Christopher New - Shanghai

Shanghai

Christopher New

published by: epubli GmbH, Berlin, www.epubli.de

Copyright: © 2012Christopher New

ISBN 978-3-****-***-*

IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE CHANGE in the ship's motion that woke him, the roll of the open sea giving way to calm of the estuary. Propping himself up on his elbow, Denton looked out of the port-hole, through which the scuttle was channelling warm, moist air onto his face. It was dawn. He could see a pink flush in the sky, and across the smooth, still-dark, oily water he could make out the dim shape of land, a low, smudged bar of earth darker and more solid than the sea.

The other passengers in the crowded cabin were still snoring and sighing in their sleep. Dressing quickly and stealthily to avoid waking them, he made his way up to the lower deck. The sun had risen over the horizon already when he reached it, and the banks of the river, clear and distinct now, were closing in on the ship. The pilot was just climbing aboard; his launch, pouring black smoke from its sooty grey funnel, was curling away to a cluster of tumbledown grey stone buildings on the bank. The water was a yellowish muddy colour, its opaque surface glittering under the long slanting rays of the sun.

For more than an hour Denton leant over the stern, watching the level countryside slip placidly past: vivid green squares of paddy fields, tall thick bamboo groves, squat stone and mud villages, little shrines with curled, tiled roofs glistening in the rising heat of the sun. Everywhere there were narrow overgrown ditches lacing the fields, their torpid waters gleaming through the green. The villages looked still and empty, not even a dog barking, but the fields were alive and full, men and women standing knee-deep in the paddy, legs spread, backs bent double, as they groped in the mud for the rice seedlings. They all wore wide straw hats with shallow conical crowns, the browny-yellow brims spreading out over their shoulders. Under each brim, black, braided queues swung down, men and women alike. Occasionally the peasants slowly straightened their backs, looked incuriously up at the liner steaming remotely past, then bowed to their work again.

Now and then Denton saw water buffalo plodding through the mud of the few unplanted fields, or ambling along the banks between them. Grey and slimy from the water, they were prodded on by half-naked children with pointed sticks, who kept shouting out strange shrill cries. Some of the children waved at the boat, grinning or making faces. So this is China, he kept thinking, half-awed. So this is China.

Then Everett joined him. 'We've passed the Woosung forts, then?' he asked, his freckled fists gripping the rail beside Denton.

'Woosung forts?'

'Yes, the pilot gets on there. Bit of a ruin. We shelled them in eighteen forty something or other. When we took Shanghai.'

'Oh yes, I saw the pilot coming on board.'

Everett nodded, breathing deeply and regularly through his nose, making long hissing sounds in his nostrils. 'You'll be seeing them again, I should think. There's a Customs post there, too.'

The breakfast gong sounded on the first class deck above them, struck by a dough-faced, spotty youth, insolent in his white P&O steward's uniform. Time for them to eat too, then, in the airless third class saloon with its plain wooden tables and smells of stale cooking.

'Coming?' Everett asked.

'Not just yet,' Denton answered awkwardly. 'Think I'll just watch a bit more first.'

He stayed on deck till it was too late to eat, gazing across the yellowish water that swirled gently past the ship's smooth white hull. He watched wooden junks drift past, their stiff, ribbed sails like patched grey bats' wings, he watched the light and dark green squares of the paddy fields, he listened to the clanging of occasional bells, behind the feathery bamboos that sometimes screened the villages. The sun grew slowly hotter. His cheek began to burn. He moved reluctantly into the shade of one of the lifeboats. But still he watched.

And then, at last, the thing he scarcely knew he'd been waiting for: the city of Shanghai began to emerge from the shimmering haze ahead. First tall black columns of smoke from unseen funnels and chimneys, then the bright shapes of large buildings, windows intermittently sparkling in the sunlight, then the dark rigid fingers of pointing cranes and the masts of ships, bare as leafless trees. While he gazed at the approaching city, he heard the deep throbbing blast of a siren, and almost at once a rust-streaked liner slid round the next bend, heading downstream towards the sea. For a few moments Denton looked at the two raked stacks billowing sooty smoke and at the silent faces of the passengers lining the side, then the ship had passed and he was watching the Russian flag flopping limply at the stern above the muddy foaming wake churned by its propellers. Another liner was making its tortuous way upstream behind them, sailing almost in their wake. As it slowly turned at a buoy in the middle of the channel, he saw the American flag drooping from its mast.

They swung slowly round another bend and all at once they were in the middle of the city. On the starboard side, large stone buildings with colonnaded facades lay back behind a wide green park. On the port side a dirty grey slum of houses, factories and godowns sprawled, all crammed together. The river was dense with ships of all kinds there - liners, cargo ships, coalers, barges, lighters and junks. Between them and the shore, smaller boats dawdled over the smooth, sluggish water, Chinese sampans rowed from the stern with a single oar. From the quays came a continuous hubbub of noise - voices shouting and chanting, wheels grinding, chains squealing, whistles blowing, cargo thudding onto shore or barge. So this is China, he thought again half-exhilarated, half-afraid. He went below.

Everyone else in the six-berthed cabin had gone, their trunks and boxes piled outside. Denton quickly folded his few remaining clothes and started packing them into the dented metal trunk his father had bought him from a pawnbroker in London. The cramped cabin was on the lowest deck, hot and stifling now that the ship had stopped moving and the scuttle no longer scooped in any air. He began to sweat, and took off his jacket and tie. His best collar, which he had had starched for threepence in the ship's laundry the day before, was damp and curling already.

As he was closing the lid the stamp of approaching feet sounded outside, then an abrupt, authoritative voice. A large man in a white drill uniform pushed the door open and ducked inside, holding his topee in his hand. He seemed to fill the doorway.

'Denton?' His face was red and perspiring, and he had a bristly ginger moustache. 'My name's Mason. Been sent to meet you.' He made it sound more a duty than a pleasure.

'Where's your kit? That all?' He sniffed and then, as an afterthought thrust out a meaty red hand that was also perspiring. 'Mason's the name,' he said again. 'How do. Only one trunk?' He shouted over his shoulder in a hectoring voice, and a small crooked-backed Chinese padded in on bare feet, peering deferentially, warily, round the cabin, as if expecting to be cuffed or kicked. Mason gestured to the trunk. 'One piecee topside,' he ordered curtly.

The Chinese wore faded blue trousers and a shapeless, torn tunic. 'Master no more piecee?' he asked in a sing-song voice, shaking his head so that his waist-long queue twitched at his back. His head was shaved in front, giving his face a strangely naked and mask-like appearance.

'One piecee!' Mason repeated impatiently. 'Quick, quick top-side! Master later look-see, you blithering idiot.' He looked round the cabin distastefully as the Chinese heaved the trunk onto his shoulder and staggered out with it. 'Glad to get out of this, I should think, won't you be?'