Mandarin-Gold (2 page)

'Opium possesses considerable medicinal value,' Gunn pointed out. 'It isn't all bad.'

He had frequently prescribed it himself for a wide range of complaints: travel sickness, toothache, neuralgia, ulcers, insomnia; even for hysterics in women. Nearly all the patent medicines on which nannies relied so heavily in Britain — Mother Bailey's Quieting Syrup, Godfrey's Cordial, Galby's Carminative and McMunn's Elixir — contained opium; sometimes as much as half a grain to a fluid ounce. Poor mothers, distracted by crying children, also fed their infants these elixirs by the spoonful. It quietened the children immediately; sometimes for ever. But then one could say the same for almost any other medicine, which was harmless in the right quantities, yet lethal if you swallowed too much of it.

'I always thought opium came
from
China, not went to it. And I never imagined I'd ever be closely involved with it,' he went on.

'We're not—personally,' said Griggs. 'But a lot here are, and the old Hoppo knows which side his bread's buttered on. He'll make ten times as much dealing illicitly in opium as he gets from our legal trade. Anyhow, that's nothing to do with us. If the Chinese are going to kill themselves smoking mud, they might as well do so at a profit to our Company as anyone else's.

'Don't forget. Longboat's leaving in five minutes. It'll take us two hours to Canton if we catch the tide. If not, twice as long. Can you be ready?'

'Of course.'

Gunn went below decks to his cabin, a. small hutch, barely twelve foot square. A round porthole looked out over washboats with split bamboo roofs and curtained walls, each crewed by three or four girls, cheerfully calling out to the crew for any clothes that needed washing or mending. They were refreshingly honest. Sometimes, so Griggs had told him, when a ship sailed unexpectedly before all the crew's clothes had been laundered, the wash girls would keep them safely until the ship returned, twelve or eighteen months later. They were all shouting now.

'Ah, you missee chiefee mate, how do you dooa?... I missee you long time.... I makee mendee youah shirt, yes? . . .'

Gunn closed the porthole, and locked it, for his cabin was not only a sleeping place, but also the ship's surgery. Two rows of shelves had wide holes to accept his big round-stoppered bottles of tinctures and lotions. He also kept a stained wooden trunk, always locked, beneath-his bunk, for his instruments and dangerous drugs,

He poured water from a ewer into the zinc basin, washed his hands quickly, dashed some over his face, combed his hair and was back on deck within minutes. Already, as he watched sailors ferrying food or unloading cargo, Marion's memory was fading, and the hurt diminished. In its place anew hardness was growing, like fresh skin over a wound.

He had never possessed much money, and this shopkeeper fellow Cartwright was obviously richer than his family. However, Gunn had one important qualification; he was a doctor. This did not rank particularly high in the social strata, of course, but it gave him a possible edge on some rivals. He was paid nearly two hundred pounds a year and his keep as ship's surgeon, and he should also find opportunities of making money by trading ventures. Few men who sailed East did not return to England wealthier than they left.

I'll grow rich
somehow,
he thought. Really rich. Then women will be proud if I just look at them, let alone offer them my name in marriage. Money alone might not guarantee happiness, or even a place in society, but provided you had enough, gold was a card of entry that eventually everyone honoured. For then you could buy your estate .and become a country squire, arrange for a seat in Parliament, maybe even a title.

He would make Marion sorry she had ever spurned him for a shopkeeper who dealt in peppermint bull's-eyes and aniseed balls. He felt more cheerful now; maybe Marion, quite unintentionally, had done him a good turn.

The longboat drew alongside. Gunn climbed down the white ladder and the
Trelawney
soared above him like a sheer tarred wall from her gilded figurehead to ornamented stern, both freshly painted and shining with new varnish. The rigging, made a rope lattice against the blue sky, and the black and white chequers beneath the deck reflected the yellow water like a chess board. Well, if it
is
a chess board, Gunn told himself, then I will be king; never the pawn.

Griggs and he sat in the stern. Twenty oars dipped and raised as the tars bent broad backs to their task. As they rowed, girls sculling small sampans shot out from shore, their boats laden with oranges and bananas. They cried out:.'You wantee fluit? Olanges, yes?'

Some of the crew shouted back bawdily: 'You know what we want! We want fruit with hair on it!'

These girls, using a single scull at the stern, twisting it with their wrists, could keep up for a hundred yards or more, until .finally they realized that the sailors were making fun of them, and fell back to await another boat, shouting: .'You all stinkee lying Englishmen!'

The sun was very bright. What had seemed a yellow river, oily and scummy, from the
Trelawney,
now glowed like liquid gold. On either side, rice fields grew greener than an English lawn; there were temples and pagodas, and in the distance, mist had painted the hills pale blue. They passed lacquered house-boats, passenger vessels. with streamers and - paper lanterns, and war junks with eyes lacquered on their bows to see an enemy, and red and blue demons on their sterns to frighten them away.

Canton was crowded with sampans; house-boats and junks were moored in mid-stream, packed with men and women and children. On one, half a dozen people in rags came out to watch them row by. 0r»
^e
threw a bucket of faeces and orange peel into the water after them. A naked child of five or six stood on a box and slowly raised her. right clenched fist, as though lifting a severed head by its hair. She drew her other hand beneath it in a horizontal cutting motion, as if slitting a throat, and then everyone shouted in English, in a chorus obviously learned by rote, 'Foreign devils! Demons! Red Bristled Barbarians!'

"They don't think much of us,' said Griggs. 'Never mind. They sell the strongest drink in the world in Canton. We'll be lucky if we get half our fellows back tonight to row us.'

'What happens to those left behind?'

'If they're on their own, they'll probably be robbed, and left in the gutter. If they're in a crowd and put up a fight, then they should escape. Either way, there will be some sore heads in the morning!'

Moored close to the shore, Gunn saw several long house-boats with gilded roofs and painted decks, their roofs heavy with flowers in terra cotta pots. On balconies reached by carved staircases and shielded by ornate bannisters, young women sat dressed in purple silk, strings of bright jewellery, round their necks. Some stood up and tip-toed to the edge of the craft to wave to the new arrivals.

Gunn saw with horror that their feet were bound so tightly, their toes curved beneath them like claws, so that they were barely the size of a child's clenched fist. The girls could only totter or toddle. It was quite impossible for them to run, and difficult enough to walk.

They were running in now between sampans and barbers' boats, others selling toys and burning charcoal, towards wooden piers, bearded with seaweed. The crew shipped oars, and pulled their way along by boathooks on to other craft already moored.

On land, the noise after the gurgling of the river was suddenly intense. Gongs boomed; firecrackers whirled; men carrying trays of melons shouted their wares. Servants, pushing their employers in wheelbarrows, screamed hoarsely for others to make way, and a band marched along the quay, leading a funeral procession. Gunn knew that the noise was to drive off demons and devils; the louder the bangs, the more frightened such devils became.

The longboat bumped against the wooden piles, the sailors made her fast, and Gunn and Griggs climbed up an iron-runged ladder. After the slow rolling of the
Trelawney,
the earth seemed to heave beneath Gunn's feet: He stood still to steady himself, eyes narrowed against the burning brilliance of the day. Hundreds of people were milling about. At various points, raised high on lattice scaffolds of bamboo, stood little bamboo watchtowers. Each contained a policeman watching for fires or any other disturbances.

Canton was divided into areas separated after dark with locked gates guarded by watchmen who beat a tom-tom every hour to mark the passing of the night. By dividing the city in this way the authorities believed that robbery or insurrection could be localized.

Gunn had heard that each area held one citizen responsible for the good conduct of all the residents. This man sub-divided his responsibility to other individuals in each street who became responsible for the good behaviour of their neighbours. Because they knew they would be punished if no other culprit were apprehended, these headmen invariably discovered the guilty men—and so saved the police (and themselves) a great deal of trouble.

At the far end of the quay, three-quarters of a mile away, he could see the Union Jack, then the Dutch and French flags, and the American Stars and Stripes.

'They're the factories,' Griggs explained. Their pillars and porticoes faced a garden known as the English Garden, which, in turn, ended in Jackass Point and the river. Between these factories ran three narrow alleys, Hog Lane, Old China Street and New China Street, all leading to a wider road behind them. This was called, from the number of foreign factories that had originally traded, Thirteen Factories Street.

In the past, Swedish, Spanish, Austrian, Danish and other companies had been represented in Canton, but they had gradually withdrawn, although the names of their companies were still engraved on the buildings. All had three stories; the ground floor given over to counting-rooms, vast store-rooms, and a treasury built of granite, with iron doors, for Canton possessed no banks that would do business with Barbarians.

The first floor contained sitting-rooms and dining-rooms; the bedrooms were on the third.

Opposite their landing place stood a factory narrower than the rest, on the edge of a scummy stagnant river, fouled with bloated bodies of dogs, pigs, and branches of dead trees. Children squatted in the yellow mud, defecating amid crowds of blue flies. Above the front door, in. black raised letters, were the words: Creek Factory.

'That's privately owned,' Griggs explained. 'By two of our countrymen. One, William Jardine, is a doctor, like you. Used to be a ship's surgeon, too. The other is James Matheson, the son of a Scots baronet. They're probably the richest European merchants out here. They trade as Jardine and Matheson.'

Maybe Jardine had also yearned for wealth, and had been goaded to prove himself in a way his fellow men would be forced to admit and admire?

'He doesn't practise now,' Griggs added. 'Doesn't need to, of course. You'd probably meet him if you were staying here.'

'Pity I'm not.'

'I don't think so. Couldn't stand this place myself. Give me the sea. Something clean about that. These factories are like monasteries. They've hardly any windows, and no women are allowed whatever. Then the Chinese have a guard-house on the corner of Old China Street, either to see we all behave ourselves, or to protect us from the locals who can't bear the sight of Foreign Devils. Or maybe for both reasons.

'Anyhow, each year, as soon as the trading season is over, they insist that all foreigners move to Macao—the island the Portuguese have owned for two hundred years in the mouth of the river.

'The Chinese Emperor fears that if we're allowed to stay here for twelve months in the year then we'll all gradually acquire more space, more land, and more concessions. Which he's no intention of giving in case we take over the whole country, as we've done in India and Burma. So he only allows foreigners about three hundred yards frontage for all their factories, and a depth of four hundred. And this in a country with more inhabitants than, any other in the .world, and a potential trade that is staggering!

'So far as the merchants are concerned, they feel like men dying of thirst on the edge of a locked reservoir. They are more concerned about the fortunes they're
not
making than the ones they are.'

'Then why don't they come to some better arrangement?'

'The mandarins are afraid to. They have a strictly ordered society here—-more so than with us. The mandarins treat, the peasants like dirt, and the peasants don't object, because they don't know anything else. Now if you allow all kinds of Europeans in, and the peasants hear how well labourers live in the West, then they'll demand more for themselves. And that would mean less for the mandarins and the Emperor.'

At the edge of the quay, half a dozen Chinese, naked except for blue drawers, had looped a rope around the bloated carcase of a pig floating in the river. Very carefully, for the rope was old, they began to haul it up, faces beaming.

'They'll have that for dinner tonight,' said Griggs, and spat into the sea. 'But don't let it put you off your food,'

'I won't. But I'll be damned careful what I eat.'

The smell of spice, overlaid with scents of tea and spices and the salty stench of the river, was suddenly overpoweringly strong. He turned away in case he was sick.