A Most Immoral Woman (22 page)

Morrison reeled. He searched for the right words with which to frame a question as inescapable as it was indelicate. ‘Are you certain it’s mine?’ he rasped.

Her upper body straightened incrementally. She placed the flat of her hand on her stomach. ‘I feel that it is.’ Her voice was steel wrapped in velvet.

That’s it? She ‘feels’ that it is!

‘A woman knows such things.’ She poked at a sliver of cake with her fork, her eyes suddenly clear and dry.

Another moment passed. Then, an affection stronger than Morrison had ever felt for any woman welled up from God knew where and flooded his veins. All was forgiven, all could be forgotten. He’d be a father. He smiled stupidly.

She smiled back.

Morrison was forty-two years old. He had experienced alarums before, most recently with the sturdy Australian lass Bessie, whose menses obeyed no calendar known to Western science but did—
thank ye gods!—
eventually make their appearance. Bold bad Sally Bond had embarrassed and infuriated
him some years earlier by insisting, to her husband no less, that he, Morrison, was the father of their child; Morrison had denied it absolutely, despite the boy’s suspiciously ginger complexion and preternaturally serious brow. From the time he was a young man, Morrison had wanted children—though assuredly not with Sally Bond or even Bessie. But he’d been in no hurry. He always figured these things would sort themselves out. Perhaps it was time. He was getting on. He owned a comfortable home in Peking, enjoyed an international reputation and high social standing and possessed solid, if minor, investments. She was the daughter of a senator and millionaire. She was undeniably charming, stylish and more accomplished in the arts of love than any woman he’d ever encountered. She loved him. She’d said so. And he loved her too. He might as well admit it to himself. He’d already asked her to marry him once before. She had said no because—well, mainly because—she feared she’d be unable to bear him children. That, clearly, was no longer the case. As for her rather elastic sense of fidelity, things would be different now.
That’s it then. This it it
. ‘Will you…?’

She looked at him, blinking, expectant.

She doesn’t make this easy.

‘Will you…would you…do you think you would…?’ Doubt niggled.

She sat preternaturally still.

‘Maysie, is it really mine?’

Her gaze frosted over. When she spoke, each word was an icicle, gelid, dagger-shaped. ‘I told you it was.’

‘I just need to know—is there any chance it’s not mine? Have you been with anyone else lately?’

‘I thought you banned me from speaking of others.’

‘It is not the speaking that is at issue.’ At the next table, the English teachers Mr and Mrs Lattimore had been sitting with their four-year-old son, who slipped out of his chair and wandered over. Mae bent to stroke the child’s hair. In that instant, Morrison saw her as he’d never seen her before. As a mother. The vision melted him. He was lost again.

‘Owen.’ His father stood up with an apologetic air. ‘Don’t bother Dr Morrison and Miss Perkins.’ He led his son back to their table.

‘If you wish to know,’ she said with a resigned air, ‘I will tell you.’

‘I don’t need—’

‘Martin Egan, of course.’

‘You don’t have to—’

‘I can see you want to know. There was Chester as well.’

‘Holdsworth.’ Morrison felt ill.
She is entirely faithful to my memory.
‘That old goat?’ His tone was bitter.

‘Yes. The last time we were together, that “old goat”, as you call him, had me four times in two hours. More like an old bull, really, when you think about it.’

‘At his age,’ Morrison spluttered, trying to keep his voice down, ‘you’re lucky it didn’t kill him.’

‘I told him it was a most impressive performance. He was tickled pink.’

‘No doubt the result of cardial infarction.’

Mae burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Ernest, honey, that’s why I love you. You always make me laugh.’

Against all reason her treacherous lips looked sweet again, full and kissable. He could not believe he was thinking about her lips.
She’s doing it again.
‘You take other lovers to provoke me.’

The sparkle faded from her eyes. ‘Oh, honey, will you never understand me? I don’t do it to provoke you. I do it to amuse myself.’

‘Maysie, whose girl are you?’ His voice crackled with unhappiness. Just minutes earlier he had intended to renew his proposal of marriage. He did not understand how things had gone so terribly awry.

‘Whose girl am I?’ She smiled thinly. ‘My own. And lest you ask again, so is the child. That’s that then. You are just like John Wesley after all. I should prevent myself in future from giving my heart to men who keep their own hearts for themselves, for whom career and ambition will ever be their only true wife and mistress.’ She stood. ‘It’s been delightful. But I must run. I told the Ragsdales I’d be back at four o’clock. They will be expecting me to be prompt.’

‘Not if they have paid any attention to your timekeeping in the past, I should think.’ It was a poor joke. But he had been stung by the accusation that he had not been willing to give her his heart, even if—or perhaps because—there was an element of truth in it.

‘I do not appreciate your sarcasm, Dr Morrison. Good afternoon. And I wish you well with your travels and your war.’ A flurry of skirts and shawls and she was gone.

That evening, at a banquet with Chinese officials, the conversation swirled about Morrison like mist. For once, his tenuous grasp of the language seemed a kind of blessing. Back at the Astor, he dreamt a thick unpeopled dream of fern gullies with whispering leaves, of hard, clean sunlight, and of rocks crowned
with the square dung of wombats. He woke with a head like an anchor stuck in sand.

Before breakfast, he sent a telegram to Bell saying he was delayed in Tientsin, implying interviews. It was the nineteenth of April.

From a local curio dealer he bought a beautiful silver belt engraved with the character ‘double happiness’, the Chinese symbol for wedded bliss. He sent it with a letter addressed to ‘My darling Maysie’. He begged her to see him.

No response came.

In Dumas’s parlour that afternoon, Morrison confided that he was in trouble, in every state of every union but calm—and, for better or worse, marital.

‘Ah, then there are some consolations.’

‘I heard that, dear.’ Mrs Dumas entered with a tray of tea and sandwiches. Her expression intimated that were she married to someone such as Dr Morrison, she would not have to endure such tedium as her own husband’s humour afforded.

‘You see my point?’ whispered Dumas.

‘I heard that too,’ Mrs Dumas chirped. ‘Anyway, I shall leave you two to your discussions. I am going to my room to read. I’ve discovered the most marvellous book.’

‘And which one is that?’ Morrison asked.

‘
Anna Lombard
by Victoria Cross.’

‘Ah.’

‘You’ve read it? Don’t you agree it’s a wonderful novel?’

‘Yes, fine book, hmm.’

After they were reassured by footsteps on the creaking floorboards above that Mrs Dumas had moved out of earshot, Dumas sighed. ‘Thank goodness Tientsin is short of handsome, sword-bearing Pathans or I should fear anew for our marriage.’

‘Awful book,’ Morrison said.

‘Terrible. So what news?’

Morrison described his conversation with Mae.

The tale sent Dumas into a frenzy of whisker-pulling. ‘When do you see her next?’

‘Her Grace declines to answer my notes. Mrs Ragsdale, however, has summoned me to her residence tomorrow morning for a chat.’

Dumas’s eyebrows shot high and wide.

‘My feelings exactly.’

‘Dr Morrison, thank you for calling.’

‘Always a pleasure, Mrs Ragsdale.’

Overnight, the weather, as capricious as love, had turned springlike, almost sultry. A film of sweat sheened Mrs Ragsdale’s upper lip as they stumbled through an exchange of pleasantries. Under his jacket, Morrison felt damp circles spread from under his arms. He held his hat in his hand.

‘Dr Morrison,’ she ventured at last, her eyes apologetic. ‘As you know, Senator and Mrs Perkins have entrusted the guardianship of their daughter to me whilst she is in China.’

He nodded. His throat and stomach were a sheepshank, knotted top and bottom.

‘I feel I must speak to you about a rather sensitive matter. I believe you know what I’m referring to.’ Mrs Ragsdale attempted a smile. It died on her lips. She tried to resuscitate it without great success.

‘Yes.’ He felt his cheeks colour. ‘I believe I do.’
Anguish gripping my vitals.

‘Dr Morrison, you know how much I respect you.’

Morrison held his breath.

‘Back home, as you might imagine, Senator and Mrs Perkins are pillars of society.’

‘Of course,’ was Morrison’s careful reply.

Mrs Ragsdale, eyes moistening, frowned. ‘This is so terribly awkward.’

Morrison sat as still as a corpse.

‘Miss Perkins is the apple of her father’s eye. But she has always been a bit…man-crazy. She is, and I shall be frank with you, Dr Morrison, only kept from male company with the greatest of difficulty.’

Morrison nodded. ‘I understand,’ he said, though in truth he was struggling.

‘I shall come to the point. Mae—Miss Perkins—has told me that you’ve been pressing your suit. That you have asked her to marry you. That you have been steadfast and persistent.’

Morrison blinked.

‘I know your intentions are honourable, Dr Morrison.’

‘They are.’
They were. They are
. ‘And what,’ he added, maintaining as neutral a tone as possible, ‘does Miss Perkins say of her own intentions?’

‘You can imagine my astonishment as her circumlocutions finally spiralled towards the central point, which was that my fervently desired engagement—such was the dated quality of her newsgathering—was not to be. I digested this information, as well as the news that Miss Perkins had departed for Shanghai in the company of Mrs Goodnow, with some degree of heartburn, as you might imagine. But the moment I was truly threatened with reflux was when Mrs Ragsdale informed me, in a dramatically lowered whisper, that the cad, the scoundrel, the reprobate Martin Egan, whom she had always thought such an honourable gentleman and a pleasant man too, had gone and got the lass “into trouble”.’

Dumas jerked forward in his chair as though mechanically sprung. ‘No!’ he cried.

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘Egan?’

‘Egan. So she told Mrs Ragsdale, anyway. I cannot work out whether her motivation was to protect me or punish me. She’s accomplished both. Mrs Ragsdale told me that Mrs Goodnow and Miss Perkins would soon be leaving Shanghai for Japan. There, the maiden will promptly marry Martin Egan, thus averting further scandal. Egan, conveniently, is from San Francisco as well and to San Francisco they will return, accidental man and wife, him to inherit a most eminent father-in-law and, in the long run, an obscene and undeserved fortune.’

Dumas’s jaw bristled with questions. ‘So was it Egan then, do you think?’

‘In truth I am left no wiser as to whether the lucky father was Egan or myself, or perhaps even Holdsworth or someone else entirely. It could be the contagious wart Jameson for all I know. I rather doubt the lady knows herself, for all her protestations to the contrary. All I am sure of is that I am spared a future in which I would contend with Lord Bredon for the title of biggest cuckold in the Extreme Orient. That honour I shall happily concede to Egan. He can grin it away with those stupidly straight white teeth of his. And I shall go to the front. I have a ticket on a steamer departing T’ang-ku for Wei Hai Wei this very evening.’

In his cabin, Morrison smoothed the pages of his journal and secured his ink bottle. He wrote the date: the twentieth of April 1904. Then, out of long habit, he recorded the names of the crew:
Captain Bennett, Engineer Malcolm.
He noted various titbits of information and gossip culled from fellow passengers before
turning to the topic that was closest to his heart.
For almost two months, all my movements had been guided by this infatuation…

The steamer ploughed through the gulf. The view from his porthole was unedifying. Darkness above and below.
Certainly the circumstantial evidence would suggest…even now, every fibre of my body thrills with passion as her image passes before me…capricious and wilful…distraught…blinding jealousy…
He wrote solidly for an hour until his inkwell was nearly dry and his hand cramped with the effort of writing against the ship’s vibrations.

As a much younger man, Morrison had thought the world would end when Noelle had run off with the sinewy Italian major-domo of Montmartre’s notorious Chat Noir. There had been other devastations. And now Maysie was quitting him for Egan.
Is this to be the final parting?
he wondered, his chest contracting at the thought.

He reread what he had written and ripped the pages from his journal. Loping up the stairs two at a time to reach the deck, he sowed the sea with his hopes, dreams and disappointments. The white pages glowed briefly before being sucked down into the midnight waters.

A chill rain was falling. Liu Kung Island was shrouded in fog. Morrison had awoken with his throat as sore as if it had been scraped by razors. The muscles behind his eyes were throbbing hot, his neck felt as though it had been iced into position, his ears ached and his sinuses were in a worse than usual state of rebellion. Swathed in woollens, wrapped in misery and bound by duty, he dragged himself across the quay, past a medical boat unloading wounded Japanese soldiers and their civilian Chinese labourers and, with the moans of the injured in his ears, proceeded up the hill to the wireless base station. There, he found James in a right state.

James hurled a sheaf of cables onto the desk for Morrison’s consideration. ‘I am getting no support whatsoever from any quarter. The world is ruled by small and careful men.’

Morrison thumbed listlessly through the cables. ‘And what from our editor?’

‘The worst blow of all. Bell is not disposed to re-engage the
Haimun.
Says that unless we can get within sight of a naval battle, it’s a waste of the paper’s money and resources.’

‘Your response?’

‘We—you and I—sail to Nagasaki at daybreak. Passmore estimates that with the winds and currents it will take forty-eight hours and the
Haimun
’s remaining reserves of coal to get there. But we must convince the Japanese to allow us to proceed. It’s our last chance. In the meantime, you have to stall Bell.’

‘And if the Japanese still say no?’

‘Then I shall give up the
Haimun
and seek attachment to a Japanese column. In any case, Tonami tells me you will travel with the Japanese Second Army Corps leaving Nagasaki on the first or second of May for the Yalu River. You should be able to witness the first major land battle of the war.’

Morrison had never felt less capable in body or less prepared in heart and mind for such adventure. ‘Grand.’

At dawn the following morning, the
Haimun
steamed across the Yellow Sea towards the Land of the Rising Sun. Ichibans, for all the restorative properties of egg and milk, had not proven the best medicine for nasal catarrh. But Morrison’s mood had brightened. A telegram had come overnight to him care of the
Haimun
from that impossible creature.
Dear, dear girl
. She was taking passage to Nagasaki on the
Doric
with Mrs Goodnow. She would be able to meet him there before joining Egan in Yokohama. Perhaps she had reconsidered. He found himself full of hope, though exactly what it was he hoped for now he would have been hard pressed to say. He dosed up on Tinct Cinchona.
By the time we meet, I ought to be well again. Please God. For all that she tests me, she brings me great happiness as well.

Early on the morning of the twenty-fourth of April, the
Haimun
steamed into the mountain-cradled port of Nagasaki. Coal barges drew alongside the vessel as it tied up, and, on the jetty, women in plain blue kimonos queued, baskets of coal harnessed to their backs. Bare-legged boatmen, the hems of their calico robes tucked into their waist sashes and ropy muscles glistening, steered their skiffs across the calm water, gliding in and out of the moorings. A pungency of shellfish and seaweed infiltrated Morrison’s consciousness; that he could smell again meant he was on the road to recovery. His senses were sparking back into life; the mix of travel and uncertainty—about Mae, about being sent to the front—gave everything an electric charge.

The
Doric
was expected that very evening.
And she is on board! It is almost too good news.
His mind raced with possibilities. She would not have told him to meet her if she hadn’t reconsidered her plan to marry Egan. She had been rash and foolish. He would forgive her. They would be married and return to Peking, or return to Peking and be married, though it was possible she would prefer the wedding to take place in Tientsin or Shanghai. They would have that child and many more after. There was so much to talk about. Perhaps—
hope against hope!—
Egan did not yet know of her condition.

He was an idiot. She just wanted to have him again, on her terms, before leaving him on her terms. He should know that by now.

He should not be such a cynic.

It was in his nature to be a cynic.

It would be strange getting married at his age. But comforting, too. And children. He recalled the sight of her with young Owen Lattimore.

Ridiculous.

Lovely.

James was occupied with the refuelling of the ship, and Tonami with appointments that they all hoped would help break the official impasse with regard to the
Haimun
. Relieved of any immediate tasks, Morrison took a room at a hotel. He idly perused the guest book, only for Martin Egan’s signature to leap out like a flare. He was relieved to see that Egan had checked out almost a week earlier.

He set out for a walk. A pair of middle-aged women in layered kimonos passed him on the street, bobbing along under oil-paper parasols and smiling from behind their hands. Paper charms fluttered from tree branches and chimes tinkled. There was a gentility here that Morrison found almost disconcerting after the robust hustle and bustle of China. He stopped at a tiny, immaculately clean eatery for an early lunch. Even the way the Japanese prepared food struck Morrison as discreet—the steaming, grilling, rolling; the delicate odours; the concealment in lacquered boxes as opposed to the hiss and crackle of the wok, the scrape of the spatula, the wallop of chilli and garlic and heaped platters.

Despite the impeccable courtesy of the Japanese, Morrison sensed that Japan had a way of coolly excluding the foreigner that China, for all its violent spasms of xenophobia, had never mastered. If China’s government did not command Morrison’s respect as Japan’s did, China as a nation had won his love. For a man who craved order, who spent much of his time collecting, cataloguing and recording, Morrison had a weakness for the garrulous, the passionate, the chaotic, the unpredictable. China. Mae.

Walking out from the eatery, he found himself on a narrow street of open-fronted shops leading up to the Temple of the Bronze Horse. A doe-eyed little boy in a blue kimono played with spinning tops by the side of the road until, spying the tall foreigner with the pale hair and skin, he ran to his shopkeeper father and buried himself in the man’s long skirts. The father bowed to Morrison, who bowed back, strangled with emotion. He burned so fiercely with anticipation he felt he might set the houses of wood and paper aflame. He had no patience for sightseeing. He turned and all but sprinted back to the docks.

The
Doric
had arrived but had been put into quarantine. A customs official told Morrison that a passenger had displayed symptoms of the plague. No, he didn’t know the name of the passenger. No, he didn’t know if it was a man or a woman.
Please ye gods, let it not be her.
Thinking of the danger to Mae and the baby she was carrying, and for once in no doubt that it was his, Morrison nearly doubled over with anguish.

Over at the
Haimun
, he found James in the engine room in heated conversation with the ship’s engineer and gesturing sharply with his pipe.

‘It’s going to take days to fix,’ insisted the engineer, a little Scot with wild red hair. ‘You can rant and rave as much as you like, Mr James. But we have to get a new valve or we’re not going anywhere, and they don’t grow on Nagasaki’s trees.’

Morrison, secretly relieved, led James back up to the deck. ‘Think of it this way. Tonami will have more time to plead the
Haimun
’s case with his superiors in the navy here.’
And I will wait for the
Doric
to be cleared.

‘The engine is not the end of our trouble.’ James thrust a letter into Morrison’s hand. ‘From our minister in Tokio.’

‘Sir Claude? What does he say?’

‘Nothing of any use whatsoever. He implies that he does not wish to use his position to argue our case with the Japanese government. He even intimates that he admires the efficiency with which the Japanese have managed to crush the curse of correspondents. The traitorous Brinkley, meanwhile, has published a leaderette supporting the Japanese position on keeping correspondents well away from the war. Says that information disadvantageous to the Japanese army, and hence the outcome of the war, could be disseminated by too much freedom of access to the front by the men of the press. He forgets he’s one himself.’

‘Bilge. The Japs thought this war would be swift. So, in truth, did I. Now that it’s not going as well as they thought it would, they wish to hide this obvious fact from the world. Well, they can’t. Bell should pull Brinkley into line.’

‘Fat chance. His latest telegram read, “Obey the Japanese.” And so the English, the Japanese, our own colleagues and even the bloody machinery are conspiring to keep me from doing my job,’ James exclaimed. ‘I can’t speak for the engine but the others are doing this, from what I can see, not because I am not doing my job well enough but because I am doing it too well. The Russians, of course, would still welcome any excuse to hang me from the nearest yard-arm.’ James lit his pipe and puffed furiously at it.

Tonami arrived back from an appointment with the commander of a Japanese man o’ war berthed nearby, worry etched into his brow. He was clutching a telegram.

‘What is it, Tonami?’ James demanded before the man had even the chance to say hello.

‘Not good.’ He waved the telegram. ‘Military Headquarters has overruled the navy and ordered the
Haimun
to remain south of the line of battle. Well south.’

‘They know I am willing to play by their rules,’ James spluttered. ‘I just want to see the action with my own eyes. I am more than happy to accept censorship. Tonami, your welcome presence on the
Haimun
is testament to that.’

‘
So
,’ Tonami concurred. ‘And James-
san
has been more careful in his dispatches than our own admiralty.’

‘And as a reward I am threatened with capital punishment by one belligerent and warned off the high seas and neutral waters by the other. My own editor wishes to whisk my boat from under my feet. All because I have a vision for revolutionising correspondence itself!’

Morrison thought for a moment. ‘MacDonald—Sir Claude—is weak and vacillating. But he’s out best hope. James, draft a letter of reply to our minister. I shall have a look at it when you’re finished.’

Morrison’s air of authority clearly calmed James and brought a look of relief to Tonami’s face as well.

‘That’s settled then,’ Morrison added. ‘We’ll have dinner first at the hotel.’

The three men went ashore for dinner. Afterwards, Morrison returned to the docks only to find the
Doric
still in quarantine.

Gripped by foreboding and still suffering from the lingering effects of the flu, Morrison slept poorly. At dawn, he forced himself from his bed and discovered the
Doric
still had not been cleared. Composing a note, he sent it up to the ship. Whilst awaiting a reply, he obtained a copy of the manifest and ran his finger down the list three times. His heart sank. There was no
Miss Perkins aboard. No Mrs Goodnow, either.
The lady is constant only in her inconstancy
, he thought and was instantly struck with remorse.
What if something has happened to her
? Perhaps she just missed the boat. That was a plausible explanation. Enquiring as to the next boat out from Shanghai, he learned it was the twin-screw
Empress
, a fast boat due in the following day. He knew he could not wait indefinitely. Bell had ordered him to the front; he would have to go to Tokio soon to get his orders. He felt ill with worry—and glad for the
Haimun
’s troubles, for they gave him an excuse to linger in Nagasaki a bit longer.

Sighting him, James bounded down the
Haimun
’s gangplank with his draft letter to Sir Claude in hand. The pair returned to Morrison’s hotel for breakfast. There, Morrison read the letter. He shook his head. ‘You have rather let drift the faculties of diplomacy. Instead of moving the diplomat to come to the aid of the
Haimun
, you may be inciting him to sink it.’

James made a sound like a tyre deflating. ‘It is a trifle uncompromising,’ he conceded.

Morrison nodded. ‘It’s violent.’

‘Violent,’ admitted James.

‘Worst of all, it’s unconvincing.’

James grimaced.

‘Moderation and a respectful tone might better aid the cause of a sympathetic result.’

‘You see,’ James said, ‘this is why I need you, G.E. Please, help me redraft it.’

‘My pleasure. I will get to it shortly. I’ve an urgent telegram of my own to send first.’ He could see the question forming on James’s lips. ‘Our colleague in Shanghai, Blunt.’

‘I’ll accompany you to the telegraph office,’ James offered as they walked out.

‘You worked all night,’ Morrison replied. ‘Rest for a while.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Rest,’ Morrison ordered. ‘I’ll come to you shortly.’

Morrison had not been dissembling. The telegram was indeed addressed to Blunt:
IS MISS PERKINS IN SHANGHAI. FIND OUT IF SAILING
EMPRESS
.

He feared his disappointment could be bitter.
Perhaps she has decided it would be folly for us to see each other again. She has made her decision. Egan is to be the happy one and I forever precluded.

Plagued by pessimistic thoughts and craving occupation, Morrison was thankful for the task of revising James’s draft. Several hours later, he handed James the new version. ‘You will see that I have removed various random accusations and fulminations in order to stress the loss
The Times
would be forced to sustain if the
Haimun
was kept from sailing into the zone of war, the punctiliousness with which you adhere to the rules of neutrality, for so it must appear, and your sensitivity to Japanese military concerns. It most humbly requests Sir Claude, whose prestige and influence with the Japanese, not to mention our own government, is unparalleled, to render his most invaluable assistance in the matter.’