‘Ooh, are those the pie things?’ his father called hopefully.
‘She doesn’t understand, Ba,’ Joe called back, ‘you’ll have to try harder …’
‘My English is fine,’ his father huffed, although since he also swore up and down that King Edward was a fine figure of a man, Joe suspected that it was code for appalling.
Joe opened the door, still laughing, but then stopped, because his heart vaulted.
There was no choir outside. Only a man. There were burn scars across the left side of his face and he looked as if somebody might once have abandoned him in the Arctic and left him to find his own way home, but he was well-dressed and he held himself so straight he must have been from the army or the navy. Joe had met too many of Toby’s military friends to place him, but that didn’t stop him feeling happy to see him.
‘You came. I haven’t seen you for ages.’
The man looked alarmed. ‘Pardon?’
‘Come in, it’s freezing,’ Joe said. ‘Sorry – you’re going to have to believe me, I’m very glad to see you but I can’t remember where we know each other from. Are you from the regiment? No, you can’t be,’ he corrected himself, puzzled. There were no white people in the regiment. The army grouped soldiers more or less by colour. Toby was too noticeably Chinese to go in with a white regiment, so he had gone in with the Sikhs. He always said he was lucky not to look more like Joe, who would have been dumped into a regiment full of hopeless Eton boys and dead years ago after some heroic stupid charge.
‘No, the Psychical Society.’ The man was well-spoken, officerly. ‘Eleanor Sidgwick is coming too, but I’m the placeholder. She just called on someone else on the way. She gave me your Christmas card for proof. We don’t … know each other,’ he added.
‘Sorry,’ Joe said, though he was still sure they did. He had to crush the feeling down. ‘I’ve got you mixed up.’
‘It’s all right. You’re …’ He had to glance again at the envelope, then turned it around helplessly for Joe to see. Mr Tchang.
‘Jang,’ said Joe, charmed because the man had looked so worried by the spelling. ‘It’s just how the French write Chinese, I don’t know how they came up with something so odd.’ He put George down. George ran off, following the sound of Toby tickling Beatrix in the next room and cavalrymen horsing about. ‘Do you work there? At the Society I mean.’
‘No, just visiting.’ The man handed over the envelope and didn’t come up the step. His hands were in a bad state. There were scars across his fingers, one of which was crooked, broken and not healed properly. ‘Chinese, you said?’ he asked. Not in the accusatory way bigots asked. He was handling the idea with such care he seemed afraid Joe might take it off him. ‘That’s right. Anyway.’
Joe opened the door wider. ‘Coming in? We’ve got about forty people already and we’re still expecting the other half of a cavalry regiment.’
‘Who is it?’ Alice called, on her way down the stairs again. Behind her, a couple of her friends were stretching to hang up mistletoe on the gallery banisters, laughing.
‘Someone from the Psychical Society, Eleanor’s late.’
‘Anyone capable of unequine conversation is extremely welcome,’ she said.
‘See?’ said Joe.
The man smiled, at least, and finally did as he was told. He glanced up when from upstairs came a cheer that sounded a lot like they might have got the Taj Mahal fountain working. It didn’t make him jump, but he was on edge. Joe touched his arm to try to bring him back. He would still have sworn to a jury that they knew each other, but it must have just been an epilepsy illusion, because he couldn’t recall a particular conversation. Knowing that it was only a misplaced impression did nothing to smooth it over. ‘So Eleanor wandered off and left you, did she?’
‘She pointed me in the right direction.’
‘She’s a bit … yes,’ said Joe, not wanting to say bad things about her. ‘If you’d like to stay overnight, there’s plenty of room. You don’t have to decide now; decide after some wine.’
‘It’s all right, thank you, I’m staying in Knightsbridge.’
‘But wine?’ Joe pressed, wanting to make him sit down and fighting a rush of anger with Eleanor for having left him alone. It wasn’t her fault; the man seemed steady and it was only a fractional brittleness that said he wasn’t. Joe wouldn’t have recognised it if he hadn’t seen it before at one time or another in half the people upstairs.
‘Please.’
‘More reliable supply in the kitchen,’ Joe said, because it seemed better not to put him in front of all Toby’s loud friends, or even the eager intensity of the Society scientists.
The man looked relieved, then laughed when Joe tucked a sprig of silk holly into his breast pocket. They were easily the plainest people in the house. With so many of the women in bright dresses, and the vivid-sashed uniforms of the cavalry officers, there wasn’t much else in the way of grey and white but them. Joe was even more glad of him than before.
However much Joe promised himself he was a perfectly worthwhile person, it was difficult not to look at Toby’s friends and feel like a coward for not serving. To be clearly demarcated as such in black tie was uncomfortable. It didn’t matter that he oversaw the workshop that made the artillery they used. It always niggled, and worse because he couldn’t remember why he hadn’t signed up too. Toby was good at telling him about the life he’d forgotten, and Toby said he had forbidden it because you couldn’t waste a good brain on cavalry, but Toby was also prone to telling whichever story he thought would go down best.
The kitchen was large enough to stay at one end of it without disturbing everyone else too much. Joe poured two glasses, mismatched because all the matching ones were upstairs now, then put the pan back on the stove, where Alice poured in another bottle. Her dress was a brilliant peacock blue whose shade changed all the time.
‘Hot, careful,’ Joe murmured as he handed over the glass.
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m Joe,’ said Joe.
When the man said his name was Kite, it sounded familiar. Joe wished the déjà vu would go off. It had never lasted this long before.
While they talked, Joe stoked up the fire behind them. The kitchen used to be two rooms, knocked through now, so it had two hearths, one at either end. The front door opened again and a new clatter of soldiers came through and raced upstairs. Some of them had brought husbands and wives, and Alice went out to see them properly. Kite watched as if he’d never seen so many people in a house at once. He relaxed little by little and Joe felt relieved. Toby’s crowd wasn’t for everyone. They had a sweet but clumsy unconsciousness of how much space they took up, and how it could feel threatening to anyone less strong or less young.
‘So what brought you to the Society?’ Joe ventured.
‘I was looking for someone I used to sail with. He told me to look up Mrs Sidgwick because he didn’t know where he’d be living. And then I didn’t get much further. I’ve been staying in her attic.’
‘Find him?’
‘Yes, he’s well,’ Kite said, but not as though he wanted to dwell on it. It must have been a lie, unless the friend didn’t have a spare blanket to sleep on.