Fortune is a Woman (36 page)

He shook her hand, bowing to her, his eyes smiling a welcome and she could tell he was as glad to see her as she was to see him. He walked with her across the road to the hotel and then left her there, saying he would meet her in an hour's time.

***

The Hong Kong Hotel described itself as the most commodious and best-appointed hotel in the Far East; it was solidly comfortable in colonial British style with gas-lit bedrooms and bathrooms en suite, hydraulic elevators, Grips restaurant, and a grill-room that served Western-style chops and steaks at any hour. Francie inspected it critically, thinking of Annie's plans for a new hotel, and she thought Annie could do it better. Still, the service was remarkable, her bags were in her suite before she was, and there was an abundance of flowers and fruit and bottled water. The only trouble was that Chinese were not allowed, except for servants.

Lai Tsin had warned her of this and she had immediately refused to stay there, but he had insisted she must. "It is not suitable for a Western woman to stay in a hotel with Chinese," he told her firmly.

He was waiting for her in a black-hooded rickshaw and they soon left the smart paved streets behind, jogging through crowded alleys and up and down hills and steps to a shabby waterfront area. Their rickshaw man wove his way through a maze of narrow lanes behind the docks and stopped in front of a dilapidated gray wooden warehouse. Lai Tsin alighted and held out his hand to help her.

"This is what I have brought you to see," he said, flinging open the door proudly. "Our own godown in Hong Kong. I was fortunate to find it so near the waterfront, because the big trading companies own most of the land. I have bought it in your name, Francie. Look, here are the papers for you to sign." She stared at the papers covered in Chinese writing.

"This is only the beginning," he said excitedly. "The taipans of the big hongs would eliminate us immediately if we were to try to compete with them, it is only because we are small that we have a chance. And it is that very smallness that will be our biggest asset—it will enable us to pick up the crumbs they consider too much trouble to sweep up themselves.

"And if this little godown does not look worthy of the L. T. Francis Company, then only remember this: that from smallness and discretion grows greatness. Our lack of ostentation enables us to act stealthily, and stealthily we will creep up on our competitors, until one day we shall stun them with our power."

Francie stared at him, impressed. He looked small and fragile, his skin was stretched thin as parchment across his prominent cheekbones, but his black almond eyes sparkled with intelligence and knowledge. He was her mentor, her guide through life, and he knew everything.

Lai Tsin took her hand and led her inside. The wooden shelves were covered in the dust of years and a thin ray of sunlight filtered through a broken pane in the small window. It looked shabby and desolate, but he promised confidently, "The next time you see this it will be filled to overflowing with our wares."

The waterfront was a hive of activity. Everywhere Hakka coolies, stripped to the waist, were carrying, lifting, and staggering beneath burdens more than twice their own weight. Forming human chains, they loaded the little tugs that chugged back and forth to the ships anchored in the deep water bay. Sweat streamed down their backs, it dripped from their furrowed brows into their eyes, but they had no time to wipe it away.

Francie watched curiously, but she didn't notice one of the coolies stop work and stare at her and Lai Tsin. Nor did she see him edge closer, stealing toward them in the shadows behind the mountain of crates.

The coolie was large-boned and desperately thin, his back was bent and there was a permanent frown of anguish on his filthy, sweat-streaked face. He was short and wiry, he kept his head bowed and his face hidden beneath the wide straw coolie hat. He wore his thick, coarse black hair shaved at the front and braided in a queue, and he was dressed in the cheap, black cotton pants they all wore. His skin was burned a dark yellowish brown and only his eyes gave him away; they were the eyes of a Western man, burning with rage and pain and hatred. They were Sammy Morris's eyes and they were staring, stunned, at Francie.

If he had ever prayed in his life it was to see her again. When they had flung him, emasculated and half-dead, into the stinking hold of the filthy Chinese clipper, he had thought he would die. He had
wanted
to die—what was there to live for? To suffer the excruciating pain that racked his bleeding body? To live with the knowledge that Josh was dead? To feel the rats sniffing his blood, gnawing at his limbs, impatiently waiting their turn to mutilate him further? When they had brought him water and rice he had asked them, half-conscious, Why? "You are not to die," they told him. "Those are our instructions." And so, despite his horrific wounds and his wish to depart this world of pain they had forced him to live, in order to suffer the humiliation of poverty and despair, when existence meant a coolie's life, breaking his back for a few
yuan
that bought him only a miserable bowl of Chinese rice morning and evening and a filthy six-by-nine-foot cubicle flimsily partitioned off from a dozen others where he slept nights, and which was rented out during the day to another coolie.

Many times he had contemplated suicide. It would have been so easy to leave his pain behind, to smoke a pipe of opium and then jump into the harbor and let the tide take him, or to climb the bamboo scaffolding surrounding the tall buildings under construction and throw himself off, or to buy a lethal potion from the Chinese medicine shops where they knew all about those things. But in the end, he could never do it. Because one ambition still burned in his shattered, broken shell of a body. He wanted to take his revenge on Francesca Harrison. He wanted her to suffer the way Josh had suffered and the way he was suffering now. She had put him through six years of hell when she had him flung, half-dead, into the China clipper, never expecting him to return. Her big mistake had been in not killing him and shipping him instead to China. It had taken years for him to make his way to Hong Kong. And now fate had given her to him again.

She looked so cool and elegant and aloof, like a queen surveying her subjects, he thought bitterly, his heart jumping with the old excitement. Ignoring the angry shouts of the overseer, he moved from shadow to shadow in their wake. He watched as they climbed into the waiting rickshaw, and as they set off down the street he padded after them, trotting in rhythm with the rickshaw man, but always keeping a careful distance behind.

Despite his crippled back and his terrible wounds, years of work as a coolie had toughened him and he was scarcely out of breath when they turned into Pedder Street. He lingered on the edge of the milling crowds, watching as she stepped from the rickshaw and went into the hotel.

He was very thoughtful as he made his way back to his miserable little rat-infested cubicle later. He bought a bowl of rice and vegetables from a stand on the corner and ate it leaning against a wall, still thinking. And when he went back to his stinking cubicle and lit a pipe of opium, he thanked whatever providence had thrown her into his path. He decided that whatever it took this time he would get Miss Francesca Harrison. He would torture her the way he had been tortured, and then he would be merciful. He would kill her.

***

Francie had been in Hong Kong a month and at first everything had seemed to be going right. They had found a cargo ship for sale; it was shabby and rusty and not very fast, but it was sound. The purchase was completed within days, an American captain was appointed and a Chinese crew recruited. Now it lay in anchor, empty and waiting for its first cargo. And that was the problem.

The crumbs of business that Lai Tsin had anticipated snatching from the rich hongs' tables had not materialized. They did not do business with Chinese, they told him loftily. And when Francie went to see the taipans, they closed their doors to her, instructing their compradors, the managers, to offer her a glass of sherry and a sweet biscuit and inform her they did not do business with women. Smarting, she had retorted that it was their loss and marched out, but the truth was that now she did not know what to do.

It seemed impossible to penetrate their tight trading cartel, it was all wrapped up and shared out amongst the big hongs, the Jardines, the Swires, and the others.

The rickety godown had been cleaned and swept ready for the bales of silk and cotton, the chests of tea and spices, the precious carpets and the porcelain and jade they'd anticipated shipping, but it were still almost empty. And she knew from Lai Tsin's eyes that he had failed to secure any more business from the hongs. Reassuringly, he said the ship would be filled with his own merchandise, but she knew that there would be little profit in it. Francie's heart sank; instead of being a help to Lai Tsin, she had failed him.

When she returned to the hotel there was a message from Edward Stratton. It said, "I'm back, staying at Government House. Would you please be kind to a poor traveler and have dinner with me tonight?" Francie's spirits suddenly lifted, though she knew she shouldn't see him again. It was an impossible situation, her life was too fraught with complications, while his was as straightforward as A to Z. Yet just the thought of him made her pulse race and she knew she couldn't resist. Sitting at the ornate walnut desk, she wrote a note accepting, and summoned the little pageboy to see it was delivered.

A huge bouquet of flowers arrived for her shortly afterward, tall creamy roses. "I remember you best with these lovely flowers in your hair," Edward's note read, "only they were never as lovely as you. I shall be at your hotel at seven-thirty."

Francie was so nervous, she was ready at six-thirty. She wore the long ice-blue silk dress and tucked a rose into her hair.

She paced the floor nervously until seven-thirty and then with one last glance in the mirror, she picked up her floating blue-green lace wrap and her silk purse and walked slowly to the elevator. She took a deep breath as it descended, telling herself this would be the very last time she would see him. And then the metal grille slid open and he was walking toward her, both hands outstretched and a tender smile on his handsome face, and her heart lurched all over again and all her good resolutions were forgotten.

"You look just the way you did the first time I saw you," he said, taking her hands in his and lifting them to his lips.

She took back her hands quickly and patted the rose in her hair. "It's because of your lovely flowers," she murmured. "You remembered the roses."

She had never realized how intimate a vehicle a rickshaw was until she sat in one with Edward. The black hood closed them off from the view of pedestrians and she felt his arm against hers. "Where are we going?" she asked nervously.

"I'm taking you to my favorite restaurant," he said, smiling at her.

The rickshaw took them farther along the waterfront to a small dock where a sampan waited. She looked at him inquiringly as she stepped into it, but he just nodded and said mysteriously, "Wait and see."

The sun was setting and its fiery red glow silhouetted the black, full-sailed junks dotting the bay. The old woman paddling the sampan swung it around, maneuvering it skillfully to a little platform at the side of a junk, where a flight of steps led up to the deck. Her gnarled toothless face beamed into Francie's and she said something in Cantonese, touching her horny, callused hand to her cheek and patting her stringy hair.

Edward laughed in reply, tipping her lavishly as they climbed from the sampan.

"What did she say?" Francie asked, shading her eyes with her hand to watch the old woman paddle away.

He grinned. "She said the hairy barbarian lord's woman is very beautiful, but she has too much strength for him."

Francie laughed ruefully. "I'm afraid she made the wrong guess."

"Oh, it's no guess." He took her hand and led her up the steps as dozens of coolies in white smocks and black trousers appeared to welcome them. "These people can read faces the way we read books."

The Chinese junk smelled of tar and rope and salt spray, and they walked to the stern where soft Oriental carpets covered the wooden boards and fat silk cushions were piled around a low red-laquered table. Sticks of incense burned in front of tin figures of the sea goddess, a tasseled red awning sheltered them from the last rays of the sun and there were heavy red silk curtains that could be drawn to shut out the wind or to give them privacy.

In a sudden flurry of activity, the coolies clambered along the rigging, hoisting sails; the anchor was pulled in and Francie sat on her silk cushions speechless with pleasure as they sailed silently across the bay past a dozen tiny green islands dotted with curved-roofed temples. The sun quickly disappeared into the indigo sea, leaving only a faint rosy stain on the royal blue sky and a boy hurried to light the lanterns hanging from tall iron poles, while another solemnly carried in the silver ice bucket with the bottle of champagne Edward had sent ahead. Crystal glasses were filled and as he handed one to Francie he said, "I could think of no one I would rather share this moment with than you."

The sea rippled past like a stream and the wind sang in the rigging, billowing their sails as they watched the sky change to midnight, then to ink. The stars were as bright as their lanterns and he smiled happily at her.

Then half a dozen chattering Chinese appeared bearing steaming platters and they ate their feast, laughing as their ship skimmed over the glossy dark sea.

"Maybe we're destined to spend all our lives on boats," Francie said dreamily, leaning back against the huge soft cushions and gazing upward at the stars. "Liners and freighters and junks... permanent travelers of the world."

"Is that what you would like?" he asked, leaning toward her.

She shook her head. His face was so close to hers she could see the little dark flecks in the blue of his eyes. Discreetly, the Chinese removed the dishes from the low table and closed the curtains, leaving them alone in their cushioned lamplit world.