The Ginger Tree Page 5

  I feel so far from home and Mama right now. I am sitting here staring at the rust stains which come through on bolt heads from the iron plates, wondering if I believe in Heaven and Hell? Perhaps it is not necessary to believe in either to believe in God? If that were so I would feel better, yet every Minister I have ever listened to would say that the Christian must believe in life after death and rewards for goodness and punishment for evil, and that if one did not one could not be a Christian. How can millions and millions of people be so proud as to believe they are worth being kept by God forever and ever?

  Mama would die if she knew I had put down words like this. Sometimes at night in this creaking ship I feel so far inside myself, with no help from anything outside, that I wonder if this is the way things must be even when I am married? Perhaps these are just a traveller’s thoughts because one is so unsettled and all you have of your own is in a trunk and two cases. Maybe I will feel better when I am once again with faces I will see every day for a long time. I think of Cook in Mama’s house, who has been with us ever since we came to Edinburgh and who always sings hymns when she is baking. She only goes to church rarely but believes firmly that when she dies she will go to Heaven which is, for her, a little two-roomed cottage in Perthshire, or what looks like it, with a brook running through the garden. She told me once she could see every detail. I wonder what Mama sees when she thinks of Heaven? I have no vision of it at all.

  Perhaps there is a lot of Papa in me and Mama has always been afraid of this. I know very little about him except that I think Mama was half angry with him because he was not a good business man like Grandfather had been and that before Papa died suddenly he had allowed the factory to run down so there wasn’t nearly as much money as Mama had expected. However, she has always been very generous with me; after paying for my trousseau and steamer tickets she gave me two hundred pounds, which I said was far too much, fifty would have been enough to get me to China and my husband’s protection. She insisted, saying a young lady must have a little nest egg to give her a feeling of security. I was quite nervous about carrying so much money and have spent very little of it, only about ten pounds so far, which has included purchases on the way and tips to stewards and stewardesses on board the Mooldera. I think I should reach Peking with a least a hundred and eighty pounds, which is more than some quite respectable people have to live on for one year.

  SS Ching Wha

  February 13th, 1903

  We are now anchored in the harbour of Wei-Hai-Wei which is a piece of British China I had never heard of. I asked the Captain at luncheon how we came to own it and he said we only took it five years ago. When will we stop taking places in the world? The way we do it is the reason why the American missionary doesn’t like the British, and in a way I cannot blame him here. The Captain said that this is a good harbour and after the Japanese moved out in 1898 after their war with China was over it seemed a good idea for us to move in before the Chinese had a chance to come creeping back. They say that Queen Victoria didn’t want us to take any more of China and when informed about her new possession said: ‘We do not wish to hear about it.’ But that may only have been the Captain’s story. I know I should not listen to jokes about the Royal Family but I had to laugh when the Captain said that the Queen gave a large piece of Borneo to Rajah Brooke because she thought his need was greater than hers. The Captain is very irreverent and I don’t think the other officers like it, particularly the Second Officer, who is very patriotic and serious. Mama wouldn’t care for the Captain’s jokes, either, and Mrs C would have left the dining saloon.

  It is strange how soon we forget the dead. Though I lived so close to her for weeks on end, and could scarcely move without her watching, I now only remember Mrs C from something like this and in honesty do not greatly respect her memory. This is perhaps very wrong of me.

  From the deck one can see the walled city of Wei-Hai-Wei itself and I must say our new colony is very pretty, the harbour closed in by the island of Liu Kung Tao on which is our naval base. There are quite high hills all around, some with terraced rice fields, and a good deal of pine forest. The air is extremely cold, but dry, and though snow has fallen recently the sun is strong and bright. There are six warships of our China Squadron anchored near and I watched a liberty boat going ashore from one of them. There was not time for us to land though some passengers left us by tender, including one First Class Chinese with a pigtail. The steerage people took no notice at all of the unloading going on all around them, continuing with their deck cooking over braziers. I asked the Captain if he wasn’t nervous about having his ship set on fire by an overturned brazier and he said he lived in terror of it, but had hoses ready which he had used more than once to spray both cooks and their stoves. However, the Chinese become seasick quicker than most races so that if the sea is at all rough they do not eat.

  I find watching them cook down there quite fascinating and it seems to go on all day. This morning the youngest priest came up beside me at the rail and said in his quiet voice: ‘Is this how you like to watch the world, Miss Mackenzie? From an upper deck?’ I thought that was rather cheeky of him even if he does wear a robe and is addressed as Father Anthony which I find so strange and never could do to one so young, so I call him nothing. But when, half angry, I looked at him, he was smiling. It is a gentle smile but gives me the feeling that it is a little put on from his theological training. He is very fair with thin hair that will not last long, though this will not matter to him. I realised that he had not meant to be superior but had a real interest in what I might be thinking. Suddenly I was bold in a way I could never have been a month ago. I said: ‘In Moukden you expect to be right in the middle of the world?’ His answer to that was a nod, which wasn’t very satisfactory, which somehow prodded me to go on and I said: ‘For every convert you make in China ten thousand will be born who will not be converted.’ As soon as that was out I thought how dreadful of me, but he wasn’t angry, just nodded and after a moment said in a quiet voice again: ‘All we can hope for is to be a leaven.’

  I felt terrible because I could see that he was sincerely humble and his being willing to spend his whole life on something that seems hopeless was a kind of rebuke to me. I was a little frightened, too, because I knew then that I would never be able to follow a straight line in life as he was doing. I will probably always be of weak faith. When I pray it is for God to stop a storm.

  SS Ching Wha

  February 14th, 1903

  It is early morning and I am writing this because I can’t get to sleep again. Tomorrow we reach Taku Bar and then go up river to Tientsin where Richard and I meet. All the way from Wei-Hai-Wei it has been bitterly cold, the wind now reaching us from Siberia, like a stab to the lungs when you step out on deck. Even with the heating pipes clanking from the hot water being pushed through them it is still so cold in this cabin I have had to massage my fingers.

  These days I find I can look back at the past with new eyes, suddenly seeming to understand things that I missed at the time. I have been thinking about my visit to Richard’s mother. Mama had refused to come with me, saying that if I was going all the way to China to get married it would be a good experience for me to travel to Norfolk unaccompanied. It was quite a difficult journey, with two changes, one at Peterborough and again at King’s Lynn, and when I reached the station of Swaffham where I expected to be met all I found was the family carriage and coachman. I did not know then that Lady Collingsworth was a semi-invalid with rheumatism, so was quite unhappy on the long drive sitting alone in the back of a vehicle that was not in very good condition, more like a hackney in Edinburgh than a private conveyance. Also, the countryside was strange after Scotland, so flat and to my eyes uninteresting. The house of Mannington itself seemed almost suffocated by old trees, a brick building, not stone, and so dark inside that if there had not been a fire on in the hall I would have seen nothing until my eyes became accustomed to the gloom. The house is undoubtedly very damp on that low-lying
ground and needs fires in all the rooms even in summer, though there was never one in my bedroom and the sheets were clammy. Lady Collingsworth and Sir John, Richard’s eldest brother, were very kind in a way but I can see now clearly enough that I was being inspected that first evening and for the next three days as well. I can also see myself as they must have seen me. In spite of my school which did its best to cure me of a Scotch accent I still have one because Mama has stayed quite broad in the way she speaks even since moving to Edinburgh, and the moment I came home for holidays it was to lapse into the old way of speaking. Lady Collingsworth pretended not to notice my accent, but Sir John kept asking me to repeat things, which was embarrassing. He is still a bachelor but as Lady C said to me one day when we were alone at tea, he expects to do his duty soon. I thought the lady in question was a neighbour called Elizabeth who came to Mannington three times while I was there, but with my new eyes I think she was curious about me because she had been after Richard herself. She is quite pretty but with too colourful a skin from hunting and with very broad hips that I expect come from horse riding. I do not think I passed Elizabeth’s examination either.

  3

  Letter from Mary Mackenzie to her mother, Mrs Isabel Mackenzie

  c/o PO Box 103, Legation Quarter,

  Peking, China.

  February 17th, 1903

  Dearest Mama – This will probably be my address for some time because the house in which Richard and I are to live when we are married isn’t yet available. It is in the native city and still occupied by a German couple so I haven’t even seen the outside as yet. There is no place for us in the Legation Quarter itself which was terribly devastated during the Boxer Troubles, many of the houses completely destroyed by Chinese guns or fires after the bombardments. The most important residence, Sir Robert Hart’s, was burned to the ground with all the records in it of the Chinese Customs which he has been in charge of for many years. However, the new Legation Quarter is to be fortified with a strong wall and in front of this a very wide space that is never to be built on, this to give a clear field of fire if there should ever be any more troubles. Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you all this, but there is no need to be nervous about me, the city is now totally pacified. The Allied troops who stayed a long time to make quite certain of this have left only recently.

  As we came alongside the wharf at Tientsin it didn’t seem as though I was arriving in a Chinese city at all, all the buildings seemed European, one with a sign saying Astor House Hotel and another Gaiety Theatre. Except for rickshas waiting on the dock, and some palanquins, there was nothing really strange at all except perhaps that everyone waiting for us seemed to be wearing furs, men and women alike. I was expecting Richard to stand out from the crowd because he would be wearing uniform, but he wasn’t, also in a fur coat, a long one, which made him look like a Cossack especially since he was wearing a fur hat to match! He was up the gangway as soon as it was lowered and then came striding down the deck to meet me, pulling off that hat and just dropping it in order to take both my hands and welcome me to China with a kiss. I was a little surprised that he did this in front of all those people because he is always correct, as you know, but I was glad, too.

  That night I spent at the Astor House Hotel and Richard had a room at another hotel, but we dined together at the Astor, a small table by a window that was hung with rich red curtains. There was an orchestra playing, three instruments. Except for the Chinese waiters, called ‘boys’, that room could have been in Edinburgh. At first we were a little shy together, but soon I was telling him about my journey and the sad death of my chaperone, and Mrs Brinkhill, the typhoon and so on. I suppose I was chattering but Richard didn’t seem to mind and he kept me going with questions. Then, when we had finished the meal, I think he must have tipped the orchestra for suddenly they began playing ‘Tales from the Vienna Woods’, a bit squeaky for they are Russians, and Richard took out a little box with my ring that he didn’t think it was safe to send to Scotland. So I put on my engagement ring to Austrian music and I hope that was a good omen, though I know you don’t believe in such things. The stone is a Korean amethyst which Richard says is not to be confused with the ordinary amethysts we see at home, but a much richer colour and more valuable, of course. It is set in seed pearls. He had it specially made in Shanghai to the measurement I sent and the fit is perfect.

  The next day we did not meet for breakfast, but at about eleven Richard arrived in a carriage and though it was cold it was sunny, and we drove with the hood down and well wrapped up in a huge bearskin rug that was smelly, but warm. Richard was interested in all the sites where battles had been fought for the control of Tientsin during the Boxer Troubles and we stopped on an iron bridge across a narrow river where the fighting had been very intense. What interested me was the river itself. I could scarcely see water between the sampans and small junks packed into it on which families were living out their lives. It was really a floating slum cutting across the main shopping street of Tientsin in which there are many fine shops and buildings, these all restored for business again. I wonder where the people in the boats went to during the Boxer fighting, perhaps they just stayed where they were, hoping for no stray bullets. Mrs Brinkhill told me that I would soon get used to the poverty in China, but I haven’t yet. It is not confined to special places as it is with us, you see it everywhere, and have quite horrid reminders sometimes. Right outside the Astor Hotel there was a beggar on the pavement with a greatly disfigured face and stumps for hands. Richard said he was a leper but that I wasn’t to worry about such things because a lot of the beggars become quite rich and return at night to comfortable houses. He also said that in China nothing is what it seems, and I was to remember that. I am not sure I know what he meant.

  That afternoon we took the train to Peking, sitting opposite each other on rattan seats that were cold and slippery. There was nothing much to see, just flat fields with clusters of mounds in odd places in nearly all of them. These are graves. The Chinese country people bury their dead in the family fields and then plough all around them. I saw one or two fields that seemed more graves than ploughed land, and couldn’t help thinking that it was wasteful agriculture.

  What we talked about on the train was Mannington. I have found already that a way to make Richard happy is to talk about his home, which he loves above all things. In a way it is a pity he is a third son so cannot hope to inherit. I think he would have made a better ‘laird’ of the Collingsworth estates than his brother. Sir John seemed to me, though quite nice, a slow man who was really only doing his duty about his inheritance, and I don’t think he really cares much for hunting which in Norfolk makes you odd, I believe. The English families are run in such set ways, the eldest son inheriting all the property while the others must go into the Church or the Army. It is all laid down before you are born and no one ever thinks of varying the pattern by leaving everything to a second son, or a third, as a father might well do in Scotland if he was displeased with his eldest. I didn’t say this to you at home but at Mannington I felt that there are so many differences between the Scotch and the English that we might be French and Spaniards in our separate ways. A Scotch wife to an Englishman must expect that her husband is going to seem a foreigner.

  Our wedding is the first in Peking since the Boxer Troubles so there is going to be quite a fuss. An English Bishop will be up from Shanghai on tour at the time and will perform the ceremony. I do not much care for the Anglican Church way of doing things, but I suppose I will just have to put up with it, though after we are married I shall attend a Protestant service as often as possible.

  I must give you my first impression of Peking. It was dusk when we went in rickshas from the station towards the walls and a huge gate in them. My ricksha and the ones behind carrying Richard and my luggage, had to slow down to make way for a camel. The camel had a big load on side packs and bells on its neck and it almost pushed past me in the ricksha as though to show that in China camels have priority
over Europeans. I said to the camel: ‘By all means go first,’ and Richard called out that he hadn’t heard what I said. I couldn’t very well tell him that his fiancée had started talking to camels.

  I asked whether the gate was the Hatamen, but it wasn’t. The Captain of the Ching Wha told me that the Empress Dowager, returning to Peking after her exile as a result of the Boxer Troubles, had entered the city by the Hatamen Gate with all the foreigners she had tried to put to death up on a parapet watching her return. From her palanquin she noticed them up there and the Old Lady bowed very deeply to the people she had meant to kill.

  I must not tell you these stories or you will be worried again, but such tales do not make me nervous. I am staying until the wedding, the final date depending on the Bishop, with the British Second Secretary and his wife, a Mr and Mrs Harding. This house, like most, had some serious damage during the siege, a shell through the roof for one thing, but this has now been repaired. Damage to a once-beautiful garden will take much longer to heal, burning timbers scorched the trees and shrubs and only a few survived, as is the case with most Quarter gardens. It is such a pity because they must have been very beautiful. I climbed yesterday with Richard up on to the wall behind us here, and the view showed Peking as a city of gardens. I have yet to visit the outer precincts of the Winter Palace where the public are permitted.

  I am thinking of being extravagant and buying a fur coat since everyone has at least one, some eight or ten, particularly rich Chinese ladies. Mrs Harding took me to the one shop where it is safe to try on these furs, elsewhere is a real risk of catching smallpox. I liked very much an almost black Manchurian wildcat, very long and sleek. It cost fifteen pounds but Mrs Harding says she thinks she can get it for twelve if we bargain cleverly. I shall leave that to her.