By Eastern windows (23 page)

She had risen at daybreak and packed all her clothes and trunks herself, leaving Marianne with nothing to do but keep George Jarvis company as he ran on deck, staring in wild excitement at the packed and busy harbour of Macao. Bappoo stood behind them, reprimanding them severely for their unruly noise, whilst trying himself not to jiggle with excitement.

‘Bappoo – why all boats have eyes painted on front?’ asked George Jarvis.

Bappoo didn't know. All three stared at the hundreds of small Chinese junks tossing about in Macao harbour with a large eye painted on each side of their bow.

‘Why all boats have eyes painted on front,’ Captain-Sahib?’ George asked later when Lachlan came on deck.

Lachlan didn't know either, but he came up with a possibility. ‘So the boats can see where they are going?’

‘Yes, by God, by Jove!’ Bappoo cried exultantly. ‘That is what!’ And George Jarvis let out another shout of delighted laughter - Bappoo knew nothing, but Lachlan-Sahib knew everything.

‘Boats have eyes to see where going,’ George said to Marianne, and Marianne nodded and giggled at the cleverness of the Chin people.

An hour later the baggage, children, and Bappoo were all packed with Lachlan and Jane into the large Chinese junk that was to take them through Macao's outer harbour to the inner harbour, where they finally disembarked after a further two hours on the water, the wind and tide both being against them.

Captain Wilson travelled ashore with them, and as they set foot on land he was amazed to see that the person who did not seem in the least fatigued from sitting so long in the windy boat was young Mrs Macquarie. He watched her as she stepped ashore, looking wonderfully strong and in high spirits as she rallied everyone to the exciting time ahead in China.

She was young, he thought, and how indomitable were the young. She had recovered from her illness and proved the doctor wrong. Good girl. And since she had spoken to him of her child, he too was now certain that under the masking folds of her skirts she was carrying a baby for her husband. Lucky man.

And the face she now turned on Macao – a city built on seven hills around the harbour – was so full of excited anticipation that Captain Wilson saw in her all the beauty of youth that knows no complaints and no tiredness.

He looked at Lachlan. And the Major – how old was he? Thirty? Thirty-one? And he too seemed full of youth as he helped the sick-looking little Indian girl ashore.

Captain Wilson slapped Lachlan on the back. ‘So! Here we are, my friend! In Macao – the opium gateway into China.’

‘Opium!’ Lachlan stared at him in dismay. ‘Here, too?’

‘Everywhere in the East. clever men make a fortune from it, stupid men are destroyed by it.’ Wilson shrugged. ‘Bright silver and slow death bargaining daily with each other. That, my friend, is the opium trade.’

‘Every ounce of it should be dumped in the sea,’ Lachlan said with disdain.

Captain Wilson had to smile.
 
‘I suspect you do not know that it was the
British
who first brought opium from India to China, and sold it at a colossal profit. There are many rich families in England whose wealth comes from the sale of Bengal opium, and thousands of opium addicts left behind in China.’

Lachlan looked at him, taken aback. He had always believed it was the British who were trying to stop the opium trade in India, not making a wholesale profit from
exporting
it to China.

Wilson nodded. ‘Only this year, the Emperor Tao Tuang issued an edict banning the drug. But all that will do is make it more expensive for the Chinese addict and keep the pirates in business. The traders of the Honourable East India Company will now
smuggle
the opium into China, and the Co-Hong merchants in Canton will simply corrupt their own Chinese officials with bribes and pay-offs and the trade will go on as before. But now...’ Lestock Wilson smiled, ‘you are on holiday, so no more talk of opium.’

He moved to Jane and turned her to look east. ‘Over there, my lady, less than forty miles away, is Hong Kong.’

Jane was only interested in Macao – one of the main trading centres of the East, teeming with life and noise and running rickshaws pulled by men with hair worn in long black pigtails. She couldn't wait to get into the thick of it, but first they must rest and dine and take possession of the house they had rented.

It was for that purpose Lachlan looked around him searchingly until he saw a very obvious-looking Englishman pushing his way through the streams of coolies working on the waterfront.

As he was out of uniform and dressed elegantly civilian, the Englishman looked uncertainly at Lachlan. ‘Major Macquarie?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Lachlan shook hands with the man. ‘Mr David Reid?’

‘At your service,’ Reid replied with a smile; and the introductions began.

‘My wife, Mrs Jane Macquarie.’

Mr Reid seemed delighted at Jane's pretty youth. He bowed over her hand. ‘Mrs Macquarie, what a singular pleasure it is to welcome you to Macao.’

Lachlan continued the introductions. ‘Captain Lestock Wilson, our voyage master ... Bappoo, Marianne, George.’

Mr Reid bore patiently with the last three – one was not usually introduced to servants.

‘I have some disappointing news for you, I'm afraid, Major,’ Reid said. ‘In accordance with the letters I received from both yourself and Mr John Forbes which, I hasten to say, I received only two days ago, I have succeeded in renting a house for you in a clean and airy part of Macao, quite near my own, actually, with a good view of the sea. But unfortunately the house is without furniture and the new furnishings will not be completed until tomorrow.’

‘So what do we do until then?’ Lachlan asked.

‘Stay with me, of course. Be delighted to have you! There are not many of us British here in Macao, so it's always good to see a new face. The place is overrun with Chinese of course. Not to mention the Portuguese! They own Macao, you know? The Portuguese.’

Lachlan was feeling distinctly uncomfortable due to the fact that he had invited Captain Wilson, now a friend, and whose ultimate destination was Canton, to bide a while and spend a few days in Macao with himself and Jane, in the hospitality of their own house.

‘You will come along too, will you, Captain Wilson?’ said Reid, solving the problem. ‘Be delighted to have you. The more the merrier!’ Reid smiled merrily. ‘As I say, always a joy for us exiles in the British factory to have some more of our own amongst us. Now then, Mrs Macquarie dear, shall we be off?’

Jane was scooped away into a waiting rickshaw and the rest left to follow in other rickshaws.

Their stay in Mr Reid's house lasted not one day, but two days and two nights; and throughout they had no time to venture into the town and markets of Macao because every British resident of Macao's small trading post of the East India Company, responsible for the export of tea and silk, called to pay their compliments to Major and Mrs Macquarie.

Jane found herself sitting until almost midnight, eating sweets and talking animatedly to Mrs Beale and Mrs Drummond about the European fashions of Bombay, which were at least two years behind London.

Lachlan and Jane's bedroom in Mr Reid's house, they were pleased to discover, had eastern windows, facing the rise of the sun.

‘The best sun is the morning sun,’ Lachlan had often said, and Jane had always agreed with him, because in India and Antigua, only the morning sun was soft and mild with a gentle radiance that warmly awakened a room and its occupants to a new day.

They awoke on the third morning to see the golden rays creeping through the louvered shutters. Jane stretched her body luxuriously in anticipation of a new day that promised to be the best so far. ‘This morning, we move to our own house,' she said. ‘And this afternoon we go into Macao to buy some presents.’

Lachlan freed the arm that was deadened from her sleeping on it, and blinked at the clock. ‘It's not yet six.’

‘That early?
Oh my land...
’ She rolled onto her side and dived under the silk sheet like a young porpoise, and went back to sleep.

At seven o'clock a Chinese servant whispered into the room with a tray of early morning tea and whispered out again.

By ten o'clock they had moved into their own house, a two-storey stone villa built in the Portuguese style, with Chinese long windows and a sloped attic roof.
  

A low stone balustrade surrounded the shaded terrace that opened onto the front garden, the sunny path lined with ornamental stone urns filled with green foliage and plants of large round flowers, all of the same genus, varying only in their colours, a beautiful mixture of red, pink, and white.

‘The peony,’ said Captain Wilson, bending to touch a bloom. ‘The flower of China.’

When they entered the house, Lachlan and Jane were very touched to discover it had been partly furnished by the tiny colony of British people in Macao, who had insisted on filling it with extra little items of English oak and English china and lace in order to make them feel more comfortable during their stay in this foreign land.

‘Don't they know that you have come from living years in India and not direct from Britain?’ Captain Wilson asked in a tone of puzzlement.

‘They know we come from India,’ Lachlan replied,
 
‘from a
British
part of India. But there is nothing British here in Macao. This house is rather nice, don't you think?’

‘Yes, yes indeed.’

The house was spacious and comfortable with a lovely view over the harbour. ‘And the cool sea breeze will be delightful during these summer nights,’ Wilson said.

 
Jane adored the house, but as soon as they were installed and the baggage had been unpacked, she pleaded with Captain Wilson who happily agreed to be their guide and escort them around Macao.

Travelling in rickshaws, he took them first,
away
from the town, up to see the temple of Kun Iam Tong, which was more a series of temples within beautiful pavilions. They passed through the ornate entrance to the dim interior of the first Prayer Hall that flickered with candles, the air heavy with the fragrance of burning joss sticks, and where they found three Buddhas staring at them steadfastly.

‘Each represents the past, present, and future,’ Lestock said, and then took them on to the second hall, within an open courtyard, to meet the Buddha of Longevity.

Jane was entranced as they climbed the steps to the various pavilions, linked by paths, each a little garden secluded within itself. It was like another world, drenched in tranquillity and the fragrance of flowers. Without demur she allowed Lachlan to kiss her under the ‘Sweetheart Tree’ – two ancient banyans with roots and branches intertwined, symbolising true love.

She bent to admire the trees gnarled old trunks, which must have been there for – ‘How long?’

Lestock Wilson shrugged. ‘The temple has been here at least two hundred years, so I suppose the tree has too.’

Then it was time to leave the serenity of the temple gardens and venture down to the noisy streets of the town where Jane was eager to spend Lachlan's money buying presents for all their friends back in India.

‘And Mammy Dinah in Antigua,’ Jane said, as they strolled through the busy streets filled with Chinese hawkers, craftsmen, peasants, and merchants. ‘Something beautiful from China for Dinah.’

‘
From China for Dinah...
’ sang George Jarvis as he skipped along, slyly pulling the long black pigtails of Chinamen as they passed, then looking innocent when heads turned.

Jane was in raptures at the beautiful merchandise for sale in Macao. Here was some of the most exquisite art and craftsmanship she had ever seen. Her first purchase was a Chinese robe of blue silk embroidered in red peonies; then a beautiful clock set in jade, followed by a silk shawl for Dinah.

They returned to the house that evening laden with purchases and presents, and found two Chinese servants in residence and waiting for them, having been employed that day on their behalf by Mr Reid.

A married couple, the two Chinese bowed graciously, and a short time later they beckoned to Lachlan, Jane and Captain Wilson to come into the dining-room where a beautiful table had been laid out, dressed with small bowls of miniature white orchid blossoms and circlets of white jasmine. The rest of the table was covered in steaming dishes of rice and all kinds of Cantonese food.

‘Delicious!’ Jane said, eating a forkful of shrimp rice, while Lachlan and Lestock Wilson sampled spicy prawns and had to agree that the standard of cooking was superb.

In the servants' quarters, Bappoo found himself with a whole Canton duck all to himself, which he held in both hands and continually pointed, between bites, at George Jarvis.

‘You rascally son of slave!’ he said severely. ‘You no pull Chin people's hair tomorrow!’

‘No, Bappoo,’ George said, and then let out a giggle of laughter because one Chin man had blamed Bappoo for pulling his pigtail. And when Bappoo had lifted his big fist threateningly over the head of the small Chin man, the Chin man had not even blinked as he reached for a particular point in Bappoo's wrist and twisted it in a way that left Bappoo gasping in pain, his surprised eyes standing out like huge black dates on glistening white saucers.