The Sun in the Morning (10 page)

Since the new Emperor was only a little boy when his father died, Tzu Hsi had a long run for her money. But when the Regency ended and her son took possession of the Dragon Throne, she was reluctant to hand over power to him, and legend has it that he was disposed of, with her connivance, by means of one of those little steam-heated towels that nowadays air-hostesses offer to passengers on long flights, and which in his case had first been pressed to the ulcerated face of someone suffering from smallpox. The Emperor caught the infection and died, and his mother ignoring the fact that his widow was with child (who could well turn out to be a son), indulged in some spirited plotting that resulted in the election of a candidate of her own to succeed him — the four-year-old son of her youngest sister. The widowed Empress, her child still unborn, died mysteriously a short while later, and Tzu Hsi embarked triumphantly on a second Regency…

It was this child, by then a youth, whose favourite concubine was thrown down a well before his ‘Motherly and Auspicious' aunt fled from Peking during the Boxer Rising. And when he too died (in all probability hastened on his way by poison) his elderly aunt once again made certain of being Regent by selecting another infant to succeed
him: this time the two-year-old grandson of the only man who, as far as anyone knows, she ever loved; the man to whom she had been once betrothed, and would certainly have married had she been rejected as an Imperial concubine all those years ago. His name was Jung Lu, and he had served her all his life — and saved hers on many occasions. When she died a few days later, it was Jung Lu's grandson who succeeded her: little Pu Yi, who was destined to become the last Emperor of China: the last, the very last Son of Heaven to occupy the Dragon Throne! His reign was a brief one. And though after China became a Republic the Russians installed him as a puppet Emperor of Manchuria, that did not last very long either, and he ended up as an ordinary Chinese citizen, Comrade Pu Yi Aisin Giorro, who died only recently.

The three short years that the 21st Punjabis spent in North China changed the whole course of Tacklow's life. For one thing, he met my mother there; and married her. And for another, he and a great friend of his, a Major Brownlow, attended a stag-party in Tientsin where over the port and cigars the conversation happened to turn to ciphers. When, inevitably, someone mentioned the unbreakable Playfair, Tacklow intervened to contradict him and ended by telling the company the story of his room-mate at Sandhurst. I am not too certain which one of these two events was the more important, but am putting Mother first — !

Tacklow was standing on the up-platform of Tientsin's railway station, seeing off a friend who was leaving for Peking, when his eye fell on what he later described to me as ‘one of the prettiest girls I ever saw in my life'. He also noted, with a sense of outrage at the sheer waste of it, that this delectable creature was warmly embracing ‘a grey-bearded fogey old enough to be her father'! The fact that it
was
her father was something he was to discover much later; but at that point the guard blew his whistle, the friend began to shout last messages, an eleventh-hour rush of baggage coolies and late arrivals swept Tacklow aside, and by the time the train pulled out in a cloud of steam the vision and her old fogey had vanished.

He had no idea who she was and though he looked hopefully for her at every party, accepting all the invitations that came his way in the hope of seeing her again, he drew a blank. There followed another
extended tour of duty in Peking, but he did not forget her; and when at length he returned to Tientsin he still kept looking, just in case. He had almost given up hope when one day his friend Major Westhrop-White of the 74th Sikhs invited him to accompany the regiment on one of their morning constitutionals, that combined showing-the-flag with a bit of brisk exercise by marching the battalion through Tientsin. ‘There's one street,' said Westhrop-White, ‘in which we always play “Marching through Georgia”, because the prettiest little missionary-girl you ever saw lives there. She teaches a class of Chinese kids and as soon as she hears that tune she comes flying down the path, with the whole kindergarten at her heels, to hang over the gate and listen to us as the band goes by.'

Tacklow accepted and rode beside the Major at the head of the column. And sure enough, when the regimental band swung into ‘Marching through Georgia' a starry-eyed girl with a long plait of chestnut-brown hair as thick as his arm shot out of a doorway, and accompanied by a horde of Chinese tots came running down the path to see the Sikhs march past. It was, of course, Daisy Bryson; the girl he had seen at Tientsin's railway station.…

Years later, told by a friendly and admiring Head of Department to ‘write your own letter recommending yourself for the job, and I'll sign it!', he was to list among his qualifications the fact that despite his belonging to what at that date was too often regarded as ‘the brutal and licentious soldiery', he had not only managed to inveigle himself into the good graces of the family of a Scottish missionary, but had actually succeeded in marrying one of their daughters!

The claim was not entirely a frivolous one, for he always insisted that it had been the toughest assignment he had ever undertaken. And there is little doubt that initially he was regarded with the gravest suspicion by my mother's parents. But having found what he was looking for he had no intention of letting it go, and he persisted; though the first occasion on which he was actually invited to supper was not exactly a success, due to the home-made ice cream having somehow managed to get flavoured with raw onion. Tacklow, who as the guest was served first (and who detested the taste of raw onion), meekly ate a portion of the revolting stuff without flinching - an exhibition of good manners that did not go down at all well with the rest of the family who, loudly condemning the dish, thought he was
incredibly silly to have eaten more than the first spoonful. However, he managed to live that down too. But it was a long courtship. And an expensive one, since the girl of his choice possessed three sisters and four brothers, and as he did not wish anyone to guess that he was only interested in one member of the family, he used to bring presents for all of them whenever presents were called for; which cost him a packet.

By 1904 he had become sufficiently friendly with the Brysons to be invited to spend Christmas Day with them, and when pulling a cracker with some fellow guest he found himself in possession of small trinket — a little silver ring with a flower-shaped boss that was not unlike a daisy — he handed it surreptitiously to Mother, whispering that he hoped she would allow him to exchange it one day for a real one. When that day eventually came she returned the cracker ring to him as fair exchange, and he wore it on his watch-chain to the day of his death. I have it now for safe keeping, because Mother is afraid she might lose it. Though I am not even sure that she would still recognize it; or even remember anything about it. But as long as someone remembers, that is really all that matters. For ‘
beauty vanishes; beauty passes; However rare
—
rare it be; And when I crumble, who will remember This lady of the West Country?
'.

When Tacklow finally decided that it was now safe (and also high time) to come out into the open and ask the Rev. Thomas Bryson's permission to marry his second daughter, the Dadski, not the most observant of men, was astounded. It seems that he had not had the faintest suspicion as to what Captain Kaye was after, let alone whom he was after. When he had recovered from the shock, all he would say was that he ‘did not feel that he could part with the lassie today'. A dusty answer that was to be repeated again and again during the following months.

There used to be a popular song in those days called ‘A Bicycle Made for Two', with a refrain that began ‘
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do!
' and Mother had had it sung to her for years and was by now heartily sick of it. But though her father prevaricated, she herself had already given Tacklow the answer he wanted. She had said ‘yes'. Yet despite this, his Daisy, now aged eighteen, was remorselessly chaperoned, and had it not been for a sympathetic family friend, a Mrs Edkins who used to invite Mother to tea or out on a picnic and arrange
for her swain to be present so that he could snatch a few words with her alone, he would probably never have got to first base. Not that her parents had anything against him. On the contrary, they approved of him; particularly on account of his age, which was exactly twice that of his intended bride. And if that sounds odd to us, it didn't to the Victorians. Or to the Edwardians either. They preferred mature husbands for their young daughters, being convinced that an older man would, in the approved fashion of the day, be a father-figure who could be trusted to take the greatest possible care of an innocent and inexperienced damsel who had only recently been given permission to put her hair up and let her skirts down. (In my day the process was reversed: hair being ‘bobbed' or ‘shingled' and skirts raised well above the knee.) My grandparents' objection to the marriage was merely a sentimental reluctance to face the fact that the family circle was bound to break up as their children grew into adults. Daisy's was the first defection. That was all. Tacklow was a very patient man; but there are limits, and eventually he told Mother that enough was enough and that he was going to buy her an engagement ring and then pay a call on her father to demand a straight — and shorter! — answer from him.

That crucial interview took place in the hall of the Brysons' house in Tientsin. And when the Rev. Thomas gave his usual answer, the lassie in question (who had been hanging anxiously over the banisters on the landing above, listening to every word) marched resolutely down the stairs and, putting her arms about her suitor's neck, kissed him soundly; whereupon he produced a little diamond ring from his pocket and put it on her finger. At this point her father threw in the towel; though he insisted on an engagement period of at least six months by which time ‘the lassie' would have turned nineteen and Tacklow's regiment, their tour of China duty almost over, would be on the verge of embarking for India.

The marriage of Cecil Kaye, Captain 21st Punjabis, eldest surviving son of William and Jane Kaye, to Margaret Sarah (Daisy) Bryson, second daughter of the Rev. Thomas and Mrs Bryson, London Mission, took place not once but twice, on 5 September 1905, in Tientsin. The first ceremony being a civil one conducted in the British Consulate by His Britannic Majesty's Consul-General, Mr L. C. Hopkins, ‘according to the provisions of the Foreign Marriages Act
1892'. Later that same day the conventional white wedding took place in the Union Church where the address was given by Mother's brother Arnold, who had like his father taken Holy Orders, and the closing prayer by her father, who had given her away. Major Westhrop-White, who had invited Tacklow to go with him on the fateful march through Tientsin, acted as his best man, and the band of the 47th Sikhs played ‘suitable selections' — including, one hopes, ‘Marching through Georgia' — at the wedding reception.

My uncles Tom, Alec, Arnold and Ken were ushers. My aunts Alice, Dorothy and Lillian, carrying baskets filled with marguerites and wearing hats the size of flying saucers made of net and trimmed with daisies, were bridesmaids. And my mother, who had set her heart on wearing a wedding veil so long that it would trail behind her down the aisle, wept bitterly when it arrived that morning (lent for the occasion, as wedding veils were very expensive) and she discovered that it was not much bigger than a pocket handkerchief! That veil was the one blot on an otherwise happy occasion, and accounts for the wooden expression with which she faced the cameras as she descended the Church steps on her bridegroom's arm under an arch of swords raised by his brother officers. Mother has always said that it was the bitterest disappointment of her life and that it ruined her wedding day…

A yellowed page from the
Peking & Tientsin Times
of 5 September 1905, which is still in existence, has three columns of print describing the whole festivity in detail and informing the reader that the bride was ‘very becomingly dressed' in plain white silk made with a ‘transparent yoke' (!!!
surely
not?) and that she wore ‘a wreath of orange blossoms under a plain tulle veil'. The reporter adds that ‘she looked remarkably sweet and pretty'. Not in the photographs she doesn't! She looks excessively po-faced, and she still insists that her nose was red and her eyes pink and swollen from crying and that ‘it was all the fault of that horrid, mingy little veil with its wide, dowdy, hemmed edge — just like an outsized man's handkerchief,
ugh
!'. Hence the stuffed expression, I suppose. She never forgot the incident, and when years later my sister Bets married, compensated for it at one remove by buying Bets the longest, widest and flimsiest wedding veil you ever saw. And very pretty it looked too!

The ancient
Peking & Tientsin Times
that reported the Bryson–Kaye
wedding also prints a short account of the speech given by Mr McLeish (described as ‘one of the oldest Tientsin friends of the family') who proposed the health of the bride and bridegroom. In it he mentions the siege of the Legations and that some humorist in those days had predicted that one of the most striking results of the Boxer Rising would be that some of the ‘soldier johnnies' would be walking off with some of the Tientsin girls. He also — wouldn't you know it? — expressed sympathy for Mr and Mrs Bryson who were seeing the first of their brood ‘take flight from the nest'. That ‘soldier Johnnie', C. Kaye, gets barely a mention, but looks very smug and pleased with himself in the wedding photographs.

I still do not know why Mother married him. She was barely seventeen when she met him and he was not only bald on top — and had been since he turned twenty — but he was twice her age,
^*
and no taller than she was (though he always claimed to be half an inch taller and said she cheated by wearing high heels and having so much hair!). Every young businessman in Tientsin was in love with her — with the exception of the faithful Howard Payne who married her sister Alice not long afterwards — and since they were all in Trade they must have been far better endowed with ‘worldly goods' than a penniless Captain in an Indian infantry regiment. Yet she chose him, and never regretted it.