The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (30 page)

‘Thank you, Henry, for a lovely day.' Helen Frances reached out her hand and touched the flank of his horse, close to his knee.

‘I'll call on you at the Airtons' in a couple of days,' said Manners. ‘Have a good journey, Tom. You'll like the hunting up there. Don't worry about Helen Frances.'

Tom turned. ‘Why do you keep telling me not to worry about HF, Henry?'

‘'Bye,' said Manners, saluting with his crop. ‘
Zoule,
Lao Zhao!' Turning his horse he was quickly swallowed up by the night.

‘He doesn't want you to be concerned about me while you're away, that's all,' said Helen Frances, perhaps because she felt somebody had to fill the silence.

‘Question is, just what am I not to be concerned about?' said Tom.

‘I don't know what you mean,' said Helen Frances, after a while.

‘I don't either,' said Tom, after an equal pause. ‘Let's forget it, shall we? Tell me about your day with Henry.'

*   *   *

When the party was gone, and Frank's lamp was only a glint in the distance, a figure rose from the ditch by the side of the road. While the sightless eyes gazed expressionlessly in the direction of the vanishing party, the figure moved his right hand to his left shoulder and probed with long fingers into the hole in the flesh made by Tom's gun. A soft mewing sound came from his mouth. After a while he located the crumpled bullet and slowly withdrew it. He held it for a moment in his open palm, then placed it casually in his mouth and swallowed it. Then, picking up his bowl and staff, ignoring his wound, he began to shuffle in the direction of Shishan.

*   *   *

More than ever Helen Frances looked forward to the afternoons with Henry and Lao Zhao, if nothing else as a relaxation from the good behaviour she was expected to show in the presence of Mrs Airton. After the interminable lunches with Nellie and the nuns, she would plead tiredness and wait by the window of her room. Her heart would leap when she saw the horses emerge round the clump of pines and climb the hill toward the mission. By then she would be changed into boots and riding dress, and at the first sound of the doorbell, flush-cheeked, she would step out into the hall where Ah Lee would be waiting with her hat and crop.

Henry would not often come into the house. He would lounge against the porch smoking a cheroot, or squat in the yard with the children, carefully unwrapping his handkerchief to show them a grasshopper or a beetle or whatever he had found for them on his ride over from the camp. As often as not he would reach into his other pocket and produce another handkerchief, and this time unfold an orchid or other wild flower for her to pin on her lapel.

Mrs Airton, who would never fail to be present for their departure, if only to register her disapproval, would offer a sour smile when he extended a similar courtesy to her, and tell him, in her Scottish coo, what a beautiful wee bloom it was and hand it to Ah Lee to put into a jar. She never failed to ask Henry what time exactly he would be returning with Miss Delamere, reminding him that with children in the house supper times were punctual, as indeed was the daily service beforehand, not that young people nowadays observed religion with the punctiliousness that had been expected when she herself was a girl. Henry would invariably disarm her, describing the route he intended to take that day, the sights they would see on the way, assuring her that even if they were unfortunate enough to be late for prayers, he would bring back Helen Frances in time for supper, safe and sound, having worked up an appetite that could only do justice to Mrs Airton's magnificent cooking.

And then, at last, she would be galloping down the hill, wind in her face, blinding her eyes, unravelling her hair, thudding in her ears, Henry laughing and egging on her horse to go faster, wilder, racing her, daring her with his white smile and crinkling eyes, and she would cry out with the joy of being free, delighting in the rhythm of the hot, powerful muscle beneath her, the pulsing blood, the abandonment and the control, kicking with her heels and slashing with her crop. The two horses would pound past the mission and the clump of firs, into the plain and beyond, reining in by the poplars on the road, with Lao Zhao grinning in a cloud of dust as he trotted up behind.

‘Well, where to today, now you're flushed and hot and unladylike?' Henry asked her, one afternoon after one of these gallops, patting the neck of his horse.

‘A temple?'

‘Sorry. Run out of temples—though I'm still inventing notional ones for Mrs Dragon up there.'

‘I don't care where we go, as long as it's away from the Airtons.'

‘Och, noo. What a braw ungrateful thing ye are, so discourteous to your poor kind hosts.'

‘The doctor's all right, I suppose. Bit of a bore. The children are sweet, funny things. It's Nellie I loathe—and those cheerful nuns.' She giggled. ‘God, those nuns. They're so damned …
jolly
.' And she threw back her head and laughed. A curl, loosed from her riding hat, drifted across her cheek and over her eye. Henry reached across and brushed it to the side, his fingers lightly tracing the line of her eyebrow. Startled, she pulled her head away, stiffening, her pupils dilated.

‘Your hair. A strand was loose,' he said.

‘Thank you,' she muttered. Her cheeks were hot and she wondered if she was blushing.

‘All right,' he said, after a moment's silence. ‘We'll go for a ride, shall we? I'll take you to the river. Come on.'

As she followed him she thought again, not for the first time, about the choices she might some day have to make.

*   *   *

The issue was much simpler for Lao Zhao, although he kept his own counsel and nobody ever asked him anyway. He was a herdsman who knew the ways of mares and stallions. It had been obvious to him from the beginning, when they had journeyed over the plains to Shishan, that Ma Na Si Xiansheng by asserting his superiority and authority over the other big Englishman, Tom, had secured the right to his red-headed woman who looked like a cat. There had never been a moment on that journey when her eyes had not hungrily followed Ma Na Si's movements, especially when he was mounted on his horse. She had already belonged to him, well before he formally claimed her in public, during those executions in Fuxin, when he had ridden after her bolting horse and taken her in his arms. The only thing that puzzled Lao Zhao was why the two of them had done nothing about it afterwards, except to talk and talk. Every day they rode together he could see the physical desire growing between them, and he would often absent himself out of tact, unnecessarily attending to the horses or pretending to sleep away the afternoon while they strolled round ruins, but as far as he could see they never took advantage of their moments alone with each other. He assumed that it was some English custom or erotic game. Abstinence heightened desire, so perhaps this deliberate delay had the object of making the ultimate lovemaking (for any fool could see that that was where this slow courtship was leading) even more passionate and delicious. He had heard of such techniques—in fact, once, in Mukden, a harlot had teased him for three whole days before finally offering her lotus, and fragrant it was after all the expectation—but he wished all the same that they would hurry up with it. Winter was coming on and he did not relish standing in the snow outside some temple while they dillydallied inside.

Today the weather was hot, a last burst of autumn sunshine with only a little breeze; a good day, thought Lao Zhao, picking a morsel of mutton fat from his teeth, for hunting, for riding, for any other kind of sport, and here the two of them were, just talking again. At this rate it would be spring before they got on with it. He didn't care. He was well paid and well fed and this was an easy job. Lucky the man who worked for an ocean devil: they were all pleasantly mad and never knew the value of money.
‘Ta made,'
he cursed, and, lazily thwacking his mule, followed them across the fields.

*   *   *

‘Henry,' Helen Frances was saying, in a manner she imagined was artful and fashionable, ‘it's vexing for a girl—you know how silly and curious we all are—but every time I try to find out something about you you brush it away with a joke.'

‘Nonsense. I'm an open book. Transparently in love with you. All adoration. And envy of Tom.'

‘There you go. Being foolish. But, admit it, you are a man of mystery. You've never told me anything about yourself.'

‘I spend every hour of every day telling you about myself. Answering your questions about life in London, and high so-ci-et-y. “Ooh, Henry, do, do tell me again about Lady Dartmouth's ball,” for the hundred and tenth time, or is it the hundred and eleventh?'

‘All right. Laugh at me. But it's true, I don't know anything about you. Except the obvious things.'

‘Which are?'

‘That you're a wonderful rider. And witty. And handsome. And … and…'

‘And what?'

‘And good to me. Kind to me.'

‘And are you kind to me in return?' he asked lightly.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘As a friend. As Tom's friend.'

‘And if Tom were not my friend, would you still be kind? How kind would you be if neither of us had ever met Tom?'

‘I am sure that we would be friends.'

‘Only friends? Come, Helen Frances, tell me, if there had never been a Tom, how kind would you be then?'

‘Are you flirting, Mr Manners? How kind would you want me to be?'

‘Oh, I'd want you to be very kind,' said Henry quietly. His face was suddenly serious. ‘But tell me, Tom's fiancée, you said you wanted to know more about me. All right. What do you want to know?'

‘You promise not to make another joke? You'll really tell me?'

‘Try me. Go on.'

‘All right.' Her green eyes flashed defiantly. ‘Why was it that you left the Horse Guards and joined an engineering regiment in India?'

Henry seemed to be concentrating on the way his horse was picking its path through the millet stubble. A straggle of thin sheep grazed in a corner of the field, the afternoon sunlight slanting on their fleeces. A kestrel and a magpie were competing for territory in the sky.

‘Why don't you speak?' asked Helen Frances.

‘I'm wondering whether you'll want to hear the answer.'

‘Of course I would. Why shouldn't I? Is the reason … shameful?' She giggled nervously.

‘I don't find it so. Others might. My dear pater did. That's why he cut me off. And Society—So-ci-et-y—well, Society was amused, of course, and envious, and hypocritical, and ultimately vengeful. So here I am.'

‘What did you do?' Her voice had lost a little of its confidence.

‘What did I do? There's an innocent little question. From such an innocent little lady too. Does Tom's trusting fiancée really want to know what I did? It might have been very wicked, you know.'

‘Don't call me “little lady”,' snapped Helen Frances, trotting her horse forward. ‘You have no right to laugh at me. Or at Tom.' She turned in her saddle. ‘Tell me,' she said. ‘Tell me what you did.'

Henry trotted his horse next to her and reined it in. Leaning over, lightly touching her shoulder, he moved his mouth close to her ear. ‘Do you really want to know?' he whispered, brushing her cheek with his finger. She twisted her head away angrily. ‘Will it excite you, I wonder, as those executions did? All right, then.' He laughed harshly, pulling his mount away. ‘I'll tell you what I was accused of. Indecent association. Adultery. Rape. Breach of promise. Is that what you wanted to hear?'

Helen Frances's startled expression showed clearly that it was not.

‘According to my accusers, I debauched—you notice how I pick my words with care—the wife of my colonel, who was an earl, and later I ravished his daughter, the Lady Caroline. Terrible behaviour, indeed. You didn't know you were out riding with a twice-condemned fornicator! One who was caught in the act!
In flagrante delicto
 … My dear Helen Frances, you've gone all red. I hope that's embarrassment pinking your cheeks and nothing else. It'd be rather immodest if you were enjoying my confession.'

Helen Frances gasped, as if she had been slapped. Henry trotted his horse back to her, and looked hard into her face. She raised her head and defiantly returned his stare, but she held the reins tightly to stop her hands shaking.

‘That's better,' said Henry. ‘Face me. Look at me. Be angry. You've every right to be. After all, who would have thought it? Your dear friend—oh, yes, and Tom's friend too, can't forget Tom, can we? I wonder where he is now, by the way. Fighting off bandits, no doubt, the hero … What a shame that dear old Henry turned out to be such a wicked bounder. Who would have thought it?'

‘Why are you being cruel to me?' she asked, in a tiny but firm voice.

‘Cruel? I thought you wanted to penetrate my mysteries.'

‘How can you say these things to me, Henry?' she hissed.

‘You asked me.'

‘But those terrible vicious things you say you did, that cruel, mocking tone, it's not like you.'

‘Is it not? You know me so well, do you?'

‘Ravishing and debauching. Those disgusting things. No.'

‘Oh, my dear sweet Helen Frances. And I thought you were so eager to listen to my stories of goings-on in high society. I thought that was what drew you to my company. I thought you wanted to be taken out of your safe little middle-class world.'

‘Stop it. Please.'

She trotted away from him but he kept pace, laughing.

‘Aren't you going to listen to my side of the story? I do have one, you know. I was wronged by the good earl long before I seduced his wife. Insulted. My honour impugned. My escutcheon blotted. What was a fellow to do?'

‘Now you're mocking me again,' she cried. A flock of sparrows fluttered up about her horse's hoofs. ‘What could this man possibly have done that deserved these terrible things you say you did to his family?