When the Chinese spoke, there was an edge to his voice. ‘I know this happens here in China. Death and opium, they share the same path. But I did not think it was so in England.’
Theo shrugged. ‘People are the same wherever they live.’
‘Many fanqui think otherwise.’
‘Yes, that’s so, and my father was one. He believed with all his soul in the supremacy of the British, and of his own family in particular.’
‘Grief hides in your words. An ancestral shrine for him in your house would honour his spirit.’
‘There’s my elder brother too.’ The words kept flowing now that the stone was dislodged.
A shrine? Why not? Every Chinese home had one to keep the ancestral spirits well fed and happy. Why shouldn’t he? Except of course he might not have a home much longer, and he had a nasty feeling prisons didn’t go in for that kind of thing.
‘He was handsome, my brother Ronald. Had everything. A Cambridge blue and the pride of my father’s heart.’
‘Your father was fortunate.’
‘Not really. Papa gave over the family investment business to him, but it all went belly-up. My brother started on opium to help him sleep at night and… Well, it’s the old story. He bankrupted the company and defrauded clients to cover it. So…’
Theo silenced his tongue. He could not understand why these memories had surfaced now. He thought they were dead and buried. Why now? Why to this Chinese Communist? Was it because, just like his father before him, both he and Chang An Lo faced the ruin of all their hopes and plans for the future?
‘So?’ Chang prompted quietly.
Theo reached for a cigarette but he didn’t light it, just twisted it between his long fingers. ‘So… my father took his shotgun. Killed my brother. In his office, sitting at his desk. Then blew out his own brains. It was… frightful. Awful scandal, of course, and Mother took an overdose of something nasty. After the funerals, I came out here. That’s it. Ten years and I’m still here.’
‘China is honoured.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion.’
‘I’m sure it is the opinion of the beautiful Li Mei.’
Theo wanted to believe him.
‘I would ask a question, please?’ Chang said.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Are problems of mixing a European and a Chinese very great? In your world, I mean.’
‘Ah!’ Theo ran a hand over the minute hand-stitching on the Chinese gown he was wearing. He felt a sharp tug of sympathy for the young man. ‘To be brutally honest, yes. The problems are bloody huge.’
Chang shut his eyes.
Theo patted his shoulder. ‘It’s damned hard.’
53
This time the cold was like a shell around her. She pecked at it, picked at it, scraped her nail along it, but it wouldn’t crack. Her mind couldn’t understand why. It struggled. Grew weary. The organs of her body were shutting down, she could feel them inside her, one by one, going to sleep. Abandoning her. The cold. They hated it. It was only when she became aware of a sudden warmth between her legs that she woke up.
Her eyes opened. To total blackness. She tried to churn her thoughts into action, but all they wanted was sleep. Where had all this blackness come from?
Things came to her in bits and pieces. A pain in her leg. Her head sore and her cheek on something hard. Icy skin. Her knees up under her chin. Gradually it dawned on her that she was lying on her side curled up in a tight ball. Her hand risked stretching out into the darkness but it couldn’t reach far because there were cold metal walls all around her. Her heart thundered in her ears.
Where was she?
She tried to sit up. It took three attempts. And when she’d done it, she felt worse. Not because of the pain in her leg that felt as if someone had kicked it. Nor because her head started to spin inside a crazy kaleidoscope, lights flashing behind her eyes, reds and blues and fierce brain-searing yellows. No, it was because she touched the ceiling one inch above her head and knew where she was. She was in a box. A metal box.
They put me in a metal crate.
Three months, perhaps more.
Chang An Lo’s words.
Her stomach spasmed with fear and she vomited, sour acid in her throat. It sprayed over her knees, and the sticky warmth of it recalled to her sluggish mind the earlier warmth between her legs. Her fingers explored along the metal base under her. It was wet. She had peed.
Her mind went white. She started to scream.
She was fighting her way through cobwebs. They stuck to her eyeballs, and a spider with a red speckled body and yellow pincers ran up inside her nostril.
She opened her eyes. And immediately wished herself back in the spider nightmare again. This was worse. This was real. Her body struggled into a crouching position and her hands inched along the four walls to discover the dimensions of her miniature cell. Long enough to sit up but not to straighten her legs, wide enough to touch both walls with her elbows at the same time. An inch of headroom when she was seated in a hunched sort of position. She then examined her own body. Her knees. They smelled. She remembered the vomit. The stink of stale urine scored the membranes of her nostrils, a lump on the back of her head, and high on her left thigh another one the size of a saucer. But no broken skin. No broken bones. No missing fingers.
It could be worse.
How? How in God’s name could this devil’s rat hole possibly be worse? How?
She could be dead. Think of that.
The cold didn’t increase. It didn’t improve but it didn’t get worse. That was something. She worried about the constant shivering. It was using up so much energy, draining her reserves. She was exhausted already. Or was that the fear?
Her mind kept blanking out.
She’d be in the middle of trying to work out how long she might have been a captive in the dark, when her mind would suddenly slip away from her. Blank out totally. That terrified her almost as much as the box. Brain damage? From the blow to the head. Please, no, not that. Or was it sheer terror? Her mind escaping.
To find a tiny scrap of warmth she wrapped her arms around her knees and huddled tight, stroking her shins for comfort.
Breathe. In. Hold for the count of ten. Out. Slow and smooth. In. Hold. Count. Out.
Control. Keep control. Concentrate.
Her thoughts felt like glass. The slightest touch and they shattered. Panic stalked her. Sprang out at her from the dark corners when she wasn’t looking.
‘Chang An Lo,’ she murmured, and was astonished at the reassurance the sound of her own voice gave her. ‘How did you keep yourself sane?’
She’d worked out three things. One was that she’d only been inside Box – she thought of it as a creature that had swallowed her whole – for less than a day. Otherwise she’d have peed more than once, though admittedly she’d not had anything to drink. Don’t think of that. Her mouth was dust-dry and her throat parched. The screaming hadn’t helped. Stupid that. Wasting strength. Anyway. Nor had she done… her brain shied away from the prospect… done more serious toilet matters. So. Less than twenty-four hours then.
The second thing she’d worked out was that she must be underground. In a cellar maybe. Or a secret dungeon. It was the temperature that made her decide that. It never varied. A constant cold, never warmer by day or icier at night. Not that she had any idea whether it was day or night inside Box. Just dark. And more dark. Cold. And more cold. No sounds either. If she’d been anywhere aboveground there would be sounds. Not this dead weight of silence.