Bill for the Use of a Body (11 page)

With a crestfallen glance at Julian, Merri went upstairs, while he followed Mrs. Sang into the drawing room. Pushing the door to behind them, she rounded on him and, her eyes hard as agates, said angrily, ‘The engine broke down! I don't believe it! That's the oldest story in the world. You fixed things with the crew of the launch so that you could make love to Merri.'

‘No, honestly. It's the truth, Mrs. Sang,' he protested.

‘You're lying! Her lipstick's all over your face. I shouldn't be surprised if you succeeded in seducing her.'

Julian drew himself up and retorted sharply, ‘I did not; and you've no right to suggest such a thing. I admit to kissing her, of course; but she's not a child just out of the school room, so why shouldn't I? And you may as well know that I've asked her to marry me.'

‘Marry you!' exclaimed Mrs. Sang, her blue eyes widening.

‘Yes. Why not? I'm a bachelor with no entanglements, and I'm sure that I could make her happy.'

For a moment the handsome blonde woman stood there staring at him, then she burst out, ‘No! I won't have it! When you were here on Sunday you saw all the valuable things in this house. You realised that I was a wealthy woman and that all this will go to Merri. You're just a fortune hunter, trying to turn the child's head with your knowledge of the world and polished manners.'

‘What nonsense!' Julian gave an angry little laugh. ‘You haven't the least foundation for making such a charge. I'm probably as rich as and maybe richer than you are. In the United States alone I have enough money safely invested to buy this house and everything in it.'

Mrs. Sang's hands were trembling. ‘All right, then!' she snapped. ‘If I'm wrong about that there's another reason. You're too old for Merri; much too old. At your age how could you expect to keep pace with a girl of
hers? After the first excitement of being married and having her own home had worn off she would become bored with you. How can you expect me to agree to her making a marriage that would be bound to go on the rocks within a few years?'

‘I don't agree that it would,' Julian replied stubbornly. ‘Merri's great wish is to travel. She is highly intelligent and greatly interested in art and history. In these days there are very few men who're not tied by some business or profession, and wealthy enough to take their wives to live for a while with every comfort in any country they wish to see. I'm in a position to provide her with a whole series of new sights and interests for years to come; so you're quite wrong in supposing that she would become bored if she married me.'

‘One can get bored with travelling after a few years. And what sort of a life is it for a girl to live out of a trunk for months on end, even in the very best hotels? The real joy of marriage is to settle down, make a home, have children and live among a circle of friends.'

Julian gave a slight smile. ‘I think now, Mrs. Sang, I can guess your real reason for objecting to me as a husband for Merri. As she is your only child and you have very little social life you are most reluctant to lose her. It's only natural that you hoped that when she did marry it would be someone with a good position here in Hong Kong. Well, let me reassure you. I've found Hong Kong to be one of the most delightful places I've ever stayed in, so I am quite prepared to buy a pleasant property on the island. Merri and I would travel only part of the year and make our permanent home here. Does that satisfy you?'

‘No, it does not!' Merri's mother flared, her blue eyes blazing. ‘Since you drive me to it I'll give you a reason that is final. When you came here on Sunday you thought we had met before. You were right. We had. I recognised you immediately. I was Matilda Cray, the young
Australian V.A.D. who appealed to you for help when the Japanese broke into the temporary hospital at the Jockey Club. If you'd been half a man you would have saved me from rape and worse. I'll not let my daughter marry a coward.'

Momentarily speechless, Julian stared at the woman who had once been Matilda Cray. Then he had seen her face fully only for those two agonising minutes when his muscles had seemed near breaking point as he had tried to hoist her up through the skylight; now he realised that she had hardly altered at all. The tall, well-made girl had only put on flesh, acquired a few wrinkles round her eyes and a harder mouth, to become this big, handsome woman.

As he stared at her, she went on furiously, ‘I suppose you know that the nurses in that hospital, British and Chinese alike, were raped time after time all Christmas Day and all through the following night, and knocked about and beaten into the bargain? That's what happened to me after you took to your heels to save your skin. But I fared worse than they did; far worse. A Japanese officer took a fancy to me and had me shanghaied to a house on the mainland. He kept me locked up there for weeks while he inflicted every sort of bestial lust on me. Then … then when at last he tired of me he sold me into a brothel in … in Canton. If you've any imagination, Mr. Day, try to picture the sort of hell that was for a young girl like me. On some nights I had to accept as many as a dozen stinking sweaty men one after the other. That lasted a whole year. If I hadn't been as strong as an ox I would have died after a month of it. That's what you let me in for.'

Panting, she paused a second and Julian stammered out, ‘But Mrs. Sang, I … I—'

With an angry gesture she cut him short. ‘That I'm not an old harridan peddling myself on the waterfront for enough rice to keep me alive, or long since dead, is no fault of yours. But I survived. Sang … Sang came to that low brothel one night, having been misled into believing it a good-class one. He happened to see me, paid for a whole night with me and after he had had me talked to me for a long while. He was a wealthy merchant and he bought me out. Later, in 1944, he married me. After he died I … I saw the red light and got my money out of China. But my family had long since given me up for dead. I couldn't bring myself to return to Australia with little Merri—a half-caste child—and face them; so I came here: a lonely widow with a ruined life. You could have saved me from all those agonies I went through, but you lacked the courage. Now you know why I won't have you as a husband for Merri.'

Holding out both his hands in a helpless gesture, Julian said, ‘Yours is a terrible story—terrible. I can't find words to express my … well, horror … sympathy … distress. They're all inadequate. But you are being unjust to me. Remember everything happened very quickly. I saw you only for a moment through the skylight before calling to you, and looking down on you I underestimated your weight. Even so, in normal circumstances I think I could have pulled you up; but I had a wound in one arm, was bruised all over from having escaped capture by rolling down a steep hillside, and was practically all-in from three days of constant marching and fighting. You can't hold me guilty of more than an error of judgment.'

‘I do! When you found you couldn't pull me up you could have shot me. In those days my looks had attracted a dozen men who tried to seduce me. But I had been brought up to believe that to keep herself chaste was a
woman's first duty; so I was a good girl. I meant to keep myself for some man I'd fall in love with and marry. Rather than be raped by the Japanese I would willingly have died. If I'd known the hell that was in store for me I'd have gladly suffered death ten times over. I implored you to shoot me. But you hadn't the guts. You just crouched up there looking on while one of them blacked my eye and they threw me down on the sofa.'

Helplessly, Julian shook his head. ‘I couldn't have shot you. My pistol was empty and I hadn't a round of ammunition left. I appreciate how you must feel, but there was nothing I could possibly do to save you.'

Ignoring his explanation, she retorted bitterly, ‘Yes, you could have if you had done as I asked you in the first place. I called up to you to come down and help me barricade the door. If you'd done that, before they could have broken in we would have had time to get out on the roof together and escape them. But you chose to remain up there rather than risk your own safety.'

Julian realised that she must have nursed this grievance against him for years, and that there was no arguing with her. He could only repeat, ‘I was half dead on my feet—too exhausted to think clearly. I admit that I did the wrong thing; but anyone might have in the circumstances. I felt ghastly about it for weeks afterwards. But you cannot blame me for more than an error of judgment.'

‘And I paid for your error,' she said with sudden calmness. ‘Well, we'll let it rest there. But you know now why I wouldn't have you as a son-in-law. No, not if you were the last man on earth.'

Stung to anger by what he felt to be her injustice, Julian retorted, ‘Perhaps, then, you'd rather have Merri marry her Japanese?'

Mrs. Sang's blue eyes dilated again and she repeated in a horrified whisper, ‘Her Japanese? What … what d'you mean by that?'

Julian felt entitled to get a little of his own back, so he
shrugged and said, ‘If Merri were not such a dutiful daughter and, knowing your hatred for the Japanese, turned him down on that account, she might quite well by now be engaged to a young man named Urata.'

‘You … you're lying!' Mrs. Sang burst out. ‘I don't believe it.'

‘Don't, then, if you prefer to bury your head in the sand. But if you check up with the Tourist Association you'll find that up till a few days ago she was acting as guide to him, and that they spent a week or more together before I arrived on the island. She told me herself, only yesterday, that he'd proposed to her and that she was half in love with him.'

‘This is the end; the end!' Mrs. Sang's voice rose to a hysterical note. ‘I was always against her becoming a guide. Now I know the sort of people she takes round she shall be one no longer. She is still a minor, so must do as I bid her, like it or not. First thing on Monday morning I'll telephone her office and tell them that she'll not be working for them in future. As for you, I forbid you to see her again or communicate with her in any way. Now get out!'

For a moment Julian stood glowering at the tall angry woman, then he said firmly, ‘I still mean to marry Merri if she'll have me, and I'll do as I damn' well please.'

Turning on his heel, he marched from the room and out of the house, slamming the front door behind him.

Next morning he woke to a feeling that some catastrophe had befallen him, then the awful scene that he had had with Mrs. Sang flowed back into his mind. Trying to regard dispassionately all that she had said, he conceded that the ghastly time she had been through might have warped any woman's mind to a point at which she could no longer form a fair assessment of its causes, and it was evident that she had fixed on him as the scapegoat for her sufferings. Throughout the long years since the invasion of Hong Kong, whenever those few terrible minutes
in which he had attempted, but failed, to save her had recurred to him, he had again reproached himself for having told her to do the wrong thing. But it had never even occurred to him that she might look on her having become a victim of the Japanese as due to cowardice on his part, and he was fully convinced that any fair-minded person who knew the facts would exonerate him from such a charge.

As Merri must have been born either just before or soon after Mrs. Sang's marriage, it seemed very unlikely that she knew anything about her mother's shocking ordeals, and Julian had no intention of telling her about them. But if he continued his courtship of Merri, as he intended to do, the possibility had to be faced that in a last-ditch attempt to prejudice Merri against him her mother might reveal her real reasons for objecting to him. If that did happen what would Merri's reaction be?

Having considered the matter, Julian decided that it would depend on the degree of trust and affection that he could inspire in his beautiful love. If he could get no further with her than he had up to the present the odds were that she would accept her mother's view of him. Therefore his best hope lay in seeing much more of her; so that if Mrs. Sang did use the past in an attempt to discredit him, Merri would believe his side of the story.

But to see more of Merri, now that her mother would be acting as a watchdog, was going to be far from easy. Deciding to tackle this difficult situation without delay, after Julian had had his bath he rang up her home and asked for her.

A Chinese ‘boy' answered the call and lisped, ‘Solly, Master. Missie Merri not very well today. Missie take no telephone calls.'

So that was that. Obviously Mrs. Sang had already given her servants their instructions.

Undeterred, Julian sat down at the writing table and wrote a note that read:

My very dearest Merri
,

I understand that your mother intends to forbid you to continue to act as a guide, and I consider her decision most unkind and unreasonable. Obviously she is still living in a bygone age and does not realise that it is now accepted that parents have no right to dictate to their grown-up children
.

In view of our friendship I refuse to tolerate this arbitrary attempt to end it; and I hope you will do so too. However you may feel, I positively must see you at least once more, to offer you a little sound advice about how best to overcome her prejudice against your being allowed a reasonable degree of freedom to live your own life as other girls do in these days
.

From half past seven this evening I'll be in a car near the entrance to the Lido. As we have not yet had a meal in one of the floating restaurants at Aberdeen Bay, and as it is quite near, if you can join me I suggest that we dine there. But if you can only get out to talk to me in the car for a few minutes that would be better than nothing
.