Authors: James Leasor
Mandarin-Gold (12 page)
The Parsee smiled. "
'You are young, Englishman. When you are as old as me you will know that all women are much alike. At first, they seem sweet as the distant scent of the lemon tree. But if you taste the fruit too long, it grows bitter on the tongue.'
'But I cannot return to
Trelawney.'
To be stuck in that ship, battling up against the wind for months on end, with hard tack, salt pork, a barrel of limes or apples? No. Not again. Not after this. Never again.
'That is your life, doctor. You chose it.'
'I chose it because I needed a profession. I had no money to start in trade, no land or business to inherit But you have paid me money. I am poor no more.'
'I would not say you were
rich,
Englishman.'
'No, sir. Not rich, as you count, wealth. But is there no work I could do here? As your physician, perhaps?'
'No. My daughter will be returning with her husband to Bombay as soon as his ship turns round. You would then be just as lonely here as in your own vessel, or in your own country. There is nothing for you here.'
'What about one of these opium boats? Smuggling? People might get wounded. I could help.'
'You are most foolishly trying to cling to the past. That is something no-one can ever do. Take your cheque, and when you call at Calcutta, cash it. Gold speaks with a louder voice than paper money. And both are stronger than dreams.'
Gunn bowed his head. What the older man said was true. This had been an episode in his life, but was not his whole life, only part of it. Yet like one tiny crystal of potassium permanganate dropped in a bowl of clear water, it had coloured all that came after, like the petals of a rose. He had absorbed an experience into his blood, his brain, his bone: but what the Parsee said was still true. He must go.
He stretched out his hand.
'Perhaps we will meet again,' he said hopefully, still clinging to his dream. 'All three of us?'
'Perhaps,' agreed the Parsee. 'Perhaps, indeed.'
He turned back to his view of the Praya. The merchantman was coming into harbour now, her sails flapping loosely like huge white sheets above the scrubbed decks. It would be interesting to learn whether his son-in-law was aboard, and even more interesting to discover how he would take the fact of his wife's pregnancy. There might be some little difficulty in explaining its length; but men were notoriously vain and gullible over such matters. He did not foresee much trouble.
Gunn went out, along the corridor, down stone steps into a formal garden where fountains threw up long water sprays, and yellow-plumaged birds called to each other in a giant aviary made of bamboo slats. The air felt sharp and clear, rinsed with the scent of orange trees.
He looked back at the house. The grey shutters had faded in years of almost perpetual summer; the walls were of yellowish stone, in the seventeenth-century style, when the Portuguese and Spanish stars had been rising, before their empires in the East and South America had began to crumble: How fortunate he was to be British, with Britain's vast possessions all around the globe, so that if the sun went down on one, it was already rising on another!
In silence, Gunn followed the servant along the quay, turning over in his mind what he would do, what he would say when he returned to
Trelawney.
He had been kidnapped, held for some kind of ransom, and then quite inexplicably released. Then he had caught the first boat back to Canton.
The captain should be pleased to see him. Griggs would question him closely, of course, but there was nothing he could not adequately explain. Suddenly, the servant turned to him and stopped.
'What's the matter?' asked Gunn, still absorbed in his own thoughts.
'You asked my master about an opium boat, yes?'
'I did.'
'There is such a boat, a clipper, due to sail soon. -The
Hesperides.
An American missionary is aboard who speaks Chinese.'
'What about it?.'
'I think their trip will be successful. Why do you not see the captain?'
'Is he English?'
'Goanese. Part Portuguese, part Indian. But he speaks English.'
'Does he need a ship's surgeon?'
'You should ask him.'
Odd, Gunn thought, how he was treating this man almost as a friend and equal, not as a servant; but there was something about the East that seemed to melt- all pre-established strata of rank and authority. You were who you were, because of what you could do; by reason of your wit or your courage or your cunning. These things were more important here than where and to whom you had been born; and it was right that they were.
'What about your master?'
'He need never know.'
'Where is this clipper?'
'I will show you.'
It was much hotter now in the sun; Gunn could feel sweat trickle down between his shoulder blades. They came to a. clipper moored fore and aft against the quay: black hull, white superstructure; spars, masts and bowsprit newly varnished; the sails furled, not neatly, but adequately.
'Here she is,' said the servant. ‘The
Hesperides.'
'Come aboard with me.'
'It is not right that I should do so. I might be seen and my master told.'
'Would he punish you?'
'Any master punishes a servant who disobeys his orders. My orders were to take you to another vessel.'
'Where is she?'
'Two hundred metres down the quay.'
Gunn could see a schooner ahead of them, preparing to sail. A handful of men were on the quayside, coiling ropes.
'Thank you,' he said. The servant bowed and turned, and within seconds he was lost in the crowd of coolies and strollers and beggars. But as soon as he was out of Gunn's sight, he climbed on a bale of silk. and stood looking back at the clipper. He watched Gunn go up the gangway, waited for twenty minutes in case he came down, and then went back obediently to his master.
The Parsee was standing where he had left him, looking out to sea. The servant entered the room, and the Parsee turned, eyebrows raised questioningly.
'He went aboard the clipper, master,' said the servant.
'I thought he would. It is strange that when the English, the Americans and the French, and others from colder climates, come East, so often the heat goes to their heads like strong wine. They lose all wish to go home. They hang on here even if they have no reason to do so. The East for them is like an incurable disease. They cannot get it out of their blood. Tell me, have the other arrangements been made?'
'Yes, master.'
'Good.'
The Parsee nodded his dismissal, and stood, hands behind his back, thinking about Gunn. Ah, to be so naive that you genuinely believed you would receive the equivalent of three thousand pounds for the act of love, and then return to tell others about it!
Even so, he felt a certain sadness in his heart; the boy had spirit. And he would let no hint of what he had ordered reach his daughter, for she was still in tears at Gunn's precipitate departure. She would have to dry her eyes before her husband arrived. But perhaps he would believe that she was weeping for joy at his return? Truly the gullibility of men was only equalled by the fathomless duplicity of women.
7
In Which the
Hesperides
Sails North and New Contacts are Made
'Anyone on board?' Gunn called as he came up the gangway.
Four Lascars, brown arms blue with tattoos, naked save for loincloths, were sponging the deck with huge ' squeegees.
'Do you speak English?' Gunn asked one of them.
The man shook his head. The others paid no attention to him. Gunn walked up the companionway into a deck cabin. A dark-skinned man was reading a Portuguese newspaper. He wore a dirty white duck uniform, cap pushed to the back of his head, and white canvas shoes with a hole cut to ease a bunion on his left big toe.
'Can I see the captain?' asked Gunn.
'I am the captain,' the man replied in English. What is it you want?'
It was no good lying; no good making up some story that could easily be broken down. He had better tell the truth.
'I am an English doctor,' said Gunn. 'I want a job.'
'How do I know you're a doctor?'
'You will have to take my word for it. But if you have any case of illness aboard I can treat it.'
'What with? Where are your medicines and your instruments?'
‘They are not with me,' Gunn admitted.
'Where are they, then?'
'I was a ship's doctor. I became involved in a fight at Canton and was brought here. Now I do not wish to return.'
'Why should I need a doctor with a healthy crew?'
'No-one is healthy for ever. If we were, we should all live for ever.'
'That is true. But we do not.'
He threw the paper to one side, and stood up, stopped, bent his body and broke wind.
‘I am not healthy,' he announced. 'I have an ache in my guts all the time. What is causing that?'
'I would have to examine you,' said Gunn.
‘Then you shall,' announced the captain. 'Follow me.'
He went down a companionway, took a key from his jacket pocket and opened a cabin door. It contained a porthole, a bunk with a stained wood side, and a stained wooden chest bolted to the floor.
The captain took out another key, and unlocked the chest. It was filled with drugs in glass bottles, each labelled in black and gold by its Latin name.
'Now
cure my gut,' he commanded.
'Take off your jacket.'
The man peeled it from his shoulders. His body stank with sour sweat. His stomach was like a huge soft pale bubble.
Gunn placed his hand over his heart to feel the beat, moved his fingers about the man's stomach. The captain stood there, watching him suspiciously.
'Have you ever had treatment for this pain?'
'Grog is my treatment, doctor.'
‘I see.'
Gunn took out three of the glass bottles, removed the ground-glass stoppers, sniffed cautiously at the contents to make sure they were not adulterated, then measured out a small amount from each and shook it into a glass.
He crossed to the basin.
'Is this water drinkable?' he asked.
'I drink it,' replied the captain stiffly.
Gunn poured some on to the powder and stirred it.
'Drink that,' he said, and glanced at his watch: five o'clock in the afternoon.
'You will need another dose at nine tonight, and every four hours tomorrow. By the next day you should be feeling better. If not, you will be dead.'
'You speak with certainty,' said the captain, impressed and uneasy. What if the second prognosis, was the right one?
'I have had several years' training,' Gunn explained grandly. 'I have also seen a number of men who drink too much, take too little exercise, and are worried. I am looking at another now.'
The captain said nothing. He swallowed the drink, tipped the glass upside down on the board by the sink and put on his jacket.
'You can sail with us,' he said shortly.
'What's the pay?'
'Twenty dollars a week. Spanish dollars, which are the currency here, worth five English shillings each in the market, a bit less in the banks. Paid in Chinese silver. And your keep.'
'How long is the voyage?'
'Impossible to say.'
'What's the cargo?'
'Dirt. Foreign mud.'
'You mean — opium?'
'I mean nothing else. We're sailing three hundred miles north to try new markets, and there may be trouble. Sometimes the Chinese put on a great show of anger, but they don't generally mean any harm. It's only because a new official is in the area — maybe someone from Peking to check that the local authorities really are trying to stop the trade.
'They fire guns, send out a few junks or fire-ships piled up with burning straw to catch our sails alight. Sometimes they even chase us, but not very hard. But just occasionally,
very
occasionally, we do meet an incorruptible official. Then you might be useful. People could get hurt.'
'When do you sail?' asked Gunn.
'We're still taking on fresh water. The tide will be right in about two hours.'
'I'll be with you,' said Gunn.
He held out his hand.
'I never shake hands,' said the captain shortly. 'It's unlucky.'
He turned away for a moment, so that Gunn could not see his eyes. It was one thing to take a man to almost certain death, but you could not shake hands with him. You could not allow yourself to become friendly towards him, even though he had been friendly to you. That was against his code of conduct, and he prided himself on the strictness of his code. He had been a Catholic once.