Enchanted Evening by M. M. Kaye Read Free Book Online Page B

as binding as a proposal. A kiss still meant ‘I love you’, and was accepted as such. I suppose you could say that we were among the last generation to be ‘courted’; and we wouldn’t have changed it for anything. Fancy swapping all that thrill and expectation for a kiss taken and accepted as a matter of course after only an hour or two’s acquaintance, and knowing perfectly well that every girl the man had previously fancied, however briefly, had also been kissed by him, and that it didn’t mean a thing. I could only be grateful that I had been born when I was, and not into the heyday of the Thoroughly Modern Millies. They may have had more freedom, but we had more fun.
    I had not imagined that we would have much fun in Pei-tai-ho, and had resigned myself to making the best of it. But in fact we had a wonderful summer – two wonderful summers, for by now I find that I cannot separate them in my mind, or remember if this or that happened during the first year, or the second. We seem to have done exactly the same things in both years: had one long party, with never a dull moment.
    This was largely because as soon as the weather in Peking became uncomfortably hot, the British Ambassador with his daughters and his staff moved down to Pei-tai-ho. In consequence it had become the custom for a British warship of the China Fleet to visit Pei-tai-ho and ‘show the flag’. Each ship on arrival would throw a cocktail party on board to which all the summer visitors were invited, and the Ambassador would reciprocate by entertaining the members of the Wardroom, and giving them the use of the Embassy tennis courts and bathing raft. In this way we came to know all the officers of each ship in turn.
    Bets played tennis with them on the Embassy courts, and there were picnics to the Lotus Hills, and to Shan-hai-kwan and any number of normally inaccessible little coves, in one of the ships’ boats. The only reason I know the order in which the ships came in is because Mother was a compulsive album keeper, and there is a photographic record of both summers. The first ship to pay a courtesy call during that first summer was HMS Kent, commanded by a Captain Drew who, together with his junior officers, added greatly to the gaiety of the various nationalities who were holidaying at Pei-tai-ho, while the sight of HMS Kent at anchor offshore gave the European contingent a welcome feeling of security.
    That security was needed, for ever since 1911, when the Manchu dynasty had fallen and the last of its Emperors, young Pu-yi, had been deposed, all China, in particular the northerly territories, had been subjected to a series of lawless uprisings, instigated, as often as not, by some ambitious landowner who had hitherto owed allegiance to the throne but who now saw himself as the possible ruler of a province. The undisciplined armies raised by these Candidates-for-Power all too frequently degenerated into bandit hordes who ravaged the countryside, looting and burning. Only recently three British citizens, a girl, and two young men who had been out with her for a morning ride in the open country surrounding Ching-wan-tao – one of the popular summer resorts of the northern Treaty Ports – had been kidnapped and held to ransom by a gang of hooligans, who had kept them chained to one another for the best part of a month.
    As far as I remember, their fate was still in the balance when we arrived in Pei-tai-ho and, judging from the daily bulletins in every newspaper, at least half the English-speaking world was putting up prayers for their safety. Happily, these were answered, and later the girl, a pretty young thing by the name of ‘Tinko’ Pawley, wrote her account of the terrifying affair in a book entitled My Bandit Hosts.
    If the kidnapping of young Tinko Pawley and her friends shed an unpleasant light on one side of the Chinese character, the present that Tacklow gave me on my birthday threw