coolie nodded, heaved against the bar and trotted off. Watching his sandalled feet slap on the hard uneven road. Denton looked away over the river a trifle guiltily. A long white liner was swinging slowly round in the middle channel, turning to sail downstream away from Shanghai. The setting sun glowed on its side, gleaming brokenly on the portholes and washing the white paint with a faint rosy hue. The sight of the liner leaving, perhaps for England, sent a pang through him and he suddenly understood his dejection. He was lonely, that was all. The letter he'd been waiting for from Emily hadn't come and there wouldn't be another mail ship for a week. It was Saturday afternoon. If he were in England, he'd be walking with her beside the Lea perhaps, or going to her parents' for tea. For a moment he wanted just to talk to someone, just to tell someone about Emily and him - he even considered going back to the mess and calling on Johnson. But no, that wouldn't be any use. He stared at the river, where the liner had completed its turn. A deep, mournful bellow from its siren tore the hanging stillness of the air. He wished longingly that he could be on board, sailing home. The coolie slowed his steps and glanced back over his shoulder, as though divining Denton's thoughts. But Denton waved him on, and the man grunted as he quickened his pace again. The back of his shirt was dark with sweat.
They came imperceptibly to a part of the city he hadn't seen before. The change was subtle but definite. The streets seemed even narrower, the canals more filthy, the smells stronger and more rotten. Then the rickshaw swung under an arch into a main street, and he saw the name - rue Molière. He was in the French Settlement. He looked about him wonderingly, and even a little anxiously - the French Settlement was full of crime, so people said. But there was something appealing about it. French names appeared on the shops, a French sailor with a red pompom in the middle of his hat was strolling along the street, and he heard the rapid, voluble murmur of the French language being spoken behind him. Looking round, he saw that it was a lady and a little fair-haired girl in a rickshaw. The lady was holding a parasol slantwise against the last rays of the sun and the little girl was peering round its scalloped edge as she talked. There was something calm and peaceful about them that caught his heart and he kept secretly looking back.
Soon the lady's rickshaw stopped outside a large house, set back behind a white-washed wall, through which streaks of an older, darker, colour showed. Denton watched the lady step gracefully down, holding her bunched, grey skirt in one hand, resting the parasol on her shoulder with the other. The little girl followed her, skipping through the arched entrance in the peeling wall. He felt a sudden impulse to tell his coolie to stop, to take him back, so that he could watch the two of them walking along the drive to the house that lay concealed behind the peeling wall. But he said nothing. He let them float away like some vision - what sort of vision he couldn't say. A vision of serenity, perhaps? He felt some perceptible lightening of his self-pity, as though the lady and the little girl had left a promise of comfort for him as they slipped so peacefully away.
After a short time the coolie's pace slackened again and he stopped outside a tall narrow house with green-washed walls, lowering the shafts expectantly. Denton looked from the coolie to the house. The door was open and a very large Chinese sat toad-like beside it in a cane chair on the shaded porch. At first Denton thought he was asleep, but then one lid slowly opened, followed by the other. The man regarded him unwinkingly from under the wide brim of his straw hat.
The coolie gestured Denton to get down, panting lightly. 'What is this?' Denton asked in his lame Shanghainese. The coolie replied unintelligibly, gesturing again. The huge man on the porch heaved himself ponderously out of his chair, and Denton heard the wood creak and groan. He was grossly fat and rolled from side to side as he walked, his whole body quivering at every step. He glanced from the coolie to Denton, his face immobile except for the flickering of his little brown eyes. 'M'sieu'?' he asked in a calm, even voice. 'Vous d‚sirez?'
Denton shrugged. He had never heard a Chinese speaking French before, and it seemed outlandish. At the same time there was something insolent in the fat man's examining, undeferential gaze. 'Do you speak English?' he asked.
The fat man turned his head slowly to the coolie, ignoring Denton, and spoke to him quietly. Then he turned slowly back, gazing unblinkingly into Denton's eyes again. 'Vous désirez une jeune fille?'
'I don't understand,' Denton said blankly, in English, then in Shanghainese.
The man sighed impatiently and brought his round, heavy face closer, speaking slowly and distinctly as if to an idiot. 'You ... want ... this?' he slapped his groin suggestively.
'What? No!' Denton pulled back indignantly, as if he'd been hit.
The gross man turned away, shrugging his massive shoulders indifferently. He muttered something to the coolie, at which the coolie, glancing back at Denton, gave a short, derisive laugh, then waddled quivering back to his chair, where he slowly subsided. Again the chair creaked and groaned.
'Go back,' Denton said weakly, but the coolie laughed, gesturing again to the open door. At the same time footsteps sounded down the dark, wooden stairway inside the hall and a man came out into the light. He was a European, dark-haired and sallow, about thirty years old, with a slim, black moustache. He walked swiftly down the path and away, glancing momentarily at Denton. 'Bonsoir, m'sieur,' he nodded casually, raising his elegant straw hat with a brown silk band round it. There was a white carnation in his lapel.
The coolie was gesturing encouragingly again, but Denton adamantly shook his head. 'Bund!' he said tensely, making a turning movement with his hand. 'Bund!'
The coolie shrugged at last, and picked up the shafts wagging his head slowly in amused disbelief.
The rickshaw lurched into a pot-hole, as if the coolie was no longer bothering how he pulled such an unworthy passenger, and Denton glanced stealthily back at the house. Beneath his almost panicky abhorrence, he was secretly enticed by the allure of that open door with its vague carnal promise. His heart was beating more rapidly as he felt a guilty sense of regret and self-reproach that he hadn't dared enter. He tried resolutely to think of Emily, of the Reverend Eaton's exhortation, of the Christian Youth Fellowship and Dr Pusey's doctrines, but all the pure and earnest images that he summoned up seemed pale and drab against the forbidden excitement of that open door beside the gross and sensual Chinese. In a quarter of an hour, he thought bewilderedly, he'd passed from the serenity of the lady with the little girl to the sordid turmoil of lust - how was such a thing possible?
The evening stretched out before him, stale, lonely, and empty, and the dark crushing swell of his depression rolled over him once more.
22
IN NOVEMBER THE HEAT at last began to weaken, like an iron hand slowly loosening its grip on the city. Denton could wear his uniform without immediately sweating, even at midday. The evenings were cool, and at night he slept now beneath a light cotton blanket. The mosquitoes were less troublesome too, as if the drier, cooler air was too thin to carry them.
Mr Brown seemed moderately satisfied with his progress, though not to the point of inviting him to dinner again, and not long after the Moon Festival, when the Chinese wandered through the street with coloured lanterns hung on springy twigs, Denton had been able to write proudly to his parents that he was no longer merely a training probationary inspector, but a probationary inspector in his own right, inspecting vessels in his own section of the wharves, often without any supervision at all. His Chinese, too, had been improving, and Mr Wei, who always perched on the edge of the same chair in his room, his head alertly cocked like an eager little bird, was able to hold simple conversations with him in the language.
It was in November, too, that the Shanghai Race Club held its annual meeting. A party of officers went on the last day, when the best horses and riders were competing.
'They're gentlemen riders, of course,' Johnson explained to Denton, as they stood by the paddock watching the horses being led round. 'They don't have professional jockeys or anything like that here.'
Denton nodded, moving a little away. His coolness towards Johnson had begun to turn into a mild revulsion, as though Johnson were always standing too close to him, brushing his sleeve, or accidentally nudging him. Besides, he was irritated by Johnson's quiet, smug assumption that he was in