By Eastern windows

by Gretta Curran Browne

  Together he and Bappoo lifted the beautiful lead and silver casket. There was nowhere else to go, but back to the house.

  *

  For sixteen days he stayed within the house without once venturing outside the door or allowing anyone to enter and give him the consolation of their company.

  On the seventeenth day he allowed his worried friends from the British factory to enter, but the experiment failed. Worn by weeks of solitude, and desolate for his wife, their conversation seemed pointless and trivial to him. His attention kept wandering, their words drifting unheard.

  His lack of sleep, personal grief, and sabotage from all directions had led him into a state of vague disorientation. The casket, which had been closed and screwed down forever within days of Jane's death, now took on an unreal aspect in his eyes. It contained something belonging to Jane, something precious left in his care, but not Jane herself.

  As he stood at night, alone in the glass attic flickering with light and shadow, gazing out to the harbour, he felt Jane's presence at his side, soothing him, and time became meaningless. All the urgency left him as day followed day when he watched the sun rise through the eastern window of his bedroom, and later set into the sea as he sat on the terrace.

  He did not realise that his every movement was being watched by George Jarvis who silently followed him everywhere and squatted unobtrusively in a corner of the veranda, keeping a steadfast eye upon him, and later reporting in whispers to Marianne and Bappoo, when Bappoo would rub a big hand over his face and sigh and sigh, but voiced no judgement.

  All the laughter had died in George. The eyes in his beautiful ten-year-old face were now grave. In the space of a few weeks George had matured years. The sudden loss of his beloved mistress, who had given him her own name, had wounded him far more than his years of being a slave.

  Now George spent his days looking at the man whom he thought of reverently as ‘Father’ and whom he loved passionately, watching him like a guardian angel and wondering how many more days Lachlan-Sahib would be content to stay here listening to echoes and gazing at memories.

  Why did they stay here? Where nobody wanted them. Why did Lachlan-Sahib not look for a way back to Hindustan? And if there was no way, why did he not look to Heaven and ask Allah to show him a way?

  The harbour below them was sinking into a silence as the sun began to set like a huge blood orange down into the far horizon of the sea, but George's eyes were turned up to the sky, his young mind questioning. Why all religions fight, when there was no God of one tribe but God of whole universe.

  *

  The letter came one week later, at the end of August.

  As Lachlan read it, the clouds of his memory cleared and he wondered how he could have completely forgotten his friend?

  The following day he was up at sunrise, dressed and preparing for a journey, leaving instructions with Bappoo, Marianne and George, and even running as far as David Reid's house to request him to keep an eye on his house and servants and his beloved Jane while he was away.

  David Reid nodded his head and assured him that he could rely on it. `Rely on it most assuredly, dear boy.'

  Reid watched him running away, in a devil of a hurry, and sighed and turned back indoors to his wife and said yet again that Macquarie's situation was no longer tragic, it was positively shocking!

  When Lachlan returned to his own house he found George Jarvis eagerly waiting for him.

  ‘Where we go?’ George asked.

  ‘Not we, George, just me. I am going alone.’

  George's face fell, then his eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Where you go?’

  ‘Canton.’

  *

  Lestock Wilson was so shocked he had to flop into a chair when Lachlan arrived alone at Canton and explained the reason for Jane's absence.

  ‘But why—’ Lestock made an effort to clear the lump in his throat. ‘Why did you not send word to me?’

  Lachlan shook his head vaguely. ‘I didn't think. I haven't really been thinking straight at all.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I can imagine.’ Lestock rose to his feet and headed for a bottle of wine.

  The two men sat for hours talking. Lestock looked at his friend, pitying him, but Lachlan spoke calmly, as if there was no real feeling in him, as if all that had happened had happened to somebody else.

  ‘Stay here for a few weeks,’ Lestock suggested. ‘I'll not be sailing again until the spring. And you need not worry about having to put on a social face for visitors from the Canton English factory. Most of my friends here are Chinese. So we will allow no callers and you can rest and live just as you please.’

  ‘Thank you, but I have not come to Canton for a holiday.’ Lachlan suppressed a wincing smile. ‘I have come for your advice on a way of getting out of China.’

  Lestock shrugged. ‘Most of the Chinese are polite, quiet and good people, you know. But they do have their superstitions which only another Chinese really understands.’

  He poured more wine. ‘Tomorrow I shall introduce you to a good friend of mine named Chinqua. A nice young man. Speaks fairly good English and is very clever, very smart. You will like him. He may be able to help us in finding a way around the superstitions of the sampan and junk sailors.’

  ‘But will he be able to sort out the Chinese officials?’

  ‘Ah, now, no. They are a very different kettle of fornicating fish.’

  ‘So what about a ship? We will need an English ship bound for Bengal or Bombay. It has to be an English ship. The French are our enemies. The Portuguese and Dutch can no longer be trusted. And the Chinese are forbidden under penalty of death to sail out of China.’

  ‘The problem is a difficult one, I don't deny,’ Lestock said with a worried frown on his face, standing up as a Chinese girl signalled to him that supper was ready. ‘But all we can do,’ he said, ‘is take each day as it comes, and see what happens to drift into harbour.’

  *

  As they dined, Lestock slyly watched Lachlan's eyes to see if he noticed the exquisite beauty of the Chinese girl who served them, but as time moved on he realised that Lachlan had not noticed her at all.

  There had been no more talk that night after supper, for Lachlan was very tired. He was still asleep the following morning when Lestock Wilson set out to find his friend Chinqua.

  Lachlan awoke when a soft hand gently touched his cheek. He opened his eyes slowly and looked into the face of a girl, a beautiful Chinese girl with a flower in her long black hair, bending over him, with a soft smile on her lips.

  ‘Jo san,’ she said softly. ‘Nei ho ma?’

  He sat up slowly, weary in body and spirit, and gave her a shadowed smile of apology. ‘I don't speak Cantonese.’

  ‘Cha?’ she said, and handed him a small saucer and cup of steaming tea.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and when she continued to stand and watch him, he looked into her face and said it again, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘M goi,’ she said with a smile, and in a blink had glided out of the room.

  By the time Lachlan had washed and dressed, Lestock Wilson had returned with his friend Chinqua.

  Lachlan took an immediate liking to the strong-looking young Chinese man who came towards him with an easy athletic stride and wearing a genuine smile of friendship.

  ‘Jo san,’ Chinqua said in greeting, and then throwing up his hands in apology, spoke in English. ‘Your friend, my friend,’ he gestured to Lestock Wilson, ‘he tell me of your sorrow. I know not how to help you, but I try.’

  The three immediately sat down to discuss Lachlan's situation. They spent hours and then days discussing the various problems, but even Chinqua could find no obvious solution. In the end, he, too, was of the opinion that Lachlan must take each day patiently and wait to see if an English ship drifted in to Canton's harbour.

  One month later Lachlan returned to Macao, no nearer to leaving China than before, for no ship at all had drifted into Canton's harbour.

  *

&nbs
p; The gentleman of the British factory came to see him, but still he resolutely refused to bury his wife in the neutral strip of unconsecrated ground and leave China without her.

  And now, familiar with the obsessive determination that had sprung to life in Lachlan Macquarie's character, the British group gave up their argument and made no further protest.

  Lachlan hired an interpreter. Day after day he approached the Chinese officials for permission to take his wife out of the country, but they had their laws and would not allow the slightest deviation from any of them.

  Finally, due to his dogged persistence, they agreed to take further consultation and look into the matter, which resulted in many meetings and many questions from the mandarins who looked at him silently and without expression when he admitted that, Yes, he was a soldier, a British soldier. Yes, an officer, of the rank of major.

  ‘But I am here as a civilian!’ he insisted. ‘Tell them!’ He turned angry eyes on his interpreter. ‘Tell them I am here as a civilian who wants to take his wife out of Macao and never come back!’

  But as the meetings went on, he realised that all the Chinese officials were doing was tying him up even tighter in knots of red tape.

  FOURTEEN

  A month had passed since his return from Canton. Nothing had been achieved and nothing had changed, except his silent face now had a worn pallor and showed even deeper lines of strain. The Portuguese officials still scorned him, and the Chinese Mandarins continued to ignore him.

  Every day was now a torture for him, and he could see that the long days imprisoned in this place, with no end in sight, was also becoming a torture for Bappoo and the two children.

  In the first week of November, he returned from a desolate evening walk along the waterfront to find Bappoo waiting for him at the door of the house, telling him there was a visitor waiting to see him.

  ‘A visitor?’ Lachlan assumed it was one of the gentlemen from the English factory. He frowned at Bappoo. ‘Which one?’

  ‘He only say he from Canton. But, Sahib …’ Bappoo clutched his arm with a whisper of warning, ‘He a Chin man’

  Lachlan entered the house and stared in amazement at the young man who came towards him with that easy athletic stride of his.

  ‘Chinqua!’

  ‘May the Gods bear witness to the turn in tide of your fortune,’ Chinqua said, smiling.

  ‘Chinqua, oh, man, am I glad to see you!’

  ‘Bearer of good news always welcome, heya?’ Chinqua held out a letter addressed in Lestock Wilson's hand.

  After the traditional greetings had been exchanged, and while the traveller sat down to refreshment, Lachlan read the letter from Lestock Wilson.

  It was brief and to the point: There was an English ship, the Sarah, bound for Bombay and leaving Canton on the 10th of the month. The Sarah was mastered by a Captain McIntosh, who on hearing of Lachlan's situation had readily offered a passage to himself and family, but in view of the restrictions of the Chinese government, Lachlan would have to find a way of meeting him at the mouth of the Pearl River and board the ship there.

  Lachlan looked up from the letter and met Chinqua's calm gaze. ‘Do you know what this says?’

  Chinqua nodded. ‘The winds of favour and fate have blown English ship into harbour.’

  ‘But to get to the ship means a long journey up the Canton River, with my wife, my servants, my baggage – and not one sampan or junk willing to take us – not at any price!’

  Chinqua calmly laid down his rice bowl and smiled. ‘That is why Chinqua come to help you, heya?’

  The following night, under cover of darkness, Lachlan and his precious coffin, his servants, and his baggage were being loaded into a spacious junk, followed by Chinqua who spoke in quiet but rapid Cantonese to the boatmen, urging them to be off.

  Incredulously to Lachlan, other junk owners had come forward and offered to take them, but Chinqua had shaken his head in apology.

  And now, as the lopsided junk made its silent passage up the dark reaches of the Pearl River, Lachlan could not believe the tide of fate had finally turned and he was truly getting out of China.

  ‘Chinqua,’ he said in quiet admiration, ‘you're not just clever, you’re a bally genius! How did you do it? Persuade the boatmen to take us so willingly?’

  Chinqua smiled his calm smile and threw a glance at the junk-master who was standing astride the bowsprit with his back to them.

  ‘In the beginning,’ Chinqua confessed in a low voice, ‘it was a problem to which I find no answer when starting my journey from Canton with the letter. But I find the answer in Macao itself, because Macao's true name is A-Ma-Gao, which means "Bay of A-Ma".’

  Chinqua glanced at the junk-master, and then continued. ‘Chinese legend say A-Ma was poor girl seeking to travel. Rich junk owners refused to take her because she cannot pay, but a fisherman, a poor but kind disciple of Buddha, he agree to take girl. And as soon as A-Ma steps in his boat, the winds of a storm blew and roared like a dragon. The storm wrecked all junks on river – except boat carrying A-Ma. When fisherman's boat reached land, the girl vanished like smoke before fisherman's eyes. The people then said A-Ma was a goddess of the sea and protector of all kind seafarers. They built A-Ma temple in her name, and land where she last seen is now called A-Ma-Gao… Macao.’

  ‘But how did that help …’ Lachlan stared at him. ‘Chinqua, you didn't ... you didn't infer that Jane may be a goddess?’

  ‘She your goddess,' Chinqua said calmly. ‘This journey up river speaks truth of it.’

  Just in time Lachlan checked his startled objection. Chinqua had sought a way to help him, at no advantage to himself, and to repay Chinqua now with a stern rebuke would not only be impolite, it would be disgusting.

  ‘I not say she goddess,’ Chinqua explained. ‘I speak only of A-Ma and how no junk or sampan would take her, and then I look up at the wind and contemplate in silence.’

  Lachlan had to smile.

  Chinqua motioned his head in the direction of the junk-master. ‘Look at him,’ he whispered with a smile. ‘See how proud he stands, heya?’

  Lachlan turned his gaze to the junk-master who indeed made a very proud figurehead in the moonlight as he stood astride the bowsprit, one hand on hip and head held high.

  ‘When he return to Macao,’ said Chinqua, ‘he think all junks be wrecked by storm, but not his.’

  Lachlan shook his head, and Chinqua grinned. ‘No sorrow, no guilt, no need. Junk-master get good joss from Heaven in other way.’

  They spoke a little more, then both settled into an easy silence as the lopsided vessel yawned up the dark river through the long night and Lachlan eventually laid his head down on one of the cushions and went into a deep sleep in which for once he did not dream.

  When he eventually awoke it was to the bright yellow light of the morning sun, and the sight of the ship the Sarah, waiting for them at the outreaches of Canton’s harbour.

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ Lachlan whispered.

  ‘Ya Allah!’ George Jarvis shouted, jumping up and punching his fist at the sky.

  Marianne and Bappoo simply smiled in tired relief: the lopsided junk had been very uncomfortable and Bappoo was sure he would be listing to one side for days.

  *

  Two hours later, the Macquarie entourage were standing on the strong deck of the Sarah, waving farewell to the junk-master who had already turned back towards Macao, standing now at the stern and bowing to them deeply and graciously.

  Then they all turned to look at Chinqua, who was grinning and waving from a small sampan that would take him home to Canton.

  Lachlan gazed fondly at the noble-hearted young man who had taken the time to help the friend of a friend and would take no reward, simply because China was his land and its people were good if not always its government, and at the end of a day and a life, friendship was more valuable than gold.

  FIFTEEN

  India, at last.

  As soon as the Sarah anchored
in Bombay harbour it was surrounded by a number of small boats, one of which took a message ashore to John Forbes.

  John Forbes, a practical man, immediately took charge of everything. He insisted that Lachlan stay for a while at his house where he could be in the company of friends, yet still have peace and privacy.

  On the second morning after his arrival in Bombay, Lachlan faced the task of arranging the delivery of all the little toys and presents that Jane had bought in Macao for the children of their friends. Throughout the day ladies all over Bombay opened their door to the call of ‘Kooee-hai!’ from George Jarvis, who handed over parcels with short notes, all of which more or less said the same: ‘Some toys for little Anne and a Chinese fan for yourself – from Jane and Lachlan Macquarie.’

  The four-year-old son of Mrs Oakes received a boxful of toys. The wife of Jane's doctor, Mrs Kerr, received a breakfast set of china. Mrs Coggan, Mrs Scott – the deliveries of Jane's gifts went on. The poor girl had spent her time in Macao buying presents for them all, and now they couldn't even thank her.

  Then, in the cool of the evening of the third day after their return, the funeral of Jane Macquarie finally took place.

  The whole of British Bombay turned out to walk in the train of the sweet and amiable twenty-three year old girl who had been born in Antigua, married in India, and died in China. Her coffin, covered in white jasmine, was solemnly pall-beared to Bombay Cemetery by six senior officers of the 77th Regiment.

  John Forbes, the man who had first introduced the couple less than five years earlier, walked as chief mourner beside Lachlan who seemed to be moving within a dream. Despite all the people around him, he seemed so alone. His behaviour was impeccable, no outward signs of grief, but his responses were not quite in tune with life, slightly abstracted from what was happening around him, as if people were saying things to him that he couldn't quite hear.