The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (41 page)

‘No,' said Henry.

‘Perhaps you ought to,' she said. She moved her mouth along his shoulder, kissed his ear, his neck, his chin. Her hand touched him below. He began to respond. She pulled herself forward on his chest, and looked him sadly in the face. ‘This'll be the last time, Henry.'

‘Why?' he breathed, feeling the caress of her hand. ‘I thought you enjoyed this.'

‘I live for this,' she said.

‘Then why?'

‘Because you won't be mine and I can't live two lives.'

‘Oh, dearest,' he sighed, ‘it's not that I want … I do, I really do…'

‘Love me?' she whispered. She was sitting across his belly. ‘You don't have to say that, darling. I understand.' She guided his hands to her breasts, and sighed herself as he touched her nipple.

‘I have a job to do here,' he whispered. ‘Darling, it's a role I have to play. I'm not the person you … Oh, God, if only I could…' He groaned as she lowered herself on to him, riding him.

‘It doesn't matter. I understand,' she breathed. ‘It doesn't matter. I'll be all right. I'll be all right. I promise. I understand…' She panted the words, rocking to the movement below her.

‘You don't understand.' He arched up and clasped her back, keeping himself tight inside her, maintaining the rhythm. His mouth found hers and they sucked each other hungrily. ‘You can't. You can't marry that oaf,' he whispered urgently, as his tongue withdrew, but she only heard him groan, as she was beginning to groan, and whimper as the passion and the heat grew greater, and the sweat ran between their two bodies, which now had a movement and life of their own, oscillating violently towards a moment of final release …

*   *   *

Jin Lao snapped the spyhole shut. ‘Exotic, as you say, dear Mama. A most curious display, but very untalented. And the woman is extraordinarily ugly.'

‘Every woman is ugly to you, Jin Lao. The question is, will she be ugly to others?'

‘For those libertines, I suppose, who have become satiated with every other possible variety, the prospect of bedding a fox fairy may have some appeal.'

‘Might it appeal to the Mandarin, Jin Lao?'

‘It might,' he said, ‘but how will you accomplish her procurement? You are dreaming, dear friend.'

‘You saw she took the drug. That can be a hook.'

‘Yes, but she is protected by a father and a lover and a doltish fiancé who, like some farmer happy to receive soiled goods from the town stews, is foolish enough to want her even when Ma Na Si is finished with her. How do you propose to deal with them?'

‘Maybe I won't have to, Jin Lao. You were there when the fire-cart came, and you saw the Boxer priest magically vanish. My son tells me that the Harmonious Fists will one day soon be powerful in Shishan. And what will a foreigner's protection be worth then? What will even the Mandarin's protection be worth then?'

Jin Lao looked at her long and hard.

‘Mother Liu, who knows what the future will bring? It is safer not to speculate. All I can say is that if any eventuality arises like the one you described, the procurement of a foreign she-devil will be the least of our concerns. I prefer my prognostications to be limited to what is tangible, and in this context I think you mentioned something about a bath?'

Arm in arm the two friends made their way back along the garden path. Mother Liu wrapped her shawl closer round her body. There was a chill in the air that portended a fall of snow.

Nine

Little Brother can imitate the Striking Crane; Master Zhang says practice will make us worthy of the gods.

 

The children were clearly up to something.

It was puzzling how tractable Jenny and George had become at bedtime, especially on nights when the Airtons had guests, and even on ordinary nights they scurried off to their rooms immediately after their supper without a protest.

When Nellie came to announce that it was time for lights out, there were no pleas for ‘just a few more minutes', or ‘Can I finish the chapter?' Books immediately snapped shut and were placed unprotesting on the side table. In one fluid movement the children slid out of bed and onto their knees for their goodnight prayers. Then as briskly they wriggled back into bed again, sheets up to their noses, big eyes looking up innocently, awaiting the good-night kiss, and there was not a murmur from them when the candle was snuffed. It was all very mysterious.

Nellie might have discovered the secret if she had thought of lifting up the heavy linen tablecloth during her own dinner. There she would have found them, their arms folded round their knees, their eyes shining in the shadow, ever watchful of the forest of legs that might at any time stretch and kick and discover them. For several weeks now the truants in their hideaway had been listening to the real bedtime story unfolding in the adults' dinner conversation, something much more exciting than they could ever find in any adventure books by Henty or Captain Marryat.

For it was at dinnertime that their parents talked about the Boxers.

They had given up trying to warn their parents of what Ah Lee and Ah Sun whispered to them in the kitchen: tales about the ever-growing and invincible army that had been spreading its magic and menace over the countryside. The children themselves had seen the Boxer priest tumble under the wheels of the train, and vanish like a magician without receiving any hurt. His white pallid face and sightless eyes haunted them in their dreams. And now that the big American man, Mr Fielding, had come to stay, they were convinced that finally they would get some real answers. Not only was this minister, for an adult, extraordinarily impressive (he had been a cowboy in the Wild West), but in his role as Commissioner of Foreign Missions he had travelled all over China, and more than that, as he told their father on the first night, he had actually met the Boxers face to face!

And now he was describing them!

‘Down south the Boxers are part of the local scenery,' Mr Fielding was saying. He had just lit his second cigar. ‘You'll find them lounging in knots by the side of the road in any village in Shantung or Chih-li. Usually there'll be some martial arts demonstration going on in the background: some bravo stripped to the waist twirling a great sword round his head while the crowd admires him, or maybe it'll be a demonstration of strength, smashing bricks with bare hands—it's amazing what they can do. Normally, they don't pay much attention to you as you pass, maybe give you a hostile jeer or a catcall, but they'll laugh if you answer back in kind. They're simple peasants beneath, for all their colourful exterior.'

‘Colourful?' interjected their father. ‘You mean their uniforms?'

‘Well, you could call them uniforms. More like the sort of fancy-dress costume you'll find in the wardrobe of an actors' travelling troupe—yellow tunics and red bandannas, sky-blue sashes round their waists, and blood-red characters painted on their chests. Some have raided the village arsenals and clomp around in ancient armour, brandishing great big snickersnees.'

‘You make them sound comical.'

‘They're not comical, Doctor. Might as well call Cochise comical because he wore a buckskin loincloth and a top hat with a feather in it. I spent some time with the Apache when I was a young preacher. Worked in a reservation—one of those squalid hellholes where we attempted to break the spirit of a proud and savage people, introducing them to civilisation through starvation rations and the bottle. I gave them scripture classes, God help me, and I remember the patient hatred in their eyes, while flies crawled over their faces and their pride. They were a broken people and it makes me sick to think of them. But, Doctor, if you had seen a Chiricahua Apache on his horse with a rifle in his hand, as I did once after Geronimo led the breakout from San Carlos in the seventies, then you would have seen a man. Proud as an eagle, free as the wind, for all he was wearing what you or I would call rags, and his possessions amounted to his weapons and a few knucklebones or beads. Scary as a mountain lion, as ruthless a killer as ever trod God's earth, the odds were ever against him, yet he held his head high. Doctor, I hate to tell you this but that man had something in common with the Boxers I see in this country today.'

‘You mean they're dangerous savages?'

‘If you provoke them, they could be very dangerous, but that's not what I was referring to. What I saw in their eyes was pride, Doctor, pride. You and I have lived in China many years, you longer than me. We've become used to the downtrodden nature of the Chinese peasantry. Come, don't deny it. Does the farmer look you in the eye when you give him surgery? Does the muleteer keep to his path when you come by on your horse? No, sir, the one greets you mumbling with his eyes averted, the other is anxious to step out of your way. There's a sycophancy ingrained into every Chinaman from birth. It's a society of superiors and inferiors, where you either bully or grovel, and the peasant's the lowest of the low—but when a Boxer brave beards me on the highway, I'm looking at a man. He's not a savage like the Apache, but he stares me in the eye with the same menace and, by God, I treat him with caution and respect and go on my way as fast as I possibly can.'

‘Are we missionaries really in danger from the Boxers, do you believe, Fielding?'

The children heard the American sigh as he thought over this question. They heard the clink of glass as he poured himself more port.

‘Danger? Physical danger? I don't think so. Not yet awhile. It's the poor converts who are being threatened. They'll turn on their own kind before they turn on us. There are corroborated stories of murders of Christian villagers in Shantung and Chih-li. There's certainly incendiarism going on in outflung parishes. Burning of Christians' houses, torching of churches, that sort of thing. These are terrible times and those farm-boys in their mad state are capable of devilish cruelty. I daresay the Boxer bands have their share of criminals and bandits who egg them on. Convert communities all over north China are naturally pretty fearful …

‘What scares me, though, is how the Government and people in power might try to manipulate these disturbances for their own ends. So far—largely—the mandarins have come out on the side of law and order. Perpetrators of violence against Christians are still being punished. Yet the Boxers are a sword that can cut in two directions. I hear that the antiforeign factions at Court—Prince Tuan and his like—have been quietly supportive. Whatever else, the Boxers are growing in numbers. I feel that there's some sort of tacit encouragement going on. That at least one faction sees an opportunity to scare us, squeeze a few concessions out of us, get even a bit for some of their diplomatic humiliations over the past few years.'

‘The Government would not break their treaties,' said Dr Airton. ‘They know just what sort of retribution that would bring down on their own heads from the powers. But I'm alarmed by what you say about the converts. There is tension between convert and local community at the best of times. Ordinary land disputes sometimes flare into religious quarrels. And there are other resentments.'

‘I am afraid that our good work has inadvertently created a tinderbox. Is Shishan's Christian community large, Doctor?'

‘Not large, no. There are three or four Christian villages in the vicinity. Sadly I can make no claim to having converted them. I'm afraid that they owe allegiance to the Church of Rome rather than the Reformed Church. My two Italian nuns take on such pastoral work as there is, which is difficult without a priest, but they do make visits there from time to time.'

‘I've noticed that your arrangements here are commendably charitable, Airton.'

‘It is a special circumstance, Fielding. One day a new priest will be appointed by Rome to replace the late Father Adolphus, and then I will lose two excellent nurses—but if what you are saying is correct, it seems to me that we missionaries of all persuasions should be showing some solidarity now to counter the Boxer superstition. But I wonder, I wonder. Can we really take them so seriously?'

‘I advise you to take them very seriously indeed. Don't misunderstand me, sir, I will not be intimidated by the Boxers or any man. I haven't put out any call to the American missions to evacuate, and I won't do so. I don't see the need. In fact, in this time of trial I think it behoves us to stay. It's our duty. We need to be calm. If we keep our heads and trust in the Lord, then we'll all be safe enough.'

He paused. The children heard the thump of his cigar being stubbed out in the ashtray above their heads.

‘In the meanwhile, what we do
not
need at this time are mad dogs like Septimus Millward embarrassing our good name and confirming every prejudice against us.'

‘Ah,' said Airton. ‘You've met him, then?'

‘Yes, I went to his dwelling, if such you can call it, this afternoon. The squalors of an Arapaho reservation are more refined. Doctor, I nearly despaired when I saw the skeletal state of his family. I asked him why they were not eating, and do you know what he said? The Lord has commanded them all to fast until the prodigal has returned.'

‘Yes, he believes his murdered son is alive.'

‘Apparently he's thriving. Mr Millward is a regular receiver of celestial visions, as you know. The latest bulletin has the boy Hiram luxuriating in abomination and vice among the stews of Babylon, which he says are located in front of Baal's temple.'

‘Mad, quite mad.'

‘I'll say, especially when he told me that this stew of Babylon is located above a dumpling shop in the market square of this very town. He saw his son's painted face gaze out at him from a window while the minions of Satan were beating him below.'

‘You know, he was once beaten in the market square. He was trying to prevent a beheading. Actually, it was the execution of his son's murderers, whom he maintained were falsely accused. As it happens there is a brothel above a dumpling shop and it is right opposite the Confucian temple.'