High Road to China. Jon Cleary
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which had petered out and the other had been broken off sharply when she had discovered the man in question had been as interested in getting into her bank account as getting into her bed. But there had been no disillusionment; as she had told Arthur Henty in London (only yesterday?) she was mad about good-looking men. Quite apart from the worry and distraction of what had happened to her father, perhaps she had not been interested in O’Malley purely as a man because he was not good-looking. He was just above medium height, well-built, clear-skinned and healthy-looking; but he was not handsome. He had brown curly hair that was in need of a cut, a broad blunt face with a long upper lip only relieved by the well-shaped nose above it, and eyes that were too mocking ever to offer an invitation to a girl who believed in romance.
‘I don’t think Mr Sun would be the man to ask. He’d be too influenced by his master, as he calls him.’
‘Just who are you, Mr O’Malley, besides being an ex-ace?’ She cupped one elbow in her hand, put the other hand under her chin.
‘An ex-infantry officer. No kills that I can claim, if that’s your next question.’
‘Who were you before the war?’
‘Nobody.’ He grinned. ‘I’m an only child, like you. My father is in the Colonial Service. He and my mother are out in Tanganyika now, trying to educate the natives that the British Empire will be better for them than the German one was.’
‘Do you think it will be?’
‘I don’t know. If ever I meet a native, I’ll ask him. My father won’t. He believes the British Empire is the closest thing on earth to a well-run Heaven. It may well be. I’m just not interested in propagating the idea.’
‘You sound like a radical. Were you one before the war?’
‘No. I was at Oxford playing cricket and rugger and drinking beer. One term I tried drinking sherry, but I discovered I’m no aesthete. Not as a drinker, anyway.’
‘Was that all you did – played cricket and rugger, whatever that is, and drank beer?’
‘No. Occasionally I read History, but it was considered bad form to swot. I was very much against bad form in those days.’
‘But not now?’
He shook his head and grinned again. ‘I saw too much of what was good form during the war. It killed more men than bad form ever did.’
‘You don’t believe in duty?’
Kern had come along the terrace. He was still dressed as he had been earlier, still the lady-killer; and Eve wondered if he went to the tea dances over in Constance and actually was a gigolo. But despite his foppish image there was something about the Baron that said he would never sell himself to anyone. Least of all to fat matrons at Constance. Though Eve wondered who, in these days of incredible inflation, had money to buy a partner even for a dance. But perhaps, she thought, absorbing some of O’Malley’s cynicism, not all Germans had lost the war.
‘You sound like our government in Berlin,’ said Kern. ‘Schneidemann and Erzberger sneer at the sense of honour we had in our army.’
‘I don’t sneer at a sense of honour,’ said O’Malley. ‘I just don’t admire stupid generals who expect too much of it.’
Kern bit his lip, then nodded stiffly and reluctantly. He was an honest man, too uncomplicated for dialectics; he was a past pupil of an old school that was now just ruins. He turned his attention to Eve. A sense of honour was not so necessary with women: he knew that most of them privately had too much common sense to expect it.
He offered his arm, a courtier from the old school. ‘Shall we go in to dinner, Fräulein Tozer?’
Over dinner Kern held the chair. ‘I am from Koenigsberg. The Poles have our city now. You English and Americans don’t know what it is like to have your home city given away to another country.’
‘You asked for it,’ said George Weyman round a mouthful of potatoes. His dislike of Germans did not extend to their food. He had had two helpings of soup and the meat course and was on his third glass of wine. But he sounded only amiably argumentative. ‘You had to give up something. You can’t lose a war and get off scot-free.’
‘Perhaps Mr Sun has something to say about that,’ said Eve. ‘They have had wars in China for far longer than we’ve had them.’
Sun Nan was seated beside Weyman at the table. O’Malley and Eve were opposite, with Kern at the head. He had said nothing since they had arrived at the castle, but his eyes and ears had been open, absorbing everything that surrounded him. He had been impressed by the castle; he wished his master were here to take an example from the circumstances. The yamen at Szeping had begun to look like nothing more than a grandiose tenement.
‘Losers in our wars lose everything,’ he said. ‘We are not so foolish as to expect mercy.’
‘You sound as if you have never been on the losing side,’ said O’Malley.
Sun smiled, and seemed annoyingly smug to the others. ‘My master is a very able general. Not stupid.’
‘He is a swine.’ Weyman abruptly looked less amiable.
Kern, sitting very still, looked in turn at each of his guests. He still did not understand the presence of the Chinese, but it was against his code of manners to ask. The atmosphere had changed; but he was curious rather than annoyed. He had been bored ever since coming here to the Bodensee six months ago and he welcomed anything that would spark a little electricity in his dull existence. Any war was welcome, even one at the dinner table.
‘For wanting to be master in his own province?’ said Sun Nan, looking sidelong at Weyman as if doing him a favour by answering him at all. ‘You foreigners have no right to be in China.’
‘We have the rights of trade.’ Weyman was flushed; it went against his grain even to argue with a Chink. ‘There are treaties.’
‘They mean nothing. You Europeans invented them to cover up your lies and greed.’ Sun Nan waved a hand of dismissal; then turned to Kern. ‘I am sorry to be in an argument in your house, Baron. But the bad manners are not mine. Forgive me, I shall retire.’
He bowed his head and stood up. But as he pushed back his chair, Weyman grabbed his arm. Ordinarily, despite his low boiling point and his consuming prejudices, he might have contained his temper at a stranger’s table: he was not without social graces. It was ironic that it was German wine that made him lose control of himself.
‘I’m not taking that from any damned Chink!’
‘Getyourhandsoffme!’ The hiss in Sun’s voice ran all the words together; his mouth ached with the awkwardness of his teeth. He said something in Chinese, glaring down at Weyman.
‘Who the hell do you think you are!’
His hand still grabbing Sun’s arm, Weyman pushed back his own chair and stood up. O’Malley, sitting on the other side of the table, saw Sun’s left hand go to his pocket, guessed at once what was going to happen but was too slow to act. The knife came out of Sun’s pocket and slashed at Weyman’s hand; the latter cursed, let go Sun’s arm and swung his other fist. But the knife flashed again and Weyman flopped back in his chair, holding the inside of his right elbow with his bloodied left hand. He drew his hand away and looked in amazement at the blood pumping out of the rip in the sleeve of his jacket. He tried to move his arm, failed, then suddenly fell off the chair in a dead faint.
Kern and O’Malley were already on their feet. Sun Nan, still holding the knife out in front of him, backed off. He was working his jaw and his mouth, still battling with his dental plate, but he looked neither afraid nor apologetic for what he had done.
O’Malley knelt down beside Weyman, wrenched off the bloodstained jacket and wrapped a napkin round the punctured artery. ‘Get a doctor!’
‘I shall get the police, too.’ Kern made for the door.
‘No!’