he was wondering aloud about the possibility of taking a trip to Hankow at Christmas, with the bounty from the capture. 'You can have some lovely hikes round there, you know, when the weather's cooler,' he said equably. 'Have to watch out for bandits, of course.'
Denton only half listened, gazing again at the prisoners' faces. They didn't look as though they'd have much pull. His eyelids drooped treacherously. How sore and heavy they felt. How sticky his skin was, despite the gentle fanning of the air. As he rubbed his eyes, he was reminded of the bloodshot eyes of the prisoner nearest him. He glanced at him again. The man's eyes stared out blank and motionless over the dark water and the dark, empty fields. As though the darkness had got right inside his eyes, inside his head, Denton thought. Johnson's voice flowed on uninterruptedly while Denton only half-listened. Then suddenly, as if a light had gone out, the misty shapes before his tired eyes were blotted out by sleep.
18
Dear Mother and Father,
Thanks for your letter. Sorry to hear Father has not been well lately. I hope it will soon clear up. I have more or less settled in here now, although some things still take a bit of getting used to. The food and climate affected my stomach for a time, but I am keeping well, apart from a few minor upsets.
You should see my quarters. They are rather grand, as I think I told you on my last letter. I have my own bedroom, living room and bathroom. The living room and bedroom have verandas and you can look over the houses opposite to the river and docks. I obtained some curtains and chair covers complete with antimacassars in an auction in the mess. They used to belong to someone who has now gone home.
The new work has kept me rather busy. It is often interesting. The port here is actually the third largest in the world. We have to inspect all the ships before they are allowed to unload cargo or sail. Sometimes we get meals on board, and then it is always in the first class saloon, which is often pretty grand!
I actually took part in the arrest of some smugglers last week! We caught some people in sampans (small boats) who were smuggling salt, after waiting in an ambush for them until three in the morning. Very exciting, my first capture! You get a bonus of 10% of the value of any contraband you catch, but I don't suppose I'll get much of it this time as I was really only taken along for the experience of it. But next time perhaps I'll make a real haul.
You would be amazed at the number of well-to-do people there are here. I had dinner with the deputy assistant commissioner a week or two ago. He lives in a grand house with lots of servants, and I had to get evening dress for it. There were a lot of good class people there. The table seated twenty-four!
I have offered to join the choir in the Anglican cathedral. It is supposed to be the largest and best in Asia. So I shall be able to keep my voice in practice. I met the Dean after service last Sunday. He is friendly and I am going to have tea with him the first Saturday next month. He does not know any of the clergy at Enfield, though. He has been out here fifteen years.
There is a native city and an International Settlement (mainly run by the British of course!), and a French Concession in Shanghai. The native population is about three quarters of a million and the whites altogether about twelve thousand. The French Concession is supposed to be rather scruffy, by the way. I have not seen it yet, except from the river.
The enclosed photograph shows me in my full working uniform. How do I look? I am having lessons in Chinese, which most people say is impossible to learn. But we get a special increment if we do learn, so I am going to try!
Must close this now to catch the next ship.
Love from
John.
PS Just received your letter posted in July. Glad to hear Father is better. Had a nice letter from Emily in the same post.
Denton placed his pen in the ink well and leant back as he read the letter through. He had taken his shirt off, but his skin was still moist with sweat. His forearms felt slippery against the grainy wood of the desk.
He read the sentence. They used to belong to someone who has now gone home with a little satisfied pursing of his lips. He imagined himself casually mentioning it to them a few years from now, when he returned bronzed and senior in rank to marry Emily.
'You remember that letter when I said I'd got some things that used to belong to someone who'd gone home? Well, I didn't want to worry you, but actually....'
He slipped the photograph into the envelope, folded it and slid the letter in after it. Sealing the thick creamy flap and writing the address in a hand that was larger and bolder than usual, he reflected how little he'd really told his parents. But then he couldn't very well tell them of the dark and deadly side of things - they'd only be upset and worry. He couldn't tell them that he'd seen a man's head chopped off, that he slept in a dead man's bed and wrote on a dead man's desk, that corpses floated in the river and were netted like fish every morning, that beggars held up dead babies to pluck your heart strings. He couldn't tell them of the girl in Mason's room, of the 'honey boats' that carried the nightsoil up to the farming villages at dawn, the nightsoil that was packed round the vegetables he subsequently ate, boiled of course, in the mess.
He pushed back his chair and put on his shirt. There were some things one just didn't tell, he thought, with a touch of pride at his own manliness, one simply had to pretend.
Tell who, pretend to who? His parents, or himself? Or the whole world? It wasn't until he was halfway down the stairs, tapping the hard, sharp edge of the envelope against his palm, that the disturbing question occurred to him. And then, after a moment's dim and uneasy pondering, as he reached the tiled lobby, it was the impropriety of the grammar that lingered in his mind, not the question itself. 'Tell whom,' he muttered under his breath. 'Pretend to whom.'
19
THE WEEK AT THE WOOSUNG FORTS passed slowly and vacantly for Denton. There was so little to do, it was like seven Sundays, he thought. Only without church. When they were not inspecting the junks and barges that infrequently put in for Customs clearance, Johnson would go wandering round the old stone buildings, many of them creeper-covered ruins that hadn't been touched since the British captured the forts in the opium wars sixty years before. Although it was late September and the sun was lower in the sky, the steamy heat seemed just as relentless. Yet Johnson would scramble tirelessly over fallen parapets, peer through crumbling gun embrasures and explore overgrown paths, even at midday when the sun was fiercest and his clothes were drenched with sweat. At first Denton went along too, unwilling to seem unsociable; and, despite the heat, he too enjoyed exploring the place, especially when they followed tracks that led to intensely green paddy fields with peasants working in them, or to placid fish tanks, or sudden little temples, half-derelict and no bigger than a room, in which sweet-smelling joss sticks from some unknown worshipper were still burning amongst the cobwebs and litter. But Johnson's insistently monotonous voice and interminable commentaries on everything they saw began to grate on him more and more. There was nothing, no matter how obvious or insignificant, that escaped Johnson's laboriously detailed explanations. 'That butterfly only lives for six days,' he would announce as Denton watched the fluttering spread of its gorgeous wings among the leaves. 'It lays two hundred eggs.' Or 'That's a joss stick. They burn for over an hour.' Denton had only wanted to stand and look, to absorb the scene through his senses, his imagination, to feel it working on him through the silence and the heat, but Johnson would be counting the bricks aloud or calculating how long ago the joss stick must have been lit.
So he began to make excuses. He had letters to write, he would mutter a little awkwardly, or his Chinese to study. And Johnson, unperturbed, would walk off alone along one of the almost overgrown paths, taking his sketch book with him.
'What's happened to those two smugglers?' Denton asked him as they sat at tiffin one day in the bare but cool stone hut that served as their mess. Johnson had just come back from one of his 'hikes,' his face red and glistening with sweat.
'Oh, I haven't heard. It usually takes a few months at least before they come to trial. I'll have to give evidence then, unless they're satisfied with my written report.' He shrugged,