By Eastern windows (26 page)

‘But that neutral ground is not consecrated ground, is it?’

‘Well, no.’

‘Then it is not
good
enough!’

‘I'm sorry.’ Mr Reid was startled at the savagery in Lachlan's voice. ‘I'm sorry … but does it really matter where a body is buried? I know you are a good man, but I'm sure God will – ‘

‘No, sir!’ Lachlan pointed towards the room where Jane lay. ‘
She
was a
good
girl! An
angel.
All her principles were good and kind. And she will not be buried under some filthy dust outside the city walls of Macao!’

After a silence, Mr Beale said quietly, ‘There is another place, up on the empty hills.'’

Lachlan looked at him. ‘But you said that was Chinese territory.’

‘Yes, yes, it is, but...’ An idea had come to Mr Beale and he sat forward as he voiced it. ‘Perhaps we could take her up there in secret, during the night, and with all of us helping, perhaps we could bury her on the hills and get away before morning without the Chinese knowing anything about it.’

He looked questioningly at Lachlan to see his reaction, but Lachlan's mind was miles away.
 
‘Well?’ said Mr Beale. ‘Do you think it worth a try, to take her up to the hills under cover of the night?’

‘No,’ said Lachlan, coming out of his thoughts. ‘No, she will not be buried anywhere in China. There will be no hole in the dark burial for my wife.’

An idea had come to him too – the best idea of all, and he could not understand why he had not thought of it before. He said incredulously:
 
‘Why did I even consider leaving my angel alone in this foreign and hostile place?
 
I will take her back with me to India.’

‘What? Good gracious! I say, dear boy, are you mad?

The small British group looked at him as if he was indeed mad.

‘All the way back to India!’

‘My dear man, are you not getting this whole business out of proportion? In the end what does it really matter? The whole world is one big graveyard.’

But Lachlan was suddenly and stubbornly resolved to taking Jane back with him to India. That night, for the first time, he lay down to sleep with a small measure of peace; but the nightmare went on.

*

The Chinese officials refused to allow him to take the coffin out of the country.

The government of Macao, Lachlan began to realise, was not a simple matter to comprehend. The Chinese ruled, and the Portuguese ruled, depending on which door you happened to step through. Officially, Macao was ruled by the Chinese under a Portuguese administration. And the Chinese refused him permission to take his wife aboard a ship.

Slowly he was beginning to understand that here in Macao he had enemies all around him – not because of his religion – but because he was
British
.

The Portuguese hated the British because they had stolen nearly all the valuable land and rich trading posts they had founded in India. Even Bombay –
Bom Baìa
– the Good Bay, had belonged to the Portuguese, before the British swept in.

The Chinese hated the British because twenty-four years earlier, in 1773, the British had unloaded a thousand chests of Bengal opium in Canton, and were still managing by corrupt and illicit methods to unload thousands of chests of the addictive ‘foreign mud’ every year, in return for China's precious tea.

It did not seem to matter to these Western barbarians that, every year, more and more Chinese addicts were needed to keep up the demand for Indian opium in order to supply the British nation's craving for tea.

And China's tea was not the only thing the Western barbarians wanted. In the past there had been a number of Anglo-Dutch attempts to move into China and drain it of its riches. The first invasion attempt had been at Macao, but the Portuguese had joined the Chinese in fighting them off.

Since then, under the guise of legitimate trade, the British had practically taken over Canton, and now had their greedy eyes on the superior harbour of Hong Kong.

For almost a century the Chinese had been noting the activities of the British all over the world, and they had no intention of allowing the British to carve up China in the same way they had sliced up India.

The Chinese Mandarins and Portuguese officials had no charity to spare for the bereaved husband, not the smallest drop of mercy, because he was one of the opium-smuggling, land-grabbing British.

But even if he had found a way around the solid steel of Chinese officialdom and managed, somehow, by bribery or some other means, to get permission from the Chinese government to leave with Jane, he quickly learned that there was still no way he could take her out of Macao, because of the superstitions of the ordinary Chinese themselves. Their spiritual beliefs would not allow them to carry a coffin on their sampans and junks. Macao's inner harbour was simply not deep enough for a heavy sea-going vessel, and without a sampan or junk, there was no way he could get out to sea to board a ship.

He had managed, with the help of his friends, to secure a passage on an English ship that was lying at the mouth of the outer harbour, but when he arrived at the waterfront, and the junk sailors saw his cargo, they waved their hands angrily and refused to take him.

For hours he beseeched and offered bribes, in a position to do nothing else, but all in vain. Daybreak found him sitting on a box at the waterfront, numb and sick and swamped in exhaustion, surrounded by all his rejected cargo, a huge Moor servant, two Indian children, and a young wife in a coffin.

Together he and Bappoo lifted the beautiful lead and silver casket. There was nowhere else to go, but back to the house.

*

For sixteen days he stayed within the house without once venturing outside the door or allowing anyone to enter and give him the consolation of their company.

On the seventeenth day he allowed his worried friends from the British factory to enter, but the experiment failed. Worn by weeks of solitude, and desolate for his wife, their conversation seemed pointless and trivial to him. His attention kept wandering, their words drifting unheard.

His lack of sleep, personal grief, and sabotage from all directions had led him into a state of vague disorientation. The casket, which had been closed and screwed down forever within days of Jane's death, now took on an unreal aspect in his eyes. It contained something belonging to Jane, something precious left in his care, but not Jane herself.

As he stood at night, alone in the glass attic flickering with light and shadow, gazing out to the harbour, he felt Jane's presence at his side, soothing him, and time became meaningless. All the urgency left him as day followed day when he watched the sun rise through the eastern window of his bedroom, and later set into the sea as he sat on the terrace.

He did not realise that his every movement was being watched by George Jarvis who silently followed him everywhere and squatted unobtrusively in a corner of the veranda, keeping a steadfast eye upon him, and later reporting in whispers to Marianne and Bappoo, when Bappoo would rub a big hand over his face and sigh and sigh, but voiced no judgement.

All the laughter had died in George. The eyes in his beautiful ten-year-old face were now grave. In the space of a few weeks George had matured years. The sudden loss of his beloved mistress, who had given him her own name, had wounded him far more than his years of being a slave.

Now George spent his days looking at the man whom he thought of reverently as ‘Father’ and whom he loved passionately, watching him like a guardian angel and wondering how many more days Lachlan-Sahib would be content to stay here listening to echoes and gazing at memories.

Why did they stay here? Where nobody wanted them. Why did Lachlan-Sahib not look for a way back to Hindustan? And if there was no way, why did he not look to Heaven and ask Allah to show him a way?

The harbour below them was sinking into a silence as the sun began to set like a huge blood orange down into the far horizon of the sea, but George's eyes were turned up to the sky, his young mind questioning. Why all religions fight, when there was no God of one tribe but God of whole universe.

*

The letter came one week later, at the end of August.

As Lachlan read it, the clouds of his memory cleared and he wondered how he could have completely forgotten his friend?

The following day he was up at sunrise, dressed and preparing for a journey, leaving instructions with Bappoo, Marianne and George, and even running as far as David Reid's house to request him to keep an eye on his house and servants and his beloved Jane while he was away.

David Reid nodded his head and assured him that he could rely on it. `Rely on it most assuredly, dear boy.'

Reid watched him running away, in a devil of a hurry, and sighed and turned back indoors to his wife and said yet again that Macquarie's situation was no longer tragic, it was positively shocking!

When Lachlan returned to his own house he found George Jarvis eagerly waiting for him.

‘Where we go?’ George asked.

‘Not we, George, just me.
 
I am going alone.’

George's face fell, then his eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Where you go?’

‘Canton.’
        

*

Lestock Wilson was so shocked he had to flop into a chair when Lachlan arrived alone at Canton and explained the reason for Jane's absence.

‘But why—’ Lestock made an effort to clear the lump in his throat. ‘Why did you not send word to me?’

Lachlan shook his head vaguely. ‘I didn't think. I haven't really been thinking straight at all.’

‘Yes, yes, I can imagine.’ Lestock rose to his feet and headed for a bottle of wine.

The two men sat for hours talking. Lestock looked at his friend, pitying him, but Lachlan spoke calmly, as if there was no real feeling in him, as if all that had happened had happened to somebody else.

‘Stay here for a few weeks,’ Lestock suggested. ‘I'll not be sailing again until the spring. And you need not worry about having to put on a social face for visitors from the Canton English factory. Most of my friends here are Chinese. So we will allow no callers and you can rest and live just as you please.’

‘Thank you, but I have not come to Canton for a holiday.’ Lachlan suppressed a wincing smile. ‘I have come for your advice on a way of getting out of China.’

Lestock shrugged. ‘Most of the Chinese are polite, quiet and good people, you know. But they do have their superstitions which only another Chinese really understands.’

He poured more wine. ‘Tomorrow I shall introduce you to a good friend of mine named Chinqua.
 
A nice young man. Speaks fairly good English and is very clever, very smart. You will like him. He may be able to help us in finding a way around the superstitions of the sampan and junk sailors.’

‘But will he be able to sort out the Chinese officials?’

‘Ah, now, no. They are a very different kettle of fornicating fish.’

‘So what about a ship? We will need an English ship bound for Bengal or Bombay. It
has
to be an English ship. The French are our enemies. The Portuguese and Dutch can no longer be trusted. And the Chinese are forbidden under penalty of death to sail out of China.’

‘The problem is a difficult one, I don't deny,’ Lestock said with a worried frown on his face, standing up as a Chinese girl signalled to him that supper was ready. ‘But all we can do,’ he said, ‘is take each day as it comes, and see what happens to drift into harbour.’

*

As they dined, Lestock slyly watched Lachlan's eyes to see if he noticed the exquisite beauty of the Chinese girl who served them, but as time moved on he realised that Lachlan had not noticed her at all.

There had been no more talk that night after supper, for Lachlan was very tired. He was still asleep the following morning when Lestock Wilson set out to find his friend Chinqua.

Lachlan awoke when a soft hand gently touched his cheek. He opened his eyes slowly and looked into the face of a girl, a beautiful Chinese girl with a flower in her long black hair, bending over him, with a soft smile on her lips.

‘
Jo san
,’ she said softly. ‘
Nei ho ma
?’

He sat up slowly, weary in body and spirit, and gave her a shadowed smile of apology. ‘I don't speak Cantonese.’

‘
Cha
?’ she said, and handed him a small saucer and cup of steaming tea.

‘Thank you,’ he said, and when she continued to stand and watch him, he looked into her face and said it again, ‘Thank you.’

‘
M goi
,’ she said with a smile, and in a blink had glided out of the room.

By the time Lachlan had washed and dressed, Lestock Wilson had returned with his friend Chinqua.

Lachlan took an immediate liking to the strong-looking young Chinese man who came towards him with an easy athletic stride and wearing a genuine smile of friendship.