Sea of Glass (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (8 page)

These long burning slopes are the origin of the place’s Chinese name, which means Sea of Glass. They end about half a mile from the walls, where the oasis begins. The transition from sterility to luxuriance is astoundingly sudden. Over a brief ellipse, stretching east and west for eight miles at its furthest extent, the desert soil is made intensely fertile by a multiple outcrop of springs. Between the pools and the conduits there are orchards which grow peaches and apricots, and small amber grapes that dry out into currants of unrivalled quality. The fruit on the trees and vines is so thick that a sort of warm glow comes off its massed profusion. There are also fields where cotton is cultivated, but not many because the trade in dried fruits is more paying.

On the other side of Doljuk the ground continues to slope away. Down and down it goes, still fertile for several miles, but gradually drying up. The salt content of the soil increases rapidly. Suddenly the traveller is stopped by a ragged precipice which turns the steady downward grade into a sheer plunge. At the bottom is a salt-crusted wilderness which contends with a spot near the Dead Sea for being the deepest land depression on the earth’s surface. For bestial desolation it probably has no rival. Between the white bone-like pans there are rocks, lead-coloured, but dyed here and there by mineral veins of a curious fungoid yellow. Then gradually the face of nature lightens to a mere scowl and the Takla Makan desert rolls out in sand and gravel to the borders of Tibet.

The wall of the cliff contains numerous caves, mostly natural in origin, but extended by human artifice. Between eight and fourteen hundred years ago they formed the homes of a colony of hermits. Or rather two colonies, for though the first inhabitants were Buddhists from China, they were presently joined by a few Nestorian Christians out of the West. Both faiths seem to have coexisted amicably: but this is almost the only example of mutual forbearance, let alone charity, in the history of Doljuk. Where the entrance of a cave has fallen in, anybody who will brave the surroundings may often find not only human remains sealed up in the interior, but also images and paintings on the rock and manuscripts written on leather in the strange Uighur script. At one time, before the First World War, there was a spate of visits from German archaeologists whom the inhabitants complacently robbed and occasionally murdered, not realizing that these imbecile strangers were quietly removing stuff which had ten times the market value of anything taken from them.

Between the Sea of Glass and the nether pit stands the walled city. Its fortifications and all its houses are of mud, except for the residency of the Chinese Governor and a palace which once housed an hereditary puppet-prince. The buildings are very thick and almost windowless to withstand the appalling heat of the summer and the no less frightful cold of winter. Narrow streets, like mole-runs, twist between the high, blank façades. Sometimes they are further constricted by booths and stalls which line them on either side. Where there is a market a sort of roof is often erected from mats and green branches. Struggling up and down, like strange fish swimming in soup, go the people.

There are Tungans wearing long Chinese robes. They also speak among themselves the language of their masters, but there are no other bonds. The Tungans are Mohammedans of a fierce and bigoted persuasion. Nobody knows their true racial background. The Chinese who reciprocate their hatred say that their ancestors appeared on the borders of China many generations ago, proclaiming that they sought only temporary hospitality, after which they would return to their own place. As they never did, the Chinese ironically named them ‘Returners’.

And now comes a leather-faced old man with long moustaches driving in an ox-cart which splashes sewage over the cooked meats and fruit in the stalls. He has a high-crowned hat like an Ottoman fez and he is supported by two youths carrying long whips who are his sons. All three wear expressions of mingled good nature and suspicion; the first reflecting natural temperament, the second the experience of a slow-witted race living among five or six who are quicker and more dishonest. They are Turkis and they have the best claim to be considered the basic population of the area. Though they too are followers of Mohammed, not much love is lost between them and the Tungans who have managed by superior astuteness to relegate them, as a whole, to the class which provides employees rather than employers of labour. Many of them are carters, and they may make journeys ranging from fifty to a thousand miles across the Gobi: east over the firm gravel to Mongolia and China proper, or west to Dzungaria, or, hardest of all, southwards through the soft shifting sands and the haunted desert of Lob.

At intervals of twenty years or so the races of Sinkiang forget their mutual distrust sufficiently to make common cause in rebellion against their overlords. The land—not only Doljuk but the cities for hundreds of miles around—flares up like a volcanic pit. Chinese officials are dispatched with unspeakable torture, incomprehensible speeches are made, and small bands of warriors, some wearing old bowler hats, some medieval Persian helmets, are to be found riding furiously about the desert to keep strategic
rendezvous
which are always bungled. For a while all the towns are in the hands of the insurgents. Then gradually, like boxers fighting beyond their weight, they feel the exhausting effect of being leant on, and occasionally buffeted, by a much larger body. Chinese armies arrive. They go to the wrong place, but eventually reach the right one. They are grossly defeated in the field, but somehow remain in possession of it. Finally their adversaries start quarrelling among themselves. After a well-judged distribution of cash, it is found that most of the revolted towns have been unobtrusively retaken. It is then time for the second series of hideous executions. It has all happened some dozen times since the reign of Kien-Lung and the result is always the same.

From about
1907
onwards Fulk Ellison and his wife (if so she was), Serafina Filipovna, lived in a large house near the centre of the town. Fulk’s dealings in arms made him rich by local standards. Moreover the gold deposits which had first attracted him to the place, though disappointing, were not entirely mythical. He derived an income from them which cushioned him against any temporary slackening of violence.

Fulk obtained his stock-in-trade from a variety of sources. The greater part came through China, but in the years immediately following the Russian Revolution there was a brisk flow of Tsarist rifles and machine-guns from over the northern border. The bread-and-butter of his business was sales to individuals, which nevertheless frequently reached quite large proportions, since the rich men of the town had learnt the wisdom of arming their retainers. On a bigger scale he was purveyor to a tribe of Oirat Mongols who made Doljuk the western terminus of their wanderings. These people, and particularly their prince, were his devoted friends and through them he performed a feat which blazed his name throughout Sinkiang.

It was impossible to live in a land so torn by conflicting loyalties without taking sides. There was no doubt where Fulk stood. He was a supporter of the native dissidents against the Chinese. It was curious that for twenty years the latter should have put up with the unconcealed treasonable activities of a foreign devil who was enjoying their hospitality. But the Chinese are curious to our way of thought. Besides I imagine they found that over long periods there was a balance of usefulness in his favour. He was a good engineer and improved the city’s water-supply. And though he was hostile to the established government his influence was opposed to mere casual disorders. Possibly, too, they feared that if they drove him out, he would be only too welcome elsewhere. The Russians would no doubt have paid well for his knowledge of a highly strategic area.

Nevertheless, whenever a new broom took over the governorship, an attempt was usually made to assassinate him. This fact was recognized in the Ellison family and laughed over. Later, they knew, relations with authority would settle down into the old groove of amicable mutual vigilance. No one—least of all himself—believed that anything could really happen to him.

For a moment of disintoxication her voice came to me as a source of mere words, no longer of vivified impressions. Then, as if a prop had been knocked away from under my eyelids, I fell into a blank sleep.

When I woke the light was still on. Even so it took me several seconds to realize that I was not in my own room. What restored my memory and orientation was a sound of someone stirring at my side. The simple Child of Nature had not seen why she should waste the unoccupied half of a bed. Admittedly she had taken off nothing except her shoes and stockings, but even so the situation invited misunderstanding.

Sliding my feet cautiously to the ground, I prepared to creep out. But sentiment and curiosity impelled me to stop for an instant and look back at the recumbent girl. Purged by sleep of its overcharge of will-power, her face was truly beautiful. Now, too, it had for me the romantic appeal of its associations.

As often happens, intense scrutiny seemed to penetrate to the sleeping brain. Varvara woke up suddenly.

‘Are you well now?’ she asked, abrupt and unabashed.

‘I think so.’

The best proof of my recovery was that I had almost forgotten the original reason for my presence in that room.

‘It is good,’ said Varvara. ‘Sometimes, if the dose is wrong, they die.’

‘Ssh!’ I entreated her. ‘Someone might hear us.’

She looked baffled for a moment, then she said:

‘They would think it is fornication?’

‘Well . . . necking, anyhow.’

My genteel effort to spare her feelings involved me in explaining to her the difference between the two pursuits. She listened, nodding moodily.

‘I am pure,’ she said at length, ‘but I have a strong instinct for love. I inherit from my mother. When she was young she would lie in the bed yelling with pleasure.’

‘Good God, who told you a thing like that?’

‘She did,’ replied Varvara surprised. She rolled off the bed, landing on her knees. ‘There remains one thing more,’ she said. ‘To ask for you the blessing of God.’ Therewith she recited a string of sentences in sonorous Russian. I continued to stand, feeling foolish and at the same time curious. Public piety usually embarrasses me, but I had no more shame in asking Varvara the meaning of the words than if she had been a young actress giving a foreign recitation. When she had finished I asked her what the words meant.

‘O evergreen, immortal Christ,’ she translated, ‘forgive this man for seeking to put off the sickness which Thou hadst sent him for the improvement of his miserable nature: and me for helping him to do so.’

It was a new theological outlook to me and not one that I found particularly sympathetic.

I reached my own room without mishap. But in the short transit I was suddenly attacked by an enormous physical weariness, as if my legs, like my mind, had travelled ten thousand miles.

4

‘All I can say,’ observed Nurse Fillis, ‘is that when my own father died, my mother and I relied on my uncle for everything. When I think of the trouble he took for us—’

‘I do not suppose you had anything else worth taking,’ said Varvara very rudely.

Nurse Fillis jumped up from the table and flounced out of the room, muttering audibly about ‘foreign chits’. She had yet to learn that you do not change the constitution of a tiger by calling it a jackal. On the other side of the door she uttered a further remark which I thought I must have misheard. It sounded like ‘the wrong side of the blanket’.

Whether because of this final insult or the general nervous tension, Varvara also felt the need to relieve her feelings. In her case it took the form of seizing a bunch of bananas, biting each of them in half and throwing the ends on the carpet. Then she too went out.

Because Mrs. Ellison was never present to keep the peace, lunch had become an agonizing meal. The two women baited each other incessantly. Nurse Fillis, mouthing her words primly, would talk into the blue about the strange customs of people from savage lands and the idiotic mistakes and breaches of good taste which they were always committing. Varvara, however, had somehow discovered a very deadly form of retaliation. She speculated aloud on the beastly habits and vanity of certain types of middle-aged men and on the frequency with which uncles turned out to be wicked. She had somehow grasped that Nurse Fillis cherished a deep admiration, if no more, for Cedric Ellison, and could not bear to hear him run down.

Turpin entered, breathing heavily, and looked at the mess on the floor with resignation.

‘She done it?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ I said, helping to pick them up.

‘ “The bud blasteth”,’ he quoted. ‘Three cheers for the Blasting Bud!’

He repeated the phrase meditatively. It evidently pleased him, for thereafter he often referred to Varvara as the Blasting Bud. What point the name had I am unable to say, but it seemed to be vaguely, surrealistically appropriate.

As we finished clearing up the bananas, the telephone rang. Turpin went to answer it.

‘Mrs. Ellison’s residence,’ I heard him intone. He was still speaking mandarin butlerese when he came back to fetch me. ‘Mr. Callingham desires to speak to you, sir.’

I had forgotten about Andrew since our tea at Tytlers. His amicable, slightly patronizing voice came crawling over the wire. ‘Look, old boy, can I have your reactions?’

‘What to?’

‘Do you know Pam Kerrison? No, I don’t suppose you would. Jeffrey Kerrison’s daughter—the sparking-plug man. Well, Pam’s going to set up a dress-shop. I should think it might be quite good because she’s always had a flair for fashion. But of course one needs to get a start . . . eh?’

‘I doubt if one would get very far without it,’ I said, practising my legal caution.

‘There are lots of ways. But one of the cheapest—and most effective—is to collect a school of really striking young creatures, dress them and then turn them loose for people to stare at and ask where they got their clothes.’

He paused before continuing: ‘Of course, in those circumstances there’s no question of a girl
paying
.’

‘The other way round, I should have thought.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Presumably mannequins don’t work for nothing.’

Andrew sighed patiently. ‘I’m not talking about mannequins. The girls I mean simply receive smart clothes in return for showing them off in the right places. It’s a very common arrangement. Anne Butterworth does it; so does Laura de Toffarini.’

(These were names of two of the chic-est and most sexually active débutantes of the season.)

‘Why are you telling me this?’ I asked mildly.

‘The one type that Pam’s short on is what you might call the Amazonian and the other day I happened to mention that I’d seen just what she wanted. I mean, most of these big girls are so fat: you can hear everything clapping together. Anyway, it struck me that your Miss Ellison might be ready to enter into the sort of arrangement I’ve described. What do you think?’

‘I think your friend would be wasting her money. Surely the point about that sort of tie-up is that the girl practically lives at race-meetings and dances and night clubs. Varvara’s not got the opportunity or the inclination for social life.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about the second,’ he said with the laugh which I liked least of his attributes—a fruity sniggering noise. ‘It’s easy to mix up a country cousin and an ascetic, particularly for a retiring type like you. It wouldn’t surprise me if in, say, a year’s time Varvara was getting around quite a lot.’

‘Well,’ I said rather helplessly, ‘if you believe it would work, you’d better ask her.’

‘Good idea,’ said Andrew. ‘I knew you’d put me on the right track. I wonder if you’d mind getting her for me?’

I found Varvara on the roof-garden, reading in the sunshine. She received the summons with composed alacrity. My God, I thought, she’s been expecting to hear from him!

The more I thought about Andrew’s appeal to me for advice, the phonier it seemed. All he wanted was to be able to tell Varvara that he had put his odd proposition to me and to make it appear by implication that it had my approval. I did not believe that Pam Kerrison would be fool enough to spend money equipping a striking but barbarous girl from the wilds of Asia, merely in the hope that she would one day turn into a socialite beauty. If so, Andrew himself must be intending to pay. This showed that since his meeting with her he had revised his opinion as to the perfect suitability of her present weird garments. In other words he had decided to take her seriously.

As well as jealousy, I felt a genuine concern. By no means all Andrew’s conquests were invention. He was quite capable of eliciting those hereditary yells of pleasure.

After about ten minutes she returned.

‘Well,’ I said, too impatient to pretend ignorance, ‘do you mean to take the things?’

‘Would there be harm in it?’

‘In England girls usually fight shy of an arrangement which puts them under an obligation to a man.’

‘Why?’

‘He might think that it gave him certain rights,’ I said with high-principled malice.

A tremendous struggle was visibly enacted in Varvara’s face; it was like a virgin martyr deciding to go to the lions, or a wrestler performing under arc-lights.

‘Alas,’ she said at length, ‘I must do it. It is my duty to my grandmother to appear worthy of her station.’

I played my final card.

‘If you’re thinking of your grandmother, couldn’t she meet you halfway by providing some pocket-money, so that you could buy your own clothes?’

Though it was none of my business, I was surprised that some such arrangement had not been in force since Varvara’s first arrival. One reason, no doubt, was that Mrs. Ellison tended to be forgetful about the mundane details of existence. The other Varvara gave me herself.

‘No,’ she said, and the refusal clearly came from her heart. ‘I am her son’s daughter and either she shall enrich me fittingly, or I will take nothing.’

That evening we went to the cinema together. It was pleasant because she was in a good mood, but the film happened to be extraordinarily fatuous. In it there was a hard-used wife. She had a faithful platonic boy-friend who would turn up at intervals with little gifts designed to redeem the husband’s neglect. Once when this happened Varvara caused some scandal by leaning towards me, reading out the caption which displayed the little woman’s pure gratitude, and adding in a voice which carried for several rows:

‘You see, David? She has had the gift, but she is not dishonoured.’

After the film I tried, as I had done several times of late, to persuade her to speak about Doljuk. But again she refused with a brusque shake of her head. I was not altogether resentful; her performance on the night when she drugged me had been that of a pythoness and too frequent repetition would have depreciated it to the level of a parlour trick.

The first appointment with the dressmaker took place three or four days later. Varvara went off about eleven to an address in Mayfair. Just before one she rang up and told Turpin that she would be lunching out.

My thoughts about Andrew now became very low. I wondered whether he was actuated by anything as healthy and straightforward as physical lust: it struck me that he might have been making a few inquiries about the Ellison family’s situation, if indeed he had not known it from the first. He was extraordinarily shameless about such things and I had several times seen him cross-question his host about the income and connections of a fellow-guest, the moment the latter was out of earshot.

Even at twenty, I did not delude myself that as the son of a well-known financier Andrew would have no interest in outside sources of wealth. That is not the way most rich people are made. In any case the Callinghams and the Ellisons held their money on quite different terms. Metaphorically speaking, the former had yachts, mistresses, and caviar on a yearly tenancy—which might in fact continue for a decade: but sooner or later, in the nature of their occupation, would come a black period when the markets went wrong and the yachts were sold and the mistresses turned loose to forage. Eventually there would be a grand recovery . . . but who favours a career of ups and downs if he has any chance of sticking exclusively to the former? It was natural that Andrew should envy the Ellisons whose fortunes varied no more between one summer and another than the African sun.

There was one consolation for Varvara’s absence: it spared me her daily lunch-time bicker with Nurse Fillis.

‘Mr. Ellison’s coming this afternoon,’ she volunteered.

‘He turns up almost every day, doesn’t he?’ I said.

She had evidently become so used to Varvara’s baiting that she saw a sneer in every remark.

‘Why shouldn’t he, Mr. Lindley? It’s surely nothing to be ashamed of, if a son takes the trouble to visit his old mother—particularly when she relies on him so much for help with her affairs.’

As usual when she was upset, she went an alarming puce colour. Whilst I made some soothing reply, I thought of the prevalence of blood-letting in earlier ages. Millions of gallons must have been drawn off—usually, so medical science now declares, with no useful effect. It seemed ironical that Nurse Fillis should have been born after the practice lost its popularity.

In the afternoon I went down to see Turpin. A bottle of Chablis was open amidst the knife-powder and the cleaning-rags, and we drank several glasses. Presently one of the maids came in on some trivial errand. This was a rare occurrence; perhaps because Turpin liked to keep his pantry free from feminine influence; although I think that the housekeeper may have had something to do with it.

As the girl passed him on her way out Turpin slapped her saucily on the bottom, at the same time observing:

‘ ’E nothing common did or mean

Upon that memorable scene.

I don’t bloody think!’ he continued in the same breath.

‘Language, Mr. Turpin!’ said the girl, but she did not seem offended.

‘You want to watch them little tarts,’ said Turpin as the door closed behind her. A sudden fit of class-consciousness swept over him, bringing back for a moment his official voice. ‘Not, sir, that I suggest you would lower yourself to misbe’ave with a mere
corpus vile
. I meant it general. I once lost the best place of me life that way.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought you could do much better than this.’

‘Ah,’ said Turpin, ‘no damned disloyalty—no, sir. But this ’ere, it might ’ave made something of me. And near did! See, I was first footman to Sir Travers Wilkin—’

The name was vaguely familiar. As he talked on I picked up clues which combined with my scattered memories. Sir Travers had been one of the great figures of Victorian archaeology. Most of the gloomy Assyrian bulls and nervous Persian lions in British museums which had not been acquired earlier by Sir Henry Layard were the fruit of his foraging. He was, in the better sense, a gifted amateur. And this gave him a breadth of taste rare in the present age of subsidies and specialization. For instance, I now learnt that he had been a great lover of English literature and vintage port. From him, in differing degrees, Turpin had caught both tastes.

‘Drink!’ he said. ‘The old boy made a bloody camel of anyone else I’ve seen! Lock ’imself up in ’is study with a dozen Cockburns, and then after two, three hours, you’d ’ear it beginning—rumble, rumble, rumble, like a big drum.’

‘Do you mean he got D.T.’s?’ I asked rather stupidly.

‘Not ’im! ’E was reading ’imself poetry—Shakespeare, Tennyson, ones ’ose names I can’t remember. Well, after maybe another couple of bottles, ’e’d start thinking ’ow beautiful ’e read and what a pity there wasn’t nobody to listen to ’im. That’s where I came in. I was only first footman, but the butler was deaf. So when ’e rang I ’ad to go up to the study and act audience for ’im. Many’s the night we did a play, a couple of long Brownings, and a handful of tiddlers. I got to like it; though, mind you at first it was a job keeping awake: because ’e made you drink level with ’im. But I knew it was as much as my job was worth to doze.’

I said: ‘He sounds a marvellous old pirate. Were the rest of his habits to match?’

Turpin shook his head regretfully.

‘Strait-laced as a Baptist over women. That was my trouble. I reckon the ones that are always taking it out on Cleopatra or Queen Guinevere don’t see what us others want with the real thing. Caught me in the cellar, doing the under-’ousemaid a bit of good. “Filthy malpractice”—I can still ’ear ’im—“and in the middle of my wine.” Still ’e never put a word against me in my character.’

A bell rang, and in a box above our heads a light came under the sign which said ‘Morning Room’.

‘Now what’s that for?’ grumbled Turpin. ‘It’s an hour and a ’alf to tea-time. Besides the old lady’s got Mr. flaming Cedric up there, giving ’er the usual pasting.’

He struggled into his coat and went reluctantly upstairs. I sat and waited. On return his first words gave me a sharp surprise.

‘It’s you that’s wanted.’

‘Me? Who by?’

‘That Cedric. Know what ’e ’ad the bleeding face to say when I told ’im you was down ’ere? ’E ’oped I wasn’t teaching you to fuddle yourself in the afternoons! Bastard!’

I was almost as annoyed as Turpin—particularly as I was still near enough to my public school to have a sense of guilt about indulging in sluggardry after lunch.

‘I suppose, in courtesy, I must go.’

‘You watch out,’ said Turpin prophetically. ‘ ’E’s up to something.’

I found Cedric Ellison pacing up and down the morning-room. As soon as he saw me he leapt forward and gripped my hand, at the same time subjecting me to one of his compelling, man-to-man stares.

‘I knew I could rely on you,’ he said, allowing his voice to vibrate slightly.

‘I didn’t,’ was what I nearly replied; but prudence won and I merely made a non-committal noise.

‘Frankly,’ he continued, ‘it’s a god-send that we have you in the house. It’s so often the same story; the man that’s needed is the expert who can speak with authority. As an ordinary business-man with no professional qualifications I’m always coming up against that hard fact.’

He gave a rueful laugh that was so rueful it would have got any ham actor turned off the boards.