The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (43 page)

‘Off to Tsitsihar again tomorrow,' said Tom, after a pause. ‘Won't see me for a while. Five to six weeks at best.'

He seemed to wait for a reply, but none came.

‘Mr Lu's confident enough that Mr Ding will purchase all the alkali. It'll be Babbit and Brenner's big breakthrough. Everything your father's worked for.'

‘I'm glad for him,' murmured Helen Frances. ‘And for you.' The children had to strain to hear her voice.

Tom waited, as if he expected her to say more. ‘Well, I'm glad too,' he said, after a while. ‘Yes, it's very—gratifying.' He paused. ‘The journey…' he continued. ‘Look, don't worry about us. We'll be all right.'

‘Father shouldn't be telling everybody about the silver.'

‘No, he shouldn't.' The children noticed that Tom's foot was tapping the carpet again. His hands were twisting the side of his chair.

‘He's become so boastful. Stupid. Juvenile.' Helen Frances spat the words. The children started at the shrill vehemence. ‘I'm sick of him. Sick of him. Drinking. Boasting. Drooling sentimentally over his little girl. I'm
not
his little girl. Has he even thought of the danger he's putting you in? Is this deal so important that he has to risk your lives on the road? He's monstrous, and you're a fool for going along with him.'

‘Come on, HF,' sighed Tom, ‘we're taking all precautions. We've gone that way before. This is an ordinary business trip.'

‘Not with Boxers about, and the bandits knowing your movements. But you're as bad as he is, aren't you? What a pair you are. Jolly adventurers. Everything a joke, or a game of cricket. How I despise you.'

Tom had gone rigid again at her outburst. But Helen Frances's hands had also tightened under the table: Jenny could see her knuckles pale in the gloom, and her legs and body shaking under her dress. Like Tom earlier she seemed to be forcing back some strong emotion she could hardly control.

‘HF, what's the matter?' asked Tom quietly. ‘You've been acting oddly for weeks—months, actually.'

‘Not you too?' said Helen Frances scornfully. ‘Are you going to nag me like Nellie? “Och, Helen Frances, aren't we a wee bit pale again today? Och, Helen Frances, aren't you going to finish your chicken soup?” If people would only leave me alone. Leave—me—alone.'

‘Your father and I are concerned about you,' said Tom, lamely.

‘My father and you? It's always my father and you, isn't it? What an inseparable pair you've become. Is that why we're engaged? Am I part of the deal? So we can all be a jolly threesome doing great things for Babbit and Brenner?' She laughed. It was an ugly sound. ‘The two of you don't need me, Tom. I'm no part of your nice little boys' club. The two of you should be happy enough now I've left you to come and work here. You can both drink and joke to your heart's content, can't you? Has my father introduced you to one of his fillies yet? You do know about his goings-on before we arrived?'

Tom breathed out heavily. ‘Well, old girl, if I hadn't seen you touch nothing but water all evening, I'd have said you'd had one too many. I really don't know what you're talking about.'

‘Pure, honest Tom. You really are too good to be true, aren't you?'

Tom pushed back his chair. The children could hear the click of his feet as he paced back and forth. Helen Frances seemed to quieten. Her hands settled on her lap. After a few moments Tom sat down again. ‘I've never asked you what happened between you and Manners,' he said, his voice softer but somehow firmer than before, ‘while we were away in Tsitsihar, and afterwards. I've never questioned you or him. Mrs Airton once told me something about a rainstorm … You must understand something about me, HF, that I'm a simple fellow. I'm not imaginative, or clever. I take things at face value. And I'll trust people until I know I shouldn't. Maybe that's foolish. To think the best of people. Maybe it's cowardice. Running away from facts. But sometimes you hope—you just hope—that if you let things be, they'll turn out for the best.

‘No, don't say anything. It's my turn to speak now. You've had your go at me. I don't think you hate me, although for the last few weeks, whenever you've spoken to me, your words have been … well, not what a fellow wants to hear from the girl he's in love with. I don't think I gave you any cause to be angry. If I did, it was unintentional and I'm sorry.

‘But I don't think, actually, you are angry with me or your father. I think you're in a bate with yourself. The few occasions at school that I blew my rag, as often as not I was only taking out on the other fellow some rage at my own mistakes. I don't know how a woman's mind works. But I think it's probably the same. Let me say this once and for all. I don't care what happened between you and Manners. If it's over, HF. If it's over. As long as it's over I don't want to know. It's past. Forgotten.'

‘Forgotten?'

‘I love you, HF,' said Tom simply. ‘I mean it. Forgotten. Unless he hurt you.' His voice hardened. ‘If I find out that he hurt you, then I'll kill him.'

George gasped, Jenny quickly put a hand over his mouth, but neither of the adults heard. Tom was punching his palm again under the table. They saw his chest expand as he took a deep breath. ‘If it's not over, on the other hand … If it's not over…' His voice stumbled. He sighed, took another breath. ‘Then you must tell me, old girl, and I'll get out of your way.'

The children dared not move. Helen Frances reached in her purse and withdrew a handkerchief. It was damp when she replaced it. Presumably she was weeping. Her voice, however, when she spoke was calm and flat. She sounded tired. ‘It's over. He didn't hurt me. You don't have to kill him. Does that satisfy you?'

Tom slumped in his chair, letting out something between a groan and a sob. There was a long pause. The children could hear the grandfather clock ticking in the hall. There was a laugh from the sitting room.

‘And us?' he said, after a while.

‘I don't know,' said Helen Frances.

‘Our engagement?'

‘I don't know,' she said, clenching her fists.

Tom thumped his own fist down on the table. The plates and glasses rattled. A wine glass fell and the children saw the tablecloth stain red and drips pool on the parquet.

‘Sometimes I think I will kill him anyway. The bounder. The cad. The…' The explosion was over as soon as it had begun. His voice faded. Helen Frances said nothing.

Another explosion. Tom was on his feet again. George and Jenny heard him banging back and forth, back and forth.

‘God, HF. Why? Why?'

She said nothing.

The children heard the steps move round the end of the table to Helen Frances's side. Suddenly her body was dragged upward, off her chair. Craning their heads they could see Tom's great arms in a bear's embrace around her but she hung limply, unresponsively. He seemed to be shaking her. ‘I love you. I love you,' he groaned, but her head was turned away. After a while he replaced her gently in her chair. The sound of the pacing continued.

‘I'm away for six weeks, two months.' The words came out woodenly. ‘When I'm back I'll ask you if you still want to marry me. My feelings for you won't have changed. I'm yours, HF. You're life for me. Nothing less. I loved you from the moment I saw you, at your aunt's house. You came in and the gaslight burned brighter. That's the best I can describe it. You radiated me. I never dreamed … On the boat that night when you … I felt, how can a chap deserve such happiness? I suppose I should be thankful. I'll always have that memory.'

The pacing stopped.

‘But didn't we have such fun together? Don't you remember how we used to laugh? Our eyes would only have to meet and we'd read each other's thoughts … I blame myself. I shouldn't have left you alone all day. I shouldn't have got so intoxicated like your father with that bloody soap yard. I should have been with you, so you wouldn't have had to go riding with him … with that…'

‘Don't, Tom. It wasn't your fault.' Helen Frances's voice hardly exceeded a whisper.

Tom began to say something, but stopped himself. Then the children heard him sigh.

‘If the answer's no when I get back, I won't make it difficult for you. Excuse me if I don't stay around in Shishan. I couldn't bear that. Babbit and Brenner will give me some other outpost somewhere. I don't care if they don't. I'm sure life will go on. As I said, I'll have my memories. And if a chap chooses to nurse a broken heart, well that's his own affair, isn't it?

‘But think hard, old girl. Think hard while I'm away. It doesn't matter if you throw away my life, but don't throw away yours.'

His voice choked. ‘Excuse me. I can't bear to face anybody else this evening. Pass on my thanks to Mrs Airton. Make some excuse … Oh, God, HF, your hair in the light of that candle … How I love you … God go with you, my dearest. Think of me sometimes.'

The door to the corridor opened and softly closed. The children listened to Tom's footsteps fade. Helen Frances had not moved. She continued to sit rigidly in her chair, then her body slumped and began to heave with silent sobs. A hum seemed to emanate from deep inside her, which developed into a shrill wail of misery. She rocked from side to side as the keen from inside her grew louder. Jenny could not bear it. She left her hiding-place under the tablecloth and hugged the weeping woman. Tears were running down her own face. The keening stopped. Helen Frances put her arms round her and the two wept silently in each other's arms. Like a mole, George put his own head into the light. In a moment he, too, had been swept into the embrace. The three rocked silently together, and it was this tableau that Frank Delamere saw, a cigar in his mouth, when he peeped in from the sitting room.

‘I say,' he called to the Airtons behind him, ‘here's a subject worthy of Burne-Jones. Mariana crying her eyes out at the moated grange with a couple of cherubs as comforters. No sign of Sir Lancelot. No doubt he's so overcome with sorrow at a separation too grievous to be borne that he's sloped off already. Ain't it touching? Well, well. Cheer up, old girl. We're only going to Tsitsihar. Back before you know it. Don't worry, the wedding bells will ring soon enough. Airton, how come your children are up so late? Getting a little liberal, aren't you? It was six o'clock to the nursery with a loaf of bread in my day.'

*   *   *

Two miles away, in the Palace of Heavenly Pleasure, Fan Yimei was coming to a decision. Major Lin was away with his troops. She was alone in the pavilion.

Across the courtyard she could see lights in the windows of the pavilion that mirrored hers. Earlier the Englishman Ma Na Si had been having dinner there, followed by a bout of drinking with his Japanese friend. Originally Major Lin was to have joined them (no doubt for another interminable discussion about gunrunning) but there had been disorder in one of the outlying villages—a group of hooligans, maybe one of the bands of Boxers that everyone was talking about, had been inciting disturbances against local Christians, and a barn had been burned—so the Mandarin had ordered Major Lin to go there to restore order. He had grumbled, but obeyed. He had said that he would be away for at least two days.

She had observed that the Japanese man who reminded her of a snake had already left Ma Na Si's pavilion a short while earlier, following Mother Liu to the main building. She knew where he was going, and she felt a deep pang of sympathy for the white catamite who waited for him. Colonel Taro had repelled her from the moment she met him. For all his courtesies and good looks she sensed violence lurking behind the velvet charm. His eyes never smiled: lizard-like, they would flick from person to person, coldly, appraisingly. He had a terrible effect on Major Lin. The more relaxed and ingratiating the Japanese became, the stiffer and more curt was her lover's response to him. He took propriety to the extremes of discourtesy, as if he loathed this man he had to do business with. Yet in pauses of conversation, when Taro's attention was elsewhere, she would observe Lin looking at the Japanese, with a wistfulness in his eyes that was almost spaniel-like. It was the gaze of a worshipper or a lover.

Lin always drank more than usual before and after the Japanese colonel's visits. And invariably at night when he and she were alone after his drinking, the rod would come out and he would demand to be beaten. He had also become brutal with her, slapping her, forcing her to her knees in front of him. If he took her it was in the dog position. Sometimes she would wake in the night and hear him crying. She had always suspected that her lover was hiding some shame. She had assumed that it dated back to the war. Now she no longer doubted what it was. As a slave herself she had come to recognise the symptoms.

Her suspicions of Taro's proclivities had been confirmed a few days before, when Mother Liu, angry and preoccupied, had summoned her to the main buildings. Mother Liu's creature, Su Liping, had led her up flights of stairs she had not known existed and down an undecorated wooden corridor flanked by cells. In one of the rooms Mother Liu was waiting. She lifted a blanket from a figure huddled on the bed. It was like revisiting a bad dream. For a moment she had the delusion that the bloody, bruised flesh was that of Shen Ping returned from the grave. Then horror gave way to curiosity and surprise. This was no girl and no Chinese but a thin, pinched foreign boy. Mother Liu gripped her by the throat. ‘You won't breathe a word, do you hear? Or you're a dead woman. I want you to clean this brat up. Fix him up and get him well, like you did last year with that bitch Shen Ping. I don't want this one dead on me. Not yet. There's still money to be made from him. Do you understand? I've picked you because you have a healing touch, and you're intelligent enough to know when to keep your mouth shut. You'd better not disappoint me. Do you hear?'