Authors: David Downing
“You think people don’t already know? All those Europeans back in Shanghai know perfectly well what sort of life the Chinese have.”
“Perhaps. Look, I don’t know enough about China to argue with you—if my friend Ch’ing-ling were here … but she isn’t. So let’s talk about the States or England. I don’t think most people in our countries have any idea what their rulers are up to, either at home or abroad. For instance, I don’t think many English people would be happy if they knew how Indians are treated by the authorities there.”
McColl was unconvinced. “I don’t think many would care if you presented them with the facts.”
“You have a very low opinion of people.”
“No, I think you overestimate the power of the written word. Just knowing that people are badly treated isn’t enough.” McColl smiled to himself. “A couple of years ago a friend of mine was in New York, waiting for the ship that was supposed to take him home. It was the
Titanic
. When the news reached his hotel that the ship had sunk, other residents booked on the return voyage held a meeting in the lounge. And spent the whole time complaining about how hard it would be to make fresh arrangements.”
“So people are just rotten through and through.”
“Not at all. I’m sure most of those people are kind to their children and servants and pets. But they weren’t actually on the ship, and unless they were close to someone who went down with it … well, it wasn’t real enough for them to actually feel any empathy. For most people, just knowing isn’t enough.”
“Of course. That’s why the best writers are the ones who stir the heart as well as feed the mind.”
“Touché. And are you one of those?”
“Not yet.” She smiled and stood up. “Will you be here again tomorrow?”
“If I’m not racing round the deck.” He couldn’t read her expression. He had, he realized, no clue at all as to what she was feeling.
Jed was sitting with him the following day but quickly gave up his seat when she appeared. McColl introduced them and noticed a new ease in his brother’s manner with the opposite sex. Whatever else the Lotus Flower had given him, it seemed to have cured his chronic shyness with women.
“Is he your only sibling?” she asked once Jed had left.
“Yes,” he said, offering her a cigarette.
“And your parents are still alive?” she asked after they’d both lit up.
“Oh, yes. My father’s an official in the NUR—that’s the main railway union. A dyed-in-the-wool socialist. You and he would find a lot to agree about. Though you’d find his attitude to women something of a problem.”
“And your mother?” she asked, not rising to the bait.
“She used to work part-time. Since they moved to Glasgow, she’s been keeping house for my father and Jed, but sooner or later Jed will move out.”
“What will she do?”
McColl shrugged. “She has friends.”
“That helps.”
“Tell me about your family.”
“Okay. My mother died when I was small, and my Aunt Orla—my father’s sister—more or less took her place. My older brother, Fergus, is a lawyer—he’s very conventional but very kind. My younger brother, Colm, is not much older than yours, and he’s a bit of a rebel. My sister, Finola—she’s two years older than me—she got married last year, and I expect there’s a baby on the way by now. All she’s ever wanted is a family of her own.”
Unlike you, McColl thought. “And your father?”
“He owns a construction business, but other people run it now. They do a lot of work for the city—Brooklyn, that is.”
Her face clouded, and McColl had a glimpse of the girl she’d been.
“He’s … from the old school, I suppose. He likes the old songs, the old ways. The old attitudes to women. If he’d made the family decisions, I’d never have finished high school, let alone gone to Wesleyan. But being from the old school, he went out to earn the money and left Aunt Orla in charge of the home.”
“She never married?”
“Oh, yes. But he died young, younger even than my mother. He left her a little money, and I sometimes wonder what Orla would have done if my mother hadn’t died a few weeks later. The world would have been her oyster, and she was only thirty. But my father asked her to care for his children, and she couldn’t refuse. I don’t think she’s had a bad life—my father made a lot of money, too, and we children all love her. But sometimes I see a particular look in her eyes, and I know she’s wondering what could have been.” She regarded McColl. “I don’t ever want to have that feeling,” she said. And she said it with such quiet force that he bit back the obvious retort, that regrets for roads not taken were the fate of anyone with the least imagination.
By the time the ship left Kobe, he was able to complete a circuit of the deck, albeit with some pain and difficulty. Caitlin had been using most of her waking hours to write up her
impressions of China for several magazines back home, but that afternoon she announced herself almost finished and suggested an evening drink in the oak-paneled smoking room and bar.
The two of them never seemed short of subjects for conversation—or indeed subjects for good-natured argument—and the first time he looked at his watch, he was surprised to find it was almost midnight. They had, he realized, been drinking for several hours.
She had never brought up their evening in Shanghai, which seemed strange only until he realized that he hadn’t either. Perhaps it had been unimportant to her, a brief fling soon forgotten, but he couldn’t really believe that. The more he knew her, the more conflicted she seemed, but he had no idea why. Had she been hurt by someone?
Studying her face through the bar’s haze of smoke, he didn’t think he could stand another three weeks of holding back his feelings, and now seemed as good a time as any for crashing through the ice. “That evening we spent in Shanghai,” he began. “At your friend’s house. I …” He was going to say “enjoyed it,” but that was ridiculous. “It meant something to me,” he managed, which sounded every bit as feeble.
She lowered her eyes for a moment, as if in search of inspiration, and the silence seemed almost tangible. “I like you,” she said eventually. “And I … I liked having sex with you.”
He wanted to ask if that was all, and it must have shown in his face.
“If that were all, I would be wanting more. But I don’t want to fall in love with you. Or with anyone.”
“Why not?” he asked, his heart beating faster at the possibility.
She smiled ruefully. “Where would it go? You’ll be returning to England, or traveling the world selling automobiles. I’ll be in New York City trying to tell people what’s happening to their fellow citizens. We lead such different lives, but even if we didn’t … I don’t want a marriage and a home and a family, not for a long while, if ever.”
She was right, he thought. For herself, she was right.
“Or we could live for the moment,” she murmured. “Enjoy the time we have.”
“We could do that.”
“And when the time comes, part like friends. With no regrets.”
“We could do that, too,” he said, although it was much harder to imagine.
“Are you …?” She searched for the word.
“Firing on all cylinders?”
She laughed. “Something like that. My stateroom’s on this deck. So …”
They walked there arm in arm, stopping to kiss several times on the way. After putting out the Do Not Disturb sign, she helped him undress and winced at the sight of his wound. “I’ll be gentle,” she promised, letting loose her hair.
They spent most of the next two days in her stateroom, emerging only for fresh air and meals. Jed and Mac seemed shocked, envious, and happy for him, and they treated Caitlin with the exaggerated courtesy of characters in a Victorian romance. What they actually thought of her, McColl dreaded to imagine.
Eight days after leaving Shanghai, they docked at Yokohama for a thirty-six-hour layover. Caitlin was staying the night with the exiled Ch’ing-ling, so McColl explored the imperial capital with Jed and Mac, returning early to the ship when he grew tired. They intended to visit the red-light district and sample whatever was to be had.
Next day the ship was due to leave at noon, and McColl was leaning over the rail, keeping an eye out for her, when an official-looking automobile drew up on the quay below and discharged another familiar figure—Rainer von Schön. Ascending the gangplank, the German engineer noticed McColl and waved an acknowledgment. A few moments later, they were shaking hands.
“I heard you had some trouble in Shanghai.”
“You are well informed.”
“It was in the English paper here.”
“Ah, well. Yes, I was attacked with a knife. But as you see, I survived.”
“Who was it?”
“A Chinese. They hadn’t caught him when I left, and I don’t suppose they will. I couldn’t give them much of a description.”
“I see. Well, look, I have to make sure my luggage is aboard. We’ll have plenty of time to talk.”
He hurried away, and McColl turned to see Caitlin ascending the gangplank. Her eyes were scanning the ship, and he realized with a thump of the heart that she was looking for him. Parting as friends would not be easy.
He didn’t see von Schön again until the following morning, when he caught the German’s eye across the crowded dining room. Once Jed and Mac had left for their usual twenty circuits of the promenade deck, von Schön came to claim a vacated seat, just as Caitlin claimed the other.
McColl introduced them.
“So what are you doing in Asia?” Caitlin asked the German.
“I’m a businessman, like my friend Jack here.”
“Are you selling automobiles as well?”
“Nothing as beautiful. Or as substantial. I sell only expertise. I’m an engineer—water filtration—all very boring. I’ve been in Tokyo for ten days, talking with government contractors.”
“Did they buy what you had to sell?” she asked.
“Oh, yes.” He gave McColl a quick glance, as if to ask,
Who is this forward female?
“Any news from Europe?” McColl asked him.
Von Schön’s face dropped. “The only thing the people at my embassy were talking about was the Saverne Affair.”
“The what?” Caitlin asked.
“Saverne is in Alsace, which was part of France before 1870,” McColl told her. “A few months ago, a young German officer insulted the locals—I can’t remember how exactly. But I thought the business was over.”
“Unfortunately not,” von Schön told them. “When the officer had his wrist slapped, the locals mounted protests and his superiors compounded the mistake by overreacting. They arrested hundreds of people, most of them completely innocent. Progressive Germans were enraged, by both the army’s actions and the Kaiser’s refusal to censure the officers concerned.” He brushed a speck off his trouser leg as the Chinese waiter removed some cups from the table. “Things would probably have died down eventually, but then the officer who started it all used his saber on a shoemaker who laughed at him, and the whole thing took off again. There were protests by the left all across Germany, and the Reichstag passed a vote of no confidence in the government, the first time it had ever done so.”
Von Schön shook his head and looked hopefully out at the ocean, as if its size might dwarf his concerns. “And there we have the rub,” he went on, “as your Shakespeare would say. Because nothing happened. The Kaiser and the army just carried on as if the Reichstag were completely irrelevant. The young officer’s superiors, the ones who overreacted so stupidly at the start, are up in court next week, and everyone knows that they’ll be exonerated. The military have come out of this stronger than ever, the Reichstag considerably weaker. All of which is bad news for Germany.”
“And for the world,” McColl muttered.
“You remember our discussion in Tsingtau, I see. You are right. For the world as well.”
For the next nine days, the
Manchuria
plowed south and east across the Pacific, heaving gray seas slowly giving way to a calmer blue as the ship crossed into the tropics. Jed and Mac
made the most of the entertainment on offer, swimming in the saltwater tanks, tossing quoits and paddling pucks on deck, dancing to the Filipino band. Mac inveigled his way into one of the ship’s illicit poker games, and, left to his own devices, Jed trailed hopelessly after the golden-haired daughter of an American missionary, whose innocent eyes seemed so worthy of rescue.
By this time McColl was able to walk the ten circuits that made up a mile without too much discomfort, but the steps and staircases still hindered his movement between decks, and he spent many hours sitting in the communal areas, either alone or with von Schön. The German seemed happier with him than with his few fellow nationals, all of whom were older and probably more conservative. The two of them shared their enthusiasm for automobiles and airplanes and other wonders of the modern world, and talked about their pasts. Von Schön often spoke of his wife and two young children back in Stuttgart, whom he hadn’t seen for almost six months. He liked his work, he said, but he didn’t know how long he could cope with all the traveling. McColl, he assumed, was not married.
No, McColl lied. Not because he minded von Schön’s knowing, but because he feared that Caitlin might find out. He and Evelyn had been divorced for years, but he feared how it would look, particularly as he still worked for Evelyn’s brother.
Most of his time was spent with Caitlin. When they weren’t eating three-course meals in the ship restaurant, sleeping, or making love, they were talking—on deck, over drinks, lying replete in each other’s arms. They talked about the other passengers: the English couple who couldn’t stop apologizing to each other, the elderly American husband whose every attempt to placate his wife seemed to enrage her more, the spinster from Oregon who had a kind word for everyone despite her obvious sufferings from old age and arthritis. They talked about politics, with him doing most of the listening. She had a long list of heroines, and he found to his surprise—and not a little shame—that
he recognized few of the names. Sylvia Pankhurst he knew of, but Alice Paul, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Margaret Sanger? They were all American “feminists”—even the word was new to him—but each in a different field. Paul was a suffragette leader, Gilman a writer and reformer, Gurley Flynn one of the labor leaders in the Lawrence and Paterson strikes. Margaret Sanger worked in the New York slums Caitlin had written about, defying the law and convention by handing out advice on female contraception. As he listened to Caitlin talk about these women, he felt a bewildering mixture of emotions—envy of her certainties, shared excitement, fear of the distance between them.