James Clavell - Gai-Jin

Again a deep breath. The next letter shocked her. Aunt Emma wrote the awful news of her husband's fall and: now we are destitute and my poor poor Michel languishes in Debtor's Prison with no help in sight!

We've nowhere to turn, no money. It's terrible, my child, a nightmare...

Poor darling Uncle Michel, she thought, weeping silently, a shame he was such a bad manager. "Never mind, dear darling Aunt-Mama," she said aloud, filled with a sudden joy. "Now I can repay all your kindnesses, I'll ask Malcolm to help, he'll certainly..."

Wait! Would that be wise?

While she pondered that she opened her father's letter. To her surprise the envelope contained only a letter, without the expected sight draft she had asked for, on money brought with her from Paris and deposited in the Victoria Bank, money that her uncle had generously advanced to her--on the solemn promise that she must not tell his wife and that her father would instantly repay the loan the moment she reached Hong Kong, which he told her he had done.

Hong Kong, September 10. Hello my little cabbage, I hope that all is well and your Malcolm idolizes you as I do, as the whole of Hong Kong does. It's rumored his father is at death's door. I will keep you advised. Meanwhile I write in haste as I leave for Macao on the tide. There's a wonderful business opportunity there, so good that I have temporarily pledged the money instruments you left in safekeeping and will invest for you as an equal partner. By the next post I will be able to send you ten times what you wanted and tell you the wonderful profit we have made--after all, we have to think of your dowry, without which... eh?

Her eyes could not read on, her brain in turmoil. Oh my God! What business opportunity? Is he gambling all that I have in the world?

It was nearly two o'clock and McFay was weary, his stomach empty, his mind filled with gloom.

He had written a dozen letters, signed half a hundred chits, paid dozens of bills, checked the previous day's books which showed trading was down, found that all goods ordered from America were either cancelled, held up or offered at increased prices, all business with Canada and Europe equally affected in some degree by the American civil war. No good news either in any dispatches from Hong Kong--a lot of bad from their branch in Shanghai, though Albert MacStruan, the power there, was doing a sterling job. My God, he thought, it'd be a catastrophe if we have to evacuate Shanghai, with all our investments there.

The city was again in turmoil and the three foreign concessions under British, French and American control beset with rumors that armies of rebel irregulars of the immense Tai'ping Rebellion, based in and around Nanking--a major city southwards they had captured nine years ago and used as a capital--were again on the move. The clipping from the Shanghai Observer read: Two years ago when our valiant force of British and French troops, ably assisted by the local mercenary army, organized and paid for by our merchant princes, both European and Chinese, under the command of the gallant American soldier of fortune, Frederick Townsend Ward, drove off the rebels for a thirty-mile radius, we all presumed the threat was put away forever.

Now eyewitnesses report an irresistible army of half a million rebels, with some European officers, have massed to come against us, and another half million will again stab north for Peking. Their opposing Manchu armies are unreliable and helpless, their Chinese levies mutinous, so this time we will not survive. It is hoped that Her Majesty's Government will prevail on the Manchu authorities to appoint Captain Charles Gordon to command of Mr. Ward's force, grievously wounded in action, and to the position of overall command of Manchu training. Your correspondent believes this will be, as usual, too little too late.

We need a fully equipped British Army stationed in China, permanently--nervousness in India over the recent, dreadful Indian Mutiny of native sepoys notwithstanding.

Business continues to be disastrous with the price of silk and tea at an all-time high. Famine conditions exist in most areas within five hundred miles...

More depressing news from home. Monumental rains had washed out the harvest and famine was expected in Ireland and other areas--though not like the Great Potato Famine when hundreds of thousands died. Vast unemployment in Scotland.

Destitution in Lancashire with most cotton spinning mills silent, including three owned by Struan's, because of the Union embargo on Southern cotton and blockade of all Southern ports. With Southern cotton England had supplied cloth to the world. A Struan clipper ship crammed with teas, silks and lacquer inbound London had been lost. In the stock market Struan's was down badly, Brock's up with the successful arrival of the first of the season's teas.

Another letter from his fiancee of five years, Maureen Ross, more bad:... when am I to arrive? Have you sent the ticket? You promised this Christmas would be the last to be apart...

"It can't be this Christmas, lassie," he murmured with a scowl, much as he liked her, "can't afford it yet and, this isn't the place for a young lady."

How many times had he written and told her, knowing that really Maureen and her parents wanted him to work for Struan's in England or Scotland or better still to leave "that infamous company and work at home like a normal man," knowing that really he wanted her to break off the engagement and to forget him, knowing that most British wives soon hated Asia, loathed Asians, abominated the Pleasure Girls, raged against their ready access, despised the food, moaned for "home" and family, making their husband's lives a permanent misery.

Knowing, too, that he enjoyed Asia, loved his work, adored the freedom, treasured their Yoshiwara and would never happily go home.

Well, he thought, not until I retire.

The only good in the mail were the books from Hatchard's in Piccadilly: a new illustrated edition of Darwin's explosive On the Origin of Species, some Tennyson poems, a newly translated pamphlet by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels called the Communist Manifesto, five copies of Punch, but most important of all another edition of All the Year Round. This was the weekly started by Charles Dickens, and contained the fourteenth installment of Great Expectations-- to be published in twenty parts.

In spite of all that he had had to do, McFay, like everyone else who had received a copy, locked the door and consumed the installment rapaciously. When he read the last sentence, "to be continued next week," he sighed.

"What the devil will Miss Havisham do next, evil old bitch? Reminds me of Maureen's mother. Hope to God it all works out for Pip.

Somehow or other it has to! Hope to God good old Dickens gives us a happy ending..."

For a moment he was bemused, lost in admiration of the man and his marvelous range of stories, from the Oliver Twist more than twenty years ago, through Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield and a dozen others to the riveting Tale of Two Cities. Dickens is the greatest writer in the world, no doubt about it.

He got up and stood at the window, watching the sea and sending good thoughts to the fleet at Yedo and to the mail ship that need not now be diverted but would continue on her regular route to Shanghai instead of direct Hong Kong with Malcolm Struan, worrying about him and the future that somehow quickly became mixed up with Pip and Miss Havisham, wondering how Pip would extract himself from the mess he was in and would the girl fall in love with him.

Hope so, poor lass. What about my lassie, Maureen? It's time I had a family...

A knock. "Mr. McFay. May I see you a moment?" It was Piero Vargas, his assistant.

"Just a moment." Feeling a little guilty he put the copy under the pile, stretched and opened the door.