The Harbour

by Francesca Brill

  But Madame Kung was no Sleeping Beauty.

  Stevie was quiet during these visits. She watched as Madame Kung held court, listening to villagers’ grievances like an old-time feudal queen. She organised the staff and rewarded relatives and strangers alike with an occasional favouring smile. When the moment came Madame Kung would summon Stevie with a nod of the head and they would sit together. Today it had been on the veranda, and she had allowed Stevie to ask questions. She answered slowly and gave her time to make notes while sipping fragile Lushan Cloud Mountain tea between pronouncements. Her English was idiomatic and the accent faultlessly American. To Stevie’s immense relief, instead of impressing on her yet again the importance of her much-publicised and certainly worthily well-intentioned Chinese Industrial Association, which created job opportunities for women in weaving, sewing and traditional crafts, she was reminiscing about her school days at Wesleyan. Arriving as a fourteen-year-old princess, Ai-Ling had found America strange and terrible and lonely, and she had understood nothing about the loud girls she had landed among: their clothes, their manners, their shrill voices, the disgusting milky drinks, the lack of respect to the adults. Madame Kung shivered delicately as she remembered. Stevie laughed – it wasn’t a million miles from her own experience of American youth. She may not have come so far but it was all pretty much incomprehensible to her too at the time.

  ‘Was there anything you did like about it?’ she asked.

  ‘I liked to dance. “Wait til the sun shines, Nellie”.’

  ‘ “By the light of the silvery moon”.’

  ‘ “Meet me in St Louis”.’

  ‘ “Oh you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll”.’

  And now Madame Kung was on her feet. Stevie took her tiny hand in hers and they were dancing up and down the veranda, ungainly and out of step but laughing. When Stevie ran out of the words Madame Kung hummed the tune and they danced back to their chairs. Releasing her hostess’s hand, Stevie stepped back and gave a little bow of thanks. Madame Kung made a small curtsey and they settled down again, panting a little. Stevie glanced up and saw amazed faces at every window around the courtyard, each of which disappeared back into the cool darkness as she watched.

  ‘My husband is too busy to dance, you know, Miss Steiber.’

  ‘That’s a shame, Madame.’

  ‘It is indeed.’

  It was with a new kind of intimacy that the conversation resumed.

  The gates to the compound swung open later than usual for the journey back to Hong Kong island. The sun was setting over the bay, small birds spun and whirled in the dying light like motes of dust. The two motorbikes swept out first, startling the silence with their roar. Close behind was the low-slung heavy car in which Stevie sat opposite Madame Kung. The smell of leather was pungent and every piece of hardware gleamed. Stevie glanced towards the shore, and was startled to see a car parked on the verge. She was even more startled to see Harry Field and the freckly younger man from the party looking right back at her. Were they following her or Madame Kung? Or both? For a moment she was frozen – a combination of fear and fury. It was one thing for them to be interested in Jishang’s movements, but what business was she of theirs?

  She sat forward and in a bold confrontational gesture she waved at them. Ken was taken aback.

  ‘Did she just wave at us?’

  But Harry, oddly ashamed, looked away.

  Chapter Six

  July 1940

  . . . so, when are you coming home? I had news from my old friend Marguerite, who manages to write despite the air raids and terrible things going on in poor old England. She says she can hardly think for the horror of it. Everybody says the Germans are not behaving too badly in France but I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing the sights of Paris in this life. Jane and Faye tell me you haven’t written to them either. You always were selfish but since there’s a war on and all, you’d think you’d let us know how things are. I guess I’ll have to wait till I read it in the paper. Yours ever, Mother.

  The letter lay in her hands, a pale-blue tissue of recriminations. The phone rang again. Stevie ignored it and after five or so shrills, it stopped.

  She let the letter go and it drifted, a leaf, to the floor. It was incredible how tight the bonds of guilt still were. It really made no difference that she was on the other side of the world from her mother – one tug and the cords were restricting her again. No distance was far enough. She debated starting a reply, even took a step towards the desk where the paper lay waiting, imagining the pleasure on her mother’s face when she opened the mailbox at the edge of the grass at the front of the house and found the pale-blue news. This image was instantly replaced by the sides of her mother’s mouth drooping in disapproval, her eyebrows arched higher than ever in a combination of disappointment and incomprehension. How would it be if Stevie actually wrote the truth of her life? She laughed out loud at the very thought.

  The sound of footsteps running across the parquet floor interrupted her thoughts. Stevie was already on her way towards it when the door to her room was flung open. The letter skittered further over the floor in its wake. Lily, uncharacteristically flustered and clearly distressed, spoke in a rush, the words falling over each other.

  ‘We’ve all got to go. Just like that. How can they do this?’

  In the living room the phone started up again.

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘Away. We’re being evacuated. All of us. Not you. I don’t think it means you. It’s us, the British women and children. What am I going to do? I mean, where will they send us and what about my things?’

  ‘Where did you hear this?’

  Lily sat down on the bed. ‘Susie told me. I was picking up the fabric for my blouse, you know, the one I saw in Vogue, and I bumped into her and she was running home.’

  ‘Where did she hear it?’

  ‘Her boyfriend. The soldier. He said it was a secret but he’d typed out the order and thought she should know.’

  The phone rang on and on. Lily, irritated, got up and went over to it. Stevie tried to stop her.

  ‘Don’t pick up. I know who it is.’

  But the receiver was already in Lily’s hand.

  ‘Yes?’ She glanced across at Stevie. ‘No, she’s still not here, Major Field. I can take another message.’

  Changing her mind and surrendering her unilateral boycott of communication with him, Stevie was across the room in seconds. She grabbed the phone and kept her voice level.

  ‘What’s all this about, anyway? Where have they got to go?’

  Harry’s voice, rich and low, disconcerted her for a moment. ‘Ah. Miss Steiber. At last.’

  ‘Don’t bat your eyelashes at me. What’s all this about an evacuation?’

  ‘Do you by any chance mean the evacuation of British women and children to keep them safe in the unlikely event of a Japanese invasion?’

  ‘Don’t make a joke of this. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Does this imply that the British government is in a state of panic and finally acknowledging the inevitability of the Japanese not respecting a crown colony just because it’s owned by the great Emperor of England and treating it and us in as heinous a manner as they have been treating the poor Chinese?’ She took a breath. ‘Oh and by the way, if you’re spying on me I can spare you the effort. I’m just a lawful citizen going about my lawful business.’

  Harry’s laugh was genuine and also extremely irritating.

  ‘Well?’ she snapped.

  ‘I don’t know how you lawfully came across this classified information and I couldn’t possibly comment on the kind of gossip that suggests there might be evacuation plans for the women and children to go to Australia.’

  ‘Australia?’ Stevie glanced across the room and saw Lily’s eyes widen.

  ‘As I said, I couldn’t possibly comment.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You may be aware that I’ve been trying to contact you and since I’ve finally got thro
ugh, I was wondering whether you might have a moment.’

  Stevie’s resolve not to see him had been fading while they spoke. Now it snapped right back into place. She couldn’t have put into words exactly why, but she knew he was dangerous and, bold though she was in her life, she wasn’t looking for more complications. As far as she was concerned she was only in Hong Kong for a finite period, long enough to finish the book. Then she would be straight back to Shanghai and her real life.

  ‘Sorry. Not a single one.’

  She replaced the receiver just in time to catch Lily as she swayed.

  That week Madame Kung took another extended trip to Chungking to make an appearance at the Chinese Industrial Association and check in on her husband, who was serving a brief tenure as Premier in the Kuomintang government, a token nod towards Western power-sharing before handing the reins back to the all-powerful Chiang Kai-shek. Consequently, Stevie was again left to her own devices in Hong Kong. She felt cut loose. There was no Jishang to walk and talk with, and Lily’s state of anxiety fed into her own. She avoided the Colony’s claustrophobic social events and there were only so many hours she could actually stand to be at her desk. The pressure to make something of the book felt overwhelming. She was constantly tired. An iron-band of pain gripped her head most days and the nightmares had come back. They were the same terrors that had haunted her childhood and she could not shake the memories of shivering on the night-cold linoleum of the hallway during the journey to her parents’ bedroom, only to be rebuffed and sent back to bed alone. Like a virus, they lingered in her system.

  In the end, once she had made the decision, the pain lessened immediately.

  She walked fast and with focus along the narrow strip of pavement by the harbour. The wooden hulls of the junks creaked and groaned as they scraped against each other, a chorus of disapproval. She had not been there since that disastrous night after her first meeting with Madame Kung and she ignored the pangs of guilt at breaking her farewell promise to Jishang. As she stepped on to the first boat she nearly lost her balance. She scrabbled from boat to boat – hell, which one was it? They all looked the same in the overcast daylight. Come on, come on, she thought, driven by the promise of the absolute release that only opium could deliver: the bliss of it, the softening of the world, the fading of boundaries between wakefulness and sleep, the lostness.

  At the beginning the thrill had been tied in with the transgressive nature of her secret life with Jishang. Their mutual passion had to be played out in dark corners and on languid afternoon trips into the countryside. They were hardly the first couple to cross the racial divide but it was inevitably the foreign men with their Chinese girlfriends who paraded through the cocktail bars and dance halls of Shanghai. And she had been tentative about the romance for good reason: apart from anything else he was married. Jishang had assured her that his wife was traditional in her outlook and entirely unconcerned with his life outside the domestic arena. An assurance which she chose to take at face value. As the months passed it became clear that theirs was a connection that transcended the sexual and had become even more precious because of their shared excitement about ideas, so they stepped out into the open. The magazine had been their baby.

  One day Jishang had insisted that they stop at his family home on the way to a meeting. He needed to find a particular book to illustrate a point he intended to make. Stevie had stood awkwardly on the veranda, uncomfortably aware of the sounds of family life coming from inside the pretty house. There was the metallic noise of pans being washed and Billie Holliday scratchily sang ‘Strange Fruit’, giving the afternoon a disturbing tinge. A compact woman in a beautiful navy-blue cheomsang high in the collar, giving her an even longer neck and straighter bearing, had come out of the house and bowed her head before shamelessly looking Stevie up and down. Stevie had instantly realised she must be Jishang’s wife, of whom he spoke with great pride and respect. Feeling slightly panicky, she had shuffled her feet and muttered a greeting.

  Wu Mei’s voice had been suprisingly assured. ‘My husband will not be long.’

  ‘I hope we’re not interrupting you too much.’ Shrinking under the full unblinking gaze of Wu Mei, Stevie blathered on witlessly. ‘We’re on our way to a meeting with the printer. Jishang thinks he doesn’t understand how to set the type to its best advantage.’

  Wu Mei had raised her hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘According to him, no one understands anything quite well enough. He thinks only he can do everything right. Tirseome, no?’

  Stevie nodded, embarrassed and a little afraid to be having this conversation, and wondering whether Mei had any idea who she was or what her relations were with Jishang.

  Wu Mei continued. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, could you please make sure he doesn’t come back until late this evening? We’re having family to stay and I don’t want him getting involved in the arrangements. It will take twice as long.’

  Stevie was so dumbfounded that she laughed. ‘Yes. I’ll do my best.’

  ‘You know, I’m really very grateful to you.’ She was interrupted by a shout from inside the house, and Mei turned to go before glancing back at Stevie and saying, ‘You are skinnier than I thought.’ She was swallowed back into the cool dark of the house and Stevie felt slightly humiliated though she couldn’t work out why. Later, Jishang tried to explain that Mei knew Stevie was no threat to the marriage and would leave in the end, unlike a Chinese girl, who might have ambitions to be the second Mrs Wu. It was yet another opportunity for Stevie to ponder the cultural gap between them. She never completely understood the apparent pragmatism that Wu Mei had applied to her husband’s extra-marital interests but she was grateful that Jishang’s wife had accepted her presence in her family’s life with such singular serenity.

  Jishang’s otherness was a source of complete wonder to her. She could spend hours exploring the creases in his skin. Everything about him seemed miraculous because it was so unfamiliar. When he assured her that his wife considered it practically a compliment to her that he had taken a European lover, she was prepared to accept it. When he paraded her into his own house and sat her in state in the main room while the servants laid out tea and Jishang presented his small children to her – none of this seemed worthy of too much questioning. It was all delightfully picturesque. She was caught in the hazy moral code of an unfamiliar culture and chose to interpret things in her own light. The drug was part of it: the sleazy dens, the opium dreamscapes, the long, long nights.

  And now, alone in Hong Kong, caught up in the fringes of someone else’s war, afraid that she might not be able to do justice to the opportunity the book was giving her, all she wanted was the forgiving forgetfulness of the opium pipe. Just this once, she had told herself, as she put on her jacket and left the apartment. Just this once thrummed in her head as she found the junk with the curtain over its door and pushed it aside.

  Inside the boat a young woman looked up, startled. Her baby lost its grip on her breast. The nipple dripped pale milk and the baby started to wail. The noise echoed wildly in Stevie’s head as she stepped back, dropping the curtain, the wrong curtain.

  As she crossed on to the next boat, Yang slipped out of the cabin. He recognised her instantly.

  ‘Not dead,’ he stated, poker-faced.

  ‘No.’ She saw him twitch, look over his shoulder, he was jumpy. ‘I want to buy.’

  ‘Not possible.’ And he turned to go.

  Stevie, disconcerted by this dismissal, was now desperate. She followed him as he opened the curtain and ducked inside. With one glance she surveyed the gloomy cabin. What she saw made her gasp out loud. She had caught sight of the last man on earth that she’d expect to see there. His head was bent awkwardly under the low roof – what the hell was Harry Field doing there? She was flooded with shame. Both for herself and for him. How could it be that she had got him so wrong? Major Field a fellow opium-smoker? And instead of making her feel complicit and comfortable, the shame redoubled.

  She drop
ped the curtain instantly and stepped away but Harry was on the deck before she got far. His voice held her, angry and contemptuous.

  ‘You’re even more ridiculous than people think you are.’

  Stevie, craven in herself but on the offensive as ever, said, ‘And you? I thought alcohol was more your thing.’

  Harry came close enough to take hold of her elbow. ‘Shut up, you silly, silly girl. And keep walking.’ They walked.

  The restaurant was all bustle and business. Through the window the neon lights glowed noisily. Families crowded around the tables, which were crammed claustrophobically into the impossibly small space. There was a scrum of plates, steam and trolleys of dim-sum.

  Stevie’s back was tight against the corner. Harry had somehow managed to trap her there. Why? In case she tried to run away? His chair was set close to hers at an angle to the small table. His back was to the room and he spoke in a low voice under the clatter of diners.

  ‘You must know how dangerous it is. What were you thinking?’

  ‘Yang sells good stuff, the right colour and not too dry or too sticky.’ Harry’s frown deepened. ‘Don’t look at me like that, I’m not an addict really, you know.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t know.’ His tone was serious and concerned.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Don’t tell me, it’s all right for you, you can handle it.’

  He laughed in surprise. ‘Not my thing at all. Yang is a helpful chap, he has all sorts of interesting things to say, we were catching up. What’s your excuse? To be honest, Miss Steiber, I’m disappointed, I had you down for an intelligent girl.’

  Shame flushed her cheeks and Stevie suddenly felt the need to explain herself. She looked down at her hands and laid them out, fingers spread, on the sticky table. Keeping her head down she shrugged.

  ‘I want to know everything, experience everything.’