Ghost Stories - Lorna Bradbury [8]
They have been waiting for me, I think, with the first prickings of fear. I reach for the boy but he retreats into the assembled throng as if this is all but a game.
I showed you mercy, I berate them as they close in upon me, and when they shake their heads in unison there are a great many more of them than I first presumed, hundreds I see now as the fog shifts, lengthening my view.
They hold me taut and prone on the ground, and at first, in their great numbers, I think they will rip me to pieces. Some chanting old crone breaks free of the swarm, kneels on my chest, snaps at my eyes.
I remember now the cause of my wife’s distress, the bundle of rags in her arms, which is all that’s left of our child, our beautiful son, the most serious boy who ever lived, whom I couldn’t save, however much he suffered from the shattering disease that took all his hair, and then his life, and which now has finished mine.
Let’s start with your eyes, says the redheaded crone, wrenching a clump of eyelashes out from the root.
My boy, my boy! I cry, with tears in my eyes, as he glides through bodies jostling for a view, twixt coats and skirts and scarves. only when the air alights with the sound of my screams does he turn and smile.
The Rites of Zhou
Justin Crozier
I had not seen Ronald Kirklees for more than twenty years when I encountered him on the London train from Edinburgh. it was a wretched wet night and the first-class carriage was almost empty. My seat was across the aisle from his. I recognised him immediately – despite the startling changes that time had wrought upon him. always lean, now he was gaunt, even haggard, a wraith of his former self, his eyes underslung with great bruise-coloured pouches. nevertheless, he was unmistakably the man I had known in college. Evidently, though, I was not as easily recognised – much as I prided myself that I was largely unmarked by the passing of youth.
But while I recognised him he looked up at me in apprehension, almost fear. he seemed to index my every feature before he relaxed and replied to my greeting, fumbling for my name.
And so we sat and started to while away the journey, first with college reminiscences and then my outlining of my career and family. we ordered the first of two bottles of vile red from the restaurant car. I was no longer much of a drinker, but Kirklees went at it with gusto. and as he drank, he told me about his life.
When we left college, I had gone straight into the law: safe, comfortable, ultimately boring. Ronald had taken a teaching position in western China – ‘Chinese Turkestan’ was how he quaintly styled his destination when a crowd of us had gathered in a London pub to send him off all those years ago. he was full of that sort of thing then – ‘the orient’, ‘East of Suez’, ‘taking the road to Mandalay’ – his view of the East equal parts Kipling and Maugham.
But the undergraduate gaiety was gone. he had, I learned, taught English in Xinjiang for three years, then studied in Beijing for two more years, honing his Mandarin. and then to hong Kong, where he eventually procured a position in a well-know auction house specialising in antiques and art from the mainland.
‘There were difficulties, of course, with Chinese officials – especially when our buyers were Japanese, as so many were then. But there were always ways round the rules. There always are in asia, or so I thought. and strangely, things got easier after the handover in 97.’
And so he, with his mix of fluent Chinese and English public-school charm, became something of a success, first for the company and then in his own right. he became an expert in identifying and classifying urns, axeheads, Tang camels and Ming porcelain, and the baroque curios of the Qing court, selling to interested parties both inside and outside the Middle Kingdom. Business was thriving and he had enjoyed all the trappings of expat success: the opulent apartment, a succession of glamorous girlfriends and even a limited degree of local celebrity.
‘But all of