The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (105 page)

‘I'd been rather counting on you to pull me up out of the depths,' murmured Henry. ‘I'm not the hero and paragon you and Nellie make me out to be. I'm not much of anything, if truth be told. The idea of an ordinary life rather appeals.'

‘There's nothing ordinary about you, Henry Manners. Nothing. Let me tell you something. When you died, and the doctor told us you did die, I felt nothing but relief. Relief, do you hear me? Because I knew I wouldn't have to go on loving you any more. Dr Airton thought he'd poisoned me against you with a whole lot of lies about how you had organised my rape, and that was why I didn't show any shock or horror when I heard you were dead—but that wasn't the reason. I never believed Airton. He just hated you because he envied you and you always showed him up—no, Airton's lies weren't the reason I didn't mourn you. It was relief for myself, Henry, sheer, sheer relief. With you gone, with that great, shining presence out of the sky, I felt that in my dim, dreary way, I might, just might, be able to get my life back again. And I had your child inside me, and that was enough. It would be my memory of you but it wouldn't be you. I felt I could manage loving the child, the baby. It wouldn't make any demands on me as you did—'

‘You know you're talking rot, Helen Frances. Demands? What demands did I ever make on you?'

‘None,' she said. ‘None. That was the problem. You didn't need me. You kept saving my life every five minutes. How can a girl possibly be a wife to a man who keeps saving her life, in the most noble, noble way? Old Tom. He just went off and got himself martyred. You were so perfect you just martyred everyone else around you. Do you know? When I was on the floor being raped and you were tied to the bedpost, do you know what I thought you looked like? Christ, Henry. Christ on the Cross. I could see my own suffering in your eyes. And I hated you then, I hated you. I hated you…' Her shoulders were shaking and she began to sob.

Henry reached into his pocket and passed her his handkerchief. ‘Come on, old girl,' he said. ‘Take this. You're—you're making a scene.'

The shaking subsided at last. She blew her nose noisily. This time he reached for her hands, and she allowed him to hold them.

‘I got over you,' she whispered. ‘I got over you. In the grasslands I had a dream about you. It was a beautiful dream. We made love and we said our farewells, and I was at peace.'

‘Dreams again,' said Henry.

‘Yes, Henry, dreams. Wasn't it—wasn't it somehow always a dream?'

‘Not to me,' he said.

‘I'm a mother now,' she said. ‘I have somebody else to look after. Oh you should see Catherine, Henry. She's so, so beautiful, and little, and vulnerable.'

‘I'd like to see her,' said Henry, and something perverse made him add, ‘Tom Cabot's daughter.'

‘That hurts you, doesn't it?' she said. ‘But I should always have married Tom. It's his world I come from. The counties. That's the real me. I'm not decent and honourable and good like Tom was, but I could be. I want to be. Well, now I have the chance. I can at least pretend, and it won't really be acting. Deep down, deep down, that really is me. Dull. Provincial. It'd be an honest life—even though I'm getting there by a deception. But I know it would have been what Tom wanted. It won't be an exciting existence, not like yours—but I don't want excitement any more. I've had my holiday. My dream.'

‘Catherine is not a dream, Helen Frances. I'm her father. For God's sake, I've never heard such madness in my life. You love me, so therefore you hate me—and you're going to be Tom's widow, because that's the real you. What is this, Helen Frances? I can't even follow you.'

Helen Frances frowned. ‘Don't you think we owe something to Tom, Henry? We hurt him so badly.'

‘To be frank, I don't. No, we don't owe him anything. To be crude, my dear, you made your bed with me. I'm living. He's dead. We love each other, for God's sake. Why can't we just accept that? Never mind the past. All right, call it a dream if you have to. But let's live the future together—because we can, you know.'

Helen Frances let go of Henry's hands, which she had been holding all this while. ‘Oh, Henry,' she said. ‘How I've hurt you. How bitter you've become.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' he drawled, ‘I think I've taken it rather well, all in all. It's not every man who would accept that his child has been given another man's name.' And as he said this, a voice inside him cried out at his own stupidity and wilfulness.

Helen Frances was shaking her head sadly. ‘It's done now, Henry,' she said. ‘Tom's parents are waiting to see their granddaughter. We're taking the train next week to Shanghai from where we'll catch the boat home. I've already agreed to accompany the Airtons, who are planning a long furlough in Scotland. You know they've got two children there. They say they'll come back to China. I—I don't know if I will.'

‘But it's all a lie, Helen Frances. A damned lie. You never married Tom. It's not his child.'

‘He said he would marry me. He said he would do the right thing. He would have married me, and become father to Catherine. Would you, Henry? Would you have married me?'

‘Look at me,' he said, ‘all fopped out in my best clothes. I came here today to propose to you. I still would, if you wanted me.'

‘If only you had done so then,' she whispered. Her eyes had welled with tears. ‘But it's all different now.'

‘Why?' Henry's fists drummed the table and the glasses rattled. The waiters looked away. ‘Why is it different?'

‘Oh, Henry, I'm crying again and I wanted to be so brave. But it is. It just is.'

‘That's not good enough,' said Henry. ‘Why is it different?'

‘Because I can't bear to be near anything any more that reminds me of that dreadful time in Shishan,' Helen Frances screamed. ‘And you're part of it. You're all of it,' she sobbed. ‘Oh, I loved you. I still do love you. You don't know how I sometimes long for you—but I'm different now. I'm different. I'm not that silly convent girl you once seduced. Not any more. Not any more.' She picked up a napkin and started fiercely dabbing her eyes. ‘Look at me,' she said. ‘I'm making a scene. There goes the reputation I've been so careful to cultivate as the respectable widow, Mrs Cabot.'

‘Is that what it's all about?' said Henry softly. ‘Reputation?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Partly.' She giggled through her tears. ‘I wouldn't find any respectability married to you, would I?'

‘No,' said Henry. ‘I suppose you wouldn't.'

‘Oh, come on, Henry. You're living with that prostitute, Fan Yimei. Not that I hold anything against her. I admire her. She's fine, and brave. But the whole town gossips about you two.'

‘I suppose they do,' said Henry sadly.

‘I don't care if you're sleeping with her. That's got nothing to do with my decision.'

‘So it's a decision?' he asked gently. ‘An irrevocable one?'

‘I don't know. I don't know. Why are you pushing me? Oh, Henry, don't you see I need time? Away from you. Away from China. This terrible place. I've the means to be free now. I can be my own woman. Isn't that the modern thing to want to be? To be one's own woman. I have an adorable child. I'm a respectable widow. Yes, with money. More money than I could possibly need. God, Henry, I want air to breathe. Don't you understand that? You of all people?'

‘Pick up your glass,' said Henry. ‘Here. Here's to your freedom.' He clinked her wine glass with his brandy tumbler. ‘I won't drink to your respectability, however, Mrs Cabot.'

‘So you accept it?' she breathed. ‘My going, I mean?'

‘No,' he said. ‘I think it's mad.'

‘You could—you could come and woo me in Lincolnshire,' she said.

‘Somehow I don't think that would work,' he said. ‘I've rather outgrown England.'

‘Oh, Henry, how I love you,' she whispered.

‘And I love you too, my darling,' he replied. ‘But that's not quite good enough any more, is it?'

For a long time they sat facing each other, saying nothing.

‘Henry, I don't want us to end up this way. Can we not be friends? Please take up Nellie's invitation and visit us before we go. See Catherine. At least come and see Catherine.'

He promised. It was the easiest course. Henry was not a man to stay at the gambling table once he knew he had lost his winnings.

Quietly they finished their drinks. Henry smoked his cheroot. Suddenly he stabbed it into the ashtray. He contemplated Helen Frances coolly. There was a hint of a smile on his face. ‘I don't think I've told you tonight how beautiful you look,' he said. ‘Lincolnshire's in for a bit of a shock. Come on, my darling, let me escort you out of here. Hold your head high, ‘he added, taking her arm. ‘After all, we both have our reputations to consider, don't we?'

They left the tearoom arm in arm. The heads of the few remaining guests turned away as they passed, but the room buzzed with animated chatter in their wake. Henry winked conspiratorially. ‘I don't think they'll forget Widow Cabot for a time,' he smiled—and after a moment she smiled back.

Henry escorted her to the foot of the stairs.

‘You'll come to see me again before you go?' she asked urgently. ‘You'll come to see the baby?'

‘Try to keep me away,' he said.

He leaned forward to kiss her cheek. She grabbed his head and pulled his mouth to hers. In full view of the doyens of the Hôtel de Pekin, they made a last, passionate kiss. It was Helen Frances who broke away, running up the stairs as fast as her dress would allow her. The gossipmongers afterwards could not agree whether they were pants or sobs they heard, as she turned the corner and disappeared down the corridor.

Somehow he managed to keep the smile on his face until she was gone, but when he turned he had the face of a dead man.

Henry made his way slowly to the door, leaning heavily on his stick.

He did not immediately call a rickshaw. He hobbled slowly down Legation Street in the direction of the canal. Night had fallen and the sky was glittering with stars. He smoked a cheroot. Its smoke coiled into the cold air. After a while the pain in his leg tired him, and he hailed a passing rickshaw.

He did not notice the beggar who had been sitting on the corner by the Japanese Legation, who got up after he passed and followed the rickshaw at a loping run.

*   *   *

Airton kept to his room, nursing his mild fever. There were some uncharitable types who construed that there was something diplomatic about this cold. Many of his colleagues among the missionary community, for example, would have liked to be told a lot more about the Shishan massacre. Some of the journalists, who had descended on Peking in the wake of the relieving forces, sensed a story. There were so many questions still to be answered, not least about the remarkable way in which the Airton family had escaped the general slaughter. At first there had been some sympathy for the survivors of an atrocity of this magnitude—especially in view of the hardships that everyone knew the Airtons had suffered during their escape. Airton's continuing silence, however, had its inevitable effect, and after a while old friends like the Gillespies found themselves taking a defensive attitude when the subject of Shishan was mentioned. Nobody said it outright, but there was a general feeling that it might have been more respectable for the head of one of God's missions, like the captain of a sinking ship, to have stayed at his post. Older missionaries shook their heads over their cups of tea. Young curates, about to start on a missionary life, were given patronising little lectures about the selfless fortitude required in their work, and how they must be wary of all too human frailty when faced with temptation or trial. The American missionaries were understandably smug. One of the Protestant foundations produced an inspiring little pamphlet bordered by a black wreath, profusely illustrated with drawings of hands folded in the attitude of prayer, kneeling figures holding candles, and not a few angels outstretching welcoming arms among the clouds—all these touching details surrounding a centrepiece consisting of daguerreotypes of Burton Fielding and Septimus Millward. The Airtons were not mentioned in the accompanying text. Nor were the Roman Catholic nuns.

It did not help that the Airtons were in the company of the young, attractive, and rather too composed widow, Mrs Cabot. As the bereaved wife of one of the martyrs—Tom might not have been a missionary, but he had been a gentleman, and came from a good public school, which included muscular Christianity among its traditions—it might have been expected that Mrs Cabot and her child would also have been deserving of sympathy, and even some of the reflected glow of martyrdom, but besides the equally imponderable question of how she, too, had managed to survive, the friendship that was apparent between her and the unsavoury Mr Manners, another dubious survivor, also set respectable tongues a-wagging.

In fact, there was something smelly about the whole affair, and after a while, despite the unquestioned saintliness shown by the likes of Millward and Fielding, it became the habit, when memorialising the martyrs of the Boxer madness, to focus on the demonstrably nobler sufferings of victims in such places as Taiyuanfu and Baoding, where there had been no embarrassing survivors, and to leave Shishan to a minor mention, if it was recalled at all.

If Nellie and Helen Frances were aware of these undercurrents, they did not show it. They spent the ten days that they were in Peking shopping in the silk markets, pushing a rented perambulator through the Ritan Temple Park, and taking the children to see the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and all the other imperial sites, which, under the protection of sentries from the Allied armies, had been opened up since the siege, to the general public—or, rather, to any European civilian who applied to visit.