by Kane, Clare
The morning had not progressed beyond its first blushes when we returned to the Fairchild residence. The servants moved efficiently through the house, clearing away glasses slick with the residue of gin and victory, sweeping grey ash and faded embers from overflowing trays while most of the guests, including Nina, still slept. I supported Nicholas up the stairs, as he slowly, agonizingly took each uncertain step. His frame frail, he appeared a decade older than he had that morning when we had set out to find Pei. I accompanied him to his room, suggested he return to bed, but he refused, finally agreeing at least to sit, his spine straight and unforgiving, while I poured him a measure of whisky.
“Are they blind?” he said, in thick, cold tone. “Do they not distinguish between a Boxer and a civilian Chinese?”
“I do not know which is worse ,” I said hopelessly, handing him the glass. “That they cannot distinguish between militant and civilian, or that they simply do not care.”
“Brutes,” Nicholas said. “Ignorant brutes.”
Clamor rose from below us. The unmistakable voice of Lillian Price called out in high peals: “Five chickens! Eggs! Gentlemen, we have not seen such a feast for months!”
Nicholas, suddenly animated, made to stand, his legs wavered beneath him.
“They are here,” he said. “Those soldiers!”
“Sit, man!” I pushed him back into the chair, poured more whisky into the glass. Reluctantly he drank it, and closed his eyes.
I left him to this dreadful meditation, and moved quietly to the room where Nina slept.
“Nina,” I whispered, kneeling by her side. “You must wake now.”
She stirred, an arm protruded from beneath the bedsheet. I noticed the sheer ivory of her skin, the blue maze of veins, so vulnerable and exposed, glimmering in the sunlight that streamed through the window. In sleep her hand sought mine, pulled my fingers towards her lips. She mumbled a word, or perhaps a name, that I could not understand. I jerked my hand free.
“Nina.” I spoke sternly now; her eyes opened immediately, swimming in confusion.
“What? What is it?” She sat up.
“You must come to see your father,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Mr Scott,” she said. “I was so tired. Is it very late?”
She stood, glanced half-heartedly at her drawn expression in the looking glass, smoothed her hair.
“Nina, Pei is dead.”
She stopped in the doorway.
“No,” she said firmly. “It cannot be. You mean she is missing?”
“I saw her myself. I am so sorry.”
She ran to her father’s room. From the doorway I watched them, Nina’s head in her father’s lap, his hand petting her head distractedly, silent tears coursing his cheeks as Nina sobbed. Quietly I closed the door, and left them.
By then it was clear to me the fate which awaited Peking. The Legation Quarter had been liberated, but the wider city faced a terrible, vindictive crushing. Troops of every flag were issued with identical instruction to “secure the city”, a command which in theory called only for the deaths of rebels but in practice proscribed indiscriminate slaughter. Whilst I have no doubts that some Boxers were exterminated in this bloody campaign, the price for one slaughtered warrior was a dozen of their helpless compatriots. Corpses piled in the street, but the fetid stink they produced proved no deterrent to the soldiers when engaged in their second most-preferred activity after killing: looting. Wealthy homes and palaces were stripped to their roofs and rafters, soldiers walked the streets with bulging trousers and awkward, arrogant gait. Not even God’s messengers on Earth denied themselves the prizes of liberation, though the tactics employed by the missionaries were rather different. I discovered Phoebe Franklin removing myriad ornaments and clothes from the large home of a wealthy Chinese family. She explained that she had organized a sale of the family’s belongings to Peking’s foreign population and that the funds raised would be used to feed the Chinese Christians. Those were strange times, and her puzzling morality struck me as unexpectedly fair. The house would in any case be raided, the items stolen, and her actions allowed at least some good to come from the pillage of city. I handed her a coin.
“Would you like something?” she asked.
“No, no. A simple contribution.” I walked away with sick heart.
The poor conduct of the foreign soldiers and opportunistic civilians continued unchecked as the various powers scrambling for the treasures of Peking bickered amongst themselves in the assigning of blame for each misdemeanor. General consensus named the Russians the most heartless and uncouth looters, though the French also provoked disdain. Many of the British asserted, despite the clear evidence in front of their own Anglo-Saxon eyes, that not one of Her Majesty’s soldiers had pilfered a single item from Peking. We are gentlemen even in war, they said, and I suppressed my laughter. In a parade of rouges, what does it matter who leads?
The result was that in a few short days the count of terrible events was so high that I felt it impossible to try to record them. I did not write of Nina’s visit from Lijun. The girl from Su’s palace, determined to the end, arrived one unforgivingly hot afternoon at the Fairchild residence, nimble fingers drumming on the door. The servants hesitated about whether to permit entry to this ragged and sorrowful creature, but Lijun left them with little choice, tearing past them, crying Nina’s name in a voice thick with tears. Between sobs she told Nina that some of her friends had jumped in a well, preferring to take their lives than risk grisly fate at the hands of Peking’s liberators. While Lijun told this sorry tale the soldiers who commandeered Fairchild’s drawing room from dawn til dusk, filling it with smoke and crude jest, joked amongst themselves that someone ought to shoot the female Boxer directly. Nina tried to calm her, and took Lijun to the bedroom she shared with Lillian, feeling shame as the young girl looked in wonder at the room, of unthinkable dimensions and unimaginable luxury, shared by only two people. Lillian returned from an outing to the Forbidden City, a new jade pendant swinging from her neck, and she cried in fright when she saw Lijun’s tear-stained face and tattered clothes.
“Miss Ward, we are still at war with these people, are we not?” she said.
Within ten minutes Nina was at the Grand, where Hilde and I received the girl with warmth and surprise.
“Please care for her,” Nina whispered, telling me in low tones of the ghastly end of the other girls. “And tomorrow, Mr Scott, you must accompany Father and I home.”
In the morning they waited for me at the entrance to the Grand. I came downstairs with a jade-topped walking stick.
“Here,” I said to Nicholas, who recoiled at the offer.
“That looks very much like a priceless antique,” he said.
“I believe it to be exactly that. I bid on it last night. Already looted, it may as well go to a good home.”
Nicholas accepted the gift, wrinkled knuckles settling around the stick’s green orb. Nina was pale and quiet, but her steps grew more animated as we approached their home, and she linked her arm with mine as we turned once more down their hutung. The narrow street remained worryingly empty, the houses that hugged its sides were shuttered, uninhabited.
“Father,” she said. “Are you happy to return?”
Nicholas nodded and used his newly-acquired walking stick to move the carcass of a dead dog from his path, its jaw open and bloody, revealing its useless teeth.
Nina and I spent several hours clearing the house of its debris, sweeping fingernails of Boxers and fragments of shattered ceramics out into the street. Nina watered the plants that shaded the corners of the central courtyard, their leaves a rusted yellow after weeks of neglect.
“This is too much work for us alone,” I said to her. “Let us see if Fairchild cannot spare a servant or two.”
Her head, craned over a wilted rose bush, jolted. She did not respond, but I noticed that
she spilled water around the base of the pot.
It was not hard to find Oscar during those days; wherever the senior military men gathered one could be sure he was amongst them. Today they were at the British Minister’s home, discussing strategy in the shade offered by the official’s generous verandah.
“Mr Fairchild.” I approached. “Do you have a moment?”
There was jostling, murmuring under the breath as the men observed me. Oscar did not reply, but regarded me thoughtfully, removed the pipe from between his lips. I stood firm.
“Naturally, Mr Scott,” he said eventually.
Fairchild rose and weaved his way through the group of men, who turned their knees to the side to let him pass.
“Hey, Scott,” one of them called to me, his uniform pulling tight over his chest as he leaned towards me. “Fairchild says there shall be a parade through the Imperial City. You might like to write a story about that, let the British read it first. We shouldn’t like to lose out to that Wingfield character.”
“Thank you.”
Oscar led me some distance from the gathered military men, inhaled from his pipe, and closed his eyes momentarily against the glare of the sun.
“How may I be of service to you, Mr Scott?” he asked finally, meeting my eye.
“This parade,” I started.
“We should be delighted if you were to write about it. It is planned for the 28th.”
“And its purpose? A victory parade?”
“I suppose one might call it that, yes. It is intended simply as a message to the Chinese.” Oscar pulled slowly on the pipe. “Terrible heat,” he said. “Dry enough that a man might set alight.”
“Mr Fairchild, I came to ask if you might make one or two of your servants available to the Wards. They have returned home and I am afraid to say that the house is still in a state of quite serious disarray. It might ease the return a little.”
“They have gone?” he asked, fingers worrying the tip of his pipe.
“Yes. They felt it was time to go home.”
Oscar’s eyes narrowed.
“I am afraid the servants are rather busy. We have so many guests.”
“Well, you have two fewer now,” I replied. “Come, Mr Fairchild. Is this not the least you might do for Miss Ward?”
“And what exactly do you mean by that, Mr Scott?” Oscar asked coolly.
“Please, Mr Fairchild,” I said. “This charade is an insult to my intelligence, and to yours.”
“I do not like your tone,” Oscar said flatly.
“Very well,” I said with exasperation. “Then we shall speak no more of your seduction of an innocent. All I ask is that you help her settle once more at home.”
“Enough,” Oscar said under his breath, the words controlled but live, sparking beneath their civil veneer. “I have heard quite enough.” He turned his back to me, faced once more towards the men of uniform, engaged in low, murmured discussion.
“It is not fair, Mr Fairchild, that you play the victor, the emperor welcoming subjects come from afar, while Miss Ward scurries home to live amongst smashed ornaments and plates stained by Boxers.”
Oscar walked. I followed him.
“The servants,” I said. “Get me the servants.”
I returned to the Wards with two servants in tow. We found Nina sunning herself in the courtyard; I stopped to admire her for a moment, so deeply tranquil did she appear below those old, familiar eaves. She jumped at our arrival, straightening her skirts and thanking the servants for their help. The pair moved into the quiet of the house, brooms in hand, and left me alone with Nina in the courtyard.
“Mr Fairchild sent the servants,” she said softly. “That was very kind.”
“Yes, very kind,” I said simply.
She squinted her eyes against the sunlight.
“Perhaps Father might feel better if he were to sit out here a while,” she said. “It is almost like old times.”
The exodus was underway. Groups of women and children were already leaving Peking and heading east for safer pastures. Lillian Price was to be one of the first to leave for Tungchow and her departure was set for the early hours of the next day. Her trunk swelled now with new acquirements: a Siberian fur, a gold vase and a set of jade earrings among other treasures. Dinner at the Fairchild household that night was a two-hour toast to the young American, who accepted the raised glasses of the military men with happy modesty. I attended the farewell party only because I had heard that Walter Wingfield would be in attendance, and the idea that Wingfield might amongst those military men hear some significant news and better me on my own turf irked me. Word had reached the Legation Quarter that at least one of my dispatches had made the front page in London, and that the story had enthralled the general population, so fond of tales of Oriental peril and Occidental derring-do. I found the liberators keener now to seek out my company, and Oscar was careful and polite when I entered the party with dinner already drawing to a close, insisting I take a seat at the centre of the table, next to Phoebe Franklin. She greeted me with fatigued eyes.
“Mr Scott,” she started immediately. “I have a most wonderful collection of Ming vases for sale. Would you be interested in purchasing any?”
“Your career has moved in a rather surprising direction,” I said lightly, before promising to review the collection after dinner. In the end I would agree to buy one vase from her, the purchase justified by the promise that proceeds would improve the circumstances of the orphaned converts, who existed now in unanchored liberty, caught between miserable past and hazy future.
After dinner talk in the drawing room was given over to Lillian’s recollections of the summer. Lillian, powdered and prepared for this moment, did not mention James Millington or the bullet that had torn through Queen Victoria’s canvas, but spoke instead of recent jaunts to the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace. Beatrice Moore had arranged a picnic at the latter, and gathered a group to eat on the Empress Dowager’s marble boat. The boat was an infamous folly of Tz’u Hsi’s, its construction had stripped the navy of its budget, and being of marble the vessel of course could cross no seas. Lillian enthused about the false lake that spread across the grounds of the Summer Palace, telling us of a huge statue of the Kuanyin Buddha that she had looked upon in bemusement. “A thousand hands!”
She retired early, pleading tiredness and an early start, and watching her retreat, I regretted that these would be the stories Lillian would carry with her, these would be the memories she would tell again and again, light, giddy narratives that would obscure entirely the verity of our bloody summer. And how they would laugh. In New York, in Havana, in London. Goddesses with ten thousand arms, naps on courtiers’ beds in the Forbidden City, afternoons spent watching soldiers pocket the best of the Imperial opium supply and laughing languorously with them as they slipped from reality into the cloying clouds of illusion. Wingfield filled pages of his notebook with Lillian’s recollections, nodding enthusiastically as she picked over each detail. I left shortly after ten, and walked with haste to the Wards’ home.
Their hutung was the only place I thought might bring me peace in that wretched city and so I hurried past the piles of corpses, the broken down doors, the pleading signs affixed to desperate homes: “No Boxers. Christianity”, the last-ditch American and British flags fluttering outside shuttered windows, until the streets, dark, deserted, deathly, brought me finally to their quiet street. The house did not glow with the mellow warmth it had given off in a previous life; only one window was lit, and no trails of lively conversation filtered beyond its walls, yet I was glad to return. I found the main gate open (how many times had I told Nicholas that security must be better enforced now?) and allowed myself into the central courtyard, where I was surprised by the sight of a small cat, which jumped from a window ledge at the disturbance of my arrival, curving its back and stretching out its paws,
instinctively moving towards me.
Nina read alone in the old drawing room, restored somewhat now to its original state, with only the most familiar of eyes able to perceive those empty spaces where treasured ornaments had once sat. I noted the book between her hands was decorated with Chinese characters:
Hung Lou Mêng, Dream Of The Red Chamber.
“No more Hardy?” I greeted her.
“I find more comfort in familiar words,” she said, and called for a servant to bring me a drink. The household’s stores had rather depleted in the Wards’ absence, but I gratefully received the sweet rice wine I was offered.
“Your father?”
“Sleeping,” she said simply. “I have become something of a night cat this summer, as the Chinese say.”
“I did see a cat in the courtyard.”
“Yes, it is Miss Price’s kitten,” Nina said carefully. “Liberty. It needs a new home now that Miss Price has left for Tungchow.”
“But why is it here?”
“Mr Fairchild brought it to us this afternoon.” Nina spoke softly, looked determinedly at the floor.
“Mr Fairchild was here?”
“Yes.” Slowly she raised her head and glanced at me, pitiful, desperate. “He took me to the Summer Palace.”
“Nina,” I said sharply but quietly, aware that Nicholas slept. “If you wish to see Mr Fairchild you must tell Mrs Samuels or myself, you cannot take such risks.”
“He pleaded for me to go with him,” she whispered. “It was easier simply to agree.”
I am sure that Nina wished very much to see the Summer Palace, in fact I might go as far as to say that she may have desired to step within its high walls and walk its steep hills more than any foreigner in China. The Summer Palace, the seasonal Imperial hideaway, watched over Peking from a northerly distance, its treasures concealed, its happenings unknown, a delightful mystery to one as curious as Nina. I experienced a surge of anger towards Fairchild then; how clever the man was, knowing that such a temptation would prove irresistible to Nina, no matter the exhortations Hilde and I might have made for her to safeguard her reputation above all else.
