High Road to China

‘An ex-infantry officer. No kills that I can claim, if that’s your next question.’

‘Who were you before the war?’

‘Nobody.’ He grinned. ‘I’m an only child, like you. My father is in the Colonial Service. He and my mother are out in Tanganyika now, trying to educate the natives that the British Empire will be better for them than the German one was.’

‘Do you think it will be?’

‘I don’t know. If ever I meet a native, I’ll ask him. My father won’t. He believes the British Empire is the closest thing on earth to a well-run Heaven. It may well be. I’m just not interested in propagating the idea.’

‘You sound like a radical. Were you one before the war?’

‘No. I was at Oxford playing cricket and rugger and drinking beer. One term I tried drinking sherry, but I discovered I’m no aesthete. Not as a drinker, anyway.’

‘Was that all you did – played cricket and rugger, whatever that is, and drank beer?’

‘No. Occasionally I read History, but it was considered bad form to swot. I was very much against bad form in those days.’

‘But not now?’

He shook his head and grinned again. ‘I saw too much of what was good form during the war. It killed more men than bad form ever did.’

‘You don’t believe in duty?’

Kern had come along the terrace. He was still dressed as he had been earlier, still the lady-killer; and Eve wondered if he went to the tea dances over in Constance and actually was a gigolo. But despite his foppish image there was something about the Baron that said he would never sell himself to anyone. Least of all to fat matrons at Constance. Though Eve wondered who, in these days of incredible inflation, had money to buy a partner even for a dance. But perhaps, she thought, absorbing some of O’Malley’s cynicism, not all Germans had lost the war.

‘You sound like our government in Berlin,’ said Kern. ‘Schneidemann and Erzberger sneer at the sense of honour we had in our army.’

‘I don’t sneer at a sense of honour,’ said O’Malley. ‘I just don’t admire stupid generals who expect too much of it.’

Kern bit his lip, then nodded stiffly and reluctantly. He was an honest man, too uncomplicated for dialectics; he was a past pupil of an old school that was now just ruins. He turned his attention to Eve. A sense of honour was not so necessary with women: he knew that most of them privately had too much common sense to expect it.

He offered his arm, a courtier from the old school. ‘Shall we go in to dinner, Fräulein Tozer?’

Over dinner Kern held the chair. ‘I am from Koenigsberg. The Poles have our city now. You English and Americans don’t know what it is like to have your home city given away to another country.’

‘You asked for it,’ said George Weyman round a mouthful of potatoes. His dislike of Germans did not extend to their food. He had had two helpings of soup and the meat course and was on his third glass of wine. But he sounded only amiably argumentative. ‘You had to give up something. You can’t lose a war and get off scot-free.’

‘Perhaps Mr Sun has something to say about that,’ said Eve. ‘They have had wars in China for far longer than we’ve had them.’

Sun Nan was seated beside Weyman at the table. O’Malley and Eve were opposite, with Kern at the head. He had said nothing since they had arrived at the castle, but his eyes and ears had been open, absorbing everything that surrounded him. He had been impressed by the castle; he wished his master were here to take an example from the circumstances. The yamen at Szeping had begun to look like nothing more than a grandiose tenement.

‘Losers in our wars lose everything,’ he said. ‘We are not so foolish as to expect mercy.’

‘You sound as if you have never been on the losing side,’ said O’Malley.

Sun smiled, and seemed annoyingly smug to the others. ‘My master is a very able general. Not stupid.’

‘He is a swine.’ Weyman abruptly looked less amiable.

Kern, sitting very still, looked in turn at each of his guests. He still did not understand the presence of the Chinese, but it was against his code of manners to ask. The atmosphere had changed; but he was curious rather than annoyed. He had been bored ever since coming here to the Bodensee six months ago and he welcomed anything that would spark a little electricity in his dull existence. Any war was welcome, even one at the dinner table.

‘For wanting to be master in his own province?’ said Sun Nan, looking sidelong at Weyman as if doing him a favour by answering him at all. ‘You foreigners have no right to be in China.’

‘We have the rights of trade.’ Weyman was flushed; it went against his grain even to argue with a Chink. ‘There are treaties.’

‘They mean nothing. You Europeans invented them to cover up your lies and greed.’ Sun Nan waved a hand of dismissal; then turned to Kern. ‘I am sorry to be in an argument in your house, Baron. But the bad manners are not mine. Forgive me, I shall retire.’

He bowed his head and stood up. But as he pushed back his chair, Weyman grabbed his arm. Ordinarily, despite his low boiling point and his consuming prejudices, he might have contained his temper at a stranger’s table: he was not without social graces. It was ironic that it was German wine that made him lose control of himself.

‘I’m not taking that from any damned Chink!’

‘Getyourhandsoffme!’ The hiss in Sun’s voice ran all the words together; his mouth ached with the awkwardness of his teeth. He said something in Chinese, glaring down at Weyman.

‘Who the hell do you think you are!’

His hand still grabbing Sun’s arm, Weyman pushed back his own chair and stood up. O’Malley, sitting on the other side of the table, saw Sun’s left hand go to his pocket, guessed at once what was going to happen but was too slow to act. The knife came out of Sun’s pocket and slashed at Weyman’s hand; the latter cursed, let go Sun’s arm and swung his other fist. But the knife flashed again and Weyman flopped back in his chair, holding the inside of his right elbow with his bloodied left hand. He drew his hand away and looked in amazement at the blood pumping out of the rip in the sleeve of his jacket. He tried to move his arm, failed, then suddenly fell off the chair in a dead faint.

Kern and O’Malley were already on their feet. Sun Nan, still holding the knife out in front of him, backed off. He was working his jaw and his mouth, still battling with his dental plate, but he looked neither afraid nor apologetic for what he had done.

O’Malley knelt down beside Weyman, wrenched off the bloodstained jacket and wrapped a napkin round the punctured artery. ‘Get a doctor!’

‘I shall get the police, too.’ Kern made for the door.

‘No!’ Eve stopped him. Her mind was a confusion of shock and anger, but at once she saw the danger of further delay if the police were called in. ‘Not the police – please! I’ll explain later. Just get a doctor. Please!’

Kern looked at them all again, then he went out of the room.

Sun Nan moved round to the other side of the table, picked up a napkin and wiped his knife. He put it back in his pocket, did up the buttons of the jacket, bowed his head to Eve. ‘I am not used to being treated like that, Miss Tozer.’

‘Not even by your master?’ She was rigid with anger at him.

‘No white man is my master. Or mistress. You had better remember that, Miss Tozer.’

He left the room, turning his back on them and moving unhurriedly as if he knew neither Eve nor O’Malley would dare to touch him.

‘The bastard!’ said O’Malley.

Weyman stirred, opened his eyes and tried to sit up. But O’Malley pushed him back, while Eve found a cushion and put it under his head. She wrapped another napkin round his wounded left hand. Weyman looked at his right arm, propped up on O’Malley’s knee, and shook his head, as if he still couldn’t believe what had happened to him.

‘I could kill him.’

‘I’d stop you first,’ said O’Malley. ‘You heard what Miss Tozer said this morning. She needs him more than us. And he knows it.’

Weyman looked at both of them, then at his arm. ‘How bad is it?’

‘I don’t know. It’s not good, that’s about all I can say.’

Kern came back. ‘The doctor will be here in ten minutes. Where is Herr Sun?’

‘Gone up to his room,’ said Eve. ‘He won’t run away.’

‘Perhaps you would do me the favour of explaining all this?’ Kern was coldly polite.

Eve hesitated, then told Kern everything. He listened without any expression on his face. When she had finished he looked down at Weyman. ‘Herr Weyman is not going to be able to fly tomorrow.’

George Weyman was stubborn, but not stupid: at least not about practical matters. ‘I couldn’t handle a machine, not the way my arm feels now.’

‘We’ll have to fly on tomorrow,’ Eve said. ‘We can’t be delayed. Can we leave Mr Weyman and his machine here with you?’

‘There is no alternative,’ said Kern. ‘But you still have to have your other aeroplanes released by Herr Bultmann.’

‘Can’t you help us there?’ Eve pleaded. ‘You can see how much even a day’s delay may mean to us.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime we should get Herr Weyman up to his room.’

‘What do we tell the doctor?’ O’Malley asked.

‘That it was an accident,’ said Kern. ‘This man was my uncle’s doctor for years. He won’t ask awkward questions.’

The doctor didn’t. Old, thin, looking like his own most regular patient, he came, fixed up Weyman’s arm, ordered him to rest. ‘You have damaged the tendon, too. It may be a long time before your arm is perfectly well again.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Weyman, irritated by the doctor’s inability to speak English. Kern told him and he shook his head in angry disappointment. ‘When you get to China, Miss Tozer, throw that swine out of your machine, will you? From a great height.’

Eve smiled, though it was an effort. ‘Just get well, Mr Weyman. Go back to England. You’ll be paid in full.’ Then she turned away, put a hand to her forehead. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them as she felt herself sway. ‘I’m tired. I’ll go to bed, if you’ll excuse me, Baron.’

Kern took her to the door of her room, kissed her hand. ‘We’ll solve your problem, Fräulein Tozer. Just get a good night’s sleep.’

‘My problem isn’t here, Baron. It is in China.’

She closed the bedroom door, undressed, got into the big four-poster bed. She stared out through the open window, saw a star fall across the purple-black sky. She believed in omens, but, exhausted emotionally and mentally, couldn’t remember what a falling star meant. But it reminded her of the flash on Sun Nan’s knife as he had plunged it into George Weyman’s arm. That had been some sort of omen, she knew; and cried for her father, the prisoner in a land of superstitions. She wondered if her father, staring out of his window wherever he was held, had seen the same star fall. Then remembered that it would be already dawn in China, the beginning of another precious day to be marked off by the man who held her father captive.

2

In the morning, at breakfast, Kern said, ‘Would you allow me to take Herr Weyman’s place?’

Eve ed at O’Malley. There were only the three of them at the table Weyman was in his room, still asleep. Sun Nan, careful of his manners, had asked to be excused from eating with them; munching an apple, he was now out on the terrace, admiring the scenery like any unworried, conscience-free visitor. Breakfast made a mockery of the claim that people further north were on the verge of starvation; eggs, bacon, sausages, fruit, three sorts of bread loaded the table like some harvest offering. The fruits of defeat, thought O’Malley, who hadn’t had a breakfast like this in longer than he cared to think about. And looked at Kern and wondered if he could put up with the arrogant ex-enemy.

‘It’s up to you, Miss Tozer.’ He sipped his coffee, tasted the mushy bitterness of it; at least the coffee in England wasn’t made from acorns, as this was. ‘If it won’t offend the Baron to fly a British machine.’

‘You are a flier like me, Herr O’Malley. You know real pilots draw no distinctions between aeroplanes. Your fliers had as much admiration for our Albatroses and Fokkers as we had for your SE’s and Bristols. All one looks for is a machine that gives him pleasure to fly.’

‘At least we have that much in common.’ O’Malley tried not to sound too grudging. ‘If the Baron flew with von Richthofen, he’d be a good pilot. I know – I flew against the Circus.’

‘We may even have flown against each other,’ said Kern.

‘The thought had occurred to me. Were you ever shot down?’

Kern hesitated, but his honesty was equal to his pride. ‘Once. I was flying an Albatros and we ran into an English formation above Rosières. I shot down two machines, two Camels, then a third one got above me, put me on fire. I got back to our own lines, but only just. My mechanics dragged me out, but not before I was burned. Here.’ He ran his right hand down his left side and left arm. ‘It was 22 July 1918.’

O’Malley looked at his coffee cup, pushed it away. ‘I still fly that Camel back home in England.’

Kern showed no surprise: the war in the air had always been a local affair. ‘Did you claim me as a kill?’

‘I’m afraid so. I thought you were a dead duck.’

Kern shook his head, smiled thinly. ‘Your count was wrong, Herr O’Malley. So I am one up on you, thirty-two to thirty-one.’

‘Are you finished, both of you?’ Eve, worn out, had slept soundly; but she had woken depressed. The offer by Kern had given her a momentary lift, but now she was annoyed by these two men and their reminiscences that had nothing to do with what concerned her so much. ‘This is not a lark, Baron – ’

‘The war was no lark, Fräulein.’

Eve ignored that: she knew it had been no lark, but these two talked as if it had been some sort of deadly game in the air. ‘Our arrangement would be a business one. The same terms as I’m paying Mr O’Malley. Five hundred pounds and your return fare. I don’t know what that is in marks.’

Kern smiled. ‘Who does know? Yesterday it could have been a billion marks, today a trillion. The money is immaterial, Fräulein Tozer. But I’ll take it.’

He’s as broke as I am, thought O’Malley. The castle, the big Mercedes, the servants, the big meals: it all floated on God knew what depth of credit. The Junkers still survived, though O’Malley wouldn’t bet on how long. Not even a credit bet, if anyone would give him credit.

Eve stood up, suddenly eager to be on their way again. ‘Could we leave in half an hour, Baron? We hope to make Belgrade tonight.’

‘I shall have to telephone Herr Bultmann before he talks to his superiors.’

‘Is he likely to hold us up?’

Kern shook his head. ‘Herr Bultmann is one of the old school.’

What the hell does that mean? O’Malley wondered; but didn’t ask, because he had already guessed. Certain areas of Germany still echoed to the click of boot-heels; the workers’ soviets might be taking over towns in Saxony, but not here around Freiderichshafen. He determined there would be no heel-clicking between here and China.

Kern went away to make his phone call to Bultmann and Eve and O’Malley went up to say goodbye to Weyman. He was more comfortable this morning but far from cheerful. ‘This is a right do, isn’t it? Stabbed by a blasted Chinaman, replaced by a Boche. I did better than that in four years of war.’

‘Stop laughing, chum.’

O’Malley would miss Weyman on the flight. His mercurial temper was a handicap and they would be flying over terrain where his prejudices would have flourished like weeds; but he was an excellent mechanic and O’Malley had little confidence in his own ability to keep the machines going if any of them should break down. But he was becoming more and more aware of Eve Tozer’s concern for her father, could see that the air of cool control she affected was now no more than a veneer, and he did not want to add to her worries by mentioning what, with luck, might not happen.

‘Good luck.’ George Weyman put out his bandaged left hand, made the gesture of a handshake. ‘You’ll get there in time, Miss Tozer. You can put your money on Bede.’

Eve, an affectionate girl, kissed Weyman on the forehead; he blushed as if she had pulled back the sheets to get into bed with him. ‘Good luck to you, too. See Arthur Henty when you get to London. Tell him so far we are keeping to schedule.’

‘Second day out,’ said O’Malley sardonically. ‘I should hope so.’

‘That’s the only way I can bear to think,’ said Eve. ‘Day to day.’

‘Sorry,’ said O’Malley, and bit his tongue to remind it to be more careful in future.

An elderly servant drove Eve, O’Malley, Kern and Sun Nan in to the airfield. Sun Nan sat in the back with Eve and O’Malley, completely indifferent to the change of pilots in the third plane. He made no reference to Weyman, not enquiring about how his victim was this morning; and on the surface he looked equally uninterested in Weyman’s replacement. But he was studying Kern, certain that the German aristocrat, in his own way, had as many prejudices as the English working man. They were all the same here in the West and he would be glad to get back to China, where all the prejudices were honourable ones.

Bultmann and Pommer were waiting for them at the airfield. One of the airships had been brought out of its hangar and floated against the morning sun as it nosed a mooring mast. The Mercedes drove through the shadow of it and went down to the end of the airfield and the parked Bristols. Kern looked up at the huge shape above them.

‘Some day the sky will be full of those. There will be no room for fliers like us, Herr O’Malley.’

‘Let’s take-off, do a circuit and come back and shoot them down.’

For the first time Kern smiled directly at O’Malley. ‘Jolly good idea.’

The car pulled up in front of the three Bristols. O’Malley, certain that Kern was going to get his way with the class-conscious Bultmann, went to his plane and began to dismantle the Lewis gun in the rear cockpit. Then he did the same with the gun in what was now Kern’s plane. He stowed the guns in the cockpits, but left the Scarff rings still mounted. He jumped down from Kern’s plane as the latter and Eve came across to him.

‘We can put the guns back when we get into hostile territory,’ he said.

‘What is the point of them with nobody in the rear cockpit to fire them?’ said Kern.

‘They were Weyman’s idea. If we’re going to have to fight anyone, it’ll be on the ground, not in the air.’

‘A pity, don’t you think?’

‘Stop that sort of thinking, both of you!’ Eve snapped, turned and strode across to her plane. She gestured curtly to Sun Nan to get aboard, then she clambered up and settled into her own cockpit.

Kern looked across at her. ‘She would be a fiery woman in bed.’

The thought had crossed O’Malley’s mind, but he wouldn’t have voiced it. He was glad of an interruption from Bultmann. ‘I had all the tanks filled, Herr Baron. But there is one, er, small point. Who pays?’

Obviously the thought of payment had not occurred to Kern. He looked at Bultmann in surprise; but O’Malley came to his rescue. ‘Fräulein Tozer will pay you.’

‘A woman pays?’ said Bultmann.

‘A new custom,’ said O’Malley. ‘Equal rights.’

Bultmann, shaking his head at the decadence of the English and the Americans, went across to Eve. There was some discussion, then she handed him some English money. Bultmann looked at it as if not sure of its value, then he stepped back and bowed to Eve.

‘Do you want to take your machine up for a test flight before we start?’ O’Malley asked Kern. ‘You haven’t flown one of these before, have you?’

‘Hardly. But you and I are fliers, Herr O’Malley. Would you wish to have a test flight?’

Yes, thought O’Malley; but said no. But told himself it was the last time he was going to swap bravado with the arrogant Baron. ‘Shall we start then? Vienna is our first stop, to refuel.’

They took off into a cloudless sky, with O’Malley once more leading the way. He looked behind him and saw Kern lift his Bristol off the ground too soon: the Baron hadn’t allowed for the extra weight. The plane flew flat for several hundred feet, the nose threatening to point down; but Kern, as he had claimed, was a flier, a pilot who was part of his machine. O’Malley saw the plane wobble and he waited for it to stall; then the nose lifted and he knew Kern had it under control. It climbed steadily, swung round in a steady bank and fell in behind O’Malley. They headed east and soon were skirting the northern flanks of the Bavarian Alps. The flying was easy and O’Malley lay back in his wicker seat, occasionally turning his face up to the sun, listening to the music of his engine, marvelling at his good fortune. He felt sorry for Bradley Tozer, was apprehensive for him, but the American millionaire, involuntarily and through his daughter, had bought him a few weeks of escape. He looked across to his left and wondered if Kern had the same thoughts.

They landed at Vienna after three-and-a-half hours’ uneventful flying. Kern was first out of his plane and moved across at once to help Eve down from hers. Sun Nan, plump and awkward, was left to feel his own way down to earth. O’Malley, finding an English-speaking official, was left to superintend the refuelling of the planes and Kern, taking a small picnic box that his servant had packed, led Eve to the shade of some near-by rees.

Eve called to Sun Nan, gave him some food and asked him to take some across to O’Malley. The Chinese didn’t rebel at being asked to act as servant; he knew he was as much a partner in this foursome as the others, uneasy though the partnership might be. He gave O’Malley his lunch, then sat down under the wing of Eve’s plane and began munching his bread and sausage. The food was awkward in his mouth, dislodging his dental plate, and he longed for some nice smooth noodles.

‘I was here in Vienna before the war.’ Kern lay back on the grass. He had brought a wartime flying suit with him, but was not wearing it; like the others on this hot summer day he wore just street clothes. He was dressed in grey flannel trousers, a wide-collared silk shirt open at the neck and black-and-white shoes; again Eve had the mental picture of him as a gigolo. He looked at her appraisingly and she waited for him to pat the grass beside him and invite her to lie down. ‘My father was at the court of the old Emperor for six months. He was there on loan as a military adviser.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He was killed at Verdun. My two brothers also.’

She changed the subject. ‘I came here when I was a girl, with my mother and father. We did the Grand Tour.’

They were both silent for a while, lost in the contemplation of something that now had the fragile structure of a half-remembered dream. A bee buzzed above the picnic box and Eve lazily brushed it away. In the distance the end of the aerodrome shimmered in the heat like quivering green water. Eve lay back, somnolent, but wide awake enough not to lie too close to Kern. China, and her father, all at once were as remote as the lost empire of the Hapsburgs.

She heard Kern say, ‘I fell in love with the women of Vienna. They were beautiful, always flirting, in love with love. But I was too young for them then, only eighteen. I vowed to come back and enjoy them when I was old enough. But it’s too late now.’

‘Why?’ she asked dreamily.

‘Because romance blossoms best on a full stomach. One does not flirt when one is hungry – I learned that in Berlin last year. The women of Vienna, I’m sure, are thinner now than they used to be.’

Eve sat up, no longer dreamy. ‘I fear you are a ladies’ man, Baron. Don’t expect any opportunities on this flight of ours.’

Kern, still lying back on the grass, hands behind his head, smiled up at her. He is handsome, Eve thought; and chided herself for the admission. But it was a pity she had not met him in other circumstances, when she could have pitted her wits against him in the flirting game that seemed to be his favourite sport. Then was conscience stricken as she thought of her father. She stood up quickly, brushing the grass from her skirt. Pulling on her flying helmet, she walked across to O’Malley, who stood leaning against the wing of his plane, finishing his lunch.