A Most Immoral Woman (4 page)

‘I’ve heard of Sada Yacco. But I still think the Chinese woman is more fair to look at. And her lot is certainly better than that of her sisters in many other heathen countries.’

‘Even taking into consideration those awful little bound feet of theirs?’ Miss Perkins sounded incredulous.

‘Most certainly.’

‘Why, truly, do they do that? Bind their feet, I mean.’

It was a sexual thing, as far as Morrison knew. Feminists like Mrs Little of the Anti-Footbinding Society carried on about how the custom was intended to limit and control women’s mobility. Morrison had heard more engaging stories from Confucian gentlemen about how the swaying walk of the bound-footed woman had the effect of multiplying the folds in their vaginas. He knew that Chinese men loved to play with ‘three-inch golden lotuses’, kissing, squeezing, licking and sucking on them. They even drank from wine cups placed in the little shoes. But it was hardly the sort of topic to raise with a young lady of recent acquaintance. ‘It dates back to the Tang Dynasty, about a thousand years ago. There was a dancer beloved of the Emperor whose feet were naturally small. It became a fashion and then a custom. To have bound feet is considered evidence that a woman is respectable.’

‘That’s most intriguing,’ replied Miss Perkins, putting a finger to her lips, which were beautifully shaped and impossibly rosy. ‘And I’d always heard there was a sexual motivation.’

Morrison’s heart stopped at the sound of the word ‘sexual’ coming from those lips. He felt himself colour. He convinced himself that he had misheard her. So tangled in thought was he that he failed to comment at all.

She shrugged. ‘I would dearly love to have a pair of the little shoes as a souvenir, but I understand they are hard to come by.’ She turned and lifted the heavy velvet curtain at the window. ‘Oh my,’ she said, standing. ‘Look at this!’

Morrison hastened to her side. He felt both the chill of the night air through the glass and the heat of her body, so close to his own that they were almost touching. They gazed together at the new snow glittering like white jade in the moonlight. It was
almost as bright as day. The ancient stones of the Great Wall glowed softly in the distance.

‘That moonlight is enchanting.’ Her eyes shone. ‘Let’s climb the Great Wall!’

‘Now?’

‘Why not?’

The heavy meal had excited his gout, and dyspepsia threatened. Thanks to his old spear wound, cold, dry air always put Morrison in danger of nosebleeds. The sensible part of him yearned for an early night and a warm bed. The sensible part of him was not in the ascendant. ‘Marvellous idea,’ Morrison said. ‘Splendid.’

By then, the Reverend and Mrs Nisbet, needing a lie-down after the near-fatal choking incident brought on by Miss Perkins’s shocking suggestion, had scuttled off to bed. Dumas, lulled by the combined exertions of digestion and conversation, was scratching at his beard and suppressing yawns. When Miss Perkins revealed the plan, Mrs Ragsdale drew a sharp breath. ‘It’s terribly late, dear. The ground will be most treacherous.’

‘Oh, please, Mrs R.!’ Mae pouted, squeezing her chaperone’s hand and pecking at her cheek.

The sight of those innocent kisses made Morrison feel weak. He plied his friend with a gaze both meaningful and apologetic. ‘Dumas?’

Dumas, Morrison was pleased to see, saw his use. ‘A postprandial would be grand.’ Morrison would owe him one.

Dumas placed Mrs Ragsdale’s hand in the crook of his arm. ‘Mrs Ragsdale, would you do me the honour?’

Rugged up in scarves, hats and furs, the ladies’ gloved hands tucked into rabbit-fur muffs, the party set off down a road leading eastwards from the hotel towards the Wall. It was a short stroll, only a quarter of a mile. Kuan and Mrs Ragsdale’s Boy, Ah Long, summoned from the conviviality of the servants’ quarters, walked ahead, dangling paper lanterns from sticks. Animated by a sense of shared adventure, they tramped through the soft white landscape towards the ancient battlements, their boots crunching through the snow, their noses shocked crimson by the cold. Morrison stole a sideways look at Mae and felt his blood thrill.

The Great Wall divided the world between known and unknown, domestic and wild, civilised and barbarian. It was less a coherent wall than a confusion of fortifications scattered across the north of China like a game of pick-up sticks across a carpet. It hadn’t served any real function since 1644. That year, the Ming General Wu San-kui opened the gates at Mountain-Sea Pass to a powerful army led by Manchus, the very people this section of the Wall had been designed to keep out. General Wu had asked the Manchus to help quell a rebellion against the Ming Dynasty. He
hadn’t foreseen that, having done so, they would enthrone their own dynasty, the Ch’ing. Once thrown open, gates in even the most carefully defended walls could be difficult to close. Morrison, relating this history to Mae and Mrs Ragsdale, never considered there might be a lesson there for himself.

Upon arriving at the Wall, Mrs Ragsdale panted and patted her chest. ‘I fear I am not up for such a climb. You young folks go on ahead.’

‘I shall keep Mrs Ragsdale company,’ offered the faithful Dumas.

‘You want me to come?’ Kuan asked Morrison, looking unsurprised by the answer.

Morrison clasped Mae’s small gloved hand as they negotiated the stone steps, slippery with snow. When the heel of her boot caught in a crack and she stumbled, he caught and held her for a moment, his heart banging in his chest like a schoolboy’s.

Atop the summit, they surveyed the glittering landscape. The full moon had sown the snowy fields with diamonds and silvered the rippling corrugations of the Gulf of Bohai where, not far from where they stood, the Wall finished its discontinuous journey of thousands of miles, abutting into the sea.

The path along the Great Wall became less treacherous as they approached the old garrison town of Mountain-Sea Pass, nestled against the magnificent watchtower of the First Pass Under Heaven. The snowfall had laid an ermine stole over the Wall’s towers and parapets and the undulating roofs of the town dwellings. Below, on deserted streets ragged with moonshadow, a nightwatchman, plump in padded robes, swung his painted lantern, calling out the Hour of the Rat and, in a gesture as self-defeating as it was traditional, banging together wooden clappers to warn thieves of his advance. Beyond the
Great Wall, a caravan of shaggy, two-humped Bactrian camels, bells jingling from their necks, loped ahead of a Mongolian herdsman on a pony. A thin breeze tinkled the chimes hanging from the eaves of a Buddhist temple inside the town. In the distance, the Great Wall, leaving the town, snaked over serrated mountain ridges.

Morrison felt as though he had never been so alive to wonder and possibility. He spread out his cloak and they sat down side by side on it, enveloped in the magic of the night. Though every part of him was yearning to touch Mae, Morrison found himself beset by an accursed shyness that might have surprised acquaintances who thought of him as the most confident of men. He took a deep breath to calm himself, but the cold air seared his lungs and he had to stifle a cough.

Mae looked up at him with a playful expression. ‘How long must I wait before you kiss me?’ she demanded.

Mae Ruth Perkins’s soft mouth tasted of minted chocolate and black coffee, with a hint of meat and onions. She did not—
thanks ye gods!—
kiss like a virgin. Surprise quickly gave way to gratitude, and gratitude to sensuality. After some minutes, he pulled away to look at her, placing an ungloved hand on her cold cheek. She grasped it in both her own and, locking her eyes on to his, kissed it in such a silky manner that he felt dizzy. More revelations followed. Layers of clothing—not to mention freezing temperatures and a bed of ancient stone—proved no obstacle to her ability to deliver and command pleasure; her hands were as cunning as her kisses.

By the time they were ready to turn back, Morrison’s senses were aflame and his legs atremble; he felt as though his bones had been reduced to gelatine. She, on the other hand, had grown
irrepressibly gay and was humming American show tunes as though nothing out of the ordinary had transpired.

‘Do you know “Good Old Summertime”? No? Blanche Ring sings it in the musical play
The Defender
. I saw it in New York’s Herald Square. She was wonderful.’ Mae launched into the song in a voice as husky, warm and throaty as that of Ethel Barrymore. ‘Come on. Your turn. What songs do you know? Court me with something.’

He hemmed and hawed.

‘You must know this one. “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do…”’

‘Maysie, Maysie…’

‘I like that.’

‘Oh, look,’ called Morrison, as they came upon the others, ‘here we are. Hello.’

It was hard to say whether Mrs Ragsdale, Dumas or the two servants were more relieved at their return. All were too frozen to complain. As the little group straggled back to the Six Kingdoms, only Mae appeared as fresh as if the evening had just begun.

Morrison, head still spinning, had just changed into his nightshirt when he heard a soft, insistent rapping on his door.

George Ernest Morrison had had considerable experience of forward young women in his two and two score years. Saucy Pepita, devastating Noelle, naughty Agneth. Three nameless Scottish tarts who allowed him to sprinkle their bodies with brandy and soda one memorable night whilst he was studying medicine in Edinburgh. The harlots, grisettes, bad girls and worse
wives of a dozen countries. But nothing had prepared him for Miss Mae Ruth Perkins, who looked like a lady, was every bit a woman, but took her pleasure like a man. And whose charms, he already sensed, would prove more addictive than opium.

Morrison gazed upon the sleeping form by his side. The room was dark, the moon having set. He listened to the rhythm of her breathing and watched the slow dance of her curves under the satin quilt. Her head was tilted to one side, her chin doubling slightly in repose, her long hair fanning out over the pillow. Under heavy, tasselled lids her eyes rested, guarded by the thick natural crescents of her eyebrows. Even asleep, those lips seemed to smile at some private entertainment. He felt all of his repressed longings fold themselves around her shape. Brushing a lock of hair from her cheek, he inhaled her musk of perfume, perspiration and sex. He described all this to himself, a correspondent in love.

‘Mae,’ he whispered, ‘it’ll be dawn soon. They mustn’t find you here.’

Without opening her eyes, Mae flattened the palm of her hand against the top of his head, urging him down towards her thighs, via her breasts.

Time passed memorably. He was well pleased with himself for having had the foresight to pack several ‘riding coats’. Fashioned from the oiled and stretched intestines of lambs, they were not much protection from the pox. But they were fairly reliable at preventing what was known in polite society as an ‘interesting condition’.

Outside the window, the sky began to shimmer with a premonition of dawn. Morrison slid under the warm quilt to bury his nose in Mae’s bosom, occasioning all manner of delicious gasping and squirming. With great reluctance and greater willpower, he finally pulled away from her and sighed. ‘We mustn’t get caught. I don’t want to cause a scandal for you.’

‘Don’t worry, Ernest, honey,’ she said, snuggling close again. ‘I am perfectly capable of causing my own scandals. I have been doing so since I was seventeen. Don’t look so alarmed. You remind me of my father when you look alarmed and that won’t do at all.’

He winced at the comparison. ‘What scandal did you cause at seventeen?’ The journalist in Morrison required information. The man in him wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. Morrison had been relieved that she was not a virgin. Yet he would prefer not to discover that she was a tart. Even when it was a patently absurd presumption, he preferred to think that a woman had flowered uniquely under his tutelage.

‘Oh, it was all rather silly. It happened about eight or nine years ago. The
Daily Examiner
reported that Fred Adams, who was in Oakland society, was to marry a divorcee who called herself Miss Potter. Can you imagine, a
divorcee
!’ She threw her hands up to her face, her eyes and mouth perfect circles of mock horror. ‘Well, the paper
would
report that he had met this unsavoury creature at a gathering I had hosted. My father was furious.’

Morrison, his hyperactive imagination having produced far worse scenarios, was relieved and amused. ‘Scandal, as Oscar Wilde wrote in
Lady Windermere’s Fan
, is but gossip made tedious by morality.’

‘I must store that one away.’ She tapped her temple with her forefinger. ‘I am quite sure it will come in handy.’

‘So what did your father do? Were you punished?’

‘He was away in Washington at the time. You know he’s a senator. He wrote a letter to my mother, urging her to tighten my reins.’ Raising herself on one elbow, Mae switched into her father’s voice: ‘“It seems that this Miss Potter was a friend of one of Mae’s friends and had been passing herself off as a young girl, although she was at the time a divorced woman!!!” There were three exclamation marks, the final one of such vigorous a pen stroke that it tore the paper. He said, “As long as I let Mae do as she pleases, wear
bangs
”—he underlined the word—“and run around having a wild time with questionable boys and girls, I am a dear, good papa, but when I insist that she must go to school and socialise with respectable young people, why I am another kind of man!”’

Morrison shook his head. ‘You frighten me. For a moment there, I could have sworn your father had slipped into bed between us. Have you ever thought of becoming an actress?’

‘Of course. I’ve loved the theatre ever since Mama took me to my first play at the Alcazar in San Francisco. Do you know the Alcazar? It’s the most elegant Moorish hall in all the world, or at least that’s what is printed on its playbills. Gas-jet chandeliers, classical busts on pedestals here, there and everywhere, and all society dressed in their finest, raising gold opera glasses to the stage. From the first encounter I wanted to be on that stage, to be
the one they were all watching. And so I declared to Mama then and there that I would become an actress.’

‘What was her reaction?’

Mimicking her mother’s light Anglo-Irish lilt, Mae slipped into character: ‘“Young lady, are you so determined to disgrace the family? An actress is but another name for a fancy woman! It would kill your father!”’

‘If your talent for mimicry is any indication, I would think you could have enjoyed a stellar career on the stage.’

‘So you say. But I might as well have told her I was running away to join the circus. Which, like being a sailor, is something I also dreamed about when I was little. I wanted to be the girl with the feathered headdress who rode the pony and got the tigers to leap through hoops. But speaking of ponies, let’s find some and ride out to the seabeach at the end of the Great Wall.’

‘Now?’ Morrison recoiled. ‘But it’s so pleasant in bed.’

‘I will go alone then.’

‘You mustn’t do that. It wouldn’t be proper. Or safe.’

‘So come with me.’

‘Can’t you linger with me a while longer?’

‘And if we are discovered?’

‘Hmm. I feel a sudden desire for exercise.’