Broken Meats: A Harry Stubbs Adventure

by Hambling, David

  “Really?” I could not believe that Arthur would really have this level of surveillance.

  “Plain boiled rice and boiled chicken, I am reliably informed.” Arthur patted my arm. “You’re just one cog in this observational apparatus, Stubbsy.”

  “I wonder if he’s brought the cat to eat,” said Reg thoughtfully. “They do that, you know, in South China.”

  “My information is that he requested fish for the cat,” said Arthur. “And left strict instructions about it not being disturbed by the chambermaids. He talks to it in Chinese. Also, he lets it out at night. I don’t believe that cat is on the menu. Probably has it to keep the English mice from nesting in his expensive handkerchiefs.”

  “It’s not civilised, is it, taking an animal into an hotel?” Reg muttered.

  “You often see ladies in these hotels with their little Pekingese,” I said. “If a Chinese dog, why not a Chinese cat?”

  “That’s different,” said Reg. “Also, one thing I should warn you about, Harry. I hear you carried Yang’s luggage yesterday.”

  “What of it?”

  “In the Middle Kingdom, servants don’t carry luggage. It’s degrading. They always get a street porter to carry things. Yang must think you’re very low.” He seemed to find this amusing.

  “You might have mentioned that before,” said Arthur. “But I want to know what he’s doing here. What is it he’s looking for?”

  I tried to explain to them how Yang’s survey had made me feel uncomfortable. It was like when the dentist used that sharp probe, poking around to find tender spots. Yang was looking for tender spots in our neighbourhood. I remembered how Reg had described Chinese doctors sticking pins in people. I wondered if Yang had something like that in mind.

  “What’s geomancy?”

  “It’s just something they do,” said Reg. “Yang is a Fang-Shi, or pretending to be one—a sort of Taoist magician. Taoism is a hodgepodge of folklore and superstition. These Fang-Shi go about selling mineral potions and horoscopes to people who believe in that sort of thing.”

  “Why did he get hot under the collar when I mentioned the Boxers?”

  “Did you?” Reg gave a low chuckle. “You shouldn’t have brought that up! That whole rebellion was stirred up by Taoist priests. They don’t like foreign devils being in China.”

  “Can they really break bricks…?”

  “Of course not,” said Reg. “It’s just a trick. Breaking a brick with your hand is a physical impossibility. You, of all people, ought to know that.”

  I tried to explain how Yang was moving on a plane of his own. He was not seeing the Norwood that I knew but another place, where there were spiritualist circles and fortune-tellers. He was looking at the subtle currents of wind and water.

  I had a shrewd idea that there was more to the pond on Beulah Hill, and perhaps the Home and Hospital for Incurables, than met the eye. Yang was on a religious mission, or a superstitious one. This was not any ordinary business to do with opium dens and gangsters; of that I was sure—even though Yang looked somewhat like a gangster himself. His suit was not so well cut that I had failed to spot the automatic pistol tucked into the side of his belt.

  Chapter Four: The Séance

  The days followed a pattern. Each day, Yang would have a timetable of appointments that we would drive to, or I would be called on to guide him in a walking tour. We visited the Crystal Palace three times, inside and out. I mentioned the National Cat Show there, but he would not be drawn out on the subject of cats. Our perambulations took in West Norwood Cemetery and the lakes.

  Yang often spent afternoons in his room. One day, when the rain was unremitting and forecast to stay that way, he sent me away as soon as I turned up in the morning. He did not like English rain.

  Our walks were interrupted by queer little rituals. He sometimes stopped by a building and asked me to explain it. Once, he sat down cross-legged on a flagstone, having dusted it clean with his handkerchief, and took out a little bundle of twigs no bigger than matchsticks. He divided them into two piles and started counting them off by fours. Having completed the calculation, he repeated the process of combining, dividing, and counting by fours several times.

  A woman with a shopping basket stopped to ask me what the Chinese gentleman was doing.

  “I believe it is known as geomancy,” I said. “It’s an ancient Chinese art of divination.”

  “Oh,” she said, not approvingly.

  On other occasions, Yang took out a small brass pendulum and gravely observed its motion without comment, or ignited a cone of rice paper with his lighter and watched it rise into the air like a balloon before it dissolved into fine ash. He did not comment on the results of these operations, and his face betrayed nothing.

  He was also given to occasional bouts of philosophy. Once a butterfly alighted on Yang’s sleeve, confused perhaps by the half inch of bright yellow shirt cuff. For a moment I thought he might grab the insect, but he watched until it flew off.

  “Once I dreamed I was a butterfly,” he said meditatively. “When I woke I did not know if I was a man who had dreamed I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I was a man.”

  This sounded very much like a literary quotation. I was lost for a reply, until I was rescued by the Immortal Bard. And my English teacher, who beat the words into me.

  “’We are such stuff as dreams are made on,’” I said. “’Our little life is rounded with a sleep.’”

  “Indeed,” said Yang.

  For my part, I tagged along and answered what questions he had. Years of making deliveries on a bicycle had given me a pretty fair knowledge of the geography of the neighbourhood, though in the field of history I am somewhat deficient.

  I made efforts not to look too shabby. I could not match Yang’s standards of appearance, but I bought some fresh collars and new ties and took extra care with my shaving and grooming.

  Once, as we drove past my father’s shop, Yang asked sharply, “That shop is important to you?”

  The sign read Stubbs Family Butchers as clear as day. Yang could hardly have failed to make a connection with the names. But I am not ashamed of what I am. I have never pretended to be anything more than the son of a butcher.

  “This is my father's shop. My family has been here for generations.”

  “So, a butcher.” Yang considered this. “Does your father chop meat with a cleaver?”

  “That is part and parcel of the trade, yes.”

  “How often does he replace the cleaver?”

  “Never,” I said, well remembering the big, square-bladed chopper moving briskly up and down over a carcass. “A good butcher never damages the blade by trying to slice through bone. He cuts through the joints, and the cleaver never wears out. My father has had the same one for years.”

  “Indeed!” Yang said, nodding briskly. “The same in China. Your father is a wise man! Many ministers are not so wise!”

  I could not detect mockery in his tone. Yang seemed as impressed as if my father had been a general or a bank manager. I do not know why a butcher who cut meat should be revered. It must have been another peculiarity of the Chinese view of things.

  One day, Yang produced a slip of paper with Captain Hall’s address and said that he would visit the Captain to convey his uncle’s good wishes. I mentioned to Yang that it was normal practice, in England, to give notice before a visit and that perhaps it would be in order to send a note first.

  Yang smoothed his beard with one hand. “Indeed.” He drove on.

  From my viewpoint, sitting in the car, I saw Mrs Hall open the door and her look of surprise and dismay at the well-dressed Chinese gentleman on her doorstep. Afterwards, I could see Yang clearly in the Hall’s front room. He was standing with his back to the window and had not taken off his hat or his coat. It did not look like an especially comfortable or relaxed encounter for the Halls.

  Yang emerged again after a few minutes with a face stonier than ever. The Halls closed the door quickly
behind him. I learned later from Arthur that Yang had stalked in and started making comments about Hall’s health that sounded like veiled threats. However, before Yang had gotten very far, the parrot started screeching at him in Mandarin. That old parrot was a character; he was as travelled as Captain Hall and well-known for his powers of swearing in many languages. Something he said drove Yang off sharpish, to Captain Hall’s great relief.

  A second visit to Whatley was no more successful. This time, Yang stayed in the car and sent me to knock on the door. To my surprise, a woman opened it, looking at me through an opening only as wide as the chain would allow.

  “There’s nothing for you here.” She was in a dirty housecoat; hair fell lankly about her shoulders, framing an unhealthy, pale complexion. “We can’t help him find what he’s looking for.”

  “Mr Yang would like to talk with Mr Whatley, please,” I said.

  She raised a hand in a defensive gesture as though she thought I would spit at her. “We don’t talk with the likes of him.” She shut the door. I heard a key rattle and bolts being shot.

  I conveyed this to Yang, who merely nodded. Nothing seemed to surprise him.

  Not long afterwards, on Yang’s instruction, I parked the car a quarter mile from the Theosophist Circle. Yang went first, and I followed ten minutes afterwards. I checked the notice board in the garden and confirmed the time of the séance and that it was open to all. The Circle encouraged visitors to come and see for themselves, being a church like any other and always eager to increase the congregation.

  The maid took my coat and hat and directed me to the crowded sitting room, where a dozen people were already gathered. The hostess greeted me at once. I had always been self-conscious in these situations, and with half an ear missing after recent events, I felt even more freakish in polite company.

  She was a lady of advanced years. From a distance, her bobbed auburn hair led to some confusion about her age, but I soon concluded that it was a wig.

  “Everything’s on first-name terms here,” she told me and insisted that I call her Lavinia. The clothes hung loosely on her fleshless limbs, but she carried her years lightly and was quick and sharp as a bird for all that. She wore an amethyst necklace and a great many rings and bangles, and she turned about rapidly like a hen looking over her brood.

  Lavinia was a widow. For some years, her passion had been gardening, but she had been forced to give it up on account of rheumatism. She had moved away from her big house with the big garden, which she could no longer bear to look at, and bought Maycot. The place had, for some reason, revived her interest in spiritualism, which she had toyed with forty years previously.

  “Ours is a pure Theosophy,” she told me. “Not the debased nonsense of that Blavatsky woman. We are, I should say, Paracelsian. You know Paracelsus?”

  “Only from Mr Robert Browning’s work.” I had greatly enjoyed his epic poem Paracelsus, about the old alchemist’s quest for truth, though some passages were a little disturbing. “I believe it was written near here, by a curious coincidence.”

  “There are no coincidences,” she told me gravely. “Excuse me, I have to attend a rather special guest. Do have yourself a cup of tea. And you’ll want to read this.” She pushed a pamphlet entitled What Is Theosophy? into my hands and was gone.

  I pretended to read the pamphlet while looking around the room. It was a decent place though somewhat spoiled by some ill-advised artwork of the primitive school. I suspected the paintings were by some local amateur and represented theosophical themes. The reproduction furniture was of good quality, and the carpet was plush beneath my feet. Above me, the chandelier—a garish affair with a thousand scales of purple glass—spoke of money.

  Mr Yang was the special guest that Lavinia was attending to, aided by a plump young woman and a man with wispy hair whose back was to me. These were the bigwigs, I decided. The others were all over sixty, the majority of them women, standing in pairs or threesomes with little animation. While I was evaluating them and realising how I stood out, a tall, elderly gentlemen in tweeds took me by the elbow.

  “Harry, isn’t it?” he said. “I’m Victor.”

  I thought he was a retired military man, though he had actually been in the Indian Civil Service for many years and had retired as provincial governor somewhere in Uttar Pradesh, which, if you are unfamiliar with Indian geography, is near the Himalayan Mountains. His manner was one of forced cordiality. “Can I just have a small word with you?”

  I found myself in the kitchen, backed against the wall, with Victor bearing down on me. The maid hastily piled teacups on the tray and fled the room.

  “I like to think I’m a pretty fair judge of character,” Victor said, coming directly to the point. “We don’t see too many new faces around here. Those we get are seeking consolation and wishing to contact a departed one, or sometimes we get someone who’s just come to gawk and scoff. But I don’t think you’re a grieving relative or a scoffer. You look very much like a bailiff’s man to me. What the devil are you doing here?”

  I swallowed, taken aback by his tone. Victor was tall, and he carried himself with considerable authority. His gaze was as intimidating as a magistrate’s. He had spent years dealing with petitioners in India and was inured to soft-soaping and wheedling.

  I hesitated.

  “Out with it, man,” Victor snapped.

  For one moment, the idea of making a run for it flashed into my mind. My lips were moving, though, even before I knew what I was going to say. I did not stop to think through the tangled situation or consider telling him about Yang and Arthur Renville.

  “I've always been a down-to-earth sort,” I started. “I've paid more attention to the football results than the great questions of the human soul. But lately, I've seen some things that have made me wonder about everything.”

  “Have you indeed,” Victor said with heavy emphasis on the last word.

  I did not know where to start or what to say about what I had witnessed in the Shackleton affair. I’m sure my confusion showed. Victor’s eyes bored into me.

  “Look.” I opened my shirt and drew out a fine chain. On it hung the ring that was too dainty for my sausage fingers, the ring set with a five-pointed green stone.

  Victor’s expression changed from hostility to baffled wonderment as he held the ring in the light and examined it. “Good Lord! It’s real… do you know what this is? Where did you get it?”

  “The story is quite a convoluted one. The ring did not come without a price.”

  “I’ve only seen one like it once before,” he said, fascinated by the stone. “It was on the hand of an old Swami I met in curious circumstances…”

  “I should be happy to tell you about it on another occasion.”

  “I should like to hear that story very much,” he said, looking at me with new appreciation. Evidently, the ring was enough to persuade him that my intentions were honest. “I bet that story is a corker. Well, well, well. Nothing personal, Harry, but we don’t often meet fellow seekers. I’m afraid I was rattled by something else and… anyway, we’d better get back to the throng.”

  We returned to the sitting room, where a cup of tea was pressed into my hand, and with Victor, I joined a group that included Lavinia and Yang.

  “I used to take an interest in gardening,” Lavinia was telling Yang. “And this is much the same, you know. A garden must be nurtured to reach its potential, not allowed to run riot. Theosophy must be guided towards its goal of uniting esoteric wisdom of every type with science. Left alone, it degenerates into a jungle.”

  “Madame Blavatsky,” added Victor, “our illustrious standard-bearer and former occupant of this house, was a bit of a one for those kinds of weeds. To be fair, she did bring the Vedas to the attention of the West, but—”

  “That woman did no end of harm to Theosophy,” said Lavinia. “She knew nothing of science and precious little of the esoteric. She commandeered Theosophy and sailed it away from its true ends.”

/>   “Quite so,” Victor conceded.

  “‘The wisest woman in Europe,’ indeed,” she fumed. I had a feeling this was a discussion they had had many times before and were planning on enacting again.

  “I rather think T. S. Eliot was making fun of her,” said Victor, looking around for support. “You know The Waste Land?”

  Neither Yang nor I was familiar with that work, so the subject lapsed.

  “Anyway, like a garden that has been left untended, our little circle needed pruning—there were a few members who had to be encouraged to leave. And it needed new growth, like Elizabeth, our Mediator, and Victor, who you might say is a transplant, who are both experienced in the Indian Vedic tradition.”

  “And Howard,” said Victor.

  “A prize bloom,” said Lavinia, “if you don’t mind the expression.”

  Howard shrugged casually.

  “He's got more original scholarship in his little finger than the rest of us put together,” said Victor. “He's the greatest expert on Palingenesis in England—he's written two monographs so far, and we're pressing him for a third.”

  “I am not familiar with this word,” said Yang.

  Victor shied slightly when Yang turned to him. He was ill at ease with the Chinese visitor.

  “A form of alchemy,” said Lavinia. “I’m sure there’s a Chinese word for it.”

  “Few people have heard of Palingenesis,” said Howard dryly. He was a pudgy, anaemic young man with wispy, receding hair and steel-rimmed spectacles. “It is the art of recovering the form of a thing from its ashes.”

  “Show him the pictures,” urged Victor.

  “This is one of my experiments,” Howard said. He drew a set of photographs wrapped in wax paper from an inner pocket and passed them to Yang. “The first picture shows a test tube containing salts extracted from the ashes of a rose. In the second, heat is applied to the test tube, and you can see the results.”

  Yang examined each photograph in the sequence. “Shoots grow from the ashes, then buds and leaves and a flower. Your rose, no doubt.”

  “Lavinia found a young man to do the photography,” said Victor. “I believe these pictures are unique.”