The Ginger Tree (10 page)

What I said then was rather awkward, something about the practice of dowries having more or less died out in Britain. It was she who stared then, before bursting out laughing. According to what she calls her certain knowledge, there is not one man in the British Legation in Peking, with the possible exception of Sir Claude himself, who had not most carefully married for money. Marie said that there might not be with us, as in France, precise rules any more for these marriage settlements, but they were settlements none the less, and absolutely vital to young men making a career in diplomacy because nearly all of them were the younger sons of good families who had only their names to offer the world, no financial backing. Mr Harding was an example of this, a distinguished Essex family, his brother a baronet, but penniless, so he had been obliged to fend for himself, searching for and finding Edith. Who would have had Edith if she had been without a fortune? Madame Harding might attempt the grand manner now she was on the road to becoming a Lady when her husband, in old age, was knighted, but she was actually nothing but the daughter of a Midlands manufacturer of iron bolts, and quite without any social standing in English society.

I felt myself becoming very warm and knew that my face was
colouring
up in the way it had done at that concert on the
Mooldera
. Marie noticed, of course, her tone changed, becoming quiet, as though she was suddenly worried: ‘Surely,
ma chère
, your mother must have discussed such things at the time when your marriage to Richard was arranged?’ I
said the marriage had not been arranged and no dowry talked about because there couldn’t be one from my family, which is poor.

Marie looked really astounded, clearly finding it difficult to say
anything
, though what she did manage was a considerable shock: ‘Mary, what of your family factory?’ I had to draw in a deep breath then. I knew very well indeed that I had certainly not spoken of that factory to her or anyone else in Peking, and the only one who could have done so was Richard. After having been so very hot I felt suddenly as though there was a frozen lump in my stomach.

I wanted her to go and she sensed this, rising, talking about other things as we waited for Yao to bring in her coat, saying that from the first time we met she had wanted us to be as sisters because at once she had felt real sympathy between us, even our names being almost the same. Her coat was brought and I helped her into it, beautiful matched leopard skins to almost floor length trimmed with silver fox at hem, neck and cuffs. Her hat, which she had not taken off, was a small round pillbox, also leopard, worn tilted down on to her forehead. Even with the sick feeling I had then I could appreciate how elegant she always is, of course at great cost. Perhaps her wardrobe is also paid for from her dowry?

Near the door Marie paused to pick up the purple dish Richard says he had found in a bazaar. The dish is translucent like a cake of Pears Soap, with a dragon curving around it. I said something about the plate having to go if we decided on Marie’s green colour scheme. She said it was priceless. I didn’t see how that could be since it had been bought in a bazaar. Marie looked at me, rather hard I thought, then said that it was of a type only done on Imperial Court order or, by special permission, for the very highest princely families. I then asked how she thought Richard could possibly have come by such a piece and she said: ‘Loot from the Winter Palace.’ She laughed and added: ‘He probably won it at cards from another officer. One who had helped at the sacking of Peking. Richard is very good at cards. Didn’t you know?’

Marie has been very kind to me, but I came back from seeing her off at the gate with the feeling of having been pulled about like some article in the January bargain sales.

The House of the Dragon Screen
April 5th, 1903

I had been expecting signs of spring in April, but it has been snowing all night, and is still doing it, the frost hard. It is so quiet one might be in the country, not a sound coming in from our lane. Until a short time ago there was the noise of our handyman sweeping snow from the path to the gate. He was heaping it up against those rocks that are supposed to be ornamental, a broom and a shovel his tools, but not working very hard with either, stopping often to blow on his hands, which were bare, though the rest of his body was covered by a long padded robe and a cap with earflaps lowered which didn’t leave much of his face exposed. He was using the shovel when he looked up suddenly and saw me at the
drawing-room
window. I raised my hand in a sort of wave, but he must have taken this as a signal to go away, for at once he picked up his tools and disappeared behind the dragon screen, beyond which is a door to the servants’ courtyard.

All I know about him is that his name is Ching Hen. I haven’t even seen Mrs Ching Hen because the dragon screen hides all the comings and goings from the servants’ side of the compound to the lane. I am beginning to see that the huge piece of stone has more uses than just keeping the devils at bay.

I am writing this by the crackling stove. Though I can’t hear any sounds of it, there must be a wind for there is a huge draught in the iron chimney and this is red hot where it leaves the stove. Quite often I look at that pipe and think how easily it could glow right up to the wooden ceiling and set it alight. This house, behind its high walls and built almost up to them, would burn like paper and sticks in a grate the moment you set a match to them.

Richard does not like seeing me at breakfast, so Yao brings a tray to my room. Already we have contrived a system of not meeting before Richard leaves for the Legation, though this is sometimes quite trying for me if he leaves later than usual and spends too long in the bathroom. Richard has the kind of nature which brightens as the day goes on but is very dark in
the morning. The trouble is I am quite cheerful then and in Edinburgh was often an early riser, even as early as the servants, sometimes helping with the housework, dusting and so on. Here I am not supposed to do anything, at least while Richard is about, so I tidy my room. It is not a room I would ever become fond of, even if a great deal of money was spent on it. The two windows face a brick wall just ten feet away and the only sun that comes in, at least in winter, is if I open the door to the passage which runs alongside the courtyard and has windows to the floor. Later, when there are flowers out there, it may be quite attractive, but I wonder if I will ever get away from the feeling that the house is like a prison? Or perhaps a fort in enemy territory.

If I have become fond of anything in these rooms it is this huge, ugly stove. It has isinglass windows on the fuelling door which put a patch of colour on the carpet the Germans left, and when that door is opened for coals the whole stove roars: ‘Yes, feed me and I’ll do my job!’ It does that, too. Within an hour of its ventilators being opened in the morning this big room is warm.

I have been thinking about friendship, how it is usually an accident. Marie is becoming my friend because we are both here in Peking and most of the Legation ladies are slightly suspicious of her. I think this is partly because she is too clever for them, but more because she is popular with their husbands. She is taking me up because she cannot be entertaining to men all the time. If she and her husband had been living in London, and we had met there, she would not have looked at me twice in a place so full of interesting distractions.

I wonder if Richard does not care to see me in the morning because he has no wish to be reminded of the night before when he visited my room? I have no wish to be reminded of it either.

House of the Dragon Screen, 157 Hutung Feng-huang
Peking, China
April 17th, 1903

Dearest Mama – I know it is a terrible time since I last wrote and my excuses are poor, but I think of you so often, and wonder what you are doing just at that hour, trying to imagine this, that you are settling by the fire for tea, for instance, or that on an Edinburgh April day you are visiting friends. Suddenly, as I was beginning to feel shut away behind these walls like a Chinese wife, things have started to happen. First, it is the spring. We had snow in the early part of this month, but now there is fruit blossom out in gardens – though not in ours – and we can ride in our rickshas without those smelly fur rugs tucked in around us. All the snow has melted and the city feels clean and washed, though I don’t think it will stay like this for long. I find that I am seeing a hundred things that I never noticed with winter clamped down, like how the ends of many of the curved tile roofs have little animal figures marching in a procession towards a bigger figure on the last tile, which is usually a hen with a devil on its back. These are called bongs. Even going down our lane, which can be quite squalid at ground level, if you look up you see the most beautiful roof patterns and sections of wood carving though I do get a little tired of dragons everywhere. It is as though all the Chinese had experienced the same bad dream.

One day my friend Madame de Chamonpierre got the loan of the French Minister’s carriage and called for me in the afternoon and we drove through an eastern gate out to the Temple of Heaven where, on ceremonial occasions, the Emperor worships. What he worships, or why, I am not very sure, and Marie didn’t know either. There was no way to find out because we had no guide and the coachman only understands ‘go slower’ or ‘go faster’ in French. However, we got out and walked for quite a long way over paving, through which grew tall weeds, to what Marie thought was the Altar of Heaven, this reached through a gate that had what seemed to be stone wings sprouting from the top portion. After
that were steps up three different levels to a circular platform offering a view down to what was the temple itself, this set against a circle of trees coming into bud. In that whole huge area we saw not another human being, only pigeons, which was a little eerie. You would have thought that in a place where the Emperor sometimes comes to worship there would have been priests about, or at least someone to pull up the weeds. Marie would not go down to the actual temple because she was reminded of the Boxer Troubles by what she says is the most frightening thing in China, a sudden deep silence where there should be continuous noise. It was certainly silent at the Temple of Heaven and we were quite glad to get back into the carriage again and hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves.

I have been to the Russian Legation, though not to meet their Minister who is away in Vladivostok. Our host was the First Secretary, who is a Count, and wore enough medals to have fought in ten wars, though he does not look like a man who has ever fought in any. As Marie had told me to expect, we talked about nothing interesting and the men drank too much vodka, which is their whisky, only apparently quite tasteless. I wondered what was the point of drinking it until Richard took me away quite suddenly because, as Marie said afterwards, our Russian colleagues were becoming too relaxed suddenly.

Then there was a dinner-party at the de Chamonpierres’, very elegantly done, with twelve guests, at which one of my table partners was another Count, this time a Japanese one. He is military attaché at their Legation here, and during the Boxer Troubles became one of the heroes of the defence, in that he led a party of Japanese marines through the streets of the Chinese city, this seething with Boxers, to the relief of a Catholic mission which he helped to defend when he got there. Of the twenty men he took with him seven were killed, and Captain Count Kurihama was wounded in the leg and has a scar on one temple where a bullet grazed his scalp. He should have been a very interesting man to talk to but I could scarcely get him to say a word. Marie explained afterwards that they are brought up never to have their meals with the women of the household and that it is impossible for them to get used to sitting at table with females. Marie says that quite often, at formal dinners in her house,
she has had the feeling that Count Kurihama was about to order her back to the kitchen where she belongs while the men are at the serious business of eating and drinking. Clearly she had placed me next to him to see if a Scotch girl could get any reaction from a Japanese Count, but I failed. The peak of our conversation was reached when I asked if Kurihama was a place name, as with our aristocracy, or a family one, and after thinking for about five minutes he said one word: ‘Family.’ Not the most sparkling of dinner partners. I have a feeling he knows English quite well, but is keeping this a diplomatic secret.

I must soon be considering giving our first dinner-party at Dragon Screen House, and I can promise you, Mama dear, that the idea quite terrifies me. Have you any Scotch recipes that could make chicken taste different? I am quite sure that the beef we get here is not that at all, not even old oxen, but camel. Our cook serves it in a sloppy stew which has clearly simmered for hours but it is still like chewing parcel string. Peking is supposed to be a paradise for food, and may be in some of the Chinese restaurants, but only very few of the Legation people are going to these again, and Richard has never taken me. Is there any way, do you think, that I could make a Chinese cook produce a good Scotch meal from simple recipes? There is now open again quite a reasonable European grocery store where you can get most things, at a price, so if you have any ideas please send them. Your last letter, via the Trans-Siberian railway, reached me in less than a month, which means there is still time, since I will not be entertaining until Richard comes back from a mission.

He leaves for Chinwangtao at the end of this month to make a report to the Admiral of the British China Fleet. I do not know what this is about. Richard says it is part of the routine contact between the services, but Marie looks mysterious. I would so like to impress her with that Scotch meal, for she thinks we live on porridge three times a day during the week and steamed mince on Sunday. She says she had a Scotch nanny who told her this was our life in the ‘frozen north’. Marie would amuse you, I think, she is very gay and bright.