The more he thinks on it the more he hopes his cards are shit. He could then leave this rank, black cloud of a country and return to Shanghai. He’ll be hired to work his passage back, but has only enough money for one life when he arrives and he’ll be hanged if he’ll throw his savings in the mix tonight. Now that the circumstances are right in front of him, he prays to his ancestors to lose.
Finn needs only one more point to win and he holds a ‘3’. He has no need to bluff, but he allows the tension to build anyway.
‘Put.’ Finn says at long last.
All heads turn to Ling. He does not follow his opponent’s advice to throw, or ‘put’ his card in, rather, he forces Finn to lead with his card. His aim is for everyone to witness how squarely Finn will triumph. There must be no dispute.
Finn pauses again, which sends the other men into an aching moment of anticipation, then he flips his ‘3’ down in front of Ling. Unless Ling also holds a ‘3’ the boy is Finn’s.
A whoop goes up all around the table, and then another moment of complete silence prevails until the slow steady scraping commences when the boy takes up his knife again. He received his new name by means of his father’s casual glance at an English newspaper, Mr Jonesy Rawlins, who finished his apprenticeship on Tuesday … While he lay across his mother’s breast, blood gushing from the place of her recent delivery until she almost bled to death, or so the midwife said when she insisted on increasing her compensation, he was named Yun, ‘born in the clouds’.
Father and son have not exchanged glances during this game of ownership. Mr Ling places his card down as Jonesy’s shavings fall silently to the floor.
The King card shows his face. Ling has lost. The boy is lost. And then a great roar of voices and the pounding of fists on the table are too much for the small room as they celebrate the birth of Jonesy’s apprenticeship.
Three Colt Street is deserted at this late hour. The screeching sounds of fighting crows break the silence as they lay waste to a mound of discarded entrails the lazy butcher has tossed in an alley near his blood-splattered shop. A breeze carries the stench. The master and the apprentice walk in different forms of sobriety; Finn’s ale has worn off after the thrill of his victory, and Jonesy entertains a thoughtful terror of the unknown.
Finn wends his way along expertly in the fog that speedily rolls in from the river. He is a late-night creature, a man who is comfortable in and with the darkness. Jonesy notes this and how efficiently his master slips his key in the front door.
‘Follow me. I’ll get you sorted tomorrow. Tonight you’ll make do with a sleep in the scullery. At least you’ll be warm.’
Jonesy bows his head and begins to express his thanks when a figure advances and moves the air in the room like the shadow puppets of his childhood. She looks like midnight meeting the waning sun. Her gown is a blue so dark it seems it’s been dipped in a bottle of ink. He has never seen hair the colour of a Shanghai sunset, or the beauty of that sunset in a woman. It leaves him speechless. He is not aroused; the feeling is purer, as though he has stepped into a poem, her beauty encased in a couplet.
Clovis takes the measure of Jonesy with a vulture-like eye that seems to penetrate his deepest fears. She circles him; her nostrils flare at the clinging aroma of herbs and other men’s games. She steps back and surveys the delicate manner in which he allows the observations. His thick, dark lashes fall to his cheeks when he lowers his eyes. He cannot bear to be scrutinized so, but he endures it.
‘I have seen you skulking around the river front. You like to watch the ships. Yes?’
‘Yes, mistress.’
‘Hmm. What shall we do with that long plait hanging down your back?’
‘Whatever Mistress wishes.’
This makes her laugh.
His queue is thick at the top and gradually tapers out to a few thin strands below the back of his knees.
For a moment her gaze travels from Finn to Jonesy and then back again.
‘I think you can train him,’ she says to Finn. ‘But he won’t last long.’
She offers him no bedding, nor food or drink.
Finn cuts a piece of cheese and points to the bread and a slice of meat pie.
‘You look like a fuckin’ skeleton. If you’re gonna work for me, you need more flesh.’
No one has ever considered his strength, or lack of it. No one has ever considered him at all.
The stinking cheese tastes foul, but Jonesy scoffs it with the bread. He’s smart enough not to refuse the food. In the past, a simple statement such as ‘I do not care for cheese’ could bring a slap, or worse.
Finn has made a bowl of punch, and this Jonesy does like. His senses sharpen after the first few gulps. He will not speak until he is allowed, but he would like to say that he is very glad to be here and away from his father’s house where the walls never rest, where someone is always in need of extra care, where the days never end, they just turn darker. He’d like to say aloud to someone that already he breathes a larger share of the air than he ever has done in his life,
