Known, Ah Chew, ladies' tailor, announced immediate attention and promised 'instant visitings.' Church Services were listed in a solemn little ornamental border -
'Oh, that'll do for now,' Mason growled, shoving back his chair. 'Come along, let's go back to the mess. Time for tiffin.'
5
MASON KICKED HIS WAY through the crowded, clashing shafts of the badgering rickshaws and settled into one further away from the gate, leaning back sweating under the canvas canopy. 'Never take the first one,' he advised Denton loudly, 'They always charge more.' He took off his topee and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
It was noon, the heat stared balefully at them from the cloudless sky, from the narrow, parched streets, from the flat walls of the houses. The coolie pulled them along bumpy, rutted alleys and beside stagnant little canals, stinking with refuse. Stalls and dark cave-like shops lined every street. Coolies with long bamboo carrying-poles, women with crushing loads of stones in baskets on their backs, children, dogs and whining beggars pressed noisily all round them. Occasionally another European passed in a rickshaw or a sedan chair, eyes narrowed like theirs against the heat and light.
'Where d'you come from?' Mason asked suddenly, taking another cigar out of his tunic pocket. This time he did not offer one to Denton. 'Enfield? Near London, isn't it?'
The rickshaw lurched into a pot hole and Mason fell against Denton. 'Blithering idiot!' he shouted at the coolie. 'Why don't you look where you're going?'
The coolie's head shook briefly in apology. Or was it incomprehension, or mere helplessness?
'Look-see! Look-see!' Mason called out threateningly. 'You damn well look-see, or I'll kick your behind!'
The coolie shook his head again, hunching his shoulders abjectly. His subservience seemed to mollify Mason. He gave a satisfied but still warning little grunt and leant back again, lighting his cigar. 'What got you into the Customs service?' he demanded, tossing the still burning match aside as he settled himself more comfortably in the seat.
Denton edged along to make more room for him. 'It was an accident, really,' he began.
'Hey, look at that,' Mason interrupted, nudging him with his elbow. 'Not bad, eh?'
A sedan chair was being carried past by two bearers. The curtains were open and Denton caught a glimpse of a doll-like oval face with quick, dark eyes and rouged cheekbones framed by shiny black hair. Mason twisted round as the chair swayed past, his eyes gleaming as they had at the execution. 'Not bad, at all, eh?' he sighed as he turned back, blowing out a long jet of aromatic blue smoke. 'That's what makes being here worthwhile.'
Denton looked at him inquiringly, puzzled.
'Sing-song girl,' Mason explained obscurely. 'They make a fortune. Cost it, too.'
'Sing-song girl?'
'That's the translation.' He said something in Chinese. 'Sing-song girls.'
'Oh, they're singers?'
Mason glanced at him sideways. 'That's one of their accomplishments,' he agreed, preening his moustache with his knuckle and pursing his rosy lips into an ironic little smile. 'Here we are. Hop out, you're smaller than I am.'
They walked together up the stone steps of the large building that Denton had scarcely noticed when he first saw it, his eyes still numbed by the execution. It was an imposing building, he recognized, in the same style as the Customs House. Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Officers' Mess he read over the entrance, feeling a faint lift of pride that he belonged to it.
'Let's change your money first,' Mason nodded across the lobby. 'At the desk over there. Then you won't have to rely on me to pay the rickshaw boys.'
6
THE DINING ROOM WAS COOL and dim, two large punkahs stirring the limp, moist air beneath the high ceiling. Delicate large-fronded palms, and rubber plants with glossy, thick leaves stood along the walls and between the rattan tables. White-jacketed waiters moved noiselessly about in black cloth slippers. There seemed to be thirty or forty young officers in the mess, drinking and eating in separate groups. Mason took him a table in the corner, introducing him offhandedly to the two officers already sitting there. One was called Jones, a tall, fair-haired man with a downy moustache. Denton didn't catch the other's name, and was too shy to ask.
Mason ordered from the handwritten menu in a disdainful voice that suggested the food couldn't possibly be much good. Denton tamely said he'd have the same. The steward, an old man with a short grey queue, nodded silently. His slippers shuffled away over the tiled floor.
'Where d'you come from?' Jones asked Denton, as they began to eat.
'London,' Mason answered for him, packing his mouth with rice and diced chicken.
'Enfield,' Denton qualified mildly.
'Near enough. Ah Koo!' Mason snapped his fingers, calling out across the room. 'Soya sauce!'
'How did you get into this outfit?' Jones dabbed his downy moustache with his napkin, looking up at him with slightly bloodshot eyes.
'It was an accident,' Mason answered for him again.
'Well, I was going to be a teacher,' Denton spoke quickly and quietly, toying with his rice, 'I'd just done one year in a training college, actually - '
'Ah Koo! Soya sauce!' Mason called out again.
'and then my father had an accident at work, so I had to give it up. And I just saw an advert in the paper and....' He shrugged and sipped some of the beer Mason had insisted he should share with them. It was only the second time in his life that he'd drunk beer, and he shivered at the bitter taste. Jones, losing interest, turned to talk to Mason in a low voice that excluded him.
'What sort of accident was it?' asked the small, dark man, whose name he hadn't caught. He had a mild, even, slightly nasal voice.
'At the small arms factory. He was testing a rifle when the barrel burst.'
'Ah Koo! One piecee soya sauce!' Mason shouted irritably. 'Come along, man! Chop-chop!'
The dark man nodded, scrutinising the moistened point of the tooth-pick he was using. 'I started as a sailor. Strange what brought us all out here in our different ways.'
'Money,' Mason said emphatically.
The dark man inserted his tooth-pick between his teeth without replying, which Mason seemed to take as a tacit denial.
'Cash,' he said belligerently. 'That's what brought us here.' He took the soya bottle from the steward and shook it vigorously over his plate.
The dark man probed the gaps between his teeth reflectively.
'Not that there's much of that by the time you've paid your chits, eh?' Jones said pacifically.
'Anyone can make a pile out here,' Mason asserted through bulging cheeks.
'Do you mean the bonus on contraband seizures?' Denton asked hopefully. He planned to send some of his salary home to his parents each month.
Mason glanced at him under his reddish brows and swallowed deliberately before answering. A thick, blackish trickle of soya sauce ran down from the corner of his mouth and he dabbed it with his napkin. 'That, and other things,' he said, with the same ironic smile that he'd given when he spoke of the sing-song girl's accomplishments. He turned to Jones, who had pushed back his chair. 'Are you doing the auction, Jonesy?'
'Smith's stuff? Yes. Three o'clock in here. Why?'
'Nothing.' Then Mason jerked his head at Denton without looking at him. 'Except he'll want to buy some stuff.'
'I haven't got much money to spare,' Denton began doubtfully.
'Who cares? Pay by chit.' Mason waved his fork grandly. 'Cash is for coolies.'
'Er ... how do you bid?'
'I'll bid for you, if you like,' the