‘Why?’ asked the boy.
‘Why what?’
‘Why do you want me?’
The professor nodded to the drawer which contained the silver bar. ‘Because you can do that.’
Only then did the boy realize that this had been a test.
‘These are the terms of my guardianship.’ Professor Lovell slid a two-page document across the desk. The boy glanced down, then gave up trying to skim it; the tight, looping penmanship looked nigh illegible. ‘They’re quite simple, but take care to read the entire thing before you sign it. Will you do this tonight before you go to bed?’
The boy was too shaken to do anything but nod.
‘Very good,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘One more thing. It occurs to me you need a name.’
‘I have a name,’ said the boy. ‘It’s—’
‘No, that won’t do. No Englishman can pronounce that. Did Miss Slate give you a name?’
She had, in fact. When the boy turned four, she had insisted he adopt a name by which Englishmen could take him seriously, though she’d never elaborated which Englishmen those might be. They’d chosen something at random from a children’s rhyming book, and the boy liked how firm and round the syllables felt on his tongue, so he harboured no complaint. But no one else in the household had ever used it, and soon Miss Betty had dropped it as well. The boy had to think hard for a moment before he remembered.
‘Robin.’*
Professor Lovell was quiet for a moment. His expression confused the boy – his brows were furrowed, as if in anger, but one side of his mouth curled up, as if delighted. ‘How about a surname?’
‘I have a surname.’
‘One that will do in London. Pick anything you like.’
The boy blinked at him. ‘Pick . . . a surname?’
Family names were not things to be dropped and replaced at whim, he thought. They marked lineage; they marked belonging.
‘The English reinvent their names all the time,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘The only families who keep theirs do it because they have titles to hold on to, and you certainly haven’t got any. You only need a handle to introduce yourself by. Any name will do.’
‘Then can I take yours? Lovell?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘They’ll think I’m your father.’
‘Oh – of course.’ The boy’s eyes cast desperately around the room, searching for some word or sound to latch on to. They landed on a familiar volume on the shelf above Professor Lovell’s head – Gulliver’s Travels. A stranger in a strange land, who had to learn the local languages if he wished not to die. He thought he understood now how Gulliver felt.
‘Swift?’ he ventured. ‘Unless—’
To his surprise, Professor Lovell laughed. Laughter was strange coming out of that severe mouth; it sounded too abrupt, almost cruel, and the boy couldn’t help but flinch. ‘Very good. Robin Swift you’ll be. Mr Swift, good to meet you.’
He rose and extended his hand across the desk. The boy had seen foreign sailors greeting each other at the docks, so he knew what to do. He met that large, dry, uncomfortably cool hand with his own. They shook.
Two days later, Professor Lovell, Mrs Piper, and the newly christened Robin Swift set sail for London. By then, thanks to many hours of bed rest and a steady diet of hot milk and Mrs Piper’s abundant cooking, Robin was well enough to walk on his own. He lugged a trunk heavy with books up the gangplank, struggling to keep pace with the professor.
Canton’s harbour, the mouth from which China encountered the world, was a universe of languages. Loud and rapid Portuguese, French, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, English, and Chinese floated through the salty air, intermingling in an implausibly mutually intelligible pidgin which almost everyone understood, but which only a few could speak with ease. Robin knew it well. He’d gained his first instruction in foreign languages running about the quays; he’d often translated for sailors in exchange for a tossed penny and a smile. Never had he imagined he might follow the linguistic fragments of this pidgin back to their source.
They walked down the waterfront to join the boarding line for the Countess of Harcourt, one of the East India Company ships that took on a small number of commercial passengers on each voyage. The sea was loud and choppy that day. Robin shivered as frigid seaside gusts cut viciously through his coat. He badly wanted to be on the ship, inside a cabin or anywhere with walls, but something held up the boarding line. Professor Lovell stepped to the side to have a look. Robin followed him. At the top of the gangplank, a crewman was berating a passenger, acerbic English vowels piercing through the morning chill.
‘Can’t you understand what I’m saying? Knee how? Lay ho? Anything?’
The target of his ire was a Chinese labourer, stooped from the weight of the rucksack he wore slung over one shoulder. If the labourer uttered a response, Robin couldn’t hear it.
‘Can’t understand a word I’m saying,’ complained the crewman. He turned to the crowd. ‘Can anyone tell this fellow he can’t come aboard?’
‘Oh, that poor man.’ Mrs Piper nudged Professor Lovell’s arm. ‘Can you translate?’
‘I don’t speak the Cantonese dialect,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘Robin, go on up there.’
Robin hesitated, suddenly frightened.
‘Go.’ Professor Lovell pushed him up the plank.
Robin stumbled forward into the fray. Both the crewman and the labourer turned to look at him. The crewman merely looked annoyed, but the labourer seemed relieved – he seemed to recognize immediately in Robin’s face an ally, the only other Chinese person in sight.
‘What’s the matter?’ Robin asked him in Cantonese.
‘He won’t let me aboard,’ the labourer said urgently. ‘But I have a contract with this ship until London, look, it says so right here.’
He shoved a folded sheet of paper at Robin.
Robin opened it. The paper was written in English, and it did indeed look like a lascar contract – a certificate of pay to last for the length of one voyage from Canton to London, to be specific. Robin had seen such contracts before; they had grown increasingly common over the past several years as the demand for indentured Chinese servants grew concurrently with overseas difficulties with the slave trade. This was not the first contract he’d translated; he’d seen work orders for Chinese labourers to board for destinations as far away as Portugal, India, and the West Indies.
It all looked in order to Robin. ‘So what’s the problem?’
‘What’s he telling you?’ asked the crewman. ‘Tell him that contract’s no good. I can’t have Chinamen on this ship. Last ship I sailed that carried a Chinaman got filthy with lice. I’m not taking risks on people who can’t wash. Couldn’t even understand the word bath if I yelled it at him, this one. Hello? Boy? Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Robin switched hastily back to English. ‘Yes, I’m just – give me a moment, I’m just trying to . . .’
But what should he say?
The labourer, uncomprehending, cast Robin an imploring look. His face was creased and sun-browned, leathered in a way that made him look sixty, though he was likely only in his thirties. All lascars aged quickly; the work wrecked their bodies. Robin had seen that face a thousand times before at the docks. Some tossed him sweets; some knew him well enough to greet him by name. He associated that face with his own kind. But he’d never seen one of his elders turn to him with such total helplessness.
Guilt twisted his gut. Words collected on his tongue, cruel and terrible words, but he could not turn them into a sentence.