Mr Fong translated, as ever, adding those words of explanation that were necessary.
“The lord believes that you should go, Mr Jackson, for some few years. Eventually, when the state of affairs in Canton has changed, you should return to establish a new set of warehouses here. For the while, you should betake yourself to Bombay where you will make proper arrangements for the lord. It seems to the lord, in his wisdom, that he should send a son to Bombay and another to London, both with some of his money, to arrange the purchases of those few goods which are necessary to the well-being of the Chinese people. It will be wise to place gwailos in a position which shows them to be in command, as one might say, the Chinese to be servants in appearance. To do this will require a gentleman and some sagacity and knowledge of China.”
I turned to the lord and knelt and bowed, signifying that I understood his orders.
You will note I did not offer obedience to his command – I would not suggest the possibility that I might even consider disobedience. I was far too much attached to my head to offer the least appearance of disloyalty.
“There will be a reward for your services, Mr Jackson.”
I bowed again.
“When must I go, Mr Fong?”
“In a few weeks, Mr Jackson. All must be made ready first.”
Thinking on the matter, after I had left the presence, I had no objection to leaving Canton for the while. The life was rich but lonely and I would enjoy Bombay society the more for having been distant from it for a few years.
The shroff also approved of my going away. I suspect that I had interfered just a little in his personal money-making. He was not a great thief, that I was certain of; equally a man in his position could not be simon-pure honest – it was not natural to expect that. The shroff had a fortune to make and I had no great wish to continue to stand in its way – I might be removed, permanently.
This is not to say that the shroff was in any way unfriendly to me. I did not doubt that he would much regret the necessity of having my throat cut.
I was starting to learn Chinese ways, belatedly, you might say. I sat down with tea and a glass of gin and water to think, to use my sense to discover exactly why I was being sent to Bombay.
The first assumption was that Mr Fong’s lord had told me the truth - a small part of the truth buried under an awful lot of deception. I had first of all to decide which was which.
‘Sending a son to London’ to set up as a merchant – that sounded unlikely. Of all the people the lord might trust with possibly millions of his money, a son would be low down the list. The son’s main concern would be his inheritance, and rules of primogeniture did not apply; a son in London who suspected he might be out of line to inherit would grab every tael he could lay his hands on and disappear. The young man would have to travel no further than Bristol or Liverpool to be effectively invisible in England.
Any son sent overseas would be no more than a figurehead, real power residing in one of his apparent underlings, a man who owed everything to the lord. I would be acting as the false face for a man of straw, which might not be the easiest of positions to hold. The enterprise would need an Englishman as apparent owner, so I might be expected to deceive the son myself while answering to the real man of power.
Difficult!
I smiled and arranged for my bags to be packed and conferred with the shroff and made a public display of a young man who was returning to a more congenial posting, which I was.
Mr Fong arrived after a few days and told me that I was to take passage on the outward convoy, my cabin booked for me and of the very best. I would have a train of servants who would include the lord’s third son, who was bound for Bombay, and his fourth, a most intelligent young man who was to go to London.
“How will he reach London, Mr Fong?”
“He will take passage to Persia, already arranged, and from there he will follow the overland route to Stamboul. It would have been better to send him down the Silk Road but there is war in the western provinces of China and merchants are not travelling this year, and probably not for the next several.”
I assumed a grave face and assured Mr Fong of my silence. I would not mention that the Silk Road was closed and that merchants selling into Persia from Bombay could make a profit on its back. I was lying, of course, but that was expected of me.
“The Levant Convoy will bring the young gentleman to London from Stamboul, openly. It is not uncommon for gentleman traders from the Orient to travel to London to remain for a few months. A sojourn of some years will go unnoticed. He will make contact with the Honourable East India Company at Leadenhall and there present a number of Bills drawn upon the Company which will provide him with the cash he requires.”
That was entirely reasonable, provided the Company had the cash to hand, which it likely would.
“What of the third son, Mr Fong? Am I to set him up in his own offices in Bombay?”
“He will sit as a clerk in your offices, Mr Jackson. There will also be another gentleman, fluent in English, who will perform many of the trading functions of the hong. Again, there will be Bills to meet his costs, and yours in setting up the offices. Mr Ainslie will be informed of your activities and will support them.”
That seemed good to me.
“You will continue to receive a small percentage on the sales of foreign mud, Mr Jackson, and will not need to trade on your own account as a result. Arrangements have been made for your existing fortune to be transferred to accounts in Bombay. You will be told of them when you arrive. For the meanwhile, your household here will be catered for at no expense to you.”
I obeyed. I had been bought and must deliver myself.
Three weeks later I boarded the Indiaman, Shoreham Castle, a ship of the larger class and settled myself into her greatest cabin, Fred at my shoulder. There was a bag awaiting me, sat on the table in the tiny private lounging area curtained off from the bedspace. I wondered what it was doing there and made to lift it down. Damned near ruptured myself!
There was more than a hundred pounds weight in pagodas; pretty, almost pure soft gold coins. I sat counting on my fingers and made eight thousand guineas, more or less. It was a small fortune in its own right.
Mr Fong knocked on my cabin door.
“I am come to bid you farewell, Mr Jackson. My lord has sent a token of his esteem, as you will have discovered. May I have the pleasure of saying that I look forward to the day when you will return to us, Mr Jackson?”
“It will be my pleasure too, Mr Fong.”
We exchanged bows and he left. I realised as he went that he had become a friend, one of the very few I had known. I hoped he felt the same for me.
Having the most expensive cabin, I was by definition doyen of the passengers for that voyage – far too young for the status and insufficiently senior. I did not belong to one of the greatest hongs nor yet to the Company, but it was whispered that I had control of the opium trade, that all foreign mud passed through my metaphorical hands. That implied that I had influence in Canton, that I was well in with the Chinese, which made me not so far from being a traitor in some eyes.
It was mainly the Company’s people who had doubts about my patriotism. The country traders’ sole loyalty was to gold and they believed I shared that allegiance.
I sat at the captain’s table, at his right hand, and was served immediately after him at every meal except breakfast, which was taken less formally. My wine glass was filled from the captain’s personal bottle, which was expected to be of the best. I remember that the captain – who was commodore of the convoy, senior of all the masters – was on his last voyage. Mr Parkin was to leave the sea when he reached home, to retire to a place in the Company offices in London on a fat salary.
“My twelfth round voyage to Canton, Mr Jackson. Nearly twenty-five years of seafaring for the Company. I first sailed to the Orient in the year ’68, as fifth mate, and worked my way to captain in just six trips.”
I suspected that was an achievement. P
arkin was still in his forties, had been a young man when he had been given his first berth. I made the appropriate noises of amaze.
“Seven years a midshipman with the Navy and then the opportunity to ship with the Company just as soon as I had my commission. I had no friends in the Admiralty, would have been many years seeking promotion if I had stayed. I was lucky in my elder brother marrying that year to the third daughter of one of the Company’s Board.”
I had wondered – places aboard East Indiamen were much prized in the mariner’s world.
“We all need luck if we are to rise in this world, sir. I was fortunate in being brought out to Bombay as a boy.”
“Very true, Mr Jackson. A first stroke of fortune and then years of unremitting toil – the sole means by which a man may advance himself.”
I agreed, very virtuous in public.
‘Unremitting toil’ was hardly the description I would have given to my rise in the world. I had fought occasionally; schemed increasingly as I learned how; kowtowed to my masters unashamedly; lied on occasion, though as rarely as possible; taken sometimes wild risks. None of those attributes amounted to unbroken hard labour. Mostly, it seemed to me, I had enjoyed myself.
I was grossly irresponsible, in fact.
Still am, for that matter. Much to be said for a healthy dose of insouciance, of living for the moment, understanding that tomorrow is just another today. I tried to teach my son, young Fred, that, but it never stuck; forever worrying about the future, poor fellow! Time and again I have told him that the only certainty in life is that one will die, at the correct moment. He seems to think that he can store up life, or avoid the Grim Reaper – one thing I know for sure is impossible.
He also thinks death is important. How can it be? It’s the most commonplace thing on Earth, the one thing that everybody shares!
Where was I? Ah, yes, the good Captain Parkin who was working round, subtly, he thought, to discovering exactly who or what I was.
“I believe ye work with Mr Ainslie, Mr Jackson?”
“I do, Captain Parkin. I have the privilege of being in that good man’s confidence. I have been able also to perform one or two commissions for the Company as well as being to an extent a protégé of a nobleman of Canton who has entrusted me with the performance of a few of his errands.”
A man who had been in and out of Canton for a quarter of a century must know exactly what I was saying there.
“Ah! That perhaps explains much, Mr Jackson. Few of us are so very lucky as to reach such an eminence in the Trade – though it is not without its hazards, I believe.”
Evidently he knew of the Triads and of the absolute nature of their confidence.
I smiled and nodded, unwilling to discuss the topic. He hurried to change to a different tack.
“I was told that you had a run-in with some of the Pirate Fleets, Mr Jackson?”
“I was so unfortunate, certainly, Captain Parkin. I was lucky in the first instance to fall in with the convoy en route to Canton, and then my lord in Canton was able to extend his protection to me. I believe there are now only two fleets to be found in the waters off the Pearl River.”
And that told him precisely how powerful my Chinese acquaintance was. It also informed him that I was still, and always would be, obligated to that gentleman. Slightly more subtly it made clear as well that any man or authority that trod on my toes would be well advised to shut up shop in Canton.
“Rare, Mr Jackson, that any gwailo should have such good friends.”
“It is, Captain Parkin, but it need not be. Make the attempt to meet the Chinese halfway and one finds them to be the most pragmatic of people. They will do whatever is necessary to advance trade and join us in making a profit. I have found the leading merchants of Canton to be anxious to involve themselves in trade. One must, however, offer the courtesy they expect and in the forms they are used to. I have found that referring to people as ‘yellow, slant-eyed bastards’ one minute and expecting them to be helpful the next does not quite work.”
Captain Parkin nodded thoughtfully. The passenger dining on his other hand showed outraged.
“Mr Jackson! You cannot pretend to say that we should act to the heathen Chinee as if he were our equal! It is plain that God made us their superior and it is little less than blasphemy to say otherwise!”
“That is certainly a point of view, sir. I am sorry, I much regret that we have not been introduced.”
The convoy had sailed from Whampoa only three hours earlier and I had not met the bulk of the passengers. In the nature of things – the Europeans of Canton being few in number – I knew almost all of the other faces in the cabin.
“I am the Reverend Elias Witherspoon, Mr Jackson.”
I bowed my head civilly.
There was a Catholic mission in Macao, naturally, with a number of priests, all of whom I had carefully avoided when staying there in the off-season. I had not been aware of the presence of any of the other sort in Whampoa.
Captain Parkin offered the information, in the most neutral tone, that the Reverend had come from London on the inward convoy and had been encouraged very strongly to make his way to Bombay on the next ship out. The Hoppo had heard of his presence and had instantly given the order; the Company had insisted that he must obey.
I fervently agreed.
“To deny the Hoppo would be unwise, Reverend; to defy the Company would ensure your return to London, quite possibly in chains. One must accept the realities of our existence, sir, one of them being that we number perhaps as few as two thousands, while the Chinese hordes are uncounted but must without doubt be in the hundreds of millions. The Chinese could muster an army greater than the whole population of England. The Company is aware of this fact and insists that we do not cause unnecessary offence to the Chinese.”
“I come with the Word of God, Mr Jackson. Are you to say that is an offence, sir?”
The wise man might have temporised at this point. I have never been able to set wisdom in front of the opportunity to laugh. I smiled my very best.
“Why, Reverend, I am never to set myself up against the Company! The Factors here have evidently decided that you are a cause of dissension and unrest in Canton – and, truly, they cannot be wrong!”
Captain Parkin had been a quarter of a century in the Company’s service; he agreed quite honestly.
“Indeed, Reverend Witherspoon, the Company does not make its judgements lightly. I have never known the Company to be wrong in its policy.”
I had, but felt it was not the time and place to argue.
The Reverend was not pleased. He would not, however, set into argument with a captain – the Master under God of the ship - at his own dining table, knowing that he might easily be banished to his cabin thenceforth for his presumption.
He grunted and addressed himself to his dinner and said no more to me.
I did not object or seek afterwards to heal the rift.
The voyage was long and tedious, but that is the nature of travelling by ship. I shall say no more of it.
Chapter Four
The convoy arrived at Bombay with all of its normal flourishing – flags flying and dipped in salute; guns fired; signals sent to all and sundry; the Navy having fits because its commodore was not granted precedence over the Company’s senior captain by the shore authorities – everything as it always was, invariably.
I took a surf boat to the shore and hopped onto the strand, dry foot; I almost wet myself laughing as the Reverend Witherspoon fell arse over tip trying to disembark from his boat. He had worn his ecclesiastical robes, presumably to lend himself authority vis-à-vis the Company, and now presented all the dignity of a drowned duck.
Amazing how the small pleasures of life remain in one’s memory – after half a century, I can remember that clearly.
The boatmen were in a state of near collapse, laughing so hard and pointing.
My five Chinese servants – all male, it had been a tedious voyage – saw nothing
and proceeded to bring my luggage ashore, their faces determinedly severe; they did not approve of mockery of those in authority.
I spotted Ainslie’s senior man waiting with wagons to unload their cargo from China, such as was consigned to Bombay rather than going directly to London. I caught his eye and he came running across.
“Mr Jackson. I did not know you were to return, sir.”
“No more did I until a few weeks before we sailed when it was too late to send a message. I am in company with some gentlemen from Canton. One of them is to take passage to Bushire, in a Persian ship; the other will remain in my company in Bombay. Mr Ainslie will wish to host them.”
The arrangements were instantly taken out of my hands. Wagons and carriages were called for and messengers were sent running. Inside an hour we were at the Ainslie bungalow and I had taken the man himself quickly apart to explain who was what and why.
“Sons of his lordship, do ye say, Mr Jackson? Who are the real figures among them?”
Give Ainslie his due, he knew exactly what the position was regarding the structures of power in Canton.
“Going to London, the young gentleman with the kindly smile is the son. He will do exactly as he is told by Mr Lee, who stands at his left shoulder. Remaining here, and to be my responsibility, is son Lamqa who has Mr Tung as his ‘assistant’. There are a number of servants and bodyguards as well, as is only natural. Both will be engaged in trade here, as goes without saying. I am to be their mentor in the ways of Bombay – and what that means, I do not know. We are to continue to lead in the opium trade in Canton. The shroff will organise the whole of the legitimate sales; only mud that is run ashore unlawfully will be outside our ken.”
Mr Ainslie achieved a smile at that; profits to the house had been enormous in the last season and he could not but be pleased to hear that was to continue.
“And for you, Mr Jackson? Are you to trade?”
“No, sir. I am not permitted to. I have been given a retainer, one might call it, that cannot amount to less than eight thousand guineas in pagodas and I am to receive a percentage of the opium that is landed overtly. We might, by the way, sir, give some thought to reducing the amount of mud that is slipped into the hands of the true smugglers. The triad loses some amount of control, and of face, while the night runners flourish.”
Foreign Mud Page 5
