by James Barlow
Debbie greeted, ‘I was looking for you.’
Miss Wearne said, ‘My dear, I thought you’d gone off for the day.’
‘Only for a couple of hours. I thought you might like to come with me to see some Chinese opera at the City Hall.’
‘How kind of you! Is it very far?’
‘We only have to cross in the ferry.’
‘I’d be delighted,’ admitted Miss Wearne frankly.
She was tired, but eager to see some more of this remarkable city. Alone she had been afraid of getting lost. This had happened to her yesterday. She rested in the ferry and told Debbie about it.
‘I got on the wrong train and went too far. It was most interesting. There were people in the compartment drinking out of saucers and eating fishy things and the women were picking things out of their children’s hair. An office told me I was on the wrong train, but I didn’t believe him. He stopped it eventually at a little place with a market covered by scores of umbrellas. All sorts of officials made sure that I boarded a train back, and half a dozen more met me at Kowloon. Very thoughtful of them.’
Debbie laughed and told her about Dempsey falling off a plank . . .
They sat in the memorial gardens for an hour and then went in to see an opera. It was not Chinese, but Gilbert and Sullivan, but Miss Wearne had never seen such a thing in her life and was delighted. Furthermore, the seats were very restful and for a while she could rest her feet and kick off her shoes.
It was experience enough for Miss Wearne, who would not have known the opera hadn’t been Chinese if Debbie and the programme hadn’t told her.
The girl now insisted on taking her to dinner. Miss Wearne was impressed by her confidence. Debbie turned into a restaurant which would have been too formidable for Miss Wearne had she been alone. It was packed with apprehensive Europeans from ships, restless children under the care of amahs, businessmen and parties of shrieking girls. All was bustle and colour and unfamiliar scents.
They were unable to have a table to themselves, but sat at a round table with six other people, four of whom were Americans.
Miss Wearne studied the menu. It was not only a very full list of strange names, but a thing of beautiful design. She coveted it. What better proof to send to Eileen Boyd, a confirmation that she was indulging in sophisticated enjoyments? She had no idea of what the dishes were, but they had a romantic appearance just printed on a colourful card . . .
She found that she could handle the chopsticks quite well, with occasional assistant from the porcelain spoon. A man came around with hot towels, but in this restaurant they were not moist with rosewater but hygienic and Occidental with disinfectant.
‘Where’s the menu?’ an American gentleman asked.
Miss Wearne had put it under her plate. She fiddled with it as if it had fallen on her lap and viewed the man with misgiving in case he put a greasy thumb mark on it.
‘How long are you gonna be with that thing?’ the man’s wife asked.
‘I can’t figure it out,’ the man admitted. ‘The soup seems to come halfway.’
After a while Miss Wearne recovered the menu. She dropped it in her lap and covered it with a paper napkin and looked blank when another man asked what came next. Hot and bothered, she folded it under the napkin. It dropped on the floor. Miss Wearne went a bit dizzy recovering it, but put it now with finality into her large handbag. It was the first time since childhood that she had stolen anything, but she was unrepentant. It was necessary to overawe Eileen Boyd, and if pinching a Chinese menu helped to do so, that was that.
But she waited with apprehension for someone to ask, ‘What did you do with it?’ or for the waiter to suggest, ‘Can we have it back, please?’
She ate well, but was relieved when Debbie suggested that it was time to leave. The Americans offered farewells and the Chinese waiter smiled and bowed and people at tables stared with interest at the foreign girl who was very beautiful and so much taller than her grandmother.
Right by the door a young man stopped them, Miss Wearne was scared: they’d caught her.
The young man asked politely. ‘Would you like to take a menu with you?’ and picked two from a pile of hundreds.
The young woman was conversational. It was as if Pauline was being interviewed by a journalist. Instead of which she was having her fortune told in a bamboo hut in the gigantic fairground of Lai chi Kok.
‘It’s not easy with Europeans,’ the young Chinese woman told them apologetically. ‘With us it’s all written there on the face.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought that,’ Dempsey said.
The young woman arranged cards on the table before her.
‘What beautiful cards!’ Pauline commented.
The woman smiled.
‘German,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Did you think they were Chinese? May I see your hands? Yes, both of them,’ she urged, laughing. ‘Value for money, yes? Beautiful hands, if I may say so.’
‘Never done any work,’ suggested Dempsey, but he agreed with the opinion of the girl. Despite her incidental remarks she had an attitude of seriousness, of someone who accepted the challenge of frivolousness and would prove it mistaken.
There was the smell of cooking to undervalue her skill, and, outside, the noises of the acres of enjoyment.
She produced a box of small ornament rather like chess pieces but made of jade, pearl and silver.
‘Please select these as you wish and place them on the cards of your choice,’ she instructed.
Pauline did so. It was not quite meaningless, for she put a horse on the king, a turret on a jack.
The young Chinese woman pleaded, ‘Excuse me,’ and put her head into her hands as if in anxious thought. Once she looked up to check the arrangement.
‘I see many people dressed in white,’ she informed Pauline. ‘The sun is hot. The king comes. There are tears. I can smell paint burning. There seem to be endless journeys. You have received much love and yet you despair. Do not be afraid. You have great beauty, you laugh and smile, but happiness avoids you because you are in pursuit. Stand still and it will approach you. Bite the fruit that seems bitter . . . You’ll never forget Hong Kong . . . I’m sorry,’ she concluded. ‘It’s gone.’
‘Not bad,’ opined Pauline.
‘It wasn’t much.’
‘I certainly shan’t forget Hong Kong.’
‘Are you satisfied?’
‘More than satisfied; I am impressed.’
‘Thank you.’
Outside, Dempsey laughed and commented, ‘It wasn’t paint she could smell burning, it was her blasted dinner!’
Pauline objected, ‘But she was good. All that stuff about love.’
He told her frankly: ‘Anyone can see you’re beautiful. It’s a fair deduction that you’ll therefore have emotional problems rather than economic or health ones.’
‘I think doctors are too practical. What do we do now?’
‘How about an hour’s Chinese opera?’
They were fortunate enough to have only a quarter of an hour to wait before one began. It was in traditional style, with much beating of gongs and clash of cymbals. The strange voices and overacting by people with bright costumes and exaggerated makeup were fascinating for a while, but after an hour the ceremonial style had a tedium and Pauline was restless. ‘I want to go on the roller coaster,’ she whispered.
The roller coaster was not only nerve-racking but rewarded them with superb views of the harbour. ‘When I get my stomach back I want to eat,’ Pauline declared. ‘And then can we go up on the tram to the Peak? I like to do corny things.’
She was like a child being taken around, but Dempsey was not fooled. She was purposeful; the careless charm was part of intention. And there was within him the inclination to succumb. Why no
t? She was very beautiful, dressed in the pale blue dress. No ornamentation, no makeup; she didn’t need them. People stared at her, indifferent to his (or her) resentment, and even in Chinese youths Dempsey saw the shock of identification: she exuded physical provocation, intentionally or otherwise, and perturbed the beholder.
It was difficult for him, even aware of this property, to refrain from touching her. She was all electricity, hands that were agitated, a face very alive, and eyes never still. She had no qualms about touching him, taking his arm, leaning on him in the taxi and the ferry and clinging to him outright in the little train as it made its near-vertical ascent above Victoria.
It was the only place in Hong Kong where they’d experienced quiet. They followed a track, each corner revealing a new and magnificent panorama. It was very hot and eventually they sat down to laze. ‘I’m going to sleep,’ Pauline said. She lay on her stomach, absolutely relaxed, soft and sensual, and he was disturbed by the contours of her buttocks. He studied her hair and neck and grace of posture. She was magnificent, physically. But she was neurotic, cunning and predatory.
‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.
‘You,’ he admitted.
‘Well, that’s nice, I like that.’
‘I was thinking you’re a chameleon.’
‘I don’t care for that.’
‘You adapt to the situation.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘A little hypocrisy for the dying, yes. I mean, what’s the real Pauline Triffett like?’
‘I don’t know either,’ she admitted.
‘I’d like to meet her.’
‘I think you know me now. Daniel.’
‘I want to.’
‘I’m glad you care that much. You heard what the woman said: ‘Bite the bitter fruit.’’
‘She was talking to you.’
‘Perhaps I’m a rotten fruit. Bite and see.’
‘I’m thirty-five years old.’
‘Poor thing. So what?’
‘I take things cautiously, with seriousness.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought that at first, Daniel, but I believe you. I don’t like the inference.’
‘Which you presume to be -?’
‘That I’m flighty, neurotic, don’t take anything seriously.’
‘What happened to Mr. Triffett?’
‘Like I told you.’
‘It’s a vague situation.’
‘You want it cut-and-dried?’
‘Doctors don’t like to have relationships with other men’s wives which their patients might object to.’
‘To hell with your patients! What about me? We’re on a journey. Different values apply.’
‘I don’t know how to value you, Pauline.’
‘I can’t do it for you. Somewhere along the line you have to believe in your own judgement.’
He was afraid. That was the truth of it. He had no wish to hurt her, but was sensitive to the possibility of being hurt himself, and perhaps this was her intention. She liked sensation, quarrels, trouble; he could imagine that the mental chaos had been too much for Mr. Triffett. The tantalization, mockery, violence of emotion, all preceding or following passionate lovemaking may well have caused him to look elsewhere, for calmer emotional pastures. But maybe Triffett was just a dirty young man who’d seen a piece he fancied more, and any brittleness in Pauline was a result, not a cause.
‘My senses tell me you’re a very beautiful woman.’
‘Hooray for your sense.’
‘But frenzied, sexy, and in many ways selfish.’
‘It’s your rotten old caution which gives you that message.’
‘As I said, I’m thirty-five and a doctor.’
She asked in apparent anxiety, ‘I’m not ill, am I, Daniel? I mean, because of Reidy . . . ’
‘No. Nothing more than a high moral fever.’
‘She can’t alter. I have.’
‘Let’s go and try some other Hong Kong attraction.’
‘A Chinese film?’
But this, he deduced, was merely a device to rest the body and pass the hours. Later he took her into a bar and then for a meal. She ate ravenously, with frank greed, through nine or ten delicious dishes. They moved onto a floor show. It was funny and rather affected, Chinese dancers attitudinizing for the benefit of Europeans: London was far more shocking.
Later still they found a dance floor that suited their mood: a barn of a place, almost in darkness, where hundreds of youths, shrieking girls and American sailors danced with frenzy or cheek-to-cheek, whatever took them. A go-go girl danced in an illuminated cage, a voluptuous Asian, not Chinese but probably a half-caste, sultry, insolent and tireless, pouring sweat down her thighs and arms.
Pauline, crushed against Dempsey, was frankly sensual and perturbing, undulating her body against his, kissing around his neck, clawing him. He found the touch of her burning hot, the flesh moving to and fro to the music was erotic in his hands.
They kept it up for an hour or so until they were moist with exertion and gasping the hot smoky air.
Then, as if it was a problem that had been postponed for as long as possible, they went back to the Areopagus. The night air was cold, and they both dithered. Dempsey froze a little, caution returning to him more urgently than to her, if indeed she ever felt caution.
It was two in the morning and he had a surgery at eight. Nobody would turn up, but he had to go through the motions. He felt all the caution of a professional person who must consider the duties of tomorrow and relinquish some of the fun of today.
But she clung to him outside his cabin door, sensing the drop in temperature.
‘You can’t end it here,’ she asserted. ‘Daniel, believe your senses.’
He hesitated and she saw the irresolution, the professional care clashing with the desires of the man.
‘I’m sorry, I think I understand,’ she conceded.
He was hot with care diminishing. He had lost all dialogic skill and was confronted with his own desires and had no words left to avoid them. Not unless he simply rejected her. In her naked emotional state no hypocrisy would suffice. He’d have to say he didn’t want her.
She was neurotic, subtle, and full of some feminine cruelties. He knew she would always be trouble. She might be diseased, she had been so casual. She had picked up men and taken them to her cabin. And she had enjoyed the physical relationship with Miss Reidy. These actions were repugnant to him.
But his emotions told him also that she really cared for him. And she was brittle, had presumably been wounded seriously but someone, probably Triffett. He just couldn’t bear to hurt her. He was deeply fond of her, possibly in love, albeit scared. And he had all day watched those swingy thighs and buttocks.
‘Come on then!’ he urged grimly.
‘Oh, Daniel, how kind!’
‘Kind? You fool! I love you – with some reservations!’
‘I’ve no reservations,’ she told him.
Her eye took in the cabin instantly. It was larger than the double cabin she shared with Reidy. It had a bed, not bunks. She looked at Dempsey and grinned with outright satisfaction.
He stripped her slowly down to her pants. Her breasts were already swollen, the nipples erect. Her torso was flushing.
He pawed her as long as it was bearable and then pushed her across the bed. She intertwined her legs around his, slippery with sweat, and gasped and writhed. She kissed him all the way down his back, and bit his ears and neck, while her fingers clawed his buttocks and then crawled around with sly insistence to stroke his genitals. When he turned her over she was groaning as if already approaching climax. He ripped the absurd pants off, and, sure enough, the folds of flesh were fluid and swollen.
She gav
e a brief cry of pain, oddly, at the touch of his hands on her inner thighs and then thrust her stomach up and demanded him. It had been too exciting for him, and his climax came in a couple of minutes, but so did hers, the flesh shuddering with him.
Ten minutes later he said, ‘I’m sorry if I hurt your leg.’
‘Don’t be sorry about anything. You hurt my bruises too!’
‘What bruises?’
‘Some man beat me up.’
She was moving one leg very slightly, and he saw circular scars, very recent on her inner thigh. ‘What the devil are those? Why didn’t you say?’
‘And stop you? Don’t ever stop. There was nothing like that before. I trusted you, you see, completely.’
‘But these scars need attention. What the hell have you been doing?’
‘A little game Reidy and I played. We stubbed cigarettes out on each other to see who was chicken She was . . . ’
Dempsey was silent.
‘No you despise me again.’
‘No. I’ll never despise you. But don’t do that again. Your legs are too beautiful . . . ’
‘Oh, that was a lovely day you gave me, Daniel,’ she sighed, and was asleep.
He fell asleep himself, too tired to take care, and the steward woke them both at half past six in the morning.
The steward was not shocked, although a bit startled. After a two-seconds’ pause, he inquired, ‘Another cup of tea?’ and Pauline whispered, ‘Yes.’
‘Letter on floor.’ The steward said.
He gave it to Dempsey. It had been pushed under the door and was a bit creased. Dempsey recognized the writing on the envelope; not that he’d seen it before, but it was the neat, rounded script of a girl of fifteen.
He read it later. ‘My dear Daniel,’ it began, and continued in careful phrases to express gratitude for an unusual and beautiful day. It ended ‘Your very dear friend, Debbie.’ He knew what it meant, was aware of the weight of sentences, the balanced phraseology which she had probably written out four or five times . . . The tender day in which they’d seen the junks and the dragons, the cool hands holding his head briefly and the child’s mouth touching his eye – they meant almost nothing to him.