The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (21 page)

‘So she could whore from my lodgings? So I can pimp for her instead of Mother Liu? Come on, Lu. Leopards don't change their spots. She led me along. Fine, but now it's over.'

Lu shrugged. ‘As you please. I will deliver your letter and gift, or see that she gets it.'

Frank shook Lu by both hands. ‘Thanks, old friend. What would I do without you?'

‘You now have your daughter again, and a fine new son-in-law. You are a lucky, happy man.'

‘I suppose I am,' said Frank. ‘I suppose I am.'

*   *   *

On Friday evening at seven o'clock the Airtons had taken their places in the sitting room ready to receive their guests. Nellie had tucked up the children, Jenny and George, half an hour earlier, but as soon as she had turned down the lamp and left the nursery, the two little night-shirted figures had crept out of their beds and down the corridor, keeping carefully to the shadows. They were now hiding behind the coat stands near the main door, tense with excitement. They were expecting to see the hanged lady who had miraculously come back to life again. Of course, their mother had insisted that Ah Lee's story had been a fib from start to finish and that Miss Delamere had been alive and well all the time. The children, however, had had enough experience of dealing with adults to know that truth was a multilayered affair, and nothing should ever be taken at face value.

Neither Jenny nor George had much confidence in their parents' truthfulness anyway. Not since Archie, their father's chow dog's untimely death. When Archie had been run over by a cart, Ah Lee had immediately sat them down in the kitchen and given them all the gory details. He had described how their father had taken one look at the broken legs and back and, there and then, snapped the dog's neck to prevent further suffering. The children quite understood why he had done this: in the western stories the doctor liked to read to them, cowboys were always putting bullets into the heads of their brave, wounded horses. They had been shocked, however, by the story their mother and father had told them that evening over tea. In this sanitised version of events, Archie had been suffering from a terminal illness (this was strange because he had looked fine when he romped with the children that morning); God had decided to relieve his suffering; he had died quietly in his sleep, having given a last bark and a lick before rolling over on his side; and now he was in doggy heaven. It had been a soppy and unbelievable story, and the children had been embarrassed. They could only assume that the shock of the animal's death had been so great that neither their father nor their mother wanted to face the truth, and that they were somehow trying to comfort themselves with this patent lie. They were too polite to contradict their father when he began to tell them about the grave he was going to make for Archie on the hillside; they did not wish to cause him any further upset by telling him how they had seen Ah Lee take Archie's body into the kitchen and boil him into a stew.

Tonight, therefore, when judging the probability of whether Miss Delamere had or had not hanged herself, George and Jenny were inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to Ah Lee whom they saw as a forthright, hard-boiled and, above all, reliable witness. Ah Lee's description of the hanged lady had been very convincing indeed. The fact that the corpse had revived and was coming to dinner was a surprise, but they had heard of stranger things. They knew that the countryside was full of ghosts and vampires and fox spirits. Ah Lee would tell them spine-chilling stories during those afternoons when they sat with him in the kitchen watching him polish the silver or clean the shoes, and once Ah Sun had come in very agitated having seen the ghost of one of the patients in the shrubbery. They had come to accept that odd things happened outside the safety of their compound. George argued that if Miss Delamere really had hanged herself then it was only logical that she had turned into a fox spirit. That would make it perfectly possible for her to come to dinner in her former guise. Everyone knew that fox spirits were beautiful women who waited on lonely roadsides at night, luring unwary scholars to their homes in the forests where they gave them wine to drink then tore out their throats when they fell asleep. But Ah Lee had also told them that, as often as not, they were the ghosts of lonely women who had hanged themselves when rejected by their lovers. ‘Just like Miss Delamere,' said George. ‘QED.'

‘But her lover didn't reject her,' said Jenny. ‘It was her father who wouldn't let her marry.'

‘Same thing,' said George. ‘Still stopped the marriage and drove her to kill herself.'

‘But anyway, they
are
getting married now. Isn't it an engagement party we're having here tonight? If she's getting married she can't have hanged herself, can she?'

‘Yes, but is it the real Miss Delamere? Maybe they don't know she hanged herself and became a fox spirit, and the reason why Mr Delamere's now allowed the marriage is that he's been hypnotised by her magic powers.'

‘Maybe,' said Jenny doubtfully. ‘We'll need to look for a mark on her neck, I suppose. The rope must have left a bruise.'

The two hovered behind the coat stand, watching Ah Lee usher in the guests. The railway people appeared first—Dr Fischer and his funny assistant, Charlie Zhang, smiling and chattering in his silk gown. Jenny liked it when Mr Charlie came. He was the most unChinese Chinaman she had ever met, and she looked forward to his presents—red envelopes full of money, or sweetmeats, and once a doll dressed in peasant clothes—that he would slip into her hands with a wink and a smile when her mother wasn't looking. She knew that he probably had a present for her tonight but, like George, she preferred to stay in her hiding place until the mysterious lady appeared. Unlike George, she only half believed that Miss Delamere might be a fox spirit, but she was excited and a little scared all the same.

George tugged her hand. ‘Jen. Jen. Look. She's here,' he whispered urgently. ‘And, by golly—she's wearing a choker!'

A beautiful young lady was slipping off her coat. She had very white, slightly freckled arms and dark red hair, which shifted tones in the candlelight from chestnut to cherry to amber. She wore a long purple evening dress of taffeta and lace, and she had green eyes like a cat's. She reminded Jenny of one of the princesses in her book of Celtic fairy tales. Around her neck was a thick black neckband, which bore a large amethyst locket. Behind her, handing in their hats, were Mr Delamere and an enormous, yellow-haired man with a kind face.

‘That proves it,' George was saying excitedly. ‘She's covering up the marks on her neck.'

‘But she's beautiful,' gasped Jenny.

‘Of course she is. All fox spirits are. That's why they're so dangerous.'

‘Well, I believe she's real and alive, and I'm going to prove it,' she said. Taking her courage in her hands, she stepped out and curtsied.

‘Why, hello,' said the big young man. ‘What's your name?'

‘I know. You must be Jenny,' said the lady, in a sweet voice. ‘I'm Helen Frances. I'm so pleased to meet you.' Jenny stiffened. How did she know her name? Was she a spirit after all? And then she smelt a whiff of perfume and a tickle of red hair brushing against her cheek as Miss Delamere leaned forward and kissed her lightly. She closed her eyes, partly in fear, partly in delight.

When she opened them again, the Delameres' party, including the beautiful lady, had already moved down the corridor to the sitting room where her father and mother were waiting to greet their guests. Another man was standing in front of her looking down at her with an amused expression. She had never seen anyone better dressed or more elegant. He wore a black dinner suit with a red cape and he was folding his white gloves into his sleeve. He had a small moustache and laughing blue eyes, and she thought that he must be a prince or a duke at the least. ‘Hello,' he said. ‘I'm Manners. Are you my beautiful hostess? I'll tell you what, my dear, you keep that peaches-and-cream complexion, and I guarantee that in ten years you'll be the toast of all St James's.' And he, too, leaned forward and kissed her on the brow.

Jenny was stunned. It was only when the coast was clear and she felt a tugging on her sleeve from George, who had emerged from behind the coat stand, that she dared open her eyes again.

‘Did you see any scars or marks?' he asked.

‘No,' said Jenny. ‘She's beautiful. An angel.'

‘That's what all the fox spirit's victims say,' said George. ‘Nothing proven, then. I didn't like that dark man either. Do you suppose he's the lover?'

But Jenny was still bereft of words.

‘Come on, Jen,' said George. ‘She didn't bite you, did she? You're not in a trance? We'd better get back to our room before Mummy or Daddy catch us.'

But Jenny loitered, still enraptured, gazing at the door of the sitting room where there was a murmur of conversation. ‘Oh, I wish I was a grown-up and could go in there and be with them,' she sighed, ‘and hear what they're all saying. Don't you think they're the most exciting people we've ever seen?'

*   *   *

Exciting was not a word that would have occurred immediately to Helen Frances. Looking round the faces of these strangers she felt a sense of dislocation. When she had dreamed about joining her father, her schoolgirl fantasies had conjured an image of Shishan as a place of mystery, throbbing with dark, exotic life, full of dangers and allurements. She had not imagined that within days of her arrival she would be sitting down to dinner in the sort of middle-class English home she thought that she had left behind her (the wood-panelled dining room was not unlike her aunt's in Crowborough) or that her hosts would be as conventional as Dr and Mrs Airton.

She knew that she was being naïve. How else would English people abroad behave? Was it really surprising that long-term exiles should wish to re-create the comforting environment of the home counties? Had she expected that Dr and Mrs Airton would be living in a palace? But she could not contain a sense of disappointment. It was strangeness and new sensation that she desired above all else. She had experienced a sense of wonder on her journey. The sights and experiences had heightened her anticipation, and she had imagined that Shishan, the magical destination that had coloured her childhood dreams, would be a Xanadu of delights. Yet up to now all she had seen was a shabby, very smelly town, with dusty streets and alien, rather forbidding inhabitants. Now she found herself again in the humdrum normality from which for most of her short life she had fretted to get away.

With a sinking heart, and a growing sense of anticlimax, she listened to Mrs Airton and Herr Fischer, the man they had met at the railway camp on their arrival, discussing the weather. She had nothing against Herr Fischer, but everything about him was dreary. His head emerged like that of a reluctant seal from an old-fashioned tailcoat. With his hair cut short in the Prussian style and sunburned features, his grizzled moustache and stained, calloused hands, he carried about with him an aura of the grime and dust of the railway camp, and his pale eyes blinked like a kindly vole's as he showered her with laborious and overflowery compliments. He reminded her of one of the tradesmen on whom her aunt had called in the high street.

Admittedly the two Italian nuns in their black habits would have been a little out of place at a Sussex dinner party. And there was certainly nothing conventional about the pig-tailed, silk-robed Chinaman chattering gaily in plummy English as he spooned his soup and gulped his wine, rolling his eyes as he explained earnestly to the nuns between mouthfuls why he preferred French Camemberts and Bries to Dutch and Swiss cheeses. Yet Charlie Zhang's very outlandishness in such an ordinary setting merely confirmed for Helen Frances her disillusionment and made him for her the exception that proved the rule. He was like a parody in fancy dress of the exoticism she had hoped to discover here, the eccentric foreigner who had been invited to tea and to whom well-brought up girls such as she had been taught to be particularly polite in case they offended any sensibilities. After an hour of so of polite embarrassment a pony trap would come for him and the English household would resume its orderly ways.

As the evening progressed Helen Frances experienced a growing sense of futility and boredom. She felt that a trap was closing about her. She wanted, irrationally, to scream or make a scene, or to answer courtesies and platitudes with something so outrageous or shocking it would provoke indignant stares. When she realised that these people would be her only companions for the coming months and years she felt stirrings of panic. Even the doctor, whom she liked, appeared ridiculous to her this evening. With his pale whiskers and inquisitive eyes, his amiable and slightly bumbling manner, he might have stepped out of the pages of the
Pickwick Papers;
he certainly had no role to play in the sort of adventurous romance that Helen Frances had dreamed of discovering in China. She watched despondently as, with thumbs hooked in his waistcoat and his eyes moving round the wine glasses to make sure that none were empty, he hurried his guests to their places and on to the first course as if activity alone would somehow make the dinner party a success. As for her father—well, tonight, much as she loved him, in his unlikely and ill-fitting white tie and tails, his hair streaked with brilliantine and his moustaches curled, she saw only a bombastic caricature. He had promised to be on his best behaviour but his red face and booming laughter carried with it the atmosphere of the music-hall and the pub.

She wished she could have caught Tom's eye, as she had on the captain's table on the ship, to share with him the satire of the scene, but Tom was deep in conversation with Mrs Airton. Instead she found herself looking towards Henry Manners, whose elegance of evening attire and languid posture made him actually the most incongruous figure in the room. His whole manner smacked of a larger, more cosmopolitan world. Helen Frances imagined that he might, only a minute ago, have left a dinner at the Reform Club or White's to take his seat at this provincial table. She thought she identified a bored curl to his lip as he attended to his hostess with perfect courtesy and apparent concentration. It did not fool Helen Frances. Suddenly his blue eyes turned in her direction, and his head moved almost imperceptibly in recognition that she was observing him. Despite herself she grinned, and feeling the onset of the giggles, hastily drank a glass of water. His eyes crinkled in amusement and his teeth flashed in a wide smile. Their unspoken alliance lasted for the rest of the meal.