Dragons in Shallow Waters

by Kane, Clare

  “Don’t worry, dear.” Hilde placed a maternal arm around Nina’s shoulders. “You and I shall discuss that matter further.”

  I made straight for Su’s palace, where I expected the beleaguered Japanese guards might have some idea as to what was happening. The soldiers I came across belonged to the lower ranks, but were able to confirm in a halting mix of Mandarin and English that their superiors had received word that the troops would soon reach Peking. I thanked them and stepped only briefly inside the Su mansion itself, where conditions remained bleak: there I saw children whose skin seemed to melt hopelessly from their bones, women whose hair fell in sparse, desperate clumps and cockroaches and flies that covered the walls and floors, creating a hellish, crawling tableau.

  “Mister!” A girl tripped across the floor towards me, her feet heavy and graceless at the end of bowed legs. “You are Miss Nina’s friend?” she tried.

  “Yes, yes. I am.”

  “I am her student,” the girl said. “When will she come to teach us again?”

  “Oh, I’m afraid that I don’t know. She is helping at the Grand Hotel.”

  “Yes, yes, Lijun tells us this. But we want her!” The girl stretched a bony hand towards me, knuckles lifting her skin in cragged peaks. “You will tell her to come, please?”

  “Yes.” I dipped lightly in the girl’s direction, suddenly desperate only to get away from her, to obliterate the image of her helpless, starving body. As I turned to leave I saw Phoebe Franklin in a corner, cradling a baby with limpid, blemished skin. I raised a hand in greeting.

  From Su’s palace, I went to the chapel, where, as I had expected, large numbers of Legation Quarter residents had gathered around the pavilions to corroborate the news. I pushed my way past the uniformed soldiers and red-cheeked children to a tight group of Englishmen a few feet from the noticeboard, and waited momentarily for them to open up their circle to me. Benjamin Moore was there, unsteady enough on his feet that I wondered whether he had already taken a drink in celebration. Oscar Fairchild stood at the centre of the group; he watched me closely as I took my position amongst them.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Scott,” he said, his voice controlled and careful.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Now that communication channels appear to have reopened I should very much like to submit a report about the latest developments,” I said. “Would you care to expand on the news received by the Japanese?”

  The group repeated what the Japanese guards had attempted to tell me, that a missive addressed to Baron Nishi confirmed the fall of Tienstin. Boxers had been slaughtered in large numbers in that city, and the troops would arrive soon to liberate us just as they had our compatriots in that city less than a hundred miles to the southeast. The letter was dated the 26th of July and recorded the imminent departure of the soldiers; the delay in it reaching us suggested our liberators may already be close. Some voices dissented from the general optimism; the Americans had received rather less hopeful letters, vague and uncommitted on when exactly the soldiers would save us. Yet none could deny that this constituted something of a breakthrough: for once the whisky I took before sundown was celebratory.

  The food committee wasted no time in organizing a Legation Quarter-wide meeting to evaluate supplies the next morning. Nina and I duly attended with Hilde, who came to the meeting at the Fairchild residence with an accurate list of the hotel’s stockpiles; I rather suspected that she had approached the exercise with greater integrity than others had done. The room bustled with the pleasant energy of feminine diligence: all the most helpful and practical women were in attendance. These were the ladies who had been quick to criticize the weaker members of their sex who had retired to darkened rooms over the past weeks, emerging only to eat food they had played no part in preparing and to drink wine to soothe blows they had not received.

  “Good morning,” Phoebe Franklin started. “We would like each household to declare their stocks. We expect to be liberated within the next week to ten days, perhaps even sooner, but we must make provisions for another month in case of any further delays. In order to design the most nourishing menus for every resident of the Legation Quarter, we must first know what each one can provide.”

  The women gathered in a circle and spoke one by one, their tone hushed when supplies were meagre, and round and self-assured when their residence boasted more. Beatrice Moore and Lillian Price sat outside the circle, observing the calling out of each household’s inventory. Beatrice whispered in Lillian’s ear after each woman had announced her stocks, raising smirks or smiles from the American girl with each comment. After Kitty Bloomfield, whose verandah had so effectively shielded me and Nina from Boxer attack, read out her paltry list of jams and grains, Beatrice’s comment was sharp enough to raise a laugh from Lillian. Kitty’s cheeks colored, she glanced over her shoulder at the two women; Beatrice’s gaze smooth and unflinching unnerved Kitty further and she folded the list in her hands over and over until it was no more than a small square in her palm. I stood by Hilde as she proudly declared her supplies of grain, dairy and spirits. Her efforts received a brief round of applause led by Phoebe.

  “Quite extraordinary, when you consider the Samuels have so selflessly given over their business to the aid of refugees,” Phoebe said.

  “Well, we are in the business of hospitality,” Hilde said, matter-of-fact. “We started with far more.”

  When the comparison exercise was completed, Phoebe took a moment to read her notes silently before addressing the committee.

  “Unfortunately,” she began. “We appear to have rather less than I had hoped. And with only three dozen ponies left, we shall struggle to provide enough meat for everyone.”

  “Quite,” Beatrice Moore agreed, rising from her seat by Lillian and walking to the centre of the room. “Where have these supplies gone?” she asked, pushing her way into the gathered circle. “I personally find the decline in wine and tobacco quite shocking. Don’t you remember, Mrs Franklin, how surprised we were by the vast quantities of such items that each household possessed at the beginning of the siege? I fear not everyone has been wholly honest about their stocks.” She crossed the room to sit once more, and gathered her skirts around her with pomp.

  “I do not think we can blame people for drinking or smoking at a time like this,” Nina said. “The stench has been quite unbearable. Tobacco helps to mask unpleasant odors.”

  “I cannot stand the smell of tobacco,” Beatrice retorted. “And to smoke it in such quantities, at such speed when we might be here for a… a decade! A tolerance for tobacco, well, there is another thing that you and Mrs Bloomfield have in common.”

  Kitty Bloomfield stared intensely at her the rounded tips of her shoes peeking beyond the hem of her dress, the color in her cheeks flushing deeper. I thought of seeing her face at the window when Nina and I had taken cover on the Bloomfields’ verandah, and remembered the swift appearance of Mr Moore in her place. I saw it clearly then, understood Beatrice Moore’s persistent presence at the Fairchild household, her close confidence with Lillian Price, her bitter delight in gossip, her severe judgment of character and her evident, fierce dislike for Nina, and I wondered how differently events might have unfolded for Nina had Beatrice not struggled under the burden of her own private betrayal.

  “That is quite enough.” Phoebe raised her hand. “We are all disappointed, Mrs Moore. I shall put together a plan for the coming days. Thank you for coming, and for your honesty. Salvation comes in helping others.”

  The women drifted out of the room in pairs and threes, chatting to one another as they returned to their various tasks: cooking, child-minding, nursing. Nina stood by the window, her back to the departing women, her eyes fixed on the distant horizon.

  La Contessa sat alone, her expression listless and faraway. I moved towards her, she smiled gently.

  “Hello, Mr Scott,” she said.

  “La Conte
ssa,” I said, taking the seat opposite her. “How have you been?”

  “Well.” She tugged on the string of pearls around her neck. “It is good news, no?”

  “The food committee?”

  She laughed.

  “That we shall be liberated.”

  “Naturally,” I said. “Perhaps you might like to visit us at the Grand before then? The streets have been quite safe since the truce began. We have gin and, if I do say so myself, rather pleasant company.”

  She nodded, but her eyes were trained in the distance, fixed on no particular point.

  “I would like that,” she said quietly. “Although it may be difficult now.”

  “La Contessa, are you sure you are quite all right?”

  She raised her eyebrows in warning, of what, I did not know. I asked no further questions and left her to her meditations.

  I walked back to the hotel with Nina. She was silent, but I saw that a storm brewed in her mind. She moved swiftly, arms straight by her sides.

  “Why did you bother to challenge Mrs Moore?” I asked. “You know she means only to be difficult and you shall never change her mind.”

  She looked at me askance.

  “She is an awful woman, Mr Scott.”

  “I don’t deny that,” I agreed. “But we must show tolerance towards one another. We hope the troops will liberate us soon, but you might find yourself in the company of Mrs Moore for many more weeks.”

  “She is cruel,” Nina said simply.

  “She has upset you,” I suggested. “I think I may have some idea why. It is nothing personal, Nina, you mustn’t give her comments more credence than they deserve.”

  She did not respond to me.

  “You spoke to Mrs Samuels,” I said. “Have you set a date?”

  “This afternoon,” she replied. “Thank you, again.” Her face cleared, and she smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Nina,” I said. “You must be careful. Do not rile the other women, do not encourage any more talk.”

  “Let them talk,” she laughed. “Let them talk until the Boxers chop off their heads!”

  “Miss Ward,” I said, with indulgence. “You ought to learn which thoughts should be voiced and which should remain unspoken.”

  “And you, Mr Scott, ought not to deny when you agree with me.”

  Oscar arrived at the hotel around 4p.m., by which time I had already retired to the bar. Nina waited for him upstairs, and I could not meet his eye, could not allow him to read his own victory in my shame as he crossed the lobby. He left an hour later and I returned to my room, where I found Nina locking the door behind her. Her hair and dress had been carefully arranged, nothing in her appearance betrayed that she had spent the afternoon outside of the bakery.

  “Miss Ward,” I greeted her. “I shall join you for dinner this evening. Let me walk you home.”

  The meal was not jubilant exactly, yet our conversation possessed a lightness markedly absent from most of our evening gatherings. Previously any gaiety expressed had its origins in the mood-altering effects of wine, creating a hysterical jollity that belied our habitual gloom. Yet this evening even Nicholas joined the chatter about Liberty’s adorable feline habits, while Oscar tolerated jokes about the poor quality of the supper without bothering to defend his staff doing their best under difficult circumstances. Nina, I was pleased to note, smiled at the appropriate moments and refrained, I was relieved to see, from any particularly barbed comments. The only one who failed to be swept along in the optimistic spirit of the evening was La Contessa, who appeared subdued, listless, her contributions to our discourse lacking their usual color.

  Phoebe explained her plan for rations; small portions of white rice and slightly larger ones of yellow rice for each household, and expressed concerns that some had been rather less than honest about the supplies at their disposal.

  “What concerns me,” she said carefully, “is the lack of compassion for the Chinese. We are burying seven children a day at Su’s palace.”

  “I quite agree,” I said. “Have we a ration plan for them?”

  “Not a formal plan as such,” Phoebe admitted. “I’m afraid, Mr Scott, that I have not been able to secure the support for such a plan. For the time being, I suppose, we shall continue to send them the heads of the ponies we eat. Some of the men there have taken to shooting stray animals. Meat is meat, they say, but I fear they are stripped of their dignity.”

  “We shall do more for them,” Oscar said gravely from his position at the top of the table. “They are foremost in our thoughts.”

  “Foremost in our thoughts,” Lillian repeated.

  Our plates were cleared and Nicholas signaled to me.

  “Would you accompany me upstairs, Mr Scott?” he asked.

  I felt an immediate panic of discovery, and followed him with reluctant tread, words, excuses fluttering pathetically in my throat, justifications, explanations, entreaties, all inadequate, composing themselves in my mind.

  Papers and books were scattered across his room, a manuscript marked in Nicholas’ distinctive, jagged cursive was spread over the desk. I lifted one of the loose sheets.

  “No one party may be held entirely accountable for the rise of the Boxer movement,” I read. “Rather, the Boxers, a peasant uprising with little central coordination that has grown far beyond the imaginings of even its most fervent devotees, might be considered the natural conclusion of systemic failure on behalf of those who claim to control China: the weakened Qing administration, the foreign powers which squabble over territory, the merchants who focus their efforts on the wealth of the port cities at the expense of China’s hinterland and, of course, the various religious bodies that have failed both materially and spiritually to provide for their followers.”

  “A work in progress,” Nicholas said, reaching to the take the paper from me.

  “It seems a most sensible analysis,” I said.

  Nicholas gestured for me to take a seat. Removing a pile of books he had collected from the Hanlin, I placed them on the floor with what I considered sufficient respect, and settled myself opposite him, tried to appear natural, crossing and then uncrossing my arms. “How are you, Nicholas? I have seen little of you of late.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I have been rather focused upon my work. And you know that I find the company of others trying at the best of times. Not your company, of course, but that of bureaucrats and women.”

  “Women?”

  “Women like these women,” he said. “Women who talk of nothing but children and dressmaking and the quality of domestic staff. Only the Italian has anything of interest to say, and her husband seems increasingly determined to keep her quiet. He speaks so very sharply to her, when I daresay he is quite the luckiest husband in this household.”

  “You miss Pei,” I offered. Naturally I wished to ask Nicholas more about La Contessa, but a desire to protect both her and myself stopped me from enquiring further. There was another consideration too, one less noble, that I did not want details of my lover’s diminishment by her husband, I did not want to imagine her, the fabric of my dreams and the source of my hope, as just another unloved wife, a woman grown older and unlovely in the eyes of the man who holds her every day.

  “Very much so. I wish I had never agreed to confine myself here.”

  “You would be dead if you hadn’t.”

  Nicholas considered this, brushed his grey beard.

  “Alistair, I wondered if I may talk with you of Nina.”

  Guilt reared then, hot and inescapable. I had convinced myself that allowing, no, arranging, permitting, one might go as far as to say sanctioning, relations between Nina and Oscar was the only solution left to a man in my position, but now, seated opposite the girl’s father, doubts prickled my conscience.

  “Yes?” I worked to steady my voice.

  “I
find my daughter rather distant at present. It is difficult to find a moment to speak with her, and even when we are alone, a terrible silence dominates.” He cleared his throat. “You see her at the hotel. Does she seem quite all right to you?”

  “Yes,” I said simply.

  “Does she speak to you of her… her thoughts?”

  “Very little,” I said and shifted in my chair. “I think she is a rather despondent that she cannot return to Prince Su’s palace.”

  “Ah.” Nicholas closed his eyes momentarily, shook his head. “Alistair, I fear that China shall be forever changed by the events of this summer. I doubt the future of a young Englishwoman here.”

  “Nina?”

  “She is the case in question, naturally, but I believe that any foreigner may struggle to live a normal and prosperous life in China following this rebellion. The at first tacit, and latterly rather open, support of the authorities for the Boxer movement has created an atmosphere in which it is quite acceptable, in fact laudable, to turn against foreigners. Nina considers herself Chinese, I suppose, or some sort of Anglo-Sino hybrid, but I fear this new century is not for such hybrids.”

  He stopped. I nodded uneasily.

  “We shall have to wait and see,” I said carefully. “We cannot know what the future holds.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I am sorry to trouble you. As usual, I am rather given to overthinking the matter. It is only that I am so removed from the old country, from that world. You have superior understanding of these things. I only ask that you might think what options could be open to Nina in England, or elsewhere. My imagination does not stretch much beyond the Tartar walls these days.”

  He stood and showed me to the door. “I trust you not say anything to Nina. I do not wish to alarm her.”

  “Never.”

  My heart laden now with yet more secrets, with promises I was loath to keep, I descended the stairs. Amiable conversation filled the drawing room. I paused in the doorway and watched La Contessa with a smoldering cigarette between her lips. Oscar led the conversation in the room, telling the gathered audience of letters received that day from the Qing court that promised safe passage out of the Legation Quarter for all foreigners, guarantees we were by then unable and unwilling to believe.