Juan in China

by Eric Linklater

  ‘The American was about the size of Camera, and arrived with one of the girls over his shoulder, and kicking the other two in front of him,’ said Ronny. ‘All of them were dead-beat, according to Robertson, but simply devoted to the American, who’d used them to get some exclusive information.’

  ‘When did this happen?’ asked the trimly dressed, grey-haired, desiccated man who had been introduced as a lawyer.

  ‘This morning,’ said Ronny.

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘I knew he wouldn’t,’ whispered Mrs Fannay-Brown. ‘Dear Edward. One of my oldest friends, but he’s got a passion for perjury. Just like a lawyer. They hear so many lies, they don’t know the truth when they see it.’

  Ronny maintained that his story was literally true, and the grey-haired man began to summarize the law of evidence.

  ‘Not worth listening to,’ said Mrs Fannay-Brown, and from a table at her side took a small flower-painted black vase. ‘K’ang-hsi,’ she said. ‘Lovely piece. Take any interest in porcelain? Ought to, when you’re in China. Let you have this cheap. Far too much stuff in the house, don’t know what to do with it all. Three hundred dollars, if you like it. Don’t want to press you, but it’s a bargain if you want it. Pictures, too. Lots of pictures. Good heavens, is Edward still talking?’

  With the manner of one who puts an unanswerable point, the grey-haired man declared, ‘The whole story is fantastic. I can believe, though not readily, in the devotion despite ill-treatment of one woman to a man. But the devotion of three women I cannot and will not credit.’

  Ronny looked sulky, and helped himself to another drink. A brown-faced handsome girl, who had been introduced as Harriet, said cheerfully, ‘I wish I could meet a man who’d the ability to make three good girls happy.’

  ‘Concurrently or successively?’ asked Mr Fannay-Brown with an ingratiating flash of his artificial teeth.

  ‘Dicky’s getting fresh,’ exclaimed Mrs Fannay-Brown. ‘Always have been ambitious, haven’t you? But he’s too good-natured, really. Anyway, sauce for the gander’s sauce for the goose. Equal rights nowadays. Equal rights have given women equal opportunities.’

  ‘Do you believe that, Mr Motley?’ asked the handsome girl. She had a mole like a beauty-spot at the corner of her right eye, and well-cut humorous lips, as red as rowan-berries against the brown of her cheeks.

  ‘Indeed I don’t,’ said Juan.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Fannay-Brown decisively. ‘Don’t want to shock you, I don’t want to shock anybody – you never know with a stranger, especially colonials – but if civilization has done anything at all, it’s made the world safe for adultery.’

  ‘Only for a man,’ said Juan. ‘Infidelity’s a natural condition for a man, but for a woman it’s artistically unsound.’

  ‘The fellow thinks he’s being funny,’ muttered Ronny.

  ‘Not so loud, dear,’ said Mrs Fannay-Brown.

  ‘Surely propriety is an aesthetic term,’ said Juan, looking at the brown-faced handsome girl to whom he felt greatly drawn, ‘and male polygamy is like surrounding a teapot with six tea-cups, which is a natural and desirable arrangement. But female promiscuity is like a tea-cup with six teapots, which is both absurd and unsuitable.’

  ‘A very happy illustration,’ said the grey-haired man.

  ‘Naughty, very naughty indeed,’ said Mrs Fannay-Brown. ‘Very broad-minded for a colonial.’

  ‘It isn’t funny,’ said Ronny.

  ‘Hush, dear!’

  Juan sat down beside the brown-faced girl, whose eyes were seagull grey and whose hair grew pleasantly to a widow’s peak.

  ‘You’re being a success,’ she said. ‘Beatrice likes being contradicted. She talks so much herself that the sound of anyone else’s voice is a positive thrill to her.’

  ‘What are your favourite sensations?’

  ‘Do you think I’m going to tell you that on one sherry?’

  ‘Let me get you another.’

  Like a sunflower over a garden wall, the bright gold hair of Mrs Fannay-Brown impended upon them.

  ‘Dear Harriet,’ she said. ‘How well you’re looking. Terribly pale and drawn the last time I saw you, but you’re simply à peindre to-night. A little plumper, too, aren’t you? As soon as I saw you I said to myself, “Something’s happened to Harriet. She’s having an affair!” – One of these modern girls, Mr Motley. They’re always having affairs, one after another, can’t enjoy them properly, but still they go on. – Tell me, was I right?’

  ‘No,’ said Harriet, ‘I’ve been taking calcium, that’s all.’

  ‘Very disappointing. I hoped you were going to tell me all about it. – Never take medicine myself. Always healthy. Sound as a bell, though I’m grey as a skate if I didn’t dye it. – Are you interested in modern painting, Mr Motley? I’ll show you some of our pictures, if you are.’

  She led him towards a strange, pale, hybrid sort of painting. ‘Nice, isn’t it? Done by one of the younger Chinese artists. Such an unhappy boy, you can see it, can’t you. And terribly self-conscious. I only bought it to please him, let you have it very cheap if you care for it. He’s impotent, poor thing.’

  Juan looked at the pale grey nude. A very uncomfortable nude, neither Chinese in appearance nor wholly European, but rather like a report on nudity by a Committee of the League of Nations. ‘I don’t like the way her thighs have collapsed,’ he said.

  ‘So they have, never thought of it before. Well, you don’t want that, of course, though it would do for a present to someone. But it’s too depressing to keep if you look at it that way.’

  There were numerous pictures in the room, of flowers, and ponies, and bathing parties, and objects or events not very easy to recognize. Some were modern, some conventional, and some had fallen between two schools. There was also an abundance of pots, bowls, statuettes, rams’ heads, masks, and bells, in bronze, brass, ivory, porcelain, and terracotta; together with a great disarray of books and expensively illustrated magazines and geometrically patterned carpets. If Mrs Fannay Brown intended to show him all her treasures, he must husband his critical resources, thought Juan. But her attention was not wholly set on art. She kept one eye on her guests, and suddenly leaving Juan before a good painstaking drawing of a polo pony, she hurried away to greet a new arrival.

  Then she returned and loudly exclaimed, ‘Tiresome man, but lots of money. Sold him a piece of famille verte the other day. You mustn’t mind Ronny. He’s a nice boy, devoted to me, but quite silly. That’s probably the reason.’

  ‘I haven’t been rude to him, have I?’ asked Juan.

  ‘Of course you haven’t. The other way about. But he’s furiously jealous, can’t bear to see me with anybody else, though heaven knows I’m not that sort of a woman. Too old for it even if I were.’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better go away. I’ll go and talk to Harriet, shall I?’

  Mrs Fannay-Brown laid a hand on his sleeve. ‘Don’t be silly. There’s lots of things I want to show you, and it’s good for Ronny to be neglected. Nothing like neglect for a silly young man. Teach him to think. Come and look at this ram’s head.’

  Before they could leave the drawing of the polo pony, however, a loud genial voice in Juan’s ear exclaimed, ‘A lovely pony that. Beautiful manners, and fast as a flash. And she knew as much about the game as I do. More, in fact. Yes, more, poor old girl. But she crossed her legs one day, and came a fearful purler. Had to be shot, poor old Molly.’

  ‘Poor old Molly,’ repeated Mrs Fannay-Brown. ‘Always trust Dicky about a pony. Best judge in Shanghai, aren’t you, Dicky? Go and get Mr Motley a drink.’

  ‘I’ve just brought him this. Now don’t forget about Sunday, Motley. The Japs have been very decent, and definitely agreed to an armistice. So that’s all right. And you’re riding a pony called Chang. A China pony, of course, but better-looking than most of them, and a good deal faster. He knows the ground, too, and he’ll go all day if you want him to. I don’t know how lon
g you’re staying in Shanghai, but if you’re thinking of buying a pony, you couldn’t do much better than Chang. But it’s too early to talk about that, of course. Come and ride him first, and see what you think of him.’

  ‘Never thinks of anything but horses,’ said Mrs Fannay-Brown as her husband turned away. ‘Ought to bore me by rights, but he doesn’t. Marvellous thing, love – call it love if you like, but it simply becomes a habit, doesn’t it? Still, there you are. When he was ill last year I read Jorrocks to him for a month. Can’t go farther than that, can you?’

  ‘Do you ride too?’

  ‘Good heavens, yes. Ridden since I was a child. Too old now, though. I get left in the lurch. Pots and vases more in my line now. But every-thing I see, get tired of it, and sell at half-price. Take that sang-de-bœuf jug if you don’t believe me. Six hundred dollars, and then ask a dealer what he thinks of it. He’ll give you eight-fifty on the spot. Not if you don’t want it, of course. Harriet’s a nice girl, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, I like her very much.’

  ‘Normal, thank God. You never know nowadays. Look at that girl beside her. Pretty as paint and not a bit of use to anyone. I suggested psycho-analysis to her once, but she wouldn’t hear of it, so I suppose the trouble’s deep-seated.’

  ‘She looks perfectly healthy.’

  ‘Makes it all the worse for her, doesn’t it?’ said Mrs Fannay-Brown in a voice that showed she was losing interest in the subject. She looked round, in a rather puzzled way, at the other guests. ‘Now I wonder where Ronny is? I won’t be surprised if he’s taken a pique and gone home. Just the sort of thing he’d do. He wants to take photographs of naked girls, but he hasn’t the nerve to ask them, so he dances attendance on an old woman like me because I sympathize with him. Lots of trouble myself, when I was young. Silly, isn’t it? He’s got three different cameras, just in case, but he’ll never use them.’

  Juan caught Harriet’s eye, smiled, and was gratified by her indulgent smile.

  ‘But you must come and see my Nail,’ said Mrs Fannay-Brown excitedly. ‘Most interesting thing I’ve got. Some people like it, others hate it, but no one’s ever indifferent. You’ll have to come to my own sitting-room.’

  ‘To see your…?’

  ‘My Näfl. Austrian, of course. I got it in Vienna. Don’t you knowr his work?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. No, I’m afraid I don’t. It’s well known, is it? I mean he is, is he?’

  ‘Not so well as he’s going to be,’ said Mrs Fannay-Brown, and with dangerous leapings of her rope of jade, led the way.

  Her sitting-room was an extravagant pink flaccidity of cushions and drapery on pale gold furniture, at which her mauve dress shouted defiance. ‘We’re right away from the rest of the house here,’ she said. Just like a hermitage, or a monk’s cell. You’ve got to have privacy, haven’t you? Horrible thing to be married and live in a small house. All very well to sleep with a man, especially when you’re young, but you don’t want to sit about with him all day.’

  ‘Privacy…’ began Juan.

  ‘You’re going to say it’s a luxury. Of course it is, the poor can’t afford it, but the poor don’t need it. They’ve lots of work and the Kingdom of Heaven. Tired out by the one, believe in the other, shilling on a horse, and Saturday night at the pictures. Not nearly so bad as it used to be.’

  ‘I was going to say that privacy’s like a diving-board: you shouldn’t stay on it too long.’

  ‘You’re perfectly right. Plunge right into everything, that’s always what I’ve done. The deeper you go, the quicker you come up. There’s nothing in life except what you bring to it, and if you spend all you have…’

  ‘You must live on charity.’

  ‘Now you’re just being obstructionary. A clever remark, but it doesn’t mean anything. You’re trying to put me off and keep me talking because you don’t want to buy my Näfl. I knew you wouldn’t, nobody ever does. But take a look at it, and tell me what you think of it. Jeune Femme Assise, it’s called.’

  It stood on an easel beside an escritoire of tulip-wood with ormolu mountings. It offered, apart from its strictly aesthetic qualities, an unusual view of a young woman. The artist had apparently executed it underneath a cane-bottomed chair on which his model was sitting. Such features as were visible to him in that position he had painted with academical fidelity, and the others, such as eyes, ears, and breasts, he had collected, without reference to their anatomical position, in the upper left hand corner of the picture.

  ‘Yes,’ said Juan reflectively, ‘I think I see what he means.’

  Mrs Fannay-Brown narrowed her eyes and stared hard at the picture. ‘Well, it’s more than I do,’ she said. ‘All I know is that it’s good. Balance, colour, design, drawing, form: everything’s good, but hanged if I see any meaning to it. You’re not a critic, you’re a thought-reader.’

  ‘I’m perfectly certain that you’re not.’

  ‘Now what do you mean by that?’

  ‘At the moment I think there’s someone in that other room.’

  ‘In there? Nonsense, that’s my bedroom.’

  ‘A servant, perhaps.’

  Mrs Fannay-Brown opened the door into a rose-red bedroom, and discovered against that glowing hinterland a pale and agitated young man.

  ‘Now really!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is too much, this is definitely going too far. Heaven knows I’m broad-minded, and ‘I’ve listened to your repressions time and again, and told you what to do about them. But this is unbearable, quite unbearable, Ronny. My privacy, my feelings, my bedroom – all outraged, grossly outraged, and just when Mr Motley had refused to buy my Näfl but was certainly going to buy a bit of famille rose or peach-blow or something of the kind. I don’t know what to say!’

  ‘I wanted to brush my hair,’ muttered Ronny.

  ‘There’s a hair-brush in the cloakroom downstairs, as you know perfectly well.’

  ‘I don’t like that one.’

  ‘I dare say you don’t, it’s a disgusting brush and ought to have been thrown away years ago, but you could have put up with it for once. This silly behaviour, this childish jealousy, I shall never forgive. Now go in again and sit down and be quiet.’

  Ronny stood sulky and stubborn, and Mrs Fanny-Brown indignantly closed the door against him. Then, largely and theatrically, she exclaimed, ‘Pique! Pure pique, I knew it. All conies of brooding over his photography. I do a lot of brooding myself, but not about that kind of thing. Isn’t that a lovely piece? Hawthorn ginger-jar, best thing I’ve got, worth a mint of money. You couldn’t possibly afford it, and I’m not going to sell it anyway. But here’s a nice little piece, paper-weight or something of the sort, tea-dust glaze. Pretty, isn’t it? Let you have that for thirty dollars, simply giving it away. Here, put it in your pocket.’

  Juan, incapable of further resistance, meekly gave her three ten-dollar notes, which Mrs Fannay-Brown threw carelessly on to a table. Then she said, ‘Now run along and leave me to deal with Ronny. I’m going to talk to him like a Dutch uncle, Dutch aunty, something of the sort. Lots of unpleasant relations in the world, aren’t there? So glad to have seen you, you must come again. I’ve plenty of things to show you, Ming, Sung, pictures, anything you like. Oh, wait a minute. How did you guess that Romiy was in my bedroom?’

  ‘He breathes rather loudly.’

  ‘So he does, poor boy. So used to it I never noticed. Adenoids, of course. Common in Scotland. That’s the worst of Edinburgh. East winds, draughts, cold houses, no comfort, kilts, all that kind of thing. Tonsils and adenoids, can’t escape them. Poor fellow, perhaps it isn’t his fault after all. Well, good-bye, do come back.’

  Juan made an inconspicuous return to the L-shaped room – its shape facilitated an unseen entrance – and was presently talking to the brown-faced Harriet.

  ‘So you’ve escaped?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve been dismissed. I stopped to see if you would come with me.’

  ‘I don’t know. Have you bought anyth
ing from Beatrice?’

  ‘A paper-weight.’

  ‘You’ve got off lightly.’

  ‘I’m generally lucky.’

  ‘Do you think that’s a recommendation?’

  ‘No, just boasting.’

  ‘Where’s Beatrice now?’

  ‘Rebuking Ronny, who turns out to be a cousin of the de Trops. But I must speak to Fannay-Brown before we go. I shan’t be a minute.’

  Juan wanted to know where the paper-chasers were to meet, and how he could get there. Fannay-Brown, as cordial as ever, immediately offered to pick him up at the Club and drive him out.

  ‘No trouble at all,’ he said. ‘Only too glad you’re coming. And I can promise you a thoroughly good ride on Chang. A grand-going pony, I wish I was riding him myself. If you’re not in the first four home, I’ll eat my boots and spurs. On Sunday morning, then, at eleven o’clock.’

  An hour later, after drinking a Martini or two in the lounge of the New Celestial Hotel, Harriet consented to dine with Juan.

  ‘That’s splendid,’ he said, ‘but don’t let me talk too much. I’ve been talking rather a lot already, haven’t I? I’m still rather excited, and sometimes, in such a mood, I’m inclined to be a trifle verbose.’

  ‘What are you excited about? Beatrice’s bargains?’

  ‘No, I’ve recovered from that. But I shot a man last night. I was in Chapei, and we were attacked by gangsters. I shot one of them in the chest, and wounded a couple of others.’

  ‘And you have blood on your conscience?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but I’ve got this curious feeling of excitement.’

  ‘Oh dear. Do you want to get drunk?’

  ‘No, not a bit.’

  ‘Well, take your mind off homicide, it never did anyone any good to think about it. After all, there have been thousands of people killed in the last few days; one or two more can’t matter very much. What were you doing in Chapei?’