Kyril Bonfiglioli - All the Tea in China

I did not go into the shops of the dealers with Jewish names and no ignorance; I went into the shops where the goods in the window were laughably over-priced, for I reasoned (and this is still good reasoning) that a man who over-prices foolishly will make mistakes in the other direction, too. I spent a few pounds carefully in such shops. Later in my life I made a great many lamentable mistakes but in those early days I made only one, for I seemed to bear a charmed life. This was it, and I tell it without shame for it was beautifully done. So was I.

Walking into a nasty little mud-pie of a shop, far from Bond Street, I noticed on the floor an incomparable saucer, polychromed, yet from the very earliest part of the Ming Dynasty, when such wares were made with great difficulty and then only for the Emperor himself and his concubines. I kicked the saucer gently as I passed it. It rang true. It was a jewel, a jewel, unflawed. Better, it was dirty and crusted with tide-marks of old milk and a great, horrid, ginger pussy-cat was schlipp-schlopping some sour milk from it.

I walked around the shop, pretending to look at his pitiful stock, then said: “There is nothing here quite in my line, but I have taken a fancy to your pussy-cat, for my little daughter has begged me again and again to buy her just such a pussy-cat.”

“Aarrgh,” said the shop-keeper, “aarrgh. My own liddle daughter loves that there pussy-cat better than life itself. I vouldn’t sell that pussy-cat for a fi’-pound note, I swear I vouldn’t, for I could never look my little girl in the face agin.”

“You are trying to say that this pussy-cat costs six pounds?” I asked.

“Yes, Sir.”

I dealt out six good English pounds, scooped the noxious beast into my arms and, as though it were an after-thought, bent over to pick up the saucer.

“The pussy-cat will be accustomed to its own milk-bowl,” I said off-handedly. “It is dirty but I shall take it with me.”

“Oh no, no, no , Sir,” he cried. “No, not by no means. Vy, that saucer there ’as sold me three pussy-cats in as many months!”

I looked at him without expression.

“Would you care,” I asked “to buy this pussy-cat back for one pound? I have just noticed that it is not precisely the colour of pussy-cat my daughter pines for.”

“No, Sir, thankyou, Sir,” he said, “for to tell you the truth, the moment you discards that cat, were it in John O’Groats or even Hampstead itself, it will be back here by nightfall, shit or bust, for I gives it a little catnip and hopium in its milk each night; it has grown accustomed to it, you see.”

Anyone who has ever fenced knows the feeling of scraping his foil tentatively along the blade of a professor of arms. There is an authority about the resistance, an especial timbre to the ring of the steel which tells the almost-good swordsman that he is paired against a master of the art.

“Good day,” I said.

“Good day, Sir. Pray call again.”

Every day the boy “You” took down the shutters at noon, having made the floor, the mahogany shop-fittings and the Delft glow, for he was, it proved, a cleanly and diligent boy. He was handy, too, for he neatly pierced for me a little Judas window in the private door, so that I could observe customers unseen. Only four came into the shop in as many days: two were dealers on the prowl, I could tell this by their casual, flickering glances. The boy told them that all the stock was spoken for, as I had instructed. One was a poor old woman with some blue-and-white to sell; it was all rubbish except for a little, sparrow-beaked jug from the English factory of Worcester, for which I gave her a few pennies.

The fourth was the person I had been praying for: the angry milord. He stamped about the shop, glaring at things and pretending, in a childish way, not to be aware of my presence. At last he picked up a small and beautiful vase and walked out of the shop with it. I made no move. He stood outside the shop holding the vase up to the sun, looking through it to see the colour of the paste. I went upstairs to make a pot of Mr Jorrocks’s tea. When I came down the lord was back in the shop, walking moodily up and down, whacking his boot-leg with his cane. He rounded on me.

“See here,” he said. “The piece I looked at the other day, the piece you dropped on the floor. Was it really rubbish?”

“No, it was worth about fifteen guineas.”

“Why did you smash it, then, eh? Come now, let’s be frank.”

“Because I am a Dutchman,” I said. “Which is like an Englishman only more pig-headed.” He stared at me for several long seconds, then suddenly began to roar with laughter, raising his head and bellowing with mirth, so that little “You” crept out of the shop in fright.

“Oh, stap me!” he cried at last, when he had finished laughing, “but you’re a cool ’un. Vewwy cool, stap me if you ain’t!”

(It was strange: I pronounced the “very” as it is spelled and as I had been taught but people of Jorrocks’s class said “werry” while gentlemen and lords, especially if they had served in the cavalry, pronounced it “vewwy”. I did not understand the English in those days. To speak plainly, they seemed all to be mad. They still seem so to me but I am now wise enough to have stopped trying to understand them.)

“Windermere,” he said, extending two fingers. I shook the fingers lightly. “How do you do, Lord Windermere,” I said. “My name is Carolus Van Cleef. Do you drink tea?”

“Tay? Tay? Depends whose it is, weally.”

“Jorrocks’s,” I said. “Of course. His new season’s superior Twankay.”

“’Pon my soul,” he said, “you are a high-flier. Man of taste, man of taste. Yes, by all means, let’s have some.”

I locked the door; we propped our behinds on the counter and drank tea.

“Now, Meneer Van Cleef,” he said, “show me something I should buy. Something choice. Rare and choice.”

“No,” I said. “For I do not know how advanced a collector you are. But I will tell you what not to buy, if you will be guided by me.”

He stared, then roared with laughter again.

“Rot me, but you’re a sportsman, damme if you ain’t!”

This was a compliment, I could tell.

“Tell you what,” he said, “tell you what, tell you what. Come and call on me this evening, see my bits of pots, drink a glass of port, eh?”

“Thankyou, Lord Windermere, but tonight I am, to speak plainly, whoring. Perhaps another night?”

Again he roared with laughter — I do not know why — cracking his cane against his boot most loudly and uttering many a strange oath. In the end we agreed upon an engagement for the following night and he left, still full of mirth, wishing me good sport and urging me not to catch anything I wasn’t fishin’ for. I do not know what that meant but it was clearly a British joke.

I dined in the Strand, eating a great many chops and a pigeon pie, then went to bed alone, for I was not, in truth, in the mood for whoring; I wanted to think. I thought a great deal that night, chiefly about the predictability, or otherwise, of mad English lords but also, a little, about opium and the way it could make surly pussy-cats trudge all the way from very Hampstead itself. I had read something of how the British Colonials had secured the best part of the North American Continent by judiciously selling Demon Rum to the Redskins; perhaps something of the sort might be happening in China with opium; it was a kinder thing to sell to the heathen for it took longer to kill them, it did not inflame them to massacres and, most of all, there were a great many more customers in China than in America.

When I at last went to sleep, my head was buzzing with ambition.