Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station Read online

  “Finished inspection?” he asked, amused.

  She laughed. “A very thorough one, wasn’t it? I think you’re very elegant.”

  His smile deepened. “Presently I’ll be wearing a very red noisy sport shirt—”

  In which, thought Mrs. Pollifax, you will look equally distinguished, let us not kid ourselves.

  “—because I’ve only flown in this morning after a business stopover in Tokyo. And now if breakfast is buffet—as I have been told in no uncertain terms,” he said dryly, “I hope you’ll excuse me?”

  “Yes, of course,” she told him, and watched him stroll toward the buffet, pick up a tray and manage to look both friendly and unapproachable at the same time. She wondered who would appear next, thinking how much like the first act of a play this was becoming, with each person arriving singly, and on cue. She looked up from her coffee to see a young girl approaching with a red, white, and blue ribbon pinned to her collar, but her analogy was upset when the girl turned and spoke to the older man behind her. Not singly, amended Mrs. Pollifax, and waited.

  “Are you China?” the girl asked, coming to her table and pointing to her identical ribbon. She had a pert young face, very friendly and gamine, almost overwhelmed by huge round glasses that made her face look even smaller; her upper lip was retroussée, not quite meeting the lower one and exposing square white teeth. She wore a purple shirt and pink cotton skirt that emphasized her dark hair and fresh complexion. “I’m Jenny,” she said. “Jenny Lobsen.” Glancing over her shoulder she added, “And this is George Westrum.”

  Mrs. Pollifax stood up to shake hands this time. “Hello to both of you. You’re traveling together?”

  Jenny laughed and vigorously shook her head. “Oh no, we spotted each other’s ribbons in the lobby at six o’clock this morning, I guess we’re both still on San Francisco time. So we went walking. It was great—we saw people practicing Tai Chi in the park.”

  Mrs. Pollifax extended her hand to George Westrum, amused by the difference in temperament between him and Jenny. Although he wore a boyish cap tilted back on his head, George Westrum was a very dour-looking man in his fifties. His face was taciturn and weathered, with a tight mouth that looked like a purse snapped shut forever, yet as he gripped her hand and looked squarely at her Mrs. Pollifax swore that she saw a twinkle in the man’s eye.

  “Just George will do,” he said.

  A twinkle, a baseball cap, and a tight mouth—very interesting, she thought. “I’m Emily Pollifax,” she told them, and mentally running over Bishop’s list she added, “And now we’re all here except for one person.”

  At that moment she became aware that Sullen Young Man from the nearby table had risen and was strolling toward them, still looking as if he preferred to be elsewhere, and also rather out of place in his ancient faded jeans and jogging shoes. Reaching them he said, “I’ve had my breakfast and I’m just leaving—I’m Peter Fox.” He looked at each of them one by one, nodded, added, “See you later,” and before anyone could speak he walked out of the breakfast room.

  So much for him, thought Mrs. Pollifax, startled, as she gazed after him. She wondered whether his hostility was going to infect and effect the others; she thought, too, how unfriendly it was of him to have sat nearby for so long, watching but without declaring himself.

  But there was research to be done on all of them, she remembered, and with a glance at her watch she excused herself, secure in the knowledge that at least she had met her six tour companions, however superficially. At the top of her research list, however, she now placed Peter Fox. Assignment aside, she found that she was intensely curious as to what had brought him here, and apparently so unwillingly.

  * * *

  Huge crowds surrounded the railway station, encircling it in lines ten deep until it looked, said George Westrum, exactly like a baseball stadium at World Series time besieged by eager fans. With Miss Chu and Mr. Li to run interference, they made their way through line after line to a smaller queue inside the building, where they waited with families gripping small portable fans in one hand and food packages in string bags in the other: visitors to Canton, bearing gifts to relatives.

  “This must be first class,” murmured George Westrum, standing just behind her.

  “In a classless society?” said Mrs. Pollifax in amazement.

  Again she surprised that twinkle. “It’s a matter of semantics,” he said. “They call them soft seats, as against the hard seats for the masses out there.”

  “You’ve visited China before, then?”

  “I read a lot,” he said simply.

  She smiled at him. “And what do you think of our newly met China guide?”

  “Mr. Li? Young and very organized,” he said. “Put him in Western clothes and he’d be a junior executive anywhere. IBM, probably.”

  She laughed. In spite of Mr. Li’s modest attire it was exactly that executive quality, with its sense of coiled energy, that had first struck her on meeting him, too. Or perhaps his attire wasn’t modest at all, she thought, as she glanced around and compared him with the other Chinese waiting in line, for his sandals were of leather, not plastic; she had already glimpsed black silk socks with tiny clocks on them, and he wore a digital watch on his wrist. She only wished that she could be more confident about his English, which was spoken with enthusiasm at a reckless speed and with an explosive laugh at the end of each statement.

  The crowd suddenly began to move and they achieved the train at last, said good-bye to Miss Chu, and climbed aboard the appointed car that would take them across the Lo Wu bridge into Mainland China. Mrs. Pollifax, entering the car last of all, chose to sit next to Peter Fox, from whom she received a swift, bored glance. Paying this no attention she gazed around in awe at the starched lace curtains at each window of the railway car, and the pale blue decor. Everything was immaculate; in fact no sooner were they all seated than a young woman hurried out from some inner sanctum to run a damp floor mop up and down the aisle and erase every hint of traffic. Music began; a small TV screen over the door sprang to life and as the train began to move, so did figures on the screen: a happy smiling young woman sang a Chinese song in a strident singsong voice; a handsome young man joined her and with large gestures and an even happier smile reinforced the suggestion of total bliss in Mainland China. Mrs. Pollifax watched in fascination, and then her attention moved past Peter Fox’s impassive profile to the lush green countryside sliding past the window.

  Eventually the stoniness of that profile challenged her. “Excited?” she asked Peter Fox, not without irony.

  He turned and gave her a measuring glance. “Half and half,” he said with a shrug.

  Being direct by nature she refused such tiresome ambiguousness. “What made you come, then?” she asked. “What made you choose China?”

  “I didn’t,” he said.

  Mrs. Pollifax began to feel amused by this conversation. “I thought you seemed a little martyred,” she said, warming to the game. “Of course my next question—naturally—is just why and what—”

  But apparently he was not playing games. “I didn’t mean to seem martyred,” he said, with deadly seriousness and a scowl. “It’s just I’m still making up my mind whether I’ll like it. It’s a college graduation present from my grandmother.”

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “It was her idea then, China?”

  He nodded. “She was born here—spent the first thirteen years of her life in China, so China it had to be.”

  “For you but not for her?”

  He said with a shrug, “Well, she’s been in a wheelchair the last eight years.”

  “Oh, I see. I’m sorry. So you had no choice,” she said, nodding, and noticed how white his skin was at close quarters. A pair of too-heavy dark eyebrows emphasized this pallor, and when they drew together in a frown—as they were doing now—they dominated his face, with its high cheekbones and stubborn jaw.

  “Well—since I’ve never traveled before,” he said with ano
ther shrug, “China just seems a freaky place to start. I mean, I’ve never traveled even in the United States, let alone Europe where everyone seems to begin. I suppose you’ve been to Europe?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Oh, here and there,” she said vaguely, and watching that impassive face she asked on impulse, “Don’t you ever smile?”

  He turned and gave her such a suddenly shrewd and thoughtful look that she was taken aback; she realized that in some way she was amusing him. “That goes with it?” he asked.

  Oh, very hostile, she thought. “I was also wondering how old you are,” she told him with a smile. “A second impertinent question for you.”

  “Twenty-two,” he said dryly.

  In the seat ahead of them Malcolm Styles turned and said, “I heard that, and I’m sitting with Jenny here, who’s twenty-five. Shall we change seats and let the infants have a go at each other?”

  Jenny’s piquant face surfaced beside his. “Infants!” she protested. “Why don’t we just turn the seats and face each other?”

  “You’ll miss the scenery.”

  “We can see it backwards for a while. Where was your grandmother born in China, Peter?”

  He reached into his duffle bag and brought out a small wrinkled map. “We go near it toward the end of the tour. I was told the guide could arrange a side trip so I can take pictures. A little village outside Datong,” he said, handing her the map and pointing. “Not too far from Beijing.”

  Malcolm said gently, “I hope we can all see it. What was it like in those days?”

  “Warlords,” said Peter, and nodded. “Yeah, I guess it’ll be interesting to see what’s happened since then; it sure beats reading about it. Her father was a doctor-missionary, and I guess they saw terrible things while they were there. Droughts. Famine. Confiscatory taxes. Disease.”

  “I hear even flies have been eliminated now,” said Malcolm, “although not the occasional drought, flood, and earthquake, unfortunately. What about you, Jenny?” he asked. “Why China?”

  Jenny beamed at him. “Well, I’d done enough backpacking through Europe—sorry, Peter,” she said, laughing at him, “and China it had to be, even if I had to borrow half the money to get here, which I did, because second-grade teachers aren’t exactly rich. Which is what I am,” she explained with a lively gesture. “Not rich but a second-grade teacher. There’s such a strong pull in me toward China that I just have to have been Chinese in a past life.”

  “The Empress of course,” said Peter, and suddenly grinned at her, those relentless black brows lifting to wipe away several years and make him a believable twenty-two-year-old.

  “A smile!” exclaimed Malcolm, with a humorous glance at Mrs. Pollifax.

  “I see it,” she said, smiling back at him. “Beautiful.”

  With the arrival of Peter’s first smile came the young woman with mop and pail again, to walk up and down and leave glistening streaks of water behind her. Mrs. Pollifax’s gaze moved beyond her to the window: to rice paddies with tender green shoots springing out of the water, a water buffalo plodding along a path behind an old woman, piles of mud-and-straw bricks and trimmed logs, and a house on stilts. She heard Jenny say, “Mr. Styles—”

  “Malcolm, please.”

  “Okay. Malcolm, you haven’t said what you do when you’re not traveling.”

  Mrs. Pollifax watched the black guardsman’s moustache tilt down as the brows rose humorously. “Now that will have to wait,” he told her lightly, “because it’s time for me to check out the men’s room—if my walking up the aisle doesn’t bring out that mop again.”

  Mrs. Pollifax gave him a thoughtful glance as he left, thinking how adroitly he’d sidestepped answering Jenny when it would have needed only a second to say I’m in business, theater, or advertising. She’d not expected him to be evasive; his voice had been quietly dismissing, and there was no overlooking his well-timed retreat. She wondered what he wanted to conceal and why he wasn’t ready for that question. Perhaps, she speculated, he was taking refuge in the men’s room to decide just what he did do when he was not traveling.

  Or perhaps she was looking much too hard for her coagent, except that she felt it ridiculous that she not know.

  The train was slowing. Joe Forbes strolled up the aisle and called out to them, “Mr. Li says we’re reaching the border now, and box lunches for us in half an hour.”

  At once cameras were unfurled and the buffs sprang to their feet, everyone except Mrs. Pollifax and Iris, who remained seated up front. Gazing out the window she thought again, So many people! They stood in queues, waiting to board the rear cars that George Westrum had called hard seats, and the lines were serpentine: men and women in simple cotton clothes holding bundles and waiting, among them soldiers in khaki with red stars on their caps, and behind them a series of shabby buildings and the outline of low green hills.

  Mrs. Pollifax left her seat and walked down the aisle to join Iris. “Not taking pictures, I see.”

  Iris looked up, startled. “Oh I’ll take a few later, just for me.” She smiled. “No matter what I do, though, they come out weird. Heads chopped off, and that sort of thing.” With a gesture toward the window she said, “I was just thinking what my friend Suzie would say about all those huts and rice paddies we passed. Suzie loves glamour; she’d say, ‘You’re spending all that money to fly halfway around the world and see this?’ ”

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled. “I suppose if you chose one of the city tours—Shanghai especially—you’d find nightlife and glamour. Were you tempted?”

  “Cities are what I know best,” Iris said ruefully. “But,” she added firmly, “I wanted something different.”

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “I think you found it.”

  Iris grinned back at her. “I think so, too.” She turned in her seat to face her. “Look, Mrs.—it’s Pollifax, isn’t it? This dress—it’s no good, is it.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Pollifax calmly.

  “Damn,” Iris said without rancor, “I knew I shouldn’t trust Suzie. She’s a go-go dancer,” she explained, “and the only person I know who’s traveled. Once to the Caribbean and once to Bermuda, so I let her choose for me.”

  “I’ve never met a go-go dancer,” Mrs. Pollifax said thoughtfully.

  “Really?” Iris bestowed her large radiant smile on her. “I should keep my mouth shut, but since you’ve never met one I’ll tell you that you’re talking to one now. You wouldn’t believe it, would you, with me being so clumsy, but when I dance I’m not. And how else would I know Suzie?” she asked candidly. “I did it full time for three years, and then when I started college I worked part time until I finished college last month.”

  “College last month,” repeated Mrs. Pollifax, and realized that her instincts had been sound and that Iris was going to have ever-widening dimensions.

  “Began college at twenty-eight,” Iris said triumphantly. “Took a high-school-equivalency test and just started because I never did finish high school. Maybe it’s a college nobody’s heard of, but it was just right for me. And I happened to take a year’s course on China,” she added, “and was the only person in the class to get an A. So I decided you could have Paris and London, I was going to come to China. Except I told Suzie there’d be no cocktail parties or men, but she said, ‘What’s a trip without cocktail parties and men?’ ”

  “What indeed,” said Mrs. Pollifax, fascinated.

  “So I reminded her men are what I don’t need, having been married often enough, but Suzie—”

  “Often enough?” echoed Mrs. Pollifax, regarding her with some awe.

  Iris nodded. “At sixteen to a cowboy—that was Mike—and then to Stanley, who turned out to be a crook, and then to Orris. He struck oil, which is when he decided he was too good for me. He was nice, though, he gave me a really fair shake when he left, and I may be dumb about clothes but not about money. That’s when I decided I’d had enough, though, and it was time to change my life.”

  “Yes,” said Mr
s. Pollifax, and waited.

  “I mean,” Iris went on eagerly, “we let men define who we are, right? That’s Women’s Lib. I went to some of the meetings at college and I could see how it had been with me. For Mike I ate beans and franks all the time and was a cocktail waitress. For Stanley I learned how to keep my mouth shut about his shady deals—‘button up,’ he was always growling. For Orris I lived in a trailer on the oil fields and was a go-go dancer until he struck it rich. And you know what?” she added, leaning forward and shoving back her mane of hair, “I did it all to please them, not me.”

  “I see exactly what you mean,” said Mrs. Pollifax, admiring the passion of Iris’ discoveries.

  “Except now I’ve let Suzie influence me,” she said, glancing ruefully down at the huge polka dots and stiff white collar. “What do I do? Will there be clothes in Canton, do you think?”

  “Chinese clothes.”

  Iris scowled. “I’m too big, I’m nearly six feet tall.”

  “Didn’t you bring anything to—well, relax in?”

  “I stuck in a pair of old jeans at the last minute—something old and something blue,” she said wryly. “In case I had a chance to ride horseback or something. And a denim shirt.”

  “Wear them,” Mrs. Pollifax told her firmly.