The Dangerous Years (26 page)

She gave him a wide smile as he appeared.

‘You should do that more often,’ he said. ‘It suits you. You’re to be put aboard a passenger steamer at Chinkiang.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m taking
Spider
down.’

She gave him a broad grin. ‘I’d like to repay your hospitality, Commander. It isn’t every day one’s rescued by a handsome man, and I’m very much in your debt.’

She moved to him and kissed him unexpectedly on the cheek.

‘Mere gratitude, I hope,’ he said.

‘More than that.’ She pushed the door to and put her arms round his neck.

As he disentangled himself gently and opened the door again, she stared at him, clearly disappointed. ‘Are all naval officers so aloof?’

‘We’re noted for our detachment.’

‘Aren’t you interested in me?’

‘Very much. But it’s a bit soon after your husband was killed, isn’t it? Were you really raped?’

She shrugged. ‘One of them manhandled me. He tore my dress and I fell down. When I got up I punched him on the nose and the others started laughing. I think that’s what saved me.’

‘I’m told it often does.’

‘Come and see me in Shanghai,’ she begged. ‘I have a house there.’

For a moment Kelly hesitated, then he gave way. ‘I’d be delighted to,’ he said. ‘How about you? Aren’t you a bit scared now you’re on your own?’

‘The Clemos are never afraid.’

‘You’ve lost everything.’

She shrugged. ‘There’s plenty more where that came from,’ she pointed out. ‘I ought, in fact, to be able to dine out on this for months.’ She looked up at him, oozing sex appeal in waves. ‘It’s still beyond me,’ she said, ‘how a man who looks and behaves like you has managed to remain single all these years.’

Chinkiang was in the throes of a riot when they arrived, and the captain of
Coronet
stepped aboard as soon as they made fast alongside his ship.

‘I’ve got to hold you for a couple of days,’ he said. ‘These bloody Nationalists are creating merry hell ashore and I need your men. We’ll have your passengers transferred to
E-Wo
. She’s a B and S freighter and she’s downstream where it’s safer.’

Christina Withinshawe was surprisingly pliable. ‘When do we leave?’ she asked.

‘Boats will ferry you down,’ Kelly said. ‘You have to be ready in one hour. I’m taking a party of men ashore.’

She listened to the sound of screaming as the mob rampaged through the city. Through the scuttle she could see a huge crowd swarming along the bund, whacking in windows with carrying poles.

‘To face that lot?’

‘I expect we’ll manage.’

She slammed the door to and flung herself into his arms.

‘Damn your bloody navy stand-offishness,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to!’

He kissed her gently and was kissed back fiercely. He gently detached her and opened the door.

There’ll be time for that later,’ he said. ‘The Sub will be staying aboard with the engine room crew. He’ll see you all into the boats. Now I must go.’

As they were put ashore, the drums and the gongs and the yelling seemed to increase in tempo, and sporadic shooting came on the wind with a thin high baying from the town that filtered between the houses. Here and there bodies lay in flattened heaps along the bund where Chinese merchants who’d done business with the British had been dragged out of their homes by the nationalist mob and battered to death. Groups of sailors were escorting women and children to where
Coronet
’s boats were gathered, and Kelly’s party joined that of a midshipman who was holding the crowd back from the end of the jetty.

The midshipman was a round-cheeked youngster who looked no more than a schoolboy. Erect in front of his men, he had a black eye from a brickbat and was wearing a fixed grin to show he wasn’t afraid, standing motionless and unflinching while the filth and the brickbats bounced off him and his little party. Spat at, covered with ordure, the little group of sailors waited with their rifles at the ready, not threatening, but also not budging.

‘Nice to see you, sir,’ the midshipman said out of the corner of his mouth, without taking his eyes off the mob. ‘William Latimer. I was getting a bit worried.’

‘Kelly Maguire. What’s it like, Mid?’

‘I’m terrified, sir.’

‘You’d never know it.’

‘
I
would, sir. I know they say that midshipmen are bipeds of extraordinary stupidity used as a medium of personal abuse between two persons of unequal superiority, but there’s more to it than that. We breathe, sir, we think. Like that chap in
Merchant of Venice
, we have eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, affections, passions. If you prick us we bleed.’

‘By God, Mid, you know your Shakespeare better than I do.’

‘Habit of mine, sir. Rather like the old Bard. How long shall we be here?’

‘I gather they’re bringing the last of them along now.’

‘Thank God for that, sir. If it goes on much longer, I’m afraid I’ll cut and run.’

‘You look as though you’re rooted to the ground.’

‘If I am, sir, it’s with sheer funk.’

The wet streets were full of smoke and soggy ashes. The mob had quietened a little by this time and they could hear outbreaks of firing from small groups of soldiers dodging between the houses. Idols and dragon symbols were being carried through the streets and further along the bund coolies were making messy sacrifices with chickens and goats. British, American, French and Japanese flags had been torn down and a crowd of students were earnestly burning pictures of King George and President Coolidge.

Small groups of Europeans, their shoulders bowed, their faces grey with strain, their children wailing with terror, kept appearing, escorted by small parties of bluejackets armed to the teeth. They moved falteringly along the rubbish-littered bund, watched by defiant-looking Chinese militiamen, students and coolies. Beyond the mob telegraph wires looped above pavements strewn with broken glass, stones, paper and blowing chaff, and further back still a burning car sent a black pyre of smoke curling up like a plume against the sky.

The evacuation took longer than they’d expected and the last people to arrive were being carried on stretcher. As they approached, the mob pressed closer.

‘Stand by, Mid,’ Kelly said.

As the Chinese advanced, a line of young girls, their slant eyes narrowed, their faces contorted with hatred, pushed in front and, wrenching at their skirts and blouses, exposed their yellow bodies to the sailors.

‘Out, King George!’ they screeched. ‘Shoot, white pigs! Shoot!’

Peering from under the lips of their steel helmets, the sailors’ faces remained expressionless, but Kelly heard a small united gasp of appreciation as they stared at the slim yellow bodies naked to the waist, and the row of bobbing young breasts.

‘Christ–’ the voice was Donkin’s ‘–just take a dekko at them knockers.’

‘Stop that talking,’ Kelly rapped. ‘And keep your eyes where they ought to be.’

‘’Arder than you’d think,’ Donkin murmured.

The line of rifles lifted and the sailors gritted their teeth to stand immovable under the handfuls of dung and decaying vegetable matter.

‘I’ve heard of showers of shit,’ one of them muttered. ‘But this is fucking well
it
.’

As the mob came closer, swarming over the gardens and smooth lawns of the nearby houses, the few Sikh policemen backed nearer to the sailors. Behind them, the crowd surged like water running from a burst river bank to join those already shouting abuse, while more behind pushed forward, waving carrying poles and sticks and forcing the front ranks forward until they were only a few feet from Kelly’s nose. The barrier of sailors was forced back a few steps and the struggling line of refugees came to a standstill.

‘Do they pay your pension to your mother, sir?’ Latimer asked sideways as a brawny coolie stripped to the waist brandished his pole under his nose.

‘So I’m told,’ Kelly said.

‘Tell her I died doing my duty, sir. Head erect. Face to the foe.’

‘And covered all over from head to foot–’ the voice behind them broke into a popular bawdy song ‘–covered all over in – Sweet Vi-olets–’

Latimer grinned. ‘At least the troops are in good heart, sir.’

The crowd had halted now, bewildered by the calmness of the foreign devils, wondering what they had up their sleeves and just when the order to fire would be given.

‘I think we’re winning,’ Kelly said.

Those at the back of the crowd, safe against disaster, were still yelling and screaming, and a stone coming over the heads, hit Kelly at the side of the face. Latimer unbuckled his holster and the crowd edged backwards a fraction. Kelly had gone down on one knee but he rose, shoved his helmet straight, and stood upright, a thin trickle of blood oozing from his cheek.

‘Keep that thing in its holster, Mid. You know what they say about revolvers. It’s easier to blow your own foot off than hit what you’re aiming at.’

The stones continued to fly and a sailor’s helmet was knocked off, then the burly coolie turned to address the crowd, obviously proud of his physique. The yelling died as he began to lash himself into a fury against the Whites. The hail of stones continued, the small boys hurling pony droppings; then, as the coolie prepared for a final tirade a handful of manure hit him full in the teeth just when his mouth was wide open. As he staggered back, raging and spitting, Kelly grinned and a small Chinese boy fell to the ground, spluttering with delight. The next minute there was a yell of laughter from the crowd.

‘I think this might be the moment, Mid,’ Kelly said. ‘Let’s move forward. Use your rifle butts on their bare toes.’

As the line of blue-uniformed men advanced
slowly
, tapping gently at bare feet, the crowd began to back away. People drifted down alleys, trying to look unconcerned, then the edges crumbled and finally the centre began to melt. When there were only a few left, the last of them hitched at their blue cotton pants and, with their poles over their shoulders, sauntered off.

The Woodbines came out. The casualties had not been high, and at once the parties of white men and women pushed forward again to the jetty. As the last of them arrived, a harassed-looking consul in yesterday’s whites appeared. Behind him there was an officer, carrying the union jack from the consulate flagstaff.

‘I think we can go now,’ Kelly said.

Back aboard
Spider
, Kelly went below to the captain’s cabin to clean himself up. The missionaries seemed to have left all their discarded clothing lying around, together with torn paper, a few Mission pamphlets and a dog-eared Bible. He turned to the sailor who had followed him below to take his filthy clothes.

‘I always thought cleanliness was next to Godliness,’ he growled. ‘Let’s get this bloody lot cleared up.’

He found a bottle of whisky and, filling a tumbler, stood drinking it, his jacket in one hand, as the sailor gathered up the lost belongings and vanished. As he sank the last of the whisky, there was a tap on the door. As it opened, he saw Christina Withinshawe outside, smiling at him.

‘What the devil are you doing here?’ he snapped.

‘I didn’t leave with the others.’

‘Why the devil not?’

She blinked at his anger. ‘Don’t shout at me, Commander! I didn’t wish to, that’s why. A squabble broke out between the Total Immersionists and the Seventh Day Adventists, or whatever they call themselves, with the Catholics in between holding them apart. Nobody noticed I wasn’t there.’

‘Didn’t they check the cabin?’

‘I was inside with the door locked. They didn’t break it down. Perhaps it isn’t done in the Navy to break doors down.’ She gazed at his cheek. ‘You seem to need attention. That’s a nasty cut.’

‘I’ll get the surgeon.’

‘There isn’t one. He went with the wounded to
E-Wo
, if you remember. But I did a bit of nursing during the recent hurly-burly with the Germans – mostly holding the hands of titled officers at my mother’s convalescent home in Norfolk.’

He poured himself another whisky while she vanished to the wardroom to search among the bandages the doctor had left behind. As she reappeared, he sat down on the bunk and she produced water and a piece of lint and began to dab at the cut on his cheek.

‘I don’t think this does much good,’ she pointed out. ‘But it looks terribly efficient and the patient always seems to enjoy it.’

She bent and kissed him gently on the forehead, then she dabbed iodine on the cut and put a strip of sticking plaster over it.

‘Fit to meet the ladies,’ she said.

He rose and she straightened up close to him, her eyes on his, daring him.

He smiled. ‘Now we’ll have you taken to
E-Wo
,’ he said. ‘And this time I’ll come myself to see you get there.’

Tyrwhitt was delighted to see Kelly back and to have
Spider
safe and reasonably sound.

‘Pity we didn’t get up there in time to save Withinshawe,’ he said. ‘But I gather Lord Clemo won’t argue with his daughter back in the fold. I’ve been bombarded with congratulatory telegrams. How did you find her?’

‘Highly delectable, sir,’ Kelly said briskly. ‘She’s a brave intelligent woman – even if a little self-willed.’

Tyrwhitt’s heavy eyebrows shot up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting to see that girl of yours now, won’t you? I gather she’s been well looked after and that the Belfrages have taken her to Hong Kong.’

It was not news to Kelly because he’d already enquired. ‘Indeed, sir?’

‘I’d like to send you after her,’ Tyrwhitt went on, ‘but I’m afraid you’ll have to wait just a little while longer because things are still sticky here. Think you can hang on a little while?’

With Christina Withinshawe in the Bubbling Well Road, Kelly decided with a surprisingly small amount of guilt that he could. He’d learned very quickly about Charley’s trip to Hong Kong with Mabel and the Belfrages, and a further discreet enquiry had revealed, not entirely surprisingly, that Kimister had suddenly found he was needed there, too.