hand and waving with the other, unsmiling; while his mother fluttered her handkerchief briefly then turned jerkily away. The coal black smoke had bellied up from the funnels and, as the gap between the quayside and the sliding vessel widened, their faces, then their whole bodies, had slowly blurred. The deck had begun to creak in the estuary as the level banks of the Thames slowly receded, dimmed, became a faint grey smudge merging with the clouds. And then England was gone.
9
THERE WAS A CLINK-CLINK of china by his head, and, more distantly, a hubbub of voices, wheels, and donkeys' braying. His eyes opened onto the brilliant, harsh light.
'Tea, master,' the steward said, placing a thick white cup and saucer on the locker beside the bed.
Denton's stomach churned at the thought of the new day and the new things he would have to do in it. He glanced covertly at the steward. He was wizened and crooked-shouldered and very thin. His wrists were like chicken bones covered with loose veiny skin beneath the frayed cuffs of his white sleeves. Why did they call them boys? he wondered, blinking at the spilt brown trickle of tea dribbling erratically down the side of the cup. The steward - the boy - had gone into the bathroom, and Denton heard water splashing into the wash-basin. He realised his nightshirt had become crumpled up above his knees. Shyly he jerked it down to a decent length.
'Ho' water,' the boy said, clearing his throat noisily. He carried the toilet bucket out and shut the door.
Denton looked at his watch, still swinging gently on its chain. Quarter past six. He watched the long sweeping second hand ticking round. So he had wound it last night after all. His skin was still moist with sweat, his nightshirt felt damp with it. The sheets smelt faintly moist. He scratched a mosquito bite on his cheek, remembering the whining by his ear before he fell asleep. Lifting the gauze of the net aside - and that too felt damp, it must have got soggy and mouldy from the watery air - he sipped the strong, sweet tea. Had that noisy din outside gone on all night? He listened to the voices, trying to separate them from the confused hubbub of the other noises. A man was calling out the same chanting three notes, repeated again and again. A gong was clashing somewhere. Women's voices chattered stridently against each other. And all the time there was that undifferentiated swell of sound that rose and fell like the sea.
He swung his legs out of the bed and walked across to the veranda. Over the flat roofs of the low houses opposite, he saw the dull sheen of the river, gleaming sullenly in the early sunlight and bristling with masts, sails and funnels, some pouring out long plumes of smoke that rose straight up to the windless sky, others still and sleeping. Sirens and hooters blew, groaning and whooping like living monsters. Sampans moved slowly between the crowded ships, so slowly that they looked motionless, as though they'd been painted on the viscous surface of the river.
Hearing a donkey bray again, he glanced down into the street. There was a train of them plodding along, long ears twitching, loaded with baskets on each side. The baskets were open, and Denton saw they were full of human night-soil. He sniffed and caught the stench, wrinkling his nose. So that was where his toilet bucket went. Yet the hawkers and rickshaw coolies, the sedan chairs and the women carrying live chickens, ducks, bundles of fruits and vegetables bound with twists of rattan, seemed not to notice or care as they bustled along beside or amongst the don-keys, often brushing against the brimming panniers. His nose wrinkled again. He looked back at the broad waters of the river.
There was the Orcades gliding steadily downstream, smoke belching from her sloping yellow stacks, strings of coloured flags fluttering from her masts. He watched forlornly as the liner slid remorselessly away behind those bat-wing sails of the junks and the scaffolds of the cranes. For a moment he could see the lower deck where he'd said goodbye to Emily; then with the red ensign breaking at its stern, it was gone. He followed the masts above a warehouse wall, a patched junk sail, and then there was nothing but the drifting, spreading cloud of smoke staining the sky. He felt like a small abandoned child, just as he'd felt on his first schoolday, when his mother had left him in the screeching, shouting, alien Church School playground and he'd watched, paralysed with despair, as she sailed away, bonnet ribbons flying on the raw autumn wind.
'Come on, this won't do,' he muttered sternly to himself, and turned to go in. But then there was a loud report somewhere in the street, followed by several others, like the rapid rifle fire he'd often heard from the smallarms factory in Enfield. He looked back startled, images of massacre and revolution tumbling panicky through his mind. But the street life went on undisturbed although the loud reports still banged away spasmodically. No heads turned, there were no police or soldiers, no rampant bloodthirsty mobs. Then he saw that the bangs came from a giant red paper firecracker hanging down from the first floor of a building further down the street. The firecracker was slowly smouldering upwards in a cloud of bluish smoke, intermittently flashing and banging as the little parcels of gunpowder concealed in it exploded. One or two passers-by glanced at the dangling red snake and some children had gathered round it, gaping and clapping their hands over their ears, but nobody else seemed to notice. Even the donkeys, now disappearing, only flattened their ears and shook their heads.
A white fluttering movement on the next veranda caught the corner of Denton's eye. Knowing it must be Mason's, he glanced round, forcing a false, uncertain smile of greeting. But through the iron lattice work that separated the two verandas he saw, not Mason, but a young Chinese girl. She was leaning over the parapet to watch the firecracker, wearing nothing but Mason's tunic. Her long black hair hung down over the white of the tunic, which reached as far as her bare knees. As she leant further over, the tunic moved up, and he saw the shadowy dimples at the back of each knee, the pale curve of her thighs.
His first thought was that he mustn't allow a lady to see him in his nightshirt, but instead of turning away, he stared stupefied at the girl's pale legs and tiny bare feet. Then she turned, and saw him. Mason's tunic was hanging open and Denton glimpsed a small, swelling breast, the round rosy circle of a nipple, a long streak of pale skin and a shadowy darkness between her legs before she casually shrugged the tunic closer round her. She eyed him coolly, her eyes seeming puffy with sleep, and walked back into Mason's bedroom, while Denton gazed stiffly past her.
'Nothing, Tibbee,' he heard her chirp in a high toneless voice. 'Onlee fi' cracka.'
Denton went in and sat on the bed to finish his tea, his mind lurching from upright condemnation of what he'd just seen to turbulent images that went beyond it, images which he resolutely dismissed but which insidiously crept back again and again. He put the cup down and went into the bathroom, the vision of the girl's breast persisting wickedly in his mind.
There was a new bucket in the toilet box. He planted his legs before it sternly and imagined himself contemptuously upbraiding Mason. His own licentious thoughts slowly wilted too as he visualised Mason, shame-faced and crest-fallen, turning and slinking away from him in the mess.
When he was dressed and ready to go down for breakfast, his old diffident shyness seized him. He would have to brave a roomful of strangers, who would all look up at him with hard, judging eyes, he would have to choose a table under their watchfulness, perhaps introduce himself, order his breakfast from the steward without swallowing his words. He waited for several minutes with his hand on the door, rehearsing how he would greet strangers, call a steward (Boy! Boy!), order from the menu.... On the Orcades it had all been so much easier, a set meal without any choice at a set table. At last he forced himself to go. Even so, a creak on the boards outside held him back and he hung there listening till he was sure he wouldn't run into Mason or the Chinese girl outside, his brave imaginings of facing Mason down abjectly abandoned. Then he turned the handle gingerly and glanced cautiously through the crack before he slipped out and went down the stairs.
But breakfast went off all right. Johnson waved to him to join him at a table by the wall, and left after a few smiling bland remarks, so that Denton was able to order from the boy without being observed. He hastily chose a boiled egg - the first word he read on the menu - and signed his name to the chit afterwards without any mistake. Best of all, Mason didn't appear.
He decided he could walk to the tailor (he'd memorised the way when Mason took him the day before) which would save him the embarrassment and perhaps humiliation of trying to hire a rickshaw by himself.