Fragrant Flower by Barbara Cartland Page B

she had learnt whole families lived and died.
    There was a carriage waiting for them drawn by two horses, but Azalea’s eyes were on the rickshaws. She was listening too for the first time to the strange tinkling lilt of the Cantonese language and pidgin English which contained no r’s, as the rickshaw-boys solicited for clients, crying “Lickshaw! Lickshaw!”
    As they drove from the wharf the streets were so narrow and so full of pedestrians that it seemed impossible that the horses would find their way through them.
    There were many soldiers and sailors, Portuguese priests, nuns, and Azalea caught a glimpse of a scarlet-curtained palanquin swaying as it was carried by four sturdy men.
    She also saw several Mandarins riding in rickshaws – she recognised them because they had jade hat-buttons and robes of brilliant satin embroidered with gold thread. In contrast there were all too many ragged children staring hungrily at the food hawkers and at the Chinese who could afford it sitting down in the street for their shik-anchan. Azalea knew this meant their midday meal.
    Fish with open mouths and large eyes hung decoratively head-down from the tops of open stalls. Red snappers, caught off Hainan, sea bream which had a red swelling between the eyes, lizard fish with mouths entirely lined with teeth, Macao sole and the huge conger pike with dagger-like teeth and a smooth tapering body.
    Mrs. Chang had taught Azalea about these and also about the birds of Hong Kong, many of which she could see for sale in gold painted cages. The yellow-green South China whale-eye seemed to be a favourite with the small shopkeepers.
    “Gay bird cheer up sad people,” Mrs. Chang had explained.
    “You mean shopkeepers have cages of them just to please their customers?” Azalea asked.
    “Happy customers buy more,” Mrs. Chang replied.
    The bird Azalea wanted most to see was the Chinese blue magpie. Mrs. Chang had described and even drawn for her the magpie’s dazzling blue wings and tail, his coral red bill and legs.
    “We believe to see a bluebird brings luck,” Azalea explained.
    “Many blue magpies – you much good luck!” Mrs. Chang smiled.
    “I hope so,” Azalea said wistfully, thinking, however, it was unlikely.
    She had the uneasy feeling that once she reached Flagstaff House she would once again become a household maid-of-all-trades, incessantly abused and criticised by her aunt.
    There were crowds everywhere. Never had Azalea imagined that so many people could be jammed into such a small space. Every house seemed to be tottering and bending under the weight of the human life within it.
    The air was full of cries and voices, the clop-clop of wooden shoes and the smell of spicy cooking.
    ‘It is just as I expected it would be!’ Azalea thought.
    But she had not realised that the streets would be so beautiful with long, narrow, coloured pennants and banners hanging from the high houses.
    In the richer parts balconies were festooned with creepers, while the houses with their porticos and colonnades looked cool in the hot sunshine which seemed to come from an almost purple sky.
    “Really, the place smells!” Lady Osmund said sharply as they passed what looked like a huge perambulator on which a Chinese man was cooking several different dishes at the same time.
    No one answered her, and after a moment, as if determined to find fault, she said,
    “The coolies look ridiculous with their enormous hats, like over-turned basins!”
    Azalea longed to answer that she thought the coolies made everything seem Oriental and exciting. But she knew that such a remark would only be replied to contemptuously by her aunt and refrained from speaking.
    Flagstaff House was, she thought, like every other important British residence abroad. She had seen so many of them in India and they all appeared to have been designed on the same pattern.
    Solid, imposing, they were unmistakably English, just as the rooms inside might have been conveyed there