A Most Immoral Woman (16 page)

Two days it took to steam the nearly five hundred nautical miles down the China coast from Wei Hai Wei to the mouth of the Yangtze Delta, two days in which Morrison had plenty of time to wonder, fret, imagine, burn and hope, though he couldn’t have said what exactly he was hoping for. Early on the morning of the twenty-sixth of March, lying in his bunk between sleep and wakefulness, Morrison felt the shift of the engines. The steamer had left the East China Sea and entered the delta. The world outside his porthole was thick and grey, opaque air, turbid water.

He ought to have gone with James to Japan. There was no question but that the Russians were looking for trouble. James would not willingly give it to them. Yet Morrison was not convinced that James, irascible, stubborn and obsessive as he was, could avoid provoking it.

Dressing warmly against the dank air, he took himself above deck. Though the fog was still impenetrable, the earthy, estuarial
breath of paddy fields and vegetable gardens told him land was close.

A lightship arrived to guide the steamer through the treacherous shallows into the channel. The ships chugged in concert past low marshy banks to the mouth of the Whampoa River. Farms pitched into view, then mills and factories and graving docks, and waking industry proclaimed itself with a cacophony of clanging, scraping and whistling.

As the steamer arrived in sight of Shanghai itself, the channel grew crowded with a circus of sampans and steam liners, skiffs, paddle arks, junks, gunboats, launches and the tramps of a dozen nations and two dozen companies, all, it seemed, sounding their sirens, whistles and bells at once.

Yet for all the purposeful energy of the ‘Charing Cross of the Pacific’, there was a fecund, promiscuous, feminine sensuality here with which arid north China, for all its intellectual and political vitality, could not compete. Morrison felt both unnerved and stirred by Shanghai’s sultry breath, its sly dialect, its savage
t’ai-chi
of cosmopolitan and parochial. Peking and Tientsin were male, purposeful, important,
yang
. Shanghai, with its steamy, moist exhalations, was
yin
. A woman, and a loose one at that. Anyone could have her. It didn’t matter if you were an honest man or a pirate, a foreigner or a native-born, if you came from Canton or Paris, London or Szechuan, she offered herself up as easily as the vendors and hawkers on the Bund proffered tea eggs, steamed bread or their own—they swore—virginal sisters. If you were smart, you’d take her with one hand on your purse and your eyes wide open. It was an unsettling place in which to be meeting Miss Mae Ruth Perkins.

As they passed a hulk full of bonded Indian opium, Morrison
noticed Kuan’s frown. Most Chinese whom Morrison knew were unhappy with the British importation of opium to China. They saw the Opium Wars, in which Britain forced China to accept the importation of opium as part of the terms of trade and which began the process by which imperialist powers carved out concessions from Chinese territory, as the supreme humiliation.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Kuan,’ Morrison said. He ploughed on: ‘But you have to admit, Shanghai would not be Shanghai or Tientsin Tientsin for that matter, the Chinese Customs Service would not be so efficiently run, and places like Wei Hai Wei would be festering stink holes of disease and backwardness if it wasn’t for Western intervention. Japan had the Meiji Emperor. He put Japan on the right track, what, fifty years ago? China needs to do the same. And if it won’t, if it can’t, then it is up to the civilised nations of Europe to drag it into the modern age.’

‘Shi
,’ Kuan said after a pause. His answer was not less polite for being monosyllabic, but, whilst implying agreement, it also had the connotation of obeying an order.

Morrison’s thoughts turned to his arrangements. He would stay at the home of his colleague J.O.P. Blunt, he of the lavenderscented pomade. Blunt lived with his wife and children in a grand Western-style residence on Bubbling Well Road in the joint British and American International Settlement, of which Blunt was also Secretary. The Japanese consulate was conveniently close to the Blunts’ home. As for Mae, he had wired her hotel from Wei Hai Wei to inform her of his arrival, promising to send a note as soon as he had settled.

In his head, Morrison had composed numerous possible scenarios for their reunion. In some he gazed upon her with a curious indifference, for which he was thankful. In others—the
work of his heart rather than his head—they flew into one another’s arms. Certain versions allowed for the possibility of additional revelations from her, occasioning further moral outrage and passionate consequence. One variation that caused his chest to swell with hope had them agreeing that what was past was past; she was his and his alone now. That preferred by both pride and sensibility involved him enjoying her intimately one final glorious time and then splitting from her, occasioning tears on her part but demonstrating an unshakeable firmness on his own. That which caused him to gnash his teeth involved her having been so rushed by some bounder or another in the interim that she had entirely forgotten having bid him come. None of his fantasies took into account the possibility that she would be perched on a bench in the public gardens at the Bund under an enormous hat trimmed with pink flowers, waving at his launch. Paradoxically relieved by the sight of the source of his torment, he asked himself how he could ever have doubted her.

‘I am quite mad for Shanghai,’ Mae proclaimed as their carriage, piloted by two smartly uniformed Chinese drivers, made its way down the Bund toward Nanking Road. One driver, regal and straight, held the reins and whip. The other flourished a bell, scattering pedestrian and other traffic before them. Their carriage passed in front of the foreign shipping offices, hotels and
hongs
; the hustle of Shanghai’s river was reflected in the bustle of its streets. Western women paraded in the latest fashions and both foreign businessmen and Chinese compradors dressed with élan. Morrison, casual by inclination and bedraggled by travel, felt blurry and rustic in comparison.

If Mae minded, she gave no sign. ‘I am so happy you’ve come. We shall have such a glorious time here.’ She pressed her foot in its narrow boot against his.

The knots in his stomach loosened. All his tension, misgivings and foreboding—in short, every consequence of the use of his rational faculties with regard to the young lady beside him—evaporated like morning mist.

‘Did you find out what that Mr James was being so terribly urgent about?’ she asked.

Morrison delivered a witty rendition of his meeting with the excitable James in Wei Hai Wei. ‘And it’s not just the Russians, the British and the Americans who are stirred up by the
Haimun
. A Japanese naval commander wasn’t too thrilled the other day when, instead of his Admiral’s orders, he received on his wireless set James’s dispatch to
The Times
!’

Mae laughed. ‘And how is your war going, anyway?’

‘The Japanese have yet to capture Port Arthur but I expect that good news is not far off

‘And once Port Arthur falls, that will be the end of it?’

‘For all intents and purposes. Port Arthur is both strategic and symbolic. The Japanese have already overrun Korea. They still need to confront the Russians in engagements on land but they are doing what they can to disrupt the railways and block the ports so the Russians’ supplies must come over the mountains by cart and packhorse. They will easily be exhausted.’

‘I would think so. I’m exhausted just hearing about it.’

Now it was Morrison’s turn to laugh. Relaxed, invigorated and absurdly happy again, he reminded himself that if he was to justify this trip to Shanghai, to himself as well as James and their employer, he could not afford to be so distracted that he neglected his work. Folding her hand into his own, he mentally reviewed the tasks at hand. Molyneux had mentioned rumours of a naval engagement off Port Arthur in which the Japanese, dazzled by the flashlights from Russian-operated lighthouses, had failed to sink any enemy ships. Apparently, the officers responsible had shaved their heads in shame. No one in Chefoo or Wei Hai Wei could
confirm this story but he had better hopes here in Shanghai, where sources were looser lipped.

There was also the matter of the Chefoo-Port Arthur cable, which the Japanese had cut to punish Russian communications, acting on information he himself had provided them. The cable company had sent a ship to repair it but the Japanese navy turned it back, claiming the repair would breach neutrality. The company had protested but retired the ship south so as not to provoke an incident. Again, he expected to be able to get more detail in Shanghai. Finally there was the vexed issue of the railway concessions…

‘A penny for your thoughts.’

‘Ah…That’s a complicated one.’

‘Why? Are you thinking of another woman?’ She nudged him.

In his experience, such a question, however playful in phrasing, was rarely lighthearted in intent. ‘Such would be impossible in your presence. It’s just that I fear boring you.’

‘I cannot imagine how you could possibly bore me.’

Tentatively at first, Morrison began to expound on the politics of China’s cable communications and railway concessions. ‘Baron Rosen…General Dessins…the Lu-Han prospectus…’

A commotion erupted ahead. A motorcar had only narrowly avoided smashing into a dray. The Chinese cart-driver’s curses flew like shrapnel, aimed at everything from eighteen generations of the other driver’s ancestors to the likely possibility that his children would be born without arseholes. The driver of the automobile, a European, gave back as good as he got in a stream of language as evidently defamatory as it was incomprehensible.

‘Jànos!’ Mae exclaimed.

‘Jànos?’ Morrison echoed warily.

‘Yes. He’s a Hungarian and the first person to own a motorcar in Shanghai. It is quite a big deal. Everyone is much impressed with him.’

As she nattered on about Jànos, describing a dinner the previous night where he’d been the life of the party, Morrison sank into a sulk. The possibility that this Jànos might already have been added to her list of lovers was bad enough. Morrison was even more put out by the fact that, having encouraged him to talk about his interests, she’d obviously not taken in a word he’d said. Recalling his intention to love and thence leave her, he felt both fortified and brightened—like burnished armour. The metaphor pleased and comforted him.

‘I’m sorry. What were you saying about the Lu…Lu-something prospectus?’

She exceeds all expectations
. The guards of Morrison’s inner fortress threw open the gates, let down the drawbridges and breached their own defences. He was hers for the asking, and she had not even needed to ask.

They were in the relatively open country and fresh air of Bubbling Well Road in no time. The Blunts’ Head Boy, Ah Chang, hurried out to greet them. He told them that the Blunts were upcountry. They’d be back that evening and were expecting Morrison. Relieved of any need to dawdle, Morrison instructed Ah Chang to have Kuan, when he arrived from the port with the luggage, send the washing to the steam laundry on Hanbury Street. Having reserved the carriage, he instructed the driver to deliver them in good speed to Mae’s hotel.

Once in her room, she drew him down onto her bed with a familiar urgency. ‘I have missed you so much.’

Clothing piled up on the carpet. No one else existed. No one ever had. No one…Morrison abruptly recalled her telling him that Martin Egan had once had her for days in succession in Shanghai.
Don’t ask
, he warned himself.
You won’t like the answer
. He seethed.
Don’t
. He struggled.
Ask
. ‘Was it here?’

‘Was what here, honey? What are you talking about?’

‘Egan.’

A pause. ‘Martin? What about him?’ She rolled onto her side, draping the sheet carelessly over her curves. With one arm stretched under her head and the other hooked over it, she regarded Morrison with lazy eyes. She toyed with a curl whilst awaiting his answer.

Morrison squeezed out his words through a rigid jaw. ‘Was it here, this hotel I mean, that he…he
had
you?’

‘Yes, I believe it was. Why?’

Why
? It was as though he could see, clear as day, the younger man, the damned American with his damned handsome features and excellent teeth, lying in the bed betwixt them with a hand on her breast. Once this vision had taken purchase, he was unable to evict it.

‘Does it ever occur to you…’ His lungs filled with anguish. He could not finish the sentence.
Racked with jealousy!

‘What, honey?’

That this
. ‘That this.’
Hurts
. ‘That people.’
Me
. ‘Might talk.’
Damned pompous. Why did I say that and not what I meant? Distraught with passion!
‘They see you flirting with every Tom, Dick and Harry.’

Mae studied him for a moment and then erupted into merriment so hearty her breasts quivered. Her stomach rippled with waves of laughter.

‘Why is that funny?’ Petulance fluted his words.
Humiliating. Damned humiliating. As though I cannot satisfy you alone
.

‘Ernest, honey, don’t you understand me by now? I don’t care what people say. You will never please people. Well, maybe
you
will please people. Not me. Not that way. I promise you that if I were to take up a nun’s habit tomorrow, by the day after they’d all be whispering about the scandalous manner in which I wore my wimple. I do not doubt that my own parents, whilst professing in their letters to miss me ardently, are relieved to have a holiday from the obloquy that my presence always threatens.’

‘I just don’t like to hear that people are speaking ill of you. That’s all.’

‘If to note that I have desires and urges and the wherewithal to act them out is to speak ill of me,’ she responded hotly, ‘then I shall save everyone the trouble and speak ill of myself. I make no pretence of propriety. Propriety interests me not in the least.’

That is self-evident
.

She studied him for a moment. She kissed him on the nose. ‘Oh, honey, if that’s what’s troubling you, please don’t worry. You’ve been awfully moody. Is that what’s been on your mind?’

He nodded stiffly.
Of course not. It is that you can need another when all I need is you
.

‘Oh, Ernest, let’s not quarrel—not today, not ever. Certainly not over something as silly as whether people are pretending to disapprove of behaviour they envy.’

‘Hypocrisy is rife,’ Morrison conceded between clamped teeth. ‘Don’t think that I don’t also detest it.’

‘Well then, come, let us be honest with each other and to heck with the rest of the world. If you’re really upset with me,’ she said with widened eyes, ‘you can spank me and I’ll tell you I’ve been a
naughty girl.’ She propped herself up on her hands and knees so as to better display the realm of punishment and peered around at him with an irresistible expression. ‘Come on, honey, my Cinnabar Gate, my Open Peony Blossom, my Jewel Terrace awaits your Jade Stalk, your Heavenly Dragon Pillar.’ She giggled. ‘Your Swelling Mushroom. I’m sure I’ve forgotten one.’

‘My Coral Stem.’ Morrison fought back a smile.

‘That’s it! I will even allow you to bring the Flowering Branch to the Full Moon as long as you’re gentle.’ She wiggled her bottom at him. ‘But I do think I need a little slap first, don’t you? Considering how bad I’ve been?’

Morrison raised his hand.

‘You know, in my experience,’ she observed, ‘men of the cloth are inordinately fond of this particular practice.’

Morrison stayed his hand.

Did he recall Reverend Nisbet, whom they’d met at Mountain-Sea Pass that night?

He did. Not happily. And less so by the second.

Within the Reverend Nisbet’s breast, it seemed, his ordained love for mankind wrestled with an innate revulsion of same. She had discovered not long after that evening that a similar struggle occurred between an abhorrence of sin and a natural predilection for it.

It took a moment for her words to sink in.

‘God no.’

‘God yes.’ She put particular emphasis on the word ‘God’.

Desolation!
‘Did you…’

‘All he desired was for me to sit naked but for my stockings and shoes in an overstuffed reading chair in the mission in Tientsin when Mrs Nisbet was absent and play with myself in
front of him. He took care of his own pleasure. There was a terrible moment when his face went crimson and I feared he was about to be struck with apoplexy. It would have been most awkward. As it turned out, the congestion was the normal precedent to his eruption. Also, it would have been more pleasant if the chair I was sitting in had not been stuffed with horsehair. I could feel it on my buttocks and thighs and back for a week, I swear. After, he spanked me for some time. My skin went very red. I could only just tolerate it. But by far the worst part was that he forced me to endure a sermon on the nature of lust and sin for at least half an hour afterwards.’

If there is a hell, here is a vision of it
. ‘But why?’

‘Because he felt guilty, I presume.’

‘I didn’t mean why the sermon. Why did you do it?’

‘Because he asked. Begged, really. I felt sorry for him. Anyway, no harm done and it made him happy, for a moment, anyway. I like making people happy. It is my gift.’

Morrison was unable to argue with that. In as nonchalant a tone as he could summon, he asked, ‘And did you derive pleasure yourself or was it an act of charity—
Christian
charity in this case?’

A sweet laugh rewarded the bitter pun. ‘My pleasure was in being observed. Anyway, you should know that when I touched myself I was thinking about you.’

‘Is that so?’ Morrison asked, his voice arid.

‘It was certainly so.’

‘Enough, Mae. No more stories.’

She looked surprised. ‘I thought you liked my stories.’

‘Not that sort. Not that way. Not any more.’

She studied his face. ‘All right. As you wish.’

Morrison reached for his shirt. His mood had soared and plunged so many times in the last several hours that he was exhausted. He wished to return to the Blunts’ to speak with his host about ships and mines and war. For the first time since meeting Mae Ruth Perkins, he looked upon her voluptuous languor with only the desire to flee from it.

‘Honey. What are you doing?’

‘Getting dressed.’

‘But we haven’t made love.’

Morrison, too wretched to respond, was fumbling a cufflink into place when she embraced him from behind, throwing her arms around his chest and burying her face in his back.

‘I have a gift for making people miserable sometimes, too,’ she whispered. ‘I know that. I’m not happy about it. But if I let go of my honesty, I let go of myself. You understand that, don’t you?’

‘I have to leave, Mae.’ The air in the room was close, suffocating. He pushed her hands off his torso and stood up, feeling her eyes on him as he finished dressing.

‘I have reserved a carriage for us tomorrow,’ she said as he made for the door. ‘I thought you could show me the native city. Meet me here around eleven, won’t you?’

When Morrison was a boy, a carnival had come to Geelong. Amongst the sideshow acts was that of a hypnotist. He had watched, arms crossed in defiance at the spectacle, as before the man’s spinning wheels and gentling voice the volunteers grew glassy-eyed and pliable. He found it horrible. As long as he lived, he had vowed to himself that day, he would never surrender control of his actions to another in the way those sad, suggestible sods had done.