‘That’s very good of him,’ said Mrs Jones in her grandest voice. ‘Tell him that my gratitude for his hospitality is exceeded only by my pleasure at the prospect of his company. Oh, and you might ask if there’s anywhere I can give myself a bit of a wash.’
Mrs Jones’s idea of ‘a bit of a wash’ turned out to be rather more than that. Theodore was sitting on a low stool in P’iu-Chun’s living room and half listening while Lung and the old man discussed a poem by somebody called Li Po, who seemed to have died more than a thousand years ago. He guessed that P’iu-Chun also had only half his mind on the talk, and was fidgety for Mrs Jones’s return. This no doubt was one reason why he was prepared to break with custom – another was that there was only one proper room in the house, so there was nowhere else for her to eat. Theodore had no idea where the old peasant woman had vanished to. The room was not large, but the few pieces of furniture had a look of quality about them; there were two glowing dark blue vases on a chest, and one wall was covered with large brush drawings, hanging on scrolls.
‘Enter!’ called P’iu-Chun suddenly, though Theodore had barely noticed the light scratching on the inner door. At once he found himself wide awake and staring.
Mrs Jones had re-applied her make-up, twice as thick. In the dim lantern-light her face was like a china doll’s – scarlet lips, clay-white skin, a rosy circle on each cheek, black brows over those exaggerated eyes. She had piled her hair high on her head, and put on a long red skirt and a filmy pink blouse whose lace-work frothed up her neck to her chin-line. On each hand she wore several rings over white gloves that ran to her elbows. A triple row of pearls ringed the pink lace, and a large brooch rode on the big curve of her bosom like a boat on a wave.
As she came through the door she drooped, so that for a moment Theodore thought she was fainting until he saw that she was moving into a slow, full curtsey, finishing with her head not six inches from the floor. It was astounding that she could bend her plump body to this posture, but she came up out of it, effortless and smiling.
P’iu-Chun was on his feet and bowing stiffly from the waist, and so was Lung. Theodore, who had risen automatically (Father had always insisted he should stand even for the poorest peasant woman, and had done so himself), copied them awkwardly.
‘Honoured Princess, my poor cottage is yours,’ said P’iu-Chun.
‘The hospitality of the renowned What’s-is-name makes any house a palace,’ fluted Mrs Jones when Lung had translated. ‘Got that out of a panto, when I was principal boy in Aladdin. Don’t put that bit in.’
Deftly Lung added a few courteous twiddles to account for the extra sentence. The exchange might have gone on for some time, but just as P’iu-Chun was bowing himself into a fresh compliment Mrs Jones gave a little cry and ran with fluttering steps towards the pictures on the wall.
‘Why, these are lovely,’ she cried, still in her grand voice but somehow no longer acting. ‘That’s Rhododendron megeratum – I’ve seen that in Nepal . . . and Paeonia lutea – we all grow that now . . . what’s this primula – I’ve never seen that? Lung, ask him where he got these perfectly adorable things, and who painted them.’
‘The Princess is a great lover of plants and admires the drawings,’ said Lung. ‘She names each plant in her own tongue. She asks who painted the pictures.’
‘My own poor hand made these scrawls,’ said P’iu-Chun, purring. Theodore fancied he could see a tear of pleasure in the corner of the dark little eyes. Mrs Jones understood what he was saying before Lung could translate, and once more darted across the room, seized his hand and patted it softly. P’iu-Chun was obviously amazed by this behaviour, but too happy to resist.
‘Oh, it wasn’t you!’ she cried. ‘Oh, how I wish I could draw like that. I have to paint, to make a record of what I’ve found, and I get them accurate – I mean you can see every petal and how it goes – but what I can’t do is that . . . that . . .’
Despairing of words she gestured towards the drawings again with a single sweeping movement that exactly expressed the few flowing strokes with which P’iu-Chun had brought the flowers out of the paper.
‘Theo,’ she said. ‘Be an angel. The saddle-basket with the patched cover, near the top, my sketchbooks. Please bring me the red one with my initials on it . . .’
When Theodore came back he found that P’iu-Chun had fetched more scrolls and was spreading them in turn on the chest, shaking his old head from time to time over one which was not as perfect as he’d hoped.
‘You found it?’ cooed Mrs Jones. ‘Lovely. Now come and help me talk to Mr What’s-is-name – poor Lung’s having trouble keeping up with me. Oh, look at this bamboo! That’s as common as daisies, but look how he’s drawn it just like it mattered as much as this gentian here, which I’ve never seen and I doubt if anyone in Europe has.’
Lung coughed a warning, but P’iu-Chun seemed to take it for granted that the Chinese boy travelling with this extraordinary woman should speak good English. He smiled as Theodore spoke, and reached a long-nailed hand for the sketchbook.
‘You’ll tell him I don’t think they’re very good, won’t you?’ pleaded Mrs Jones. ‘They’re accurate, but they’re not art.’
This was difficult to say in Mandarin without making it sound like another polite expression of humility. P’iu-Chun began to turn the pages, holding the book at arm’s length and straining his neck away.
‘My old eyes no longer see what is near,’ he said. ‘Ah, this detail! The Princess paints the outwardness – every leaf, every hair – while I do my poor best to paint the inwardness. We walk on opposite sides of the way. Now, compare these . . .’
He held the book open at a particular painting and with his other hand pulled from his scrolls his own version of the same plant, a curving, grass-like stem from which dangled a line of little yellow bells. Theodore could see that Mrs Jones had used several different colours and dozens of brush-strokes to paint each bell, wheras P’iu-Chun seemed simply to have dipped a brush in ink and blobbed it once on to the page, and yet the bell was there. You knew how. it would move in the wind. You could even, somehow, guess its colour from the nature of the dark grey blob.
‘If I hadn’t just done my face I’d burst into tears,’ said Mrs Jones gravely. ‘I shall never, never learn to paint like that. I wonder where he found that one – ask him, Theo. It’s got to be in the mountains somewhere, but I’ve only see it one place, right over the other side of the Himalayas.’
‘For much of my life I was a government official in Pekin,’ explained P’iu-Chun. ‘Unworthy though I am, I held posts that were not without honour. But then I fell from favour and was sent to this province with orders to survey the frontier with Tibet and to seek new routes of access, I who had been . . . but never mind that. My report was returned to me with its seal unbroken, to show me how little I was now regarded. I was employed no more. But in my journeyings among the mountains I made these pictures, choosing especially plants that were strange to me. This one I found in vast numbers growing on the ledges of a gorge beyond Tehko. Ah, never again shall I see those peaks, those thundering waters!’
‘Tibet!’ said Mrs Jones. ‘I don’t see as we shouldn’t try and get to Tibet. If Mr What’s-is-name knows the way . . .’
‘We go to Taho,’ said Lung firmly.
‘Tibet’d be just as good.’
‘Taho.’
‘Tibet.’
‘Taho.’
They laughed together, like children playing a secret game. It was so surprising that despite the trance of tiredness Theodore looked at Lung and saw him as a person in his own right, and not just an animated bit of Mrs Jones’s baggage. He showed his teeth as he laughed, and his dark eyes flashed. It was as though a spring of inner happiness had suddenly sparkled on a dull hillside, giving a whole landscape life and focus.
As if the laughter had been a signal the old woman came hobbling in with food – all very plain, boiled vegetables from the garden, dark bread, cheese, water for
Theodore and rice wine for the others. Theodore must have fallen asleep in the middle of the meal, because the next thing he was conscious of was waking up and finding that he had been laid on a rough mattress against a wall and covered with a blanket. The meal had been cleared, but the rice-wine flagons were still there, more of them than before. The other three were sitting in a row, on cushions, with Mrs Jones in the middle. The lantern-wick was smoking, and cast a dull, bronze light across their faces. The two men were listening with rapt attention to Mrs Jones, who was singing in a rich, sweet voice:
‘Wotcher, ‘Ria! ‘Ria’s on the job.
Wotcher, ‘Ria! Did you speculate a bob?
O, ’Ria she’s a toff
and she looks immensikoff
And they all shouted Wotcher, ’Rial’
Dazedly Theodore stared at this scene of debauchery, until Mrs Jones noticed him watching them, and winked. He closed his eyes, achingly aware of the huge weight of fatigue that prevented him from rising up and declaring their wickedness. He remembered that he had had a chance to bear witness to his faith, and had run away, so who was he to denounce anyone else? All he could do was pray. His lips moved automatically into the familiar words.
‘Our Father . . .’
He was asleep again before he had whispered a dozen syllables.
4
OFTEN, DURING THE journey to the mountain, Theodore would remember the argument in P’iu-Chun’s house and the laughter that had ended it. Lung had lost the argument, but now he was behaving as though he had won. Theodore would look ahead and see above the bobbing hats of the line of porters, the yellow umbrella, the little round embroidered cap and the blue quilted sur-coat, all enhancing Lung’s air of dignified swagger as he rode Sir Nigel at the head of the procession.
P’iu-Chun had apparently settled the argument while Theodore slept. It was quite simple – there was no point in going east, because the rage against foreigners was sweeping through the province like a brush fire. The Governor was trying to suppress the Boxers, but this only had the effect of driving the young fanatics outwards and spreading the blaze. A week ago they had reached Taho and burnt the mission. Dr Goertler was either fled or dead. Nor did P’iu-Chun dare to hide the travellers for more than another day and a night – he was rumoured to be a rich man, and the local townsmen would be delighted to ransack his house. But to the west lay the great barrier of the Yangtze, and if Mrs Jones and her party could only cross that they might be Safe, because the authorities would use the river to prevent the Boxer madness spreading that way. But for the time being Mrs Jones must travel in disguise.
So next morning Lung had ridden into the town and bribed the local magistrate to supply him with papers authorizing a rich widow to cross the river and journey to the Plain of Shrines, where she could burn incense at the tomb of her husband’s ancestors. P’iu-Chun himself had provided the disguise – clothes and a litter belonging to his dead wife, Lung’s uniform, a similar jacket for Theodore, a Chinese-style saddle for Sir Nigel. He had insisted that all these were gifts, but he had had no hesitation in accepting a gift of gold coins from Mrs Jones, in fact the two of them had conducted the exchange with complete understanding, and Theodore had needed to do very little translation. When it was over P’iu-Chun had added one genuine gift, the map from his rejected survey.
So now here they were, doing what Mrs Jones longed to do, heading towards the mountains where she might find flowers no botanist had ever seen. Three days earlier they had crossed the Yangtze with no trouble at all, and now were travelling almost due west along a steep-sided valley; below them rushed a tumbling tributary, green with melted snows. As they climbed, the climate changed, the rain ceasing earlier each day until by now it had ended before they were moving. But the forests that clothed the valley’s flanks were ancient and reeking with decay, and though the air grew steadily cooler, the valley still breathed out a heavy, sodden odour which seemed as oppressive as the heat in the lower hills. Only sometimes, brought into view by a curve of the track or the crest of a ridge, was there a glimpse of anything beyond this prisoning cleft – far off, blue against blue, the snow peaks of the Himalayas. No day’s journey, however long, seemed to bring them nearer.
They hired porters at the villages, each sourer and poorer than the last, a huddle of ramshackle huts spilt down the hillside like a rubbish-tip. The poorer each village seemed, the more sullen were its inhabitants, though they must have needed the money they were paid. Lung conducted all the negotations with great lordliness while Mrs Jones encouraged him with fierce mutters from behind the closed curtains of her litter.
On this third morning the track narrowed and began to climb erratically away from the river. Mostly the party was forced into single file, with Lung at the head, followed by half a dozen porters carrying their burdens slung fore and aft on coolie-poles and jogging up the track with an apparently tireless shuffle. Next came Theodore, leading Bessie, who carried the front end of the litter; its rear end was carried by Albert, because the litter-poles prevented him from straying and Mrs Jones was close enough to coax or bully him into tolerable behaviour. Then came two more porters with coolie-poles, and finally Rollo, led by an elderly, tiny man who carried no load but had a huge old pistol stuck in his belt to show he was guarding the party against bandits and so was worth his extra copper coin a day. He spoke a little Mandarin and Miao, beside his native Lolo. He wore a long wisp of grey beard, so Mrs Jones called him Uncle Sam.
‘Come and look here,’ called Mrs Jones after they had been travelling for a couple of hours. ‘Path’s wide enough for two, and old Bessie’ll jog along without you. I been looking at these here hangings.’
Theodore hitched Bessie’s reins to a basket and dropped back. Mrs Jones had drawn the litter curtains and was looking around for something to amuse her. The litter was a gaudy affair, like a miniature pavilion with gold tassels dangling at the corners; its curtains were scarlet, embroidered with green trees through which swooped blue and yellow birds. At the foot of each tree sat a man and a woman, fully clothed and not touching each other, but with something about their poses and expressions which produced in Theodore a flicker of unease.
Mrs Jones was dressed in much the same style as the women in the pictures, with her hair piled up into a bun, stuck through with great wooden pins, and her face painted white and scarlet like a doll’s. Her small hands fluttered inside the huge sleeves as she spoke.
‘Isn’t it perfectly marvellous needlework?’ she fluted in her upper-crust accent. ‘I can’t help wondering what they’re up to. What do you imagine the story is, Theo?’
‘There’s got to be a story?’
‘Oh, yes, please. I wouldn’t trust this gentleman here one inch. Why’s he giving her that lily – lilium tigrinum, I’d say? He’s just the type to deceive an innocent girl. Would you say she looked innocent?’
‘The rain has spoilt them.’
‘I don’t know,’ she cooed. ‘These vegetable dyes don’t run and wool stands a lot of wetting . . . Now is this the same lady? Ooh, fancy, she’s got a knife! Is it for herself or for him? It’s a different gentleman, I think . . .’
Theodore knew quite well what she was doing, deliberately steering the conversation as close as she could to the frontiers of indecency, to see how he would take it. At first she had been amused simply to play the mourning widow, a figure of mystery behind her curtains – to peep out at the fabulous Yangtze and the busy ferry-towns, or to wait with her gun cocked beneath the litter-rugs while Lung bargained with porters or officials. She had positively enjoyed the danger, and the triumph of using that danger to force both Lung and Theodore in the direction she wanted to go, towards the forbidden mountains. But now she was bored – bored with the slow job of the porters, and with her role as a female, mere baggage, not allowed to ride her own horse, let alone to halt the procession and botanize in the teeming woods. She had spent twenty minutes swearing at Albert, pitching her voice just below the level at which Theodore
could pick out definite blasphemies, and now she was bored of that too and had found a subtler way of teasing him. He looked at the embroidered picture, and smiled.
‘I guess she’s going to cook him dinner,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that a turnip?’
‘Oh! Men!’ she said. ‘You ain’t got no souls, none of you!’
Theodore smiled again. Even the careless phrase gave him barely a twinge. Since the decision to travel west, the break with Father’s last definite order, he had felt an odd sense of freedom from anything in his old life. The inner numbness was still there. He prayed morning and evening, but not as if anyone was listening to his prayers. He was cast out from the Congregation. But for most of the time he hardly thought about any of this, and was happy to play his part in the journey and let Mrs Jones tease him if she wished.
Before she could start again he had to trot forward and lead Bessie down a sudden slope. In front of him the porters used the incline to swing into a faster trot which opened a gap between them and the litter ponies. They were wizened little men, dressed in layer on layer of rags all bound to their limbs with leather thongs. They were the first Chinese Theodore had seen who didn’t wear the pigtail, but whose hair stood out in shaggy plaits beneath little grey fur caps with tight-rolled brims.
The path swung right between close-packed trunks and emerged into a clearing of lush, fine grass patched with pink flowers. The morning’s rain twinkled off the grass-blades and dripped all round from forest leaves. The earth seemed to whisper to itself as it sucked the moisture in.
‘Might be a plant or two worth looking at here,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘Time for a halt anyway. Give Lung a yell, Theo.’
Theodore put a hand to his mouth and shouted. Lung, almost at the far trees now, reined and swung Sir Nigel up the slope to circle back towards the litter.
‘Hey! Look out!’ shouted Mrs Jones, grabbing suddenly beneath her litter-rug.
Tulku Page 4
