Mandarin-Gold (41 page)

He had fallen short of the glory of God and the fellowship of man. But at least he had the courage to acknowledge this, and to end this sham existence.

He took a long breath, and slowly, almost lovingly, he squeezed the trigger and watched the hammer fall:

When Gunn reached his house, MacPherson was still waiting up for him. All the other, guests had gone, and Gunn felt a sudden rush of unexpected warmth towards the Scot. MacPherson was fatter now, of course, and more grizzled than when he had saved him on the coast years ago, but he was loyal, and loyalty was beyond all price. Gunn had treated him as a subordinate all this time, but MacPherson had never minded. He had gladly accepted his secondary role in their relationship. He had never complained.

He was sitting now in one of the cane chairs with holes cut in their arms for glasses. The room was hot, for the curtain was drawn against night moths and mosquitoes. In the candle-glow, MacPherson's face shone with sweat like a redstone carving.

'I have been to see Mackereth,' Gunn explained and sat down opposite him and poured himself, a whisky. 'I do not wish to employ him any longer as an interpreter.'

'And what
do
I say?' Gunn asked, suddenly wary.

'Nothing important, usually. Things about your boyhood. Whitstable oysters. Coal barges with red sails. Spring mist over the marshes. A hot day in a cornfield. When you go home, it will be like the prodigal son returning.'

'It is nothing like that at all,' retorted Gunn angrily. The man had been drinking too much. These people had such gross flaws in their characters. Why had he surrounded himself with the drunk and the depraved?

‘The prodigal son went back, poor and wretched, having wasted all his inheritance. I am going back rich. Why, if I wanted, I could be a Freeman of the City of London — even Lord Mayor.'

'If
you wanted,' echoed MacPherson. 'And who the devil would want that? You are rich in money, Gunn, but you are poor as a church mouse in everything else.'

This conversation was intolerable, and somehow familiar. MacPherson had never addressed him by his surname before, always as doctor. The man was far more inebriated than he had seen him for a long time; he must cut down on the amount of claret and whisky he consumed or he would have a seizure. But the night was hot, and MacPherson was growing old. He should make allowances for that. Instinctively, because he needed MacPherson now, Gunn dredged to find excuses for his behaviour.

'You don't answer me, do you?' said MacPherson tauntingly. ‘That is because you can't. I tell you, there are coolies out in the streets, running barefoot with rickshaws or carrying loads on their heads, far richer than you.'

'That's another word with the same meaning so far as you are concerned. You
request
me to do this, that and the other thing. Find you a new woman, buy another clipper cheap, beat down some middle-man.

'You
request
Mackereth to translate, to sail among the junks at Hong Kong for food and water. You
re
quest
that poor miserable wretch to take three hundred pounds a trip instead of a thousand. He couldn't ignore your
requests
because he needed the money.

'You use people and don't give a damn what happens to them after that. You're like a ship being launched, that rolls down the beach to the sea on logs. We are all the logs, supposed to be grateful if we can help your passage to greater glory.'

'You're drunk,' said Gunn coldly.

'Of course I'm drunk,' agreed MacPherson. 'How else could I stand this filthy job?'

'I would think it is better than being a mate in a wooden grain ship, and to be seized by pirates and marooned on a hostile coast!'

'It's better paid, but by God, I earn the money. When I was at sea, at least I slept nights. I didn't wonder what was going to happen when we'd poisoned all the Chinese with our mud, to make
you
a greater profit.'

'Your conscience does you credit, but I feel that its pangs trouble you rather late. You must be worth a million pounds now, at least, MacPherson. I would have paid more heed to your heart cries had I heard them before you were so rich.'

'I'm not saying I'm any better than you,' said MacPherson. 'I like money for what it buys. But for me most of what it buys is oblivion. The kind our customers seek in mud, I find in the bottle. I drink two bottles a day now, since Ling Fai died. And
you
killed her, Gunn.'

'Don't be ridiculous. That was a total and tragic accident. I liked her, as much as you did.'

The irony was that he had not even known she was in the
Hesperides
at the time. He was with Captain Smith, and had assumed she had stayed in Macao, with Chinese relations, for there had been no need for her to leave; she had not been a Barbarian:

It was ludicrous, and quite wrong for MacPherson to make such a terrible accusation. And he
had
liked her; as much as he liked anybody. But that was all; a face in the night, a body when he needed one.

'Liked!
You had her time and again, didn't you? And you thought I didn't care or didn't know. Well, I didn't
want
to know, because I wanted her to have what she wanted to make her happy. And who, if necessary. Even you, Gunn.
I
loved her.

'You have nothing to say, have you?' MacPherson went on thickly. 'That is because you don't know the meaning of love. It is only a four-letter word to you.'

'You're wrong,' said Gunn. He had also loved once, but as you grew older you found other distractions, other involvements that became more important. And the real tragedy was that your capacity for love diminished as the sun's heat decreases with autumn. You could tell yourself that a day in October was really as hot as one in June, but you were wrong; it was not, and never could be.

'You loved no-one,' said Gunn in a level voice. 'You're just a drunken old sailor looking for a quarrel. I will ring for a sedan. Maybe you will feel differently about things in the morning.'

Gunn pulled a bell tassel. MacPherson stood up, swaying.

'I'll never feel differently about anything concerning you.

'Request a
sedan! Request the bearers and the coolies and every other poor devil you own. You can order them all, and they'll do your bidding, because they must.

'But how many of them would do anything for you out of
liking?
Go home, Gunn. Sail back to be Lord Mayor, like Dick Whittington. Have your great house in London, your warehouses along the Thames. Become an MP and write letters to
The Times.
And when you've done it all, and you come crawling back here, don't look for me, because I am leaving.'

'I don't understand what has happened to you,' said-Gunn puzzled. 'When I left the dinner party you seemed perfectly normal. You'd had a little too much to drink, perhaps, but that is not new. Now you're a different person.'

'When people in the villages around Vesuvius left their homes one morning, Gunn, everything was no doubt also perfectly normal. But when they came home at night, the volcano had erupted. The earth had had enough and was on fire. That goes for me, too. It just happened that what I have been considering for months — years — reached breaking point tonight.'

Two servants appeared at the door in answer to Gunn's summons. They each took one of MacPherson's arms and led him down the stairs out into the street to the waiting sedan. He walked unsteadily, and he did not look back.

Gunn opened the curtains and walked out on to the balcony. The moon had turned the sea to silver, and the Praya was deserted except for the sedan, with its four bearers, jogtrotting into the distance. He stood and watched until they turned a corner, and then there was nothing in the empty street but beggars curled up asleep in doorways and a cat prowling for scraps.

He would never see MacPherson again, any more than he would see Mackereth. Their lives had touched briefly and run together, and now they had parted. Something had turned their minds, of course; heat or whisky or loneliness; or maybe all three had fused together to destroy their faculties. Or maybe it was simply because they had become involved with him. He was sorry for both men, of course, to a limited extent, but he was also sorry for himself.

Where would he ever find two others like them, if he had need of them?

The clipper hove-to outside Bombay. The sea streamed yellow with churned mud, and kite-hawks screeched and dived for scraps, and then turned and wheeled away, huge black parentheses in the sky.

'Longboat's ready, sir,' reported Fernandes.

Gunn nodded. He was wearing one of his new suits; dark jacket, a silk cravat with a pearl pin, and carrying his top hat. He handed this to a servant who swarmed down a rope ladder with it while Gunn walked down the gangway and took his seat in the stern. He was glad to sit; a kind of vertigo had attacked him during the last few days at sea. He was grateful to be going ashore, however briefly.

Oar blades dipped and flashed. Within minutes, he stood on the quay at Bombay, a quarter of his journey home from Macao behind him. His agent was waiting for him, and doffed his hat respectfully.

Bonnarjee's house was built of white stone with ionic pillars commanding a splendid view over the huddled roof tops of the city. Half a dozen ships lay at anchor in the bay. Two of them flew the flag of Mandarin-Gold.

He could still keep the name, even if MacPherson retired. Change was bad for business; companies liked the reassurance of continuity. He had been wise to keep both their names out of it. It was bad enough being tainted by Mackereth's suicide; you did not expect a man of the cloth to take his own life.

Somehow, the sight of the flag cheered Gunn, and he sat back in the sedan, as far away from his agent as possible in the confined space, willing the man to silence. He did not wish to waste breath on small talk of no consequence. The fact was that since he had left Mackereth, and probably even before he had visited him, he had not felt quite so fit as he usually did; the vertigo was one symptom. A certain lassitude was another, brought on, no doubt, by the heat, by the humidity and the constant worry over the movement of capital and clippers, the fear that subordinates might be swindling him in the endless fight for commercial supremacy in changing markets, a changing world.

Gunn needed a break from all this work and worry, and this trip home would set him up, restore his vigour and his keen appreciation of business. He had _not taken a holiday since he had left England. He had always convinced himself he had neither need nor time for one. Now, he admitted he had both.

'Bonnarjee sahib
nay hai,'
replied the servant.

'Memsahib hai?'
asked Gunn.

The servant nodded and opened the door. Gunn walked into the hall. It was grander than he had imagined, with a high tessellated ceiling, and little gilt-edged tables set around white walls. He stood on pink-veined marble tiles, inlaid with the points of the compass. The servant padded away hurriedly on bare feet, and reappeared almost immediately and bowed.

Gunn followed him into a large room overlooking the sea. Two tapestried punkahs moved gently from the ceiling, and a mynah bird chattered in a bamboo cage. There were settees and oil. paintings of men in turbans, and small soap-stone figures and porcelain ornaments. A gilt French clock ticked loudly on a wall. The Parsee's daughter was standing in the middle of the room holding his card.

Her voice was not as he remembered it, laughing and bright like dancing water, but flat and already old. Perhaps something had gone out of her life, too?