by Rod Jones
As the floodwaters rose during the next morning, the occupants of the hotel had to climb the stairs to the second storey where they held on to the rails of the balcony. They yelled out to the men in the boats down in the street to let them know they were safe. It was then, to Joachim’s profound amazement, that he saw his daughter race by in the wooden skiff he had kept moored to the little jetty in the Duck River all these years.
A flock of small parrots flitted across the surface of the dark water, just above Julia’s head. She threw her hands up to her face. The birds, bright crimson and green and blue, sped off through the eucalypts in the rain.
The river grasses along the banks were already submerged by the rising water. The rain increased its tempo and blinded her and now the boat could do nothing but race with the current, bumping against bobbing timbers and the carcases of animals.
She lay on her back with the sound of the rushing water and the straining timbers of the old boat so constant it might have been her own breathing. Ahead, the river raced into darkness through the tunnel of the wind. Then the boat was hurled at the walls of solid water and twice she felt it somersault.
The broken tops of trees protruded through the water’s surface and, as the wind dropped and the sun came out for a moment, Julia found herself in a green cave of light. She saw the wet grey wood of a fallen tree trunk suddenly very close to her cheek, felt the hollow knock against the bone of her head, and the light vanished. There were invisible fingers on her legs just below the surface of the water. She slowed, then stopped, while debris continued to race past her. Reeds slashed at her and the fishing net that had wrapped itself around her tightened.
Time passed and sounds came to Julia from the world. A dog barked. A toad was swelling on the edge of her vision. Julia screwed up her eyes tightly, waiting for the creature to fade, but when she opened them there was a man’s face very close to her own. He had no beard and his hair was whiter than oats. He had blue eyes with pale lashes and wore a sleeveless black vest with a round white collar. And the bottom part of his body was rubbery, shiny, like a fish. Then he did something which terrified her: he opened his mouth and laughter rang out.
An extraordinary crime occurred. King Edward was up on the wall watching Julia in the stationmaster’s office at Mem. She was lying on a camp stretcher in the corner, her hand on her swollen belly. And there, above her on the wall the man with the beard like her father’s was watching her. Would the King unhook himself from the wall and walk across to her, smiling and bearded in his uniform, wearing his sword and his royal blue sash and, not taking his blue eyes from hers, undress her? But it was the stationmaster who was fumbling out of his clothes, leaving his long woollen undershirt hanging down around the tops of his legs. His face was flushed with the effort of getting his shoes off, and his three days’ growth of whiskers gave him an evil mien. He reached beneath her and she felt his fingernails bite into her buttocks. When he had finished he got up from the truckle bed and turned towards the wall where the portrait of the King hung and laughed. Then he buttoned his trousers firmly.
Gradually the smell of boiling chicken filled the room and Julia realized she was starving. With a grey blanket wrapped around her, she went across and quietly opened the door. The man dressed as a preacher had his black-coated back to her, stirring a pot on the woodstove. He surprised her by speaking without looking around. ‘I’ve been wondering when you’d be coming in.’
When at last he turned his face to her she was shocked by its kindness. The preacher appeared to be unperturbed by her staring. He clumsily put his pipe in the corner of his wet mouth and said, ‘Me and my fishing. It’s a passion with me. I put in the nets before the storm.’ He looked around the dismal little kitchen for a match, then turned suddenly back to her, smiling. ‘My dear,’ he said. ‘God told me he was sending me a wife.’
III
As was his habit on festive occasions, Willy Paradise arranged a fireworks display in the garden. He was determined that this year on Julia’s birthday, in spite of her illness, the fireworks would be more spectacular than ever before. Hoy T’Hoy, who was a traditional fireworks maker from the village and who always planned and executed the pyrotechnics in village festivals, was in charge. Early that morning Mr Hoy had secured his skyrockets to a row of sharpened bamboo stakes along one flank of the mission’s rose garden. On boards nailed to the veranda rails he had fixed his Roman torches and Catherine wheels, while at designated places around the ground he had concealed small charges called ‘tom-toms’, whose dull thuds would send clods of earth showering skywards. He had also laid out on the veranda assorted fireworks which were to be thrown by hand: firecrackers of various sizes and force, fizgigs, torches and sparklers in every imaginable colour, as well as the fireworks unique to this particular craftsman, and to which the villagers had given names like comets, suns, moons and stars. The crackers, stacked by their hundreds, had been painstakingly handrolled over months, carefully packed with saltpetre, and covered with shiny red paper, red being the Chinese colour for celebration. Hoy T’Hoy had built his rockets, shells and Roman candles with his own hallmark of ‘stars’ which filled the sky with coloured fires as the rockets burst. He had prepared the customary white fire, the gerbes and fountains made of potassium chlorate, as well as the magnesium-brilliant, strontium-red, barium-green, sodium-yellow and copper-blue.
In the garden, where it would be clearly visible from the veranda, Mr Hoy had spent the afternoon constructing the main set piece of the display, which had been designed by Willy Paradise himself. On the edges there would be waterfalls of fire and ‘tree-pieces’, trunks and branches of fire which shot up and remained in the night sky. In the middle, in the position of honour, Mr Hoy had built the framework of wood onto which he had secured the fireworks which would become wheels moving in the vertical and horizontal planes. And there, constructed in bamboo on the wooden lattice framework, the Paradise surprise would reveal itself: the design of the Union Jack picked out in lances of colour.
When Ayres arrived at the local station on the two o’clock train from Shanghai, Julia was waiting in the little green motorcar to pick him up. Ayres immediately wondered who had been behind the invitation to celebrate her thirty-first birthday. The invitation had arrived in the minister’s hand, a short and formal note outlining the evening’s proposed activities, and Ayres had replied with an equal formality.
Julia had just returned to the mission after spending a week at Hangchow. She had been staying in an English-run hotel overlooking one of the lakes there in the care of another missionary lady, one Gerthilde Platz. Ayres, of course, knew all about this. Julia herself had approached him on the subject a fortnight before, while dressing herself at the conclusion of their regular Tuesday afternoon. Willy’s consent to her travelling to Hangchow, she had said, depended on Ayres’ agreement that the trip would not be harmful to her and that it would not in any way interfere with the programme of treatment Ayres had laid out for her and which seemed to be succeeding so well. Ayres had seen that the trip meant a great deal to her.
Hangchow was 118 miles away by train, a place of lovely lake scenery at the foot of the Eye of Heaven mountains. The proverb has it: ‘There is heaven above and Hangchow below.’ Ayres believed the change of air might have done Julia some good and lifted her spirits. The greatest danger in her going was that any undue excitement might over-stimulate her frail nervous system and precipitate another manic swerve into hysterical breakdown, far from family and friends. If she were to miss one of her regular unburdenings of her psyche to Ayres, her hallucinations might build up in her mind. Nevertheless, he had given his permission in a note to Willy on the condition that she took a first-class compartment, that she stayed in a good hotel, that her German missionary friend ensured that she avoided all excitement, and that she continued to take only regular five grains of morphine by injection upon retiring. All this was promised and Julia had left for her holiday. On the Thursday Ayres had received a picture postca
rd of the West Lake captioned on the back in her usual violent hand: ‘Dear Doctor, Greetings from the land of the lakes. Wonderful, radiant! And surprise! I am completely cured of animal pains here! Julia Paradise.’ Now, two days later, here she was sitting at the wheel of her husband’s motor car.
Ayres and Julia drove along the dirt road from the station. It was potholed and rutted; they could travel only slowly. They passed through a region of little farming villages. The countryside was spectacularly lush, the entire river plain a green carpet of crop and vegetation.
Julia sat calmly at the wheel of Willy’s little car. She seemed less tense, but was relaxed in an unnatural and uncharacteristic way that was not entirely convincing. He thought that perhaps she was merely trying to impress him with the effects of her holiday. The strain on her face, always present in the city, had vanished. There were smiles. There was even, in response to a passing comment of Ayres, laughter. For Ayres there was a sense of unreality about being together out of doors, away from his dark room and bed, and the long airless hours of Julia talking.
He ran a finger down her shoulder blade, fine as a child’s. All the time there was the river in the distance.
They crossed countless small wooden bridges only wide enough for one cart and so low and near the surface of the water that he heard above the noise of the motor car the rush of the filling canals.
After they had been travelling for half an hour, Julia suddenly pulled up. They were at a bend in the river where the valley had narrowed and huge white boulders stood around in the sun. A pebble bank sloped steeply to the murky tidal water. She reached to open the door, then slipped out of the car and began half-walking, half-sliding down the steep pebble bank. Ayres followed her, the small rocks spilling away from under his boots.
About two hundred yards away there was a small group of people at work on the rocks. Some of them were fishing with long bamboo poles while others had waded out into the water, setting their nets. Although from that distance Ayres could not see the actual nets, they were close enough for him to see what they were doing.
Ayres and Julia stood for a long time watching the fishermen and the expanse of water before them. She said, ‘You know, there are things here I can look at and look at. I keep seeing beauty here I never thought possible. I come from such an ugly country.’ She broke off and stared down at her shoes furiously, apparently impatient at the effort it took to force her thoughts into words. Then she changed again, and went on in a bright cheery voice. ‘You see that man over there with the fishermen—on that first rock there? With the hat? That’s Willy.’ Ayres said he was surprised.
‘He comes down here on Saturdays to fish with them. Those other men are our houseboys and gardeners. He comes every Saturday, without fail. He gives them all a half-holiday, as though they were Englishmen...’ Her eyes were blazing.
‘He’s paying cook double to work this afternoon. The houseboys tonight will want the same. Willy panders them. Crawls on his hands and knees to meet with their approval—like some insect. How they must be laughing at him! He treats them—I don’t know—as if they are our equals. Worse. I think he’s trying to be like them!’
Ayres said, ‘Your place must not be far from here.’
She fumbled in the pocket of the cardigan she wore and took out a packet of English Players, lighted one and said, ‘No. Not far at all.’ She continued to look at the river, then went on more calmly, ‘He often doesn’t come home until after dinner. He eats rice with their families in the village.’
‘Do none of them live in the mission?’
She laughed at that. ‘Some soldiers came here last week while I was in Hangchow. Scared them all off. Now the girls have had to go home, too. Bloody Kuomintang soldiers sleep in the schoolhouse now.’
‘Why does your husband not complain? He must have contacts. I myself know the first secretary at the Embassy.’
‘Willy says we are here to earn the people’s love. Not command it. You should hear him. You’d think he was a member of the Kuomintang himself.’ Her face had changed completely during this outburst. A look of utter misery had come over her. She was raw-eyed, her lips thin and drawn back from her teeth in a kind of contemptuous smile and her hand with the cigarette shook. She said, just as bitterly as before, ‘I’ve never known a man to love the Chinese as he does. Poor Willy. He so believes in what he’s doing.’
Ayres looked again at the distant figure, indistinguishable from the other figures around him. The sun was on the surface of the river. There was a peacefulness about the scene that was unimaginable twenty miles away in the city with its strikes, the sudden changes of mood on the Bund when the head of a march appeared at the end of the street. You heard the noise before you saw them, then slowly the Bund filled up with thousands upon thousands of Chinese strikers. The shootings, the grisly discoveries in the dawn of men hanging from lamp-posts, the days of uneasy truce when it seemed the strike might be broken, then the British and American gunboats anchored in the Soochow Creek, from the armadas cruising up and down the Yangtze—all that seemed very much further away than twenty miles just then, that moment of sunlight on the water, that Saturday afternoon when Ayres was on his way to the little mission school for girls.
From the outside, the mission seemed a happy, sunny spot for the girls of middle-class Chinese families to spend their youth; not at all like the dreary dungeon of a public school in Edinburgh where Ayres, as a fat boy, had been miserable. Ayres did not see any of the soldiers: they only returned here to sleep at night.
This little mission school with its timber and stucco buildings, its bungalows dotted amongst the vast well-tended gardens, its stands of trees and roses laid out neatly in rows was more English than Ayres’ school had been and, walking in the rose garden with Willy, it again occurred to Ayres that he seemed to be a world away from strikes and marches in Shanghai. More than anything, it seemed too peaceful, too idyllic a place to billet the officers of a platoon of the Kuomintang army in the final stage of its advance upon Shanghai.
Willy Paradise’s study looked more like the preparation room in a museum of the natural sciences than the place where a missionary clergyman might write his Sunday sermons. Three walls were lined with the scientific texts he had brought on the ship with him from Australia. In the centre of the room was the large deal table on which he had laid out the paraphernalia of his scientific researches.
The Reverend Willy Paradise was happy to show the physician, who was at least nominally his brother in science, his prized German microscope, his trays of neatly labelled butterfly and insect specimens, as well as his great leatherbound folios of birds, each painstakingly reproduced in watercolour on the expensive handmade paper he bought from a craftsman in the city.
He showed Ayres the drawers full of his local rock samples, and the ragged beginnings of the manuscript which he hoped later to publish privately at home in retirement—a fine, weighty monograph on the formation of Pacific coral reefs.
Ayres was determined to ask the man some of the questions which had over the weeks insinuated themselves in his mind like Julia’s snakes. He began by asking Willy where he and Julia had first met. The question seemed to take the reverend gentleman by surprise. He smiled, hesitated, and lifted the wet stem of his pipe to his lips. ‘As a matter of fact, it was at a dance in Brisbane,’ he said. ‘By the way, I trust we may judge her little holiday a success. She certainly looks all the brighter for it.’
‘Apparently.’
‘My word she does...’ His words trailed off and he took his pipe out of his mouth and examined it. Then he looked quietly back at his guest with his pale blue eyes. ‘I must say, Ayres, I chose an inauspicious time for a celebration. When all this is happening. How long will it last, do you think?’
‘You’d know better than I.’
‘But the strike, Ayres. The struggle of the people. You’re on the spot. What do they say at your club?’
‘What they always say, I suppose. The usual mixtu
re of doomsayers and sabre-rattlers. You have heard, have you not, that the Consul is recalling all missionaries who are British subjects from the inland?’
‘I’ve heard it.’
‘Apparently some of them are refusing to come into the Ports.’
‘We are close enough to Shanghai not to worry too much.’
‘Yes, but those others. I wouldn’t give twopence for their chances. It will be the Boxers all over again. That’s what they’re saying at the club. Although of course I take little interest in the wretched politics of the matter.’
‘Of course.’
They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Ayres spoke:
‘This German lady who went to Hangchow with your wife. Is she a teaching missionary here as well?’
‘Miss Platz? Why, yes.’
‘You haven’t noticed, have you, when they’re alone together, whether they talk in German or in English?’
‘In English, of course. Miss Platz speaks better English than you or I, if the truth were known. She was educated in England. At the Somerville College at Oxford.’
‘Yes, but I mean—Julia’s father was a German, wasn’t he?’
‘But she can’t speak German! Her mother was English. That’s the language we speak in Australia! You can’t take any notice of her ravings when she’s ill.’
‘I’d like to ask you a question entirely related to her illness. Your answer may help in her full recovery. Yet, it is a personal question and one which you may choose not to answer.’ Ayres too had been filling his pipe. Now lighting it, and sucking the heavy sweet-scented tobacco down into his lungs, he felt his heart beating quickly. He went on straight away, to get his question out into the open. ‘When you married, was your wife a virgin?’
Willy Paradise looked away. He let his eye rove over the glass trays of insects, the dry husks of their thoraxes pinned to the mounting boards; then up to the fourth wall of the room, which bore a variety of bright stuffed birds: toucans, parakeets, rainbow birds, larks, tits, chats and honeyeaters of the white-naped and striped species. He continued to stare at the birds for some moments, as if he had not heard correctly and they might help him. Finally he said, ‘The Methodist Church, unlike the Church of England and the Church of Rome, does not insist on consummation.’
