Malcolm felt his heart turn over. If he could get Struan's off that barb his mother would concede whatever he wanted. He knew her too well. She'll give me anything I want, anything, he shouted silently, if I want her to become Catholic she'd even do that!
Whatever the cost, he knew he would pay it, and pay gladly. "The price--apart from revenge?"
"When I come back."
Malcolm waited all day but the stranger did not return. It did not worry him. That night he dined alone. Angelique had said she was tired, too many parties and late nights and an early night would do her good. "So, my darling Malcolm, I shall just eat a snack in my room and do my hair and then into dream time. Tonight I love you and leave you... you are abandoned." He did not mind. His brain brimmed with so much hope that he was afraid if she had stayed he would have to confide in her--and when Jamie dropped by early evening he had to stop himself blurting out the fantastic news.
"Heavenly found an answer?" Jamie asked.
"No, good Lord no, not yet. Why?"
"You seem so, so... as though the weight of the world has fallen off you. Haven't seen you looking so good in weeks. But you have had good news?"
Malcolm grinned. "Perhaps I've turned a corner and am really getting better."
"Hope so. Your accident on top of everything else... I just don't know how you do it. With all that's happened in the last few weeks, I'm truly tired, and that fellow Gornt's the last straw. Something about him frightens me."
"How so?"
"Don't know, just a feeling.
Maybe he's not as harmless as he seems."
Jamie hesitated. "Do you have a minute to chat?"
"Of course, sit down. Brandy? Help yourself."
"Thanks." Jamie poured a small measure from the sideboard then pulled the other, high-backed armchair beside the fire opposite him. The curtains were drawn against the night, the suite cozy. Nice smell of wood smoke and the sound of ship's bells from the fleet in the bay also comforting. "A couple of things: One way or another I want to go back to Hong Kong for a couple of days--before Christmas."
"To see Mother?"
Jamie nodded and sipped his brandy. "I'd like to be on Prancing Cloud. She'll dock ... why the smile?"
"You're one jump ahead of me. I was planning to be aboard her too."
Jamie blinked, then smiled seraphically.
"You've changed your mind and you're going to do what she says?"
"Not exactly." Malcolm told him his plan about Prancing Cloud and saw Jamie's euphoria evaporate. "Don't worry, I'm a much better shot than Norbert, and providing he agrees to shoot from twenty paces without the walk he's as dead as the dodo--if I decide to kill him. Forget Norbert.
Angelique: if we can't smuggle her aboard, I say "we" because you always were part of the plan, you bring her by the next ship, so one way or another you'll be in HK before Christmas."
Jamie hesitated. "Mrs. Struan will still be very irritated to find Angelique with us."
"Let me worry about that."
"I do. Which brings me to the nut: when I leave Struan's I was thinking of trying to start my own firm, that's really what I wanted to chat about.
If you'd have any objections."
"On the contrary, I'd go out of my way, Struan's would, to help in every way. But that won't be for years yet."
"I think she's decided I am to go."
"I'll object like hell," Malcolm said, startled. "You're due for promotion, a raise and the company wouldn't want to lose you, she would know that. That's a shocking idea."
"Yes. But if it becomes necessary ... bear with me, Tai-pan, if it's necessary would you object?"
"To you going off on your own? No. But I hate the idea and Struan's would be the loser, I swear to God. It won't happen, and if, if you asked to leave I'd find a way to make you stay --to persuade you to stay. I would."
"Thanks, thanks very much." Jamie took a large swallow and felt a little better. Not from the warmth of the brandy but from the way Malcolm had spoken. The last few weeks had been bad.
Yesterday, because of Mrs. Struan's letter to him, he had been confronted with an immortal truth: however loyal you are to a company, however much service you give "the company," the company can and will spit you out at its whim, without conscience. And what is "the company"? Just a group of men and women. P. Mrs. Struan for instance.
People are "the company" and those in charge can and always will hide behind that facade, that "the company must survive," or "for the good of the company," and so on, wrecking or promoting for personal reasons, enmities, or hatreds.
And don't forget most companies these days are family companies. In the end it's "family" that wins. Blood is thicker than competence. They may fight amongst themselves but in the end they usually unite in the face of the enemy who is anyone not family, so it's Alfred MacStruan who has been positioned to take over Japan. Nothing I can do, will do about that. Maybe family businesses are more humane, can be better than impersonal bureaucratic, anonymous institutions but even there, perhaps more so, you're subject to the "Old Boy" network. You lose either way...
Last night, untypically, he had got very drunk in his little house in the Yoshiwara, finding no solace in Nemi. Every time he thought about the truth of "the company"--adding it to the hanging crime he had almost committed, and Tess Struan's unfairness, Malcolm's stubbornness, and his own stupidity, knowing that if Malcolm had not stopped him he would have ripped the string off and torn the letters up and thrown them overboard--his head would spin and only another tumbler of rum would stop the motion until it created spinning of its own. Nemi couldn't help: "Jami, wot you matter? Jami, Jami!"
"It's Machiavelli who said it best," he had said, his words slurred and incoherent, "put not your trust in bloody princes, they can plead expedience. Bloody princes, tai-pans, mothers of bloody tai-pans, sons of Dirk Struan and their sons..." and then he had wept.
Ay, he thought queasily, that's the first time in years, last time was when I'd just arrived in Hong Kong, twenty years ago and heard Ma had died while I was on the high seas. She must have known she was dying when I left. "Off you go, my bonny laddie, earn our fortune, and write every week..." If it wasn't for her we would have all died--only her strength kept us alive until the Struan arrived and our joss changed.
Cried my heart out. Like last night, though the tears were different. I was crying for my lost innocence. Can't believe how naive I was to believe in "the company." Would Dirk have let me down? Never. The tai-pan wouldn't have, couldn't have, but he's just a legend. I've got to find the courage to strike out on my own--I'm thirty-nine, old in Asia, though I don't feel old, only a ship without a rudder. And so is Malcolm... Is he?
He looked at him, still noticing the change.
Malcolm's different, more like his old self, he thought. More adult, is that possible? Don't know, but either way his joss is fixed, like mine. "I'm glad we didn't tamper... I can't say how sorry I am she's blocked you."
"Me too." Malcolm had told Jamie what Sir William had said about expecting the letter, and about opium and their Bengal fields, the news of which this morning had erupted the Settlement into a frenzy. The noon meeting at the Club had been more violent than usual with the added motion, carried unanimously, that Sir William should be strung up or at the least impeached if he tried to enforce Parliament's stupidity. He saw how deeply unhappy Jamie was and once again was tempted to pour out the marvelous development called Gornt. But he remembered his oath.