The House of Hardie

by Anne Melville

  Lucy came to stand beside him on the deck. She slipped her hand into his – but only out of companionship, not in fear. With the boat tied fast in the comparatively calm water at the foot of the cataract, they watched the preparations being made for the ascent. On board, the crew were sacrificing a fowl, whose blood was smeared over the bow of the junk. Meanwhile, a hundred or more barefooted coolies appeared, scrambling down over the boulders from the top of the cataract, ready to fasten their tow-ropes and help the crew to haul the boat up.

  After a great deal of shouting, everything was ready. With the couplings of the thick tow-ropes over their shoulders, the coolies moved off, singing a raucous chorus which helped them to keep a steady pace as they clambered over the slippery rocks. Several minutes passed while the long lines were paid out. When at last the junk was untied, the towing gangs were almost a quarter of a mile ahead.

  Gordon thought it unlikely that safety could be guaranteed in any part of the boat, but the high half-deck was as good a place as any. If any calamity were to occur, the passengers’ quarters below the deck would become a death trap. Still holding Lucy’s hand, he felt through his body every movement of the vessel as it first fell back a little, then checked, and at last began to move steadily forward. There was a band of coolies on each bank, taking and releasing the strain so that the junk could zigzag past pointed rocks on the river bottom. But then the river bed narrowed still further, the long bowsprit pointed more sharply upwards and all the coolies pulled together, gaining a yard and holding it, and pulling again.

  Suddenly a shout went up from one of the crew who remained on board. Thick and strong though the tow-ropes were, they were being rubbed against the boulders, and one of them had frayed more than half-way through. Gordon could not judge what the effect of a breakage would be, but the anxiety of the Chinese sailors was infectious. His eyes and the whole of his concentration were on the rope. For that reason he was not alert to the moment when they came to the foot of the last and highest torrent.

  A fall of water cascaded on to the junk with such weight that its bow was briefly submerged. The tow-ropes continued to tug upwards and, as the front of the deck rose to the surface again, the water rushed towards the stern. Gordon was knocked off balance by its power. Struggling to keep his head above water, he came to rest, bruised but safe, against the wooden rail. He pulled himself to his feet again, spluttering and staggering, and looked round anxiously. Where was Lucy?

  The scene on the deck was chaotic. Sailors shouted urgently to each other whilst passengers, dripping wet, scrambled up from flooded cabins. A mist of spray blinded him, and the tilt of the ship and buffeting of the water made it hard to maintain balance on the wet deck. All the time that he was searching, the junk was continuing its creaking journey up the cataract. Gordon called his wife’s name, but knew that the word would be blown away before anyone could hear it.

  He found her at last, prone on the deck, clutching a rope whose other end was secured to a mast. As she struggled to regain her feet without letting go of the rope, a new surge of water sent her slipping back again and she lay still for a moment, regathering her strength. Then, as Gordon slithered towards her, she raised her head and with great determination began to pull herself hand over hand by the rope until she could grasp the mast.

  ‘Lucy! Lucy, my darling!’ Gordon helped her to stand and pressed her back against the mast, encircling her with his arms to hold her close to it. How beautiful she was! Her sodden clothing clung to the shape of her slender body and the flattening of her long golden hair by the water served only to reveal the perfection of her features. ‘I love you so much!’

  ‘I know.’ Her smile, free of any anxiety on her own account, took his love for granted. She had never doubted it.

  Yet she should have doubted it. Even while Gordon continued to press his body against his wife’s, pinioning her to the safety of the mast, his desire was compounded by shame. Although he had been swept off his feet by his first sight of her youthful loveliness, it was not so much love as anger which, a year later, had prompted his first proposal of marriage. He had released her from her engagement only partly out of concern for her future, and had married her in the end because by her actions she had left him no choice. However brave a face she put on her situation during the voyage to India, the fact remained that she had to be rescued. Recognizing his responsibility, he had shouldered the obligation. The service conducted by the captain of the Parramatta might almost be described – although not in the usual sense – as a shotgun marriage.

  None of that meant that he found her anything but lovable. Someone so young and trusting and open in her affections could hardly fail to rouse a man’s protective instincts. She was the most beautiful woman in the world, and she was his! Yet he had agreed to let her face three years of danger in his company. ‘I should never have allowed you to come on such a journey,’ he said, between kisses.

  Lucy’s eyes twinkled with a mischief as calm as though she were sitting on a sofa in Castlemere instead of being buffeted by a torrent which threatened to rush their vessel back down over the rocks.

  ‘My memory is that you didn’t allow me to come,’ she said. ‘I have only myself to blame for an unwanted cold bath.’ The smile died from her face, and her expression became troubled. ‘You made it plain to me that you considered the journey too hazardous. And it was later in the expedition that you expected the dangers to begin, so I suppose today must be considered one of the safe and easy days. I’ve been selfish – not realizing what an encumbrance I might be to you. I determined from the very beginning that I would never complain and never hold you back. But I realize now that there could be accidents – events which might not be my fault, but which mean that all your risks are doubled. You were right to think that I could have no understanding of the handicap I might be to you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? Oh, my dearest, how could I have been happy apart from you for three years? How can I thank you enough for taking a step that I had no right either to ask or to expect? All the happiness I can ever hope for is bound up in my love for you and yours for me.’

  What he said had not always been true, but it was true as he spoke the words. He kissed her again, pressing her head back against the mast. His heart and his breathing both stood still; and so, briefly, did the junk. They had reached the top of the cataract. For a moment or two longer the bowsprit continued to point upwards, until the stern too was hauled clear. Then the bow crashed down into the level water. Its shuddering vibrated through every timber until, for the first time in six hours, there was calm.

  The stillness brought with it a kind of silence. The waters of the Yangtze were still hurling themselves down the cataracts not far away, but the sound was distanced by the knowledge that all danger was past, at least for today. The coolies ceased to sing as they tied the mooring ropes and released the tows; and the crew, who had been shouting at each other without pause all day, collapsed into exhaustion.

  They had reached a wide, calm stretch of water, whose smooth surface showed no sign of the racing current deep below. Instead of the bare cliffs which walled the narrow gorge, the river banks were flat and green. There was space for a village, the home of the towing gangs. In the distance, though, the land rose again, first in a vista of jagged black mountains and then, more distantly, to a range of high, snow-covered peaks.

  As Gordon and Lucy walked hand in hand to the front of the junk, Gordon gave a sigh of expectation and pointed to the far mountains.

  ‘That’s where we’re going,’ he said. ‘To the land of the lily.’

  ‘The lily? I thought –’

  ‘You thought we had a list of plants to search out and collect. Azaleas, clematis, primulas, alpines, rhododendrons. And a hope of finding plants which still have no name because they have never been brought to Europe. All that’s true. But there’s one thing I’ve set my heart on finding for my own sake, not for my patrons.’ He described Merlot’s lily to her, as many years earlie
r Sir Desmond Langton had described it to him. ‘Over there, in the high mountain valleys near the frontier with Tibet – that’s where we shall hunt for it.’

  Together they looked westward, gazing at the mountains. The sun was setting, flooding the dark Yangtze water with crimson and purple. Gordon became aware that Lucy was shivering, and put his arm round her shoulders.

  ‘We must change our clothes,’ he said. ‘After emerging unscathed from a waterfall, it would be humiliating to die of a common cold.’

  Lucy nodded and began to move towards the lower deck. Gordon himself lingered for a moment longer. He felt physically and emotionally exhausted by the excitements of the past few hours, and yet, strangely, a warm glow of satisfaction was invading his body. In the course of the day he had recognized a new love, but without needing to surrender his old one. Lucy had become part of his life in a way which he had not earlier believed possible. But the ambition which had driven him for so long was not destroyed by the discovery. Very soon now, all his plans and hopes would be put to the test. For ten years he had dreamed of the moment when he would catch a first glimpse of the mountains of western China. It was a moment to be savoured. They were still many miles away, but the mountains were there, waiting.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lucy clung to the saddle of the mule, determined not to collapse. She had assured Gordon that she could ride, and it was no idle boast. At Castlemere she could happily spend all day on her riding mare; or keep up with the hounds on her hunter just as well as Archie, however high the hedges or rough the ground. But by ‘riding’ she meant an activity in which she was almost one with the horse, controlling it but at the same time becoming a part of it, so that their joint energy was channelled into a single flow of movement. Sitting on a mule for twelve hours a day was a different matter entirely.

  It would have been more comfortable to walk from time to time – but also more dangerous. The mountain paths were rough and narrow. On the occasions – fortunately rare – when they encountered travellers moving in the opposite direction, it could take an hour or more as well as much argument before a passing place was found. Rocks fell from the sheer cliffs above; stones crumbled into the precipice below. A false step would allow no second chance. Although – after a daily demonstration of bad temper and refusal to move had been overcome – the mules appeared to plod along mindlessly, they were surefooted. Lucy knew that she was safe from anything but a landslide, but the knowledge did not help her to feel comfortable.

  Their weeks of travelling away from the busy trading routes of China and even deeper into the mountain wilderness had brought her embarrassment as well as physical discomfort. As long as they remained on the plains, they had spent each night at one of the inns which awaited travellers in each small town. Built round a courtyard, with a kitchen and eating-room fronting the street and stalls for mules and horses along a second side, such an inn provided plentiful accommodation for guests; and although much of it was communal, there was always one ‘best room’. Lucy had to endure staring and even touching as she passed through the public quarters, but could then enjoy a night’s privacy with Gordon, sleeping on a kang – a stove bed, heated from below by glowing coals.

  Since leaving the plains, however, conditions had necessarily become more primitive, whilst privacy had almost entirely vanished. It was clear from the sour smell of their clothes and skin that the men whom Gordon hired to act as guides and porters never washed at all, but instead rubbed rancid butter into their skin to protect it from the elements. A blonde woman was an object of such intense curiosity to them that they stared at her intently, not disguising their wish to see as much of her own skin as possible. So Lucy was forced to perform her ablutions as best she could inside the tiny yak-skin tent which was only just large enough for two people to sleep in, and did not allow either of them to stand up. The rivers whose clear water might have tempted her to a more refreshing immersion proved always to be flowing straight from a glacier or snowfield and so were icy as well as dangerously swift.

  Even Lucy’s most private functions would have come under interested scrutiny had Gordon not always placed himself on guard, forbidding his men to turn their heads on pain of forfeiting a day’s pay. There was nothing evil in their wish to stare, he assured his wife, only curiosity.

  Lucy believed him, but still felt embarrassed when she had to bring the caravan to a halt – for just as the mountain paths were too narrow to provide her with seclusion, so also they made it impossible for her simply to fall back for a few moments and take her place in the line again later. This was an aspect of travel which her heroine, Miss Marianne North, had never mentioned in the books which described her adventurous explorations. But the mortification which Lucy felt when she first needed to appeal to Gordon grew less with each day that passed.

  They had reached the mountains which separated China and Tibet by the middle of March. This was the area in which Gordon expected to make his discoveries. Within a week or two the first buds of the earliest rhododendrons would begin to open, even in the snow. For the next six months he would keep a careful log of his position and everything he saw, so that they could return later to collect seeds which had ripened and dig up dormant roots. The prospect ahead was one of ceaseless trekking, with only occasional breaks to pick up more stores.

  Lucy had known in advance about the discomforts of travelling and camping. She had resolved never to let a single word of complaint pass her lips. What she had not been prepared for was the effect of the altitude. Well aware that the mountains through which they must travel were some of the highest in the world, she had not realized that even the valleys would often be higher than mountain peaks in other countries.

  Although they remained on the Chinese side of the frontier, as their special passports required, their muleteer, Sati, was a Tibetan. Disregarding frontier lines drawn on a map, he had spent his life trading across the mountain area. He and his coolies, born and brought up at altitudes of over twelve thousand feet, were so well acclimatized to the thin air that they suffered in an opposite way from the two Europeans, feeling discomfort in the lower-lying plains of China. But their mules showed by the blood which trickled from their nostrils that they were near the limit of their endurance. If animals native to this part of the world began to gasp for breath and stagger under their loads, it was hardly surprising that the English couple should be affected.

  The first sign of something unusual had been laughable. Lucy had smiled to see Gordon’s dark, curly hair suddenly standing on end as though in an illustration for a ghost story. But within a few moments his nose began to bleed and her amusement turned to anxiety as the flow of blood resisted her efforts to check it with packs of snow. He was attacked, too, by severe headaches and spells of vertigo. It was the mountain sickness, Sati assured them. There was no cure except to move slowly and with as little exertion as possible.

  Lucy was unaffected at first and, as Gordon gradually became acclimatized, they both felt fit and energetic. Then she in turn fell victim to the sickness. The precipitous country through which they were passing was enough to induce vertigo by the merest glance downwards, but Lucy felt giddy from the moment she awoke in the morning – unable to steady herself because of the sensation that she was floating above the solid earth. She found herself retching without being able to vomit. Gordon was solicitous, and the fact that he had been a sufferer himself made it easier for Lucy to avoid feeling guilty about her weakness. But she had always enjoyed good health. It was difficult now not to be impatient with herself.

  It was no doubt the mountain sickness which robbed her of her appetite, but the only food available was not of a kind to tempt her to eat. Lucy herself had never learned to cook, so it was just as well that meals were included in the service which Sati and his men provided. As soon as a camp site for the night had been chosen, Gordon would produce his flint and steel and ceremonially provide the spark to light the night’s fire. Often the flames had to be fuelled by pats of
dried dung, for there was little wood in the higher areas; but a greater problem was the low boiling point of water at such altitude. The Tibetans were as anxious as Lucy herself for a drink of tea, and a Chinese tea brick was the first item to be unpacked. But the beverage had to be stewed rather than infused; it was some time before Lucy became reconciled to its strong tang.

  As for food, there was little variety of ingredients and less of taste. Whenever, in the lower valleys, Gordon succeeded in shooting game for the pot, the meat would be cooked in the rancid butter which the Tibetans loved. To them, every year of its stored life increased its attractiveness, but the stench nauseated Lucy even before the food touched her lips. By contrast, the dried barley and beans which provided the bulk of their rations were boiled to a tasteless mush. Lucy could force herself to eat only a little. She never complained about this, but her lack of appetite, and subsequent failing of strength, made her more susceptible to the extremes of climate which must be faced in every twenty-four-hour period. By day, as the sun blazed down through the thin air, the temperature reached 120°, whilst at night it fell below freezing point. And all the time a fierce wind blew, arid by day and bitter by night. Even in the quilted coat which she had bought locally, she shivered after the sun went down; and even under a wide-brimmed hat and wearing her thinnest, loosest clothes, her body seemed to swell with the heat during the day.

  As the weeks passed, she found herself considering a question for which no book of etiquette had prepared her. Would it matter, she wondered, if she were to remove her corsets? Polite society would hardly care if she were to relax her standards in the wildness of China, but would such slackness ruin her figure for the rest of her life? By the end of April she gave up the struggle. Like her husband, she had at last become acclimatized; but, as her appetite returned, her body felt even more swollen than before. Without saying anything to Gordon, she ceased to wear the corsets.