The Dangerous Years (28 page)

The stay was short and they dined wherever anyone wanted them to put on a show, all of them doing their best to cheer up worried businessmen in danger of losing everything. Despite his reputation for going baldheaded at the enemy, everybody seemed pleased with the restraint with which Tyrwhitt was handling the situation.

‘Thank God this is our last job,’ he announced as they headed downstream. ‘When I leave China, I don’t want another. I’ve never stopped since 1914. When we get back, I’m taking my family to Wei-Hai-Wei, tension or no tension, and I advise you, my boy, to slip down to Hong Kong and tie things up with that girl of yours before someone else does it for you.’

What he’d suggested had been in Kelly’s mind throughout the trip. Christina’s words were still in his ears. She was beautiful, intelligent and exciting, but he had a suspicion that her interest in him might soon pall and, with her wealth and her energy for enjoying herself, his career could well be hampered rather than helped. He could hardly imagine her sitting at home while he served abroad or packing up an empty house to follow him to some foreign station. With Christina there would certainly be no rented rooms and hired houses, and he’d never be able to trust her, he knew. Somehow, he felt, he
must
go to Hong Kong and see Charley. There’d been too many misunderstandings and failed meetings, and perhaps it would all be different if he did.

As the ship dropped anchor again at Shanghai, Tyrwhitt gestured. ‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘I need a break from all the conundrums. You clever young chaps are quite splendid but it’s a bit of a strain to live up to you, you know. You’d better get off to Hong Kong as fast as you can.’

But when Kelly went to the club for luggage he’d left there, there was a message from Christina and, far from unwillingly, he swallowed his gin and took a cab along the Bubbling Well Road.

She was dressed in red and her green eyes flashed as she clung to him, kissing him fiercely.

‘Steady on, old thing,’ he pleaded.

‘I don’t want to “steady on”,’ she said. ‘You’re mine, aren’t you?’

‘Am I?’

‘Surely you’re not thinking of bolting to Hong Kong to see that muddle-headed little creature down there, are you?’

Kelly was indignant. He’d never heard Charley called a muddle-headed little creature.

‘I had thought so,’ he said stiffly.

‘Well, you can unthink,’ she said. ‘I have news for you. I’ve cabled my father. We’re getting married.’

‘Are we, by God?’ Kelly snorted. ‘I don’t recall popping the question.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘It’s normal.’

‘Not this time. Haven’t you noticed anything about me?’

‘You’re beautiful. And that dress suits you. The red’s like blood. It makes you look more like a man-eater than ever.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I’ve lost weight. Know why?’

‘Father telegraphed back to say “Nothing doing”?’

‘No. He telegraphed to say he was delighted.’

‘It’s a pity he didn’t ask
me
what
I
felt about it.’

‘Don’t you
want
to marry me?’

Suddenly Kelly knew he didn’t. No, something inside him shouted. No! No! No! By Christ, No! Suddenly he realised he’d got into something that was going to be difficult to get out of.

She stared at him, smiling. ‘I’ve lost weight because I’ve been worried,’ she said. ‘You weren’t careful enough, my love. You
have
to marry me. You’ve made me pregnant.’

Kelly had been on the point of drinking, and the gin blew from his mouth in a shower as he choked on it. ‘
What!
’

She gave a hoot of laughter and slipped easily into his arms to kiss him. ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

He stared at her, his jaw dropped open. ‘Mine?’

‘Who else’s would it be? After the way we’ve been going at it.’

‘Is this true?’

‘What do you expect? You could never keep your hands off me.’

He stared at her. ‘By God, you were as quick off the mark at that as everything else.’

She kissed him again. ‘You sound alarmed.’

‘Of course I’m alarmed. A man don’t go rushing off marrying a woman who’s only been widowed a couple of months.’

She smiled. ‘Oh, it doesn’t show yet,’ she said. ‘We can leave it for another couple of months. Then it ought to be all right. Rather romantic and all that. You saving my life and so on. I can be very decorous. You can invite the Admiral if you like.’

‘But the baby! What happens when
that
arrives in six months time?’

Her smile widened into a grin. ‘Really, Kelly, you’re so old-fashioned. After the wedding, I shall hurry home to see my family. They might even give
you
leave, too, under the circumstances. But
I
shall stay in England and the baby will arrive quietly in the depths of the family estate in Norfolk. Nobody will ever know until I choose to let them.’

‘I bet somebody will find out,’ Kelly said gloomily.

‘You worrying about your career?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, stop as from this moment. I have plenty of cash and you don’t even need a career married to me. I’m a one and only, and everything my father possesses comes to me eventually. Especially married to someone he approves of. There’s a lot of land in Norfolk, a house in London, and a shooting box in Scotland, to say nothing of the house here and one in Bermuda. You’d look rather well as landed gentry.’

Charley’s letter of congratulations was short, stiff and formal, and it contained a sting in the tail.

‘It seems we’ve both deluded ourselves for years,’ she said coldly. ‘Because I’ve got engaged to Albert Kimister and I’m very happy.’

She didn’t sound it.

Oh, Christ, Kelly thought almost in tears at the way things had turned out. Not
Kimister
!

Tyrwhitt seemed surprised at Kelly’s news and not particularly pleased, while Verschoyle, back from Nanking in
Wanderer
, gave him a sad look.

For the first time in his life, he noted, Kelly seemed uncertain of himself. Damn all women, he thought, damn all faithful, loving women who wanted husbands. He himself had always refused to allow himself to be tied, not even to Mabel who, God knows, was not only highly delectable and very experienced but was as subtle as a hunting cat.

‘You know, old man,’ he said slowly, choosing his words with care. ‘I’ve been a bastard all my life and there was a time when I’d have howled with delight at this. But this time I think you’ve picked the wrong ’un. Can’t you get out of it?’

‘I don’t want to,’ Kelly snapped.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Verschoyle snapped back. ‘And what in God’s name happened to the Little ’Un?’

‘She didn’t want me. She decided to marry Kimister.’

Verschoyle’s face fell. ‘Oh, my God! What a rotten bloody mix-up.’ He studied Kelly over his glass. ‘Need someone to give the bride away?’

‘The Far East Manager of Clemo-Oriental’s doing that. He’s a fat pompous bastard with an office in Shanghai.’

‘My, aren’t we bitter? Need a best man?’

Kelly lifted his head and stared at Verschoyle. There’d been a time once when he’d have felt that Verschoyle was the last person in the world he’d want at his wedding. But somehow he seemed to go with Christina, even – because he knew what made her tick – seemed a form of defence against her.

‘I’d be grateful,’ he said.

The situation didn’t improve. Tyrwhitt had started to send aircraft over the fortified districts where fighting between the Chinese armies was taking place, feeling they might add to his information, and when a British DH9A made a forced landing outside the Settlement boundaries, the unarmed party that was sent out to retrieve it came back only with the engine and fuselage, but not the wings, pilot, or observer.

There was a great deal of back and forth and, in retaliation, the Shanghai–Hankow and Shanghai–Nanking Railways were cut, which affected the Nationalists’ lines of communications; and eventually the airmen and the wings were released. There was another hurried trip upriver to land Marines at Nanking and call at Kiukiang, but the lack of progress depressed Tyrwhitt. It was like trying to plug a leak while thousands of others appeared. No matter what they did, no matter what methods they used, the Chinese were quite intractable and far too numerous to defeat.

By this time, however, the situation in Shanghai itself seemed to have quietened down, and Kelly was married at the end of August. His guests included Verschoyle and the Tyrwhitts. Christina’s seemed to be chiefly Shanghai business associates of her father’s, hard-headed types who didn’t fit in among the naval uniforms, any more than the naval uniforms fitted in among them. Since he’d known her so long, Kelly sent an invitation to Charley, certain she wouldn’t turn up; but, probably for the same reason, she did, looking like a ghost at the feast. Their greetings were as stiff and formal as their mutual congratulations.

‘Kimister’s a lucky man,’ Kelly said.

She gave him a small twisted smile. ‘Your wife’s lucky, too. I always thought–’

She stopped, pecked his cheek and moved away hurriedly so that he shouldn’t see the moisture in her eyes. Kelly’s congratulations to Kimister were blunt, insincere and almost rude.

‘Why
that
bloody man?’ he hissed to Verschoyle.

Verschoyle shrugged. ‘There’s nothing,’ he said, ‘that defies explanation so much as the attraction for each other of two apparently unattracted people.’

Mabel was there, too, her mouth a vivid slash, and Kelly noticed that she and Verschoyle were preparing to vanish even as he and Christina headed for the taxi on the journey that was to end at Hong Kong where, it seemed, the Clemo family owned yet another house on the Peak. He’d also hoped to have Rumbelo at the wedding but Rumbelo was clearly on Charley’s side and was red-faced and uncomfortable as he stumbled out a feeble excuse about being on duty.

Hong Kong compared favourably with anywhere else in the world and at night beat them all, with the Peak sparkling with light and the illuminations reflected in the black water where an unending procession of ferries and native vessels plied from the island to the mainland. It was full of the wives of Shanghai taipans, all of them revelling in the enormous numbers of unattached young men the crisis had brought to the east.

While they were there, Lord Clemo arrived, flown out in easy stages to Singapore, from where he’d taken a coastal steamer to Hong Kong. He was a long lean man like a greyhound with the same pale face and black hair that Christina had, the same sharp wit, the same diamond-like mind.

‘What do you intend to do now you’re married to my daughter?’ he asked Kelly. ‘Get yourself a decent job in the city?’

It sounded like a euphemism for a living death and Kelly answered shortly. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll do the same as I’ve always done. Follow my profession.’

Clemo didn’t seem to think much of the idea. ‘Not much future in that, is there?’ he said. ‘The way everybody’s cutting down the armed forces. Chances are that you’ll be out on the street without a job. Your admiral, too, come to that.’

There was noticeably no reference to children and Kelly guessed that Christina hadn’t told her father the circumstances of their marriage.

From Hong Kong they went to Wei-Hai-Wei where the mountains inland looked like a background for a film. The island was wooded and beautiful and was set in a burnished sea, a mass of acacia and pomegranate rich with scarlet blooms. The naval establishments were housed in pagodas with eaves winged against the activities of devils, and the sailors’ canteen was in a temple. There was no traffic but rickshaws, and no sound but the metallic evening concert of the cicadas and the chatter of sailors strolling past the row of shops on the waterfront, staring with wistful eyes at the jade and soapstone, and the shantung they couldn’t afford to buy for their wives.

They had a bungalow with a garden full of snapdragons, zinnias, sunflowers and sweet williams, doubtless planted by some earlier naval wife, and they could hear only the twitter of birds and the mad calling of a cuckoo. Kelly thought it was beautiful but Christina complained that it was too small and too dull and Wei-Hai-Wei too humid, with mildew that was likely to spoil her clothes, and they left just before a typhoon piled junks and sampans on the rocks and left a mat of drowned Chinese in the shallows.

They arrived back in Shanghai to find the place seething with news of a coming clash between the Chinese Communists and the Nationalists, and nobody very pleased that the army had lost two of its battalions and that Tyrwhitt had released the Second Cruiser Squadron for the Mediterranean. The warships had moved up opposite the bund beneath the façade of banks and the high gold dome of the Cathay Hotel, and the place seemed to be living at a feverish pace with the knowledge of a coming Armageddon with standards haywire and delirium in the air.

It was easy to fit into the life again. There wasn’t even any need to look for a house because they already had the one in the Bubbling Well Road, heavily staffed with Chinese servants who made entertaining easy. Verschoyle came often to dinner or for drinks, accompanied usually by Mabel. They were quite obviously deep in an affair.

Charley was married to Kimister in October, Kimister eager to bind her securely captive to him while he could. The invitations included one for Kelly and his wife, and Christina spent so much time preparing for it he knew it was for no other reason than that she wanted to outshine Charley.

This time it was a naval wedding with uniforms, frock coats, epaulettes and an archway of swords that drew only contempt from Christina. Belfrage gave away the bride and the best man was a fat little lieutenant-commander called Nyland who’d been in the same term at Dartmouth as Kelly, Kimister and Verschoyle and was as dull as Kimister. Inevitably Kimister’s adoring mother arrived, like Kimister overfed, pale and characterless. ‘So bloody ordinary,’ Verschoyle said, ‘She gives you a headache.’ The speeches were formal and Charley looked like a sacrificial lamb. Kelly’s heart bled for her.