The House of Hardie (26 page)

‘Yes,' agreed Lucy honestly. ‘I think he would ask me to marry him tomorrow if I allowed him to feel sure that his offer would be accepted. The reason why I haven't given him the kind of indication you mention is because I don't think it becoming for a young woman to attract offers of marriage which she doesn't intend to accept. It's not because I think the risks too high. Just consider for a moment, Mr Hardie, the courage of Mr Elliott's wife in enduring one miscarriage after another and all the time knowing the danger.'

‘Certainly in a tropical climate – a country with poor hygiene …'

Lucy shook her head impatiently. ‘My own mother died when I was born,' she reminded him. ‘A young woman in good health, with the best medical attention that money could buy. You know, Captain Hunter has managed to persuade himself that no Afghan rifle will ever point directly at his heart – and perhaps that's courage of one sort. But it seems to me that every woman who marries is exposing herself to the
certainty
of great pain, and the likelihood of death.'

‘Perhaps they lack the imagination to realize that. Or they may fear loneliness even more.'

‘Perhaps, in some cases.' Lucy allowed her voice to express her doubt. ‘What I'm trying to say is that I believe women have as much courage as men. Less strength, no doubt, but equal endurance. They are able to do what is expected of them. A woman in England is expected by her husband to shriek at the sight of a mouse but to endure without complaint the pain of having a baby every
year, and she fulfils both those expectations. If she were given a different pattern to follow, she would take the mouse to bed with her as a pet, and think nothing of it.'

‘I understand you at last. You're telling me that you are as able as myself to swing across a deep ravine on a rope and to listen to the howling of wild animals outside your tent without a trace of anxiety.' Lucy flushed. She had intended to make herself clear, but not by using words so baldly. She lowered her head, retreating from the position which Gordon had correctly understood.

‘What I'm telling you is that if Mr Elliott should make an offer of marriage to me, I should reflect only that he is kind and honest and clever, and not that it might be dangerous to be his wife.'

‘That's not the answer I wanted to hear,' said Gordon. ‘I want you to say, my dearest Lucy, that you will share all the dangers of my journey with me.'

He stretched out a hand towards her, but Lucy shook her head.

‘I've already said that once, and it was a very forward thing to do then. To say it again would be unforgivable. The best I can do is to quote my grandfather who has complained for years of my stubbornness. When I've determined on something, I don't easily change my mind.'

‘When will you marry me, then?' asked Gordon.

Above Lucy's head, the star-speckled heavens seemed to rise into a high, wide dome, allowing all the anxieties which had been pressing down upon her to float away. She laughed with relief as well as delight. ‘Whenever you like,' she said. ‘Oh, darling Gordon, whenever you like.'

At last, after so long a period of uncertainty, she could enjoy his kiss. Close together, they began to dance to the sound of the music which percolated faintly up from the music gallery. Her filmy skirts swirled around her feet,
making her feel that she was treading on air, hardly attached to her own body. Gordon was extricating her from a predicament, but that was not the only reason for her relief. He was doing it because he loved her, and for that reason only. She felt completely sure of that.

Mrs Stewart was already lying in her berth when Lucy returned to the cabin that night. ‘Have you had a triumph?' she asked.

‘I've had an offer of marriage,' Lucy admitted.

‘And accepted it? In spite of my warnings to you about shipboard romances.'

‘We're to be married before we reach Bombay. I understand that while he's at sea the captain of the
Parramatta
is like a king: he has the power to do whatever he chooses. So if he will oblige, Miss Young is to be buried at sea.'

‘And a Mrs Elliott will step ashore? I must congratulate you, my dear.'

‘Thank you,' said Lucy. ‘But not a Mrs Elliott. A Mrs Hardie.'

She laughed to see the surprise on her cabin-mate's face; but she herself was to be surprised before the voyage ended. Sometimes as a girl she had tried to envisage her own wedding, wondering whether it would take place in the Castlemere chapel or in some large London church. Not in her wildest dreams could she have imagined then the ceremony which took place on the day before the
Parramatta
arrived at Bombay. Confessing the secret of her real name, she had asked Miss Fawcett and Mrs Stewart to act as her witnesses, and Gordon had called on Mr Elliott and the lovesick Captain Hunter – but as she stepped out on to the deck which was normally reserved for games, she found that all the passengers were crowded round to take part in the service. The captain, in his white
tropical uniform, stood behind a table, with the ship's purser on one hand and an army chaplain, who had volunteered to preach a sermon, on the other.

Lucy walked slowly across the deck to stand beside Gordon. On the previous day he had teased her with the accusation that no doubt she had packed a wedding dress in her trunk. That would have been going too far, but it was true that she had brought with her one of her prettiest white summer gowns and had deliberately not worn it earlier in the voyage. She felt like a traditional bride, even though the setting was so unusual.

The captain coughed and opened his service book. ‘By virtue of the authority vested in me,' he began – but Lucy hardly listened to the words. Gordon was holding her hand, pressing it as though to assure her of his love, and she cared about nothing else. It was curious, she thought, as the stewards' band played and the passengers roared out one of the hymns she had chosen – it was curious that in the novels which she had liked to read at Castlemere, a wedding ceremony was always presented as the end of the story, as though nothing else was likely to happen to the hero and heroine. But it seemed to Lucy, as the ship steamed steadily across the Indian Ocean, that she had reached not a happy ending but a happy beginning.

As the ship which had brought Mr and Mrs Hardie on from Bombay sailed up the Huangpu River to berth at Shanghai, Lucy voiced her disappointment. She had expected China to greet her with tall pagodas and dragon-decorated temples, with narrow streets and low houses. Instead, the tall and solid offices and hotels which fronted on to the river could have formed part of any European port.

‘That must be the Bund,' said Gordon, reminding her that, although this was not his first journey out of England, he had never visited China before: everything would be as strange to him as to herself. ‘After the Opium Wars, the Chinese were forced to allow trading concession areas to several European countries. The real China isn't far away – we shall be in it tomorrow. It may not be a bad thing that for today we shall be dealing with British banks and customs officials, and staying in a British hotel.'

Their first visit was to the office of a shipping agency. Gordon had already explained to Lucy how important the agent would be to them. He would receive and keep any letters which might arrive from England until notified of a base camp to which they might safely be forwarded. He would store whatever luggage would not be needed on the expedition, and to his office Gordon would send batches of seeds and plants – some to be despatched immediately to England and others to be kept safely until the Hardies were ready to return home. He would hold the money which Gordon had brought out with him, and
in return would make funds available at appointed places along the expected route.

Lucy sat quietly while all these details were discussed. How businesslike her husband was, and how authoritative! Naturally she left all the arrangements to him, but when the discussion of the journey became more detailed, she leaned forward to listen, so that she would not need to ask too many questions while they were travelling.

‘You'll do best to go as far as Chungking by river,' the agent said. ‘It should take about six weeks. I'll arrange that for you and send the tickets round to your hotel. There's a Jardine Mathieson steamer leaving tomorrow evening. That goes as far as Hankow; you can change to a smaller boat there. When you leave the river, you'll have no trouble finding coolies. Pay them by the journey and change them often – about a week's travel for each gang, so that they don't find themselves too far from home at the end. Once you get right into the interior and start to explore, that'll be a different matter – you'll want a team to stay with you for a season. You'll have to bargain for that yourself with a local muleteer. But while you're still on the beaten track, five shillings will hire you a coolie for a week; he'll find his own food out of that. For yourself, you'll want a pony. A coolie will do your haggling for you, but don't pay more than about four-pence for ten miles. You change ponies at each village – they just go back and forward over the same stretch. For Mrs Hardie, I suggest a sedan chair.'

‘I can ride!' protested Lucy. She had not meant to speak, but felt the need to make it clear from the start that she did not expect special treatment. Probably, she thought, she would be far more at home on horseback than would Gordon.

‘I'm sure you can, Mrs Hardie. It's a question of
dignity, though. I might have suggested the chair even for your husband if he'd been alone. The Chinese set a lot of store by status. When you arrive at an inn for the night, you'll get the best room if you come in a chair. Or at a ferry – there could be a hundred people waiting to cross the river, but the chair will go on first. It's your choice, of course.'

‘You were speaking of pence and shillings.' Now that Lucy had found her voice, she began to take part in the discussion. ‘But we surely don't –'

‘Oh no, no. I'm going to give you the kind of money you'll need now. On the steamer you can use Mexican dollars. One dollar a day each will buy you foreign chow. Chow is food, Mrs Hardie. But as a rule you'll be dealing with Chinese cash.' He pulled a bag out of a drawer and tipped out a shower of tiny copper coins, some of them strung on to leather thongs through the holes in the centres.

‘How much are they worth?' Without needing to be told, Lucy realized that Gordon did not object to her asking such questions. He had been confident as he made all his business arrangements; but, knowing as little about these small matters as she did, he was perhaps glad that she should be the one to reveal ignorance.

‘Forty cash equals one English penny – and that penny will go a long way here. Forty cash will take you a mile in a sedan chair.'

Lucy was relieved to hear all this. One of her worries had been that by her presence she would be adding too much to Gordon's costs.

‘Talking of money,' added the agent. ‘I don't know how you'll feel about this. Your steamer passage from Shanghai to Hankow will be twenty-eight dollars each, if you travel as Europeans. If you put on Chinese dress, you'll
pay only a quarter of that – and the same will be true everywhere you go.'

Gordon burst out laughing as he waved a hand in Lucy's direction. ‘How many blonde Chinese women are there who are as tall as my wife, and with such large feet?'

Lucy, who was proud of the smallness of her feet, was about to protest, but remembered just in time that Chinese girls had their feet bound to keep them tiny.

‘It's hard to explain. If you ask me to kit you out, I can get you a hat, for example, with a false pigtail fastened to it. No one who sees you wearing that is
really
going to believe that you're Chinese. Yet in some odd way he'll accept that by putting on the clothes you're making a gesture of conformity. In your own clothes, I can promise you, once you leave Shanghai you'll be followed everywhere by crowds shouting
“yang kweitze”
after you.'

‘What does that mean?' asked Lucy.

‘Foreign devil. I'm only talking now about the Yangtze valley, where there's a lot of anti-foreign feeling. When you get further west, near the frontier, any kind of stranger is such an unusual sight that it won't matter whether you're a foreign or a Chinese stranger. The frontier itself is only an invisible line, of course, but you must stay on the right side of it. Tibet is closed to foreigners. If the Tibetans find you in their territory, your guides will be beheaded and you yourselves will be beaten and tied and thrown into a river.' The agent paused to emphasize the solemnity of his warning, before continuing in a brisker manner. ‘Anyway, what you wear is up to you. I'll send a couple of outfits round. You can try them on in your hotel room and see what you think. Now, I suggest that you should go straight away to register at the British Consulate. That will enable you to get a special Chinese passport, permitting you to travel through the
country. After that, I should think you'll be glad of a rest.'

Two hours later Lucy and Gordon stepped together up the wide staircase of the Palace Hotel. It still seemed odd, after seven weeks at sea, to be treading on an unmoving surface – so odd that Lucy found herself rolling slightly as though this were necessary to maintain her balance. After the cramped conditions in which they had lived at sea, their room seemed enormous, with a huge four-poster bed and wardrobes built on the same scale. But for the moment Lucy did no more than glance around. She had a question to ask her husband on a matter which could only be discussed in private.

‘Gordon, while we're here, I'd like to write to my grandfather, so that the letter may be sent off by the agent.' He gave her a questioning look, and she hurried on. ‘I want to tell Granda that I'm married. He will have been very much upset by my disappearance.'