Kyril Bonfiglioli
ALL THE TEA IN CHINA
WHICH TELLS HOW CAROLUS MORTDECAI VAN CLEEF
SET OUT TO SEEK HIS FORTUNE IN LONDON TOWN;
ON THE HIGH SEAS, IN INDIA, THE TREATY
PORTS OF CHINA AND EVEN IN DARKEST
AFRICA; AND HOW HE FOUND IT,
PREDICTABLY, IN A PLACE WHICH
HAS NO LONGITUDE AND
PRECIOUS LITTLE
LATITUDE
Contents
A Bloody Foretaste
Part One: THE RUNNING AWAY
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Part Two: THE GREAT AND SINFUL CITY
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Part Three: THE HIGH SEAS
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Part Four: THE EMPIRE OF THE DRAGON
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Part Five: THE LONG WAY HOME
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Acknowledgments
Follow Penguin
PENGUIN BOOKS
ALL THE TEA IN CHINA
Kyril Bonfiglioli was born in Eastbourne in 1928 of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father, and after studying at Oxford University and spending five years in the army, took up a career as an art dealer, the same career as his eccentric creation, Charlie Mortdecai. He lived in Ireland and then in Jersey, where he died in 1985. Penguin publish all three Mortdecai novels (Don’t Point That Thing at Me, After You with the Pistol and Something Nasty in the Woodshed) as well as All the Tea in China, a historical novel featuring a disreputable ancestor of Mortdecai, and The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery, which was left unfinished at his death and was completed by Craig Brown.
An accomplished fencer, a fair shot with most weapons and a serial marrier of beautiful women, Bonfiglioli claimed to be ‘abstemious in all things except drink, food, tobacco and talking’ and ‘loved and respected by all who knew him slightly’.
For Rubincrantz and Rosenstern –
two princes without a Hamlet
“Cui dono lepidum novum libellum
Arido modo pumice expolitum?”
CATULLUS
I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.
JANE AUSTEN
A Bloody Foretaste
I had been frightened many times since I started my sea-voyage but always by the rage of winds and waters, dangers I could not properly comprehend and which I could do nothing about. Moreover, the Captain and the ship’s company clearly could comprehend and partly govern them, so even when I was most terrified I had some comfort and knew that I was not alone.
This, now, was different. I was very much alone. Never before had I seen, glaring from the eyes of another man, the clear intention to kill me and the certain knowledge that he could. There is no lonelier terror.
The belaying-pin – fourteen inches of greenheart – whirred past my ear and ripped through the mizzen course with a noise like a pistol-shot. Lubbock moved along the rail, his eyes fastened on me, his hand feeling for another pin.
The Captain’s voice rasped from the poop: “Fined one shilling for damage to sails, Mister Mate, and eightpence for wantonly losing one belaying-pin overboard.”
Utterly taken aback, Lubbock stared over my head at the quarter-deck. For my part, I kept my eyes on Lubbock. The end of my life was very close: I could not afford to lose one halfpennyworth of advantage.
The Mate’s jaw was open; his eyes glared dully at the Captain.
“Aye aye, Sir,” he said thickly, “I’ll pay presently but first I’m about to kill this little Dutchie yid, by the Holy I am!”
“You’ll do no such thing, Mister,” snapped the Captain. “Mr Van Cleef, whatever his race, is a supernumerary officer: if you do him a mischief I swear you shall stand trial for murder.”
“But he called me a cowardly bastard!”
“He will apologise, will you not, Mr Van Cleef? You spoke in haste, I dare say?”
I knew that if I stood down now I would lose all standing and be unable to protect my young friend.
“No Sir, I shall not apologise,” I said, “for he is no other than what I called him.”
“Then Mr Lubbock has a remedy open to him. A gentlemanly one.” There was a sneer in his voice.
“Stand there then,” bawled Lubbock, “while I fetch a pair of barkers – I’ll see daylight through your guts in three minutes!”
“No, damme, you shan’t,” cried the Captain. “I’ll have no pistol-popping in this bucket, it’s too killing and too chancy. Mr Lord Stevenage, take the key, serve out two cutlasses and see that they be of a length.”
Peter Stevenage walked unhappily to the main-mast and unlocked the chain which ran through the guards of the glittering skirt of cutlasses and boarding-pikes at its base.
This was “all to the gravy” for me, an unexpected hope. I had been Dux of my school at single-sticks and, although Lubbock was big and strong, his arms were short: I had the reach, the speed and the skill. He would, I felt sure, rely on smashing through my guard and I knew how to deal with that sort of play.
“Canvas frocks and hats!” ordered the Captain, and these stout garments, commonly used for tarring or going aloft in the very wildest weather, were brought. My frock proved to be stiff with tar – another small point to me. I worked the right shoulder free as I felt the edge of my cutlass. It was keen.
“Mind now,” the Captain shouted again, “it’s first blood only; no hacking after. The instant claret is tapped you’ll lay your arms on the deck!” Ostentatiously he drew out a little Bulldog pistol and cocked it.
“Ready? Begin!” he cried.
I fumbled my sword as though I had never handled anything of the sort and the Mate, grinning like a shark, rushed in with a great smash at my head, which I met with the high St George’s guard. The force of his blow made my very shoulder tingle and despite my parry his blade dented the crown of my canvas hat. I looked as stupid as I could and as frightened as, indeed, I was. His next attack was a slow, clumsy molinello, commencing with a feint at my side under the sword-arm, another at my head which carried no conviction at all and finishing with a slice at my breast. I performed a salto in dietro – the elegant leap backwards – at the latest possible moment and he missed by a foot; then I pretended to stumble and, as he rushed in to destroy me, dropped into the long Italian lunge, knuckles on the deck. He ran straight into it and, instantly, the front of his frock was a terrifying mess of blood.
“Swords down!” roared the Captain – needlessly, because Lubbock’s had clattered to the deck and mine had been wrenched out of my hand by his collapsing body.
“Fined ten shillings, Mr Van Cleef,” yelled the Captain, “for fouling the decks! Bosun, get that mess swabbed up; the watch is idling! Doctor, is the First Mate alive?”
The cook strode up and peeled off the blood-drenched frock and shirt. A great, slippery flap of flesh fell free. My blade had passed outside his ribs, sawing off a pou
nd or two of muscle and fat. The “doctor” looked up.
“Yazzuh, he alive. He good as new two, three weeks.”
“Weeks?” shrieked the Captain.
“Yazzuh. ’Less it foosters up, then maybe ten weeks, or maybe die.”
The Captain breathed hard for a full minute.
“Fined two guineas, Mr Van Cleef. Interfering with the working of the ship.”
“Aye aye, Sir,” I said.
As they carried Lubbock below to the cook’s kindly needle and thread, the rest of the watch was already swabbing and holy-stoning his blood from the snow-white deck. It seemed to me that they were, for once, smiling as they worked.
I have told you, my heirs-expectant, this ugly little episode to whet your appetites, for I know how you love to dwell on scenes of carnage; I have seen you snatch at the newspaper for reports of the latest slaughters between Boers and British and I recall how, even as children, you doted on the frightfulnesses of Grimm’s so-called fairy-tales, tales which it shocked me to hear your mother reading to you.
Before I regale you more, however, with blood-curdling accounts of peril upon the high sea, I must write the first part of my tale, which is how a young and headstrong Dutch Jew – yes, me, the grandfather you profess to love so well and whose health you watch so narrowly – ran away from his native land and had adventures in the great city of London; adventures quite as thrilling and, to the sensible mind, far more instructive. I speak, of course, about a time some sixty years ago, when our portly, disapproving little Victoria was a beautiful young girl, not yet married to her half-bred German prig; a time when London was gay and wicked – before the man Albert laid his cold, dead hand upon English manners and taste.
If you cannot profit from this relation of my early adventures in London, then you are all unfit to traffic in the porcelains, the tapestries and the paintings for which our House is famous – our House which you may or may not inherit on my death. I am sure I make myself clear …
Part One
THE RUNNING AWAY
Chapter One
I was running, running, fit to burst my breast; the shot-gun pellets in my left buttock burning like a foretaste of hell. It is hard for a man to run after a vigorous passage of lechery with a young woman, harder still to do so when he is holding up his breeches. I stopped to draw breath, and to attend to the buttons of my small-clothes – and to listen. I could hear nothing behind me; in particular I could not hear the baying of my uncle’s great dogs, thank God. Why he should have been so upset at finding me in an embarrassing posture with my own cousin is a mystery to me: we were, after all, engaged to be married, he knew that.
After a while I started to run again, but more slowly now for I had a tryst with another young lady that evening and I felt that in all fairness to her, I should husband my strength. She, this other one, was there: in the shadow of the great magnolia tree in the northwest corner of the knot-garden beside her father’s castle. We embraced passionately.
“Karli,” she murmured as we drew apart after our first frantic embrace, “why does your heart thump so?”
“For love of you,” I lied valiantly. “It always thumps so when you are near, dearest one.”
“I am so happy that you feel so,” she said, still murmuring, “because I have such a wonderful piece of news for us.” My heart missed a thump. I cocked an ear for the baying of hounds but there was only the rustle of magnolia leaves and two hearts beating as one, although for different reasons.
“Tell me this fine news, my sweet and only love,” I said, furtively feeling the back of my breeches on the left side, “tell me it all, my Eve with the sweet little apples.”
“Karli, you have given me a baby, I am so happy I could cry!” Naturally, she started to cry. My heart now began to thump in earnest. I collected my wits.
“And have you told your father the Ridder, dearest love?” I asked diffidently.
“Of course not, Karli, he would kill you, you know that. No, we shall say nothing to him nor to Mama, we shall run away. We shall be very poor but you can work on the canal and I shall take in washing and we shall be so happy with our baby and our love in some tiny cottage far, far away from here.”
To speak plainly, this was far, far away from the future I had planned: my courtship of the Ridder’s horse-faced daughter had been an attempt to better my station in life: the thought of toiling on a canal-dredge all day and returning at night to a red-wristed washerwoman and a brat in a squalid cottage was not at all what I had had in mind for myself.
“I shall lie down now, dearest one of all,” she said, “and you shall have your will of me, you bad, shameless, wonderful boy.”
Love – physical love in those organs designated for it – vanished and shrivelled with an almost audible rustle.
“No, heart of my heart,” I whispered, “not tonight. Tonight is too sacred. I must be strong for both of us – I shall go home and pray for our happiness in store, in store for us three. You must go to your bed and take great care of yourself and of the little fruit of our love.” I was a wonderful liar in those days.
She meekly agreed. I have often observed that women, in some matters, are almost as stupid as men. After many a perfunctory kiss, I was running again. This time, home to my mother was where I was running.
I did not cry “Oy veh!” as I ran, because on my father’s side I am a Jew of the Sephardim, the aristocrats and scholars: our private language is Ladina, not the Yüddisch of the base Ashkenazim of the East. I have, of course, some smattering of Yüddisch but, frankly, I had no breath to cry “Oy veh!” or anything else. With my mother was where I needed to be, even if I had to take a bowl of her strong chicken broth.
You must understand that I was then a young – and am now an almost elderly – Dutch Jew, so of course I must be a liar. I understand that: it is of no importance. Words are words; truth is something precious you share only with your family. So do not burst a kishka trying to believe what I am writing: just enjoy. You will learn nothing of importance from this story except, perhaps, how to die; but then, you were born knowing that and in any case it only has to be done once. It is easy: ask anyone who has done it.
My nose was dragging on the ground by the time I reached my mother’s house: she must have been waiting, for the door opened before I could rattle the pin. She looked me up and down. I opened my mouth.
“First eat,” she said firmly.
“But Mama–”
“Eat!” she said and steered me to a chair. I yelped as I sat down to the table and, in the twinkling of an eye, my mother had hoisted me up and bent me over. She is – was, now, I think perhaps – a little woman and fat but strong. She put her hands to her cheeks and started to keen, but quietly, so as not to waken my father.
“Mama, please,” I said, “I am not badly hurt, I tell you truly.”
“Your great bottom I’m not crying about – but who made you those beautiful broadcloth breeches not two years ago, and who now has to wash the blood off and maybe darn twenty little holes?”
Still bent over the table, my face among the knives and forks and plates, I answered with dignity.
“Mama, I’m hungry. Yet.”
Without a word she flitted to the big iron kitchen-range and, by the time that I had adjusted myself to sitting on the right cheek of my bottom, there was a bowl of her best chicken broth steaming in front of me, scattered with those little crisp things; I forget the English word for them.
Five minutes later I wiped my mouth politely and she set before me a plate of delicate chopped liver, such as only she can – could – make.
When I had dealt honestly with that she asked me whether I was ready for my supper.
“I am sorry, Mama,” I said sheepishly, “but tonight I seem to have no appetite. And my bottom hurts.”
“Ah, yes,” she said, a trifle piqued, “the bottom I had almost forgotten. Get the breeches off, I shall look.”
“Mama, I am almost twenty – please!”
“That bottom I have washed a thousand times before you even knew it was a bottom. And men I’ve seen before – relatives I mean, naturally. Now quick, down with the breeches before they are spoiled.”
A few minutes later she said, “Such a baby, I never heard such squealing. And it’s not buckshot, the gamekeeper loaded his gun with rock-salt only.”
“Mama.”
“Yes, son?”
“This wasn’t a gamekeeper. It was your brother, my uncle; my Oom Kaspar.”
She didn’t say anything, she stood back and folded her arms. While I was explaining, delicately, how things had been when my uncle burst in upon us, she pursed her mouth in a way which was not wholly condemnatory. I could see that she was thinking of how things could be arranged with decency. Before she could give a verdict I said, “Mama?”
“Yes, son?”
“Mama, there is a little something else.” I told her about the Ridder’s daughter at the castle. She did not clap her hands to her cheeks, she did not moan; she gave me a long, blank look, so careful not to be frightened that it frightened me.
“Just like your father,” she said at last. “A stallion, a mad stallion.”
I gaped at her amazedly. My father, slight, silver-haired, gentle, a bookworm, was snoring gently upstairs over his treasured copy of Jakob Böhme’s Mysterium Magnum, that great and ridiculous work by another philosophical cobbler. (The sign over our door read “Jooss v. Cleef, Saddler and Maker of Riding-Boots to the Nobility and Gentry” but my father was, in effect, a cobbler.) To speak of my father as a mad stallion was purely absurd: he was, as I have said, snoring gently upstairs over his book of recondite philosophy.
Except that, at the moment I am writing of, he was standing in the doorway.
He nodded courteously at me and then looked at my mother.
“Give the boy some money, Annike,” he said. “Give him as much as we can afford, get him to Rotterdam and England. I am not proud, but I will have no son of mine flogged in public.”
All the Tea in China Page 1
