otherwise. He had told me so one night in our mess at Salisbury, before we had gone to France and found the Germans made no class distinctions as they shot at us. He knew nothing about my cynicism: that had developed after we had parted company.

‘What would the pay be?’ I said, ungentlemanly.

‘We could come to terms,’ said Miss Tozer. ‘There would be no quibbling on my part. My only concern is to get to China as soon as possible. And I think we are wasting time even now. May we look at the aeroplane you suggest I buy?’

‘It’s over there in the ADC sheds,’ I lied. ‘They let us store our machines there. We have four.’

‘Five,’ said George, determined to get a grain of truth in somewhere. ‘We have a Sopwith Camel, but that would be no good for your purpose.’

Mr Sun Nan stayed with the chauffeur and we led Miss Tozer and Henty across to the Company’s sheds. Being a holiday there was only a skeleton staff on duty; no salesman followed us as we made our way down past the long lines of parked aircraft. The first machine I showed Miss Tozer was a Vickers Vimy. It could carry four people and extra fuel tanks could be fitted; it had been a good bomber in the last days of the war. George had not come across with me to look at it when I had paid one of our rubber cheques as a deposit on it; but ten minutes’ inspection now told him it would need at least a week’s work before being ready for any long-range flying. It was the same with the De Havilland 9 and 4 on which I had also paid deposits; I could see our quick profits disappearing even quicker than that O in Oxo. We were left with only the Bristol Fighter at the end of the line.

‘There’s another DH4 at the other end of the shed.’ George suddenly sounded as if he had been a used aeroplane dealer all his life. ‘But I’d take the Bristol over it. The range is about the same, but the Bristol is about five miles an hour faster and it can climb about five thousand feet higher. You’ll be crossing a lot of mountains, I suppose.’

‘What’s the range?’ Miss Tozer asked.

‘The Bristol will stay up for three hours,’ I said. ‘I flew one for a while during the war. Say about three hundred miles or a little over.’

‘We could stretch that by fitting extra tanks,’ said George. ‘Assuming you cruise around ninety to one hundred miles an hour, with the extra tanks you’d probably get another hundred, possibly more, to your range. Let’s say four hundred and fifty miles maximum.’

Miss Tozer stared at the Bristol Fighter. It had been a great warplane, a two-seater almost as manoeuvrable as any single-seater and twice as effective because it had carried two guns, one fired straight ahead by the pilot and the other able to be fired in a complete circle by the observer. George and I had flown as a team in one of them and in three months we had brought down nine Huns. Miss Tozer walked round the machine, then came back to us.

‘Mr O’Malley, could you get us some maps? I think we need to sit down and have a talk. Perhaps we could go back to your office?’

Two people in our office crowded it; a four-person conference would have split it at the seams. ‘We’ll go back to our shed – we can find a spot there where we can have a talk. George will have to scout around for some maps – all we have are some of England and some old war maps of France and Belgium. But before he goes scrounging – ’

‘Yes?’

‘This machine won’t do for what you have in mind. For one thing, it can carry only you and Mr Sun Nan. There won’t be room for a second pilot. You mentioned the possibility of a second machine, but all we have is our Camel. It wouldn’t have sufficient range.’

She was quiet for a moment. She had a habit, that I was to come to recognize later, of holding her chin in one hand, almost as if she had a toothache; but it was her pensive attitude, as if she were holding her head steady while she deliberated. Then: ‘How many other Bristol Fighters are there here?’

‘At least half a dozen,’ said George. ‘Two of them are in as good condition as this one.’

‘They happen to be two on which we have an option,’ I said.

‘I thought you might have,’ said Miss Tozer, and suddenly I knew she had already begun to doubt Henty’s recommendation of me as a gentleman. ‘How much would they cost?’

I almost quoted the ADC price; but then I thought, nothing risked, nothing profited. ‘Roughly £750 each. How many were you thinking of buying?’

Miss Tozer looking at George, the honest broker. ‘What would you say they would cost, Mr Weyman?’

George swallowed, didn’t look at me. ‘By the time the extra tanks and everything had been fitted, about £750.’ There went our profit: I had forgotten all the extras that would be needed. ‘It’s a fair price, Miss Tozer.’

‘I’m sure it is, Mr Weyman,’ she said, not looking at me. ‘Do you have a pilot’s licence?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’ll buy three.’ She took her hand away from her chin; she had all her thoughts sorted out. ‘I’ll fly this one and you and Mr O’Malley can fly the other two. We’ll fit extra tanks to each of them – we can put an extra tank on the top wing, can’t we? – but your two machines will also have extra tanks in the rear cockpits. In other words we can carry our own emergency supply dump.’

I was amazed at the calm, cold efficiency of this beautiful girl who, without benefit of maps, with no knowledge of the route she would have to fly, had already anticipated some of the basic problems such a trip would present. It was as if she had had a satellite’s view of the world between England and China. Except, of course, that in those days anyone would have been locked up who had suggested such a view was possible. Only God’s eye was the empyrean one then and I’m sure He occasionally shut it in disgust at what He saw.

‘Could you find some maps, Mr Weyman? In the meantime, Mr O’Malley, I’d like some tea.’

George, looking slightly dazed, went off. I said, ‘Pardon me for mentioning it, Miss Tozer, but I don’t think George and I have yet agreed to accompany you. I’m not taking off at twenty four hours’ notice to fly all the way to China and not know why I’m going.’

‘You’ll be well paid. Isn’t that a good enough reason for going?’

‘It’s a good reason, but it’s not enough.’

We had now walked back to our shed. The Camel stood in the middle of it, the star lodger. Against one wall were the camp beds of the other two lodgers, George and me. Near the beds were a kitchen table, two chairs, a cupboard with a sagging door, a stove that looked like something that had fallen off George Stephenson’s Rocket; pots and pans hung on nails on the wall, like the armour of the poor, and a length of old parachute silk was a curtain that hid the rack on which hung our skimpy wardrobe. In the far corner there was a chipped bath and a rough bench on which stood a basin and a large bedroom jug. The bench continued along the wall, holding all George’s tools, till it came up against the cubby-hole that was our office. The only hint of affluence in the place was the Camel and it already showed the pockmarks of the surrounding poverty.

Miss Tozer looked around her. ‘Who lives here?’

‘We do.’

Even Henty looked stunned, as if he had bought a ticket for Ascot and found himself in the Potteries. He rushed to our defence: ‘It’s only temporary, I’m sure.’

‘That’s what we said when we moved in here over a year ago. Don’t apologize for us, Henty. We’re broke. Kaiser Bill could raise more credit at our bank than we could.’ Since George had already wiped out the profit I’d been anticipating, I could afford to be honest; it was about all that I could afford. I turned to Miss Tozer, took a nose-dive. ‘Never mind the reason why you want to fly to China. We’ll go with you. As you said, the money is good enough reason.’

‘I admire your honesty, Mr O’Malley.’ But she sounded as if she was surprised by it, too. She walked out again to the open doors of the shed, stood staring off into the distance – towards China? Perhaps: she was looking east. She took something from the pocket of her suit, fondled it without looking at it: it was a gold watch and chain. Then she came back to us. ‘I’ll tell you why I have to fly to China.’

Which she did, her voice faltering only once, when she mentioned that her father would be killed if we did not reach Hunan by the deadline date. My ear faltered, too, because I found it hard to believe what she was telling me. But the proof was there in her face and in that of Henty behind her.

‘It may be dangerous, Mr O’Malley. Perhaps now you won’t want to come.’

‘She needs your help,’ said Henty before I could volunteer to be a hero; then looked at his crippled leg with hate. ‘I wish to God I could go!’

George came back, one big hand clutching a roll of maps, the other holding a school atlas. I told him why Miss Tozer wanted us to fly to China with her. He listened at first as if I were telling him about a proposed joy-ride to the Isle of Wight; then abruptly he exploded. He swung round, pointing a rifle-barrel of an arm at Mr Sun Nan still standing beside the Rolls-Royce.

‘Is he part of this? You mean you take that sort of threat from a – a damned Chinaman? I’d kill the swine!’

‘If we kill him, Mr Weyman, we’ll probably also kill my father. If you dislike the Chinese so much, perhaps you’d better not come with us.’

‘He’ll come,’ I said. ‘We need him. We’ll go with you, but it will cost £500 for each of us and our return fares.’

‘Five hundred each!’ Henty, I hadn’t suspected, had a bookkeeper’s mind. ‘That’s preposterous! You’re making money out of someone else’s difficulty!’

‘I’m not going to bargain – ’

‘Neither am I!’ Miss Tozer was suddenly fierce. ‘You sound as if you’re putting a price tag on my father’s life!’

‘On the contrary. I was putting a price on our lives. I don’t think I’ve over-valued them. We’re cheaper than the machines you’re buying.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I had the idea that Miss Tozer was not accustomed to apologizing. I also had the idea I had hurt her and that hadn’t been my intention. ‘I’ll pay whatever you ask. Now may we please get down to planning the trip?’

I made tea, got out our four cracked and only cups, pulled the chairs and two boxes up to the kitchen table, spread out the maps and got down to planning an 8000-mile trip to China, everything to be ready within 24 hours. Moses, Columbus and Captain Cook, three other voyagers, would have laughed at us. The roll of maps George had scrounged took us only as far as Vienna. The rest of the proposed route, over which we had some argument, was sketched out on a school atlas on which the inky fingermarks of its former owner, some unknown juvenile, were sprinkled like a warlock’s mockery. I began to wonder what George and I had let ourselves in for. I felt like Columbus or Magellan, heading for the edge of the world, flying into an unknown sky.

‘We can’t take a direct route,’ George said. ‘We’ll have to fly by way of places where we can refuel. And there’s no guarantee we can do that all the way. There are bound to be stretches where they’ve never seen an aeroplane.’

‘We’ll have to risk that,’ said Miss Tozer. ‘Can you have everything ready by tomorrow morning?’

George nodded. ‘I’ve already asked half a dozen chaps to stand by to help us. I promised them a pound each if they would work right through the night – all right?’ Eve nodded, but Henty looked as if George had promised them life pensions. ‘I didn’t tell them where we are going, just that the machines have to stand up to some hard, long flying. They’ll have them ready in time.’

‘I’d like to take off at noon tomorrow. Is there anything I can get up in London, things we’ll need?’

I had been making out a list. ‘We want to keep things down to a minimum because of weight, but there are still essentials. You’d better get flying suits for you and Mr Sun – ’

‘Let the swine freeze,’ said George.

I ignored him. ‘We have our wartime suits. You’ll need some good strong boots – just in case we have to walk. We want a spare compass for each machine – and you’d better get us a spare sextant. Four sleeping bags, a Primus stove and eight water-bottles, two each. Make sure the bottles are silver or nickel-plated inside, the water tastes better. You can buy them at Hill’s in Haymarket. We’ll need a medicine kit – John Bell and Croyden in Wigmore Street will make up one for you. And maps – the best place will be the War Office.’

‘I’ll get those,’ said Henty.

‘We’ll supply the cooking things. A rifle will come in handy, just in case we have to shoot something for food. You can advise her on that, Henty.’

‘Miss Tozer has her own gun. I gather she is very competent with it.’

‘What do you shoot?’

‘Elephant, tiger. And the occasional man.’

George and I looked at her with cautious interest this time. Then George said, ‘We’ll bring our service pistols. And I’ll fit machine-guns – the ADC has some spares.’

‘Isn’t that illegal?’ said Henty. ‘I mean arming a civilian aeroplane?’

‘Yes,’ said George. ‘But we’ll be out of here before anyone knows. I’ll put a couple of Vickers forward on Bede’s and my machines and I’ll mount a couple of Lewis guns on the Scarff rings in our rear cockpits.’

‘I hope we shan’t need them,’ said Miss Tozer soberly.

We were all silent a moment. The machine-guns suddenly made the other equipment seem superfluous; George and Henty and I were all at once back to the values of war. For the first time it struck me that the actual flying to China might not be the worst part of the trip.

‘We’ll wait till they fire first,’ I said, denying a wartime principle. ‘Whoever they are.’

Hently took out a cheque-book and I left him to George, who was our book-keeper, when we had books to keep. I got up and went outside. Miss Tozer followed me. She took a cigarette from a gold case, fitted it into an ivory holder, looked at me.

‘I don’t smoke. I haven’t any matches, I’m afraid.’

She searched in her handbag, took out a box of matches fitted into a small gold case, handed it to me. I don’t think I was awkward with women, even in those days; but I was fumble-fingered just then. I had never lit a woman’s cigarette before; I held the spluttering match towards her like an apprentice on Guy Fawkes’s team. She smiled, puffed on the cigarette, then stood looking around the aerodrome as the last of the joyriding machines came gliding in.

‘Mr Henty told me you were an ace. Thirty-two aeroplanes, is that right?’ I nodded. Or 44 men, if you wanted to count it another way: some of the machines had been two-seaters, such as the Albatros C7. But I never counted it that way, couldn’t. ‘Do you miss it all? The war, I mean?’

‘No. Only lunatics and generals love war.’

That’s a glib statement these days, something you see on demonstrators’ banners, but no less true for being glib. But the Battle of the Somme was only four years behind us then: I July 1916, when the British Army alone lost 60,000 men, the day that finally put an end to the glory of war. I was there that Saturday morning, in the third wave to leave the trenches. I saw the men ahead of us going up the hill, strung out like a frieze against the skyline, a frieze quickly ripped to pieces as the German machine-guns cut them down. The second wave went on, never hesitating, just walking smack into death. When I led my platoon over the top I already knew half of them would not live to reach the top of the hill. They died like flowers under the scythe and by the time I reached the top of the hill and could go no further, was trapped in a shell crater with three dead men and another one dying, I wasn’t wanting to fight the Germans but to turn back and go hunting for the blind, stupid, living-in-the-past generals who had ordered this massacre. I survived that day and I didn’t go hunting the generals. Instead, I joined the Royal Flying Corps, where you were above the carnage and the muck and, if you had to die, you died a clean, sensible death.

‘I miss the thrill of flying, I mean the way we flew in the war. I’m grateful for this job, Miss Tozer. Not just for the money.’

‘It won’t be fun, Mr O’Malley. Not for me, anyway.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of it as fun. I was thinking that once again I’ll be flying an aeroplane somewhere for some purpose.’

I looked east, towards Kent, the Channel, France and everything that lay between us and China. In the foreground stood Mr Sun Nan, bowler-hatted, black-suited, patient-faced. I couldn’t hate him, not even if I’d had George’s prejudices. He was the one who had rescued me from Oxo and all the other graffiti I had planned to scrawl on the sky.

End of extract from O’Malley manuscript.

3

General Meng had started life with the burdening name of Swaying Flower: his mother, going against the grain, had wanted a daughter instead of a son. At the age of six, already ferocious, he had changed it to Tiger Claw; by the time he was eighteen and had already killed six men he had had half a dozen other names. Now, at fifty and with countless dead behind him, he called himself Lord of the Sword. He knew there were people who called him other names and if he chanced to hear them he terminated their opportunities to call anyone any name at all.

So far Bradley Tozer had called him nothing but General. ‘You are a respectful man, Mr Tozer.’

‘Not really, General. Just circumspect. I call you other names, but only to myself.’

General Meng nodded, unoffended; if he had to kill this American he would do so for other reasons. He pulled back the sleeve of his voluminous blue silk robe and waved a decorated fan in front of his face. He had come originally from the cooler steppes of Sinkiang and he had never really become accustomed to the more humid heat of Hunan. He was a tall man with a handsome Mongolian face and a head of thick dark hair that was his main vanity. Every morning one of his concubines brushed the black hair for fifteen minutes. It shone like the feathers of a mallard, reflecting any lights that shone on it; the walls of his yamen, his palace, were lined with mirrors to add to the light. Meng could admire himself from any angle at any time of day and his head, the object of his admiration, gleamed like an evil totem to the scores of people who served him in the palace.

He looked at himself in a convenient mirror, then back at the American who could have been his half-brother. ‘I’ll kill you if the statue is not returned in time. I am a man of my word. At least, when it pleases me to be.’

They both spoke in Mandarin, the words a little awkward in their mouths: each in his own way was a foreigner to Peking. Tozer could also speak Cantonese, but Meng had only contempt for the dialect of the shopkeepers from the south. They were not warriors like himself.

‘My daughter will bring the statue. I told you, General – I prize the statue, but not above my own life.’

‘Are you afraid, Mr Tozer?’

‘No,’ said Tozer, hoping he sounded unafraid.

He was taller than Meng, with a hard-boned thrusting face and impatient eyes; he had inherited some of his mother’s features but none of her placidity. Never having known his mother, he had decided to be an American: to have been chosen All-American had brought him a double satisfaction that no one else had known of. He had no time for fools or incompetents, but he was a fair-minded man and he paid better wages than his competitors, and those who survived his stringent standards and demands usually stayed with him for years. He was also a sensible man and he knew there was no sense in applying standards or demands in the present circumstances. Also, he knew enough of Meng’s reputation to believe that the General would be a man of his word. When it pleased him to be.

‘Why is this statue so important to you, General?’

Meng continued to fan himself. He looked at the two bodyguards standing behind him. They were Mongols from the Tsaidam, muscular men in blue coarse wool robes, worn with a sash beneath which the skirt of the robe flared out. Their riding boots had upturned toes and each man had his long pipe stowed in the side of the boot. The robe was worn with one arm free and the shoulder exposed, a décolleté effect that was more threatening than provocative, since the hand of each bare arm always rested on a broadsword hung from a loop in the sash. The martial effect was only spoiled by the flat tweed caps they wore, suggesting a trade union frame of mind that had so far escaped their master. They hated the local Hunanese and were in turn hated, a state of affairs that kept them constantly alert for their own safety and, by projection, that of General Meng.

He waved the fan at them, dismissing them, and they went out of the small room, their heels clumping on the bare wooden floor. Meng waited till the door closed behind them, knowing they would take up their stance outside it, then turned back to Bradley Tozer.

‘Neither of those men speaks Mandarin, but one can’t be too careful. I can’t have them thinking I’m less than perfect.’ He looked at himself again in a mirror, nodded in satisfaction as if the mirror had told him he was as close to perfection as it was possible to be. ‘I am superstitious, Mr Tozer, my only failing. The twin statues of Lao-Tze have brought me good fortune ever since I acquired them some years ago.’

‘How did you acquire them?’

‘I made their owner, a landlord in a neighbouring province, an offer he couldn’t refuse. It’s an old Chinese custom which I believe a certain secret society in Italy has now copied from us.’

‘What was the offer?’

‘His head for the statues. Unfortunately, one of my bodyguards misunderstood an order I gave and the landlord lost his head anyway.’

‘I hope your bodyguards don’t misunderstand any orders you may give about me.’

Meng smiled. ‘I admire you, Mr Tozer. I think you are secretly very afraid, but you won’t lose face, will you? It is so important, face. That is why I want my statue returned.’

Tozer knew not to ask how Meng had lost the statue to Chang Ching-yao in the first place; the matter of face forbade such a question. He waited while Meng fanned himself again, then the General went on:

‘The dog Chang came to see me, under a flag of truce, to suggest an armistice between us. We have been fighting for two years now, as you know. I welcomed him, being a man who prefers peace to war.’ He looked in the mirror again, but the sunlight coming in the window had shifted and the mirror was, by some trick of refraction, momentarily just a pane of light, like a milky-white blind eye. Annoyed, he turned back to Tozer, his voice taking on a ragged edge. ‘While he was here, enjoying my hospitality, he had one of his men steal the statue he eventually sold you. How much did you pay him for it?’

‘Ten thousand American dollars.’

The fan quickened its movement, like a metronome that had been angrily struck. ‘Aah! You know it is worth much more than that, don’t you? Even so, it is enough to buy him two or three aeroplanes. You know that is what he wants, don’t you? He is already recruiting foreign pilots down in Shanghai. I knew it was a dreadful day when he stole that statue. So many things have gone wrong since then. Our harvest has been poor, I’ve had four opium caravans ambushed, yesterday I learned two of my concubines have got syphilis – ’ The fan stopped abruptly, was snapped shut and pointed like a pistol at Tozer. ‘My good fortune will not return until that statue is returned, Mr Tozer. And neither will yours.’