The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (71 page)

I feel very strongly, however, that it is not only a temporal power we have to thank for our deliverance. When I returned to the sitting room after seeing Major Lin, Millward was still on his knees. He did not say anything, but there was a look in his expression that seemed to signify ‘I told you so'. And was he not right to trust in the mercy of our only Saviour, for surely it was He and He alone who today saved us from harm? Among us, it was only Septimus Millward—that obdurate man—who held fast to his faith, and who was it who was vindicated?

My head is dropping. These are great mysteries. For now I can only express humble thanks that today the Lord chose to preserve the lives of my beloved Nellie, George and Jenny.

I commend you to Him, my dear brother,

 

Tuesday 25 June 1900

 

Little of note has happened since I last wrote to you, but since the attack last week a strain has descended on our beleaguered household, and there is a noticeable lack of the good humour that characterised the first days of our incarceration.

Major Lin's men are efficient at preventing the Boxers coming close to the house, but for all that they are a menacing presence beyond the fence. Their drums pound eternally, day and night. Our voices are hoarse and our throats sore from making ourselves heard above the din; for much of the day we communicate among ourselves in gestures like Cistercian monks under a vow of silence. Our nerves are taut, and all of us find it difficult to sleep, so we are tired and irritable, and less forgiving of each other's idiosyncrasies.

Every day there is a demonstration of some kind. The soldiers allow this, presumably to give our besiegers a chance to let off steam. It is the usual display of martial arts and invective. We watch because there is little else to do. It has elements of a fairground show, and would be innocuous if it were not for the hideous and murderous intent behind their antics and sword-waving. Did our Romanised ancestors behind their city walls watch the war dances of the wild Saxon invaders with a similar mixture of scorn and fear? This morning for a change there was a spectacle of female Boxers, they call them the Red Lanterns. These fierce-eyed damsels in red pyjamas appear to be the priestesses of the cult—but don't imagine, dear brother, that there is anything feminine about these young harridans, and there is certainly nothing sacred: they have been trained to do the same dances with sword and spear as the men, and the shrieks and abuse that come out of their pretty mouths are even more loathsome and unnatural for being delivered in soprano.

The strain is terrible on our little ones. White-faced, they huddle together with big, staring eyes. George and Jenny try their best, the darlings, but the toys that only a week ago provided such delight now lie unused on the floor. George sits for hours with one of his books of adventures, but I see that his mind is elsewhere; the pages do not turn. The Millward children have reverted to the old ways, and kneel for hours with their mother while Septimus chants his prayers, albeit almost inaudible under the drums. I do not know from where that man gathers his strength. Or perhaps I do. For all his madness, there is something admirable in his single-minded devotion. He is perhaps the only one of us who remains unbowed under our persecution. He has become an unconscious influence on us all. Yesterday I was surprised to see Sister Caterina kneeling among his family as he led them in prayer.

Burton Fielding, however, cannot conceal his loathing for Septimus and he will leave the room to avoid being in his company. It is as if Millward challenges his authority. But Fielding has been behaving strangely since the attack. It is tragic to see the decline in a man whom I once so respected and whose advice I so valued. There is nothing left of his laconic humour, and conversation with him is now a catalogue of bitter complaint. He blames me particularly for our predicament, saying that if only we had listened to him we would all have escaped when there was a chance to do so. He is hardly less damning of the others. In fact, he seems to despise us all. He keeps morosely to himself, glaring at us with an intensity that might be hatred. So we tend to ignore him. I hesitate to impute cowardice to a man who, if we are to believe him, once outfaced the savage Apache, but he appears to have given way to despair.

Thankfully, the rest of us remain relatively confident of our eventual delivery. Bowers, in his quiet way, exudes calm, Fischer has a blind faith in ultimate rescue by the railway board, and there is no questioning Tom's bravery and cool-headedness in a desperate situation. Tom, however, worries me. Against my better judgement and without my knowledge, three days ago he went to Helen Frances's room. I do not know what they said to each other, but there was certainly not the reconciliation for which I had fervently prayed. The poor fellow acts and behaves as if nothing has happened, but there is a grim set to his face, and a cold deliberation in his manner, which speaks to me of a broken heart. There is no trace in this icy stranger of the affable, easygoing young man who charmed us all when he came to Shishan last year. On the contrary, there is something ruthless and impenetrable about him that is almost frightening. Even Jenny, who loved him and was always presuming on his good nature, now avoids him. The saddest thing is that he does not notice or care. And Helen Frances? Well, as far as her health is concerned, her recovery is little short of remarkable—as a physician I could not be more pleased with her—yet she will hardly speak, even to Nellie. She lies on her bed, staring at a crack in the ceiling. Who knows what is going on in her mind? While, outside, and in our heads, the drums keep beating, beating, beating.

I wish that I could reinstitute the busy activity that kept us so optimistic and high-spirited in the early period of the siege, but I am afraid that our spring-cleaning days are over. I did not tell you when I last wrote to you because I did not then know but there was a serious consequence of the Boxer attack on our house last week. Some time during the commotion the Boxers blocked our well. We are now totally reliant on our guards who twice a day take the long walk to the stream at the bottom of the hill. The water is brackish, and four buckets a day are hardly enough to quench our thirst, especially when most of it spills on the climb up the hill. We are rationed to a pot of tea in the morning and evening, and we have a cup each of the ‘natural' liquid at lunchtime. If I tell you that the heat for the past few days has reached the mid-eighties you may imagine our privation. There is no question of washing our clothes or ourselves. I have no doubt that the consequent itching discomfort is as contributory to the strain as the irritation of the drums.

In this heat and hardship my thoughts often return to our beloved Scotland, and I dream of the breeze in the heather. When this is over I have determined that we might take a little furlough. I would enjoy a long walk with you, my brother, among the hills and glens. And to be reunited with dear Edmund and Mary, to whom I send my fondest love and that of their mother and brother and sister. Visit them for me now and again at their school, James, if you have the time.

Oh, these drums. These drums. How I long for a moment—just a moment—of quiet!

She had waited in her small room for Tom to come. She had waited looking blankly at the broken plaster and her ruined life. She lay on her bed like a sacrificial victim of her dashed hopes.

And after many days he did come. He let himself in quietly and leaned his bulk against the door.

‘So,' he said, after a long while.

‘I'll marry you, Tom, if you still want me,' looking up at the ceiling and the cracks.

A hard laugh, brutal, such as she had never heard before.

‘That's not really on now, HF, is it? Can't quite see myself raising a bastard's bastard.'

Helen Frances watched an ant crawling out of one of the cracks.

‘Anyway,' continued Tom, into the silence, ‘it's all a bit academic. You do realise our situation, I suppose? If we're not hauled out to be executed we'll probably be burned alive in here. Me, you and your unborn baby. Sorry, dear.'

The ant disappeared down the side of the wall out of her vision.

‘Not really the time for marriage bells, is there? Anyway, they wouldn't be heard above the drums.' Tom laughed again.

‘Have you been drinking?' Helen Frances asked quietly.

‘Drinking? I'll say I have. Not that the others seem to have noticed. To them I'm still good, honest, cool-headed Tom, the amiable cuckold. I'm their big white hope, even if I am a cripple. But, then, you probably haven't noticed that I've been hobbling on crutches, have you? You've been lying in bed recovering from your drug addiction. Doctor said I wasn't to see you because you weren't fully recovered yet—but I'm not quite the fool I look. Or maybe I am. Don't care, really. Not any more.'

‘Poor Tom.' She turned her head for the first time to look at him.

‘Is that sympathy, my dear? How jolly, jolly decent of you. Knew your heart was in the right place, even if you were fucking all and sundry behind my back.'

‘Only Henry,' she said, turning her head away.

‘Only Henry?' Tom laughed. ‘Oh, well, that's a relief. Only Henry. Then you have my deep condolences. So sorry the little shit was beaten to death. I am, you know,' he added. ‘I'd have liked to do it myself.'

‘Why have you come here?' she asked softly.

‘Well, my dear,' Tom said, with false joviality, swaying slightly, ‘that's a very good question. Do you know, I was sitting in the dining room having a little tipple, all by myself when—you know what sentimental creatures we men are—I suddenly started thinking about my dear, lost love. And I thought, Well, she's not that far away, is she? And what with old Henry gone, maybe she's lonely. So here I am.'

Helen Frances looked at him coldly but said nothing.

‘And I started wondering, you see,' continued Tom. ‘What was it old Henry had that I didn't?'

Tom opened his mouth and was about to deliver another barb, but instead he shook his head. Leaving the support of the door he lurched into the room, and slumped into a chair. Helen Frances started, then sat up in bed with the sheet pulled to her chin. There was a lost expression in Tom's eyes, and his mouth hung slackly.

‘Why, HF, why?' It was almost a whimper, and his eyes were filling with self-pitying tears.

‘I loved him,' she answered.

‘Didn't you think that I loved you? That I wanted you?'

‘I know you did,' she said.

‘We were engaged, for God's sake. And you gave yourself to him. You let him—'

‘Let him what, Tom? It wasn't like that, you know.'

She watched the big man sobbing as he rocked on the small wooden chair. She had no feeling for him. She might have been watching an actor in a play, but she remembered the duty to which she had reconciled herself. This was the man whom she would marry if he wanted her. Because of Henry's child.

‘It's all right, Tom,' she said. ‘It's all right.'

‘We're all going to die here, HF,' moaned Tom, through his sobs, ‘We're all going to be killed by the Boxers, and I'll die … I'll die without ever having known a woman.'

She had been moving forward on the bed to try to give him some comfort, but at these words she froze. ‘Is that why you came here?' she asked. ‘You thought I'd sleep with you?'

‘No,' groaned Tom. ‘But you gave yourself to Manners. You whored to Manners.'

‘Is that what you really think of me, Tom? That I'm a whore?'

Tom was not sobbing now, but his chest was heaving and he wiped his nose. In the manner of drunks his mood had suddenly changed and there was a sly look on his face, like that of a child wheedling for apples. ‘Would you?'

‘Sleep with you? Is that what you want?'

Tom hung his head, but the sly look had not left his face. ‘I didn't mean what I said,' he mumbled. ‘It's the drink. I still love you, HF.'

Helen Frances looked at him coldly. She pushed back the sheet and contemplated him. He looked back at her with an expression half misery, half bravado.

‘You don't have to,' he muttered.

She untied the bow of her nightdress and, still looking at him coldly, pulled it over her head, baring herself to his gaze. Neither of them moved.

‘Are you going to sit there?' she asked, after a while. ‘Or are you going to whine some more?'

Tom slowly and clumsily raised his big frame to his feet, and stood swaying in front of her. ‘HF?' he said hesitantly, leaning towards her, one hand stretching gingerly forward. She flinched back, unable to help it, when she felt his cold fingers on her breast.

‘So that's it,' said Tom. His arm dropped. ‘You bitch,' he hissed, and slapped her face, knocking her backwards. ‘If I ever touch you again,' he said, ‘it'll be to wring your bloody neck. Whore.' He staggered out of the room, slamming the door.

She lay on the bed, her cheek stinging. More ants were crawling from the crack in the ceiling. She watched them. Drums were beating outside. She reached for her nightdress but she did not put it on. She rolled it into a ball and hugged it, her knees up to her chest in the foetal position. She buried her face in her pillow, but she could not cry.

 

Saturday 29 June 1900

 

The most extraordinary thing has happened!

It was late in the evening. Most of us had already gone to bed and Herr Fischer was preparing in that fussy way of his to take the first watch—laying out on the dining-room table his timepiece, his Bible, his handkerchief, his pipe, his pouch, his flask of brandy, his little framed portrait of his mother (it is tiring to watch the man!). I was trimming the lamps and checking the shutters before turning in myself.

I happened to be winding the grandfather clock—it is strange how one clings to one's old habits from a time when there was a degree of normality in our existence—when I was startled to hear a quiet rapping on one of the shutters. I might not have heard it at all, had there not been at that moment a cessation of the awful beating of the drums—we have been favoured recently with blissful periods of quiet; even the Boxers tire occasionally, it seems. At first I took the noise to be the knocking of a branch. There is a tree close to one of the dining-room windows and it was windy outside (the mounting heat and the high pressure has caused the evenings to be stormy of late although, alas, there is no rain)—but the rapping was too persistent and too regular to be explained by natural causes. Carefully I lifted the shutter an inch and, with my lantern, peered outside. I saw a white face wearing a Boxer turban, and my spirits sank. I imagined that the house was under attack again. Then I noticed the urgency in the eyes, a pointed, distinctly unChinese nose, and I heard a voice, in English, whispering, ‘Let me in. Let me in.' And then: ‘It's Hiram.'