High Road to China

I almost quoted the ADC price; but then I thought, nothing risked, nothing profited. ‘Roughly £750 each. How many were you thinking of buying?’

Miss Tozer looking at George, the honest broker. ‘What would you say they would cost, Mr Weyman?’

George swallowed, didn’t look at me. ‘By the time the extra tanks and everything had been fitted, about £750.’ There went our profit: I had forgotten all the extras that would be needed. ‘It’s a fair price, Miss Tozer.’

‘I’m sure it is, Mr Weyman,’ she said, not looking at me. ‘Do you have a pilot’s licence?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’ll buy three.’ She took her hand away from her chin; she had all her thoughts sorted out. ‘I’ll fly this one and you and Mr O’Malley can fly the other two. We’ll fit extra tanks to each of them – we can put an extra tank on the top wing, can’t we? – but your two machines will also have extra tanks in the rear cockpits. In other words we can carry our own emergency supply dump.’

I was amazed at the calm, cold efficiency of this beautiful girl who, without benefit of maps, with no knowledge of the route she would have to fly, had already anticipated some of the basic problems such a trip would present. It was as if she had had a satellite’s view of the world between England and China. Except, of course, that in those days anyone would have been locked up who had suggested such a view was possible. Only God’s eye was the empyrean one then and I’m sure He occasionally shut it in disgust at what He saw.

‘Could you find some maps, Mr Weyman? In the meantime, Mr O’Malley, I’d like some tea.’

George, looking slightly dazed, went off. I said, ‘Pardon me for mentioning it, Miss Tozer, but I don’t think George and I have yet agreed to accompany you. I’m not taking off at twenty four hours’ notice to fly all the way to China and not know why I’m going.’

‘You’ll be well paid. Isn’t that a good enough reason for going?’

‘It’s a good reason, but it’s not enough.’

We had now walked back to our shed. The Camel stood in the middle of it, the star lodger. Against one wall were the camp beds of the other two lodgers, George and me. Near the beds were a kitchen table, two chairs, a cupboard with a sagging door, a stove that looked like something that had fallen off George Stephenson’s Rocket; pots and pans hung on nails on the wall, like the armour of the poor, and a length of old parachute silk was a curtain that hid the rack on which hung our skimpy wardrobe. In the far corner there was a chipped bath and a rough bench on which stood a basin and a large bedroom jug. The bench continued along the wall, holding all George’s tools, till it came up against the cubby-hole that was our office. The only hint of affluence in the place was the Camel and it already showed the pockmarks of the surrounding poverty.

Miss Tozer looked around her. ‘Who lives here?’

‘We do.’

Even Henty looked stunned, as if he had bought a ticket for Ascot and found himself in the Potteries. He rushed to our defence: ‘It’s only temporary, I’m sure.’

‘That’s what we said when we moved in here over a year ago. Don’t apologize for us, Henty. We’re broke. Kaiser Bill could raise more credit at our bank than we could.’ Since George had already wiped out the profit I’d been anticipating, I could afford to be honest; it was about all that I could afford. I turned to Miss Tozer, took a nose-dive. ‘Never mind the reason why you want to fly to China. We’ll go with you. As you said, the money is good enough reason.’

‘I admire your honesty, Mr O’Malley.’ But she sounded as if she was surprised by it, too. She walked out again to the open doors of the shed, stood staring off into the distance – towards China? Perhaps: she was looking east. She took something from the pocket of her suit, fondled it without looking at it: it was a gold watch and chain. Then she came back to us. ‘I’ll tell you why I have to fly to China.’

Which she did, her voice faltering only once, when she mentioned that her father would be killed if we did not reach Hunan by the deadline date. My ear faltered, too, because I found it hard to believe what she was telling me. But the proof was there in her face and in that of Henty behind her.

‘It may be dangerous, Mr O’Malley. Perhaps now you won’t want to come.’

‘She needs your help,’ said Henty before I could volunteer to be a hero; then looked at his crippled leg with hate. ‘I wish to God I could go!’

George came back, one big hand clutching a roll of maps, the other holding a school atlas. I told him why Miss Tozer wanted us to fly to China with her. He listened at first as if I were telling him about a proposed joy-ride to the Isle of Wight; then abruptly he exploded. He swung round, pointing a rifle-barrel of an arm at Mr Sun Nan still standing beside the Rolls-Royce.

‘Is he part of this? You mean you take that sort of threat from a – a damned Chinaman? I’d kill the swine!’

‘If we kill him, Mr Weyman, we’ll probably also kill my father. If you dislike the Chinese so much, perhaps you’d better not come with us.’

‘He’ll come,’ I said. ‘We need him. We’ll go with you, but it will cost £500 for each of us and our return fares.’

‘Five hundred each!’ Henty, I hadn’t suspected, had a bookkeeper’s mind. ‘That’s preposterous! You’re making money out of someone else’s difficulty!’

‘I’m not going to bargain – ’

‘Neither am I!’ Miss Tozer was suddenly fierce. ‘You sound as if you’re putting a price tag on my father’s life!’

‘On the contrary. I was putting a price on our lives. I don’t think I’ve over-valued them. We’re cheaper than the machines you’re buying.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I had the idea that Miss Tozer was not accustomed to apologizing. I also had the idea I had hurt her and that hadn’t been my intention. ‘I’ll pay whatever you ask. Now may we please get down to planning the trip?’

I made tea, got out our four cracked and only cups, pulled the chairs and two boxes up to the kitchen table, spread out the maps and got down to planning an 8000-mile trip to China, everything to be ready within 24 hours. Moses, Columbus and Captain Cook, three other voyagers, would have laughed at us. The roll of maps George had scrounged took us only as far as Vienna. The rest of the proposed route, over which we had some argument, was sketched out on a school atlas on which the inky fingermarks of its former owner, some unknown juvenile, were sprinkled like a warlock’s mockery. I began to wonder what George and I had let ourselves in for. I felt like Columbus or Magellan, heading for the edge of the world, flying into an unknown sky.

‘We can’t take a direct route,’ George said. ‘We’ll have to fly by way of places where we can refuel. And there’s no guarantee we can do that all the way. There are bound to be stretches where they’ve never seen an aeroplane.’

‘We’ll have to risk that,’ said Miss Tozer. ‘Can you have everything ready by tomorrow morning?’

George nodded. ‘I’ve already asked half a dozen chaps to stand by to help us. I promised them a pound each if they would work right through the night – all right?’ Eve nodded, but Henty looked as if George had promised them life pensions. ‘I didn’t tell them where we are going, just that the machines have to stand up to some hard, long flying. They’ll have them ready in time.’

‘I’d like to take off at noon tomorrow. Is there anything I can get up in London, things we’ll need?’

I had been making out a list. ‘We want to keep things down to a minimum because of weight, but there are still essentials. You’d better get flying suits for you and Mr Sun – ’

‘Let the swine freeze,’ said George.

I ignored him. ‘We have our wartime suits. You’ll need some good strong boots – just in case we have to walk. We want a spare compass for each machine – and you’d better get us a spare sextant. Four sleeping bags, a Primus stove and eight water-bottles, two each. Make sure the bottles are silver or nickel-plated inside, the water tastes better. You can buy them at Hill’s in Haymarket. We’ll need a medicine kit – John Bell and Croyden in Wigmore Street will make up one for you. And maps – the best place will be the War Office.’

‘I’ll get those,’ said Henty.

‘We’ll supply the cooking things. A rifle will come in handy, just in case we have to shoot something for food. You can advise her on that, Henty.’

‘Miss Tozer has her own gun. I gather she is very competent with it.’

‘What do you shoot?’

‘Elephant, tiger. And the occasional man.’

George and I looked at her with cautious interest this time. Then George said, ‘We’ll bring our service pistols. And I’ll fit machine-guns – the ADC has some spares.’

‘Isn’t that illegal?’ said Henty. ‘I mean arming a civilian aeroplane?’

‘Yes,’ said George. ‘But we’ll be out of here before anyone knows. I’ll put a couple of Vickers forward on Bede’s and my machines and I’ll mount a couple of Lewis guns on the Scarff rings in our rear cockpits.’

‘I hope we shan’t need them,’ said Miss Tozer soberly.

We were all silent a moment. The machine-guns suddenly made the other equipment seem superfluous; George and Henty and I were all at once back to the values of war. For the first time it struck me that the actual flying to China might not be the worst part of the trip.

‘We’ll wait till they fire first,’ I said, denying a wartime principle. ‘Whoever they are.’

Hently took out a cheque-book and I left him to George, who was our book-keeper, when we had books to keep. I got up and went outside. Miss Tozer followed me. She took a cigarette from a gold case, fitted it into an ivory holder, looked at me.

‘I don’t smoke. I haven’t any matches, I’m afraid.’

She searched in her handbag, took out a box of matches fitted into a small gold case, handed it to me. I don’t think I was awkward with women, even in those days; but I was fumble-fingered just then. I had never lit a woman’s cigarette before; I held the spluttering match towards her like an apprentice on Guy Fawkes’s team. She smiled, puffed on the cigarette, then stood looking around the aerodrome as the last of the joyriding machines came gliding in.

‘Mr Henty told me you were an ace. Thirty-two aeroplanes, is that right?’ I nodded. Or 44 men, if you wanted to count it another way: some of the machines had been two-seaters, such as the Albatros C7. But I never counted it that way, couldn’t. ‘Do you miss it all? The war, I mean?’

‘No. Only lunatics and generals love war.’

That’s a glib statement these days, something you see on demonstrators’ banners, but no less true for being glib. But the Battle of the Somme was only four years behind us then: I July 1916, when the British Army alone lost 60,000 men, the day that finally put an end to the glory of war. I was there that Saturday morning, in the third wave to leave the trenches. I saw the men ahead of us going up the hill, strung out like a frieze against the skyline, a frieze quickly ripped to pieces as the German machine-guns cut them down. The second wave went on, never hesitating, just walking smack into death. When I led my platoon over the top I already knew half of them would not live to reach the top of the hill. They died like flowers under the scythe and by the time I reached the top of the hill and could go no further, was trapped in a shell crater with three dead men and another one dying, I wasn’t wanting to fight the Germans but to turn back and go hunting for the blind, stupid, living-in-the-past generals who had ordered this massacre. I survived that day and I didn’t go hunting the generals. Instead, I joined the Royal Flying Corps, where you were above the carnage and the muck and, if you had to die, you died a clean, sensible death.

‘I miss the thrill of flying, I mean the way we flew in the war. I’m grateful for this job, Miss Tozer. Not just for the money.’

‘It won’t be fun, Mr O’Malley. Not for me, anyway.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of it as fun. I was thinking that once again I’ll be flying an aeroplane somewhere for some purpose.’

I looked east, towards Kent, the Channel, France and everything that lay between us and China. In the foreground stood Mr Sun Nan, bowler-hatted, black-suited, patient-faced. I couldn’t hate him, not even if I’d had George’s prejudices. He was the one who had rescued me from Oxo and all the other graffiti I had planned to scrawl on the sky.

End of extract from O’Malley manuscript.

3

General Meng had started life with the burdening name of Swaying Flower: his mother, going against the grain, had wanted a daughter instead of a son. At the age of six, already ferocious, he had changed it to Tiger Claw; by the time he was eighteen and had already killed six men he had had half a dozen other names. Now, at fifty and with countless dead behind him, he called himself Lord of the Sword. He knew there were people who called him other names and if he chanced to hear them he terminated their opportunities to call anyone any name at all.

So far Bradley Tozer had called him nothing but General. ‘You are a respectful man, Mr Tozer.’

‘Not really, General. Just circumspect. I call you other names, but only to myself.’

General Meng nodded, unoffended; if he had to kill this American he would do so for other reasons. He pulled back the sleeve of his voluminous blue silk robe and waved a decorated fan in front of his face. He had come originally from the cooler steppes of Sinkiang and he had never really become accustomed to the more humid heat of Hunan. He was a tall man with a handsome Mongolian face and a head of thick dark hair that was his main vanity. Every morning one of his concubines brushed the black hair for fifteen minutes. It shone like the feathers of a mallard, reflecting any lights that shone on it; the walls of his yamen, his palace, were lined with mirrors to add to the light. Meng could admire himself from any angle at any time of day and his head, the object of his admiration, gleamed like an evil totem to the scores of people who served him in the palace.

He looked at himself in a convenient mirror, then back at the American who could have been his half-brother. ‘I’ll kill you if the statue is not returned in time. I am a man of my word. At least, when it pleases me to be.’

They both spoke in Mandarin, the words a little awkward in their mouths: each in his own way was a foreigner to Peking. Tozer could also speak Cantonese, but Meng had only contempt for the dialect of the shopkeepers from the south. They were not warriors like himself.

‘My daughter will bring the statue. I told you, General – I prize the statue, but not above my own life.’

‘Are you afraid, Mr Tozer?’

‘No,’ said Tozer, hoping he sounded unafraid.

He was taller than Meng, with a hard-boned thrusting face and impatient eyes; he had inherited some of his mother’s features but none of her placidity. Never having known his mother, he had decided to be an American: to have been chosen All-American had brought him a double satisfaction that no one else had known of. He had no time for fools or incompetents, but he was a fair-minded man and he paid better wages than his competitors, and those who survived his stringent standards and demands usually stayed with him for years. He was also a sensible man and he knew there was no sense in applying standards or demands in the present circumstances. Also, he knew enough of Meng’s reputation to believe that the General would be a man of his word. When it pleased him to be.

‘Why is this statue so important to you, General?’

Meng continued to fan himself. He looked at the two bodyguards standing behind him. They were Mongols from the Tsaidam, muscular men in blue coarse wool robes, worn with a sash beneath which the skirt of the robe flared out. Their riding boots had upturned toes and each man had his long pipe stowed in the side of the boot. The robe was worn with one arm free and the shoulder exposed, a décolleté effect that was more threatening than provocative, since the hand of each bare arm always rested on a broadsword hung from a loop in the sash. The martial effect was only spoiled by the flat tweed caps they wore, suggesting a trade union frame of mind that had so far escaped their master. They hated the local Hunanese and were in turn hated, a state of affairs that kept them constantly alert for their own safety and, by projection, that of General Meng.

He waved the fan at them, dismissing them, and they went out of the small room, their heels clumping on the bare wooden floor. Meng waited till the door closed behind them, knowing they would take up their stance outside it, then turned back to Bradley Tozer.

‘Neither of those men speaks Mandarin, but one can’t be too careful. I can’t have them thinking I’m less than perfect.’ He looked at himself again in a mirror, nodded in satisfaction as if the mirror had told him he was as close to perfection as it was possible to be. ‘I am superstitious, Mr Tozer, my only failing. The twin statues of Lao-Tze have brought me good fortune ever since I acquired them some years ago.’

‘How did you acquire them?’

‘I made their owner, a landlord in a neighbouring province, an offer he couldn’t refuse. It’s an old Chinese custom which I believe a certain secret society in Italy has now copied from us.’

‘What was the offer?’

‘His head for the statues. Unfortunately, one of my bodyguards misunderstood an order I gave and the landlord lost his head anyway.’

‘I hope your bodyguards don’t misunderstand any orders you may give about me.’

Meng smiled. ‘I admire you, Mr Tozer. I think you are secretly very afraid, but you won’t lose face, will you? It is so important, face. That is why I want my statue returned.’

Tozer knew not to ask how Meng had lost the statue to Chang Ching-yao in the first place; the matter of face forbade such a question. He waited while Meng fanned himself again, then the General went on:

‘The dog Chang came to see me, under a flag of truce, to suggest an armistice between us. We have been fighting for two years now, as you know. I welcomed him, being a man who prefers peace to war.’ He looked in the mirror again, but the sunlight coming in the window had shifted and the mirror was, by some trick of refraction, momentarily just a pane of light, like a milky-white blind eye. Annoyed, he turned back to Tozer, his voice taking on a ragged edge. ‘While he was here, enjoying my hospitality, he had one of his men steal the statue he eventually sold you. How much did you pay him for it?’

‘Ten thousand American dollars.’

The fan quickened its movement, like a metronome that had been angrily struck. ‘Aah! You know it is worth much more than that, don’t you? Even so, it is enough to buy him two or three aeroplanes. You know that is what he wants, don’t you? He is already recruiting foreign pilots down in Shanghai. I knew it was a dreadful day when he stole that statue. So many things have gone wrong since then. Our harvest has been poor, I’ve had four opium caravans ambushed, yesterday I learned two of my concubines have got syphilis – ’ The fan stopped abruptly, was snapped shut and pointed like a pistol at Tozer. ‘My good fortune will not return until that statue is returned, Mr Tozer. And neither will yours.’

Chapter 2

1

The three Bristol Fighters took off on time at noon on Tuesday. O’Malley and Weyman had worked till midnight the previous night, then left the servicing of the planes to the six mechanics Weyman had engaged. Extra tanks were fitted into the rear cockpits of two of the planes and an extra gravity-feeding tank was mounted on the upper wings of the three aircraft. Spare parts were split between O’Malley’s and Weyman’s machines to divide the weight: a spare propeller, six magnetos, vulcanizing kit for repairing burst tyres, an extra-strong lifting jack. When the mechanics fitted the Vickers and Lewis guns they asked questions, but George Weyman told them to mind their own business. Just before take-off he turned up with four boxes of ammunition.

‘All we can afford to carry. We’re right on our weight maximum.’

‘Have you filled the tanks?’ O’Malley asked.

‘Right to the brim. Three and eightpence a gallon – I’m glad our lady friend is paying and not us. It’ll be a pleasure to get away from inflation. How did she handle the machine when you took her up this morning?’

O’Malley had taken Eve Tozer up on a test flight to see how she could handle the Bristol. He had warned her that it had its peculiarities: an inadequate rudder, ailerons that were inclined to be heavy, a tendency for the elevators to be spongy at low speeds; and when he had got into the passenger’s cockpit behind her he had wondered if perhaps they might not get further than Purley, just over the ridge at the end of the aerodrome. He had fitted the Gosport tubes into the earpieces in his flying helmet, picked up the speaking tube and wished Eve good luck, then sat back rigidly in his seat and waited for possible disaster. Like so many pilots he was a bad passenger. However …

‘You’d have thought she’d been flying Brisfits all her life. She’s a natural, George.’

‘I don’t think she liked me laying down the law about how much baggage she could take with her. That Chink maid who came down with her must have thought she was going in a Zeppelin. She’d packed four suitcases for her.’

Henty, Sun Nan and Eve came across from the Rolls-Royce, where Anna, the maid, stood with the three suitcases that had been refused by Weyman. Eve and Sun were dressed in brand-new flying suits and both wore helmets; Eve carried the lacquered wooden box, now wrapped in hessian, under her arm and Sun carried his bowler hat under his. Eve looked pale but determined and Sun looked pale and scared.

‘Mr Sun tells me he has never flown before,’ Eve said.

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Weyman. ‘We could run into rough weather all the way across France.’

‘Mr Weyman, we had better get one thing straight before we leave. I need both you and Mr O’Malley, but I need Mr Sun much more than either of you. He refuses to tell me who his master is or where he is to be found, for fear that as soon as we take off Mr Henty will cable the authorities in Shanghai and try to have a rescue mission mounted from that end. I shouldn’t want to risk my father’s life by having such a mission look for him, but Mr Sun doesn’t trust me. So I need him to guide us to where my father is being held captive. Don’t forget that – and keep your anti-Chinese feelings to yourself. I’m paying you for your skill as a mechanic and pilot, not for your opinions on the Chinese.’

Weyman flushed and for a moment it looked as if he was going to explode in a fury of abuse and walk away. Eve wondered if she had been too outspoken; if George Weyman did walk away it might be too late to get someone to replace him. But she could not back down; he had to understand there were other considerations that over-rode his stupid prejudices. She stared at him, painfully aware of the tightness of her jaw; her tear ducts were ready to burst, but she kept them dammed. She was determined there would be only one boss on this journey and it would be she. It was her father they were setting out to rescue and nothing was going to stop her.

‘Righto,’ Weyman at last said, ungraciously. ‘But don’t ask me to let him ride in the cockpit behind me. I’ll never trust the blighters.’

Then he did turn and walk away, but Eve knew she had established who was boss. Eager to be gone before more complications arose, she went across and said goodbye to Anna, who wept, then sat down on the suitcases, like a refugee stranded with nowhere to flee to. Eve left her and went back to Henty.

‘Goodbye, Mr Henty. I’ll cable you whenever possible to let you know how we’re progressing.’

‘I have your route,’ said Henty. ‘If there is any word from your father in the meantime, I’ll send a wireless message to the British embassies. Good luck.’

He ignored Sun Nan, passing him to shake hands with O’Malley. Then he walked back to the Rolls-Royce and stood beside it, now and again jabbing his stick into the ground, still frustrated by his helplessness. He knew China better than any of those who were about to take off, with the exception of Sun Nan, but he knew his leg would not have stood up to the journey that lay ahead. Sick at heart, envious, he watched the three planes taxi down to the end of the field.