Deceptions

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

For Cynthia, Andrew and Eric

Tart I

Chapter 1

Sabrina Longworth stood at the window of the Quo Fu Antique Shop on Tian Jin Road and debated whether she should buy the fantastically carved jade chess set or the bronze dragon lamp. She could buy both, but she hadn't even seen what was inside the shop. If she bought everything that took her fancy on a two-week trip through China, she'd go home a pauper.

When Stephanie arrived, she'd ask her what she thought. Maybe she'd buy the lamp for Stephanie. If, for once, Stephanie would let her buy her something.

From the shadows inside the dim shop, Mr Su Guang watched the American lady, amazed at her beauty. Mr Su, an artist and curator of antiques, had studied in America and had loved a fair-haired girl who took him to her bed and taught him to appreciate Western as well as Oriental beauty. But never had Mr Su seen a lady as vividly beautiful as this one. Her deep auburn hair shone bronze and gold in the late afternoon sun and was held in a loose knot at the back of her neck by white enamel combs etched in gold. In the delicate oval of her face, her eyes were a dark midnight blue, wide-spaced, and her mouth was generous, with the faintest downward curve at the comers giving it a vulnerable look. Watching her, Mr Su wanted to offer his help. What man, he wondered, looking at that lovely mouth, whether laughing or weeping or in repose, would not feel the same way?

She was not tall, he saw, but she held herself like a queen, slender and graceful against the background of crowds of people walking and bicycling home, carrying live chickens or ducks for their dinner or pulling their purchases on makeshift carts. Occasionally the lady glanced at them, but mostly she studied his window display. And of all the objects

there, she had fastened on the two finest. Mr Su decided to invite her in and take from locked cases precious antiques he showed only to those who could appreciate them. Smiling in anticipation, he stepped forward. Then, abruptly, he stopped, his mouth open in astonishment at the vision in his window: the lady had become two.

In every way they were the same, even to the silk dresses that Mr Su recognized came from a shop not far from his. But he had no more time to wonder, for in the next minute the two ladies entered his shop.

Inside the door they hesitated, waiting for their tyes to adjust from sunshine to the half-hght of candles and kerosene lamps. Mr Su stepped forward and bowed. 'Welcome. May I offer you tea?'

The first lady, who had led the way inside, held out her hand. 'Mr Su? I am Sabrina Longworth. 1 wrote to you about buying for Ambassadors, my antique gallery in London.'

'Lady Longworth! I have been expecting you. Yet now I find not one but two of you!'

She laughed. 'My sister, Stephanie Andersen, from America.'

'America!' Mr Su beamed. *I studied in America, at the Art Institute of Chicago.'

Mrs Andersen looked at her sister. *A small world,' she said, and turned to Mr Su. 'My home is just north of Chicago, in the town of Evanston.'

'Ah! I have been there also, visiting the university. Come, come, let us have tea.' Mr Su was excited by the luminous beauty of the ladies, brightening his shop as no candles could. Identical beauty, identical voices: low and soft, with a faint lilt he could not identify. How could one be from America and one from London when they both spoke with an accent vaguely European? They had been educated in Europe, Mr Su decided, and, as he bustled about the tea table, he asked about their tour through China and the antique dealers' groups sponsoring it. 'Lady Longworth,' he said, offering her a cup. She laughed and looked at her sister. Embarrassed, Mr Su looked from one lady to the other. 'I have made a mistake.' He bowed. 'Mrs Andersen. Forgive me.'

She smiled. 'There's nothing to forgive. Strangers often confuse us.' She looked again at her sister. 'The housewife from Evanston and the Lady from London.'

Mr Su did not understand, but he was relieved. They were not insulted. He resumed his chatter and, after they had drunk several cups of tea, he showed them his rarest treasures.

Lady Longworth, Mr Su noted with approval, handled antiques with reverence and appraised them expertly. She was also, he discovered, an experienced bargainer. She knew intuitively when he had gone as far as he could within the price range set by the government, and she wasted no time in deciding to buy or to go on to the next piece.

'Sabrina, look!' Mrs Andersen was kneeling before Mr Su's collection of antique magic equipment. She turned the intricate pieces in her hands.' I '11 buy one for Penny and Cliff. No, I'd better buy two, to keep peace in the house.'

Working his abacus with swift fingers, Mr Su added up Lady Longwonh's purchases, including the jade chess set and bronze lamp from the window, plus the cost of shipment to London. Then he took from his magic cabinet an ivory carving and held it out to Mrs Andersen. 'With my compliments.' At her look of surprise, he said, 'You admired this but put it back when I told you the cost. Please accept it. You bought for your children; I would like you to have this for yourself.'

She smiled with such delight that Mr Su sighed for his lost youth. He bowed and held open the door as they thanked him, and he watched them until they disappeared around a comer in the narrow, twisting street.

'How do we get back to the hotel?' Stephanie asked. She was carrying the bronze lamp, and Sabrina had the chess set, trusting neither to the shipping company.

'I haven't the faintest idea,' Sabrina said cheerfully. 'I thought I remembered how we got here, but these streets are worse than the maze at Treveston. That'll teach us to escape our keepers and wander around Shanghai alone. We'll have to ask someone.'

Stephanie took from its box the carved ivory Mr Su had given her. 'Did you see this?'

Sabrina handed her the chess set and stood still to study the delicate piece. It was made up of dozens of tiny, fancifully carved figures, interlocked to form an openwork cube. One piece moved under her finger. 'It comes apart!' she exclaimed.

'I'm afraid to try,' said Stephanie. 'I'd never get it together again. But isn't it lovely? Ladies of the court, all intertwined. '

'Clever Mr Su, telling us he thought the two of us together are like one person. Where do you think we are?'

A bicyclist stopped beside them. 'May I help you?' he asked in careful English.

'We've lost the Heping Hotel,' Sabrina said.

'Lost? Ah, you have lost the way. It is indeed confusing. If you will follow me, I will lead you to Nanjing Road East.'

'Does everyone in China speak English?' Stephanie asked.

'We study in school,' he said casually, and rode ahead slowly as they followed.

'You didn't buy anything for Garth,' said Sabrina.

'I probably will. 1 told you, I'm not feeling very generous toward him right now. Anyway, we have another week. Oh—!'

'What is it?'

'Only one more week. Such a little time. Before I left, two weeks seemed forever. Now I've gotten greedy. I wish ... Sabrina, did you ever wish you could just disappear for awhile?'

'Lately I wish it about once a day. But usually what I want to get away from is me, and wherever I went, I'd still be me.'

'Yes, that's what I meant. You always know what I mean.'

The bicyclist turned a comer, looking around to make sure they were following. 'Maybe China is the farthest we can disappear,' Sabrina said.

'Then perhaps I'll stay,' said Stephanie lightly. 'And really disappear. For awhile at least. No more Stephanie Andersen. I'll tell Mr Su I'm Lady Longworth, staying on for a few weeks, and since you're his best customer, he'll be delighted

to help me. That is, if you don't mind my temporarily disappearing into your name and title.'

'Not at all, but if you're going to be me, I'd appreciate it if you'd go back to London and solve my problems.*

'Only if you go to Evanston and solve mine.'

They laughed. 'Wouldn't that be a lark?' Sabrina said, and then the bicyclist turned again, pointing. 'Nanjing Road East,'he said.

Before they could thank him, he was gone, blending into the hundreds of bicyclists, cars and pedestrians jamming the wide road. Stephanie walked slowly, staring with unseeing eyes at the shop windows. 'It would be a faiiy tale,* she said. 'Living your wonderful life. The only problem would be fighting off your Brazilian millionaire.'

Sabrina looked at her. Td have to fight off your husband.'

'Oh, no; no, you wouldn't. Garth mostly sleeps in the study. We haven't made love in ... a long time. You wouldn't have any fighting to do at all.*

They fell silent, passing the bookstore and walking on to the artificial-flowers store. Stephanie paused, gazing at the petals and leaves of colored paper and silk. 'Doyou suppose we could get away with it? I'll bet we could. Not for long, of course, but... we could do it.'

Sabrina met her eyes in their reflected images overlaid with iridescent pink and red bouquets and nodded. 'Probably. For a few days.' She laughed. 'Remember, in Athens, when you—*

'We could look at ourselves from far away, fi-om another life, and figure out what we want to do—^well, I mean, I could figure out what I want; you always know exactly—'

'Not exactly, and you know it.*

'Well then, we'd both have a chance to think about—*

'Ah here you are!' Their guide, leading the tour group out of a nearby shop, began to scold them for wandering off on their own.

'Let's talk about it later,' Stephanie had time to say before they were swept up and taken back to the hotel for dinner and a four-hour acrobatic show.

But it was the next afternoon before they had a chance to

talk. Stephanie wanted to window-shop on the rest of Nanjing Road East. 'I keep thinking about it/ she said. 'Do you? Last night I was too tired to talk, but I thought about it, and this morning I haven't been able to think about anything else.'

'I know.' Since the day before, the idea had clung to the edge of Sabrina's thoughts. 'It's one of those crazy ideas that won't go away.' 'Not that crazy. Sabrina, I'm serious about it.* Sabrina looked at her. 'It wouldn't solve anything—' 'How do we know? The main thing is that we'd get away from what we are now.'

They were silent. Sabrina felt her blood quicken. Stephanie always knew what would strike home: to get away

'And we could do it,' Stephanie went on. 'We know so much about each other's lives. We've talked about them and we think the same way—'

They did. They both knew it; they always had.

'Everything would be new, and we'd be able to think about

ourselves in different ways ' Her words tumbled out. 'You

can't do that when you're in the middle of a life that has no time for thinking. And you've said so often you'd like a taste

of my life, it's so different from yours Listen, what do you

have to do the first week you're home?'

'Not much.' The idea had caught hold, and Sabrina's thoughts flew ahead. 'I didn't schedule anything in case I needed to recover from China. There's nothing that really needs doing. Ambassadors could even stay closed for another week.'

'And there's not much to do at my house, either,' Stephanie said eagerly. 'Penny and Cliff go their own way. You can call in sick at the office - Oriental dysentery or something. They all know about China; I had to get special permission to be gone for two weeks. Oh - but you'd have to cook for everybody at home.'

Sabrina laughed. Her eyes were bright. 'I'm a good cook. How do you think I eat when Mrs Thirkell is on vacation?*

'They don't know what they're eating, anyway/ Ste-

phanie raced on. They're always in such a hurry to be somewhere else. You'd really be alone most of the time.'

They stopped at the paper-cuts store where intricate flowers, dragons, boats and hundreds of other folded creations were displayed. Sabrina could feel a familiar excitement building inside her. gathering itself, preparing to leap. She had felt it so often in the past, since she was a little girl: the pull of a challenge, the joy of a dare, the excitement of winning - gathering itself, preparing to leap. To be someone else ...' she murmured.

To live another life,' Stephanie said. *An adventure, Sabrina!'

They smiled, remembering - twenty years ago. Sabrina thought. They were eleven, living in Athens. Their first great adventure.

They walked on. 'A week,' Stephanie said. 'Just one incredible week.'

'You might get greedy again,' Sabrina said lightly.

'So might you.'

A block firom their hotel, in firont of the Shanghai Cakes and Pastries Store, Nicholas Blackford bumped into them as he navigated with a stack of wrapped pastries. He smiled guiltily. 'It seems so difficult to diet away firom home. I should have brought Amelia. You must scold me, Sabrina, as you used to when you worked in my shop and monitored my bad habits. Or am I speaking to Stephanie? Do you know, I am ashamed to say this, and I assure you it is no reflection on either of you, but Sabrina - Stephanie -1 really cannot tell you apart.'

Sabrina and Stephanie looked at each other behind the bald and bouncing figure of Nicholas Blackford. Strangers often confused them, but Nicholas had known Sabrina for ten years. Her eyes dancing. Sabrina swept a low curtsy to Stephanie. 'Lady Longworth.' she said in a clear voice. 'Welcome to Shanghai.'

Stephanie stretched out her hand to help her up. 'Mrs Andersen,' she said. 'How glad I am to be here.'

Chapter 2

They were always moving. It seemed barely the blink of an eye from the time they settled in a house and arranged their furniture and hung up their clothes to the time when the servants would begin packing everything into cartons for the trip to a new city with a different language and a school full of strangers. It started when they were two years old in Washington, D.C., and from then on they moved every two years: Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Spain-and now they were moving again.

*Not already!' Sabrina groaned when she came in from horseback riding and found her mother wrapping a fragile vase in a blanket. 'We just got here!'

Two years ago,' said her mother. 'And Daddy and I told you last spring we'd be moving to Athens in August.'