Emma Davies and the Great Race -- Chapter 2

(Before I even release this post, let me offer the now necessary disclaimer: This is set in East Asia in 1934. Some of the characters use offensively derogatory - but true-to-the-period - racial terms. Similarly, some of the Chinese characters speak the sort of pidgin English found only in 1930s movies. I DO NOT adhere to these stereotypes; you will note only the villains speak thusly. I was merely trying to recreate a world, with both its good and thankfully obsolete points...but we left poor Emma as she had been abducted.)

Chapter 2 - Britons never, never, never will be slaves?

At first, all you can see is a blurry point of light….try to concentrate, you say to yourself, as your head is still spinning from the effect of the chloroform. You hear a voice, tinny, Chinese: “Eh, boss-man, she awakens…”

Dark shapes moving in front of you. You can’t make them out. “Wha…?” is all you can say, gulping to keep back the nausea.

Another voice, deep, harsh, east-end London . “Right, you li’uhl devils. You nearly offed ‘er for good wiv the dose you gave ‘er. Easy onna poison next time, lads, aw right? We wants ‘em alive, or no profit – you unnastand profit, don’t you lads?”

A wave of drug-induced miasma washes over you, and your eyes roll up into your head as you start to pass out again. The last thing you hear is the Cockney voice grumbling out: “Lovely, well done, we’re landed, chaps.” Then you black out again.

You wake once more, exhausted, but the chloroform has worn off a bit more. You don’t know how long you’ve been out. The fuzzy point of light you can now see is a gas lamp in this dreary room you now realize you are in. Your limbs ache. You try to move them….you can’t!
The awful truth dawns on you: you feel your wrists firmly tied behind your back. You are seated in a wooden chair, your slender ankles also bound together. You try to move your legs but find your ankles are not only tied together but also pulled back and tied to the legs of the chair. You try to cry out, but your mouth is stuffed up this time – you feel a tight cloth gag filling your mouth and tied around your cheeks. All that emerges is a feeble “mmpphhff!”

“Oi, she’s back in the realm of the livin’!” you hear the guttural east end voice exclaim. You look to your left: a large man dressed like a stevedore, his tongue lalling out of his mouth, shuffles up to you and looks you over with hideously unwelcome attention. In the background, ahead of you but at the far end of this…this shack in which you ar being held captive, are two Chinese.

You look with helpless terror at the English man. He doffs his dusty bowler. “ Arfur Pinkins, at your service, your ladyship. I believe you have already made the acquaintance of Lester and Chong-Li.” You squint a bit to focus – yes, those are the two bellhops who abducted you from the hotel! Now they are dressed as coolies, undistinguishable from countless teeming thousands in the colony.

“They picked your outfit, as you might guess,” the odious Pinkins says. You wonder what he is taking about…until you look down at your dress. Gone are your fashionable clothes from London . Instead, you are wearing a light white silk dress, with short sleeves and a collar of shorts….a Suzy Wong dress, the dress style worn by….

A wave of red hot indignation rises up and clears your head. How dare they! Undressing you while you were unconscious, and dressing you like a…a…fallen woman! The nerve! You struggle against your bonds with obstinate fury, so angry are you at their impudence. But Arthur Pinkins just laughs as you exhaust yourself, straining futilely against the ropes lashing you to the chair.

“There, there, duckie, no need to get yer knickers in a twist…and quite lovely knickers they are, I might add!”

You lunge at him, but the ropes yank you back to the chair. You start to sob, frustrated, frightened, still dazed from having been so brazenly kidnapped.

From the back, Lester speaks up in his thickly accented English. “Hey, bossman, make her stop crying! Red face no good for sale. Clients want good girl, no problems!

What? You mind reels at the implications of what he said. But Arthur speaks to you before you have a chance to think. “You don’t have to cry, Emma. We’ll be right gentlemen from now on. If you stop crying, I’ll take the gag off. No tears innose lovely mince pies, aw right?” You nod miserably, and he unties your hateful gag. You gasp and cough as you can breathe fully again. Your mouth is dry as the Sahara .

“You horrible, horrible fiends!” you say softly. “Let me go!”

“Now, fiend is no’ a word I fink I like, “Arthur says. “An’ ‘ere I was, about to offer you some water…”

“No, please! Let me have some water!” you say.

“Now a lucky toff like you ought to know ‘ow to be polite, ask fer it nice-like!” Arthur says.

“Please, I would like some water.”

“Better!” Arthur pours some water out of a flagon into a dented pewter cup and lifts it to your lips. You drink in – it’s lukewarm and foul, but you desperately need it.

“Please let me go – what is it you want with me?” you ask, twisting slightly in your bonds.

“Oh, there is a rising market for refined European girls out ‘ere,” Arthur says. “Too bad you isn’t blonde, the slanties love ‘em blonde…”

“You don’t mean….?”

“Course I do, lamb. I ‘ave been in a bit o’ whatcha might call low water for a while, so I intend to rectify my situation with a bit of traffic onna side – namely, selling you to a wealfy whatcha call ‘em?

“Sultan,” says Lester.

“Yeah, Sull-‘han, down in Malay-land, where you’ll be his personal love-slave!”

“No! You can’t do this! It’s barbaric, it’s….inhuman!”

“Yes I certainly can, Emma. An look a’ it this way: you’ll still be livin’ be’er than most of the poor blighters there – at least, until the Sull-’han wears you out…heh heh heh…An’ with the coin I get from you I’ll move back to the Smoke an’ be livin in Belgravia, an’ every night onna tiles!”

“No! You dastardly monster!” You panic and start to scream for help. It might be your last chance! “Help! Somebody help me! I’ve been kidnapped! Please, somebody help – mmppphhffff!”

“Enuff ovvat!” Arthur sneers as he stuffs your mouth with the gag and stars to tie it back.. “Oh Lester, why is it all ‘e ‘igh-class bints always scream?”

“Don’t know bossman,” is the Chinese’s laconic reply. "Don't know what means bint."

"Yeah, right, well it's the King's English for bird." The Chinese look even more confused.
"No' worf the bovver, you two," Arthur mutters. Then he turns to you.

“Let’s make you a bit more salable merchandise,” Arthur says, as he reaches to the top of yoru had and pulls out the hairpin keeping your back tresses swept up. Your long black hair cascades down around your shoulders. For a moment Arthur is taken aback by your beauty. Then he hardens again. “Yeah, yeah, she’ll fetch a mint, this one will…”

You writhe as best you can, but you are trapped in this hideous nightmare, bound and gagged in some vile kidnapper’s lair, about to be sold into white slavery, maybe never to see home again!

Part 2

You squirm helplessly in your white silk courtesan’s dress and white pumps. You notice that although the dress appears to be modest enough, with a hem below the knee, there is a slit cut on one side up to a perfectly scandalous level, exposing your leg whenver you struggle a bit too hard. Arthur Pinkins ogles you every time the dress shows a bit of your leg; you try as best you can to deny him his crude enjoyments.

“Yes, my dear, you make a very fetchin’ prize, you do,” he says as he eyes your shapely form under the close fitting dress.

“I demand you release me right now!” you try to insist, but through the gag it comes out, “I weman hoo weweese me wight ow!”

“Whazzat, duckie? Pickin up a li’ul ovvat pidgin Pekinese? Oi, Lester my ol’ Dutch, she makin’ sense to you?”

“No bossman,” says Lester, not even looking up from his whittling.

Pinkins turns back to you, and says sotto voce, “Chinamans all ‘ave ‘er limitations, see? ’E calls me bossman coz ‘e can’t pronounce Arfur.”

“Neither can you, you swine!” you think to yourself. How to get out of this terrible plight? You cannot get the ropes to budge at all, and these desperate criminals are planning to sell you! You tug reflexively at the thought of being sold into slavery.

Pinkins chuckles as you writhe in the ropes. “Go ahead, girlie, struggle all you want. I got you tied up good n’ tight. You isn’t gettin’ away!”

You notice the sawdust on the floor and old grease-covered lamps on the walls – along with the wooden tables the whole building is an exercise in fire hazards. You shudder as you think the only reason this shack hasn’t burned down already is the fetid dampness of the wood – you must still be close to the harbour.

Pinkins turns to the two Chinese by the doorway at the far end of the dilapidated wooden building in which you are being held prisoner. “Eh, pigtails, any sign of our visitors?”

Lester impassively ignores the insult and says, “Two customers coming now.”

Chong-Li, the other Chinese, opens the door a little to allow two visitors in. One has an elaborate turban on his head and is clothed in purple silk. “The emissary from the Temenggong of Johor” Lester announces with a deep bow.

“Teme-what?” asks Arthur.

“The son of the Sultan and the prime minister of one of the seven sultans of the Malay peninsula ,” Lester explains.


“’Oo’s ‘e uvver one?” Arthur asks, pointing rudely at the second guest, a Japanese man who is more modestly dressed in modern clothes: top hat and tails.

“The aide de camp of the military governor of Manchukuo ,” Lester explains.

Arthur leans over to you and whispers, “Oh, Emma, you better ‘ope that Jap doesn’t buy you – the general has his pick from the lands he’s conquered in Manchuria . You’d have stiff competition wif all ‘em Chinese birds. An’ if you don’t satisfy the General…” Arthur makes a motion with his finger across his neck. You cringe in horror as his meaning sinks in.

Arthur straightens up and calls out to the Japanese. “Ah, welcome, welcome to our li’ul auction. A speshoo ‘onna to see you ‘ere. You’s doing a splennid job taking over from these Chinamen. Can’t wait til you runs the whole country – ‘cept ‘Ong Kong, of course. That’s part o’ the big red Empire, it is!”

The two guests look with displeasure at Pinkins and his blissfully ignorant chauvinism. In less than seven years, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Burma, and the rest of the the British Empire in the Far East would all be under Japanese occupation, though Pinkins could not know that now.

“Ah, you must be wantin’ to see the merchandise! Step righ’ up, don’t be shy…she’s a beauty, as I promised!” The two step closer and start to look you over. You wince as they lift your head by the chin to get a good look at your face, cringe as they admire your feminine curves under the dress, and try to make yourself as modest as possible as they look you up and down as if you were an animal. You start to cry at the degradation and horror of it all.

“Oi. Duckie, stop that! Customers don’t like it!” Pinkins says, rushing toward you.

“Leave the young lady alone, for heaven’s sake,” says the emissary from Johor in impeccable English. “Just stop badgering us all!”

The Japanese, in a thicker accent, says, “Yes, with respect, may we think about when the auction might proceed?”

“Eh, yeah, right, then let’s go!” says Pinkins.

“Wait, bossman, two more bidders come as I told you,” says Lester. Chong-Li admits two new men, one Chinese and dressed like a peasant, the other, surprisingly, a Westerner in a leather jacket and jodhpurs. “The assistant of a warlord in Jiangxi Province ,” Lester says, indicating the Chinese, “and the representative of a businessman in Rangoon ,” he continues, indicating the Westerner.

Arthur looks the Chinese newcomer up and down. “You must be one of them Liberation Army types – what’s that chap’s name, Zhou En-lai?”

“I work for Mao Zedong,” the Chinese man says.

“OK, from Communists I accept cash only. You lot are no good for credit. No respect for profit, you lot.” Arthur sounds indignant as he looks the People’s Liberation Army types up and down with suspicion. “Well, since we’re aw ‘ere, we can get the biddin’ star’ed!”

You look on with helpless horror – what a choice, to be sold to a Communist warlord, or a Japanese general, or maybe worse!

“Get ‘er up on ‘e auction block, boys!”

Lester and Chong-Li walk over to you, unite your feet , then lift you painfully out of the chair, and walk you to a small raised platform nailed together around one of the poles supporting the shack roof. They push you roughly against the pole, despite your eyes pleading for mercy. They show none as they force your back against the post.

“Go on, tie her!” Arthur snaps. The two henchmen cruelly chain you to the post, firm metal links are wrapped around your waist and across your chest, lashing you to the post. Meanwhile, Arthur sets up four seats for the bidders to ogle you from slightly below. You shift your body to reveal as little as possible, despite your slightly vulnerable position. Your hair cascades over one eye as you start to weep in fear and disgust at the degrading spectacle Pinkins is making of you. Lester pulls back your long black hair and then steps down.

“Let’s begin the bidding, shall we?” Arthur says.