Jon Cleary - High Road to China

Perhaps there never will be, thought Henty, but not in terms of weather. It had been a summer, he mused, which even some people not yet born would look back to with nostalgia. But he had looked up the weather records and they had shown that it had not been a ‘long golden summer’: that had occurred four years before, in 1910, the last season of the Edwardian reign, of a king meant for pleasure and not for war. But memory, Henty knew, had its own climate and regret for a time gone forever created its own golden haze. So people now believed the sun had been shining through all the months and years up till August 1914. Suddenly his leg began to ache. But he knew it had nothing to do with the rain or the shrapnel still lodged beneath his kneecap.

The Rolls-Royce turned up towards the Strand and a few moments later pulled into the forecourt of the Savoy Hotel. It was followed by the smaller Austin in which rode Anna, Eve’s maid, and the luggage. Henty, who did not own a car and usually rode in buses and taxis, knew he had done the right thing in hiring the Rolls-Royce in which to bring his boss’s daughter up from the ship. He had been warned that Bradley Tozer expected nothing but the best for his only child; and, Henty had remarked to himself, evidently Miss Tozer took for granted that only the best was good enough for her. At least she had made no comment when he had escorted her off the ship and down to the car. The Rolls-Royce was good enough for the Savoy, too: a covey of porters and pages appeared as if royalty had just driven up to hand out grace and favour pensions to the common herd.

The head porter showed no surprise as Eve handed out her gun-case: it could have been that American ladies arrived every day at the Savoy with their guns, Annie Oakleys every one of them. He passed the gun-case on to a junior porter, then took the small lacquered wooden box which Eve pushed at him.

‘Tell them to be careful with that. My father would have my scalp and yours if what’s inside that box should be broken.’

‘Yes, miss,’ said the head porter, wondering if the father of this dark-haired beauty could be a Red Indian; but miffed at the suggestion that anything, other than perhaps the guests’ virginity, should ever be broken at the Savoy.

Going up in the lift Arthur Henty said, ‘I’m sorry your father couldn’t come with you. I was looking forward to seeing him after so long. It is almost seven years since I said goodbye to him in Shanghai.’

‘He hasn’t changed.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ Henty ventured and was relieved to see Eve smile.

‘He still believes China belongs to him.’

Inside the suite Eve moved to the windows, opened one of them and looked out on the river, dull as unwashed quartz under the grey skies. It had stopped raining, but it was still a miserable day. A day for going to bed with a good book or a good man. She smiled to herself: her Boston grandmother would have commended her for the first thought and banished her for the second.

Henty studied her again, the heiress to the Tozer fortune, legatee of that part of China which her father thought belonged to him. Tozer Cathay had been started in Shanghai in 1870 by Eve’s grandfather, a windjammer captain from Boston turned merchant. Rufus Tozer had died in 1903 from a surfeit of bandits’ bullets while estimating a price for a repair job on the Great Wall of China: or so the company legend went. His son had run the firm ever since, had built it into the major competitor for trade in China of Jardine Matheson, the British firm that, until Tozer Cathay began to develop, had thought that it owned China.

‘How do you feel about China?’ Henty himself had loved it and its people, but he knew his leg would never allow him to go back there and take up his old job as a traveller. He had been grateful when Bradley Tozer had made him general manager of the London office.

Eve shrugged, turned from the window. The reflected light from the river struck sideways across her face, accentuating the slight slant of her eyes and the high cheekbones. Years before, Rufus Tozer had taken home a half-caste Chinese bride and Boston, already feeling itself invaded by the Irish, had resented this introduction of a possible further invasion, this time by the Yellow Peril. Since then, however, Pearl Tozer, having conveniently died at the birth of her son, had been forgiven and forgotten for her intrusion into decent Boston society: after all, her son had grown up to play quarterback for Harvard, gaining both All-American selection and a bride who was a distant cousin of the Cabots. Pearl’s granddaughter, grown to extraordinary beauty, was admired and, though given to such eccentricities as big-game hunting, piloting an aeroplane and smoking cigarettes in public, was still considered more acceptable than the Irish.

‘It’s not my cup of tea, if that’s the appropriate metaphor. I get upset by poverty, Mr Henty, and there is so much of it in China. I like to see happiness everywhere.’

He hadn’t thought she would be so shallow-minded and his voice was a little sharper than he intended it to be. ‘The Chinese are happy. Things could be better for them, but they are not un -happy.’

‘You think I’m shallow-minded for making such a remark, don’t you?’

Henty hung on to his eyebrows again. He should have recognized that she had probably inherited her father’s almost uncanny perception. But he was not a cowardly man: ‘Your remark did suggest that to me. I apologize. Perhaps we had better talk about something else. What are your plans while you are in London this week?’

Eve smiled, forgiving him. He was right, of course: she was shallow-minded. At least if that meant preferring happiness to misery. ‘I want to do some shopping at Harrods and a few other places. And Father wants me to order him some shirts at Turnbull and Asser’s. They have his measurements. How long will they take to make them?’

‘Two, three days, no more. I have tickets for the theatre every night – you can take your choice. Chu Chin Chow – ’ Then he, too, smiled. ‘But not if you don’t like China.’

She shook her head. ‘I’d like to see some of the new matinée idols. I’m mad about good-looking men, Mr Henty. Does that shock you?’

‘Not really,’ said Henty, wondering if she took her gun when she went in pursuit of good-looking men. ‘I understand it’s a perfectly normal thing with young girls.’

‘I adore you, Mr Henty. You try to sound like a stuffed shirt, but you’re not, are you? I read about a new leading man, Basil Rathbone. I’d like to see him, no matter what show he’s in.’

He held up a fan of tickets. ‘He’s in a new play opening next week, one by Somerset Maugham. I’ve included it amongst these.’

‘You’re perfectly slick, Mr Henty.’

He took it that that was a compliment: he was not up on the latest American slang.

Then the luggage arrived, supervised by Anna. She was a tiny Chinese who had been born in New York and had hated every moment of the three months she and her mistress had just spent in China. She had a New York accent but a Mandarin attitude towards servants less than herself. And in her book hotel porters were much less than the personal maid to a millionaire’s daughter. She clapped her tiny hands in tiny explosions and fired off orders with machine-gun rapidity. The two porters, silent and expressionless, Leyton Orientals, but boiling with thoughts about Yanks and Chinks who were mixed together in this midget witch, carried the trunks and suitcases into the main bedroom of the suite.

Eve took the small lacquered box from the page-boy who had brought it up and put it on a table. ‘When I left Father he was heading for Hunan to look for the companion piece to this. It’s a jade statue of Lao-Tze, the Taoist god. I believe there is one something like it in a museum in Paris, but Father says if he can get the pair of these, he’ll make all the museums and collectors sick with envy. You know what he’s like about his collection.’