Mandarin-Gold (10 page)

6

In Which Dr Gunn Takes Leave

The captain's cabin in
Trelawney
had a low, white-painted ceiling, against which the dappled reflection of the yellow rushing river played like sun on a cornfield.

The captain stood now at one side of his table, hands behind his back, his face corrugated with worry.

'We've searched everywhere we're allowed to, sir,' Griggs was saying. 'But none of the people in any of the factories have seen Dr Gunn. I am afraid, sir, he must have been done away with.'

'What am I to tell his parents, or the owners?' asked the captain, almost speaking to himself. 'Gunn seemed a sensible young fellow; I can't understand why anyone should wish to harm him.'

'All I can remember, sir, is that we were having a meal, and a fight started. Dr Gunn stood against one wall to keep out of trouble. Then I got hit on the head myself. When I came round I was the only European left in the place. I couldn't make any of the Chinks understand my friend was missing.'

'It seems -then that this extraordinary city has claimed another victim. I will make my report in the log accordingly. In the meantime, Griggs, every officer who visits Canton is to ask every other European they meet whether they have seen the doctor. It is just possible he may have been kidnapped and robbed and then turned loose naked, or even put in Chinese clothes. Now — how's the loading going?'

'Last bales of tea and silk are promised for noon tomorrow, sir. We can catch the afternoon tide.'

'Good.'

The captain nodded a dismissal; Griggs went out on the deck. What the devil could have happened to Gunn? The current was swift and the river strong. Maybe Gunn's body was already out at sea?

Despite the heat, Griggs shuddered at the thought. But then, unless you looked after yourself in the East, no-one else looked after you. You had to stand on your own two feet — or others would carry you out to your grave on theirs.

The British frigate
Andromache
swung into Macao Roads, and anchor chains went out and down with a rusty roar. High in the old forts above the Praya Grande at the base of the blue mountains, the ancient Portuguese guns fired their ritual salute.

These bronze cannon, barrels decorated with leaves and fierce faces, had originally been installed by early Portuguese settlers to ward off pirates and marauders. Now they were used exclusively to fire salutes at the arrival and departure of any important personage. And surely there could be no more important British personage to arrive than Lord Napier, the Prime Minister's personal representative, a tall, thin figure with sandy hair, face reddened by the months of sea voyage, now being rowed ashore energetically in the naval longboat?

The guns died, white smoke blew away from their mouths, and the sea-birds settled. The Praya Grande, facing the glittering sea, was crowded with British and Portuguese merchants and their families eager to see the new arrival. The boat bumped against the quay, sailors expertly threw ropes to men ashore, and Napier began to climb up the stone steps, eyes narrowed against the blaze of sun. The local manager of Jardine, Matheson stepped forward to meet him.

'I am sorry that both Dr Jardine and Mr Matheson are in Canton, your lordship,' the manager went on. 'They did not know the date of your arrival, otherwise they would most certainly have been here to greet you personally.'

Lord Napier climbed into a palanquin; his wife was helped into a second, and his two daughters jumped into a third. At a quick jog-trot, the bearers set off up the hill. Tropical flowers blazed bright with colours as a painter's palette; orange and lemon and peach trees added their fragrance to the air.

The house overlooked the waterfront, leaning over red-tiled roofs as though eager to be closer to the sea. The rooms inside were cool, scented from sprays of flowers in blue china vases. Such was the change from being cramped in the frigate, even though they had been given the captain's quarters, that Napier's daughters cried out in delight and surprise.

'You see,' said Napier happily, 'we
shall
be quite comfortable here. I am sorry.to bring you all so far from home, but it is in the cause of duty, and we will be able to do a great work for our country. And then, after perhaps a year, maybe less, back to Scotland. This time, for good.'

Napier was a kind man, who had recently inherited a great estate in Selkirkshire, and who counted every day he was absent from it as one wasted beyond recall. He had served in the Navy as a mid-shipman at Trafalgar, then as a lieutenant, and had retired from the service to marry.

He had been elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an honour of which he was extremely proud, and as a countryman, his ambition was to breed the finest sheep in the world. He believed that to produce them his workers should also share his interest, and this they could not do fully if they had to live in the usual bothies or stone hovels generally considered good enough for Scottish farm labourers.

So he modernized their cottages and built roads through his estates so that it was possible to drive by carriage to the most remote farm. But before he could gather the advantage of these expensive improvements, he had received a personal letter from Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, requesting his presence most urgently in London.

Standing now, looking out through the windows set in walls three feet thick to withstand the heat of the hottest day, Napier recalled that interview.

Palmerston, a huge man, wearing his favourite clothes of blue coat over green trousers, his whiskers black and bushy, had received him in his room in the Foreign Office.

‘I wanted to see you,' he began immediately, 'about a new appointment.in the Far East.'

'To do what, Foreign Secretary?' asked Napier cautiously. He had retired from the Navy; he had no wish to sail anywhere again; he had infinitely more agreeable work in Scotland claiming his attention.

'A very good question, Napier, because I see this as possibly the most crucial overseas appointment this Government has yet had to make. You will have the title of Chief Superintendent of Trade. I refer to the China trade.'

'If
I accept the appointment, you mean, Foreign Secretary,' said Napier quickly.

'Hm. No doubt most of us could sometimes find occupations we would far rather follow than the sometimes onerous tasks we are called upon to carry out in the furtherance of our country's interests. Now, to proceed. As you know, the Government has terminated the East India Company's monopoly of trade with China. We felt it proper to introduce competition, both for the products of China and for our own.

'When John Company had this monopoly, they worked with what they called a Select Committee to make sure no-one exceeded his brief. For it is with trade, Napier, as with so many other matters, that the people principally involved become too easily convinced of their own paramount importance.

'Agreed, these merchants bring vast sums into India and Britain. We can do many things with that money, but we must maintain some kind of surveillance on their activities.

‘The trouble is, the Chinese Emperor will not accept a British ambassador at his court. British governments have pressed for generations to have ambassadors in Peking, but always without success. The Emperor believes that if he allows us an ambassador, then we will seek other privileges. They fear we will end up by taking over their whole country, as we have done in India, as we are doing in Burma and Malaya.

'I need not dwell on this further, for you know it is absurd. Our Empire is complete. We have no territorial ambitions anywhere else in all the world. But we have trading ambitions — and there are three hundred million people in China. We have a lot we
could
sell them. They, in return, could no doubt sell us much more apart from tea and silk. It will be your commission, as Superintendent, to act as go-between with the merchants, both British and the Chinese counterparts, and of course, with the Emperor himself.

'The Chinese Viceroy at Canton has expressed a readiness to accept some such person as yourself, and after very long deliberations, I have selected you.'

'But why did you choose me, Foreign Secretary? I have no ambitions whatever in the world of commerce, and I am not a politician. I have served in the Navy for a number of years, in many different appointments. I am forty-eight now and I wish to devote my days to the welfare of my estate, and to my family responsibilities.'

'I fully sympathize with you. Fully. But all of us are servants of the State and servants of His Majesty. Also, apart from your qualities of administration and courage, both of which you have demonstrated in the Navy, you are .a Peer of the Realm. That was one reason I chose you. It is essential to have a Superintendent known to be socially above the mercantile classes, and beyond all taint of bribery.

'Secondly, our relations with China cannot proceed at their present slow pace. Sailors from our merchant ships have been seized, strangled, robbed. Ships have been impounded until we paid grotesque fines. Iniquitous duties are levied at the whim of some petty local Chinese official.

'It is not impossible, although I hope that this will never come to pass, that the Navy
may
have to extend its presence into Chinese coastal waters. If that unhappy and unlooked for eventuality should arise, then you, sir, are the only British peer who has known active service afloat in His Majesty's ships.

'The Coast Trade elsewhere would be called opium smuggling. It is not desirable that you, in your official capacity, should encourage such adventures. But you must also never lose sight of the fact that you have no authority to interfere with them or prevent them. British subjects who are engaged in transporting opium and selling it are entitled to the same privileges as others of British birth. No more. But, equally, no less.

'You must remember that an increasing proportion of the total. six million pounds revenue coming into India every year through the East India Company's overseas trading operations, stems from the sale of opium to Chinese natives, against the direct orders of their rulers.'

'Even so, sir, it is not a trade of which I feel we should be very proud in this country,' ventured Napier.

There seemed something degrading about smuggling prohibited drugs into a far-off heathen country, no matter how profitable this, might be.

'There's nothing much to be proud of in
any
mercantile operation Napier, if you look closely enough. Merchants are merchants .the world over. As Anacharsis put it, "The market is a place set apart where men may deceive each other."

'But opium has a great value — so do not deceive yourself about that — and if we do not supply this commodity, then other countries will.

'The Americans are already our competitors. They buy it from the Turks who have been growing the poppies for generations. The Chinese used to grow poppies themselves, of course, but their soil is poor and no-one can approach the superior quality of our product, produced in Bengal and Madras.

'As to the basic charges for your commission, in essence, we wish to establish friendly relations with China and the Emperor, with eventually an exchange of ambassadors. He still refuses to entertain this possibility. I hope, and my colleagues in the Government join me in the hope, that you will be able to reverse this negative policy. To do this, of course, you will have to take up residence in Canton. Proceed first to Macao, then to Canton, where you will present your credentials as Superintendent of Trade to the local Viceroy, who will pass them on to the Emperor.

'At no time are you to adopt any tone of threat or menace to the Chinese. I am told that certain of the mercantile community, including Dr Jardine — who is one of our most successful merchants — are men of some choler, and possibly not diplomatic in dealing with others of different nationality or colour. So at all times be moderate and respect the laws of the country.'

'So I
must
go then, Foreign Secretary?' Napier's questions sounded wistful; Scotland had never seemed more inviting.

'You
are
at liberty to refuse, Napier. But I do not think you will. I most earnestly trust you will undertake the commission.'

It was only afterwards, when Napier was walking down the corridor behind the Foreign Office butler to his carriage, that he realized Palmerston had not really discussed the intricacies of the posting with him. The brief was wide and vague as a Highland mist. This was, no doubt, to absolve the Government of any blame should he fail in his mission. The market was not the only place where men deceived each other.

How far away Palmerston's office seemed now, in this blinding eye-aching heat of Macao! Firecrackers, were exploding like gunfire along the beach; a ceremony of some kind was in progress. A band of brass instruments and huge drums was marching out of step -and barefoot along the dusty road on the edge of a sea that glowed like melted blue glass. Well, he would have to do his best; there was nothing else he could do. And the sooner he began, the sooner he could return.