The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (6 page)

Airton had never seen Delamere so moved before. The big man was smiling down at him, eyes moist in his sunburnt face, and there was a glistening line on his cheek. For a moment he looked quite noble, and strangely gentle, standing in the crowded street with bedlam behind him.

He went through his conversation in the
yamen,
Delamere nodding, sniffing, his brow furrowed, a picture of a man demonstrating close attention.

‘So the old boy denied there are such things as secret societies,' he said, after a while, ‘and my caravan was attacked by some old farmer and not Iron Man Wang, and Major Lin is going into the Black Hills to gather raspberries, I suppose?'

‘Well, I wouldn't put it quite as baldly as that, but the Mandarin was reassuring. Do you not believe him?'

‘Lord knows. You're the man with the ear to the all-powerful round here. If you say things are all tickety-boo, then that's fine by me. I only passed on the gossip old Lu was bleating on about over his cups the other day, but he's always got his pigtail in a twist about something. Who knows what John Chinaman's up to at the best of times, eh? Anyway, I don't care. My daughter's coming.'

Dr Airton flinched. He expected another heavy slap on the back. He did not know what he preferred: Delamere ecstatic or Delamere melancholy drunk. This time he was spared further exuberance, however, because his companion suddenly paused in his stride and pointed ahead. ‘Speak of the Devil.' He laughed. ‘I do believe we are about to witness a march past of the Celestial Army. Major Lin and his brave grenadiers!'

‘For mercy's sake, don't salute again.' The doctor's face reddened as he recalled his embarrassment the last time he had been with Delamere and Lin had ridden by, and how, afterwards, he had tried to explain away the former's behaviour to the Mandarin. The Mandarin had found the incident amusing but he doubted that Major Lin would forgive the jeering from the crowd as a drunken Delamere had strutted and performed like a colour sergeant from a Gilbertian farce. Not that a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta was far off the mark: there was indeed something ludicrous about Lin's attempts to turn his rag-tag militia into his conception of a modern army.

The muleteers were cursing and grumbling as they manoeuvred their animals to the side of the road. Major Lin led his short column riding on a white Mongolian pony. He was dressed for this occasion not in the usual bannerman's costume but in a rather gaudy uniform he had designed for himself with elaborate epaulettes and a tuft of white feathers on a peaked shako. Silver spurs glinted on shining black boots. The marching troops were uniformed in blue tunics with brass buttons and grey forage caps. The effect was offset by the traditional white Chinese leggings and cloth shoes, and the parasol that each had tied to his backpack. The first company of twenty men bore semi-modern carbines made in the Chinese arsenal of Chiangnan in Shanghai, but the rest were still armed with muskets and ancient muzzle-loaders, which might have dated from one of the Opium Wars. Despite their Ruritanian appearance the doctor found something impressive about the seriousness and enthusiasm with which they conducted their drill. The men swung their arms and kicked their legs with energy if not good timing. A corporal barked commands. ‘
Yi! Er! Yi! Er!
One! Two! One! Two!' Major Lin held himself erect with a fierce frown on his thin, handsome face. The doctor knew from the Mandarin that Lin had been made a prisoner on the Korean border during the recent Sino-Japanese War and had developed an admiration for the military methods and techniques of his captors. It was presumably those that he was trying to re-create here. For all the comic appearance of his troop, Lin was not playing at being a soldier.

‘Just look at them,' said Delamere. ‘Face it, Airton. A Celestial and a soldier are a contradiction in terms.'

‘Behave,' hissed the doctor. Major Lin was now parallel with the two men. He turned his head and gave them a cold stare. The narrow eyes and high cheekbones gave him a hawklike appearance. He was in his mid-thirties, but there was something boyish about his face, although his mouth was set in a cruel half-smile that somehow emphasised his ruthlessness. The doctor raised his hat. Lin snapped his head forward and kicked his horse with his heels. The column tramped by.

‘Sinister-looking bugger, isn't he?' said Delamere, as they resumed their stroll. ‘One of the girls at Mother Liu's told me he beats his woman there. Oh, sorry,' he laughed, ‘you don't like me talking about the Palace of Heavenly Pleasure, do you?'

‘I do not,' said the doctor, ‘and with a daughter coming you should start to think about changing some of your bad habits, and I'm not just talking about your drinking.'

‘Well, I won't deny you have a point. Can't have Helen Frances thinking her old man's a
roué
. Responsibilities of parenthood, and all that. Think I really can reform?'

‘I doubt it,' said the doctor.

‘So do I. Oh, well, I hope she hasn't inherited her mother's temper as well as her looks.'

They walked on in silence. The street had resumed its bustle. In a moment they reached the market square. A crowd was gathered round a spectacle by the temple. Artisans in blue cotton pyjamas were laughing and gesticulating. Gentlemen in brown gowns and black waistcoats were peering curiously. Over the shouts and jeers and the general racket they could hear the sound of a trombone playing the familiar notes of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers'. Through the heads of the hecklers they could make out a tall blond man who was apparently conducting a woman and several children through the hymn.

Delamere groaned. ‘Sorry, old boy, I'm sloping off. The last thing I want to face today is the bloody Millwards trying to convert the heathen.'

‘They don't do it very effectively,' observed the doctor. ‘It shames me to say it, but I rather agree with you about the Millwards—yet we must be charitable.'

‘You be charitable. I think they're a disgrace to the human race.'

‘To the dignity of the white man, perhaps,' said Airton, ‘but they mean well. Delamere, before you go, I truly am delighted by your news, and I'm sure that Nellie will be thrilled to have the company of your daughter when she comes. There'll always be work for her in the hospital if she wants it. Let me organise a dinner for her—and Cabot, is it?'

‘Yes, Tom Cabot.'

‘As soon as they arrive in Shishan. Nellie can play the piano and I'll get Herr Fischer up with his violin. We'll have a merry evening, what do you say? We ought to welcome the new arrivals in a proper style.'

‘Thank you, Airton. I'll look forward to it.' Delamere turned to go. Then his face lit up in a wide grin. ‘I still can't believe it, you know. My daughter really is coming!' And the doctor's breath was taken away by another resounding slap on the back.

A trifle reluctantly he turned his steps in the direction of the Millwards. As a medical missionary his own focus was more on the healing of bodies than souls, but he felt some obligation to his evangelical colleagues even though they belonged to a different mission. The Millwards were American Congregationalists who had arrived fresh from New Jersey three years before without, in the doctor's opinion, the slightest training or qualification for a vocational task. He was not even certain to which actual missionary society they were attached. They were not well supported: they never seemed to receive money or mail. As far as Airton could make out they subsisted on alms from the Buddhist monastery, as embarrassing a state of affairs as one could imagine.

What they lacked in professionalism, however, they made up for in boneheaded idealism and blind faith. Septimus Millward was a tall, long-limbed man in his late thirties, with narrow, humourless features and thick pebble spectacles. Round spectacles, in fact, seemed a hallmark of the Millwards. Septimus's wife, Laetitia, and three of their eight children wore them too—the smaller the child the thicker the lenses. For the doctor, it was the uniformly thick glasses that gave the final seal to the outlandishness of their appearance. On his arrival Septimus Millward, out of some notion that they would be more acceptable to their flock if they dressed like them, had burned all their western suits, even their boots, and had clothed his whole family in patched Chinese gowns. He had also shaved the front of his head and tied his thin, yellow hair into a pigtail, which achieved the effect of incongruousness because he had preserved his full western beard.

His elder son, a sour-looking boy of fourteen or fifteen, called Hiram, also wore a pigtail. Airton saw that it was Hiram who was playing the trombone, not badly but, from his sullen expression, it looked as if he wished he were a hundred miles away. Who could blame him with such a father? He had been impressed however, by the boy's intelligence. He spoke fluent Chinese, which was more than could be said for his parents, whose indecipherable pidgin when preaching sermons was an embarrassment. On occasion the doctor had seen him playing with some of the rougher local street urchins. He wondered that the boy was not tempted to flee the nest altogether. What a nest! Airton had once made a call on the compound in which the family lived. Any Chinese peasant would have been ashamed of the squalor and poverty of their mean hovel, yet it was here that the Millwards raised their family and also brought in abandoned babies and other strays. Airton knew that this caused deep suspicion among the locals, but he could hardly prevent the Millwards saving lives. He and Nellie helped as best they could. Nellie, who was worried about the children, sometimes sent round hot meals. Septimus Millward took this charity as his due. Nellie had once asked Laetitia if she wished to have a job in the hospital. Her husband had answered for her that there was no time when doing God's work, with souls out there to be saved, to pander to the indulgences and ailments of the mere body. That had been too much even for Nellie to take and she had given him a piece of her mind. Not that it did any good: Septimus had gathered his whole family round him on their knees to pray for her.

The hymn came to a triumphant finish as Airton reached the edge of the crowd. Laetitia Millward's shrill descant echoed on a bar or two after the trombone coughed to a stop. Septimus began his sermon, and for a moment there was a bemused silence as the onlookers tried to make out what he was saying. Ordinarily Septimus had a deep, not unpleasant but commanding voice. When attempting Chinese, however, he adopted a mangled falsetto that screeched and wavered through the Mandarin tones like an out-of-tune violin. With little correct vocabulary, his grammar was arbitrary and the tones he was valiantly attempting were, in almost every case, the wrong ones. Since tones governed meaning, the most incongruous words would come out. The doctor struggled to make any sense of what he was saying.

‘Jesus elder brother and little sister,' Septimus started. Presumably he meant ‘Brothers and sisters in Jesus'. ‘I bring good questions. You are all going to die. But Jesus has old wine for you. Yes, it is true. He will bring you to God's pigs. But you must first say sorry to your robbers. The Bible tells you you are good, so you must leave the house of ink.' With a stern frown he turned and pointed to the temple behind him, where two plump
bonze
s—Buddhist priests—in their saffron robes were smiling at him from inside the gate. ‘There!' he cried. ‘There is the ink house!' (
Mo Shui
? Ink? Airton was baffled. Then he realised Septimus had meant
Mo Gui
—devil.) ‘But I will teach you to eat the hearts of little children,' Septimus cried, ‘and Jesus will drink your wine! Beware, the robber's fees are silk!'

The majority of the crowd were smiling good-humouredly but Airton noticed hostile expressions here and there. Septimus was speaking gibberish but his intent was quite clear. His position in front of the temple and his angry gestures at the priests were expressive enough. The doctor wished, not for the first time, that the Millwards would adopt a less confrontational approach. Septimus Millward's Mandarin was comic but some of his garbled expressions could be read the wrong way. ‘Eat the hearts of little children' was particularly unfortunate.

‘There was a man called Samson,' Septimus was intoning. ‘God made him long. He killed the king's soldiers with the teeth of a deer. He ate lion's meat with honey. They made him busy and took him to the bad temple where they tied him to a tree. Then he fell off the roof. Yes,' Septimus insisted. ‘He fell off the roof. Praise be to God.'

A young artisan, stripped to the waist in the heat, his long pigtail hanging down his bare back, danced up to Septimus, and began to imitate his gestures and speech. ‘Gilly gooloo gilly gooloo gilly gooloo gilly gooloo!' he shouted in his face. Septimus moved aside. The young wag moved with him. ‘Gilly gooloo! Gilly gooloo!' Septimus, his brow sweating with anger, raised his voice. The comedian, winking at his friends in the crowd, shouted, ‘Gilly gooloo', louder still.

The crowd was screaming with laughter. An old lady next to Airton collapsed to the ground, her eyes running with tears of mirth. He had difficulty containing his own chuckles, although another part of him looked on aghast. Laetitia Millward gathered her three smallest children protectively to her skirts. Mildred, one of the two older girls, was obviously scared, and she stared through her spectacles with big round eyes. The boy Hiram's face, on the other hand, became more pinched than ever. His shoulders were shaking. Then, unable to control himself any longer, he, too, began to laugh at his father, a breathy, high-pitched wheeze. The trombone slipped from his hands and fell with a clang to the ground.

Septimus, his eyes blazing, abandoned his doomed sermon and turned with rage on his son. ‘Spawn of Satan!' he cried. ‘How dare you mock your betters when they are doing the work of the Lord?' Then he slapped Hiram hard across the face, and again, hard, on the other side. ‘On your knees,' he roared. ‘Pray for forgiveness.' Hiram, sobbing, stood his ground. The crowd fell silent. Laetitia pulled her children down with her and, in a semicircle round her husband, they adopted an exaggerated prayer position, heads bowed, folded hands raised to their foreheads. ‘Pray, boy, pray!' called Septimus in his deep voice, then he, too, fell on his knees, his arms stretched wide. Gazing heavenwards, he began to intone the Lord's Prayer. The young comedian from the crowd loitered a moment uncertainly, then spat on the ground and sauntered back to his friends, where he was greeted with more laughs, catcalls and slaps on the back.