‘That’s very good of him,’ said Mrs Jones in her grandest voice. ‘Tell him that my gratitude for his hospitality is exceeded only by my pleasure at the prospect of his company. Oh, and you might ask if there’s anywhere I can give myself a bit of a wash.’
Mrs Jones’s idea of ‘a bit of a wash’ turned out to be rather more than that. Theodore was sitting on a low stool in P’iu-Chun’s living room and half listening while Lung and the old man discussed a poem by somebody called Li Po, who seemed to have died more than a thousand years ago. He guessed that P’iu-Chun also had only half his mind on the talk, and was fidgety for Mrs Jones’s return. This no doubt was one reason why he was prepared to break with custom – another was that there was only one proper room in the house, so there was nowhere else for her to eat. Theodore had no idea where the old peasant woman had vanished to. The room was not large, but the few pieces of furniture had a look of quality about them; there were two glowing dark blue vases on a chest, and one wall was covered with large brush drawings, hanging on scrolls.
‘Enter!’ called P’iu-Chun suddenly, though Theodore had barely noticed the light scratching on the inner door. At once he found himself wide awake and staring.
Mrs Jones had re-applied her make-up, twice as thick. In the dim lantern-light her face was like a china doll’s – scarlet lips, clay-white skin, a rosy circle on each cheek, black brows over those exaggerated eyes. She had piled her hair high on her head, and put on a long red skirt and a filmy pink blouse whose lace-work frothed up her neck to her chin-line. On each hand she wore several rings over white gloves that ran to her elbows. A triple row of pearls ringed the pink lace, and a large brooch rode on the big curve of her bosom like a boat on a wave.
As she came through the door she drooped, so that for a moment Theodore thought she was fainting until he saw that she was moving into a slow, full curtsey, finishing with her head not six inches from the floor. It was astounding that she could bend her plump body to this posture, but she came up out of it, effortless and smiling.
P’iu-Chun was on his feet and bowing stiffly from the waist, and so was Lung. Theodore, who had risen automatically (Father had always insisted he should stand even for the poorest peasant woman, and had done so himself), copied them awkwardly.
‘Honoured Princess, my poor cottage is yours,’ said P’iu-Chun.
‘The hospitality of the renowned What’s-is-name makes any house a palace,’ fluted Mrs Jones when Lung had translated. ‘Got that out of a panto, when I was principal boy in Aladdin. Don’t put that bit in.’
Deftly Lung added a few courteous twiddles to account for the extra sentence. The exchange might have gone on for some time, but just as P’iu-Chun was bowing himself into a fresh compliment Mrs Jones gave a little cry and ran with fluttering steps towards the pictures on the wall.
‘Why, these are lovely,’ she cried, still in her grand voice but somehow no longer acting. ‘That’s Rhododendron megeratum – I’ve seen that in Nepal . . . and Paeonia lutea – we all grow that now . . . what’s this primula – I’ve never seen that? Lung, ask him where he got these perfectly adorable things, and who painted them.’
‘The Princess is a great lover of plants and admires the drawings,’ said Lung. ‘She names each plant in her own tongue. She asks who painted the pictures.’
‘My own poor hand made these scrawls,’ said P’iu-Chun, purring. Theodore fancied he could see a tear of pleasure in the corner of the dark little eyes. Mrs Jones understood what he was saying before Lung could translate, and once more darted across the room, seized his hand and patted it softly. P’iu-Chun was obviously amazed by this behaviour, but too happy to resist.
‘Oh, it wasn’t you!’ she cried. ‘Oh, how I wish I could draw like that. I have to paint, to make a record of what I’ve found, and I get them accurate – I mean you can see every petal and how it goes – but what I can’t do is that . . . that . . .’
Despairing of words she gestured towards the drawings again with a single sweeping movement that exactly expressed the few flowing strokes with which P’iu-Chun had brought the flowers out of the paper.
‘Theo,’ she said. ‘Be an angel. The saddle-basket with the patched cover, near the top, my sketchbooks. Please bring me the red one with my initials on it . . .’
When Theodore came back he found that P’iu-Chun had fetched more scrolls and was spreading them in turn on the chest, shaking his old head from time to time over one which was not as perfect as he’d hoped.
‘You found it?’ cooed Mrs Jones. ‘Lovely. Now come and help me talk to Mr What’s-is-name – poor Lung’s having trouble keeping up with me. Oh, look at this bamboo! That’s as common as daisies, but look how he’s drawn it just like it mattered as much as this gentian here, which I’ve never seen and I doubt if anyone in Europe has.’
Lung coughed a warning, but P’iu-Chun seemed to take it for granted that the Chinese boy travelling with this extraordinary woman should speak good English. He smiled as Theodore spoke, and reached a long-nailed hand for the sketchbook.
‘You’ll tell him I don’t think they’re very good, won’t you?’ pleaded Mrs Jones. ‘They’re accurate, but they’re not art.’
This was difficult to say in Mandarin without making it sound like another polite expression of humility. P’iu-Chun began to turn the pages, holding the book at arm’s length and straining his neck away.
‘My old eyes no longer see what is near,’ he said. ‘Ah, this detail! The Princess paints the outwardness – every leaf, every hair – while I do my poor best to paint the inwardness. We walk on opposite sides of the way. Now, compare these . . .’
He held the book open at a particular painting and with his other hand pulled from his scrolls his own version of the same plant, a curving, grass-like stem from which dangled a line of little yellow bells. Theodore could see that Mrs Jones had used several different colours and dozens of brush-strokes to paint each bell, wheras P’iu-Chun seemed simply to have dipped a brush in ink and blobbed it once on to the page, and yet the bell was there. You knew how. it would move in the wind. You could even, somehow, guess its colour from the nature of the dark grey blob.
‘If I hadn’t just done my face I’d burst into tears,’ said Mrs Jones gravely. ‘I shall never, never learn to paint like that. I wonder where he found that one – ask him, Theo. It’s got to be in the mountains somewhere, but I’ve only see it one place, right over the other side of the Himalayas.’
‘For much of my life I was a government official in Pekin,’ explained P’iu-Chun. ‘Unworthy though I am, I held posts that were not without honour. But then I fell from favour and was sent to this province with orders to survey the frontier with Tibet and to seek new routes of access, I who had been . . . but never mind that. My report was returned to me with its seal unbroken, to show me how little I was now regarded. I was employed no more. But in my journeyings among the mountains I made these pictures, choosing especially plants that were strange to me. This one I found in vast numbers growing on the ledges of a gorge beyond Tehko. Ah, never again shall I see those peaks, those thundering waters!’
‘Tibet!’ said Mrs Jones. ‘I don’t see as we shouldn’t try and get to Tibet. If Mr What’s-is-name knows the way . . .’
‘We go to Taho,’ said Lung firmly.
‘Tibet’d be just as good.’
‘Taho.’
‘Tibet.’
‘Taho.’
They laughed together, like children playing a secret game. It was so surprising that despite the trance of tiredness Theodore looked at Lung and saw him as a person in his own right, and not just an animated bit of Mrs Jones’s baggage. He showed his teeth as he laughed, and his dark eyes flashed. It was as though a spring of inner happiness had suddenly sparkled on a dull hillside, giving a whole landscape life and focus.