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By Root 2553 0

from the Métro in winter to keep warm and the game consisted in seeing how many you could jump over at a time: it sounds a bit heartless, I must say, but anyway, Sinclair announced that he had decided to beat the world record for saute-Chinois which meant the number of Chinamen he could jump over at a time and he said he’d never have a better opportunity than the present. All the other men egged him on and in a flash he’d taken off his dinner-jacket and was pounding over the deck towards a row of sleeping Chinese. Then he leaped into the air and … oh, incidentally, I’ve just remembered something I wanted to ask you. When we were on the way out and stopping at ports here and there before reaching Shanghai … I think it was the morning after we left Canton and we were steaming up a river into Wuchow in Kwangsi Province, anyway, someone pointed out a golf club on the left-hand bank and said it was definitely the most exclusive in the world and when I asked why? he said because it only had four members, the manager and assistant-manager of the Standard Oil Company and the same of the Asiatic Petroleum Company, but that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? A golf club with only four members. He was only joking, wasn’t he? Really! Good heavens! How d’you mean, “Chinese don’t play golf?” Now you’re making fun of me. But sorry, I’ll go on: Sinclair leaped into the air and must have jumped over at least a dozen Chinese who were asleep on the deck and luckily didn’t land on one … but not so luckily he did catch his foot against something, a piece of iron or a rope or I don’t know what, and took a nasty fall on the deck and grazed his knees and palms and tore his trousers and made a frightful din.

That’s when some of the Chinese woke up and looked at us. I was quite near one of the lights and happened to be looking in the direction of one of the bundles when it stirred and sat up. It was the girl I’d seen in Shanghai shoved against the wall by the Jap officer. I was only a few feet away. I’d have recognized her even if her face hadn’t been still all bruised and swollen. And she recognized me, too, I could see that. I smiled at her and said something like I was glad she had got away and was she all right? She didn’t say anything at first and I thought, of course she wouldn’t speak English and she was obviously shocked to see someone who recognized her. But then she suddenly asked me in perfect English, you know, like an educated person, if I would please not tell anyone about the business with the Jap officer because she was afraid that if people knew about it they might not give her a landing-permit in Singapore and that she was going there to get away from the Japanese. Her name was Miss Chiang, she said, Vera Chiang, and her mother had been a Russian who’d had to leave during the Revolution and then had died and she’d been educated in an American mission in Manchuria or somewhere and that she’d had nothing to do with the man who’d been killed and had never seen him before. Of course, I said I wouldn’t tell anyone and I gave her your card with the firm’s name on and my name and said to get in touch if she needed help getting work or something. And that, Papa dear, was all that happened except that the Stage Butler started making scenes because he was jealous of me talking to Sinclair Sinclair, but it wasn’t my fault if Sinclair was more amusing and I can’t bear it when men are jealous and want to have you all to themselves and keep trying to have “serious talks”. In the end Mummy and I stopped calling him the Stage Butler and christened him High Dudgeon because of the way he kept stalking about the ship and sulking. Because of him it was quite a relief to see Singapore and the good old Empire Dock and there were the usual little brown boys diving for pennies, but one thing I’d never noticed before was that there were one or two quite old men diving for pennies, or would have except we preferred to throw them for the boys. And that was that except that I forgot to tell you what happened to Sinclair Sinclair. One of the Chinamen he had jumped over