Jon Cleary - High Road to China

Then at last I saw the long narrow valley ahead, with the straight white road running down the middle of it. I waved to the others to circle over the valley while I went down to inspect the road. I slid down, aware of the workers in the fields on either side stopping to look up at me, at some of them running in terror for the shelter of neighbouring trees; but I kept my attention on the white dirt road, looking for the thin shadows in the afternoon sun that would tell of ruts or holes in the surface. There appeared to’ be none and I banked steeply and climbed back. I made signs that I would go down first, Miss Tozer would follow and Kern would be the last to land.

I went back to the end of the valley, passing over a large mansion standing among trees, then slid in above the road. There were no telegraph poles bordering it to offer a hazard; and it ran without a bend in it for almost a mile. I put the Bristol down, felt the smoothness of the dirt and knew I was safe. I rolled down the road, eased to a stop and swung off into a field. I jumped down and ran back to the road.

Miss Tozer came in, steady as a bird, bounced a little as she touched, corrected and ran down towards me. She swung off into the field, got out and came running back. She stood beside me and watched as Kern, coming round in a wide flat bank so that he didn’t strain the upper wing too much, prepared to land. He came down steadily and I knew how he would be: one eye on the nose, the other on the wing above him. He was ten feet above the road, holding the nose up, when the wing started to shred off. It went back over his head in tatters at first, as if he had run into a flock of starlings; then the big strip tore off and I saw him duck as it flew straight at his head. Miraculously he jerked neither his hands nor his feet; he kept the plane steady while the upper wing disintegrated above him. I felt Miss Tozer clutch my arm, but I didn’t look at her, just kept my eyes on Kern as he brought his plane down to earth in as beautiful a landing as I’ve ever seen. He came rolling down the road and swung in beside us.

He climbed down, looking much less the dandy who had climbed into the cockpit this morning. I had recognized him for what he was, a womanizing loafer on whom time and his testicles hung heavy; but, God Almighty, he could fly a plane and that in my eyes forgave him a lot. Only I wasn’t going to tell him. With his bloody arrogance he’d have just nodded his head and agreed with me.

‘I got a bolt of lightning.’ He unwound the long silk scarf he wore, tied it round his middle like a belt; he was a Fancy Dan all right, and I wanted to throw up. But he was as cool as if he had just come in from ten minutes of uneventful circuits, and even my prejudiced eye could see that it was no act. He had probably got out of his burning plane, the day I had shot him down, with the same cool aplomb. ‘Fortunately, it was a small one.’

‘I’m just glad you’re safe.’ Then Miss Tozer sniffed the air, looked around. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘I thought it was your perfume.’ She had let go my arm, but still stood close to me.

‘Roses,’ said Kern. ‘What a beautiful sight.’

I turned my head to look behind me, following the direction of his gaze. Intent on watching Kern bring his plane down, I had not noticed before that the whole valley was one vast rose garden, split up the middle by the road. There were workers scattered throughout the fields; the closest were four women on the other side of the road. As Kern and I looked at them they flung their skirts up over their heads, hiding their faces; but everything they owned below the waist was exposed. Pubic hair and bare bottoms are common sights nowadays, but in 1920 we didn’t have the broadening education of television and only those with the fare to Paris or Port Said ever saw a blue movie. These women stood modesty on its head, but every woman to her own standards.

‘A charming custom,’ said Kern. ‘Purely local, no doubt.’

I looked at Miss Tozer, but she was staring up the road. In the distance there was a cloud of white dust, quickly coming closer. Then we saw that just ahead of it was a white horse galloping at full speed and a few moments later we recognized the rider of the horse as a woman sitting side-saddle. She came down on us like a Valkyrie, bringing the horse to a rearing halt only yards from us.

‘Good God, we must be in Roumania!’ said Kern. ‘It’s Queen Marie!’

But it wasn’t, though we didn’t know that at once. She quietened the prancing horse, sat elegantly in the saddle and looked us up and down. She said something in a language I didn’t recognize, then she spoke in heavily accented English. ‘You are English, yes? Those are English aeroplanes, are they not?’

‘We are English, American, German,’ said Miss Tozer and introduced us individually.

‘I am the Countess Ileana Malevitza.’ She had to be an aristocrat of some sort, or an eccentric; or both. She was wearing a bright red tunic, braided with silver and with silver epaulettes, over a royal-blue shirt and dark blue trousers tucked into riding boots that came above her knees. She had a black fur shako on her blonde head and a short sword swung in an enamelled sheath at her waist. Despite her coating of fine dust, the effect of her was striking. We’ve flown through that storm into Ruritania, I thought, and waited for the Drury Lane chorus, somewhere out among the rose bushes, to burst into song. I looked across the road again, ready to be bemused again by the bare bottoms and bellies, something I had never seen at Drury Lane, but the women had dropped their skirts now and stood watching us. That somehow made everything real.

‘You are welcome to my valley,’ said the Countess.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and found myself doing a Kern: I clicked my heels and bowed. ‘Where are we?’

‘In the Valley Malevitza. The border between Roumania and Bulgaria runs down the middle of this road, right through my house. You are in Roumania at this moment.’

‘And the young ladies are Bulgarian?’ Kern gestured towards the women standing among the rose bushes on the other side of the road.

‘Young? Your eyesight is not very good, Baron. Only one of them is young.’ The Countess gave them only a cursory glance, as if they were no more than thorns or faded blooms on the bushes.

‘I don’t think the Baron looked too carefully at their faces,’ said Miss Tozer.

The Countess laughed heartily: it came up out of her belly, like a fat man’s. ‘It is the custom among some of the women. They dare not show their faces to a strange man at first. What else they show is not an invitation. Their menfolk would cut the stranger’s throat if he thought it was.’

I saw the men standing further back in the rose fields. They had risen up from among the bushes; more women and children were also appearing. There must have been a hundred of them spread out through the fields on either side of the road, dark, silent figures among the blaze of red, pink and white blooms. Each man’s hand glittered: it was a moment before I realized each of them held a sharp pruning knife.

Sun Nan had got out of Miss Tozer’s plane. He looked pale and sick, but he put on his bowler hat against the fierce sun and stood holding on to the lower wing of the machine, doing a good job of looking dignified. The Countess glanced at him, but made no comment: like Kern she dismissed him as a servant. Nobody, in her book, would have an Oriental with him or her unless he was a servant.

‘Why did you land here in my valley?’

I explained the circumstances and pointed to the remains of Kern’s top wing. ‘I’m afraid the Baron can’t take off again until we repair that. Is there somewhere around here where we can stay, an inn or something?’