Dragon Land (30 page)

Jonas looked worried. ‘I hope you like it, Lizzie. You can throw out the furniture and buy new things if you want.’

I said I was happy with everything and I wouldn’t dream of throwing anything out. All I wanted in my life was Jonas, and the house was secondary to him.

Before I could ask him what he would like for his evening meal, he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but Sue Lin and Alex want us to join them at the Palace Hotel tonight.’

I said I didn’t mind.

Before getting ready for our meeting with Alex and Sue Lin, Zheng Yan arrived home from work and came into the house with his wife. He was a small man, around five foot three inches, only a couple of inches taller than his wife, and he was dressed in a dark-coloured suit with a white shirt and blue tie. He looked very smart, and his wife gazed at him with a proud look on her face.

Jonas went and put his arm around his shoulders. ‘Zheng Yan, come and meet my wife, Lizzie.’

He was very formal as he shook my hand and bowed. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Lizzie.’

Ping Li hovered in the background, but I asked them to sit down and have some tea.

Jonas asked Zheng Yan, ‘Have you had a busy day?’

‘Very, very busy, Jonas. Lots of ships coming in with their cargoes, and of course I have all the paperwork to fill in. Then there are the passenger ships, but they are someone else’s job.’

Jonas said he had noticed that. ‘I looked out for you when we arrived, but you must have been busy.’

‘Yes, yes, I was very busy.’

I put the tea tray on the table and we all sipped the bowls of fragrant tea.

I asked them, ‘Have you always lived here in Shanghai?’

‘No,’ said Zheng Yan. ‘I come from Hong Kong, where I worked with the British Shipping Company, but I came to supervise the offices here.’ He looked at his wife. ‘Then I met my wife, who comes from Shanghai, and we got married ten years ago.’

Ping Li nodded. ‘It was a fortunate move for my husband to come here and meet me. Now we are both very happy.’

I was amused by her statement, but I kept a straight face. I liked the way she spoke for both of them and the way he beamed at her when she said something.

‘I make dresses for the Star department store. It is a high-class shop and my dresses sell very well.’

‘That’s wonderful, Ping Li. I must go and see this shop, as my mother also worked in a department store in Dundee. She was in the millinery department – we always called it the hat shop!’

Ping Li clapped her tiny hands together. ‘Then we have so much in common, Lizzie, and we will be great friends.’

‘Oh, I do hope so,’ I said with feeling. I suddenly felt a rapport with my neighbours and I was glad that I had them living in the next house.

After they departed, it was time to get ready to go to the hotel. ‘Is it a very grand hotel?’ I asked Jonas.

He shook his head. ‘I really don’t know much about it, as I don’t normally go out to hotels, but it certainly has an impressive frontage, so maybe we had better dress for the occasion.’

I went to look out my silver-grey satin dress that I had last worn on board the ship to Hong Kong, as I wasn’t sure if I should wear my white wedding frock or not. Jonas came through wearing a light-coloured suit that made him look so handsome, but he was muttering about it being a bit tight.

‘I don’t normally wear suits like this, as I like being casually dressed.’

I told him he looked great in it, and he looked in the mirror and said, ‘Do I really?’ He still sounded unsure.

By now I had decided on the silver-grey dress, and I pinned my hair up and caught it in a lovely clasp I had bought in Hong Kong. It was shaped like a dragon, and I had loved it when I spotted it in a small shop in the bazaar, but this was the first time I had worn it.

Jonas stood behind me and caught my eye in the mirror. ‘I’m so glad I met you that night in Mr Wang’s shop, Lizzie. I fell in love with you that night, but I didn’t want to tell you in case it frightened you away. Then when you wrote to tell me you were leaving to go back home, I realised I couldn’t let you go.’

I turned and held his hand. ‘I fell in love with you that night as well, Jonas, but I was also frightened you maybe had a wife and children and I would embarrass you with my protestations of love.’

‘Well, it’s all turned out for the best,’ he said. ‘We’ll have years and years of happiness to look forward to.’

I felt a sliver of ice in my stomach. I didn’t like predictions like this, especially after my mother’s experience, but I smiled at him. ‘Of course we will,’ I said with my fingers crossed.

We got a taxi to the hotel, as rain had begun to fall quite heavily, but when we arrived I was surprised at the grandness of the building. The reception area was quite spectacular and the dining room was busy with people sitting eating at tables covered with white tablecloths and shiny silver cutlery. It was a far cry from the street carts and small restaurants Sandy and I had frequented, and I suddenly felt a bit overwhelmed.

Thankfully Sue Lin and Alex appeared, and we were seated at a table by the far wall, which gave us some privacy. Alex looked handsome in his black suit, white shirt and grey striped tie, and his hair was slicked back like it had been the first time I saw him. Sue Lin looked lovely in an exquisite dress of deep-blue satin with silver flowers embroidered on it, and she also had a silver clasp holding her dark hair back from her face. I couldn’t reconcile her Chinese looks with her Scottish accent when she said, ‘Congratulations, Lizzie and Jonas, on your marriage. Alex and I hope you’ll both be very happy.’

Alex smiled. ‘Hopefully it’ll be our turn next, Sue Lin,’ but she just squeezed his hand and picked up the menu.

I noticed Jonas giving Alex a look, but Alex just shrugged his shoulders as if to say, ‘Well, I tried.’

I felt so sorry for him, as he was certainly besotted with her, but maybe Sue Lin wasn’t ready for marriage.

The food was delicious and we drank some champagne to celebrate our marriage, and the evening was turning out to be a good time with friends. I don’t know what made me look over my shoulder, but I noticed the couple who were sitting at a table in the centre of the room were looking in our direction.

Jonas saw me and said, ‘That’s the aristocracy of Shanghai. He’s Conrad Hamilton and that’s his wife, Lorna-May. They’re American, and he’s the head of the American Bank here in Shanghai.’

Before I could answer, they stood up and came over to our table.

‘Good evening, Jonas, Alex and Sue Lin,’ said Conrad. ‘And this lovely lady is your wife, I believe?’

Jonas said I was. ‘This is Lizzie. We arrived back today.’

Conrad shook my hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Lizzie. This is my wife, Lorna-May.’

She was wearing a beautiful gown of pale silver and she had a sparkling necklace around her neck that looked like it was made of diamonds, but surely, I thought, they were fake.

She gave me a cool, appraising look. ‘Pleased to meet you, Lizzie.’ She turned to Jonas. ‘You’ve been a dark horse, Jonas. We all thought you would never get married.’

Jonas gave her a crooked smile. ‘Well, I never met the right woman, but I have now.’

Conrad laughed. ‘Just like the old Jonas. Full of Irish charm.’

Before turning away with her husband, Lorna-May said in her seductive drawl, ‘Perhaps we’ll see you again, Lizzie.’

I almost said ‘I hope not’, but I smiled and said I would look forward to that.

We then resumed our conversation. The two men had been speaking about the Japanese takeover of the northern part of China.

‘They’re calling it Manchuria,’ said Alex, ‘and they’re also causing diplomatic rows that give them the excuse to take over more land. They’re a nation that needs watching.’

Jonas agreed, and Sue Lin said she was doing an article on the refugee problem.

‘There are hundreds of refugees fleeing from the north and they’re ending up in Peking and Shanghai.’

When there was a lull in the conversation, I asked Jonas, ‘Do you know a woman called Elsie Lomax, Jonas?’

The three faces looked at me, and Sue Lin said, ‘Is she Ronnie Lomax’s wife?’

‘Yes, she is. I met her on the ship coming from London to Hong Kong and she said her husband was in charge of his father’s cotton mills on the banks of the Huangpu River. Her mother was with her, but I expect she has gone back home by now.’

Jonas laughed. ‘Yes, she has. She caused an incident with her son-in-law at the mill and told him she was taking her daughter back with her and not leaving her in the fleshpots of Shanghai.’

I said that sounded very much like Mrs Burton.

‘Has Elsie gone back with her?’

Jonas said she was still here and lived on Bubbling Well Road. ‘Her house is much larger than ours, but it’s between us and the palatial place of the Conrad Hamiltons.’

‘I do hope she’s happy, as she was very nervous about coming out here,’ I said, but no one said a word.

Then Jonas said, ‘We don’t really know her that well, Lizzie, but why don’t you pay her a visit? I’m sure she’ll be glad to see a friendly face.’

When I said I would, the three of them glanced at one another, and although I was slightly puzzled by this, Sue Lin gave my hand a squeeze and she smiled. ‘Elsie Lomax will be so pleased to see you again, Lizzie.’

Jonas and I spent the next few weeks settling into our house. Although I had said I didn’t want to change anything, I moved some of the furniture around and bought new curtains for the windows, as I thought the old ones were too dark and a bit threadbare.

Jonas was working with Alex on another book, and they spent hours together discussing it and sifting through the photographs Alex had taken.

I put my mother’s carriage clock on the sideboard, along with Mr Wang’s box. Neither Jonas nor I had been able to unlock the mystery of opening it, but I knew we would manage it sometime. I often looked at the photograph album and sometimes got a little bit nostalgic about my previous life in Dundee, but I was so happy here with my husband that this soon passed.

I wrote letters to Margaret and Laura and Pat and looked forward to all their news. I was amused when Laura replied to my letter telling her I was married. She wrote back saying she always thought she would be the first of the three of us to get married, and I thought she sounded slightly miffed that I had beaten her to the matrimonial gatepost. She was still teaching but was now at Rosebank School, the primary school I had attended as a child along with Emily. But thinking back to those days reminded me of the sadness of my father’s death.

I still had a letter I’d found in Mum’s box after her death. It was dated November 1918 and it verified that Dad had died that July day in 1917. But even with this evidence in front of her she still didn’t believe it. She had written ‘not true’ on the letter and continued to live a life of denial, which was so sad but so typical of her. I had shown this letter to Margaret and she said Mum had let her see it.

Margaret had said, ‘Your mum knew your dad was probably dead, but because there was no body or burial, a part of her hoped he was alive. She told me that if she saw someone who looked like your dad she had renewed hope that he could still be alive, and that small spark of hope never left her. That’s the tragedy of this war, Lizzie, that not all the dead had a Christian burial.’

I put the letter back in the box.

Pat had sent her congratulations and also her parents’ good wishes. She was now a teacher in Kirriemuir, which meant she was living on the farm instead of in lodgings. I also had a letter from Irene and Wullie, and I recalled the happy times I spent in their house in the Hawkhill and all the singsongs we’d had. Maisie also wrote with her congratulations.

Ping Li was a great friend, and I spent a lot of my time in her house, where she sat at her sewing machine making her dresses. I got a bit homesick when I saw her machine was a Singer made in their factory in Glasgow, but that soon passed as well. Some days we made our way to the Star store with her deliveries and spent time browsing in the different departments.

Most evenings after our meal, Jonas would go into his study with his typewriter and I would hear him typing away, and on other nights Ping Li and I would sit on the veranda while Zheng Yan and Jonas played mah-jong, the gentle click of tiles blending with the sound of birdsong from our garden.

After our meal at the Palace Hotel the night we arrived, I made a point of contacting Elsie. I was upset when I first met her, as she looked really depressed. Her hair wasn’t brushed and her dress looked like she had worn it for days. She had been surprised to see me and had jumped up.

‘Lizzie, I can’t believe you’re here in Shanghai. When did you leave Hong Kong?’

‘I got married there, but my husband lives here,’ I told her. ‘His name is Jonas O’Neill.’

She looked surprised. ‘Not the Jonas O’Neill who wrote
Dragon Land
?’

‘Yes. It’s the same man,’ I said. ‘I met him at a book signing in Hong Kong.’

I always like to think she cheered up from that first meeting, as she confessed she hadn’t made any friends.

‘What about your husband, Elsie? He must know lots of people. Does he take you out to meet anyone?’

Her face fell. ‘No, he doesn’t, Lizzie. The kind of people he meets aren’t suited to me, he tells me. Anyway, I hardly see him for days on end. He goes out drinking in the American Café every night, and although he comes home in the early hours of the morning, he’s gone out by the time I get up.’

One afternoon Ping Li and I were sitting on the veranda when a car drew up. Lorna-May Hamilton stepped out.

‘I was passing and I thought I would hand this invitation to you instead of posting it.’

She was dressed in a cream linen dress with cream sandals and cream cotton gloves. She looked as if she had stepped out of the front cover of a magazine.

‘Hello, Mrs Hamilton,’ I said. ‘May I introduce my neighbour, Madame Zheng.’

She cast a cool gaze at Ping Li, but made no welcoming gesture to her.

Ping Li stood up. ‘I must get back, Lizzie. I’ll see you later.’