in front of him. So Denton took the glass, shrinking back into his seat to avoid the elderly lady's bony elbow. He sat uneasily sipping the sherry which, like the beer Mason had ordered for him on his first day, and despite his pledge at the Band of Hope three years before, he was too timid to refuse.
Suddenly the old lady turned to him, fanning herself with vigorous impatience. 'So you're in the Chinese Customs?' she began accusingly.
'Er, yes. That is, I've just joined,' he answered deprecatingly. 'It's only probationary for two years....'
'I've never understood why we should give them any help at all,' she cut him off sharply. 'Such a corrupt, barbaric government.' Her fan became even more excited as her voice hardened. 'And as for that woman ... the Dowager Empress...!' She sniffed up the spite she seemed unable to express in words. 'It would never have been allowed if Queen Victoria were still alive,' she snapped finally. 'That I am quite sure of.'
Denton had no reply to give her, but in any case she had turned away already with a scornful shrug, as though looking for something more worthy of her steel.
At dinner he sat between two middle-aged ladies whose names he never caught. They talked to him so infrequently and perfunctorily that he was able to attend to all the knives and forks and the two wine glasses watchfully and without blundering. When the ladies suddenly got up to leave, Denton was about to follow them. He'd felt so thirsty that he'd kept on drinking the wines the boy poured for him, and he thought muzzily that those who were staying must be holding some meeting which he wasn't invited to. But Everett caught his arm and pushed him into the seat beside him. 'Come and sit with me,' he said loudly, then muttered, 'Port and cigars, the ladies are withdrawing.'
Denton flushed and nodded, humiliated. But now he was sitting next to Mr Brown, who appeared at first astonished to see him there, regarding him puzzledly for some seconds while he stroked his luxuriant grey moustache. Then, as port, brandy and cigars were set on the long, richly glossy table, the perplexity cleared from his eyes. 'Tell me, Mr Denton,' he asked, selecting a cigar, 'As a young fellow just out from home, what do they think of the China Question now?'
'The China Question, sir?' Denton felt himself sliding down through blank featureless waters while Mr Brown's pale blue eyes rested expectantly on his, as if following him down from the rim of a well. 'The China Question?' He clutched desperately at broken straws. 'Well, sir, I think that, er ... the new King has a different attitude to Queen Victoria's. I think,' he added doubtfully.
'From Queen Victoria's,' Mr Brown said precisely, pressing his lips together under the brushy grey fringe of his moustache. 'I must say I'm surprised by what you say. Personally, I disagree entirely with the imperialists.'
Denton nodded respectfully, as though he too might have said the same thing if he'd presumed to offer an opinion of his own. He watched Mr Brown turn aside as the boy lit his cigar, then lean forward again, blowing out a jet of greyish-blue smoke while he rubbed his bulging brow reflectively. The boy had filled Denton's glass with port and he drank it down, still trying to quench the thirst he'd felt all evening in his stiff hot clothes. His eyes were beginning to smart from the smoke, the humid heat, and the alcohol he'd unwisely drunk. As he waited uneasily for Mr Brown to speak again, it seemed to him that the room was beginning to waver in a blurry mist. Part of him felt an apprehensive tremor at this strange experience, but part seemed unconcerned and careless. He watched the boy fill his glass again and watched his hand reach out and raise it to his lips.
'Have you commenced your Chinese lessons yet, Mr Denton?'
Denton blinked, moving his head slowly to still the misty swaying of the room. 'Started on Tuesday, sir,' he said, trying carefully not to slur his words. 'One lesson a week.'
He was conscious of Mr Brown's eyes resting on him again, and felt he ought to say something more. 'The Chinese Question is very difficult,' he added uncertainly.
Mr Brown's eyes seemed to widen and cool slightly. 'It is said to be so,' he said distantly. 'But it was the Chinese language we were discussing.'
'What do you think of the opium trade, sir?' Everett asked suddenly as the silence grew longer and heavier after Mr Brown's last remark.
'The opium trade?' Mr Brown turned slowly to Everett, 'My government - that is, the Chinese government - allows it, we know it is harmless when indulged in moderation, and it fosters international commerce....'
Now Denton began to feel tired as well as muzzy. His lids kept sliding slowly down over his eyes and he had to open them with a start only to feel them slowly slide down again a few seconds later. He nodded vaguely as Mr Brown's voice flowed past him in a murmuring river of sound.
'We cannot take his choice from the individual,' Mr Brown was pronouncing judicially, 'even from the humblest peasant or coolie, without diminishing him in his essential nature. Free trade, Mr Everett, is closely associated with deeper freedoms - Mr Denton, I fear I am boring you?' Denton awoke with a start.
When they returned to the drawing room at last, Denton managed to seat himself between Everett on one side and a group of four or five people on the other, who only occasionally interrupted their discussion of servants and horses to glance curiously at him, when he would smile confusedly with bleary eyes and they would turn away with lifted brows and continue.
Everett stood up to leave at last, and Denton rose too, treading on one of the ladies' shoes, and mumbling apologies as she winced and stared at him under raised, curved brows.
'You must come again,' Mrs Brown boomed to Everett, then, more coolly, 'I hope you are getting along in your work,' she added to Denton.
Denton walked a little unsteadily down the steps beside Everett, while the boy hailed a rickshaw for them both. The paper lanterns were still softly glowing, but their luminousness seemed tired now, hazy-rimmed.
'You know, I'm afraid I may have made myself a bit ill with all that wine,' Denton confessed blurrily. 'D'you think anyone noticed? I'm not used to it, you see.'
'Oh I shouldn't think so,' Everett answered casually.
He turned to look at Everett anxiously, the words tumbling out of his mouth almost before he was aware of them. 'I'm not used to it, you see, and they kept filling up my glass. D'you think Mr Brown noticed anything?' Before Everett could answer, another nagging thought that had been vaguely troubling Denton all evening rose up like a bubble to the surface of his mind. 'And what's all that about muslin bags Mrs Brown told me? Do they catch mosquitoes in them or what? And spraying me with paraffin - what was the idea?'
'You tie the bags over your ankles.' Everett smiled patronisingly. 'It's just to stop the mozzies biting you. Like mosquito nets.' He leant back, wrinkling his nose as they passed by a festering little canal in which the pale, bloated body of a dog floated on its side. 'Some people prefer paraffin, other prefer muslin, that's all. We've got both in our mess.'
'We don't have anything in our mess.' Denton felt obscurely deprived and aggrieved. 'I hope I don't catch malaria.'
'Malaria? What's that got to do with mosquitoes?' Everett peered into his face. 'You really have had a bit too much.'
'No, I read about it in the paper in England,' Denton persisted doggedly, straining to remember through the mists that were rolling across his mind. 'Before I left home.'
'No, it's from the swampy air,' Everett said decidedly. 'You've only got to smell it.'
In the thick moist heat, with the coolie panting in front of them between his wooden shafts, amidst the shadowy figures, the weird cries of the Chinese, the ripe, rotting, alien smells, Denton's mention of home had tugged loose a little avalanche of self-pitying images. What with malaria and cholera and all those other diseases, he wondered desolately whether he'd ever see Emily or his parents or home again.
16
JOHNSON WAS TEACHING Denton snooker. Lining up his ball carefully on the black, Denton swung the cue gently. The ball kissed the black on the wrong side and rolled smoothly away into the pocket.
'You lifted your head,' Johnson explained consolingly. 'You lifted