The Challenging Heights (15 page)

Below him China looked like a jigsaw of different coloured pieces, an antique land marked by the living of the generations of its people; never improving, never varying, no matter what happened; its people, their sinewy backs bent, their faces reflecting their endless patience, their minute plots washed away by floods, their families destroyed by famine, their homes, their work, their very lives crumbled by the plagues and the wars that passed over them, always on the verge of starvation but always surviving to rebuild and start again.

He was still caught by his thoughts, touched by the never-ending humility and strength of the Chinese peasantry, when to the south he spotted an unexpected movement. Turning towards it, the sun glinting on his wings as he banked, he saw a column of troops, led by officers on small shaggy ponies and followed by a string of guns and heavily laden ox-carts. Going down low, he swept along the column. The troops looked efficient, well-clad in green uniforms and, unlike the Peking troops, not festooned with teapots, umbrellas and cooking utensils. Then he saw that they carried the red Kuomintang banners with the white sun insignia on blue squares in the corners. They all looked young and he noticed that, again unlike the Peking troops, they didn’t scatter into the fields or stop to gape up at the aeroplane, chattering and excited, but went on marching stolidly northwards, their heads down, their backs bent under their loads, unmoved by his presence and the threat the aeroplane implied.

They arrived outside the city two days later, confident and fit and without the habitual kow-tow the Chinese had always given to Europeans. But there were no incidents, not even when they tried to enter the International Settlement and were firmly turned back by grim-faced soldiers determined not to budge an inch.

That night, however, when Dicken appeared at Joyce Mahaffy’s flat he found her nervous and worried because it was close to the boundary of the International Settlement.

‘They’ve arrived,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Dicken agreed. ‘I saw them.’

‘What did they look like?’

‘Like soldiers.’

‘There’ve been rumours that they rape the women.’

They ate out and returned to the flat on the excuse that she was nervous and preferred to drink coffee at home. But they were in her bed within half an hour and, as he lay beside her sleeping figure, Dicken tried to weigh himself up. He felt no conscience about what he was doing. If Zoë had been behaving herself, he might have felt guilty but he knew she wasn’t. He still hadn’t heard from her and suspected she was taking the attitude that if she did not think about the problem it would go away of its own accord. The thought saddened him. His own parents’ marriage had collapsed while he was a child and he had always hoped to do better. He had even tried hard, but the demands of the service which separated husbands from wives had never really given them a chance, any more than had Zoë’s avowed declaration that she didn’t intend to be anything but liberated.

During the night they were awakened by the sound of firing and Joyce sat bolt upright, clutching the sheets to her throat.

‘They’re coming,’ she said.

‘Rubbish,’ Dicken said. ‘They’d never take on twenty-five thousand European-trained troops. Stay where you are and I’ll go and make coffee.’

‘I’d rather have a brandy. If they’re going to rape me, I’d rather be drunk than sober.’

The following morning, when Dicken reported for duty he learned that the Nationalist troops had broken through the cordon on the north side of the Settlement but had been driven out again at the cost of four British casualties and God alone knew how many Chinese. Soon afterwards, another clash occurred at the station yard at Chapei where there were more Chinese casualties. The Nationalists claimed the trouble was being caused by the Communists, who were committing murders whenever they got the chance, and it was hard to know who to believe, because the Nationalists were reported to have got into the Settlement at Nanking, killing, looting and raping. Six non-Chinese had been killed and others wounded, and British and American destroyers had been obliged to open fire. Eventually the Europeans had been allowed to the waterfront where they were promptly bundled on to the ships.

What had originally seemed nothing more than an anarchical movement by groups of disaffected students had become a campaign of hatred against all Westerners, and the whole of South China seemed to be on the march, each riot starting another one in a chain reaction. Upriver, Western-owned property was being abandoned by its frightened owners without even a backward glance, and the Europeans who had so demanded the respect of the Chinese that they had put up notices in their public parks, ‘No dogs or Chinese permitted’, were now feeling the backlash of their contempt. Forced from their businesses and homes, obliged to go as refugees to the safer areas of the coast, they were even having to carry in their own hands and on their own backs what few possessions they had left because there were no porters or rickshaw men who would work for them. Huddled in groups for safety, daily growing dirtier and shabbier because their Chinese servants, intimidated by threats, no longer dared appear, they struggled to where the ships awaited them, thankful for the power and prestige of the Royal Navy which was all that enabled them to escape with their lives. They had long since forgotten how to look after themselves, and were arriving in Shanghai in shiploads, hungry, exhausted, frightened and shocked by the change in their circumstances – Europeans, Americans, Japanese, even wealthy Chinese who had made the mistake of doing business with Western-owned companies.

Shanghai noticed the change brought about by the arrival of the Cantonese army in a different way. Almost from the day the Cantonese troops arrived, the city began to step up its night life for them in a manner that would have set the early emperors spinning in their tombs. The South China troops had been in the wilderness too long, on the march through a succession of small towns and empty spaces, and they were looking for excitement and a little gaiety and, with the owners of the night clubs mostly opportunistic young Chinese, the Cantonese officers were soon crowding the foreigners from what they had always considered their own dance floors. And since, as Chinese, they naturally wanted Chinese dancing partners, a group of smart operators speedily filled the gap and plastered Shanghai with a rash of new and garish night clubs which provided Chinese hostesses in place of the White Russians and the French. Girls were rushed up from the south and, keeping up with the trend, Chinese dancing academies sprang up all over the city and singsong girls hurriedly converted to taxi-dancers while opium smokers opted for the new drug, jazz. The only concession that was made was to the music because it was impossible to train Chinese musicians for waltzes, foxtrots and tangos, while Chinese singers trying to handle ‘Charmaine’, ‘There Ain’t No Maybe In My Baby’s Eyes’ or other such delights from the West sounded like cats with their heads caught in railings, and orchestras and singers had to be imported from Manila and eventually from San Francisco, Chicago and New York.

Hounded out of their own playgrounds, the Europeans fell back on those night clubs which operated a colour bar and used only Russian or Eurasian hostesses, and Father O’Buhilly, never on the side of the local Whites, crowed that the country was being won for the Chinese by the night club orchestras. He was being optimistic, however, and he knew it, because the clash between the Nationalists and the Communists was bound to come eventually, and when it did no one knew how it would affect Shanghai.

In fact, when it came it was easier than they had expected. With the arrival of the Cantonese troops and the rash of new night clubs, gangsters had moved in and begun to take over. With smuggling, piracy, drug rackets and slavery already being practised, there was no shortage of experts and they began to move round the night clubs demanding food, girls and drink without expecting to pay for them. Behind the small operators were the powerful men who could close any night club they wanted and sometimes did – once with a boxful of snakes let loose on the dance floor while the lights were dimmed for a waltz.

Since Chiang Kai-Shek had no intention of starting hostilities with the Communists for control, instead he left the business to the powerful gang leaders, and their private army of gunmen moved into Chapei and Natao and killed the revolt against the Kuomintang by the Communists within twenty-four hours.

At the height of the disturbances, Father O’Buhilly announced that he was going to Chapei.

‘Are you wanting to commit suicide?’ Dicken asked.

Father O’Buhilly lit a cigarette. ‘There are French nuns and Christian children there, me boy. Somebody has to see them out.’

He was gone for two days but eventually returned with the nuns and the children, every one of them dirty and exhausted but all unharmed. One by one the fires in the disputed districts died down and the reports that filtered into the International Settlement were hard to believe. In a series of grim, bloody, no-quarter fights, the Communists had been swept out of the city. The reprisals, though they had brought no European casualties, had caused a lot of damage and a great deal more bitterness. The authorities, worried by the possibility of more clashes, were anxious to know where the Communists had gone to, and it was finally learned they had been collected together by a former teacher called Mao Tse-Tung and were heading north towards Kiangsi to gather strength to hit back.

More troops arrived, to be quartered on the racecourse and in godowns, even in Chinese amusement centres. For this the Shanghai residents paid nothing other than for the upkeep of their own Volunteer Forces, which had companies of all nationalities, the American contingent wearing British uniforms and cowboy hats, the Russians parading with their greatcoats rolled and slung across their bodies in the manner of the Tsarist armies, the Chinese largely bespectacled clerks who took their soldiering so seriously they won all the inter-unit competitions.

There was an increase of violent crime with armed gangs attacking both police and civilians even in daylight, so that heads and severed limbs were often found in empty places and on recreation grounds. Then a DH9, flying from the racecourse, had to make a forced landing at Kiangwan outside the perimeter and the party sent out to retrieve it came back only with the engine and the fuselage, dragging it along on its wheels without the wings or the crew. In retaliation the Shanghai-Hangchow-Ningpo Railway line was cut and, since this affected the Nationalists’ lines of communication, both the airmen and the wings were promptly released.

Late in the year the Communist Russian Embassy was attacked by White Russians and the trains stopped again as armed agitators forced the drivers to go on strike, and finally, a Roman Catholic mission at Yingjao was attacked by Nationalists and Father O’Buhilly, who had already been awarded an immediate Croix de Guerre for rescuing the French nuns, offered his help.

Dicken found him in his study, dressed in a black alpaca suit, a black clerical hat on the back of his head. He had the usual cigarette between his lips and was reading the poems of Robert W Service.

‘’Tis wonderful stuff for the spirit,’ he observed quietly.

‘This chap General Lee Tse-Liu, who’s got these people, is a nasty piece of work, Father,’ Dicken pointed out.

‘It’s what I’ve heard, me boy.’

‘His father was wealthy and he was a student at one of the big universities in England when the war started in 1914. He was violently pro-British in those days and even tried to join the British army. Orr knows all about him. Some clot with red tabs and a loud voice told him they didn’t want wogs in British regiments. When he finished his studies he came home, swearing to chuck the British out of China.’

‘Sure, so I understand. There are many stupid people in this world.’

Dicken paused. ‘Mind if I come with you to the gate, Father?’ he asked.

‘Why, no, me boy. I’d even like it. Why, though?’

‘I don’t know, Father.’ Dicken was at a bit of a loss. Joyce Mahaffy had been to visit her brother in Hong Kong and was still on her way back, and he was growing tired of the rising tide of complaints from people who had so far suffered nothing from the civil war except inconvenience. ‘Perhaps I’m a bit disillusioned.’

‘It’s no thing for a young man to be,’ Father O’Buhilly smiled.

‘Were you never disillusioned, Father?’

‘Oh, sure, boy.’ The priest gestured with his cigarette. ‘Often. But it’s like measles: it’s something you grow out of as you grow older. Sure, you go on questionin’ but disillusionment’s a thing no man with faith suffers because, o’ course, there’s always the final reward of Heaven and a place at the Almighty’s side. Maybe you should join us, my son.’

Dicken rode with him to the border of the settlement and shook hands as the car stopped at the barbed wire barrier. He wasn’t sure what it was that drew him to the priest. Perhaps it was his simple faith. To O’Buhilly black was black and white was white and there were no greys. He had never discussed Zoë with him but he had a feeling the priest, while trying to understand her, would be unable to make allowances for her.

The guardpost was built of sandbags and manned by British soldiers and Sikh policemen. Beyond it there was a crowd of noisy students, most of them mere children, among them a few coolies carrying bamboo staves.

‘You sure you’re going to be all right, Father?’ Dicken asked.

‘Oh, sure. Look at the soldierly straightness of the troops, me boy. I’ll be all right.’

As Father O’Buhilly indicated his readiness to proceed, there was a shouted order and the soldiers fixed bayonets and lifted their rifles. At once the crowd vanished down alleys knee-deep in rubbish and torn paper.

‘I have a bottle of Irish whiskey in me cupboard at the Mission.’ Father O’Buhilly grinned at Dicken. ‘We’ll share it, when I come back.’ He paused. ‘
If
I
come back, because this time ’tis a touch further than Chapei.’

They shook hands then the priest lit a cigarette and climbed back into the car which drove off into the darkness. As he stood watching the tail light disappear, Dicken heard the distant crackle of musketry.