The Ginger Tree (5 page)

Mr Hamlin did not play mah-jong, sitting by an open coal fire with me. He told me that Peking is lovely, not in the least like Shanghai which is just a business kitchen in which to make money as fast as you can and then leave. In his view anyone who lives here for any other reason must be out of his mind, but Peking, in spite of the Boxer Troubles, is an Imperial city and feels like it. Though the Empress Dowager now pretends to like Europeans Mr Hamlin is quite sure that if she could she would order her people to start killing them again. When I said I seemed to be going to a dangerous city he said that the old lady had too much sense to try anything like the Boxers again, having had her fingers so badly burned only a year or two ago, and that I would find her capital one of the most interesting places in the world in which to live.

By the time I got back to the hotel it was after midnight and I sat for a long time in front of the dressing-table mirror which has movable side pieces and a bright electrolier over it. I am not beautiful. My hair is just ordinary brown. I think my eyes are best, brown, too, but really quite large and with lashes. And I haven’t a big nose, for which I am thankful because from his pictures Papa had. It would have been an awful thing to inherit. Three men have wanted to marry me and I said yes to the third. Mama wanted me to say yes to the second. If I had married George I would have had a very safe life in Edinburgh.

I have decided I don’t like the way I am doing my hair, the bun on top makes it look like one of those loaves of bread they call Sally Lunns. Still, this is the way Richard saw me, so I had better leave it just now.

SS
Ching Wha
, at sea,
February 11th, 1903

Dearest Mama – I am so ashamed of that short letter written on the
Mooldera
just before we reached Shanghai, but my excuse is that I was still rather upset by the typhoon. I won’t describe that again and you must not worry about my travelling in ships because having seen what they can endure and survive I will not easily be so frightened again. In Shanghai I spent most of the time resting in my hotel before embarking on this coastal ship which is very small compared with the
Mooldera
, only eight cabins in the First Class accommodation and eleven
passengers
occupying them, though the steerage is packed with what I suppose must be hundreds. In spite of its name this is a British ship with British officers, the Captain and two others, plus a Scotch engineer from Troon. The other passengers are an American Methodist missionary and his wife who are returning to a city called Sian-Fu which they had to flee from during the Boxer Troubles. The husband is rather anti-British in his attitudes, calling us ruthless imperialists, which does not make him the most agreeable of table companions. I think he resents having to travel on a British ship because there are no American ones on this route. Three Catholic priests who were in the Second Class on the
Mooldera
are now in the First Class here (there is no Second), but all except the youngest seem to live in another world with their little books of prayers which they must say. They are not at my table in the small dining-room but the youngest priest talks to me sometimes when we meet on deck, about the weather and so on. The other passengers in the First are all Chinese who take their meals in their cabins and no exercise, so we scarcely ever see them.

This Captain, unlike the one on the
Mooldera
, is a very merry man, only half English, his mother Norwegian. He is from Newcastle and a little like a Scotchman in his attitudes, and with a peculiar sense of humour which I enjoy. I think that usually not many people laugh at his
jokes which makes him like me rather, because I do. Also, having lived in the Far East for twenty years without once having returned to Britain – his wife is in Shanghai – he can tell me many things about China which are most useful.

I am writing this because the ship touches at a place called Wei-
Hai-Wei
before Tientsin where I can post a letter. I think of you so often, wondering what you are doing, and whether you are still giving your every other Thursday ‘At Homes’? Did you go to hear Handel’s
Messiah
once again this year as usual? It is so strange to think that I am now on the opposite side of this spinning world and that this means at least a six weeks’ journey and months for the post. They say that the new
Trans-Siberian
railway service will mean that it will soon be possible to be in Europe from the Far East within twelve days, which seems almost unbelievable, but I don’t know that I could endure sitting in a hot, smoky carriage for all that time. The sea journey offers a good deal of variety and interest.

As you can imagine I am so excited about meeting Richard in no time at all now. He will be waiting for this ship in Tientsin and we will go from there by train together to Peking. You must not worry about your daughter coming so far to marry, I am sure we will be happy and make a good life. Cook and Jessie are, I know, looking after you as always and you must give them my warmest greetings. Do you still have the same gardener? Oh well, if he has gone you will soon get another. I am writing this in my narrow bunk and my arm has got cramp so, dearest Mother, I will say goodbye for now.

Your ever loving daughter,

Mary

SS
Ching Wha
 
February 11th, 1903

Tonight before getting into bed to write this I said my prayers, which I have not done since the typhoon. It is a habit you can get out of. On the
Mooldera
I had to do it privately up in my berth after undressing, which was such a struggle in itself that quite often I forgot. Somehow the words you say at home in your prayers are not right for China, and I wonder if this is going to be a continuing trouble to me? Perhaps it is the
missionaries
and the priests on this ship which has made me think of these things but I cannot escape the feeling that my faith is now being tested. In Edinburgh it is easy to believe in Heaven as a reward for the good life carefully lived, but from what I have seen of the Far East I am having doubts of what had once seemed certain. For instance, those people on boats in the Shanghai river. No doubt many of the people living in that way lead sinful lives as we would see it, but surely it is in ignorance? And if that is the case are these sins that would put them in Hell as
punishment
? Perhaps there is an excuse in ignorance and they would not suffer as we who
know
would suffer justly.

I feel so far from home and Mama right now. I am sitting here staring at the rust stains which come through on bolt heads from the iron plates, wondering if I believe in Heaven and Hell? Perhaps it is not necessary to believe in either to believe in God? If that were so I would feel better, yet every Minister I have ever listened to would say that the Christian must believe in life after death and rewards for goodness and punishment for evil, and that if one did not one could not be a Christian. How can millions and millions of people be so proud as to believe they are
worth
being kept by God forever and ever?

Mama would die if she knew I had put down words like this.
Sometimes
at night in this creaking ship I feel so far inside myself, with no help from anything outside, that I wonder if this is the way things must be even when I am married? Perhaps these are just a traveller’s thoughts because one is so unsettled and all you have of your own is in a trunk and two cases. Maybe I will feel better when I am once again with faces I will
see every day for a long time. I think of Cook in Mama’s house, who has been with us ever since we came to Edinburgh and who always sings hymns when she is baking. She only goes to church rarely but believes firmly that when she dies she will go to Heaven which is, for her, a little two-roomed cottage in Perthshire, or what looks like it, with a brook running through the garden. She told me once she could see every detail. I wonder what Mama sees when she thinks of Heaven? I have no vision of it at all.

Perhaps there is a lot of Papa in me and Mama has always been afraid of this. I know very little about him except that I think Mama was half angry with him because he was not a good business man like Grandfather had been and that before Papa died suddenly he had allowed the factory to run down so there wasn’t nearly as much money as Mama had expected. However, she has always been very generous with me; after paying for my trousseau and steamer tickets she gave me two hundred pounds, which I said was far too much, fifty would have been enough to get me to China and my husband’s protection. She insisted, saying a young lady must have a little nest egg to give her a feeling of security. I was quite nervous about carrying so much money and have spent very little of it, only about ten pounds so far, which has included purchases on the way and tips to stewards and stewardesses on board the
Mooldera
. I think I should reach Peking with a least a hundred and eighty pounds, which is more than some quite respectable people have to live on for one year.

SS
Ching Wha
February 13th, 1903

We are now anchored in the harbour of Wei-Hai-Wei which is a piece of British China I had never heard of. I asked the Captain at luncheon how we came to own it and he said we only took it five years ago. When will we stop taking places in the world? The way we do it is the reason why the American missionary doesn’t like the British, and in a way I cannot blame him here. The Captain said that this is a good harbour and after the Japanese moved out in 1898 after their war with China was over it seemed
a good idea for us to move in before the Chinese had a chance to come creeping back. They say that Queen Victoria didn’t want us to take any more of China and when informed about her new possession said: ‘We do not wish to hear about it.’ But that may only have been the Captain’s story. I know I should not listen to jokes about the Royal Family but I had to laugh when the Captain said that the Queen gave a large piece of Borneo to Rajah Brooke because she thought his need was greater than hers. The Captain is very irreverent and I don’t think the other officers like it, particularly the Second Officer, who is very patriotic and serious. Mama wouldn’t care for the Captain’s jokes, either, and Mrs C would have left the dining saloon.

It is strange how soon we forget the dead. Though I lived so close to her for weeks on end, and could scarcely move without her watching, I now only remember Mrs C from something like this and in honesty do not greatly respect her memory. This is perhaps very wrong of me.

From the deck one can see the walled city of Wei-Hai-Wei itself and I must say our new colony is very pretty, the harbour closed in by the island of Liu Kung Tao on which is our naval base. There are quite high hills all around, some with terraced rice fields, and a good deal of pine forest. The air is extremely cold, but dry, and though snow has fallen recently the sun is strong and bright. There are six warships of our China Squadron anchored near and I watched a liberty boat going ashore from one of them. There was not time for us to land though some passengers left us by tender, including one First Class Chinese with a pigtail. The steerage people took no notice at all of the unloading going on all around them, continuing with their deck cooking over braziers. I asked the Captain if he wasn’t nervous about having his ship set on fire by an overturned brazier and he said he lived in terror of it, but had hoses ready which he had used more than once to spray both cooks and their stoves. However, the Chinese become seasick quicker than most races so that if the sea is at all rough they do not eat.

I find watching them cook down there quite fascinating and it seems to go on all day. This morning the youngest priest came up beside me at the rail and said in his quiet voice: ‘Is this how you like to watch the world,
Miss Mackenzie? From an upper deck?’ I thought that was rather cheeky of him even if he does wear a robe and is addressed as Father Anthony which I find so strange and never could do to one so young, so I call him nothing. But when, half angry, I looked at him, he was smiling. It is a gentle smile but gives me the feeling that it is a little put on from his theological training. He is very fair with thin hair that will not last long, though this will not matter to him. I realised that he had not meant to be superior but had a real interest in what I might be thinking. Suddenly I was bold in a way I could never have been a month ago. I said: ‘In Moukden you expect to be right in the middle of the world?’ His answer to that was a nod, which wasn’t very satisfactory, which somehow prodded me to go on and I said: ‘For every convert you make in China ten thousand will be born who will not be converted.’ As soon as that was out I thought how dreadful of me, but he wasn’t angry, just nodded and after a moment said in a quiet voice again: ‘All we can hope for is to be a leaven.’

I felt terrible because I could see that he was sincerely humble and his being willing to spend his whole life on something that seems hopeless was a kind of rebuke to me. I was a little frightened, too, because I knew then that I would never be able to follow a straight line in life as he was doing. I will probably always be of weak faith. When I pray it is for God to stop a storm.

SS
Ching Wha
February 14th, 1903

It is early morning and I am writing this because I can’t get to sleep again. Tomorrow we reach Taku Bar and then go up river to Tientsin where Richard and I meet. All the way from Wei-Hai-Wei it has been bitterly cold, the wind now reaching us from Siberia, like a stab to the lungs when you step out on deck. Even with the heating pipes clanking from the hot water being pushed through them it is still so cold in this cabin I have had to massage my fingers.

These days I find I can look back at the past with new eyes, suddenly
seeming to understand things that I missed at the time. I have been thinking about my visit to Richard’s mother. Mama had refused to come with me, saying that if I was going all the way to China to get married it would be a good experience for me to travel to Norfolk unaccompanied. It was quite a difficult journey, with two changes, one at Peterborough and again at King’s Lynn, and when I reached the station of Swaffham where I expected to be met all I found was the family carriage and coachman. I did not know then that Lady Collingsworth was a
semi-invalid
with rheumatism, so was quite unhappy on the long drive sitting alone in the back of a vehicle that was not in very good condition, more like a hackney in Edinburgh than a private conveyance. Also, the
countryside
was strange after Scotland, so flat and to my eyes uninteresting. The house of Mannington itself seemed almost suffocated by old trees, a brick building, not stone, and so dark inside that if there had not been a fire on in the hall I would have seen nothing until my eyes became accustomed to the gloom. The house is undoubtedly very damp on that low-lying ground and needs fires in all the rooms even in summer, though there was never one in my bedroom and the sheets were clammy. Lady Collingsworth and Sir John, Richard’s eldest brother, were very kind in a way but I can see now clearly enough that I was being inspected that first evening and for the next three days as well. I can also see myself as they must have seen me. In spite of my school which did its best to cure me of a Scotch accent I still have one because Mama has stayed quite broad in the way she speaks even since moving to Edinburgh, and the moment I came home for holidays it was to lapse into the old way of speaking. Lady Collingsworth pretended not to notice my accent, but Sir John kept asking me to repeat things, which was embarrassing. He is still a bachelor but as Lady C said to me one day when we were alone at tea, he expects to do his duty soon. I thought the lady in question was a neighbour called Elizabeth who came to Mannington three times while I was there, but with my new eyes I think she was curious about me because she had been after Richard herself. She is quite pretty but with too colourful a skin from hunting and with very broad hips that I expect come from horse riding. I do not think I passed Elizabeth’s examination either.