Mr Wu poured the steaming topaz liquid into a cup as delicate as a shell, and as he handed it to her, he spoke in a hushed tone.
“See the colour?There is none of the black lead rubbish the English put in their tea here.This variety came about hundreds of years ago in a village in the mountains in Southern China, when soldiers came during the tea harvest and occupied the farmers’ homes.The farmers smoked the tender green tea leaves over a fire of pine logs to preserve them.So you see,” he said with a smile, “my people have always found ways to bring beauty out of hardship.”
Penny sipped her tea.She had not expected Limehouse to be so cosy.The intense, invigorating flavour almost made her forget why she had come.
Crispin, however, kept to the programme.“So about this brotherhood, sir.Have they really been bothering such peaceful, industrious citizens as yourselves?”
Penny slowly compressed the toe of her brother’s shoe with her boot to remind him whose adventure this was.
Mr Wu picked up the newspaper and folded it to show them a Saint George’s Cross.
“This was left on my friend’s laundry in Ming Street,” he explained.“The next day, it burned down.That is not the only such thing that has happened here.”
Penny got out her notebook.“Please, tell me everything, Mr Wu.”
A few hours later, Penny and Crispin were in a cab heading back to Bloomsbury.Penny had a little tin of tea in her lap, as well as a fragrant fried snack from the street vendor outside the shop which she was making short work of, in typical Penny fashion.
“Penny,” said Crispin suddenly.
Penny made a semi-attentive sound around her mouthful of golden-crisp dough.
“Why a Saint George’s Cross, do you think?”he asked.He was so interested in the whole subject that he didn’t even mind the sound of her eating, which he usually abominated.
Penny shrugged.“Seems simple.It’s for England, isn’t it?England for the English.”
“England for the English,” repeated Crispin thoughtfully.“And India, and Egypt, and the Sudan, and Hong Kong for the English.”He gave a low whistle.“And none of them welcome here?What kind of bargain is that?”
Penny licked her fingers shamelessly.“Careful, Brother.Ours is not to reason why,after all,“ she said with a touch of sarcasm.“Just be thankful you have onlyto doand notto die, snug in your office there in Downing Street.”
“Well, the Fenians probably wouldn’t mind taking me out,” he remarked.“Or—you never know—one of your friends might try making bombs.Whatever madeyoua suffragette?It’s not as if Father was apater familiaswho beat you black and blue or wouldn’t let you ride a bicycle.”
“Do you really want to know?”asked Penny, wiping her fingers on her handkerchief.
Crispin nodded.
“Well,” she said.“I can tell you, then.It wasn’t Father.It was Miss Hobhouse.”
Crispin squinted.“Hobhouse?You meanLadyHobhouse?Mother knows her, doesn’t she?”
“No, Crispin,EmilyHobhouse.The one who blew up the story about the concentration camps our government established for women and children in South Africa.”
“Oh, right,thatHobhouse.The one that was always hobnobbing—sorry!—with the Boers and giving speeches about how awful we Britishers were.”
Penny made a sound.
Crispin shook his head.“Sorry.I don’t mean to be rude.I just don’t see the connection.”
Penny drew a deep breath.“It’s just that before Miss Hobhouse, I believed you.”
Crispin’s eyebrows went high.“Believedme?”
“I believed that men—Englishmen, gentlemen, men like you and father—would keep women like me safe,” Penny said, her voice unnaturally calm.Penny was always so worked up about everything that now the quietness of her voice sent shivers down his spine.“That you all really thought that we were safer and happier as we were, in our little dolls’ houses.That you protected us from a grubby, mean, tiresome part of life, just as you would always try to protect us from anything horrible or dangerous.But you didn’t protectthosewomen.Did you?It’s all a sham, all of your high talk of chivalry, and I wouldn’t risk arat’slife on it, much less a woman’s.”
Crispin couldn’t be silent any longer.
“It waswar, Penny!I don’t say everything we did to the Boers was, well, quitecricket, and Milner shouldn’t have been rewarded for dragging things on as he did—everyone says it now—but if I recall, the Boers were doing their own part, keeping the war going long after they knew they couldn’t win.Our men were dying over there every day, weren’t they?Kitchener had to do something, and the civilians kept getting in the way.”
“Herding women and babies behind miles of barbed wire—women who looked just like your wives and sisters and mothers?Letting them starve and die of dysentery, when everyone knew it was happening for simplymonths?”
