Enchanted Evening (10 page)

The coffin-bearers, as well as those who followed behind, some carrying a portrait of the deceased in an open palanquin and others who played on drums and flutes or threw up handfuls of paper money cut from sheets of gold and silver paper, wore green tunics and trousers, the tunics emblazoned on the back and breast with a single scarlet cash-pattern.

The weddings looked much the same, except that the bearers of the bride's palanquin and all the rest of the ‘hired help' wore red and gold in place of green and scarlet, and carried decorative branches of paper flowers and similar gaudy ornaments – and that, what with drums, firecrackers and flutes, the procession was twice as noisy. I had always enjoyed watching Indian wedding processions go by in the Month of Marriages in India. But those were a jumble of different hues and a glitter of tinsel, and lacked the organized use of colour that China stage-managed so effectively.

Having begun by thinking the country and its people were depressingly drab, and Peking a maze of slums, a closer acquaintance with that city, and in particular my first sight of the Lama Temple on a brilliant autumn day, made me hunt out my pencils and sketchbooks and start painting again. As for Mother, she went wild about it, and a paintbrush was seldom out of her hand.

Various artistically minded members of the city's expatriate community had got together to form an art school, and Mother, Bets and I wasted no time in joining it. The only thing I remember about it was that although there was no difficulty in finding a model to sit for the life class in costume, no local woman, not even the poorest Chinese vagrant, could be persuaded to pose in the nude. The Japanese, however, were not so prudish, and we eventually acquired several charming young models who took turns in posing for the life class, demonstrating, in doing so, why the average Western woman cannot get away with wearing a kimono and obi, while almost any Japanese looks enchanting in them.

It is all a matter of legs and bosom. All our little models had near-perfect Botticelli-Venus figures as far as their neat little bottoms. But all of them had short legs which showed up when they were standing or lying, but were not noticeable when they were sitting down. The bulky obi sits beautifully on those small, perfect breasts, while the straight line of the folded kimono, falling from the lower edge of the obi to the ankle, gives the small elegant figures – and the stout ones too! – an illusion of height.

Our time in the art class produced an unexpected bonus in the form of a request from the Peking Institute of Fine Arts that Mother, Bets and I should join forces and give an exhibition of our paintings at their gallery. So we did, with great success. The
Peking Chronicle
gave us a terrific write-up, and the exhibition was a near sell-out – largely due to a second column in the
Chronicle
which began: ‘The public is reminded that this is the last day in which the pictures of Lady Kaye and her two daughters may be seen. The Gallery of the Institute of Fine Arts has been filled with visitors the entire week.' It had too. We did very well out of it. And so did the Institute. I still have a letter from them that Mother pasted into her current photograph album, along with cuttings from the
Chronicle.
The letter is headed by the name and address of the Institute printed in English and Chinese and is signed by a Lilian Wang, who was either the ‘Hon. Sec.' or the President of the Committee – I don't remember which. It ends: ‘Really you had the greatest success of any exhibition I have ever staged, and FACE is what the Institute has gotten!'

I was charmed to find that our efforts had paid off so well, for we could certainly do with the money, and it was even more gratifying to hear that the Institute had acquired ‘face' on our account, since we had already discovered that ‘face' is one of the most important things in China. To ‘lose face' is about the worst thing that can happen to a member of the Celestial Kingdom, while to gain it is, for all of them, ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished'. We lost two sets of excellent house-servants in rapid succession entirely on account of this invaluable commodity.

The first was a result of Mother's first dinner party, which she gave early that winter. It was a rather formal one, consisting mostly of people from the legations, and one old friend of Tacklow's, the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin.

The party was, as far as I can remember, a great success, and the food was wonderful – Chinese cooks being among the best in the world. Everything, in fact, went like clockwork until the moment when (the entire party being safely back in the drawing-room) the Number-One-Boy brought in the coffee tray and Mother poured out the first cup … only to discover that the coffee-pot contained something that looked like slightly dirty water. Mother, considerably taken aback, directed one anguished glance at the Number-One-Boy, but received no help there. His assistant, Number-Two, merely looked interested. Mother lifted an eloquent eyebrow and flicked a dismissive finger, and the inscrutable one, translating this correctly, whisked the tray, himself and Number-Two out of the room with considerable speed.

If anyone noticed this brief episode, they didn't show it. And since the last of the guests did not leave until well after midnight (always the sign of a successful party), the subject of the coffee that wasn't did not come up until the following morning, when Mother asked the Number-One-Boy for an explanation. The Number-One-Boy offered the most profuse apologies. It was all most regrettable, and there were not enough words in the language to express the shame and sorrow that he and the cook, and in fact the entire staff, had felt at bringing such shame upon the
Tai-tai;
2
and in front of such important guests. He and the staff were entirely responsible, and no
shadow
of blame rested on the
Tai-tai.
‘I know that,' agreed Mother impatiently, ‘but how did it happen?' Well, it was this way, explained the Number-One-Boy …

Only when the time came for sending in the coffee tray was it discovered that there wasn't any coffee. The only coffee in the place was a cupful or so left over from breakfast, so it was decided to use that, by the simple method of filling up the unemptied coffee pot with boiling water, and hoping that it would pass muster. Sadly, it had not …

Mother said that she understood their dilemma, but in that case it would have been better to skip the coffee. Such a thing must never happen again. The Number-One-Boy repeated his apologies, and that, one would have thought, was that. But no sooner was breakfast eaten and cleared away the next morning than the entire staff, overcoated and carrying its collective luggage, lined up in the courtyard and, having once again expressed its collective sorrow, announced that it was leaving.

Tacklow, hastily summoned to deal with the crisis, inquired what the trouble was, and Number-One, speaking for all of them, explained that since they had caused the
Tai-tai
to lose so much face on the previous night in the presence of her foreign guests, their own loss of face was so great that they could no longer work for her, and since they were all to some degree related, they all bore a share of the disgrace. When Mother tried to talk them out of it, saying that the episode of the coffee, though unfortunate, was not all that bad and she didn't mind losing face, the Number-One-Boy was plainly horrified, and replied tardy that she
should
mind! Nothing persuaded them, and the entire lot swept out, no doubt feeling that they were well out of working for someone so deficient in proper feeling.

The next Loss-of-Face-Disaster arose from an even slighter cause. We were expecting a visitor who would, on his arrival in a few days' time, be occupying the guest room in the second courtyard, and orders had been given for everything to be ready for him, the bedding aired and the room swept and garnished. This had been done, and a day or two before his arrival Tacklow, thinking that his friend would probably like a bit of light reading matter, collected a few books and a magazine or two and took them round to put on the guest-room writing desk. Unfortunately, he had chosen the wrong time of day for his mission; it was the hour of the siesta, when all who are at liberty to do so treat themselves to a nap. And there, treating himself to one – comfortably disposed and snoring gently on the guest-room bed – was the new (or newish) Number-One-Boy.

Tacklow always swore that he had recognized the danger immediately and had done his best to retreat before the sleeper awoke. However, it was not to be, for, trying to tiptoe out backwards, he tripped on the edge of the carpet and dropped one of the books. Well, I don't have to tell you what happened then. Within an hour our entire staff were lined up in their going-away clothes and explaining, through a second Number-One-Boy, why the squad could no longer remain in a house in which their senior member had lost practically his entire allowance of face. And that since they were all related (which this time I didn't believe for a minute – I think it was team spirit), they must all leave. And leave they did.

It was no good Mother being cross with her ‘China-side' relations and muttering darkly that ‘They might have
warned
me!' No amount of warnings could have prevented either of those dêbâcles. It was just China.

Mother got no sympathy from her family, all of whom, I imagine, had stubbed their toes on this type of situation time without number. But it has to be said that apart from such quirks, the servants were to be valued above rubies, and the life of a foreigner who possessed a well-trained and industrious
amah
, a competent Number-One-Boy and a really good cook could truthfully be likened to a bed of roses.

Chapter 8

Winter crept up on us almost without warning. One day Peking was ablaze with the red and yellow and gold of autumn, and the next it was misty with the smoke of the countless bonfires of fallen leaves that flamed or smouldered throughout the walled cities, and there was ice on every patch and puddle of water in Peking, so that one had to be careful not to slip and fall when out walking.

But though the leaves and the chrysanthemums had gone, the colours were still there in the Imperial yellow of the roof-tiles, the blood-red of the walls and the scarlet and blue and green of the
P'ai Lous
. And now the thin silk robes and small, button-topped caps of the old gentlemen who used to come out each evening to give their pet singing-birds an airing – each little bird tethered to its owner by a long length of the finest silk thread, which enabled it to fly around as though it were free, and be wound in again like a hooked fish on a line – were exchanged for long padded and quilted coats and (if the cold was particularly intense) fur-lined caps with ear pieces that tied under the chin. Every child became a small rotund object, wrapped in a well-worn padded coat and quilted bootees, while the beggars, many of them White Russians who could not even afford that much cover, wrapped themselves in tattered newspapers under their rags, and smothered their poor, blue-and-red chilblained feet in more of the same, kept on by bits of string.

Then one night the real winter, the ‘Great Snow', fell silently upon the city, and we woke to a glittering world in which every stick and stone was frilled with frost, and our Jade Canal frozen solid: a long sheet of ice bordered on both sides by the silver lace of the leafless willows that overhung it. We learned then what a winter in North China is like. The Pei-hai had turned itself overnight into an immense skating rink, and it looked as though all Peking had taken the day off to skate on the canals and lakes of the Forbidden City. ‘Make the most of it,' said the old China-hands. ‘You won't be able to do this for long!'

I thought they meant that the icy spell would soon end in a thaw – we had already heard that the sea had frozen for three miles out from Chin-wang-tao. But it was not so. A day or two later the sky turned a dull yellowish-grey at midday, and the wind began to whine viciously through the delicate carvings and along the verandahs of the painted pavilions, pagodas and palaces, as one of Peking's infamous dust-storms swept through the city.

Rajputana had accustomed me to dust-storms. But this was not dust as I knew it. This was the sand of the great Gobi Desert, which bit and stung as it filled the air with tiny sharp-edged particles that laid a thin, gritty blanket over every surface in the city, including, of course, the ice. There were no more skaters to be seen on the Pei-hai or the canals, and although there must have been periods when the grit sank a little way into the ice so that the surface was temporarily smooth again, they never lasted long, for the wind seemed always to blow in from the Gobi, and the dust-storms were many.

Not that it worried the foreign population much, for the members of the Peking Club had learned long ago how to deal with this, and no sooner had ‘Come Winter' set in than the entire space taken up during the greater part of the year by tennis courts was flooded, and protected from the winds by a vast canvas enclosure so closely fitted that only the occasional draught managed to creep in. The result was an admirable rink. But oh, was it cold! It might have been a giant freezer, and about twenty minutes was the longest I ever lasted on it. By the end of that my feet were like solid blocks of ice, and the bitter temperature outside felt almost warm by contrast – though that must have been imagination, for there were days when even the canvas was not proof against the worst of the dust-storms, and the rink would be unusable for a day or two while the surface melted just enough to let the dust sink before it froze again.

Later during that same winter, while driving along the canal road to Pa-Ta-Ch'u to watch a point-to-point, we passed a part of the canal where gangs of coolies were cutting out the ice in large chunks, which they wrapped in coarse sacking before carrying it up to the road and stacking it into a number of carts that were waiting for them. We stopped for a moment or two to watch, and I asked our driver, a friend of Tacklow's who was something to do with the British Embassy, what they were doing that for. He replied casually that the ice they were collecting would be stored in deep pits to be used for cooling all forms of cold food and drinks in the summer. And when I exclaimed in horror that all the drains of the city ran into the canal, he laughed and admitted that was so, adding cheerfully that what made it worse was the fact that the high ground overlooking the place where they were cutting the ice happened to be the Criminals' Graveyard, which drained into that part of the canal.
Ugh!
I may say that I never touched any iced fruit or drink during the rest of the time that I was in North China.