A Pack of Lies by Geraldine McCaughrean Read Free Book Online Page B

Brian! What a pretty plate!’ cried the girl, dubiously. MCC slyly slipped the book into his pocket.
    Brian came and looked at the blue and white plate balanced between two urns. ‘Oh yeah. Willow Pattern. Your Gran’s got a whole service like it. Is that the only one?’
    It was the only one — and even so, Ailsa could not remember seeing it before, though she knew the kind of thing. Well, the Willow Pattern is a common enough design.
    ‘Is it old?’ asked the girl, looking for a price.
    ‘The story is,’ said MCC Berkshire.
    * * *
    Long ago, in China, during the Ch’ing dynasty and the days of the Manchu Emperor Ch’ien Lung, there lived a potter called Ho Pa. He was a mean, greedy and spiteful man. But he had an apprentice working for him whose work was so perfect that people called from far and near to buy porcelain at Ho Pa’s pottery. Ho Pa grew very rich indeed. But he did not pay any of the money to the apprentice, Wa Fan, who did all the work. Instead, he cursed and cuffed the young man and made his life miserable and called his pottery worthless and ugly.
    If only Wa Fan had known! His beautiful vases and plates and teapots and dishes were bought even by the Emperor’s Court! And travellers from far distant lands paid huge sums to sail away with just one piece of Wa Fan’s craftsmanship. One pattern they asked for more often than any other. ‘Give us Willow-Pattern plates, Ho Pa! We will pay you extra if you make us Willow-Pattern china in blue and white!’
    Then Ho Pa would stick his head round the door of the hot, wet pottery and shout, ‘Willow Pattern, Wa Fan! Give me more Willow Pattern, you idle son of a sleeping dog!’
    Wa Fan did not mind. The Willow Pattern is a very beautiful pattern and tells the love story of a boy and a girl and a garden, and Wa Fan delighted in painting(in blue glaze with a very fine brush) the pretty garden with its bridge and pagodas. He painted petals on to the chrysanthemums with such care that the flowers seemed to be alive. He painted the figures so beautifully that their clothes seemed to billow in the breeze.
    Sometimes — on the best days of all — his master’s daughter, Liu, would come into the pottery and talk to him about his work and admire the china drying on the racks. She never tired of hearing Wa Fan tell her the story of the Willow Pattern, as she pointed out each detail in turn.
    ‘And who is this?’ she would ask (although she already knew).
    ‘That is the cruel father,’ said Wa Fan. ‘A rich merchant who will not let his lovely daughter marry the gardener.’
    ‘And this is the lovely daughter?’ Liu would say, (although, of course, she already knew). ‘And this is the poor gardener? What became of the unhappy lovers?’
    ‘The daughter and the gardener loved each other so much that they decided to run away together into the world outside the garden. They hid in the gardens — all night, the delicate lady hid in a spidery, dark shed. But the cruel father discovered their secret and searched the garden at dawn. The only way out was over the lake, across a narrow bridge. When the lovers came out of hiding and made to leave the garden, there on the bridge stood the cruel father, whip in hand, ready to kill the poor young gardener. When the lovers saw that it was impossible to escape, they jumped off the bridge, thinking to drown together in the lake.’
    Then Liu would come bursting into his story and exclaim, ‘But the gods smiled on them and turned them into bluebirds, and they flew away to lasting happiness!’
    Then Wa Fan said, ‘You know my story already,’ and Liu blushed and covered her mouth with her fingers and trotted to the door on her wooden heels and clattered back to her father’s house.
    You see Liu loved Wa Fan the potter, and Wa Fan loved her. But they could no more hope to be married than a fish can hope to fly.
    One day cruel Ho Pa said to his daughter, ‘You may thank me, Liu. Prepare yourself. Whiten your face