There had been a time when I was sure it couldn’t last, and they were bound to find me out for the poltroom and scoundrel I was – but I’d been devilish lucky, and, d’ye know, there’s nothing sticks like a good name, provided you know how to carry your credit with a modest grin and a glad eye. Once let ’em call you a hero, and they’ll never leave off worshipping – which is absolute nuts when the worshipper cuts a figure like the adoring Mrs Carpenter’s. After three days of my society I reckoned she was ready to melt; all that was needed was a stroll in the garden after dark, a few well-chosen quotations from the Song of Solomon, and she’d play like one of those abandoned Old Testament queens her husband was forever reviling from the pulpit.
As a final rehearsal I took her out to picnic at the Poke Fullam bungalow, which was the favoured resort in Hong Kong at that time; we found a secluded spot, spread a rug, disposed of the cold prawns and a bottle of Hock, and settled down to exchange my murmured gallantries for her sighs and coy glances – I didn’t intend to board her that afternoon, you understand; too public, and she wasn’t even part-drunk. As it happened, I’d have been wasting my time, for the innocent Mrs Carpenter had been working to a fixed end just as purposefully as I. And such an end; when I think back on it, words fail me.
She led up to it by talking of her husband’s ambition to build a church and hall over at Kowloong; even in those days it was the fashionable place, so he would be quite top dog among the local gospel-wallopers. The difficulty, says she sighing, was money – although even that would not have been insurmountable had it not been for the impending war.
‘When Sir Hope Grant begins his campaign, you see, it is certain that there will be a cessation of all China trade, even with Canton,’ says she. ‘And when that happens – why, there will be an end to all Josiah’s hopes. And mine.’ And she choked back what sounded like a little sob.
I’d been paying no heed, content to stroke her hand, brotherly-like, while she prattled, but hearing her gulp I perked up. Get ’em weeping, and you’re half way to climbing all over them. I feigned concern, and squeezed her hand, begging her to explain what Grant’s campaign could have to do with dear Josiah’s church-building. I knew, as all the world did, that Grant was due in Hong Kong shortly with a fleet and army whose purpose would be to go up-country and force our latest treaty down the Chinese Emperor’s throat, but it wasn’t liable to be much of a war: show the flag to the Chinks, kick a few yellow backsides, and home again with hardly a shot fired – the kind of campaign that would have suited me, if I’d been looking for one, which I wasn’t. I could thank God I’d be homeward bound before Grant arrived, for he knew me from India and would certainly dragoon me into service if I were silly enough to be on hand. You don’t pass up the chance of employing the gallant Flashy. And he don’t pass up the chance of making himself scarce.
‘But even a little war will put an end to traffic with the Chinese merchants,’ she lamented. ‘Oh, it is so hard, when Josiah and his friends have invested so wisely! To be robbed of the deserved profit that would have fulfilled his dream! It is too bad!’ And she looked at me with trembling mouth and great blue eyes – Gad, she was like Elspeth, even to the imbecile parting of those crimson lips, and the quivering of her top hamper. Feeling slightly fogged, I asked, what investment had dear Josiah made?
‘Why, opium, of course! He was so clever, laying out Papa’s legacy in two thousand chests of the very choicest Patna,’ says this fair flower of the vicarage. ‘And it would have fetched ever so much money at Canton – more than enough to build our dear little church! But if war comes, and he cannot sell his cargo …’ She sniffed and looked woebegone.
‘D’you mean to tell me,’ says I, astonished, ‘that Josiah is smuggling poppy?’ I know the Church is game for anything, as a rule, and Hong Kong only existed for the opium trade; most everyone was in it. But it don’t go with dog-collars and Sunday schools, exactly.
‘Gracious, no! Dear Sir Harry, how could you suppose such a thing? Why, it is not smuggling at all nowadays!’ She was all lovely earnestness as she explained – and so help me, these were her very words: ‘Josiah says that the fifth supplementary clause of the new treaty removes all restrictions on the trade in opium, cash, pulse, grain, saltpetre … oh, I forget all the things, but one of them is spelter, whatever that may be; it sounds very horrid. It is true,’ she admitted gravely, ‘that the treaty is not yet ratified, but Sir Hope Grant will see to that, and Josiah says there can be no illegality in profiting by anticipation.’ So there.
Josiah’ll end up in Lambeth Palace or Dartmoor, at this rate, thinks I. Imagine – a clergyman peddling the black smoke. Purely out of curiosity, I asked didn’t he have moral qualms? She twitched her tits in impatience.
‘Oh, Josiah says that is Nonconformist missionary talk, and that it is well-known the natives of China use opium as a sedative, rather than as a narcotic, and that it does not one-tenth of the harm that strong waters cause among our poorer classes at home. Gin, and such things.’ Then she sighed again, and they quivered in dejection. ‘But it is all by the way now. If he cannot sell the cargo … and he could have built our church and to spare, too!’
With enough over to start a couple of brothels, no doubt, the way Josiah did business. ‘Hold on,’ says I. ‘Why can’t he sell it – where is it, by the way?’
‘At Macao. Josiah is gone over today to see it put aboard the fast crabs and scrambling dragons.’ Not two years out of the schoolroom, sink me, and she was talking like a taipan.fn1
‘Well, there you are – he can send it up Pearl River to the Canton factories tomorrow, and sell it to the Hongs.’
‘Oh, if it were so simple! But you see, Sir Harry, with all the war talk there is word that the Chinese merchants have been forbidden to buy from our people … and … and Josiah and his friends have no influence to persuade them.’
‘Then get Dent or Jardine to run it in – they’ll persuade anybody – and get a better price than Josiah could, I daresay.’
‘And take all our profit in commission! They are the greediest persons, you know,’ says this tender child. ‘Besides, the price is settled. Josiah vows to take no less than eight pounds a chest.’
‘Jesus – I mean, dear me!’ says I. ‘Two thousand chests – why, that’s near a ton, isn’t it? Sixteen thousand quid!’ I was no expert, but you couldn’t be in Hong Kong five minutes without knowing the going figures. ‘Phew! Well, my dear, he’d better get it to Canton somehow before the war starts – stay, though: can’t he put it in bond until things are more settled?’
‘It is prepared chandoo, not raw cake,’ says the Opium Queen pathetically. ‘Unless it goes directly, it must spoil. Oh, is it not wretchedly unlucky? Those who could run it will do so only on extortionate terms; those who would, for a fair consideration, are not people who could deal with the Chinese officials and merchants. Josiah has a skipper, a Mr Ward, but he cannot speak Chinese, even!’
And it was then, with another superb sigh, that she turned those great misty eyes on me in undoubted appeal, and said in a little voice: ‘It would be so easy … for the right person, you see.’ She looked away, downcast. ‘Josiah says he would pay him ten per cent.’
Lady Geraldine had been rather more subtle … but she hadn’t been offering sixteen hundred quid. Handsome pocket money, if you like – and easier to earn than falling off a log, for whatever the Pekin government said, the Hong merchants would cut Confucius’s throat to buy a ton of chandoo, whoever offered it. And she was right – all that was needed was someone with bold front and bearing who could brush aside inconvenient officials on the run upriver, stick out his jaw at any Chink jack-in-the-office who threatened confiscation, and see that Josiah’s ignorant skipper found his way safe to Jackass Point. Nothing in that.
Mind you, she had a hard bark, asking a British Army colonel to nursemaid her shipload of puggle – yet why not? Here was I, friendly disposed, officer and gentleman, knew the ropes, spoke the lingo