Mr Ma and Son Read Online Free PDF Page B

themselves, have them out. As for the rent, you charge whatever you deem fit. They couldn’t go to a hotel. You never know with hotel people – most unreliable. You and I are both Christians, and we must fortify ourselves with the true spirit of Christian humility in our efforts to provide some succour for this Chinaman and his son.’
    Mrs Wedderburn stroked the long hair under the little dog’s neck, and said nothing for a long while. In her mind she was feverishly working out exactly how much rent she could charge, or whether she should put her foot down and refuse to accommodate two murderous, fire-raising, rat-eating Chinamen. Anxious not to leave the Reverend Ely just hanging there frozen in silence, she could only prevaricate, ‘And they don’t smoke opium?’
    ‘No, no,’ the Reverend Ely assured her.
    She proceeded to pose countless questions based on the Chinese things she’d learnt from novels, films, plays and missionaries. She left no stone unturned. But when she’d exhausted all her questions, she suddenly regretted ever having asked them. Didn’t her questions show quite clearly that she already intended letting the rooms to them?
    ‘Thank you, Mrs Wedderburn,’ said the Reverend Ely with a smile. ‘We’ll leave it at that then. Four pounds five shillings a week, and you’ll see to their breakfast.’
    ‘I can’t allow them to use my bath.’
    ‘No, of course not. I’ll tell them they must go out for their baths.’
    With these words, and without any further effort to entertain the little dog, the Reverend Ely snatched up his hat and coat, and hastened off. He rushed along the street, and when he found himself in a secluded spot, exclaimed in pent-up tones, ‘Bloody hell! All for two Chinese chaps!’

II
    M R MA and his son boarded a steamer at Shanghai, and sailed all the way to London in a vague daze. During the forty days they spent at sea, the elder Mr Ma struggled up on deck but once. The moment he stepped out of the cabin door, the ship lurched and he was thrown head over heels. Without a murmur, he steadied himself against the door and went back inside. The second time he came up, the ship was already in London, and completely motionless. Young Mr Ma did much better than his father, and only felt a little seasick as the boat passed Taiwan, experiencing no trouble at all after Hong Kong.
    We’ve already observed young Mr Ma’s appearance. There was a difference on board ship, though: he wasn’t so thin then, and his brow wasn’t so tightly furrowed. It was, moreover, his first trip abroad, and the first on an ocean liner, and everything struck him as fresh and exciting. As he leant on the ship’s rail, with the sea breezes whisking up spray and blowing his face bright red, he felt almost as free as the waters of the ocean.
    The elder Mr Ma was no more than fifty, at the most. But he deliberately conveyed an air of decrepitude, as if he felt that on attaining a certain age one should no longer lift a finger, but should pass the day in sleeping and eating, and eating and sleeping, without taking one more step than was necessary. He was shorter in stature than his son, but his face was much fuller. He had very bushy eyebrows and very rounded cheeks, and on his upper lip there was a little crescent-moon of a moustache, which in the last couple of years had acquired its first strands of white. His eyes were the same as Ma Wei’s: big, bright and pleasant-looking. He always wore large tortoiseshell spectacles, but since he was neither short-sighted nor long-sighted, the sole purpose of the spectacles was to make him appear more dignified and venerable.
    When he was young, Ma Tse-jen – such being the elder Ma’s name – had studied at the Methodist Congregational Mission school. He managed to commit to memory quite a few English words and learn the grammatical rules off pat, but in exams he’d never get a mark of more than thirty-five per cent. Sometimes he would collar a fellow