High Road to China. Jon Cleary
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say we leave them with Herr Bultmann,’ said Eve. ‘Get into the car, Mr Weyman.’
Weyman flushed, looked at O’Malley as if accusing him of being a traitor. But the latter was already pushing Sun Nan ahead of him into the back seat of the car. He pushed Sun Nan across the seat, sat himself in the middle. ‘Come on, George. You’re next to me.’
Reluctantly, still awkward with rage, Weyman got into the car, left the door open and sat staring straight ahead. Kern drew himself up; then he closed the rear door with a slam. He went round and got in behind the wheel. He nodded to Bultmann and Pommer as they clicked their heels and stood to attention, then he swung the car round.
‘Wait!’ Eve suddenly cried. As Kern jerked the car to a halt she jumped out and ran across to her plane. She came back with the hessian-wrapped box and a small overnight bag. ‘Thank you, Baron. Flying is no good for a girl’s complexion. I’ll need my creams for repairs.’
‘I have never seen a complexion less in need of repairs.’
In the back seat the two Englishmen and the Chinese glanced at each other, joined for a moment in their contempt for such flattery. The United Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom knew how much encouragement was proper for women.
They drove out of the airfield, past the vast hangars where two airships were moored, their noses sticking out of the sheds like those of giant porpoises. The Zeppelins looked harmless enough, but once on leave in London O’Malley had seen one caught in a web of searchlights over the city and he could never remember seeing anything so eerie and menacing. He looked at George Weyman, who had lost his parents in a Zeppelin raid.
‘And they’re worried about a couple of guns on our machines,’ said Weyman bitterly. ‘All of those should have been burnt.’
‘It’s all over, George,’ O’Malley said, and tried not to sound too weary of Weyman’s hatred; after all, his own parents were safe in Tanganyika, profiting from what the Germans had lost. ‘Try to forget it.’
‘Not bloody likely.’
The road ran along the edge of the lake. Sail-boats were coming in, the sun behind them turning them into huge translucent moths. The water shone like a burnished shield and summer was a great green bloom of trees. If the war had been through here there was no evidence left of it.
‘I was on my way to a tea dance over in Constance,’ said Kern, gesturing at his clothes. In the back seat the three men glanced at each other again: going dancing in the afternoon? ‘I was driving to catch the ferry when I saw your aeroplanes fly over. I turned round at once. I am still fascinated by war machines.’
‘What did you fly?’ O’Malley could not resist the professional question.
‘Albatros D’s and Fokker Triplanes. I was with von Richthofen.’
‘How many kills did you have?’ said Eve.
If Kern noticed the slightly sarcastic edge to her voice he gave no sign. ‘I shot down thirty-two machines. But I never looked upon them as kills.’
‘The same number as Mr O’Malley. It’s a pity we aren’t staying longer. You would have a lot to compare and talk about.’
‘We might have had, at the time,’ said O’Malley. ‘You forget, Miss Tozer, I told you I was glad the war was over. That part of it, anyway.’
Eve didn’t look back, but at Kern. ‘And you, Baron?’
But Kern didn’t answer. He turned the car off the main road and it began to climb a hill. On the crest, on the edge of a sheer drop that fell down towards the lake, stood a small castle. Spired and turreted, light as a pencil drawing, it looked unreal as it perched against the salmon sky.
‘It’s like something from a fairy tale!’ Eve exclaimed. ‘Is it yours?’
‘It is now,’ said Kern, taking the car across a drawbridge and under a portcullis into a small courtyard. ‘It belonged to my uncle, but he and my two cousins were killed in the war. Then my aunt died of a broken heart. Women do,’ he added, not defensively but challengingly, as if the others doubted him.
‘So do men, occasionally,’ said Eve gently.
Servants came out, two men and a woman, all elderly: museum pieces, O’Malley thought, prewar waxworks figures wound up and put back into service. They bowed to the Baron and his guests, but not to Sun Nan; obviously they thought he was just an Oriental mirror of themselves. But their faces showed no surprise when Kern told them to show Sun Nan to a room of his own with the other guests.
‘You have had a long flight,’ said Kern as he led them into the high-ceilinged entrance hall of the castle. The walls were darkly ornate with carved timber, but the floor was flagstones and their heels echoed hollowly. Skeletons walking, thought O’Malley; and shivered. And wondered how many ghosts Kern entertained here in his moments alone.
‘Take a bath and rest for a while,’ said Kern, speaking all the time to Eve; the others could do what they liked. ‘We shall dine at eight.’
An hour later Eve walked out of her bedroom on to a terrace. Refreshed, wearing a clean blouse and skirt that had been in her overnight bag, she felt pleased at the day’s progress. She still had a long way to go to save her father, but the trip had started well. She took the gold watch from the pocket of her skirt, opened it and watched the moving second hand: again the bomb image sprang to her mind and her hand jerked of its own accord as if to throw the watch over the wall of the terrace. Instead she snapped the lid shut and shoved the watch back in her pocket.
She stood beside the stone wall and looked down at the lake turning blue-grey in the soft twilight. Pigeons murmured in the trees below her; out on the lake a last sail-boat drew a silver line behind it towards home. It was all so peaceful, and on the other side of the world her father might already be dead. She put her hand to her throat, feeling the sudden thickening pain inside it.
‘It all looks untouched,’ said O’Malley behind her. ‘It’s hard to realize they lost the war.’
‘Those in the cities know they lost it.’ She took her hand away from her throat, recovering quickly. ‘That’s what I read. Millions of unemployed, money not worth the paper it’s printed on.’
‘You sound sorry for them.’
‘I might be, if I thought about them. I was a long way from the war, Mr O’Malley, and I didn’t lose anyone in it. No fathers or brothers or even a cousin. I might feel differently if I had. Did you lose anyone?’
‘No relatives. Just friends.’ He turned back to looking out at the lake, closing a door on the war. ‘We may be in trouble tomorrow morning if Herr Bultmann gets officialdom on his side. German officialdom is the worst kind.’
‘We can’t afford to lose even a day, not so soon. What do you suggest?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve run out of invention. And Bultmann thinks I’m a liar anyway.’
‘You are a liar, Mr O’Malley, but I’m not sure yet how serious a one. You are also not averse to swindling a lady out of some money, making a quick profit if you can. Am I right?’
O’Malley smiled, unabashed. ‘Anyone who makes a profit out of you, Miss Tozer, deserves a medal. I talked to Arthur Henty yesterday before you went back to London. I wanted to know a bit more about you before I started following you to the ends of the earth. I gather your grandfather wasn’t above a bit of swindling if he could make a profit.’
‘Did Mr Henty say that?’
‘No. But I put two and two together. I don’t think any white man would make a fortune in China if he was entirely honest and stuck to his scruples. I must ask Mr Sun about it some time.’
‘My father is honest.’
‘Arthur Henty didn’t say he wasn’t. And I’ll take your word for it.’
‘Until you ask