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Out and About London. Thomas Burke
Читать онлайн.Название Out and About London
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Автор произведения Thomas Burke
Жанр Зарубежная классика
Издательство Public Domain
But the suey-sen was gone, done to death by the tea-rationing order. Gone, too, was the bland iniquity of the place. Our saunter through Pennyfields and the Causeway was a succession of disillusions. The spirit of the commercial and controlled West breathed on us from every side. All the dusky delicacies were suppressed. Dora had stepped in and khyboshed the little haunts that once invited to curious amusement. Opium, li-un, and other essences of the white poppy, secretly hoarded, were fetching £30 per pound. The hop-hoads had got it in the neck, and the odour of gin-seng floated seldom upon the air. The old tong feuds had been suppressed by stern policing, and Thames Police Court had become almost as suave and seemly as Rumpelmayer's. Even that joyous festival, the Feast of the Lanterns, kept at the Chinese New Year, had fallen out of the calendar. The Asiatic seamen had been made good by an Order in Council. All for the best, no doubt; yet how one missed the bizarre flame and salt of the old Quarter.
We found Pennyfields and the Causeway uncomfortably crowded, for the outward mail sailings were reduced, and the men who landed in the early days had been unable to get away. So the streets and lodging-houses were thronged with Arabs, Malays, Hindoos, South Sea Islanders, and East Africans; and the Asiatics' Home for Destitute Orientals was having the time of its life. Every cubicle in the hotel was engaged, and many wanderers were sleeping where they could. Those with money paid for their accommodation; for the others, a small grant from the India Office secured them board and bed until such time as proper arrangements could be made. The kitchens were working overtime, for each race or creed has its own inexorable laws in the matter of food. Some eat this and some eat that, and others will eat anything – save pork – provided that prayers are spoken over it by an appointed priest.
At half-past nine an occasional tipsy Malay might be seen about the streets, but the old riots and mêlées were things of the past. In the little public-house at the corner of Pennyfields we found the usual crowd of Chinks and white girls, and the electric piano was gurgling its old sorry melodies, and beer and whisky were flowing; but the whole thing was very decorous and war-timish.
We did, however, find one splash of colour. A new and very gaudy restaurant had lately been opened in a narrow by-street, and here we took a meal of noodle, chow-chow and awabi, and some tea that was a mocking echo of the old suey-sen. The room was crowded with yellow boys and a few white girls. Suddenly, from a corner table, occupied by two of the ladies, came a sharp stir. A few heated words rattled on the air, and then one rose, caught the other a resounding biff in the neck, and screamed at her: —
"You dare say I'm not respectable! I am respectable. I come from Manchester."
This evidence the assaulted one refused to regard as final. She rose, reached over the table, and clawed madly at her opponent's face and clothes. Then they broke from the table, and fought, and fell, and screamed, and delivered the hideous animal noises made by those who see red. At once the place boiled. I've never been in a Chinese rebellion, but if the clamour and the antics of the twenty or so yellow boys in that café be taken as a faint record of such an affair, it is a good thing for the sensitive to be out of. To the corner dashed waiters and some customers, and there they rolled one another to the floor in their efforts to separate the girls, while others stood about and screamed advice in the various dialects of the Celestial Empire. At last the girls were torn apart, and struggled insanely in half a dozen grips as they hurled inspired thoughts at one another, or returned to the old chorus of "Dirty prostitute." "I ain't a prostitute. I come from Manchester. Lemme gettater."
And with a final wrench the respectable one did get at her. She broke away, turned to a table, and with three swift gestures flung cup, saucer and sauce-boat into the face of her traducer. That finished it. The proprietor had stood aloof while the girls tore each other's faces and bit at uncovered breasts. But the sight of his broken crockery acted as a remover of gravity. He dashed down the steps, pushed aside assistants and advisers, grabbed the nearest girl – the respectable one – round the waist, wrestled her to the top of the marble stairs that lead from the door to the upper restaurant, and then, with a sharp knee-kick, sent her headlong to the bottom, where she lay quiet.
Whereupon her opponent crashed across a table in hysterics, kicking, moaning, laughing and sobbing: "You've killed 'er – yeh beast. You've killed 'er. She's my pal. Oo. Oo. Oooooowh!"
This lasted about a minute. Then, suddenly, she arose, pulled herself together, ran madly down the stairs, picked up her pal, and staggered with her to the street. At once, without a word of comment, the company returned placidly to its eating and drinking; and this affair – an event in the otherwise dull life of Limehouse – was over.
Years ago, such affairs were of daily occurrence, and the West India Dock Road became a legend to frighten children with at night. But the times change. Chinatown is a back number, and there now remains no corner to which one may take the curious visitor thirsting for exotic excitement – unless it be the wilds of Tottenham.
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