The last puff of train engine smoke vanished up and around the bend, as if a divine starter’s pistol had signaled the beginning of a new race. After taking a seat and settling in, Eric recalled a line he had picked up in school: “We must prepare in the days of comfort, for when the days of hardship come, we will be prepared to meet them.”
Eric Liddell was prepared to meet whatever challenges came.
Or so he thought.
[24] D. P. Thomson, Scotland’s Greatest Athlete: The Eric Liddell Story (Barnoak, Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland: Research Unit, 1970), 75.
[25] Ibid., 74.
[26] Eric Liddell, The Disciplines of the Christian Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985), 61.
[27] David McCasland, Eric Liddell: Pure Gold: A New Biography of the Olympic Champion Who Inspired Chariots of Fire (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 2001), 115–16.
[28] Ibid, 111.
[29] Ibid.
[30] D. P. Thomson, Scotland’s Greatest Athlete: The Eric Liddell Story (Barnoak, Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland: Research Unit, 1970), 81–82.
[31] Ellen Caughey, Run to Glory: The Story of Eric Liddell (Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour, 2017), e-book.
[32] David McCasland, Eric Liddell: Pure Gold: A New Biography of the Olympic Champion Who Inspired Chariots of Fire (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 2001), 119.
CHAPTER 9
A SORT OF HOMECOMING
Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.
Mark 5:19
July 18, 1925
Fourteen days after leaving London’s Victoria Station, Eric stepped onto the station platform at Pei Tai Ho, the Chinese beach resort he’d not seen or played at for eighteen years. He scanned the small crowd waiting there until he found his father and mother, his sister, Jenny, and his younger brother, Ernest.
They spotted him as well and, within seconds, had him wrapped in hugs, his mother waiting until the last for her turn at him. He breathed in the oddly familiar scent of her. “Mother,” he whispered as she pressed another kiss against his cheek. “Mother,” he said again.
“Let’s get your luggage,” his father said, “and be on our way.”
They looked good, all of them. His parents had aged, of course, but so had he—receding hairline and all. Ernest had grown to a strapping lad of twelve, and Jenny looked as lovely as he had remembered. “Where are Rob and Ria?” Eric asked.
“They’ll join us next week,” James Liddell said. “That’ll give you five weeks total with the whole family before you get to work.” He beamed at his wife. “Won’t that be something, Mary? Five weeks with all our children?”
Mary didn’t answer; she only nodded.
They loaded everything—including themselves—into a donkey-drawn carriage and settled in for the short trip to their summer cottage. They’d hardly pulled away from the station when Ernest begged, “Tell us everything about your trip.”
Eric threw back his head and laughed. “Which part?”
“All of it!” Jenny exclaimed.
“How about the weather?”
Ernest wrinkled his nose. “Not that.”
“Partly cloudy. Pouring rain in parts. Sunny in others,” he teased, his eyes taking in the unfamiliar terrain. He’d hoped he could have remembered even a fraction of it. Of being there with Rob. The smells, the sounds . . . anything.
Jenny punched her brother’s upper arm, bringing him back to the moment. “Anything but that. Did you meet anyone interesting?”
Eric nodded. Indeed, he had—a Lithuanian who spoke only of the poverty of his country, something Eric had not fully appreciated until their train passed through the country. Then he’d been able to take note of the people—a large number without shoes or decent clothing—and of the houses, most not decent enough for any human and yet inhabited by many.
He’d also met a Chinese man who sat next to him for a portion of the trip and carried a bundle wrapped in a skin.
“—and every so often the car would rock hard,” Eric said, “and when it did, a large swarm of flies would rise up and . . .” Eric felt the pain of such poverty in the deepest part of himself and he frowned, aware that his younger sister and brother were looking at him now, waiting. “And then back down again.”
“It sounds positively awful,” Mary said. “That poor, poor man.”
“And for you, Eric,” Ernest said, “for having to sit so close.”
An hour later, Eric stood next to his father on the beach. They’d cuffed their pants to their calves as the water lapped over their bare feet. “I read your report to the LMS while on the train,” Eric said, resting his hands on his hips as he took in the beauty around him. Something familiar caught hold of his memory now, and he breathed it in. “Is it really so grim here now?”
James’s chin rose a notch, something Eric had almost come to expect from his father, even though he’d so rarely seen him in his life. “Worse,” he said finally. “This country has been brought to a sad condition, Eric. The work of the church has been more difficult than ever.”
Eric blinked, furrowing his brow. Had he made a mistake by coming now? In Britain, he had the world at his fingertips when it came to his work. But here? No one knew him beyond his being the son of Rev. James Liddell.
But once Eric made up his mind to do—or not to do—something, little could change it.
IT HAD BEEN DECIDED that upon return to Tientsin at the end of the holiday, Eric would live in the upper room of James and Mary Liddell’s home. At twenty-three, Eric had essentially been on his own for nearly two decades. He was an independent man, a scholar, and for all practical purposes, a world conqueror. And now? Now he lived in his parents’ attic.
James and
