China to Me (44 page)

Nothing could have been more effective. There was an infinitesimal pause, and then we all roared with laughter. We laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and somehow everything was all right again. Then we went to the cocktail party.

“You used me, you know,” said Cooper.

“Maybe,” I admitted, “but I swear I didn't mean to. It all happened that way; I didn't plan it. Charles admits that all through the — the shotgun interview he was saying to himself, ‘I won't let Cooper get away with it.' He didn't give me a thought; he says he just turned into a complete cad, and he was damned if he'd let you win out. So there you are. He's finally written Ursula everything, and he said that, no matter what, he won't ever live with her again. Well, that's that. She'll get tired in time.”

Cooper thought it over. “You used me,” he repeated, “but anyway, there is always Tertius.”

“I'm too old for you anyway.”

“You are ridiculous about that. … Charles is conceited, and childish, and he has no sense of responsibility, but one forgives him everything. That remark about the time and the place, you know. Sheer genius.”

He sailed the day after, smuggling Tertius aboard against all the laws of the sea.

My agent sent word that the publishers had a new idea for the next book. They thought I might do a history of Singapore and of its founder, Raffles. Everything seemed propitious for such a work; the newspapers at home were playing up Singapore as the impregnable fortress on which the Far East depended to maintain the status quo, and there I was, almost on the spot, and well in training for another book on Asia. I liked it too. I had developed a fondness for historical research while doing The Soong Sisters, and the more I read of Sir Thomas Raffles the more I like him. He founded the Regent's Park Zoological Society, for one thing. He kept a gibbon, for another, and the gibbon's name was Mr. Silvio. The day I found that out I was so excited that I telephoned Charles at his office to tell him. The Hong Kong Club had a library that was a monument to Victoria, and although it wasn't the most stimulating collection of books in the world for a general public, it was full of what I needed. And Singapore itself — the history of Singapore is ninety per cent that of the Eurasians who make up the city. I had that fixed idea of the Eurasians in the Far East already in my mind, and it looked like the ideal chance to do something about it. I worked hard and happily on Raffles. By the time Pearl Harbor came along I was almost ready to start the book; all that remained was to go down to Singapore for a look around. But I'm anticipating.

The determined though well-bred silence on the part of the public was getting on our nerves. I had time to think all sorts of things, and though it was late in the day for that I did at last give some thought to Charles's career. I inquired around, discreetly. There were people in on the secret because we had told them; there was an old lawyer who had drawn up Charles's will in favor of the baby, and a few people like that. It seems that the British Army is more practical than you might think. Just at that moment the British Army needed Charles. We assumed that they would ultimately put things down on a record and talk it over after the war. Fair enough. In the meantime, “The general hasn't said a thing,” said Charles.

One man in all the Far East could be depended on to be reasonable, and that was Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr. He came down into town just about that time, flying from his ambassadorial post in Chungking for some reason or other. We met for a drink at the Grips and I told him.

“Oh well,” he said, “the general's a reasonable fellow. If things get too hot, come on up to the embassy in Chungking; we'll be glad to have you. By the way, things may get hot anyway, if the Japanese attack; please don't hesitate to come on up the minute it looks bad. You'd be better off even there — we have pretty good hospitals now.”

“P. T. Chen's wife died of childbed fever in Chungking,” I said.

“Yes, shocking thing. … But that's better than being bombed.”

“It's a moot point, Sir Archie. Do you think Charles will get into bad trouble?”

“I doubt it. We need him too badly. I can't see any way out of this, Mickey, but war.”

“Oh lordy.”

“Oh lordy, indeed.”

“How much does Jack tell you about his work?” I asked Vera Armstrong in the ladies' room. Jack Armstrong was Charles's regular attorney, who had taken care of his marriage settlement and who was now in his confidence about our baby. Jack was a perfect man for such work: he never said anything to anybody, though he chattered as lightly as the next man.

“He never tells me anything,” said Vera crossly. She patted her hair and powdered her nose. Vera has red hair and eyes of different colors, one blue and one brown. Otherwise, too, she is out of the ordinary. She has a quick intelligence that was always stubbing its toe in Hong Kong. She didn't know what the trouble was, herself, but she was too high-geared for her friends. She has French blood and was born and brought up in Japan, and although she thought she was just another May Road matron, she wasn't. It made for trouble. “He never tells me anything, the rat,” said Vera.

“Then you don't know I'm having a baby?” I asked.

Vera studied me, her eyes lightening with interest. “My dear! Well, now that you mention it, I did think you were letting yourself go rather shockingly. … How perfectly amazing.”

“Not at all,” I said stiffly.

“Well, I do think Jack might have said something. Oh, do let me help. Have you bought anything yet?” Vera has two children of her own.

“No, and I haven't the slightest idea how to go about it.”

“I'll do it,” said Vera. “Everybody will think I'm expecting again, but never mind. I say, this is one in the eye for old Ursula. We had the most frightful row on her wedding day — did Charles tell you?”

“No, he didn't. How fortunate! And will you really help me with the nappies and all that?”

“I'll go down to Kayamally's in the morning,” said Vera. We unlocked the door and joined the gentlemen demurely.

Chapter 35

This program was all intensely personal, and for the first time in many years I really shut China and the political situation out of my mind. I made gestures of keeping up with things. I read the papers, and the work on Singapore and Raffles kept me in touch, in a remote, historical sort of way, but in actuality I had slipped back into one woman's life, like the Chinese themselves, and I busied myself with my own thoughts and my own affairs. Even Agnes Smedley couldn't jounce me out of it. She was roughly sympathetic, in her own way, about the baby; she oversimplified the matter. “You take your child in your arms and tell ‘em all to go to hell,” she counseled me.

“But I don't have to, Agnes. They're not being mean. Everyone has been awfully nice, so far,” I said. She stared at me, uncomprehending. The world to Agnes is full of dragons, familiar dragons which she is forever battling. A world of easygoing people just doesn't exist in her conception of things. She didn't worry about it, though. There would come a time, she knew, when I would need a champion, and then she could do her job.

Agnes carried with her, always, an atmosphere of tenseness. It could be as calm and gentle out of doors as anything, and yet when she came in you thought of blowing winds and flying sleet and snow, and clouds whizzing past the mountaintops. One evening I was sitting peacefully at my desk, and I'll swear it was as sweet a spring evening as you'll find anywhere along the Pacific. Then suddenly the door burst open and Agnes stamped in, frowning. She shook snowflakes off her sturdy shoulders. I could almost hear the stamp of the horse outside and smell the sweaty saddle leather, and the frosty pine needles that they had bruised in their headlong flight. … “I've brought a chicken for you,” growled Agnes.

“I'll have to tell Mme. Kung,” I said to Charles. “I'll have to tell her before she can see for herself too. I tell you what: you'd better tell her. She likes you, I think.”

“I won't,” said Charles flatly. “I'm afraid.”

“So am I. I don't see why you need be so mean about it.”

It stayed like that until one afternoon when I was in her car, taking a ride with her. She was busy in her own way, but she felt imprisoned sometimes and then she just went out and told the chauffeur to drive around the island, while she sat well back in the deep car so nobody could see her. Sometimes she asked me to come along, and this was one of the times. It was difficult, but I told her.

Her reaction was typical. There was a little silence, while I held on to her hand firmly, possibly for fear she would slap me, and she stared straight ahead at the back of the chauffeur's head. Suddenly she giggled. I dropped her hand and turned around to look at her. She giggled like a little girl.

“My sister,” she said, “will be furious with me.”

Then she scolded me, gently. She scolded me like a Christian and a law-abiding woman. She told me that she had always defended me when people said I wasn't a good girl.

She then lapsed into deep thought, and I interrupted it. “I think we'd better cut this off,” I said. “Being my friend after a bit will be embarrassing for you. Don't you think so?”

No, she didn't think so. She then dropped all of that, and started giving me medical advice. There was a certain tea which I must drink a good deal of. I must try to develop some sort of religion; nobody should have a baby, she said, without God to help. (Madame is practical.) Was there any chance that Charles's wife would let him go? We discussed that, in a sensible hardheaded manner, until it was time to go home. I'll swear I don't know yet if she was thoroughly horrified or if she didn't get just a bit of a kick out of it. Anyway, she was thoroughly kind, of course, and from then on she managed to send encouraging messages and strengthening food whenever she had a chance. Also she cautioned me against thinking of Ursula or getting upset at all. “You may regret it all your life if you hurt yourself now,” she said.

“She's right,” said Charles heartily.

But my mind did start working for me. I suppose that sort of thing always happens. Sometimes at night when my back kept me awake I lay there and wanted my mother. I wasn't unhappy, but I did want my mother. Just the same, I couldn't very well have her. I couldn't even tell her. Agnes was preparing to go to the States, because she smelled the war coming and she didn't want the Japs to catch her, and it wasn't propitious to go back into China just then. I asked her to carry the word to my sister. I didn't dare write this direct because Hong Kong was an inconveniently chummy little town, and the censors were all women I knew intimately. Of course they would have to know later, anyway, but I didn't feel like announcing it just that way. What I said to my sister, I felt, was nobody's business.

The appearance of The Soong Sisters in the middle of all this was sufficiently exciting, but my first enthusiasm was a little damped when I looked at the advance copy that was sent me. The embossed Soong character on the cover was upside down. It was a natural thing to happen in America, but it was unfortunate, because it could mean awfully bad luck to the Chinese mind. I sent a frantic cable to the publishers, and everyone scurried around to put it right, and there was a sarcastic little mention of it in the local sheet, and that was that. Later reports of the book's success came pouring in. Charles was proud and I was proud, and everything was fine.

“I read it all last night,” he said one day, “and I must say, it wasn't as bad as I'd expected. Clever girl, Mickey.”

We waited and waited, and still nobody said a word. We got so nervous at last that we resolved to give a reward to the first member of the general public who said anything about it; a box of cigars if it was a man, and a box of chocolates to a lady. Soon after this — and I think it was well on to the end of July — it happened. I met Hal Sweet, of the CNAC, in a shop. Hal is an American; all the pilots were American unless they were Chinese.

“Come and have a drink,” he said. We did, and once we were ensconced at the table he said it. He cleared his throat a couple of times first.

“Uh — have you been married lately?” he asked.

I said, “Well, you get the cigars.” Then I had to explain. What he said accounts for a good deal of what happened later, between me and the other Hong Kong Americans.

“All right, but, Mickey — why a limey?”

That, it seems, was the general sentiment. People had been talking for weeks, and comments were varied, but among my compatriots the first sentiment, evidently, was outraged patriotism. It amazed me how much the international complications of the affair seemed to matter to people. My old friend Mrs. Loseby, the Dogs' Home lady, had turned bright red with anger and said:

“Some women will stop at nothing to bring discredit to our nation!”

Disquieting reports came from Shanghai about Corin. Then one day I had a letter from her, a long and extraordinary one. She had put herself in the care of Dr. Halpern, the clever mental specialist who had opened a hospital for Chinese patients. Corin was like the rest of us in this generation: she ran to the doctor to ease her heart, and like the rest of us when we do that she found some sort of substitute for what she wanted. But she must have been in a precarious state, just the same. The letter was like that of an Oxford Grouper, confessing her sins toward me. She said that Jacques had cut her off from me; Jacques had been madly possessive and resented all her friendships; Jacques had forced her to avoid me in Hong Kong, and only let her see me when he wanted her to borrow money. Would I forgive her?

I was upset, but there wasn't anything to do except write reassuringly and, I hope, sensibly. I asked her to come to Hong Kong if the authorities would permit it, and stay with me. I even said I needed her, which wasn't true, and I was a little afraid she would come. I knew she didn't like Charles. But of course she wouldn't leave Jacques. Then I got in touch with other friends, and they wrote and told me their viewpoints. After all, we don't help each other really. None of the letters sounded as if Corin were anything but very much alone in the world; each one was about the writer, and not about the tortured Corin at all. I know she wasn't normal. She was probably a bore. I know that people did everything they could; they gave her work, and kept her going, and advised her, and kept her seeing the doctor, and even then in the end it wasn't any use, but …