by Ann Bridge
She did at last remember tea and the singing-practice with Joanna. She lost her way several times among the thuja-filled enclosures, the innumerable doors in endless red walls; she was breathless when at last she found herself again by the moat, and ran like a deer down the avenue. Thank goodness, the little door into the court before the great gateway was still open! Back down the paved roadway she sped, the police making no trouble about her exit, and jumped into the first ricksha she met. Borne along in the glowing afternoon light, in turns she was horrified to think of her lateness, and exulted in the wonders of her afternoon. Lovely, incredible places. She must find out exactly what they all were. Good heavens, it was half-past five! And she had no change at all. At the Legation gate she jumped out. She must get some from Jamieson or someone. Darting through the low ugly archway, followed by the protesting coolie trailing his ricksha, she ran slap into Rupert Benenden. “Hullo! What on earth’s the matter?” he asked, as the girl recoiled and apologised.
“Give me fifty cents, quick, will you?” said Amber.
Chapter Eight
“WHAT have you been doing?” Benenden asked, when he had paid off the ricksha. He had taken in at one glance the girl’s starriness of eye, quick breathing, and general air of being fresh from some emotional encounter; for a moment he wondered if she could have come from a rendezvous—he knew that vibrant look in women.
“Oh, in heaven! But I must fly—I’m going out with Mrs. G.-H., and I’m fearfully late,” Amber breathed.
“Joanna went out three-quarters of an hour ago,” said Rupert repressively, “so it’s no good your hurrying. You’d much better come in and have a cup of tea with me. Come on. They had it early at the Erh-ch’in-ch’ai’s.”
“Oh. Thank you. Yes. Was she worried?” Amber asked as they walked along towards Rupert’s house: he observed that she was still thinking mainly about Joanna, and not in the least about coming to tea with him, which increased his curiosity.
“She rang up the Leicesters, but she wasn’t really worrying. She doesn’t unless it’s Nugent or the children,” he said. “In here—now sit down and tell me where you’ve been.”
“Oh, what a lovely room!” said Amber.
“Yes. You haven’t been here before, have you?” said Rupert as he rang the bell; he was pleased with her exclamation.
It was a lovely room. The walls were covered with rice-paper of the colour of pale parchment, the furniture with tribute silk of a slightly deeper shade: on the floor was an old Chinese carpet in tones of blue and yellow and pale fawn. There were cool blue and yellow cushions on the chairs and sofas, and four bronze pictures on the pale walls, but nothing else. In this clear monotony of colour the abundant flowers and books glowed with sudden significance. It was all very thought-out, very perfect; quite different to Hawtrey’s rather miscellaneous surroundings—a poet’s room, Amber thought, looking back after her survey of it to its owner. The room fitted her theory of the poet better than Benenden himself. He was sunk into a deep chair, his hair rumpled and his coat collar half turned up as usual—he was watching her with those light intense eyes of his, curiously, quizzically. “Where have you been?” he asked her again.
“That’s just what I want someone to tell me!” she burst out. “Have you got a map or a guide-book or anything?”
“There are no guide-books to Peking: there are maps in Juliet Bredon. But tell me where you went—this is Indian tea, by the way: do you mind?”
“No.” Amber’s tone dismissed the tea. She began to recount her adventures of the afternoon to Rupert: she had to tell them to someone, and he was there, so he got the full recoil of the explosion, so to speak, made by the Forbidden City in her unexpecting mind. Out it poured, in a flood—the pleasure-dome above, the moat, the ancient greenery, the caves of ice, the water vanishing underground. “It’s all there!” she said at length, gazing at Benenden with large astonished grey eyes. “How the man could have written it all up like that, without even seeing it, I can’t imagine. Someone must have been here and told him. Or was Coleridge ever here?”
“It was a dream,” he reminded her. “Don’t you remember, he started to write it when he woke up, and they interrupted him because a person from Porlock had called to see him—and when he got back to his study he’d forgotten the rest.”
“Damn the person from Porlock!” said Amber with energy. She mused, her chin cupped in her hand, staring in front of her. Benenden watched her. He was struck, as Nugent had been, with the vividness of her seeing, and the sureness of her insight into the significance of what she saw: still more was he impressed by the very unusual phenomenon of a fashionable young woman being so violently émotionnée by places and buildings. Of course the Forbidden City was enough to émotionner anyone, but most of the young women who came to Peking seemed to take it very coolly. Certainly none of them ever had the enterprise to barge their way in through the dynastic gateway, leaving cards all the way! And recalling her account of this, he gave a little snort of laughter.
“What is it?” Amber asked, looking up.
“I’m wondering who will get all those cards you left on the police,” he said, still laughing. “The Chief Executive, I expect. I’m really rather jealous,” he went on. “I’ve been here two years, and I’ve never found Xanadu. I’ve never even been into that side. Let’s get the map and see what it all is.”
Seated side by side on the sofa, they pored over the map, tracing Amber’s route: Benenden finally decided that the courtyard where she had “fetched up” must be the outer court of the Temple of the Ancestors, where the Memorial Tablets of the Imperial Family were housed. “But that’s the most sacred place of the lot,” he said. “No European has ever been in there except once, in the Boxer time. It’s always most jealously guarded.” He banged his knee. “I must get there!” he said, rumpling his hair. “Do you think you could take me—if we could get in again with your famous cards? Would you remember the way?”
Oh, but they wouldn’t need the cards, Amber told him—she’d found out another way in: and she described how by watching the man with the odd hat she had marked down the route from the bridge.
“My heaven, you are a sportswoman!” Rupert cried. “You ought to be in the gum-shoe brigade! When shall we go? Tomorrow?”
The idea of escorting the poet to a sight he had never seen was a delightful temptation, and Amber longed to say yes. But she held stoutly to her conscientious scrupulousness, and said that no, tomorrow she was riding with Hawtrey.
“Damn Joe! You can ride with him any day! Thursday, then?”
No, not Thursday either. Amber was riding with Mme. de Bulle on Thursday, to try a pony.
“Oh—well; can you spare an hour from the sacrés horses any day this week?” Rupert asked irritably. “And don’t get too much mixed up with Mimi de Bulle—she’s a foul woman. You can’t like her?” he asked, turning brusquely on Amber.
“No, I think she’s frightful,” replied Amber candidly.
“Then why in heaven’s name do you go out with her?”
“Oh well—for one thing, I want to try the pony, and besides, she keeps on asking me,” said Amber.
Benenden looked at her consideringly, his head on one side. “Why are you so amiable?” he asked at length. “There’s no sense in it. The important thing at the beginning of any encounter is to show that you are capable of being disagreeable. You never do that, do you? I’ve watched you. You’re as friendly as a spaniel!” He offered her a cigarette, and lit one himself. “Aren’t you?” he said, in the half-caressing, half-reasonable tone which people use to a nice child.
Amber was rather at a loss. No one had ever talked to her quite like that before; the caressing tone, the fact that he had watched her, the apparent contempt, or nearly that, with which he had done so, brought so many confused and confusing ideas into her mind that for a moment she simply sat, blushing and disconcerted, in the firelight. At last—“I don’t see any harm in being amiable,” she brought out.
His words poured over Amber like an astringent disinfectant—they stung, they almost hurt: he was letting in a cold light on a lot of comfortable preconceptions. She had begun to think Peking a friendly place, this last week or so: her miserable secret consciousness of being diminished and humbled by her mistake about Arthur had found, half consciously, a balm and a tonic in the fact that people seemed to like her, that she was so much in demand. It was beginning to restore her self-respect. And now perhaps it was all a delusion. Her mind flew round her new circle of acquaintances, trying to see if what she had observed matched this new idea. Harry Leicester, determined that she must ride in the Ladies’ Handicap which closed the paper-hunting season, and anxious therefore that she should take Bananas out in the two next drag-hunts, to qualify: Hawtrey with his insistence that she should help him lay his paper-hunt course. Was it all a complete sham? How horrid! Anyhow, she wouldn’t back down, she thought, with a healthy movement of resentment, and quite unaware how plainly her trouble showed in her face, she said stoutly:
“Well, I was brought up to be polite, and I shall ride with Madame de Bulle on Thursday.”
“Well, will you take me into Xanadu on Friday?” Benenden asked.
“Wouldn’t that be rather unnecessarily amiable?” Amber asked, in a chilly tone.
Benenden shouted with amusement. “Oh you darling! Touché! No, you must take me.”
“But why? Why you and not Mimi—Madame de Bulle, I mean, and all the rest?”
“Oh, because I’m quite different. In every way!” he said, leaning a little on the word; he smiled at her, and there was something forcible and engaging about his smile. “Friday, at three?” he asked.
“Very well,” said Amber. She got up to go.
“No—wait a moment: don’t go yet. Look here—you want, don’t you see, to discriminate about people, especially in a place like this, which is full of all sorts and nearly all with axes to grind. There’s not time for everybody, and you want to go for the ones who have got something real inside, who aren’t just façades. You see for yourself that Mimi is frightful—then don’t waste time on her. She’s pretty obvious: but don’t you see the difference between old James, say, and Nugent? The Minister’s a good old thing, but he’s much too fat and comfortable, and too much of a diplomat, to be a real person.”
“But isn’t Mr. Grant-Howard a good deal of a diplomat?” Amber asked, thinking of Nugent in action at some recent dinner-parties.
“Oh Lord, yes, brilliant—but it isn’t his life. His life is”—Benenden paused and blew—“well, ultimate things. Secretly he adores the spiritual graces. Haven’t you got into that side of him at all?”
Amber considered. She remembered little things—their talk about people and places as they looked at Sumatra: the swift illumination on his face on the first morning in Peking, when she mentioned the “forpress.” And slowly—“I’ve seen the shadow of it,” she said. She paused, considering again: she had thought of Hawtrey, and was trying to fit him into this new valuation. “How well do you know Mr. Hawtrey?” she asked at length.
Benenden answered the question in her mind and not the one she uttered aloud.
“Oh, Joe’s a border-line case. When he’s being social he’s barely human!” Amber nodded—it was exactly what she felt.
“The trouble with Joe,” Benenden went on, “is that he values his façade so much—all that eye-glass and ‘dear lady’ business. But he’s pretty shrewd really.” He lit another cigarette. “And as a matter of fact I don’t much believe in all this lady-killing business either. I don’t say he hasn’t had his loves, like everyone else, but fundamentally I think he’s much more simple than he likes to give out.”
“Mrs. Leicester said that,” said Amber.
“Oh, she did, did she? Poor Lydia!” He sighed. Amber wondered why, but catching sight of the clock, which said twenty to seven, she gathered up her gloves and prepared for flight—she had a Chinese lesson at seven.
“I’ll see you back,” Benenden said when she announced this fact. As they walked across the compound and up the drive to the Counsellor’s house, “Don’t you think it’s about time I began to call you Amber?” he said.
“A month? M-m-m. All right,” said Amber.
“Do you reckon it by time?” he asked, peering at her in the dusk—he sounded half irritated and half amused.
“You said it was time!” she protested.
“Yes, but I was reckoning by this afternoon,” said Rupert, departing.
Indoors, she first looked into the drawing-room to see if Joanna had returned. She hadn’t. Then she had better get as much dressing done as possible before Mr. Lin came, and take the first half of him. Mr. Lin was the Chinese teacher provided by Leroy: Amber and Mrs. Grant-Howard shared him, and by great efforts one or other contrived to be with him for quite a fair proportion of the hour which he spent daily at the Counsellor’s house. Amber darted upstairs, bespoke a bath from Burbidge, undressed, whisked into it, whisked out again: she had time to do her hair, but not her face, and slip into a frock, before the Number Two tapped at her door and called “Lin Hsien-hsieng lai-loh!”
Mr. Lin was round, fat and comfortable: he wore a black sateen robe and velvet slippers, and a little round satin cap. His broad greenish-white face, the planes so delicately flattened that it looked almost like a plate with two eyes in it, was nevertheless sensitive and humorous. He came of an old Manchu family, now fallen on evil days, and was thankful to teach Mandarin to the foreign devils for fifty cents an hour. He spoke no English at all, and Amber and Joanna learned like parrots, repeating phrases after him and copying them down in little note-books. This method was strongly recommended by Leroy as good for the accent, but involved a great deal of pantomime.
Amber came in now, hurriedly, received Mr. Lin’s ceremonious bows and Nin hao’s?—(Are you well?)—said “Nin hao” herself: and taking her copy-book and pencil, settled down to her lesson. Gravely, Mr. Lin began his revision of yesterday’s work. “Wo-ti pi,” he said, touching his pencil. “Waw-dy bee,” repeated Amber, touching hers. “Nin-ti pi,” said Mr. Lin, touching Amber’s pencil. “Nin-dy bee,” repeated Amber, touching his. “Nin-ti pen-tzŭ?” said Mr. Lin, an ivory-coloured finger on her note-book, with a questioning glance. “Waw-dy bendze” said Amber proudly: Mr. Lin beamed. When, encouraged, she indicated Joanna’s note-book and said “Erh-ch’in-ch’ai T’ai-t’ai-dy bendze,” he clapped his beautiful hands and laughed.
But while Amber was repeating the sounds of “bee” and “bendze,” talking about chairs, tables, sofas, clocks and carpets, and scribbling in her book that She-in-garden-flowers-see-not-could, half her mind was back in Benen-den’s pale room, listening to him, trying to clear up her thoughts about him. It was, definitely, fun to be taking him to the Temple of the Ancestors: it marked Friday with a little luminous dot in her mind. Friday—what was Friday in Chinese? Oh yes, li-pai liu. Then there was what he said about Hawtrey. Hardly human!—he was very amusing. That was absolutely true, too. Was it really equally true, all that about not being friendly? Amber wasn’t sure—she had a feeling that there was a catch in this somewhere. She could feel the difference, anyhow, between Sir James and Mr. Grant-Howard. (“I today sitting ocean-cart to Pei-t’ang go” repeated Amber, and wrote down this very peculiar description of her ride to the Leicesters’ in the ricksha.) That about his adoring the spiritual graces was frightfully interesting. She tried to think exactly what the spiritual graces were. It stuck in her mind that in the little books she used to read when she was confirmed humility was always referred to as one of the main spiritual graces. Humility?—Mr. Grant-Howard? She thought of him—busy, learned, ironic; suave in need, caustic by choice—a
nd yet—yes, she thought she saw what Rupert meant, and might meet it in time.
Joanna came in at this point, very glittering in a silver frock, very perfect and complete as to face and hair. Amber rose and said she would go and finish dressing. “Right—can I have your book? Oh, and Amber”—Joanna called her Amber now—“tell Nugent, will you, that that wretched Leopardi has failed tonight, but I’ve got Rupert instead? The silly idiot cut his head open out riding.” (Amber realised that the unhappy Leopardi was the silly idiot.) “And change that one name-card, will you, on the table and on the plan? The rest can stay—you’ll be on one side of him and Señor Parados the other: perfectly all right.” Amber was aware of a little tiny puff of pleasure, like the half-caught scent of a flower, at the thought of seeing Benenden again so soon; as she left the room she heard Joanna’s voice saying “Wo-ti pi.”
She changed the cards, then went to Nugent’s study to give the message. As she opened the door she heard voices in discussion, and there were Nugent and Rupert.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” Amber began.
“Come in—it’s all right, we’ve finished,” said Nugent amiably. “You’ll take that back then, Rupert, and give it to Joe to be typed, and we’ll let Himself have it tomorrow morning. Well, Mademoiselle, what can we do for you?”
