The Ginger Tree

by Oswald Wynd

7

  157 Hutung Feng-huang, Peking, China

  November 27th, 1904

  Dr Hotchkiss is looking as though he needs another long leave in England, too old for active duty in the Far East, but not too old to be practically certain about my condition. I am to have another child. The doctor told me how delighted my husband would be, and we might hope for a boy this time. He asked when Richard would be back from his duties with the Russian forces and I told him that my husband was now sealed up in Port Arthur by the Japanese siege of the place. He said this was unfortunate but that I should try to get the news to Richard some way, for it ought to make him very happy.

  Recently a few devils have been getting around our stone screen and one of them seemed to have travelled to the surgery with me. I said that I didn’t think my news would make Richard very happy since I hadn’t seen him since July. Dr Hotchkiss was turning away as I spoke. He stopped dead but did not turn back to look at me. There was no need for him to do any arithmetic in his head; the woman now sitting up on his leather-covered sofa was nothing like five months pregnant.

  When I saw him walking slowly over to the washbasin I felt sick with shame. He washed his hands, then went to the desk and was a long time writing a prescription which he said, determinedly keeping his voice normal, that I could have made up at the new pharmacy which had just opened. For all that he has been in medicine for nearly forty years, he has stayed a simple man who believes that the rules for living are all laid down and properly indexed, so that in any situation you have only to look up the regulations which apply to your case and abide by them. As I have not done.

  While I dressed I thought about Mama receiving the news, as she must one day, that her second grandchild was half-Japanese and born out of wedlock. I could not begin to picture how she would take it in that house where the windows have a layer of lace against the glass to foil prying eyes, and all the talk, at least Mama’s, is carefully watched to provide nothing at all that wagging tongues might use. She will probably hate me. I cannot see her having any other feelings but deep anger. I hope I am wrong.

  Dr Hotchkiss tried very hard to be kind. Without exactly reminding me that his surgery is as sacred as the Confessional which Marie uses so blithely, he said he would help in any way he could and was there anything I wished to tell him? I shook my head. I am sure he was relieved that I had not burdened him further with a confidence.

  157 Hutung Feng-huang, Peking

  December 13th, 1904

  I have had a letter from Mama, in answer to one I wrote from the Western Hills, in which she is quite shocked that I took Jane to such a dangerous place, and what would Richard think if he knew? Also, she wondered if it was quite wise to make such close friends of a French couple in a place where there were many British available? She says she loses sleep over the thought that we are so near to that horrible war in Manchuria and that in spite of what many people in Britain are saying about them, she cannot feel any sympathy for the Japanese. After all, the Czar’s family are cousins of our own Royal House, and in recent years the Japanese have seemed rather pushing and too sure of themselves, which could bode ill for the future.

  Every word that Mama writes now seems to come to me from a place that is a thousand light years from where I live. I suppose if you look at a map the war in Manchuria does seem to be taking place quite near to us, but in Peking everything has quietened down again, the Empress Dowager having decided against listening to the wild voices urging her to action. She is now back in the city after having prolonged her stay at the Summer Palace, which may have been because she was making up her mind as to whether or not she should take China into the war.

  I get the news from Edith Harding who has been faithful in attending me here, which I’m sure she would not have been if Marie had said anything to her or to anyone about what happened in the Western Hills. I did not go to any of the farewell parties for the de Chamonpierres, even the one which Edith gave, rather grudgingly I thought, my excuses quite acceptable; one that while there was any remnant of unrest in the city I did not like leaving Jane at night here; and two, that if I went to the Quarter in the evening it meant some reluctant husband being detailed off to see me safely home again. No one was so desperately anxious to have me as a guest that they tried to beat down these defences.

  I know that I should not stay sealed up in this house the way I am doing, and a few times I have gone for a ricksha ride just to get out, but I have been uneasy until I was in through this gate again. It is not that I care for the house very much, and I haven’t tried to do to it the things I could have while Richard was away, but it is the only shelter I have. For how long?

  When I try to look at the future I can’t see a thing. This has never happened to me before; even when I had no idea what was coming I could imagine something. I could always make up a picture to fill up the empty space on the wall in front of me. Now I can’t. That wall stays blank. I had a dream in which I went up to it and touched it, and it dissolved away like steam blowing from a kettle, but beyond me again was another blank white wall waiting and I knew if I went up and touched that one it would dissolve, too.

  It must be that for all of us there has to be an apology available that we can make to ourselves for anything we do. It doesn’t matter so much about an apology to others, pride may block this, but we must have that one for ourselves, to be able to say: ‘Yes, I did that, but …’ If you can’t put the ‘but’ after what you did then you are in a sort of way lost. There is no ‘but’ that I did not know what I was doing when I went up that path to take tea with Kentaro. I went knowing what he was going to think of any woman who accepted an invitation issued as he had done. In his eyes she was there to be used. Also, I don’t think I really wanted what was to come, for I had no idea of what this was going to mean to me. I wanted an end to what I had, to Richard, to my life here in Peking, to the Legation Quarter, to growing old in a narrow groove that might lead me one day to sitting in a house like Mannington, like his mother does, with a few people she knows and accepts because of how and where they were born, and a whole world beyond of which she knows nothing. You kiss your cousins and never complain about the arthritis which is crippling you.

  This is what Richard would want for me. His worry is that I will not fit in as his wife should, so I have to be trained to make certain I do. It would have been so much wiser for him to have married someone who had already received the necessary training and was fixed in it. He has never really been at ease with me, even for short periods, or I with him. Perhaps this is why he always waited to come down the passage to my bed in the dark. The lamp was out and he would never let me light even a candle. He came when he had to, perhaps half hating me, because he felt his need a weakness.

  Oh God, I do not hate him! I did not want to hurt him by what I did, it was not anger at Richard, it was the trap we both are in. I wanted to tear it open. Well, I have. I sit now in the wreckage made by me, waiting. I can do nothing but wait. What else is there? Should I take Jane and run, to have my half-Japanese baby in Scotland, from my mother’s house?

  157 Hutung Feng-huang, Peking

  December 15th, 1904

  Yao knows. I do not think it is because I show much yet, and I have been careful about what I wear. There is an almost unmanlike gentleness in him that you would never expect from a gaunt figure and that strange, off-putting face. Marie could never stand him. She said it gave her the shivers to have him open the hatch to her, and certainly those unbalanced eyes are a bit alarming to have peering at you through the observation slit. His shaking is considerably better these days. My few words of Chinese and his few of English mean that we can never really say anything to each other, not even the communication of a mistress to her servant, but somehow words are not really necessary. I have known he was my friend ever since that day when I made him laugh. I still do not see much of the others, Yao manages everything, ruling the house in Richard’s absence and, in the long evenings when he should be in his own quart
ers, makes little visits to the drawing-room to see if I need anything. He is now watching what I eat, and if I clearly like something I get it again and again, too often. My appetite is very good. I have none of those bouts of feeling dreadfully ill that I had from early days with Jane. Perhaps these will come.

  Jane continues to put on weight. There is a stove in her nursery which keeps it very warm, but I have her playpen brought to the drawing-room each afternoon, insisting that Meng take time off and leave the child with me. Jane seems quite content with the arrangement, she cries very little these days, and I find myself conducting one-sided conversations with her. It is probably very silly but she does not seem to mind.

  We ought to get out more, but it is very hard to establish a baby’s routine of the European kind. For one thing we have no baby carriage, there would be no point in it, the lane’s rough-surfaced and there are no parks to go to. She was put outside in the summer, but now, though the winter sunshine is bright enough, it is below zero all the time, the air wonderfully dry, but still icy. So we hibernate, Jane and I. Only Edith comes to visit from the Quarter. The others have probably forgotten I exist and I have no wish to do anything to remind them. With Armand and Marie gone, I’m sure that every Legation party is exactly like every other party. Edith tells me that the successors to the de Chamonpierres have arrived but she does not think they will be so popular. I look at Edith sometimes when she is here and wonder what she will be saying about me in a few months’ time. Could I find sanctuary with them if I need it? I think not.

  157 Hutung Feng-huang, Peking

  December 17th, 1904

  A letter from Marie written on board the SS Empress of Japan bound for Vancouver has taken its time in reaching me. It is four pages of Marie’s chatter which is not as effective in the written word as it is spoken, but then the purpose of her letter is plain enough; she wrote to reassure me, without even one reference to our time in the Western Hills, that there will never be from Armand or from her the slightest hint forthcoming about what happened up there. It is very good of her, but I can see now that she probably had her own reasons for great discretion on the matter while still in Peking. Probably I am being ungenerous towards a good friend. These days I don’t feel very generous towards anyone.

  It is almost two years exactly since I went up the gangway of the SS Mooldera at Tilbury. That girl would have been horrified at the idea of being forced to share a cabin with the woman I have become.

  157 Hutung Feng-huang, Peking

  December 19th, 1904

  Still no letter from Richard and the Quarter has had no word from him either. I sent a chitty in requesting that the Legation let me know anything they heard and had a reply from Sir Claude himself, very kind, saying that if they had been in possession of any reliable information they would certainly have passed it on to me, but they really know nothing. The explosions of mines laid in the waters outside the harbour of Port Arthur have damaged the submarine cables, which are no longer operating, and of course the overland telegraph lines have been cut, the only news coming out being by the occasional courier who manages to get through, plus the stories of Chinese refugees from the fighting areas, of whom there are a great many. The official reports are all from the Japanese side, and speak of great slaughter, both in their ranks and the Russian. Apparently, after being repulsed in various areas around the outer defences of Port Arthur, the Japanese have now taken to mining and have blown up some forts by this method. As Sir Claude said, it is turning into one of the most savage and brutal wars in human history. He assures me that the Legation is very much aware of me living alone in the Chinese city, and that if I am at all unhappy about this arrangement I am to let him know and some place will be found for me in the Quarter. I will thank him for his very real kindness, but what he suggests is the last thing I want at the moment.

  Sir Claude did not sound as though he was very worried about Richard’s safety. I’m not either. I don’t really allow myself to think about him, because when I do a kind of dread comes, too. I haven’t been successful in putting Kentaro out of my mind. With his wound healed, he will have demanded to get back to active service with his regiment, and if he is not killed we still will never meet again. There can be no help for me from there. I do not dream about him but quite often, awake in the night, I give way to the temptation of going back to that temple high above the others, and we are lying side by side resting from the heat of the afternoon, and our own, not touching, except that he has my hand lightly cupped in his. Behind us, beyond a shutter half closed, a cicada is making its loud, harsh sound.

  157 Hutung Feng-huang, Peking

  December 21st, 1904

  A chitty from Edith Harding saying that I must certainly come to them for Christmas since there would now seem to be no hope of Richard getting home, and that they will somehow make room for Meng in the servants’ quarters so that Jane can be properly looked after while I am there. Edith has a real talent for making her words ring with Christian charity while at the same time clearly showing that duty is prodding her along a course she would avoid if it were at all possible. I sent her servant back with the message that her great kindness was more of what I had come to expect from her, but that I was suffering from a digestive complaint which, though not serious, made it sensible for me to be very quiet over the festive season. There could have been no more polite rejection of the Harding plum pudding, and, half an hour after the servant left here with my note, I received by telepathic communication Edith’s sigh of relief. I think her next visit here will now be postponed until into the new year, but I am not happy about that prospect for I am beginning to show, and even with let-out waistbands and loose skirts she is likely to spot my condition, with the kind of reaction I can only too easily imagine.

  If I have any plans at all just now, and I cannot really pretend that I do, these are that Richard should be the first to know. Somehow I don’t want him to come back to a Legation Quarter yattering with the news. And how the bored mah-jong women will seize on it.

  157 Hutung Feng-huang, Peking

  December 22nd, 1904

  The Legation, reminded of my existence by my note to them, have sent me a huge batch of the newspapers that Richard used to bring home, the newest of these dated three months ago. In an old London Times was a detailed account by their correspondent with the Japanese forces of the early stages of the battle for Liao-Yang in which Kentaro was wounded. The casualty lists that during the summer and autumn had been breakfast reading for the people at home suddenly came alive to me. I remembered twice seeing the blood seeping through those bandages from a wound that wasn’t healing, perhaps because of the way he was forcing himself to walk on that leg. I read the names of those villages through which he had probably marched with his men, An-ping, Hsiao-tun-tzu, as though they were stations along a railway line I travelled often, though in the names I saw blood and ruins. This is Kentaro’s second war in only a few years. He said he is a soldier not a poet, yet he wrote that poem I dare not look at.

  157 Hutung Feng-huang, Peking

  December 27th, 1904

  Jane has not been well. I remembered something Edith once said about how doctors out here have to see so many of their small European patients buried in our lonely Far Eastern cemeteries, and suddenly I was terrified by the thought that I might be going to be punished through Jane. Dr Hotchkiss has been here twice, once on Christmas Day. He did not seem too worried about Jane and may have been wanting to check up on me. I had nothing to report, just a little morning sickness that wore off quite quickly. He started to tell me that I was being lucky this time, then stopped. Jane is better, but we don’t bring her out of the nursery to the stove in here, so I sit by it alone, thinking about what I have done to Jane and Richard, and to myself, as well as others. I wonder what the baby I am carrying will look like? I am sure it is a boy.

  This afternoon I forced myself to write to Mama. I filled my letter with lies, descriptions of the life I am not leading. Afterw
ards I did something that I remembered from school, a thing that a girl whom we all thought a little crazy about religion used to do. She said that if you needed guidance all you had to do was close your eyes, open the Bible at random, put down your finger on a page, and there would be a message. I put down my finger and opened my eyes to read: My beloved is unto me as a bundle of myrrh, that lieth betwixt my breasts. My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna-flowers in the vineyards of En-gedi. I was mocked.

  157 Hutung Feng-huang, Peking

  January 3rd, 1905

  Edith came this afternoon, quite late, at about half-past five, a time when I thought she would never be out in the city alone in her ricksha. I was bathing Jane in the nursery. I have been doing that, wanting to do things for the child that I don’t have to. Meng does not like it. She does not like me. She has seen my condition. It will be the talk of the servants’ quarters except when Yao is with them. He would not allow it. The news may have got back to the Quarter via servants, who are a network amongst themselves, and when I saw Edith I was sure this had happened, that she had come to see for herself whether the gossip was true. But it was something else.

  General Stessel, the Russian in command of Port Arthur, has surrendered the city. It happened after one of the major forts had been blown up by Japanese mining, almost everyone in it killed. Edith said she had come to me at once because she had feared that if I heard about this when I was alone I might start imagining that Richard had been in the fort as an observer. At the Legation they say this is very unlikely, his was a headquarters role, and that we can expect him home in a matter of days, or at the latest by the middle of the month.

  I thought then of what it might mean to me if Richard had been killed, how I might escape that way and have my baby quietly in some place like Hong Kong where I was not known and there could be no scandal. Then I felt sick that I wished him dead as a convenience to me.