China Edward Rutherfurd (essential reading .txt) 📖

“There might.” She sighed. “If there is, I’m awfully sorry, but you’ll have to do it.”

“You’re asking me to shoot my grandson?” He looked at her in horror. “Talk to your husband, Emily, not to me.”

“Henry’s man enough to do it, but I’m afraid he might refuse. His faith might prevent him, you see.”

“His faith?”

“Henry’s faith is very strong, you know.”

Trader said nothing.

“Will you promise me?”

Trader paused. He thought of Tom. He thought of the bayonets.

“I might be killed first,” he pointed out.

“Please don’t be,” she said.

—

“Cixi wants a truce,” said MacDonald the next day. “We’ve had a message from the Tsungli Yamen: all a misunderstanding. My eye. Cixi herself sends her regrets.”

“She’s got the wind up,” said Trader. “Was it the mine blowing them up, or is there something more behind it?”

“I’ve just heard that the relief force has broken through and is already on its way up the canal. Eleven thousand men. She probably knew last night.”

“That was the last try, then, as I thought.”

“Probably,” said MacDonald. “Let’s hope they get here soon.”

It felt strange to walk about the legation again without having to duck one’s head and watch for sniper fire. On the second day of the truce, Trader even went up on the wall. He watched some Chinese collecting their dead from outside the legation barricades. Looking across the quarter towards the Imperial City, he could see into the open square of the Mongol market on the western side of the British legation. To his amazement, there were already a few stalls there selling food again. He saw an old Chinese fellow, a crate of eggs on his back, making his way across the market to the British barricade. Turning to look east across the canal to the Fu, he caught sight of Emily moving amongst the converts there.

He was on his way down from the wall when he tripped. He wasn’t hurt. Nothing to worry about. But to be sensible, he went over to the infirmary.

The infirmary was quite impressive. It had been enlarged to include a couple of old storerooms. There were two doctors, aided during the emergency by several women nurses, two of whom were fully qualified doctors themselves—a higher level of care, Henry had pointed out, than one could ever get under normal conditions. The two doctor-nurses had checked him thoroughly, diagnosed a bad sprain, and let him go. They’d given him a crutch and told him to use it. But he’d soon exchanged this for a silver-topped ebony stick that MacDonald lent him and that he thought looked better.

“I’m so glad, Father,” said Emily with a smile, “that you haven’t lost your vanity.”

The truce seemed to be holding in the days that followed. There were occasional shots fired at the Catholic cathedral in the distance, but nothing more.

And it was one day at this time that, awaking from an afternoon siesta on the veranda, Trader found himself looking into the face of his grandson Tom.

“Are you asleep, Grandfather?” Tom said.

“Not anymore.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Fire away.”

“Fargo says that all this trouble with the Chinese is our fault because we sold them opium, which makes people sick. Is that true?”

“Well…” Trader hesitated. “It wasn’t as simple as that. They had their own opium, you know. But it’s true they bought quite a bit of opium from us. Trouble was, we wanted to sell them all sorts of things—cotton goods, manufactured things—but the only thing the Chinese people wanted was opium.”

“Is opium bad for you?”

“It’s like a lot of things, I suppose. It’s a medicine, actually. And people here liked to smoke a bit, the same way we might take a glass of brandy. But if you smoke too much, then you can get a craving for it and that can make you sick. Same with drinking brandy, come to that.” He nodded wisely. “Moderation in all things, Tom. Moderation. That’s the secret of life.”

“Mother says that the Chinese kept everybody out, including the missionaries, and that they’d still like to.”

“That’s true as well. Sometimes a country can keep itself cut off from the outside world for centuries. But then one day the world will come knocking at the door, and something has to change. That’s what happened with Japan. There was no opium involved there at all.”

“So it was the Chinese who were in the wrong then, and we were in the right?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. In practice, you’ll find as you go through life, it’s really all about how you manage things.”

“Oh.” Tom looked a bit doubtful. Then a new idea seemed to strike him. “Grandfather.”

“Yes.”

“If you had your life again, would you go to China and sell opium?”

Trader was silent. He thought about Canton and then Macao, but not for long. Then his mind went back to Calcutta.

“I daresay,” he said, “I’d have stayed in India.” He nodded slowly, then smiled at his grandson. “That’s where I met your dear grandmother, you know,” he added. The statement was perfectly true, in its way.

“So if you’d stayed in India, what would you have done?”

“I expect I’d have been dealing in tea. That’s the business I’d be in nowadays. My son, your uncle, is in that business, as a matter of fact. Indian tea. But there wasn’t any then, you see.”

“If you hadn’t sold opium, would anybody else have?”

“Oh, some people would have. No doubt about that.” Trader paused. “It’s all a question of time, you see,” he offered. “It’s a question of what you can do, and what you can’t do, and when you can do it.” The boy still looked puzzled. “Now,” said Trader, “you come along with me.”

He got up, not without discomfort, and made his way stiffly across the lawn. Taking his ebony stick, he pushed the ferrule into the turf so that the stick stood upright. “We’ll say that’s the wicket,” he said. “I want you to throw the ball so that it bounces once and passes just over the top of the