Fragrant Flower (11 page)

The
Orissa
sailed into Victoria Harbour early in the morning, and for the first time Azalea saw Hong Kong.

She had learnt all she could about it from Mrs. Chang, from a history book she had found in the ship’s Library and the answers her uncle had condescended to give to her questions earlier.

She knew Hong Kong was first occupied by the British in 1841 and legally ceded to them in perpetuity by the Emperor of China two years later.

Lord Palmerston, who was Foreign Secretary at the time, had considered the occupation “utterly premature”. In fact he dismissed Hong Kong as “a barren island with hardly a house on it.”

Queen Victoria, however, thought it a joke and wrote to her uncle, King Leopold of the Belgians, saying,

“Albert is so much amused at my having got the island of Hong Kong, and we think Victoria ought to be called
Princess Hong Kong
in
addition
to
Princess Royal!
”

The history of the eighteen-year Opium War with China made complex and dry reading with its references to the difficulties of British Administration in curbing the traffic in and addiction to drugs.

But nothing Azalea had read, heard or expected prepared her for the beauty of the island which she had heard the General call disparagingly “a pimple on the backside of China!”

The
Orissa
moved slowly to the anchorage and she saw why the name Hong Kong meant ‘Fragrant Harbour.’

On the sparkling gold sea there were innumerable Chinese junks of every size, their brown sails ribbed like bats’ wings. There were also dhows, ferries, fishing boats and trading ships from all over the world.

The water-front buildings were vaguely Italian in the style common to all European settlements in China.

Pale sienna in colour, they seemed almost to be drawn in pencil, like the slab of the Peak towering above them which was tawny and brown, while lower down there was a riot of colour which made Azalea draw in her breath.

She knew from Mrs. Chang’s description that she was seeing the frangipani trees with their creamy, waxen, temple-flower blossoms and beneath them the crimson, purple and gold of azaleas.

A military launch was sent to the
Orissa
as soon as she anchored to convey Lady Osmund and her party ashore. An Aide-de-Camp, resplendent in his white uniform, introduced himself and escorted them with much respectful pomp to the launch.

They were rowed ashore under the envious eyes of the less fortunate passengers lining the decks.

“The General deeply regrets, my Lady, that he is unable to welcome you himself,” the Aide-de-Camp said respectfully, “but as you will understand, he has been excessively busy since he arrived.”

“I imagined that he would be,” Lady Osmund said graciously. “Where is Sir Frederick at this moment?”

“I believe he is with the Governor, Sir John Pope-Hennessy,” the Aide-de-Camp replied. “They are having a series of meetings which start early and go on late.”

“I am sure that my husband has a great deal to discuss with Sir John,” Lady Osmund said.

On the quayside itself there were the picturesque Chinese Azalea had wanted to see in their large coolie hats, and below, rocking a little in the waves caused by the launch, there were innumerable small sampans in which she had learnt whole families lived and died.

There was a carriage waiting for them drawn by two horses, but Azalea’s eyes were on the rickshaws. She was listening too for the first time to the strange tinkling lilt of the Cantonese language and pidgin English which contained no r’s, as the rickshaw-boys solicited for clients, crying “Lickshaw! Lickshaw!”

As they drove from the wharf the streets were so narrow and so full of pedestrians that it seemed impossible that the horses would find their way through them.

There were many soldiers and sailors, Portuguese priests, nuns, and Azalea caught a glimpse of a scarlet-curtained palanquin swaying as it was carried by four sturdy men.

She also saw several Mandarins riding in rickshaws – she recognised them because they had jade hat-buttons and robes of brilliant satin embroidered with gold thread. In contrast there were all too many ragged children staring hungrily at the food hawkers and at the Chinese who could afford it sitting down in the street for their
shik-anchan.
Azalea knew this meant their midday meal.

Fish with open mouths and large eyes hung decoratively head-down from the tops of open stalls. Red snappers, caught off Hainan, sea bream which had a red swelling between the eyes, lizard fish with mouths entirely lined with teeth, Macao sole and the huge conger pike with dagger-like teeth and a smooth tapering body.

Mrs. Chang had taught Azalea about these and also about the birds of Hong Kong, many of which she could see for sale in gold painted cages. The yellow-green South China whale-eye seemed to be a favourite with the small shopkeepers.

“Gay bird cheer up sad people,” Mrs. Chang had explained.

“You mean shopkeepers have cages of them just to please their customers?” Azalea asked.

“Happy customers buy more,” Mrs. Chang replied.

The bird Azalea wanted most to see was the Chinese blue magpie. Mrs. Chang had described and even drawn for her the magpie’s dazzling blue wings and tail, his coral red bill and legs.

“We believe to see a bluebird brings luck,” Azalea explained.

“Many blue magpies – you much good luck!” Mrs. Chang smiled.

“I hope so,” Azalea said wistfully, thinking, however, it was unlikely.

She had the uneasy feeling that once she reached Flagstaff House she would once again become a household maid-of-all-trades, incessantly abused and criticised by her aunt.

There were crowds everywhere. Never had Azalea imagined that so many people could be jammed into such a small space. Every house seemed to be tottering and bending under the weight of the human life within it.

The air was full of cries and voices, the clop-clop of wooden shoes and the smell of spicy cooking.

‘It is just as I expected it would be!’ Azalea thought.

But she had not realised that the streets would be so beautiful with long, narrow, coloured pennants and banners hanging from the high houses.

In the richer parts balconies were festooned with creepers, while the houses with their porticos and colonnades looked cool in the hot sunshine which seemed to come from an almost purple sky.

“Really, the place smells!” Lady Osmund said sharply as they passed what looked like a huge perambulator on which a Chinese man was cooking several different dishes at the same time.

No one answered her, and after a moment, as if determined to find fault, she said,

“The coolies look ridiculous with their enormous hats, like over-turned basins!”

Azalea longed to answer that she thought the coolies made everything seem Oriental and exciting. But she knew that such a remark would only be replied to contemptuously by her aunt and refrained from speaking.

Flagstaff House was, she thought, like every other important British residence abroad. She had seen so many of them in India and they all appeared to have been designed on the same pattern.

Solid, imposing, they were unmistakably English, just as the rooms inside might have been conveyed there complete in every detail from Camberley, Aldershot, Cheltenham or Bournemouth.

There were the same polished mahogany chairs and flowered chintz curtains over the windows – the same badly executed oleographs of the Queen and the Prince Consort, the same second-quality Persian rugs, and outside, the same effort to create an English garden. There were pansies, wallflowers, marigolds, asters, and forget-me-nots planted in tidy beds and chosen by every General’s wife to remind her of home.

“Now, Azalea,” Lady Osmund said sharply, “you had better see to the unpacking.”

“There are a number of Chinese servants in the house, my Lady,” the Aide-de-Camp said quickly, “and more, can be procured, if you will let me know your requirements.”

“My niece can supervise them,” Lady Osmund said. “That is what she does at home, and it will keep her occupied.”

The way in which her aunt spoke the words made it clear to Azalea that she was determined to keep her busy, however many servants were employed at Flagstaff House. Fortunately as soon as Lady Osmund had settled in, she discovered a dozen things she needed from the shops. Too busy socially to go herself, she ordered Azalea to buy her what was required.

As she was of no importance, an elderly Chinese servant, who was traditionally called ‘Boy’ like the rest, was deputed to be her guide.

Azalea asked his name and was told it was Ah Yok.

She knew that the twins would have been escorted by an Aide-de-Camp and conveyed in a carriage, but she was only too content to go with Ah Yok in two rickshaws.

In fact she preferred it.

They set out and Azalea realised that Ah Yok was taking her to the shops in the Old Praya patronised by the English. In her somewhat halting Chinese she explained what she wanted and there was a faint smile on Ah Yok’s wide mouth as he commanded the rickshaw boys to convey them further into the town.

Azalea soon insisted on discarding the rickshaws and walking in streets so narrow and so over-hung with signs that there was no sun, and up the flights of steep steps to visit the real Chinese quarters which Mrs. Chang had described to her.

There were little bread shops which sold delicious freshly baked
yeh see min bao
, which were rolls with sweet grated coconut in the centre of them.

There were stalls with fruits piled in polychromatic pyramids of colour, and the
min yan
who made for the children tiny coloured toys – tigers, cats, dogs and ducks – out of flour paste.

The noise of the hawkers and pedlars, crying salted fish, brooms, incense, blood, gelatin, rang in Azalea’s ears. Ah Yok explained they had to buy wooden tickets for 50 cents which entitled them to call their wares.

Some of them carried large, flat, rattan cages containing
um chun
– timid little brown birds called quail. Others cried “
um chun don
,” which were tiny little quail’s eggs – much favoured in Chinese soups.

In one street packed with children Azalea found the blind musicians singing and playing
nan yin
. One musician played the
ts’in-hu
– a violin with a twelve-inch sound box, while another worked the
p’ai-pan
or clappers with one hand and strummed the
ku-cheng
or Chinese zither with the other.

“Velly old music,” Ah Yok explained. “First mentioned Sung dynasty.”

Whatever Azalea bought was recorded on a wooden abacus, a calculator which had been invented, she learnt from the guide book, by Chhiwhuni-Wen, a metallurgist, nearly a thousand years previously.

Like a child’s toy, the beads were pushed backwards and forwards so swiftly by the thin, sensitive Chinese fingers, that the total seemed to be calculated by magic.

What fascinated Azalea were the medicine shops with the rows of square bottles, their dried sea-horses from the warm Gulf of Tonkin and bears’ galls from the Tibetan highlands.

“Vipers from jungles of Kwangi,” Ah Yok pointed out. “Deer’s antlers from Manchurian forests.”

Azalea had been told by Mrs. Chang that these were to ensure a long life and were as prized for their aphrodisiac properties as the wild Manchurian Ginseng which had been believed for centuries to cure all disease.

“Some herbs five thousand years old,” Ah Yok said proudly in Chinese and the shopkeeper nodded agreement and showed Azalea herbs for rectifying the heat of ‘high fever’ and for ‘purging the fire.’

Azalea had read that the Chinese believed there were two opposing principles in nature, Yin and Yang, disease being a manifestation of unbalance in the body, health of balance and harmony.

The shopkeeper confirmed this.

“The heart – husband,” he said, “lungs – wife.”

“What he is saying,” Ah Yok explained, “if no harmony between two – evil arises!”

Azalea was shown the famous tonics of the Galens of China, which included stalactite, dried red, spotted lizard skins, dog flesh, human milk, teeth of dragons and shavings of rhinoceros horns.

Even though she found it hard to believe in the efficacy of such treatments, it was absorbingly interesting, and only with the utmost reluctance did she allow Ah Yok to take her back to Flagstaff House.

“Thank you, Ah Yok, thank you very much,” she said when they arrived.

“Great privilege, Honourable Lady,” Ah Yok said with sincerity, and Azalea knew she had found a friend.

One of the first things Azalea learnt in Hong Kong concerned Lord Sheldon.

She had found it impossible, after leaving the
Orissa
, to decide what she thought about him.

She had been bewildered and confused by her own emotions when he had kissed her the second time, and she had run away from him to lock herself in her cabin and throw herself down on her bunk quivering with emotions she had not known she possessed.

Why should he kiss her? Why should he want to? she asked, and could find no answer. She could not really believe that he was attracted to her. How could he be?

When they had met first in such strange circumstances, she knew how unattractive she must have looked in the clothes that did not suit her and which had belonged to Violet or Daisy.

And yet his lips had held a compelling magic and she had been lifted by his kiss into a world of wonder and glory. But she could not believe that he could feel the same.

How could he, with his experience, with his title, his importance, his position in the social world?

Azalea was well aware, even without overhearing what Lord Sheldon had said to Captain Widcombe, that any Army officer who was reasonably good-looking was sought out and flattered.

And if, as in Lord Sheldon’s case, he should come into a title, he would only have to look in the direction of a woman for her to fall only too eagerly into his arms.

Why, then, should he trouble to kiss her? She could not explain it.