Enchanted Evening (14 page)

Like everything else in that short dark passage, and throughout the sanctuary, the murals were half hidden by a veil of cobwebs and layers of dust from decades of slow-burning incense-sticks, augmented by the dry earth of the hillsides, the sands of the Gobi Desert and the great plain of China. This was why we had not noticed them until I flashed the torch directly at them. And even then I doubt if we would have taken much notice if it had not been for the glint of a thin, raised line of something like gesso that had been covered with gold leaf and formed the outer rim of the halo behind the head of the goddess that I happened to shine my torch on.

Pure gold does not tarnish and, as I moved the light slowly along the wall, it glinted on other touches of gold and showed us that not only the haloes, but the elaborate jewellery, coronets and ornaments worn by the goddesses and their attendants (at least two of whom looked quite as fiercely masculine as the Guardians of the Gate!) were also picked out with gesso, so that they looked almost real and as if we could lift them off the wall.

Only when the battery of my torch began to run out did we tear ourselves away from our enthralling treasure-trove, and discover that we must have spent a lot more time gazing at it than we thought, for by the time we left the Goddery the sun was nearing the tree-tops and the rest of our party were collecting in the courtyard for tea.

Bets and I, incoherent with excitement and convinced that we had stumbled on the Find of the Century, poured out our story in the expectation that everyone else would fall over each other in their eagerness to see the wonders we had been describing. It was a distinct let-down to find that they were far more interested in tea, and that our World-Shaking Discovery was, for the moment, of far less importance than cucumber sandwiches, scones and the best Lapsang Souchong from the tea emporium on the Hatamên. And when that had been disposed of, a few villagers, the day's work finished, began to drift in to light their joss-sticks and say a prayer, so it was decided that we would have to wait until tomorrow before ‘poking about' in the back of the sanctuary and go for an evening walk in the woods instead.

Mother was the only one who showed any interest in the murals next morning. The others took their torches and, having stirred up the dust by tramping to and fro in the passage and made everyone sneeze, said: ‘Yes, very pretty, if only you could clean it up a bit' – which was considered inadvisable, because if one started to brush off the dust, the plaster would probably flake off the wall; it was surprising that it hadn't flaked off already. And that was that.

Tacklow questioned the old priest about the frescoes, but all he got was a shrug of the shoulders and the information that the pictures were very old – as old as the Temple. However, he did manage to open the door in the back wall and let in a bit of daylight, and this, augmented by two Petromax lamps and several torches, produced just enough light for Mother to take a photograph of part of the mural.

Finding our fellow weekenders so uninterested, we buttonholed everyone we knew as soon as we got back to Peking. But no one, not even Sven Hedin, showed any particular enthusiasm.
Everyone
knew that there were frescoes at Fa-hai-ssu – well,
almost
everyone! – and if they were anything special we could be quite sure that someone would have taken notice of it and left a record. We gave up. But I kept the little gold lacquered hand and I have it to this day. It sits on a carved ebony base among a few specially treasured mementoes.

Four years later, back in London and waiting to meet a friend in the Ladies' Drawing-Room of the Army and Navy Club in St James's Square, I picked up a copy of the
Illustrated London News
. Turning the pages without much interest, I came across a full-page spread, complete with photographs, headed ‘Wonderful Discovery of Ming Frescoes. Rivals to Ajanta!' And there was a photograph of Fa-hai-ssu and the Goddery, and that marvel of a fresco! Plus a whole lot of stuff about it being painted in the fifteenth century, during the Ming Dynasty, and that it was almost perfectly preserved and ‘believed to be unknown until now to either Chinese or European art lovers'. I resent that last bit. I really do … Bitterly!

*   *   *

There were times when I used to have qualms about that little wooden hand, and wonder if I ought not to send it back to Fa-hai-ssu. It was a purely superstitious feeling, since I knew perfectly well that if I did it would merely be thrown away as rubbish, as it had been before. Yet I continued to toy with the idea that one day I might go back to Fa-hai-ssu and hide it on the altar behind the Buddhas and let
them
look after it. Only when China declared for Communism did I cease to worry; and when, much later, Chairman Mao's Red Army stampeded across their homeland, smashing and destroying thousands of irreplaceable examples of their country's art, I felt relieved to think that the little hand was safely wrapped in a piece of Chinese silk at the back of my handkerchief and glove drawer.

Chapter 10

China was in deep trouble in those days, but though I was aware that this was so, I took no interest in the political situation. China had done nothing about Manchuria in 1931. There was a story that the only people to make a fuss about it had been the students in Peking's university, who had demanded that they be given arms with which to march against the Japanese, who had been besieging the northern border-town of Jehol for some months.

The tale went that after several days of student demonstrations and deafening howls of ‘Give us arms! Give us arms!' the authorities gave in and doled out hundreds of rifles – many of which were probably relics from the previous century. When every student had received some form of firearm and the ammunition to go with it, the demonstrators made for the railway station in a body, and caught the next train for Shanghai!

That story may have been apocryphal. But since I heard it from so many people who claimed to have ‘been there', I bet it was true. Particularly since at this time, when China was being sporadically ruled by a variety of self-proclaimed generals and temporary war lords, possession of any form of firearm would have greatly increased its owner's prestige: no one dared argue with an armed soldier in those days.

A similar tale is one that I really can vouch for, because I saw the final act of the incident myself, and though I can't, at this date, remember the year, it has to be in the autumn of either 1932 or 1933. Japan had laid siege to Jehol, a fortified autumn residence and imperial hunting lodge, north-east of Peking among the mountains beyond the Great Wall, which was held by a garrison numbering several thousand troops under the command of a top-ranking general. The siege had been dragging on for some time, and casualties among the Chinese soldiery mounted steadily. Report said that many were dying daily, not from enemy action but from cold, for they had been hurried up to the defence of Jehol in the late spring or early summer, when they would be wearing light, ‘warm-weather' clothing. The bitter cold of the North China winter, with its icy winds that swept in from the freezing plateau of Central Asia, was, literally, killing off the inadequately clad garrison like flies, by lowering their resistance so drastically that the least touch of ill-health became impossible to fight off, and they crawled into their draughty, unheated barracks and died there.
1

A call went out for fur-lined coats for the shivering army: 40,000 was the figure spoken of. Sufficient money to buy 40,000 fur coats, and the cost of their transport to Jehol, was raised in next to no time, and the Committee responsible for collecting them and sending them off by train from Peking for as far as the railway line went (and from there presumably in carts along the winding mountain roads) advertised their departure with a good many patriotic speeches and headlines in the press. A large crowd of citizens, pressmen and high-ranking officials turned up to see the show, and Tacklow, who read the Chinese papers as well as the
Peking and Tientsin Times
, took me along to the station to witness the send-off.

As far as the Chinese officials went it was very impressive. But when it came to the consignment of goods to ‘our heroic defenders', it soon became apparent that no allowances had been made for the Chinese addiction to
kumshaw
– ‘squeeze' – levied on any sum that passes through successive hands. China had subscribed more than enough money to provide all the help that was so sorely needed by its shivering, half-frozen troops, but had forgotten that the money must, of necessity, pass through the hands of a great many officials before it was converted into the necessary fur coats, boxed and ready for dispatch from Peking.

Corruption had always been rife at all levels in the Imperial Kingdom, particularly in royal circles – as witness the appropriation by the Empress of funds set aside for China's navy. (She spent them on building a marble boat, and a variety of pavilions at the Summer Palace.) It became worse under an unstable Republic, and since every single individual through whose hands that fur coat money passed kept a proportion of it, it is not surprising that the help that was sent off to Jehol consisted of
eighteen
2
fur coats and a few dozen boxes of crackers …

The men who were garrisoning Jehol were their fellow-countrymen, dying for something as easily avoidable as lack of warmth. And all because a line of greedy and corrupt officials could not keep their thievish paws out of the till.

A garden party was to provide me with another example of a Chinese vanishing-trick. The party was given by the Chinese members of Peking's Town Council, in honour of the Crown Prince of one of the Scandinavian countries. Because of the Japanese siege of Jehol it had been thought prudent to send the treasures of the Forbidden City for safe keeping in Shanghai, but the entire collection would be put on display for the benefit of the royal visitor before being packed and sent off under a strong guard to the south.

The foreign ministers and the senior members of their staffs, together with most of the foreign residents in Peking, were invited, among them Tacklow and Mother. When the day came round, however, Mother went down with a migraine and retired to bed with aspirins and an ice-pack in a darkened room, and Tacklow, who didn't like the idea of going alone, suggested that I substitute for her. After all, the invitation was for Sir Cecil and Lady Kaye, and none of the hosts was in the least likely to realize that I wasn't Mother, for there were a lot of young wives among the Consular staffs. So, thrilled to bits, I hastily scrambled into my garden-party outfit and went off with Tacklow to the Forbidden City.

The party was held in the garden of one of the palaces, and everyone who was anyone, Chinese or foreign, was there in their best. The Crown Prince was everything one thinks a Crown Prince should be, and we all sat around under the shade of ornamental pine trees at little tables. Everyone there looked forward to seeing the treasures because it was well known that only a very few, and those of a size that made them impossible to steal – such as the ‘Empress's Jade Flower Bowl' – were on show to tourists. The prospect of seeing
all
the treasures was enthralling.

But when the time came, our hosts selected a mere handful of people: the Prince and one or two of his suite, some, but by no means all, of the ministers and secretaries, a wife or two – and Sir Cecil and Lady Kaye! I couldn't believe my luck. I
still
can't. This small party of people was taken through the Forbidden City into palaces that were shut to tourists, and shown such treasures as had survived the looting and anarchy of the years that had followed the fall of the Empire, all laid out on display in cabinets and tables and on shelves.

Carved jade and ivory and rose-quartz; lacquer and porcelain and wonderful embroidered wallhangings;
Kossu
scrolls and celadon vases; and case after case of curious objects such as the curved sceptres which were presented to the Emperor once a year by various nobles or delegates from different states, and were supposed to bring good fortune. No two of these beautiful, useless objects were quite alike, except in general outline, and all were works of art. I could have spent hours with my nose flattened against the glass of the cases in which they were displayed, and I still remember them with awe.

That evening, when the party was over and the guests had gone, the gates of the Forbidden City were locked and barred, and all approaches were sealed off for some considerable time while behind those closed doors skilled packers stowed away the fabulous, fragile treasures in the many wooden crates that had been recently made ready for them. They were taken under a strong guard to the railway station and dispatched, with every possible precaution, to Shanghai, where they arrived safely. Or rather the crates did. No one would admit to knowing what happened to the treasures: when the crates were opened they were found to contain nothing but bricks.

I was convinced that the treasures were gone for ever, scattered all over the globe in bits and pieces. But there was a TV film not so long ago that said flatly that the treasure was safe and sound in a strongly fortified and most elaborate museum in Taiwan, that breakaway island to which those Chinese who did not choose to follow Chairman Mao and his Communists retreated. What is more, the film showed us many of the Imperial Treasures, beautifully displayed. They can't
all
be there, but at least a good many of them obviously are. Well done to whoever did it!

According to the China-side grapevine, the only treasure to escape being sent south was the more than life-size effigy that gave its name to the Temple of the White Jade Buddha. And that was only because when the packers came to remove it, it was discovered that at some time during its career, some opportunistic Emperor, eunuch, or abbot (with the agreement of some or all of the monks) had had a copy of the effigy made in alabaster and substituted it for the original jade which, cut up and sold by the piece, would have been worth a fortune.