‘Nik,’ Tayeb said. Nikolai turned and walked towards him with a grim face. Tayeb gestured to the restaurant and left Nikolai to walk around and confront the girl.
The next day Nikolai had handed Tayeb a hundred pounds.
‘What’s that for?’ he said.
‘For, you know, helping me out, with Sarah and the . . . you know.’
‘Yalla, I don’t need this,’ he handed it back. ‘It’s that little girl you need to give money to, not me.’
Tayeb looked him in the eye. ‘She told me.’
Nikolai made a noise, like a snap with his fingers. A frustrated gesture.
‘It’s nothing to do with me. Look, it’s forgotten.’
Tayeb leaned down and gave Burdock a stroke. ‘Good dog.’
‘Listen,’ Nikolai said, ‘you saved me, keeping her out the way of Sarah. I appreciate it. If you ever need help, ever need anything, you come to me? OK?’
‘OK.’
‘I really mean it.’
‘OK.’
Now, here he was, all these years later, needing help, needing Nikolai, having walked in circles for years, getting nowhere like the traces and lines of one of his drawings that were supposed to become a whole but somehow never did. He hoped Nikolai meant what he said.
Breathlessness; Limit Mechanical: Seated awheel, the bicyclist feels master of the situation. The bicycle obeys the slightest impulse, moving at will, almost without conscious effort, virtually as much a part of the rider, and as easily under control, as hand or foot.
35. A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Notes
October 8th
I have informed Mr Steyning that it is time for me to leave and that I must return to England as soon as possible. I insisted that I was suddenly consumed with a terrible guilt regarding my mother – which is not, actually, untrue – and, of course, he did not press me to stay. He simply looked helpful and responsive. What did I expect? I am appalled at my own stupidity.
We have examined the maps together and he has consulted various friends in town. Kindly, he took my hand in his and said, ‘The Inland Mission will look after you.’
‘You are very kind,’ I said, ‘but I can support myself. You’ve already done so much.’
‘Nonsense. I will arrange for a colleague to meet you in Moscow and you will be accompanied and assisted with the purchasing of tickets to Warsaw and Berlin, on to Paris. The final part will be the ferry from Calais to Dover.’
Perhaps it was my imagination but I fancy he looked wistful, for a moment, at the memory of Dover.
‘It will be an extraordinarily long journey for you, but we shall do our best to make it a pleasant one.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘I myself will accompany you to Chuguchak on the border, or, as the Chinese call it, “City of Seagulls”.’
I might have cried and as he gave me tea and saw to Ai-Lien, I almost spoke of my great foolishness. I could see clearly, then, that he was simply a good man and that I had misinterpreted all that had transpired between us, but he would never know, I hoped, and for that I am happy.
October 10th
There is much to prepare. The paperwork is endless and protracted. There are vast, difficult visa issues for the complex crossing from this region to Russia. I am waiting for my money from Mr Hatchett to be transferred as it is likely that bribery will be required. It is seven hundred li frum Urumtsi to Chuguchak and it is imperative that we depart soon because a little later and it will be too cold at night-time for this journey, but then, on the other hand, if I leave it too long and spring starts then the great thaw will occur, making the rivers treacherous and impassable for weeks. Now is just the right time.
There has been much discussion on the issue of Ai-Lien, my own foundling.
‘I intend to take her,’ I said to Mr Greeves and Mr Steyning. ‘Do you think this is possible?’
‘Indeed,’ Mr Greeves said, ‘I doubt any official here will care for the cost of her life on their hands, but are you sure?’
Mr Steyning put his hand on mine, ‘She was given to you, Miss English dear, for whatever reason. You belong together now.’
October 14th
Mr Greeves and Mr Steyning, as a farewell present, have given me a delightful Chinese toy, complete with opium den, a well and a market and a curious silver torture scene, all encased in a glass dome.
‘It doesn’t appear to be the most practical of presents, I fear,’ Mr Steyning had said, unwrapping it from several sheets of hessian, ‘but when you are back in England, you will look upon the scene in wonder that you have been here, and lived this life.’
He wound up the toy, and inside the glass, the figures moved in time to a clinky-clunky oriental melody. Then he lifted it up and showed me that underneath, the bottom of the wooden base slid open to reveal a secret compartment.
‘When you get to the border in Siberia, you will not be able to take over any books, letters, papers or photographs. If you hide them in here and claim it is a souvenir, that you are a tourist, then there is a hope that you will be able to make it across the border with a few of your artefacts intact, and indeed, your manuscript.’
The compartment has room for Lizzie’s camera, this diary and what I have begun as a manuscript for my Guide. Also, several other travelling companion books, dear Mrs Ward, and Burton. I have also put in Millicent’s Bible, some of Lizzie’s photographs and, although I cannot say exactly why I want to carry them all this way, some of Father Don Carlo’s translations. I have decided, also, to take the mimeograph machine with me. Whether it will make it across the border, I cannot say.
Mr Steyning has also helped me arrange the necessary paperwork for Ai-Lien. She needed to be registered and to have a passport, and so we undertook this.
‘You need to anglicise her name,’ he said and I tried out a few names. It seems odd to give her an English name, Ai-Lien, Alien. Love Bond. Ai-Lien sounds a little like Irene. Her mother’s name we were told that distant day, when we were sitting like buddhas at the Magistrates’ Court, had been Giyun. I took the fountain pen and on the passport papers I wrote her name as Irene Guy. Mr Steyning kindly paid the courts here the requisite sum and now she is officially my adopted daughter.
I kiss her all over, pretty little Irene, her face bright and open and sweet and now, such a miracle, she smiles at me.
October 16th
I am tormented by thoughts of Millicent in a jail underneath the Magistrates’ Court, her ribs poking through her skin; I think of Father Don Carlo, walking towards the Mohammedan riots in his long black robe, his Bible in his hand; and Lizzie, pecked by birds. Mr Steyning found me at the window of his study, looking down at the sleeping black city, mulling these things over. I told him a little of my troubles.
‘Is there a way, Mr Steyning, that we might try to discover Millicent’s fate in Kashgar? As the date of departure grows imminent I worry that I should not have left her.’
‘You need to look forward, now, Miss English. Move gently forward and it will become easier.’
‘I should have buried my sister somehow, Mr Steyning.’
‘It was not possible, from what you say.’
‘To leave this desert seems a profound betrayal, but if I stayed here, well . . . I do not think I can.’
‘I understand,’ he said.
October 30th
The first opportunity to write – so, we are travelling by Russian tarantass. It is a Siberian cart, much faster than the smaller spring carts, pulled by Chinese mules. The long trap is fastened to three ponies, each connected by a large hoop that is covered in bells, the jangling of which rings in my head until I might spin into madness.
We did not stay long in the colourful city of Manas where Mr Steyning bought me supplies and provisions to last me the next stage of the journey; we are now fifty li from Chuguchak. These horses are solid beasts. Mr Steyning is firm with our Qazak driver and the journey, so far, passes well.
Ai-Li
en is packed sweetly into a pillowcase which fixes either on to my front or back, and from which she can look around or sleep. The roads are fairly well trammelled and there is certainly a lot of traffic, carters and traders, sellers and travellers all on their own journeys, tramping back and forth. We met travellers from Novo Sibersk on their way to Kashgar carrying large quantities of opium (and even attempting to sell some to Mr Steyning!), also cotton traders and Qazak families and travelling vendors selling clusters of ginger, fennel, cardamom and cloves. At one point we encountered a group of Siberian monks who offered us ikons.
There are plenty of inns; finding accommodation each night is no trouble. In the interests of speed we survive on tea and bread in the day, then stew or rice or noodles in the evening. We occasionally stop to buy sheep’s milk or melon but otherwise we roll on and the edges of the earth have become unsteady and it is as if the desert floor might fall; I cannot understand the difference between the sky and the ground sometimes. Each li takes me further from my lost sister. The only thing that is clear is that, because of this baby, I must continue, onwards to an elsewhere place, though I can’t exactly remember why.
November 5th
It lives up to its name: the seagulls are here, flocked and collected. I understand that they have travelled a vast distance along the Irtish river, from the Arctic lands and certainly there is a breath from the Arctic in the air tonight: it is extremely cold, though not quite snow. Seagulls must be great travellers; they do not get bored, they do not sing low, or sad.
Chuguchak is an important border city being the main outlet from Turkestan to Siberia and so endlessly there is the business of providing the temporary passports and visas. The consulates are hustled together in the centre of the city, the most obvious and dominant being the Russian. The whole city is much more Russian than Chinese. Like Urumtsi, there is a large postal centre and telegraph offices and I have telegrammed home to Mother, telling her of Lizzie’s death, and my return. Poor Mother.
Ai-Lien – I try out her new name, Irene – and I watch seagulls squawk and squabble with each other. We must wait for the visas and the paperwork to be finished, and this waiting I do not want. It is recognisable, now, the tension between movement and stillness; the feeling that I want to go, but paradoxically, I want to remain. A pause does not help me, it provides time for reflection and reflection leads to sadness. I think of myself, arriving at Kashgar, terrified of the desert, and now – would I go back, if I could, into the vast space of it? I do believe I would. I can see how one wanders, eternally.
Ai-Lien smiles each time she looks at me, bright, sweet black eyes and I think of what I will say to Mother, to explain this baby. It could be that it is a terrible wrong to take Ai-Lien from the desert, but as we watch the seagulls it occurs to me that perhaps I should like to live by the sea, after all.
November 9th
The seagulls drop and dance, finally the paperwork is arranged and tickets are acquired. Trunks packed and I am as ready as it is possible to be for the next part of my journey: a six-day drive to Lake Zaisan, river steamer up the Irtish. The Trans-Siberian railway to Omsk. A week in Moscow and then on, to Berlin and London.
Last night, an attempt – as such – at a goodbye with Mr Steyning, to whom I owe so much, as we ate fine Russian steak and drank thick, coal-black coffee in the dining corner of an inn.
‘As I’ve already said, I simply do not know how to thank you.’
He took my hand, his face thick-spread and sincere.
‘My dear. Go home to England, make yourself comfortable and read through your diary and write it into your book.’
‘Do you really think I am capable of writing it?’
‘Of course.’
I wished that I had a gift to give him, something precious. I said so. ‘I will send you a copy, if it ever becomes a real, actual thing. And of being a mother, do you think it will be . . . possible?’
Again he smiled. ‘I have arranged for someone to meet you at Victoria Station as long as all goes according to plan and you arrive on the fifteenth January.’ Then, taking hold of my hand, he said, ‘I shan’t tell you who. When you arrive, stand under the great clock in the concourse at Victoria Station at six o’clock on the fifteenth, and you will be found.’
Tomorrow I will be gone, across the border.
The horses will be difficult to restrain, the Qazak driver will jump on the seat. There will be a flurry of movement and horse-breath and then a spring forward and I will wave and Mr Steyning will wave. Lizzie will stand behind him, in her long smock, holding a blue convolvulus from the Pavilion House garden, not waving, just watching. Millicent will be there too, though she will be looking away at something on the other side of the hills.
36. Eastbourne, Present Day
Quality Cod! Fish Restaurant
She’d had the dream again: in the hotel and the phone not working. Authorities outside, the Sheikh, talking to her – instructing her – regarding the appropriate method for the cutting of tongues. . . Sitting up, she looked around. Nikolai and Tayeb were sitting on a Persian rug, Nikolai was on his phone. Bowls of crisps and nuts were lined between them. Arrangements were clearly being made. They smiled at her. She was on a sofa above a restaurant, and somehow she had nodded off for a second.
Nikolai put his phone on the table, lit a cigarette and explained the decisions: they had one day in Eastbourne – today – and then that evening, Tayeb would be driven to Harwich in Essex by Nikolai’s brother, who had a truck with a false floor for bringing counterfeit goods over on ferries.
Frieda looked at Tayeb; he was scratching his wrist and staring down at the rug. In the B&B she had woken up with her legs in a knot around his, ankle against a calf, and her hand resting on a back. The morning bright light illuminated his skin and she saw that it was covered in scars and sores, as if the skin itself was speaking of troubles. She moved her hand, slowly, over his back. It was not unpleasant, it was just his skin speaking out, sending out its message, just as he had written his message out on her in the night.
‘Tayeb,’ Frieda said, ‘what do you think? Will this plan work for you?’
‘My own private compartment,’ he said quietly and she couldn’t tell whether there was bitterness; she thought perhaps there was.
As these plans were discussed and pistachio nuts eaten, Frieda took the missionary notebook from her bag and gently flipped through the pages, thinking of her mother and of Irene, a woman she never knew. Nikolai sat close to Tayeb and they were murmuring to each other.
She remembered the other items from Irene Guy’s flat and stood up, stretching, and went downstairs to the car. In the boot was the holdall with the things she had thrown in from the flat, assuming that she would never be able to visit there again as the week was nearly up. There was the pile of books tied together by the woven fabric, the transcripts, the camera, the Chinese ornament with the peculiar torture scene and the small black Bible. This must have been Millicent’s, she realised, examining it. It was well thumbed. She peered at a page that had come loose, A TABLE OF THE MOVEABLE FEASTS FOR FORTY-SIX YEARS 1913–1958. She untied the strip of fabric to look at the books. The first one had a faded blue cover and the lettering was a worn-down gold. Once, presumably, it had a dust jacket. On the inside cover was a frontispiece illustration of a lake in a desert bearing the title ‘The Heavenly Lake’. Frieda opened to the front page. The book began:
Travel is, in many ways, an untranslatable experience. For the purposes of writing this book I have drawn heavily upon my diaries and notes, but in essence, they have become as dreamlike and as distant as my memories of the desert which once was so very real to me. This is the problem with the communication of another sphere; in all honesty, adventures – for want of a better word – are inherently personal, and intimate. Even the materiality of the buying of tickets, the alighting of trains, the catching of ferries and all the consequential trifles that go into the organisation of such an endeavour amount, ultimately, to a se
ries of personal moments. Still, this is my attempt to capture something of these travels. Let us hope it is a valiant one.
She looked again at the cover and saw the imprint of the long-faded title: A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar, by Evangeline English. This, she realised, was a published version of the journal she had been reading, and on the inside cover, written in ink, it said Francis Hatchett. It was presumably his copy of her book. Frieda returned to the room of chatting, smoking men, holding the blue book and the Bible.
‘Right: this is the plan,’ Nikolai said, ‘we get Tay’ into Holland, then he goes straight to Amsterdam.’
‘What will you do in Amsterdam?’ Frieda asked
‘I have an old family friend. He can stay there for a while,’ Nikolai answered.
Nikolai offered to pay all of the costs required and give Tayeb enough money to live on for some time. There was much hand shaking and clapping of backs and nodding and smoking throughout these negotiations. Nikolai was gruff, addled, and, Frieda could see, a bit of a bastard, but he obviously cared about Tayeb.
Nikolai arranged whisky glasses on a low table and despite it being not yet eleven in the morning, Frieda sipped the thick, sweet brown liquid and enjoyed its burn-rush in the mouth. She opened the faded book, and flicked through its pages; there were more illustration plates, a photograph of dusty-faced and pigtailed children in exotic clothes, standing in front of a panorama of mountains trailing off to infinity. At the back of the book, sandwiched in the index, was a brown envelope. She pulled it out and opened it. Inside were several letters. The mark at the top of the paper said Eaton Highlands’ Quality Linen Notepaper.
It was a thrill to rub the thin blue sheets and see the swirl of the ink; she could see straight away that it was Evangeline’s handwriting. There were several letters, or parts of letters, and a few telegrams clipped together. Francis Hatchett must have kept them in the book; they were barely creased. She began to read January 30th, 1924, Acacia House, but Tayeb was speaking to her.
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