The Communist's Daughter (13 page)

I said, “Of course, you're aware that's not your money to spend.”

“Now, now, one or two won't hurt, I'm sure.”

“Doctor, I don't care what you do on your own time.” I said, “but I'll tell you this only once: that is not your money to spend.”

I had met people like Parsons over the years. In Montreal. In Madrid. I knew his sort well enough, the selfish addiction, the lying. He was the wicked and lazy servant in the Parable of the Talents who'd buried his talents in a bottle of rye.

Later, I found Jean on the promenade deck just outside the veranda café, bundled up and leaning against the railing watching the ocean. When I told her what I'd discovered, she clasped her hands over the railing and seemed justifiably concerned. I spoke in an even, hushed tone. We were shoulder to shoulder, close enough that I noticed the scent of her perfume, light, almost sweet, that came and went with the swirling wind. I suggested we come to an easy agreement as to our course of action regarding Charles, and to that end I recommended cabling New York with the demand that he be forced to provide an accounting of every last dime spent on board the
Empress of Asia.
This would definitively cut off his access to the remaining funds he carried.

Waiting for her consent, I watched the water far below us swirl and lap up against the bow like a live animal. It was deep blue, almost black.

“No,” she said at last, “I will not join you in this coup.”

“Please, don't let's overdramatize,” I said. “This is merely a pragmatic reassignment of duties.”

I went on to explain that only a directive from the China Aid Council would knock some sense into his sodden head, as he would never listen to us, certainly not to me. A strong scent of perfume came off her face then, or her neck.

“No,” she said again, her answer as flat-out as it was incomprehensible. She would do no such thing. Needless to say I was taken aback. It was for the good of the cause, I insisted, keeping my voice level. I pushed her, still quietly, but with greater insistence.

“No, I will not,” she said. She would give me no reason.

I wondered if her youth and inexperience prevented her from “tattling” on a colleague—an inexcusably adolescent way of looking at things, the least offensive reason available. Worse still would be a lack of commitment to the cause we were sailing into. Maybe she suffered from a fear of her own subordination, or simply an inferiority complex. Knowing Miss Ewen as I did, not well, surely, but well enough, I couldn't believe she would be so limited, so meek. I hoped above all that she'd taken this stand out of some misguided sense of compassion for a sick man. I was not afraid of ruffling feathers, I told her. Achieving our goals was of vastly greater importance than one man's suffering.

She said, still staring out to the ocean, “I know your reputation well enough, Doctor.”

“Then you know I'm right,” I said. To this she said nothing. “By the time we get to Hong Kong there'll be nothing left. You must reconsider. You know as well as I do how Parsons sits at that bar all day long. Good Lord, brandy for breakfast! I've seen it myself. It's astonishing. I swear I'll throw him overboard before he depletes our funds entirely. With or without your help.”

This caused her to turn her head. She stared at me with those big dark young eyes of hers. She really was quite lovely, I realized then. “You will be throwing no one overboard, Doctor Bethune, today or any other day during this crossing. Not while I'm on board.”

*

The evening after I confronted Jean began no differently from any other. On finishing with my writing, I was surprised to discover that it was nearing midnight. I'd been writing a paper for a medical journal, and with the intention of returning to it in the morning I set my notes aside and sought out a quiet stretch of deck up top. The ocean was calm and the air cold, a rich dampness that happily reminded me of my youth on the great Georgian Bay. I leaned against the rail and attempted to clear my thoughts. It was a wondrous thing to scatter the anxieties of the day over the ocean's wide expanse, and that is what I intended to do before retiring for the night. A glowing light was just barely visible in the west, a remnant of someone else's day, and a universe of stars sparkled overhead. I breathed deeply and conjured an image of you, my daughter, as you might be, warm, tiny, sleeping in your mother's arms.

Along the length of the deck, solemn, bundled figures leaned over the rail, caught in their own silent reveries. One of these figures, the closest to me, thirty or forty paces off, tossed a cigarette over the rail, hunched his shoulders and started for the nearest hatch, then stopped as if reconsidering. A cold wind was picking up. To me it was bracing, but for this man it might have been too much. I held my image of you a moment longer, wondering what at that precise time you were doing, when a voice interrupted my thoughts. It was Parsons. He was standing beside me.

“It's a long way down, Bethune,” he said.

“Taking a break from the bar, are we?”

“Not too long a break, don't worry. Just off to the bank.” He jangled the key to his cabin.

“You're a disgrace, Parsons.”

“I suppose you wish we could all be a bit more like you.” It was a stupid reversal. He was looking for a confrontation and past talking to, guaranteed more drunk than sober by this time of night. “You consider this your own personal cause, don't you. You think my bar tab will give the Japanese the advantage in China? That Fascism will overrun all of Asia because of a few drinks?”

“I think it best you pay your own way, Parsons,” I told him, “nothing more than that. How you choose to deal with your problems is no concern of mine.”

“Nor is it any concern of mine how you deal with yours. A thing like that—Madrid—stays with you, doesn't it.”

I was silent, looking into his eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “Madrid will be with you forever.” He smiled, waiting for a fitting riposte. “Nothing to add? No righteous words from the great Bethune? Good, then I'll leave you to think this one through.” And he turned casually, owning the moment, and walked away.

Clearly he thought he had something on me, but I'd been unable to ask what that might be, exactly. I suppose the violence of his emotion had silenced me. I will never argue with a drunk, not if I can help it, though I was eager to put the matter to rest.

The following morning, I planned to contact the CAC without Miss Ewen's help, even though I understood full well that only one name on the wire would be less persuasive. The telegraph room was situated just off the Captain's nest, and I was greeted there by a bright-looking young man. For a moment I was taken by the commanding perspective: below sat the entirety of the ship, bow to stern, port to starboard, while all around us the ocean stretched, peerless and indifferent. The young lad smiled and nodded. After commenting on the fine view, I explained the urgency of my telegram and directed him to send it off at the earliest convenience, and to inform me the moment my answer was received. Then I tipped my hat and left him to his work.

After a slow game of billiards with a fellow passenger I drank a lemonade in the lounge then retired to my cabin to look over some of my notes. It was a pleasant morning, unrushed yet quietly productive. I had sublimated my gloomy thoughts, and the possibility that Charles Parsons knew something more than he should have became a distant bother, not overly concerning. I caught up on some reading and later strolled the decks, learning the ship's plan more thoroughly. I enjoyed the views and, half past noon, snacked on a salmon omelette with jam and coffee at the café with a distinguished-looking Englishman who had some business with the Empress lines. As we talked, the ship's Captain greeted my companion, who then introduced us. Captain Aldridge Lawson seemed very interested in my work, as he had trained in medicine at Cambridge for a brief time before the Great War. He told me if I was free that evening he would be honoured by my presence at his table. I said he should count on it.

Later that day, as I was preparing for dinner, the knock I'd been waiting for sounded at my door. The lad from the telegraph office handed me a small envelope, barely the size of a personal calling card. I gave him a few coins and closed the door. It was not the news I'd been expecting. After reading the message, I slipped the telegram in my pocket. I have carried it with me to this day as a memento of the idiocy of bureaucrats everywhere.

DR H N BETHUNE
EMPRESS OF ASIA

COMMITTEE HAS COMPLETE FAITH IN ALL MEMBERS OF EXPEDITION STOP WILL REQUIRE NO CHANGE OF ACCOUNTING PRACTICES BEST OF LUCK

Despite this setback, I managed to pass a pleasant evening at dinner. Topics of discussion were as wide ranging as oceanic navigation, politics, medicine and, finally, over cognac and a cigar, the Great War. As a young man, our Captain had sailed on board HMS
Excelsior
as a petty officer with the Royal Navy. Also at the Captain's table was a terribly sententious missionary named Billingsley, out of Union College in Missouri, who showed a great interest in our expedition. He too was a fighting man, he said, but in God's army. “Bibles, not guns,” he added. It turned out he was a Seventh Day Adventist. When I welcomed him to the struggle on behalf of the armed atheists and Communists of the world, he looked at me with an expression of true horror, as if he had never before laid eyes on a dirty Communist. His eyes seemed to ask how someone of obvious intelligence could support such a despicable social fantasy. Heads turned, and the other conversations at our table fell silent. The Reverend Mr. Billingsley regained his composure enough to say, “You're not
really
a Communist! Surely you see there is no future in Communism.”

“On the contrary,” I said, “that is precisely the future I hope will prevail. We have seen the avarice of Capitalism. Capitalism cannot care for the sick and needy. Capitalism can only enrich those still hungry for riches despite their obscene wealth.”

He reached for his glass, sipped his wine and returned the glass to its place, then he folded his hands on the table and looked directly into my eyes. “We are bringing the word of God to those who hunger for it. Nothing less than the word of Jesus Christ. Spiritual hunger is what's bringing us, Doctor, and there's nothing faddish about that. Spiritual hunger is in many ways more devastating than the hunger for bread.”

“My father might have said the same thing,” I told him.

“Oh?” he said.

“He enjoyed a lofty career in the Presbyterian Church.”

“Well, there you see. Perhaps he and I would see eye to eye.”

“Perhaps you would have.” I said. “He passed away some years ago.”

He said, “I'm sorry to hear it.”

“He had the Devil on the run his whole life.”

“Isn't that what we all aspire to, Doctor Bethune, such an urgency of purpose? In one sense or another? To combat injustice, disease, war? The Devil has many names.” As the white-gloved waiters appeared with a kingly looking roast of beef, I told Billingsley the story of how my family had moved from town to town in the service of the Church, and how in the end it was revealed that a pursuit of the Devil had rather little to do with it.

“Perhaps your father knew something you did not,” he said. “Allow me to say that a son should not be so quick to dismiss his father's ideas.”

I refrained from rolling my eyes. I only smiled, tilted my wineglass, drank and waited for an opportunity to shift the direction of our conversation. I feared that Billingsley might attempt to hatch some moral out of any story I might tell, or draw an unlikely parallel between me and my father and his desire to rout out evil wherever he should find it. For once I was not up to a heated discussion, and I didn't bother telling him that it was the people of those small Ontario towns, at first invigorated but soon threatened and finally wearied by my father's overbearing righteousness, who had sent us packing again and again.

The following morning Jean appeared at the entrance of the veranda café, wearing again the cap and cape she'd worn our first day out. I was sitting at my usual table, to port, beside a large window. It was not so uncommon, her stopping for breakfast there. We'd shared coffee and toast a number of times. I decided to cut to the point.

“Doctor Parsons is a thief
and
an outrageous drunk. I don't know for what you owe him your allegiance, but he cornered me the other night. He was talking nonsense. You wouldn't believe what he was going on about.”

“Oh?” she said.

“What he said really isn't important. What's important is the quality of the man, not the nature of his lies. It is the fact of his lies that matters.”

“He's willing to travel thousands of miles—”

“Look at the reality. It is the trusting nature of your youth that hopes for the best even when that's clearly unattainable.”

“I think you underestimate—”

“My dear,” I interrupted, “you're prone to
over
estimation. There is no alternative but to send that telegram. You will grant me that, I'm sure.” I waited a moment to ensure my point had been made. She was silent. Believing all was settled, I got back to work.

Determined study has always been for me an effective tonic in the face of struggles. After taking my morning walk, I settled down quietly in the deep silence of the lounge. I felt the tension and bother of dealing with such a nuisance as Parsons fall away from me and was pleased to regain my focus. Around noon I decided, as a favour to myself, to stop off at the bar on upper deck to take something before proceeding to the café for a light meal. I felt I owed myself a treat. I'd been under a fair bit of strain and had, I thought, held up rather well. A familiar optimism was returning to me.

Just as I rounded a tall bookshelf, a man brushed against me. I was carrying a journalistic account of the China situation called
Far Eastern Front.
This young man, about thirty or thirty-five, nodded politely, glimpsed the title and said, “Snow, hell of a writer,” then introduced himself. When I gave him my name, Eli Ansell said, “Ah, yes, Doctor Bethune, I was told you were on board. What a great honour.”