A Most Immoral Woman (11 page)

Stamping snow from his boots, Morrison stepped into the oasis of the Astor House Hotel. Soon he was following the Chinese bellhop through the familiar panelled corridors to the second floor. Sending Kuan out on some errands, Morrison sat down at the escritoire and penned a note.
My dear Mae, I must know…Jameson said…of course. I don’t believe…
He tore it up and wrote another, far milder in tone and neutral in content, blotting it carefully. He told Kuan to deliver the chit with utmost expediency after which he could take the day off.
I will confront her in person.

Morrison did no such thing. He knew from the first sight of Mae that C.D. Jameson was nothing but a mendacious old windbag. From the manner in which her eyes softened at the sight of him. The way she flung herself into his arms. The urgency with which furs and hat and gloves and shoes were discarded and top bodice, under bodice, gored skirt, petticoat, corset cover, busk, corset, chemise and drawers whispered to the floor. The tattoo of their hearts. Her inquisitive lips. Her delicious unfurling. Her nimble pleasure at his own excitement and the inventiveness with
which she sought to increase it. Her own quivering hunger. Nothing existed outside the intoxicating dance, the mingling of flesh, the mutual conquering and vanquishing. Not China, not war, not care nor suspicion—and certainly not C.D. bloody Jameson.

Afterwards, he wrapped her tightly in his arms, inhaling the sour-plum smell of their spent passion. He excoriated himself for listening to Jameson’s calumny. He could have wept for his lack of trust. But Morrison was not the sort to weep. And there was only so long a man could hold such a magnificently buxom and callipygian form in his arms before rising once more to the siren’s song.

But for a commitment to a late luncheon with Mrs Ragsdale and Mrs Goodnow in the Astor’s glass-domed dining room, they would never have left his room at all.

Mrs Goodnow was the wife of a prosperous British merchant who was a notorious seducer of other men’s wives and who also kept a Chinese concubine on the side. Society was much tested by the question of whether Mrs Goodnow was aware of her husband’s infidelity, for she was of an invariably cheery disposition—only increasing public sympathy and kindness in her direction as all awaited the thrilling moment when all would be revealed. The truth was that Mrs Goodnow, an attractive and vivacious woman in her forties, not only knew but was complicit in her husband’s debaucheries. She took a range of interesting lovers herself, including, on one apparently spectacular occasion, a Khamba warrior from Tibet, and occasionally slept with her husband’s concubine either in front of him or by herself. Morrison had long suspected she was not the innocent victim she seemed to be. Mae, who had become Mrs Goodnow’s confidante, confirmed it. She told Morrison that Mrs Goodnow had confessed to greatly mourning the passing of Queen Victoria;
should sexual mores grow too relaxed under the reign of King Edward, already famous for his womanising, Mrs Goodnow had declared, she would have to find another vice with which to amuse herself. Mrs Goodnow was more than happy to provide Mae with alibis; that day, the pair of them had supposedly been at Bible study, a ruse that pleased Mrs Ragsdale no end.

Morrison, nerves sparking and limbs languid, was barely able to focus on a word any of the ladies said. And though the Astor’s dining room was famed for the excellence of both its cuisine and wine cellar, Morrison did not know or care if he was eating fish or ham, and if blindfolded would have been unable to say if the wine he was drinking was white or red. Mae did not aid the project of concentration with her outrageous half-mast gaze and hinting lips, nor Mrs Goodnow with her barely suppressed hilarity. After the coffee and petits fours, Mae remarked that she wished to purchase a bonnet before the shops closed and asked Morrison if he and Mrs Goodnow would accompany her to the department store on the Ho Ping Trade Road. Bonnet shopping was not high on Morrison’s list of favourite recreations. ‘I would be delighted,’ he said. Mrs Ragsdale, amiably stupefied by food and drink, allowed them to see her into her carriage.

After the three of them waved her off, Mrs Goodnow, eyes twinkling, bade them a pleasant afternoon and departed for an assignation of her own. Mae snuggled her hand into the crook of Morrison’s arm—‘Shall we?’ Fresh snowfall had left a hush over the garrulous streets. Drifts lay across the branches of trees like lazing cats. The air’s cold breath tingled in Morrison’s nose and mouth. She fixed him with an irresistible look.

‘I take it that Miss Perkins is not too pressed on the matter of bonnet shopping?’ he asked in a voice full of hope.

‘I do wish to purchase a new bonnet. But perhaps this is not the best time for it.’

Blessed relief!
‘And what would mademoiselle prefer to do?’

‘Ernest, honey, need you ask?’

Mae knew better than any woman he had ever encountered how to make a man happy without for a moment neglecting her own pleasure. In fact, her capacity for pleasure was so voracious, Morrison worried a little for his heart.

Dinner that night with Mr and Mrs Ragsdale, Menzies and other anodyne company was
dull passing belief
, Morrison later recorded in his journal. It was nonetheless entertaining to hear Maysie explain, in answer to Mrs Ragsdale’s enquiry, how she’d tried on ‘dozens of bonnets, and yet none suited me; isn’t that so, Ernest?’ He’d replied that she had looked lovely in all of them and that it was the bonnets’ loss that none had been chosen to accompany her home.

After the meal, the men gathered in Mr Ragsdale’s library for cigars and brandy. Out of habit and curiosity, Morrison scanned his host’s bookshelves, finding nothing to impress him and several titles that provoked his contempt. He was just beginning to enjoy himself when the men clustered around him, quizzing him about ‘his’ war. Was he surprised, after his predictions of a swift victory for the Japanese, that Japan had still not taken Port Arthur from the Russians? And what of his colleague Lionel James’s wireless scheme—did he really think the Japanese would allow it? Were the difficulties experienced by the Japanese military behind its reluctance to open the war to the correspondents generally? Morrison expounded with more confidence than he felt on Japan’s chances and intentions, though in truth, after such a day, he struggled to keep his mind on the war at all. After the weeks of
agonising doubt as to whether Mae cared for him, his relief was visceral. He stifled an uncharacteristic urge to fling open the room’s french doors, sail out onto the balcony and proclaim her name aloud to startled streets, to dance, to sing, to rush back into the room where the ladies were gathered, to scoop her into his arms and carry her off. He felt young with joy. He willed the evening to a close, for he wished to hasten with sleep the coming of the following day and his next assignation with the lover he named in his journal the
flashing-eyed maiden
.

The following morning Morrison awoke in good cheer and, he fancied, with the energy of a man twenty years younger. Whistling, he set out for his various appointments, interviews and meetings. To Westerners he spoke of gold and tin and quicksilver and the many ways Japanese control over Manchuria and Korea would benefit Britannia and her allies. To Chinese he spoke of the advantage to their country of allowing this to happen by remaining neutral. He filled his head with facts and his journal with information, ruminations and figures.

‘Do you think Japan and England rule China better than Chinese?’ asked Kuan as they were hurrying between appointments. His expression was itself a perfect model of neutrality.

‘No, of course not. Not in the sense that China should abandon its sovereignty. But if the Chinese government was smart, it would let the English look after China’s defence. It’d be as quiet as Sunday school then. You could bring in all sorts of
changes—your reforms—and you wouldn’t have any more problems from the likes of the Boxers. Or anyone else for that matter.’

‘If China had a modern army we would not need British. It is better, I think, to defend ourselves.’

‘It’ll be a long while before that happens, Kuan. You know that.’

Kuan started to say something, then caught himself.

Morrison did not pursue the conversation. His mind was already on other things.

At the age of twenty, Morrison had packed a swag with a bedroll, a billy can and some beef jerky. He soaped the inside of his stockings, slapped a panama hat on his head, and stuck a sheath knife in his belt. Breaking a raw egg into each of his boots for lubrication, he set out to walk more than two thousand miles from Normanton, near the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, to Adelaide. His goal was to retrace in reverse the footsteps of the explorers Burke and Wills. They had died attempting to traverse Australia twenty-one years before that, just before Morrison was born. People told him he was mad, suicidal. They warned of poisonous spiders and snakes. They said that if the critters didn’t get him, the blacks would. He smiled and waved goodbye. And when he found himself up to his armpits in swamp, or tramping across clay flats on which grew little but salt-bush and mallee, or when he was tortured by heat and thirst, or tested by cyclones, he exulted no less than when he found himself in sun-dappled thickets of yapunyah or watching mobs of kangaroos grazing at
sunset or sitting around a friendly campfire with the people of the bush. Humbled by the great sky above his head and covered in red dust from the earth below his feet, he knew he wouldn’t die. Not when there was so much to do in life. And certainly not in the midst of such life, such beauty.

Optimism and confidence, vital to the overlander, are helpful traits for a lover as well. Nestled with Maysie later that afternoon, Morrison felt happy to the point of giddiness. In a moment of egg-down-the-boots optimism, he whispered into her hair, ‘Maysie, dearest, dare I think that you are as happy as I am right now?’

‘Oh, honey,’ she answered, ‘it’s in my nature to be happy.’

He had anticipated a number of answers to his question. This wasn’t one. ‘I meant—’

‘I know, honey. Of course I’m happy here, now, with you. You should know that.’

The way she said it, and a look in her eyes that seemed a lot like pity, made him uneasy.

‘Let me explain it another way,’ she said. ‘I went to the Chinese opera one night last week.’

‘I see,’ said Morrison, more confused.

‘The costumes, the make-up and the gestures were magnificent. And the story was wonderful, all about a scholar who finds a painting of a beautiful woman and falls in love with her.’

‘
Peony Pavilion
. I know it. It’s a famous story.’

‘I felt it had such universal truth in it. Perhaps a particular truth, too.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘That men fall in love with an ideal image of woman,’ she replied.

‘And women don’t do the same? I believe that the heroine first died of a broken heart after meeting the scholar in a dream. He came upon that picture after her death, dreamed about her in turn, and brought her back to life.’

‘True, but the story was written by a man, so of course he wrote it that way. I think that, contrary to general opinion, we women are the less romantic sex. Don’t look so incredulous. We may be mistaken for the more romantic, due to the sentimentality of expression that’s so common in women’s books and magazines. But don’t ever forget that we have an inherent—or perhaps well-taught—desire to please. That commonly entails letting a man feel that he is the centre of our world when that centre might just as easily be…I don’t know…bonnets or novels or entertaining.’

‘’Tis a sad day when a man feels he must compete with a bonnet. You’re teasing me. But what are you saying, my dear Maysie?’

‘Maybe that what you see is not who I am.’

‘What—that this charming, sensuous, joyous, intelligent and loving creature in my arms is, in fact, some dour and doughy old spinster? Or perhaps one of those mischievous sprites the Chinese call fox spirits? Or, I don’t know, a Mandarin in the Imperial Court?’ Morrison found it hard to respond with any seriousness.

‘You see, you are proving my point. Your affection for me makes you blind, though I’d be a daisy if I didn’t appreciate that. There’s another thing about the opera that reminds me of us.’

‘Do tell.’

‘Let me get this right.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, thinking. ‘You see, laughter in the Chinese opera is so stylised that it is far more than just a laugh. It is all laughter, laughter everywhere, laughter of every type and for every joke on Earth.
Weeping is the same, it’s like a Platonic ideal of crying. When an actor weeps on stage in the Peking Opera, he’s weeping every tear ever shed by anyone. Also, every movement is subtly circular. To look up, the actor looks down and around first; to point, the fingers circle back before they move forward. And so we enact scenes of love that, when played so well, take on meanings greater than the actual gesture, and contain within them the notion of returning to the same point, again and again.’

Morrison was unsure how to respond. ‘Interesting thesis. Quite a metaphor.’

‘I ought to own that it’s not original. Chester told me that.’

‘Chester?’

‘Holdsworth. It was he who took me to the opera. He understands much of Chinese ways.’

‘Holdsworth,’ Morrison repeated. An acetic taste in his mouth recalled him to the fact that the Chinese phrase for jealousy was to ‘eat vinegar’.

‘You are surely not denying it, honey. That book of his,
The Real Chinaman
, is full of insight.’

He was on the brink of ridiculing Holdsworth’s book, which had refuted
An Australian in China
on several subjects. Certainly Morrison had been a trifle hasty in concluding in his own book that the Chinese were affected by pain less than other races. But such had been the evidence before his eyes when he saw the seeming equanimity with which men tolerated such punishments as being placed in stocks or how they harnessed their naked bodies to tow-ropes and pulled heavy boats against the currents of the Yangtze. Still, Holdsworth had not needed to get on his high horse about it. But not wishing to spoil the mood, Morrison kept his thoughts to himself. The hoary Holdsworth had as little chance as the liar
Jameson with Mae. Morrison, as her lover, could afford to be magnanimous. Besides, it was very difficult for one to maintain an ill temper when Miss Mae Ruth Perkins was caressing one’s backside.

‘That’s quite a collection of scars for one pair of buttocks,’ she observed.

Making it seem like such things were all in a day’s work for an adventurer like himself, he launched into his stories of being shot whilst defending the Legations in the siege and speared whilst attempting to walk across New Guinea years earlier.
Top that, Holdsworth!

‘I should have known about the bullet—that’s when your newspaper thought you had died.’

‘Yes, and the bullet nearly did kill me. But what happened in New Guinea was worse. There were a few moments there when death seemed the better option, especially as I took another spear below my eye. Some years later I was operated on in Edinburgh by Professor Chiene, who removed a number of fragments from my sinuses, though he couldn’t get them all. It remains a source of some misery. Chiene also extracted an entire three-inch wooden spearhead from my iliacus muscle.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Here.’ He pointed to a scar on his stomach. ‘There’s a funny story about this.’

‘Oh?’ She stroked it curiously.

If I were twenty
, he thought wryly,
I should not be able to continue speaking right now. Age has its advantages.
‘Professor Chiene later held a dinner in honour of my recovery. He said that he was going to send my mother and father a replica of the spearhead in gold. I wrote to my parents straight away to tell them about the gift that would soon reach them. But it was never
sent. In 1895, I was again in Edinburgh and met the professor to whom I owed so much. He said, “I have long intended to send your father a model of that spearhead in silver.”’

Mae chortled. ‘I thought he’d promised gold.’

‘Precisely. I again wrote to my parents, informing them of the imminent dispatch of this slightly less valuable souvenir. But it never arrived. Years later, I met the good professor a third time. I only regretted that he did not announce his intention to send my parents a model in bronze.’

Bathed in Mae’s bright laughter and sweet gaze, Morrison felt a surge of euphoric energy. He remembered belatedly the gift he had bought for her that day he went to Liu Li Chang in Peking’s Chinese City: a pair of tiny embroidered slippers, made for bound feet. Her exclamations and the shower of kisses that followed gratified him immensely. He had been absurd to allow her mention of Holdsworth to disturb him as it did. ‘I wish I hadn’t promised to meet Dumas for dinner,’ he said ruefully, stretching to reach the switch for the electric light.

‘And I the Ragsdales.’

Morrison watched like a lovestruck boy as, seated at the dressing table in her chemise, she brushed her hair. He helped her tie a black ribbon with a silver horseshoe charm around her neck, the open part facing upwards, she explained, in order to catch good fortune. She asked him to fasten a delicate platinum chain with a vertical triplet of gold hearts around her neck as well. ‘Luck and love,’ he observed.

‘The essentials.’

He kissed the back of her neck.

Outside, the clatter of shod hooves and the rattle of cart wheels could be heard. Down the corridor of the hotel, a longcase
clock struck the hour. Beyond the curtained window, twilight lay its veil over the city.

‘It’s a fine hotel, isn’t it?’ she remarked.

‘Mmm,’ he murmured into downy skin.

‘I was here not long ago with Zeppelin, the Dutch consul.’

His lips froze on her nape. His heart skipped a beat.
She couldn’t possibly mean…Surely not.
Optimistically, he envisioned the lobby, high tea, cucumber sandwiches. An avuncular diplomat, his stout wife, the garrulous Mrs Ragsdale. ‘Not like this, I presume,’ he said, expelling a short, harsh laugh.

‘Oh yes, Ernest honey, just like this.’

He stared at her reflection in the mirror.

She smiled back, her expression free of malice. She stood up and walked over to the bed, extracting her stockings from the pile of clothing on the floor and rolling one and then the other up her legs. ‘Now where has that garter gone?’

Morrison had endured lone treks across deserts and through jungles. He had raised his head above the parapets to fire at Boxer legions. He had cheated death a dozen ways in as many countries. He was not easily daunted. Yet he could be thrown. He lowered himself down on the bed next to her and chewed his lip for a moment before speaking. ‘A few years back, a Chinese man ran at a foreign consul in Peking with a knife.’

‘Goodness,’ Mae gasped, looking up. ‘Did he kill him?’

‘No, the consul ran faster. The police apprehended the man and declared him insane. But a witness objected. “Insane? For trying to kill a consul? There could be no clearer evidence of his sanity!”’

Her gaze was steady, cool and nowise encouraging.

‘You know the old ditty,’ Morrison ploughed on, bursting into
song: ‘The English, the English, they don’t amount to much; but anything is better than the goddamn Dutch.’

Mae pursed her lips. ‘Don’t be jealous, honey. I don’t like it. If you are to be my beau, then there are things you ought to know about me.’

‘And what is it, precisely, that I need to know?’

‘Now, honey, have you ever attended the Fancy Dress Spring Ball here in Tientsin?’

‘Once or twice, yes.’ The ball, held at Gordon Hall in a grand room hung with tapestries and lit by magnificent chandeliers, celebrated the spring thaw that heralded the re-opening of the port and capped the winter social season in Tientsin.

‘But you didn’t attend the most recent one.’

‘No.’

She shrugged. ‘If you had, perhaps things would have turned out differently. I had finally recovered from the grippe and was very excited about the ball. Weeks earlier I had decided to go as Marie Antoinette. It took the seamstresses and woodturners of Tientsin that long to make my
robe à la française
. I wanted every detail perfect, down to the V-shaped stomacher and panniers. The night before the ball, I had Mrs Ragsdale’s maid, Ah Lan, wash my hair in beaten egg-whites and rinse it with rum and rosewater. I think she was quite scandalised by that—I’m quite sure she saved the yolks for the servants’ kitchen. Oh, Ernest, you would have laughed at me that morning. I had flung open every last one of my steamer trunks, hatboxes, shoeboxes and jewellery boxes. Things were everywhere.’

She piled detail upon detail, of pearls pooling on the bedspread and jewelled necklaces cascading from the bedposts, of eggshell-blue crepe de Chine, of accordion flounces and chiffon ruffles, parades of
satin roses, of beauty spots, cream-coloured slippers and elbow-length gloves, Morrison was simultaneously appalled and enthralled by the extravagance and luxury her words conjured. For the son of a frugal Scottish schoolmaster from Geelong, it was a titillating vision.