Sea of Glass (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (11 page)

‘Now, look here, Mr. Cedric,’ replied Turpin calmly (though it struck me that he was looking rather worried), ‘twenty-two years I’ve been in this ’ouse. If I wanted to steal, ’ow many times d’you think I could ’ave found something better than a dirty old writing-case? Of course, if you tell me it was stuffed with jewels, that’s different . . .’

Apparently Cedric did not feel competent to tell him anything of the sort. His attitude became perceptibly more reasonable.

‘But where the hell can it have gone? I wasn’t in the cloakroom more than three minutes. . . . You say that you went through to the study?’

‘To close the window in case it rains,’ said Turpin so speciously that I knew he was lying.

Fortunately the same crassness which made his own conduct so transparent often blinded Cedric to the obvious in other people.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s most mysterious, most disquieting. If the thing turns up, you’re to let me know immediately. . . . Oh, and one other point, Turpin, I don’t on any account want Mrs. Ellison worried by the business. There’s nothing that would upset her more than the thought that things were inexplicably disappearing. You understand?’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Turpin, giving me a surreptitious wink.

Cedric seemed to become aware of my presence for the first time.

‘Lost something,’ he said brusquely and superfluously. ‘Bit on edge today. It’s this damned thunder in the air.’

He went out of the door, almost at a run.

‘Ah,’ said Turpin, bringing out his old favourite. ‘ “ ’E nothing common did nor mean, Upon that memorable scene—” I don’t bloody think!’

‘Has he gone bats?’

With a mixture of relish and apprehension, Turpin described the events which had preceded my arrival. Cedric had touched them off by his own malice. He had the idea that butlers should be made to jump around for their money. Often when he had been paying a visit to Aynho Terrace he would ring the bell for Turpin simply in order that the latter might open the front door to let him out. This imbecile bit of feudalism was of course heartily resented. On this particular afternoon Cedric decided to sharpen the pinprick by keeping Turpin hanging about for an additional five minutes. So he went off to the downstairs lavatory to wash his hands. Whilst he was away Turpin’s attention was caught by his luggage. As usual, when he was going to or coming from his office he had a big portfolio, but today it was accompanied by a much smaller and shabbier article—an old-fashioned writing-case covered in green leather. He looked at it the more closely because he had an impression that it had been placed between the portfolio and the wall for partial concealment. Moreover it appeared vaguely familiar. After a few moments he remembered where he had seen it before; several times when he brought up tea to the
boudoir
he had noticed it lying on Mrs. Ellison’s desk and once he had seen her locking it away in her safe. It may have been this last observation or pure intuition which suddenly filled him with a deep stubborn certainty that the green case was not a thing which Mrs. Ellison would ever knowingly entrust to her son. Before he could think himself into caution he had acted.

‘What did you do?’ I asked.

‘Took my ruddy future in my ’ands,’ replied Turpin.

He had picked up the case and hidden it.

‘Where?’

Smirking proudly, he led me to the back of the hall where there was a radiator enclosed in a mahogany box. He undid a latch and the box opened, showing the writing-case nestling under the pipes. I took it out and looked at it curiously.

‘It’s going to be awkward if by any chance she did mean him to have it.’

‘Ah,’ said Turpin, ‘but I’m a bit easier in my mind since I saw ’ow ’e wanted to keep ’is ma out of this. ’E never came by that thing straight.’

‘What are you going to do with it now?’

‘That’s tricky. Find it again some’ow, I suppose, and ’and it in to the old lady.’

‘It may involve a good deal of explaining.’

There was a pause during which the same thought evidently occurred to both of us. Finally, in his official voice, Turpin said: ‘It seems, sir, that we might be better circumstanced to consider this ’ere problem, if we knew what was inside.’

My Public School morality revolted a little. But it had no deep roots, and I was just as inquisitive as Turpin.

‘It might save dropping a brick,’ I agreed.

The case was closed, but a small key with an elaborately patterned head had been left in the lock. I turned it and instantly the lid sprang up owing to pressure from inside. The interior was packed with scores of letters. It would have been difficult to imagine any more embarrassing contents, owing to the popular disapproval of people who pry into other’s correspondence. I closed the case again rapidly, but not before my eye had taken in that the topmost layer of letters were all addressed to Mrs. Eleanor Ellison and bore Chinese stamps of an old issue. ‘Doesn’t tell us much,’ I said sheepishly.

Turpin felt that there was an implied slur on his judgment and in the process of defending himself his language became even more forcible than usual.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘a sod like Mr. Cedric don’t nick papers to curl ’is ’air. I bet there’s something in them letters that’s worth a mint of money. Help ’im to put the bite on some poor bastard, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘You mean blackmail?’

Turpin nodded. Personally, however, though I agreed that anything which Cedric took the trouble to acquire was likely to have a firm cash value, I did not believe that he would go in for blatant crime. For a man in his position there were too many opportunities of reaping equal profits by misusing rather than contravening the law.

I was seized with a sudden impulse of
bourgeoisie oblige.

‘Look, Turpin, if you like I’ll give this thing back to Mrs. Ellison.’

He was only too thankful to be rid of the task. I did not myself much look forward to it. My hope was that I might catch the old lady in one of her confused moments. Alas, it was not to be. I found her sitting up in bed, clear-eyed and fresh from her afternoon nap, and wearing her best expression of composed benevolence.

When I produced the case she was visibly startled, but she listened politely to my slurred explanation how I had found it on the stairs. Clearly, however, she knew what had happened.

‘Thank you, David,’ she said at length. ‘There has been a misunderstanding. That case should never have left my possession.’

An instant later the complication which I most feared had come about. Nurse Fillis walked in. Seeing the object in Mrs. Ellison’s hands she let out a loud involuntary gasp and the rich colour drained out of her face.

Mrs. Ellison said: ‘I don’t think we’re ready for you yet, Nurse.’ After a pause, she added: ‘This is not quite your moment.’

She spoke with her normal patrician urbanity. But on the last words she allowed her glance to slide round to the bedside table on which stood a contraption of silver and velvet with an inset travelling-clock and a row of hooks for hanging up small personal objects. One of them bore a fob-watch which I had sometimes seen pinned onto Mrs. Ellison’s dress and another a ring of keys. Gently Mrs. Ellison took the keys and placed them under her pillow.

I knew now to what end Cedric’s nauseous persuasions had been directed.

‘I—I—’ said Nurse Fillis.

‘That will do now,’ said Mrs. Ellison. ‘Come and get me up in about half an hour.’

‘David,’ said Mrs. Ellison, ‘I’m sure that I can trust you. What do you think is in the case?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, and the cock crew once.

‘Letters which my son, Varvara’s father, sent me over a period of more than twenty years.’

‘They must be very interesting.’

Her face lit up. Her next remark showed that I had accidentally given her the lead which she wanted.

‘They’re so interesting that many people would like to read them. And people aren’t always very considerate about how they borrow. Nor do they always give things back. I should not like to lose my son’s letters.

‘Unfortunately,’ Mrs. Ellison continued, picking her way with tired finesse, ‘though I set so much store on the letters, my eyesight makes it rather a trial to re-read them. I don’t know if you care for strange stories and strange places, David—’

‘You mean, Doljuk? I’m absolutely sold on it.’

She smiled at this outburst of youthful enthusiasm.

‘Well, if you were to look through them, you would learn a lot about the exciting side of life there—the fighting and so on.’ She paused, marshalling herself for a final effort of diplomacy.

‘But of course an old lady like myself tends to be more interested in domestic and family matters. For instance, I should like to read again about my dear son’s wife, and anything that he may have said about his marriage. There are so many letters and after all these years I forget. . . .’

The effort of concentration was causing her voice to weaken rapidly. At the risk of a snub I tried to take some of the burden of explanation off.

‘You’d like me to read them and perhaps call your attention to . . . the points you mentioned?’

Mrs. Ellison nodded. We had linked hands without ostensibly letting the right know what the left was doing. Nevertheless I do not doubt that she credited me with a full understanding of her object. After all I had been present when the meaning of ‘children’ under the Power of Appointment was discussed. No, she simply belonged to a period when any contortions were preferable to saying outright: ‘I want to find out what evidence there is whether my granddaughter was born in wedlock.’ Slowly, with shaking veined hands, she held out the case towards me. As I took it my sense of elation was damped by the reflection that I would now be responsible for the contents. Clearly Cedric thought that they might be valuable enough to make it worthwhile to suborn his mother’s personal attendant. Presumably, if he had got away with them, he would have destroyed any material which was in Varvara’s favour and abstracted for use in case of a legal battle the statements which told against her.

It suddenly struck me that my position would be more comfortable if there were several copies of the letters. I made the suggestion tentatively, not sure how Mrs. Ellison would take it. Rather to my surprise she did not demur at the idea of her private correspondence going through the hands of a typist. The avowed object was to enable her more easily to read the pieces which I might pick out, but I am sure that she knew the real purpose of the precaution.

A week later a large registered packet lay beside my plate at breakfast. Varvara who had taken to coming downstairs for that meal looked at it with unconcealed curiosity.

‘You have not opened your big letter.’

‘No.’

‘It is private?’

‘Most letters are.’

After some heart-searching I had decided not to tell her about my task. I had not been forbidden to do so, but I felt that if Mrs. Ellison wished her to know, she should make the disclosure herself. Besides . . . suppose I found something which was prejudicial to her? It would be more than embarrassing to have her aware of it. Varvara did not share her uncle’s shameless indifference to truth, but one felt that she regarded it as subordinate to loyalty.

Nurse Fillis joined in the conversation. She had been very, very nervous of me for some days after the encounter in Mrs. Ellison’s room, but of late her spirit was coming back.

‘One place I was at,’ she said, ‘the young man of the house used to get big packets every week. He made a terrific secret of them at first. But then it turned out he was writing a novel and he kept on giving me bits of it to read. They were wicked—not spicy, I mean, but real dirt.’

‘I suppose they excited your instincts,’ said Varvara.

Just as heavy drinkers can usually pick out chronic alcoholics and have the greatest scorn for them, so Varvara, a highly passionate girl, detected and despised poor Nurse Fillis’s complaint.

On the afternoon when I left Mrs. Ellison’s room with the writing-case I had assumed that the office of nurse would change hands within the next few days. As nothing happened in forty-eight hours I thought the old lady had had some extraordinary lapse of memory and I was impertinent enough to give her a hint.

‘My dear boy,’ she said, ‘from time to time we all lose our heads’—she smiled faintly—‘or our hearts. One must make allowances.’

‘But theft—’

Mrs. Ellison’s face became quite stern. ‘Not theft,’ she said. ‘Confusion of orders.’

She did not miss many tricks. It would have ripped to pieces her cherished pavilion of reticence if she had had to listen to a string of hysterical accusations against her son. She herself gave me another modest reason for her charity.

‘I’m a selfish old woman. It means a lot to have somebody about me who’s learnt to understand my helplessness and my ailments.’

‘She’s very fortunate to have struck such a tolerant employer,’ I said rather priggishly.

‘Be kind to Nurse Fillis,’ she continued. ‘She has a difficult life and she is capable of great goodness. She keeps a sister who’s slowly dying of Parkinson’s disease.’

She was obviously sincere; and therefore I was the more amazed when, having uttered these words, she suddenly began to laugh.

‘I told Barbara that,’ she said, ‘and do you know what her answer was?’

‘No.’

‘She merely asked, “Is Parkinson’s disease infectious?” . . . Oh, there’s a lot of Ellison about that young woman, a terrible lot!’

6

Altogether there were a hundred and twenty-six letters. I still have—quite legitimately, as I shall explain—copies of all of them. Many seem to me to be of exceptional interest; their style, jaunty and rather self-consciously callous, says a good deal about the character of their writer, and so indirectly of his child. This is my excuse for the limited number of quotations which I shall give.

I start with the first in the series, dated
17
th November
1914
, because it sets the tone and also because it may serve to correct in advance any impression that Fulk’s career in Sinkiang was one long succession of
Boy’s Own Paper
triumphs.

‘
Dearest Mother,

‘There are rumours here that you are having a war. Personally I think they have been put about by the Chinks to push up the price of German ammunition. But if you are, well, it is not much different here. I have had a bit of trouble, that swine Yee again, the Governor, I told you about him, I think. Last week there was a riot, the boys have been boiling up for some while, and they got a few of the garrison in a Bad House, and gave them something they didn’t go in for.

‘Well, it so happened that a couple of chaps who took a leading part in the disturbance were friends of mine. And furthermore it happened that I had lately sold them one or two odds and ends—for keeping off thieves and shooting quail and so on. Is it my fault if they misbehave with my goods, any more than you’d blame the ironmonger if a man bought a saucepan from him and went out into the street and bashed somebody over the head with it? But there you are. I’ve always been the poor fish that got the blame.

‘Two or three nights after the riot I was in the outer courtyard. A couple of my caravans had come in and I was talking to the drivers and checking over the stuff. And then, damn me, if a dozen whacking great soldiers didn’t barge in through the open gate. I asked what they wanted and they said they had orders to take me before the Governor. Well, the boys from the caravans who’re a friendly lot were in favour of up and cut their throats. But I could see this was a special patrol because they’d been issued with the old Martini Henry rifles which go off once in two instead of once in ten like the rest of the armoury. So not wanting any bloodshed I said I’d go along. But the blasted noise had roused up Serafina and she came out with the baby to ask what was happening. Well, Mother, not to make a song about it, the fact is that people who go to the Governor’s palace don’t always come back, or they come back the worse for wear. Serafina started to bawl and the baby bawled too, and then the baby’s nurse popped up, always one for a bit of grue, just like our old nanny, and the noise would have drowned a steam siren. There is only one way to stop Serafina lamenting and that is to start her cursing. So I told her she was simply trying to disguise the fact that all she cared about was my money, and she’d be glad if I was killed, so that she could get her hands on it. When I came back several hours later she was still making a speech about the purity of her heart and the delicacy of her nature. You would like S., Mother, she would give you many a good laugh.

‘Well, because of all the uproar, I’d let them take me away without my sheepskin coat or my fur hat. The cold had just set in, and when it’s cold here believe me, Mother, it would take the nose off a brass monkey. The colder it is, the brighter the stars and the moon, and the mica on the slopes above the North Gate bats back the light so that if you look long enough you begin to imagine the whole place is winking at you. Anyway the chill got into my bones and started me shivering. Which would never do. Once let these Chinks think you are frightened of them and you are finished. So when we reached the palace, I made the soldiers let me stop in the guard-house and warm myself over a brazier.

‘You’d hardly recognize the palace by that name. Some of it was put up about
1750
in the usual Chink style—a series of big barns—pavilions, if you’re feeling polite—with carved roofs and long eaves. But the centre is quite different, a bit like the castle towers in Scotland—very rough stone, slit windows and passages, so low and narrow that you feel you’re crawling along a mole’s burrow. They say it was built by either the Keraits or the Uighurs. The Chinks don’t like it, they say it is haunted, but they don’t knock it down because once or twice these four-foot walls have turned out very useful in a siege.

‘On the bottom floor there’s one big room, almost circular. I don’t know what it’s called officially, but Yee uses it as a private audience chamber. When they took me in he was sitting at a little lacquered table, painting or doing calligraphy. Well, I ask you! What an act! It reminded me of father. You know I could never stand that trick of shuffling the papers and signing letters while people wait, just to show what a big cheese you are.

‘So after a minute I waited till he was on a delicate downstroke and I coughed as loud as I damned well could. He started all right. But he’s not a man who stops on the wrong foot for long.

‘ “I have read”, he said, “that there is a natural law which repeatedly gives symbolic warnings to the perceptive when they are in the presence of evil-doers.”

‘Well, I thought, my Chink is pretty good, but if the conversation is to be on that plane, I cannot run to it. So I tried to keep it simple.

‘ “I did not feel any warning,” I said.

‘ “Possibly not. But just now you caused me to spoil the character which represents Peace and Harmony.”

‘ “There can’t be much use for it round here,” I said, trying to put us on an easy footing.

‘ “You dare to tell me that!” he said. “You who have done as much as anyone to turn this city into a den of wild beasts!”

‘When anything goes wrong the authorities always like to pretend that the man who sells a gun is responsible for what the buyer does with it. Of course, traffic in arms is illegal in Sinkiang and punishable by death, but everybody knows it goes on and who’s in it. I scarcely thought that even Yee would be cad enough to bring that up against me.

‘ “I have proof against you, a hundred times over,” he said.

‘ “There is no need to congratulate yourself on that, your Excellency,” I said. “Come down to my cellar any day and I will show you my goods.”

Yee is a funny-looking chap. For a Chink he has a long face and rather pronounced features. As I stood there looking at him in the lamplight he reminded me of an old mountain goat. You stare at that long dreary mug and you don’t know whether to laugh or to be sorry for the poor brute. Then if you’re lucky you catch the wicked light in his eyes just before he catches you in the stomach!

‘ “I am willing to grant you the conventional immunity on that score, but I can no longer tolerate the fact that you have allied yourself with the enemies of the Government which has given you eight years’ hospitality.”

‘I do not know, Mother, whether the people in England still believe that the Chinks begin every sentence by saying, “Honourable Lotus Blossom, accept my unworthy salutations”. It is not so. They can talk as straight as anyone else, at least they can out here.

‘So I said to him, “What are you going to do about it?”

‘ “I am going to put you to death,” he said, “in accordance with my lawful powers.”

‘ “There will be a frightful fuss when the news gets back to England,” I said.

‘ “I have faced many fusses in the course of my duty,” he said. “Besides, you may possibly exaggerate the concern of your Government. I shall be fully supported by mine.”

‘Well, I must say I was uneasy. About half the soldiers had stayed in the room, a couple guarding Yee, and three just behind my back. Even if I had been armed I shouldn’t have stood a chance. Whilst I was weighing up the situation, the screen that stood across the entrance was edged aside and in strolled another brute. He was carrying one of those whacking great executioner’s swords.

‘ “Is your Excellency not being a little hasty?” I said. “It would be a pity to do anything irreparable.”

‘ “The whole object of this procedure is that it should be irreparable,” he said.

‘ “Can’t I at least say goodbye to my wife and child?”

‘ “It would only distress them,” said Yee. “I shall make it my business to inform your wife that you submitted bravely to the decree of higher authority—even if the facts should not warrant that praise.”

‘I do not mind saying that I had begun to sweat. Do you know what I kept on thinking, Mother? I suppose it ought to have been about Serafina or you. But actually I thought “Father’s still alive. I counted at least on surviving him, and now I’m going to be done out of even that satisfaction”.

‘Two of the soldiers suddenly put their hands on my shoulders and dragged down so that I collapsed on to my knees. That is the position from which the Chinks usually take their heads off. Its disadvantage is that the victim sometimes starts hobbling about, and the executioner has to chase round taking a slice off where he can. I have seen some of it at the city execution ground.

‘There I was. I could hear the chap with the sword taking practise swings behind my back. It made a funny noise, as though the blade were somehow broad and wrinkled like a fan. Yee was looking at me with a serene benevolent expression like the old boy on the bench the time Jack Locksley and I broke the windows of that pub. Suddenly he said:

‘ “Do you believe that if a miracle were now to spare you, you would be able to respect your obligations to the State?”

‘ “Yes,” I said. Who wouldn’t?

‘ “It is a pity that we shall never know,” said Yee, and he made a signal with his hand.

‘The next thing I knew I heard the whistling noise for a fraction of a second, and then I stopped a sort of slap between the shoulder and the jaw. Just as if some woman had got fed up. Damn me stiff, I thought, Mother, if that’s all it feels to die! Then I realized I’d gone over on my side, flat against the tiles, but looking up I could still see old Yee, and even the executioner who was laughing like a horse. His blasted sword had bent double and caved in like a Harlequin’s smacker in a pantomime. And that’s just about what it was. Once I looked I could see that it was made of stiff paper, painted over to imitate steel.

‘Well, it wasn’t the first time that trick had been worked. I’d heard of the Chinks playing it before. So much the bigger fool me. I don’t know if you like your sons heroes, Mother, because, if so, you will have to make do with Cedric, which I think will be an uphill job. All I can tell you is that when I got back on my feet, I was shaking like a watch-spring.

‘Old Yee said, “Today one of my subordinates appears to have made an error of judgment. We will leave it at that. But you will appreciate how rarely such a thing recurs even in the lowest civilizations.”

‘Mother, I do not like being made a fool of. You know that. I have it in for Yee Chen Sung. . . .’

In a broad, breezy way Fulk must have been an inconsiderate man. This comes out in the style of writing to his mother. From other evidence I believe that his language in conversation was appalling. He moderated it greatly for literary purposes, but it is improbable that a woman of Mrs. Ellison’s generation much appreciated the residue of damning and blasting. More important, he never seemed to understand that the recital of danger and hairbreadth escapes was calculated to set up chronic anxiety in a loving parent. Yet the fact that his letters persisted throughout the long years of exile shows that he must have had a deep regard for his mother.

One thing about him which is unacceptable to contemporary opinion is his attitude to the Chinese. In his correspondence they are invariably referred to by the childish and derogatory nickname of Chinks. Hostility hardly excuses bad taste; but the truth was that Fulk, so much nearer to China than the average man, nevertheless saw it in a light far less likely to promote sympathy—namely, that of a colonial power, a role to which experts agree the Chinese have never been well fitted. They had made a mess of Sinkiang: they could not assimilate it, they could hardly hold it, but they would not let it go.

I have already spoken about the endless pattern of rebellion and reprisal which runs through the history of the province. Nobody who reads that history can doubt that the Chinese Government were chronically guilty of preferring reconquest to prevention, if only because it was financially cheaper. But as time went on the cost of this policy in human life rose steeply because of the infiltration of new weapons to Sinkiang. For instance, Fulk’s activities must have done a good deal to increase the rate of bloodshed.

A Russian traveller has left an account of a battle between the Tungan and Turki rebels and a Chinese army in the eighteen-nineties. It resembled a circus as much as a military operation, and more than either, a parade of weapons through the ages. Everything from Genoese crossbows to bronze cannon had drained down into that remote sump of warfare. On the rebel side there was even a detachment of men unarmed except for small pieces of paper wrapped round pebbles which they flung at the enemy; the paper was inscribed with highly damaging curses.

There was still an element of this glorious gimcrackery about the conflicts of Fulk’s day. But already, above the outlandish cries and the variegated explosions, one could begin to hear the quiet padding approach of the technician with his mass-produced instruments of slaughter.

The lack of letters dating from the first nine years of Fulk’s stay in Doljuk had various inconveniences. It would be interesting, for example, to know what originally decided him to settle in such an unlikely spot, how he established himself, and how the natives first reacted to his presence. But there was another disadvantage of more practical moment. No account existed of the period during which he either did or did not marry Serafina Filipovna, and their child was born. These were events which he could scarcely have avoided mentioning. But, alas, at the point where I came in all the characters were taken as introduced and familiar to his mother’s mind.

I found only one passage which might bear on Varvara’s legitimacy. In the summer of
1918
Doljuk was visited by a plague which must have been part of the great pandemic of Spanish ’flu. Varvara, then aged about nine, caught it and was likely to die. She was saved—or so at least Fulk thought—by her mother’s doctoring. Serafina had taken up this art, mixed with a little wizardry, under the influence of one of her servants, an old Kipchak woman, who, until she broke her thigh and became unfit for a nomadic life, had been the medicine woman of her tribe. (I suppose that Varvara’s similar pretensions and the stock of drugs with which she supported them were a direct inheritance.)