Dragons in Shallow Waters

by Kane, Clare

  Yet it was Oscar Fairchild who knocked, and who, in a momentary confusion of his habitually unruffled features, betrayed surprise at my appearance.

  “Mr Scott,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I did not know you would be here.”

  “The Wards invited me to spend the evening with them,” I said coolly. “I do not think they expect you, Mr Fairchild.”

  Oscar, unflappable and affable as always, smiled lightly.

  “I have come to see Miss Ward,” he said, and made to step across the threshold into the courtyard. I blocked his path. “To wish her well upon the occasion of her marriage.”

  “Mr Fairchild,” I said sternly. “Whilst I am sure your wishes would be gratefully received, I am not convinced it is appropriate for you to address Miss Ward at this precise moment. She must rise early tomorrow, and we are still at dinner.”

  “I only wish to see her briefly,” Oscar said. “I would like to pass on my congratulations.”

  “Mr Fairchild, I have asked you once to leave. I do not wish to repeat myself.”

  Footsteps, hesitant, cautious sounded behind me.

  “Mr Scott, please.” Nina tapped my shoulder, nodded encouragingly. “Allow me to speak briefly with Mr Fairchild.”

  “Nina,” I said, rather sharply. “I have asked Mr Fairchild to leave.”

  “Please,” Nina protested. “It is quite all right.”

  “Mr Scott, leave her a moment to speak with me. I promise I shall depart immediately,” Oscar offered.

  I looked behind me. Conversation had halted at the dining table; quizzically, anxiously Hilde and Edward looked towards the entrance where I stood in infelicitous triangle with Nina and Oscar. Nicholas did not trouble to look up, but his head hung heavy, defeated, as he toyed with the stem of his wine glass. I weighed the options, knew that a moment between the two, here, observed by us all, was unlikely to derail plans for the next day. What might Oscar dare to do before the girl’s father? He had been brazen in the most terrible moments of the siege, that was true, but he had rather hastily abandoned his affection for Nina when liberation came. And so I relented, discarded my resistance, and took a few steps back, allowing the pair a moment of near privacy in the half shadows. I did not retreat to the table, did not wish to give Fairchild an impression of free rein, and so stood somewhere between the tenebrous couple and the dining party, but with my ear trained on the conversation, held in muted tones, between Nina and Oscar.

  “Do not come closer,” I heard Nina say calmly. “Say what you must, then leave as you have promised.”

  Murmured protestations followed, their specific contents undecipherable to my distant ear.

  And then, Nina, forthright: “Is that all you wished to say?”

  Her voice was carefully controlled, and I thought she must appear to him as decided and unrepentant, but I worried, standing between those two worlds of Nina’s: the twinkling familiarity of her warm, intellectual life with her father, and the novel amusement of her illicit romance with Oscar, that upon seeing Fairchild again she may question those decisions she had taken, so very delicately balanced on unstable collections of pros and cons, and that those choices may teeter and wobble, and threaten to collapse. Fairchild spoke more; I strained to hear his words, made out a plea to wait, understood his injury at her hurry to marry, and all the time I wished him away, wondered if I ought to intervene, to step between them, but told myself to trust Nina, to believe in the power of her fragile elections.

  “I am cruel?” Nina said, her voice rising. Fiercely she continued: “Since we have been liberated, I have not existed for you, is it not so?”

  Anxiously I looked to the table, saw Hilde valiantly continue their dialogue, seemingly unperturbed by the distance, the distraction in Nicholas’ expression.

  And then I heard Nina speak the most devastating sentence of all: “I would have waited forever, Oscar, you know that.”

  Her voice cracked on those last syllables, and I stepped back towards the door, placed myself between the severed pair.

  “You have had your time to wish Miss Ward well,” I said. “Thank you, Mr Fairchild, and good night.”

  Nina, her eyes savage, her expression anguished, looked pleadingly to Oscar. Slowly he turned from her, and over his shoulder he called, “Good luck, Miss Ward”, before disappearing into the gloom of the hushed hutung, the silhouette of his summer suit lost rapidly amidst the dark contours of the night. I closed the gate definitely, and numbly Nina crossed the courtyard by my side. We took our places at the table, but struggled to rediscover the uncomplicated sociability that had characterized our evening prior to Fairchild’s unexpected visit, and Nina excused herself shortly, claiming tiredness. Hilde, Edward and I immediately followed and I watched as Nicholas led his daughter back inside the house, his arm mercifully, paternally arranged around her shoulders, and I saw in his slow, steady steps, in the quiet rumble of his voice, that he forgave her, forgave her everything, her moral trespassing and her imminent departure. And I hoped that Nina might sleep the sleep of the peaceful, the sleep of the assured, the sleep of the virtuous.

  The morning was clear and cool, the sky an auspicious blue. We were a small group collected at Su’s palace: Edward Samuels, Hugo Lovell and myself had gathered alongside some of Lijun’s peers and a handful of missionaries.

  “Do you know,” Hugo said to me under his breath, “at one time I thought I might see Miss Ward marry James?”

  I did not reply. His comment provoked a queer reaction in me; I wondered for a moment how many men in the Legation Quarter had considered that Nina might one day be betrothed to them. Prior to the siege, none could have imagined any man might remove Nina from Peking, from her father, from the half-world she inhabited between China and England, and yet here we were, waiting to see her married to a one-time visitor to Peking, a man none could dislike or discredit, but not a man we considered a match for Nina.

  The Chinese schoolgirls gasped when Nina arrived: “Lai le! She’s here!” “Mei! So beautiful!” We turned to see Nina on Nicholas’ arm, Lijun clutching at the train of her red-trimmed skirt. Indeed, Lijun and Hilde had made Nina look her best, since the early hours they had meticulously applied cream and powder to conceal the shadows under her eyes, and had arranged her hair in elaborate coils. Nina’s face was placid, her manner collected, nothing in her bearing revealed the night’s turmoil. With coy grace she took her position by Barnaby, and with unhesitating words a missionary colleague of Phoebe’s married the pair. Phoebe stood then before us all and read: “Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, love does not boast, it is not proud. Love does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

  I fancied that behind Nina’s veil her eyes filled with tears, but I could not be sure. Nicholas crossed next to the centre of the courtyard, a piece of paper gripped between his fingers.

  “I have struggled,” he began, “to find a suitable passage with which to send my daughter into married life. My preferred sages, it seems, did not much favor the institution of marriage.” He laughed drily. “So allow me to say some inelegant words of my own, to posit that the union of two people, like that of yin and yang, is something precious to be celebrated, a process that brings balance to two individuals.”

  Barnaby reached for Nina’s hand.

  “Unfortunately my eloquence does not extend much beyond that simple observation, so I have consulted that most wisest tomes, the Tao Te Ching, to offer Nina some advice. She is, after all, a daughter of China, setting out on untested waters, riding a wave of events that has risen unexpectedly and dramatically before her. My dear Nina, for you:

  Heaven and Earth are eternal

  Because they do not live for themselves.

  This is the reason
/>
  they exist consistently through time.

  The sage puts herself last and comes first.

  She identifies with the Universal Self

  And remains constant.

  Isn’t it this way because

  she lacks personal self-interest?

  This is why she will succeed

  in all of her personal endeavors.

  Good luck.”

  Nicholas stepped away, and Barnaby whispered something to Nina, who nodded, eyes fixed upon her father.

  “I believe there will now be a small reception at the Ward household,” Phoebe said. “Please join us for lunch and to celebrate this most delightful end to a most trying summer.”

  Nina and Barnaby led a merry line of guests towards the Wards’ home. The city remained in mourning, its streets were unnaturally quiet, but even so a few well-wishers dotted our path, waving and whistling as the bride passed by, their number even included Beatrice Moore and her three children. Nina waved warmly to Beatrice and those gathered onlookers, and I wondered if she had noticed that there was, of course, one absent face amongst the enthusiastic passersby, that Oscar Fairchild, to my relief, had not come to see Nina one last time.

  An efficient staff of refugees from the Su mansion had arranged tables around the Wards’ courtyard and set out food and wine for the guests. The party was civilized and short, in the best of wedding traditions, and by mid-afternoon I was left alone with Nicholas, Nina and Barnaby. I poured Nicholas and Barnaby a finger of whisky each.

  “May I borrow Nina for one last walk?” I asked Barnaby.

  He granted my request, leaving a kiss on his new wife’s cheek, and I stepped outside with Nina.

  “Where shall we go?” I asked her.

  “Let us walk to Su’s palace and back,” she suggested.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go further up to the lakes? We might take a rickshaw and sit by the water on such a beautiful day.”

  “No. I would rather see my streets,” she said.

  “Very well.”

  Nina had changed into a plain dress, her hair was held now in a loose plait. She walked with ease as we ambled down the hutung to join the jumble of streets leading towards the Legation Quarter. We stopped on a corner for toffee apples and Nina eased the sweet off her skewer with childlike enthusiasm.

  “What shall you miss most?” I asked her.

  “Father,” she said seriously, as we continued walking. “Do you promise to visit him every day?”

  “Naturally. We shall both write. He shall tell you lies, and say that he does not miss you, I shall tell the truth.”

  “Will you write every day?”

  “Come, Nina. I do not write every day for my employers and they pay me for my words.” She smiled, took a final bite from her toffee apple. “Every week, without fail.”

  “Thank you, Mr Scott.”

  “You mustn’t worry about us here. You must go and make a wonderful life for yourself.”

  “Do you suppose I shall be happy?”

  I regarded her, noticed that the restlessness that had colored her movements over the course of the summer seemed to have disappeared. She was not so much dulled as stilled, peacefulness permeated her gestures.

  “It is my experience, Nina, that we are all as happy as we decide to be,” I said. “And I believe you have made a very wise decision in pursuit of happiness.”

  “A wise decision,” she repeated, as we entered the Legation Quarter and neared the tennis courts.

  “Come,” I said. “Let us return you to your husband.”

  “Do you think they shall like me in England? Or will they think me strange?”

  “The best shall love you and the worst shall hate you,” I said. “And long may it be that way.”

  XVI

  Nina and Barnaby lived in an elegant three-storey house in the fashionable London suburb of St. John’s Wood, to which I had previously addressed a number of letters, but had yet to see for myself. Years of residence in unfamiliar locales had instilled in me a habit to approach places unknown on foot, allowing myself a few solitary moments to adapt to my new environs and to measure the likelihood of any hostile reception. Naturally I recognized the absurdity of descending from the hired carriage at the end of tranquil Queen’s Grove, and yet a sense of continuity required that I do so. And so I traversed that tree-lined avenue on foot, passing no other person in my path, and appreciating the mild, mellow ambience of England in the last of spring’s shady days, when flowers bloom unabashedly and scents continental and fresh fill the air.

  I knocked upon the black door to no.11, felt apprehension as footsteps sounded unseen towards me. Nina’s responses to my missives had been warm but brief; she shared light, humorous stories of her struggles to adapt to English customs and detailed the surprise with which the natives received her many faux pas. He treats me so kindly, she wrote of Barnaby. His family has made me most welcome. Still I could not imagine her, could not paint her in colors vivid and true behind that imposing, anonymous door.

  “Oh, Alistair! I so hoped it might be you! I received your letter last week.”

  She brushed past the servant, and suddenly she was before me, as palpable as she had been in Peking, her existence entirely undimmed. Her eyes danced green, her hands reached instinctively for mine. “Won’t you come in?”

  She led me to a drawing room decorated in restrained pastels. A traditional Chinese ink painting hung from one wall and through the large bay windows one could see a row of houses of identical style to her own.

  “You have a beautiful home,” I said as I took a seat opposite her.

  “Yes. Barnaby has permitted me some reminders of China.”

  I allowed myself a closer observation of her then, expecting, I suppose, some physical distinction in her appearance, some shift or change in her features to indicate that she was no longer Miss Nina Ward of Peking but rather Mrs Barnaby George of London, and yet none was forthcoming. Seated before me was the same Nina I had always known, her smile irrepressible, her face open and curious, her posture trusting, intimate.

  “You must meet Charlotte,” she said and took my hand once more in hers. “I wished to tell you in my letters, but I simply couldn’t find the words.”

  She called then for a servant, and a round-faced Cockney girl entered the room, a small child swaddled in her arms.

  “She’s sleeping, Mrs George,” the girl said as Nina received the baby, pressed it to her chest.

  “That’s wonderful, Sarah. I do not think Mr Scott should care much for Charlotte’s tempers.”

  Here then, cradled in Nina’s young arms, was the evidence that she was not the Miss Ward I had known so long. The child was a surprise, a glorious revelation in the way that all fresh life might be; tender, vulnerable and yet utterly invincible, but also constituted to me a disappointment. The baby, gurgling now, struggling against sleep, was an event so profound in Nina’s life, and yet she had not found the words to inform me of its existence.

  “She’s beautiful,” I said, and Nina laughed generously.

  “Is she really? I do worry, sometimes, that she might be terribly ugly and that I only see her as quite so adorable because I am her mother.”

  The servant returned then with tea, and I noted its familiar jasmine aroma. Nina handed the child back to Sarah, instructed that young Charlotte be set down once more in her cot.

  “And how is my father?” Nina asked. “Tell me everything.”

  “Your father is well,” I said simply. What more might I say? That he rarely went outside, that he spent all his time writing his book about the Boxers, writing and revising and reciting late into the night, that he sent money to Pei’s family, that he muttered Nina’s name under his breath?

  “And his health?”

  “Very good.”

 
“I am so glad. I miss him terribly, terribly. He receives all my letters?”

  “He does, and they bring him great joy.”

  “Good.” Nina and I fell silent then, and both of us looked around the room, eyes tracing the high ceilings, the chairs upholstered in silk, the small portrait of a large-nosed man distantly related to Barnaby. “How is Peking?” she asked finally.

  “Terrible. Better that you don’t see it.”

  “I read in the paper that the Chinese refuse to pay the indemnity.”

  “Correct. Sixty-seven million would ruin China, impoverish the country for generations. They will pay something, though, that I do not doubt.”

  “But the fighting is over?”

  “Yes. Not for me, of course, now that I am to go to South Africa.” I shook my head. “Let us talk no more of that ugliness. I am so very glad to see you.”

  “I have something for you,” Nina said.

  She disappeared and left me alone to contemplate the four walls that surrounded her new existence. The house was tidy, the furniture arranged neatly, the pictures hung just so, the hum of the place was muted. Nina returned with an envelope, which she proffered to me, kneeling by my side. I opened the envelope and a pile of clippings fell into my lap. I lifted one piece of paper, read closely the words printed upon it. Latest events in the Legation Quarter suggest Boxers are not the only threat to the survival of foreigners in Peking. An Italian countess was shot by her diplomat husband as Boxers neared the house where they had found shelter during the siege. I let the paper fall once again.