China to Me (41 page)

The Chinese have certain habits in farming which are not our habits, and one of them is that of using human excrement for fertilizer. Selwyn once explained to me that this system isn't as dangerous as we used to think it. He didn't seem to think that the dysentery and cholera of the Colony owed its prevalence to the use of that kind of fertilizer as much as it did to flies and careless preparation of food, though he was still fiercely opposed to the use of uncooked food in any form. Anyway, the drainage system of Hong Kong owed a lot to this custom of the natives. The job of carrying the city sewage out of our ken was done by a certain guild of coolies, and just about the time I arrived in Hong Kong there had been a reshuffle of the city contracts. Another guild had been given the commission. The local name for excrement of that sort is “night soil,” and you had to know it to understand the newspaper stories of the ensuing argument.

M. K. Lo was a local lawyer, prominent in his own right and a member of a prominent family. The Los are related by marriage to the Ho-tungs and like the Ho-tungs are of mixed blood. Also like the Ho-tungs, there are many of them. M.K. in the night-soil quarrel was against Selwyn's faction, and though I don't know the ins and outs of the fight, you can take my word for it that the town was rocking with it. One day I was walking downtown, strolling along easily, and as I neared Government House I found myself inextricably mixed in a procession of black-clad women and shouting men, carrying banners. It was impossible to get away from the parade. When I crossed the street, so did they. When I took to the middle of the road, so did they. I didn't shake them until we reached Government House, when they turned oft to make a demonstration before the gate in protest, and then I realized that I had been implicated in a parade of the Night Soil Coolie Carriers.

All of these bits of publicity made me interested in the Selwyn-Clarke family. When Agnes got well enough to come out of hospital she took up residence in the house of her new but excellent friend, Ronald, Bishop Hall of Hong Kong. (Hall was known as another dangerous radical.) The bishop had a country house out in Shatin, a small town on the New Territories road to Taipo at the border, over on the mainland. Theoretically Agnes was supposed to live out there, but of course she came to town quite a lot, and then she divided her time between the Selwyn-Clarke house and mine. She insisted that Hilda and I become friends, and as a matter of fact we very quickly did.

Agnes liked Charles. She had heard of him from Freda Utley before, and was already prejudiced in his favor. I had been rather careful of talking about my private project, but I did tell Agnes, and she had a suggestion to make.

“Hilda knows all the medical men in town,” she said. “If you think there's some reason you can't have this child, why not be examined? Yes, I know it's difficult under the circumstances, but Hilda will know what to do. I'll talk to her.”

Hilda did know what to do, but she wasn't sure she ought to do it.

“Gordon King's your man,” she said immediately. “I'm sure he'll know what the trouble is. I went through all that myself, you know, before I married. But, Mickey, are you quite sure? Think it over again. There seems to be a period that all of us professional women go through, in the middle thirties, when we want children before it's too late. But have you considered what a problem the child will be in your work? Are you sure this isn't simply an emotional urge that will pass?”

“My work,” I scoffed. “I don't think that is cosmically important, do you? Yes, I'm sure.”

So Hilda made an appointment for me with the doctor.

Chapter 32

None of it could have been done, I realize now, without Hilda's help. Although she was mildly radical, she had all the power of the most conventional of British women in a colony because of her husband's position. The Governor, Sir Geoffrey Northcote, liked Hilda and admired her, and after he left he probably recommended her to the attention of the acting governor, Norton, who was there when I arrived. Hilda was the highest “ranking” wife still in town, as no officials higher in rank than Selwyn kept their wives with them after the evacuation. I've explained how that all came to pass. A lot of men were now very bitter with Selwyn. They felt that a good Englishman, even if he didn't agree in principle with the evacuation, should follow the crowd and thus, paradoxically speaking, set an example. The rank and file of England always feel like this and I don't see it, but never mind. I heard lots of criticism of Selwyn and Hilda. They didn't understand their man at all. If Selwyn had merely wanted to keep his family there for himself he would undoubtedly have sent them away. He castigated himself constantly. He led such an inhuman life of intense work that he wasn't aware of their existence, personally, at all. There had been a time, Hilda told me, when he made an effort to remain in contact with his little girl, Mary, but by the time I arrived even that indulgence was slipping into desuetude, and he was beginning to skip their Sundays together.

Selwyn kept his wife and child there because he felt that Hilda could “do some good” with her Chinese affiliations. Also, like Charles, he felt strongly that the British should not whisk their own families away just because it was in their power, and leave the Asiatics to face the music because it was not in theirs.

“We get these people into a mess,” Charles said once, emphatically, “we set ourselves up to govern them and we get them into a war, and then we take away our own women and leave them to deal with the situation. No! I don't like it. If you were my wife, Mickey, you'd have to go. That happens to be Army regulations and hasn't anything to do with the case and I'd have no choice. But as it is, we're fortunate, and you can do as you like.”

Without Hilda I wouldn't have dared interview Professor King. He was the best gynecologist, perhaps, on the Coast, but he had in his past been a missionary. When I first interviewed him I was thankful that Hilda had broken the ice in advance. A tall, lean man, he gave an impression of utter dryness. He was compounded, it seemed to me, of equal parts of principle and professional technique, and only an interesting angle to his work, or a chance to play the piano undisturbed, could stir him to enthusiasm. He inspired confidence, but he was not a man you could get gushy with. I told him that I wanted a child and that I doubted my ability to conceive. I gave him my reasons, and whatever medical opinions I had collected on the subject in the past.

“You are married?” he asked.

Now was the moment. I said simply, “No.” I had meant to say much more, but that was before I saw him. This word was enough.

“You intend to be?” he asked. Then, swiftly, so that I wouldn't have to answer, he started his examination. At the conclusion he said, “I can't see anything wrong with you at all. On preliminary examination there seems to be no reason why you shouldn't conceive. I suggest a small operation.” He described it.

“Does it often work?”

“In twenty per cent of the cases it works.”

I came home feeling hopeful, but something happened about then that disturbed me. Charles had written his wife as soon as we decided that I was not going back to America. He told her that we were living together, and asked for a divorce. Now Ursula's reply had arrived: she refused to divorce him.

I looked at Charles in alarm. “You think she'll come back?” I demanded.

He looked uncertain, and I realized that he was very much afraid of her himself. “I hope not,” he admitted, “but she may work it. We'll trust to the government. Don't worry.”

So now, faced with such a threat, we were both glum. Charles foresaw the old regime of conversational breakfasts and a wife who refused to speak to him if he overdid it at a cocktail party. I drew unpleasant pictures in my mind of lonely evenings during the ordeal of the take-over. And the baby. What of the baby?

“Oh, don't worry,” said Charles. “I didn't mean to worry you. We go on as before.”

Up in Shanghai, my friend who had taken Mills was getting frantic with the gibbon problem. He had a strong disinclination to bring two gibbons (the new female had died) into his apartment in town. Just at the last possible moment he found an Australian lady, a soldier's wife, who was being sent down to Australia for the duration. She agreed to chaperon the animals on the ship, and he joyously loaded them aboard in the required crate and hurried away to send me a wire.

I smile tenderly as I remember the sunny morning they arrived. One of the CNAC pilots, Woody, the man who let me pilot the plane from Chungking, had said that he wanted the gibbons. Because he lived in Kowloon and seemed eager to keep them, and because I didn't quite know how to keep them with me, I agreed to give them away.

Woody was so enthusiastic that he came with me to meet the boat. It was anchored in mid-harbor, and we had to hire a motorboat to get out to it. We were late arriving, too, and the Australian lady who had kept an eye on the gibbons was fretfully pacing the deck, anxious to hand over her charges and rush to town on a shopping tour. We approached the ship, bouncing over the bright blue water, under the bright blue sky. I saw her at long distance hiking up and down. I climbed out to the prow of our launch and waved wildly. The plump figure hesitated; you could see hope stiffening her frame as she watched us coming. She pointed questioningly aft, where I saw the crate. I nodded vigorously. She slumped in enormous relief and crossed herself just as we approached the companionway.

“Oh!” was her greeting, in a burst of relieved sigh. “What a time we've all had! I tried to take 'em out for exercise, but I was always so afraid they would escape, you know. … Junior did, once, and got into the galley, and we had such a time catching him, you can't think. Here you are; here's Bybie's clothes.” She handed me the diminutive leather trunk that held the entire gibbon wardrobe. “And God bless,” she said. “I'm off to the shops.”

It was a highly emotional moment for me when I stooped down before the cage and looked in. Gravely, my Mr. Mills looked out at me. At first I meant nothing to him, though he stuck out a tentative hand and pulled my skirt, just for the devil of it. After all, it had been more than a year since I saw him.

“Mills,” I said. “Mills, old boy.”

My voice did it. Recognition spread slowly over his face. He made no outcry, but he began to bounce up and down, and when I opened the door he walked out straight into my arms and cuddled down. It was perfect happiness. …

“The little guy,” said Woody, “has escaped.”

And so he had. A small, wiry, black beast with a white forehead, Junior was now going hand over hand toward an upper deck.

“Hold on,” I said to Woody, “he'll come back. Look.” Gripping Mills, I climbed down the companionway to the launch, and Junior followed, and grabbed Woody and clung to him. Somebody handed down the evil-smelling crate after us. Mills looked around the little walla-walla and didn't like it. He let go of me suddenly and crawled back into the crate. If he had been able to close the door after him he would have done so. Junior followed, and so we got them home.

But I see that the Freudian censor has intervened. I haven't mentioned the fact that both of them, in the excitement of the moment, had dirtied us pretty thoroughly first. It was this fact, which seemed trivial to me at the time, that decided Woody definitely against adopting any gibbons, and without argument he helped me take the crate and the animals straight to something known as the Dogs' Home, over in Kowloon at the town's edge. I walked into the place blind, myself. I didn't know, then, that I had made an important choice. The society vet was a Mrs. Hogg, on the Hong Kong side. It was Mrs. Hogg who usually clipped wire-hairs in the spring, and de-ticked the toes of spaniels and so forth for the Peakites. Mrs. Loseby ran the Dogs' Home in Kowloon, but free. Mrs. Loseby did it for the Blue Cross (SPCA) and for love of animals. Mrs. Loseby was much aware of the fact that she wasn't an accredited vet. I didn't know that, nor did I care, but if I had known a few things about the situation in general I would never, never have called her Mrs. Hogg — which I did, alas.

Mrs. Loseby was a very fat, very pink woman, and very English. She bristled first when she heard my American accent, and she bristled second when I called her “Mrs. Hogg,” and she bristled most of all when she realized that even Woody was a Yank. It looked like a thin time for the gibbons, until she saw them. Then, being English, she fell in love with them.

“Oh, the beautiful!” she cried. I beamed, and Woody rubbed at the spots on his coat and muttered under his breath. Mrs. Loseby now thawed. She explained that she was used to much more difficult propositions; she often put up giant pandas en route for the U.S.A. She hastily cleaned out a large cage and we put the gibbons in, and they went sailing happily around, and it was all highly satisfactory. Especially to Woody, who would not now have to take them home and lock them in his garage, as had been his misled intention. I shook hands with him and thanked him warmly, and said good-by, practically forever, and went home to take a bath.

Next day when I took Charles to see the gibbons we found a large sign on the gate of the Dogs' Home: Bell Out Of Order: Please Knock. Mrs. Loseby hurried to open to us.

“They fused all the wiring in the place, the pets,” she said fondly.

On his first introduction to them, I watched Charles anxiously. How was he going to react? Would he crab the whole show? Quietly, with the corners of his mouth soberly downturned, Charles sauntered into the cage and let Mills swing over and sit on his head. In a moment he was scratching Junior's stomach, still very soberly, but I knew it was going to be all right.

“I dare say,” he remarked on the way home, “they're as good an imitation as you could find.”

Although I was never told what he did, Charles went on being busier and busier, along with the rest of his office. They now embarked on a series of dinners that were something new, I think, in Hong Kong government circles: they were given in honor of various Chinese dignitaries, but they weren't dignified. One, for example, was for Admiral Chan Chak, known as the hero of Bocca Tigris. Chan Chak was working for the British, I found out later, with the approval of Chungking, and he was the most important Chinese in town, so far as Charles was concerned. But he didn't speak much English and Charles had no Chinese, and so I was a welcome addition to the party. It was given at one of the big restaurants, the Golden Dragon. We all drank a lot and had a good time, and I found myself talking raptly with young Cooper about Irish poetry.