A Most Immoral Woman (12 page)

‘I’m sure you were the belle of the ball,’ he said at last.

‘That’s what he called me.’

‘Who?’

‘Zeppelin, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Morrison repeated, recalling the point of the story with a sinking heart. ‘Did you meet this…
consul
there for the first time?’

‘I’d danced with him at one of Tientsin’s weekly Kettledrums not long after arriving here. But I hadn’t known him well.’

Mae told Morrison how over dinner at the ball she grew rather crazy for the Dutchman with the bright blue eyes and cheeky smile. She admired the stylish cut of his dress uniform and the flash of red silk socks at his ankles. He turned out to be an excellent dancer. Morrison, he of the pale blue eyes, mercurial smile, poetically casual dress sense and tolerable competence on the dance floor, found no cheer in these particulars. ‘And so, after a generous little bottle of champagne,’ she told him, ‘we slipped away from the ball.’

By the end of the remarkable recitation, which spared no detail, Morrison’s head spun with visions of Mae as Marie Antoinette, legs akimbo upon some anonymous clerk’s desk deep inside Gordon Hall, the damnedly handsome blond head of the Dutch consul navigating complex channels of petticoats towards the split in her bloomers, murmuring just before docking, ‘The gates of Heaven are always open.’

‘What a sparkling wit he must be to have come up with that old chestnut.’

She smiled, oblivious to Morrison’s sarcasm. ‘He kissed me for the longest while.’

Kissed! Such is the euphemism.
‘Lucky you.’

‘I really did need to get out of that costume. That’s when we came across the street and took a room here at the Astor. Are you sulking?’

‘Of course not,’ he lied, then, with the air of a convicted man enquiring after his sentence, he asked, ‘Are you in love with Zeppelin, then?’

‘Oh no. He is not all that amusing, for all his obvious talents. I prefer a man of wit and intelligence.’ She drew a finger down Morrison’s chest. He had begun to pull his shirt on, but had not buttoned it. She circled his nipples. ‘And one who is tall and handsome, and strong and manly as well.’

Morrison’s chest inflated, along with his pride.

‘I am in love with—’

How sweet she is!

‘Martin Egan.’

‘Egan?’
Egan!

‘Yes. Oh darling, why the long face? It doesn’t make me happy to see that. I told you I don’t like jealousy. Anyway, Martin hasn’t had me for many days.’

‘Days?’

‘A week, probably. Oh dear, look at how the time has flown. You will call for me again at three o’clock tomorrow, won’t you, honey? I shall pine for you until then.’ She turned her attention back to her stockings.

Anna Lombard, who at least married her Pathan, seemed almost chaste by comparison. Zeppelin was one thing. Too much champagne, a heady evening at the ball. As much as it pained him,
Morrison could almost understand that. But Egan, that cheerful bastard—in love? When did that happen?
Damn him!
His mind flew back to the day they had met on Peking’s Tartar Wall. Egan had said something about the attractions of Tientsin having increased in recent months. Something else, too, which had niggled at the back of his mind. Something about wanting to keep her for himself. In hindsight it was obvious that the American had been hinting at something. He had failed to pick up on it. He was a deuced fool.

Morrison tried to think rationally about where all this left him, and what it said about the woman beside him, happily absorbed in tying a pink ribbon around her stockinged thigh. A violent rush of emotion, shame and desire overcame him.
I will not come second to a Dutch consul or an American whippersnapper!

He reached over, pushed her hand away and firmly tugged at the bow until it fell open.

‘Now look at what you’ve done!’ Mae watched her stocking slither down to crumple around her ankle. She pouted but did not bend to pull it up again. Nor did she push his hand away when it travelled up the inside of her thigh, trailing the ribbon. ‘This is very naughty of you,’ she said, opening her legs wider. ‘We will both be awfully late.’

‘We are already awfully late. And you do not seem to be resisting.’

‘I could resist,’ she murmured. ‘Would you prefer that?’

When they finally parted, each doomed to arrive at their respective dinners too late even for the fruit macédoine and cream mousse, he was confident that her goodbye kiss did not say, ‘I love Martin Egan.’

Zeppelin! Egan!
As he stared at the ceiling of his hotel room, kicked from his dreams by misery, Morrison entertained the notion that perhaps Mae was simply goading him. She would no sooner fornicate with the Dutch consul on a desk in Gordon Hall than look for a Chinese husband in order to secure a cultural education—or have sexual relations with C.D. Jameson. The passion he and Mae shared was palpable, enveloping, consuming. She saw how it enlarged with provocation, so she provoked.
Egan. Really!
He laughed aloud, rolled over and ground his teeth, knowing he deceived only himself—and even that not well.

Early that morning, a brisk stroll took him to Tientsin’s native city. There he caught sight of a Chinese policeman leading three miscreants by their queues, the ends of which he’d tied into a knot that he held in his fist. The unfortunate trio made for a comic sight, tripping over their own feet and each other’s, cursing and yelping. Morrison had a sudden and unpleasant vision of himself, Zeppelin and Egan being led by a no less self-satisfied
Maysie. He walked with a burdened gait back towards the concessions and a luncheon with Menzies and Viceroy Yuan’s interpreter, Ts’ai Yen-kan.

Ts’ai was a veteran of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. That war had also been sparked by conflict over Korea, then under China’s suzerainty, as well as Japanese designs on Manchuria. It ended badly for China. The Treaty of Shimonoseki granted Korea nominal independence whilst ceding the island of Formosa and the whole of the Liaotung Peninsula, including Port Arthur, to Japan in perpetuity. That had led to Germany, France, Britain and Russia demanding more ‘spheres of influence’ for themselves: ports, mines and the railways to access them. When the Russians offered to pay off Chinese debts to Japan in return for access to Port Arthur, the seeds of the present conflict were sown. Morrison was eager to hear Ts’ai’s views on the situation, for he was certain they’d reflect Yuan’s own.

The luncheon got off to an agreeable start. Ts’ai informed Morrison that for months prior to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War he had translated every article Morrison had written on the subject of the inevitability of war for Viceroy Yuan. ‘You were most prescient,’ he said. ‘The Viceroy considers you a true prophet.’

‘I’m not worthy,’ Morrison replied, laughing to himself.
No one ever praised Zeppelin or Egan as prophets!

‘You were also right about the strength of the Japanese army. We have heard that advance forces have already crossed the Yalu River.’

‘Yes,’ Morrison confirmed, hoping that for once Granger was right. ‘Our correspondent says the Japanese have arrived within seventy miles of Newchang.’

‘It is said,’ Menzies added enthusiastically, ‘that the Japanese army carries no white flags.’

Ts’ai exhorted both Menzies and Morrison to eat more. Had they tried the Four Treasures dish? A Tientsin specialty.

Morrison understood that Ts’ai was not as pleased with the news of the Japanese advance as he was. ‘I have written that the Chinese will remain neutral in this conflict. Am I correct in believing this to be the firm stance of the Chinese government?’

Ts’ai nodded. ‘We would not act rashly. But as I believe you are aware, Prince Kung wishes to mediate between the belligerents. Perhaps we could bring about a reconciliation.’

‘This would only benefit the Russians.’ Morrison had just begun to argue the case when Ts’ai pushed the brocaded sleeve of his robe up his arm, reversed his chopsticks and, with the blunt ends, levered a choice portion of braised fish onto Morrison’s rice. ‘Please, Dr Morrison. You must eat as well as talk,’ he urged. ‘And the fish is a local specialty.’

Morrison, recognising that this subject was closed for the moment, brought up that of the Russo-Chinese Bank. ‘It’s the beating heart of the Russian administration in Manchuria,’ he stressed. ‘Bring down the bank and you cut off their financial supply. If you persuade enough investors to withdraw their funds, it will collapse like a house of cards. This is in China’s own interests; surely the Viceroy can see that he must decline all dealings with the bank forthwith.’

A brief silence ensued, broken only by the sound of a peanut accidentally dropping from Menzies’s chopsticks onto the table.

When Ts’ai spoke, his tone was measured but no less forceful than Morrison’s. ‘I do fear that the neutrality your honourable self so keenly enjoins upon my country does rather circumscribe
our actions in aid of the Japanese cause. That would naturally include any actions against the Russo-Chinese Bank. Please, do try the duck.’

Once the luncheon was over, Morrison glanced at his fob. One-thirty. ‘Well, that was less satisfying than hoped,’ he conceded to Menzies. ‘Ts’ai can be deucedly obtuse sometimes.’

‘He will assuredly report everything you have said to the Viceroy.’ Menzies then suggested the name of a British investor in mines and railroads who might be persuaded to shift his money out of the Russo-Chinese Bank if Morrison spoke to him about it personally.

It was one and a half hours before Morrison’s next assignation with Mae. ‘Let’s go then,’ he said, setting off at a brisk pace, which it satisfied him to see Menzies struggle to match.

By five minutes to three, Morrison was pacing in front of the bandstand in Victoria Park, ordering his thoughts and bridling his emotions. He was resolute. Strong. He would make it clear to the young lady that he was not the sort to play second or third fiddle and certainly not to a damned consul or junior reporter. She could have them, and they her, and he would wish all three of them supreme happiness and bliss but he would not himself be part of any harem or compete for her attention. He was George Ernest Morrison, doyen of the China correspondents, Hero of the Siege, ‘a true prophet’ to Viceroy Yuan, overlander, author. Alpha and eminent in every way. Not some young gull to be toyed with. And what with the war, the project to bring down the Russo-Chinese Bank and the normal burden of correspondence for his
paper, he was perfectly capable of filling his days without her assistance.

‘Hello, honey, I’m sorry I’m late.’

He turned. He would not mince words. But the moment she trained those heavy-lidded eyes on his and folded her arm into his own, his stomach unclenched, his fury melted. He was conquered territory. Everything he had planned to say seemed petty, small and senseless. Around Miss Mae Ruth Perkins, Morrison carried nothing but white flags.

Back in his room, Morrison did his jaw-aching, marathon best to assert himself over the memory of Zeppelin. He was rewarded with rosy moans and undulations. After a long while, he raised his head and wiped his chin on the back of his hand. Her arms were flung behind her on the pillow and her eyes were closed. Her peachy nipples were alert; he was briefly disconcerted by the sensation that her breasts were looking at him and not the other way around. He coasted upwards until they were face to face. Her eyes fluttered open.

‘Australian versus Dutch. Who is the superior man?’ he demanded.

She licked her lips and thought for a moment. ‘Technique or endurance?’ she asked.

‘Both I suppose.’

‘Mmm, victory belongs Down Under. Naturally. Of course,’ she drawled, wriggling underneath him, ‘with regard to endurance, Captain Tremaine Smith did kiss me on the
Siberia
all the way from Honolulu.’

Morrison, en route to what from his perspective were greater pleasures, froze. The image in his mind was too vivid for comfort. He remembered her mentioning Smith before—in that first
conversation they’d had over coffees at the hotel in Mountain-Sea Pass. He wondered if he’d been a fool not to have suspected. But was he thus to understand that any male name, however casually mentioned, indicated a history of carnal relations? ‘Surely,’ Morrison rasped, ‘he looked up from time to time to check his bearings.’

‘He steered a straight course through the waves. We used to joke about that. About that and his rigging. But don’t stop, honey.’

Determined to drive the enemies from the contested land, Morrison headed south again, where he performed valiantly and strategically. Mae spent herself spectacularly. Her face was beaded with perspiration. Sweet, sweet victory.

‘So,’ he said, before it occurred to him that he was well and truly opening Pandora’s Box, ‘I take it that you’ve had one or two lovers before me. Three. Three that I know of. Zeppelin, Egan and Smith.’

‘It’s true. I have had lovers before you. And before them as well.’

There comes a point in every love affair when the lover’s desire to know everything about the beloved crashes up against what there is to know. Morrison had a choice: to retreat and shore up the defences or advance on the heartland; to remain in relative comfort or set out into the wilderness. By virtue of stubborn nature, Morrison could do only one thing: advance.

‘Who, dare I ask, was the first?’

‘I had a toothache. Our parents were in Washington and my older sister Susie was in charge of Fred, Milton, myself and Pansy. Fannie and George had both married by then and were no longer living at home. The four of us younger children could be quite a handful. Susie made an appointment for me with the dentist Jack Fee in San Francisco.

‘On the day of my appointment, things were a bit hectic. Milton had been expelled from school again, Pansy had an appointment with the seamstress and our cook had taken ill. Susie had recently given birth herself. Well, I say that to you, though to society her Alice has always been referred to as my father’s “niece” and our “cousin”. So Susie couldn’t escort me into the city. She wanted to ask our frightful old chatterbox of a neighbour, Mrs Merton, but I convinced her that I was perfectly capable of getting there and back on my own.

‘Truthfully, on the day I was to see Dr Jack Fee, the toothache began to settle. But I didn’t care to give up an opportunity to escape Oakland, even for a few hours. Everyone calls it the Bay
City’s Brooklyn, and Oakland does have lovely broad avenues and meadows full of oak trees, but compared to San Francisco it can be awfully staid. Even at that young age, I preferred the salty excitement of San Francisco.’

Morrison lifted the champagne from the ice bucket, filled their glasses and settled back against the pillows. He had learned that there was no such thing as a short story with Mae Ruth Perkins; besides, it was a good idea to gird himself for whatever revelations were in store.

‘My, my, how you’ve grown, Miss Perkins,’ remarked Dr Fee. ‘You’re quite the young lady now, aren’t you? How sails the Good Ship George C. Perkins?’ He hummed the tune ‘Good Ship George C. Perkins’, which had served as her father’s theme song in 1880 when he ran, successfully, for Governor of California. A brass band had played it everywhere that he made his stump speeches. People often hummed the tune when they asked after him, thinking they were the only ones ever to have thought of it.

‘He’s very well, thank you, and in Washington with my mother. Senate is sitting.’

‘Leaving you and your sweet baby sister, Pansy, all alone?’

‘Susie looks after us when we’re not at school and we do have housekeepers and nannies. Anyway, Mama will be catching the train home from the East Coast in a day or two.’

A look passed over Dr Fee’s eyes, as though he was measuring the precise distance between the present moment and that of her mother’s arrival. He smoothed down the cotton bib over her bosom. Something about the flutter in his fingers and the look in
his eyes made her nerves tingle. She was experiencing
that feeling
. A glow, a congestion, a warm slide of moisture on her inner thighs, disruption to the breath, urges felt everywhere from the scalp to the stomach to her feet, which arched, tense, in their narrow boots. As he fussed about her, tilting back her head, opening her mouth and spreading her lips with his fingers, her blood quickened.

Mae had accidentally discovered the art of self-pleasure in another doctor’s office a year or two before. She’d had a kidney infection. The doctor had wiped between her legs with wet cotton, recommending that she do the same at home twice or three times a day and after urinating. What revelations that had led to!

One rainy afternoon soon after, aimlessly knocking about the house, she had come upon a cache of books in her brothers’ closet of the sort known as the ‘Curious & Uncommon’. Amongst these were a rare copy of
1601
by Mark Twain, Sir Richard Burton’s translation of
The Perfumed Garden,
and Émile Zola’s
Thérèse Raquin.
Her schoolgirl French had to struggle with the last but it rewarded her with a portrait of a woman who never hesitated in the pursuit of pleasure. ‘I had already seen how self-sacrifice had dulled my own dear mama and her friends, women who lived in service to everyone’s gratification but their own,’ she told Morrison. And so, in the perfumed gardens of erotic writing, her unfocused yearnings found expression.

‘Did it occur to you that this could lead to trouble? I understand the libertine impulse, having lived with it for much of my own life. But it’s different for a woman, surely. Especially given the expectations that would have been on you with your father’s place in society and all.’

‘It’s true that it would have been easier had I not been born into society. It’s not expected of women of lower station that they will guard the “citadel of love” quite as zealously as do those of the upper classes. Less is presumed to be at stake.’

Morrison thought obscurely of the famous Chinese military ‘empty town’ strategy, by which a general makes a show of not guarding the citadel at all, then captures and annihilates the enemy the moment they pass triumphantly through the gates.

‘I have never understood what is so virtuous about keeping one’s knees pressed tightly together until marriage,’ she continued. ‘I know many a girl who does that whilst engaging in the most vicious gossip and slander. Their
soi-disant
virtue has nothing to do with kindness or generosity or care. Others will publicly censure a fast girl whilst privately outrunning the field. I abhor hypocrisy. I think it is a far worse sin than free love.’

Morrison was capable of dining amiably with a man one moment and describing him as a dullard, a sleevedog or a bore in his journal the next. He revelled in gossiping about women who were loose, bold and bad as much as he revelled in such women themselves. He noted aloud who was said to have the pox whilst confiding only to his journal his own bouts with orchitis and worse. In this, he was like most people. Also, like most people, he professed to detest hypocrisy. ‘You must know, my dear Maysie, I have never been an advocate of women keeping their knees too tightly pressed together. So please, do continue.’

Mae obliged. She told of how she had inched her chest up towards Dr Fee’s fingers, pretending that they were those of Tommy, the shy, freckle-faced teen from down the street. Two weeks earlier, on a whim, she’d taken Tommy behind the woodshed of Palm Knoll, the beautiful home her father had built for the family
in Oakland’s Vernon Heights. She lay down on the grass and told him to kneel beside her. He obeyed as if hypnotised. She lifted the skirt of her loose tea-dress and then, as matter-of-factly as if she were positioning one of her doll’s limbs for a play tea-party, placed his hand where she wanted it. Her intuition that it would be more exciting to have someone else’s fingers there proved correct. They met every day after that. One day, she guided his other hand to her breast. Three days before her dental appointment, after she had pulled her skirts down, he had thrown himself on top of her, rubbing himself against her until he spent himself in his trousers. He had rushed off quickly after that and did not return. In all those days together, he had uttered not a single word.

Mae’s stories, however disturbing from the perspective of a lover, were, Morrison was finding, at least as exciting as any tale from the pen of John Cleland or Frank Harris. ‘What did this Fee look like?’ he asked.

‘He had a waxed moustache, which he twirled into parentheses at the ends. His clothes were dapper and his neck rose strong and sinewy above his collar.’

Morrison raised his head a little, the better to display his own neck. Lost in her story, she didn’t seem to notice.

‘Okey dokey, young lady. Let’s look in that mouth of yours. Where does it hurt?’ Dr Fee had said.

As he tapped and probed her teeth, she felt the pressure of his body against her side. Her bloomers were growing damp. She thought she could smell the funny, close smell of her cunt, a word she knew from her reading. She knew it was a bad word. She liked it very much. She held her breath.

‘Are you all right there?’ He placed a manicured hand on her thigh. His wedding band glittered under the electric light.
Mrs Fee attended her mother’s sewing circle; she was a nice lady with good teeth. This had nothing to do with Mrs Fee. Holding stock-still, Mae raised her eyes to those of her dentist.

It did not take long for Dr Fee to ascertain that there was nothing much wrong with the tooth that an icepack and some drops of laudanum wouldn’t solve. After administering the analgesic, he washed his hands, his back to her. ‘Why don’t you be my guest for lunch?’

Her mother had often stated that no respectable, or self-respecting, girl would dine alone at a restaurant with a man, intimating that something of that sort had been behind the ‘trouble’ that her older sister Susie had been in and was the reason that Susie now lived at home with little Alice. But her mother could be terribly old-fashioned. It was almost the twentieth century. ‘I’d like that,’ she replied, the opium and alcohol in her blood helping her shed any last inhibitions she may have held.

Tripping light-footed alongside Dr Fee as they strolled the two blocks to the restaurant, Mae was only just sensible of the eyes that fell on her from passing coupés. When a baker’s wagon drawn by heavy dray horses came up behind them, the warm, yeasty smell of freshly baked twistbread made her even more giddy. She was giggling for no reason by the time they arrived at the corner of Grant and Bush. The restaurant was called Le Poulet and beside the door was a sign reading, ‘Best dinner for a dollar on earth’, and in smaller letters below that: ‘fine food—and discretion’. Dr Fee put a hand on her back and guided her through the ground-floor dining room with its linen-covered tables, elegant settings and crystal chandeliers, straight to the elevator at the back. At the third floor, the operator clanked back the iron grille and a waistcoated attendant led them to a
beautifully appointed private dining room with a curtain covering its rear wall. They hadn’t said a word between them since entering the restaurant. Whilst Dr Fee ordered two bottles of Golden State Extra Dry, shrimp cocktails and a few other luncheon items from the waiter, Mae peeped behind the curtain. Her heart skipped a beat. She was staring at a bedroom with a big brass bed and satin coverlet. She released the drapery and sat down on the chaise longue, fussing with her skirts.

An air of uncertainty descended upon the dentist like a sudden fog on Fisherman’s Wharf. When the waiter returned with their champagne and food, they clinked glasses. She felt like an actress in a play. That, the champagne and the laudanum gave her the courage to do what she did next.

Spearing a pink shrimp on the delicate tines of the cocktail fork, she performed a spontaneous debut version of the dance of the boiled pheasant that Morrison had witnessed that first night at Mountain-Sea Pass. The effect on Dr Fee was palpable. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he lay her down on the pink velvet chaise, spread her legs and slid his hand up into her bloomers. When his fingers touched the wetness there, he grinned. She let him undress her, though she was so nervous she was trembling. By the time he had rubbed and probed her with his fingers—so much more expertly than Tommy ever had—she was nearly fainting with pleasure. The sight of him unbuttoning his trousers to reveal his red and swollen cock gave her a fright. But he showed her how well it fit her mouth and her sex. It hurt down there at first but she would not have stopped him for the world. She had never felt so grown up or powerful.

Something occurred to Morrison. ‘How old were you, Mae?’

‘I’d just turned fourteen.’

‘He took advantage of you. You were a child.’ Morrison was choked with indignation and confusion.

‘He made me a woman.’ She shrugged. ‘I was ready. I wanted it. There were things I could not learn on my own and that Tommy could not have shown me.’ She reached out and rested her hand on Morrison’s stomach for a moment before floating it southwards. ‘It seems that you enjoyed the experience almost as much as I did. And I enjoyed the telling.’ Although mortified, he allowed her to place his hand between her thighs. ‘Can you see?’

By the time he escorted Mae out through the lobby, Morrison was in a daze. When the concierge approached with a telegram, he stuffed it into his pocket to read later.

He felt like King Shahryar in
The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night
. Except his Scheherazade’s stories were no fiction. Curious & Uncommon indeed. Morrison was a man accustomed to lucid thought and firm opinions. Mae Perkins defied both. She provoked him hugely, titillated him absolutely. The story of the dentist had disturbed him deeply. During his limited medical practice, he too had had young female patients who tempted him with their loveliness and corruptibility but he had not taken advantage of their trust. He felt a hot anger rise up against this Fee with his waxed moustache and dapper clothing. At the same time, he wondered at the apparent sangfroid with which she recounted the tale—and, for that matter, the stories about her affairs with Zeppelin, Egan and Smith. It was a strange combination, cold-bloodedness and hot passion, though he had to concede it was a combination not that foreign to him.

He was in such a state that, setting off for the Tientsin Club, he nearly walked straight into the path of a nightsoil cart. The cart driver veered away sharply, only to smack into a coolie carrying the carcasses of a dozen chickens on his carrying-pole. Shit and meat rained onto the street. Death and excrement, the ways of the flesh. Morrison hurried away, curses raining down on his back and the grim slush that had been yesterday’s charming drifts lapping at his boots.

Dumas and Menzies, who’d been waiting for him in the billiards room, looked up with an air of mutual consternation. Morrison hadn’t realised how late he was. When he explained, in the broadest terms, the reason for his delay, the two exchanged glances.

As they entered the dining room, acquaintances streamed over to congratulate Morrison on
The Times
’s great scoop: the first wireless dispatch sent directly from a war zone. James had succeeded after all. The men were naturally interested in his assessment of the situation. Would the Japanese really be able to walk through the Russian troops as he’d predicted? And what of the other correspondents’ chances of getting to the front? As Morrison ventilated the topic, Dumas and Menzies stood by with the dutiful interest and thin smiles of the retinue.