China Edward Rutherfurd (essential reading .txt) 📖

a half before. Your father and I talked. I suppose I was lonely, and to tell you the truth, it seemed to me that he was lonely, too. And one thing led to another. And here I am.”

“I didn’t know he had it in him,” Ru-Hai said. He looked impressed.

“We none of us know everything, do we?” she suggested.

“I suppose not.” He nodded sadly. “I felt angry with him because of Mother. I’d been thinking I’d go home tomorrow, unless Father stopped me.”

“I don’t think your father would stop you,” she said. “But although he might not show it, he’d be very hurt.”

“He’s hurting my mother.”

“Does she know?”

“No.”

“Then, forgive me for saying this—you may think very badly of me—but do you have to tell her? You know I shall be going home myself in a while.”

“You don’t think he’ll take you to the next place?”

“Oh no, I have to return to my family,” she replied. “I believe your father will reunite with your mother.”

“Maybe.” Ru-Hai considered for a moment. “Mother complains a lot,” he said gloomily. “She thinks my father should have been more successful.”

“He seems successful to me.”

“Maybe. Not to her, though.”

He stared at the ground. He seemed to be ruminating, so she didn’t interrupt him. Suddenly he turned to her. “Do you think my father is a good man?”

She stared at him, taken aback. What a question for a son to ask. Or for her to answer.

“When we’re young,” she said carefully, “we expect people to be good or bad. But they aren’t, you know. We’re all just somewhere in between.” She thought of Nio. How many people had Little Brother killed, even before he went to fight for the Taiping? She didn’t want to know. “Not many people are good all of the time,” she went on. “More like some of the time. You just have to hope a person performs more good actions than bad ones. I think,” she concluded, “that one has to look for what is best in people.”

“And that’s all?”

“Well, you can try to change the things that aren’t so good in another person. I think we women try to change our men more than the other way round.”

“Really?”

“And one has to be careful. If you nag a man too much or hurt his pride, he’ll walk away. Most of the time it’s wiser to accept him as he is.” She gave a wry smile. Did he realize she was telling him about his mother? Probably. But he gave no sign. He seemed to be done with the subject, anyway.

“So you think I should stay here?”

“I do. It’s a beautiful place. I think you should enjoy your holiday.” She smiled. “I’m sure a handsome boy like you could make friends with the local girls.”

He looked doubtful. “All the respectable girls are hidden indoors,” he pointed out. “Nobody’s allowed to see them until they marry.”

“There may be others,” she said. She stood up. “I should go to see your father now. If you quarrel with him because of me, I shall feel bad. But if you don’t quarrel, I think you will be glad later.” She wondered if he’d take her advice.

—

For Shi-Rong, that month was a happy period. He took Mei-Ling’s advice and spent as much time with his son as possible. They made tours of the area, and he was able to tell Ru-Hai all sorts of useful things about life in imperial service. They visited tribal villages, climbed up a couple of mountains, and even went fishing on the river together.

The boy was also a great success with the prefect and his wife. They thought he was charming. The prefect’s wife said he was very handsome; and the prefect wrote about Ru-Hai in glowing terms to one or two friends who might be useful to him in later life.

Peng also played his part. “Take the boy out in the evening a bit, if you would,” Shi-Rong had asked him. “He should have fun with someone closer to his own age.” They’d gone out drinking several times. “Though I doubt, with Peng for company, that he got into much trouble,” Shi-Rong confided to Mei-Ling.

Halfway through the month, Shi-Rong told Mei-Ling: “I’ve had a letter. When he leaves here, Ru-Hai should go to visit his mother’s relations in Beijing. So I wonder, as you are going downriver to Guangzhou yourself on your way home, would you mind if he accompanies you to the port? Then he can take a ship up the coast and the Grand Canal to Beijing.”

Mei-Ling had been looking forward to her journey. River travel was both quicker and more pleasant than traveling by road. The weather should be warm and mild, and the scenery was beautiful. It would be the first time in her life, really, that she’d ever had a period of time without any responsibilities and completely to herself.

But it would have been ungracious to him and unkind to the boy not to go along with such a sensible request, so of course she said she would.

—

It was the prefect, a few days before Ru-Hai was due to leave, who suggested the visit to the caves. As was to be expected in a landscape of karst hills, there were quite a few caves in the region. The nearest was only a short walk from their house. Ru-Hai and his father had gone in a couple of times with lanterns to inspect the graceful curtains of stalactites hanging from its high roof. But it was quite small.

“There’s an old musician working here,” the prefect said, “who told me that once his father showed him a deserted place, all overgrown with reeds, which he used to cut and make into flutes. His father told him there used to be a big cave in there, but he’d never seen the entrance and didn’t know anyone who had. It could be the roof fell in or something like that. But I’d be curious to know. I think it’s only about