The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure

by Adam Williams

  ‘We’d better set off, sir, if we’re to meet HF at the crossroads,’ said Tom, bringing the horses. ‘Henry said they’d get there shortly after dark.’

  * * *

  ‘Ho there!’ called out Frank. ‘Is that you, my dear?’

  A lantern was bobbing along the road that led from the direction of the railway camp, slowly drawing nearer to where Tom and he were waiting on the crossroads. He could faintly hear the clopping of horses’ hoofs. He sensed Tom reaching quietly for the rifle in the side holster. Tom was right, of course, to take precautions. One never knew nowadays who might be out there in the night.

  ‘Ho there!’ he called again. ‘Manners! Helen Frances! Is that you?’

  There was no answer, but a wind was blowing strongly and his voice might well have been carried away in the wrong direction.

  ‘I’m sure it is them, Tom,’ he said. ‘After all, who else could it be? Dashed late, though. Wonder where they’ve been.’

  ‘Apparently there’s a ruined temple about six miles south of the rail camp,’ said Tom.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ groaned Frank. ‘Ruined temples. Monasteries. You’d think Manners was some bloody Buddhist or something. Manners! Is that you?’ he called. ‘Helen Frances!’

  Still no answer.

  ‘Don’t know why you ever agreed to letting her go on these damn tourist trips in the first place,’ grumbled Frank. ‘Mrs Airton was decent enough to offer the girl a job in the hospital, and if Manners can afford all this time away from the railway company I don’t know why they sent him out here. Not having you getting any ideas, by the way, young man.’ He turned to Tom. ‘No half-days at Babbit and Brenner.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Tom smiled. ‘Never expected it.’

  ‘Why don’t they get on with it?’ muttered Frank. ‘Look, tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to light a lamp. Shouting in this gale doesn’t do any damn good. Got one in my pack. Have a nip of whisky at the same time.’ Heavily he dismounted from his horse.

  ‘Want any help?’ asked Tom.

  ‘No, I’m all right. Not senile yet.’

  Tom could hear the older man puffing in the darkness, the tinkling of glass and the gurgle of liquid, then more clinking of metal and glass as Frank began to fiddle with the hurricane lamp. He himself grasped his rifle stock and peered at the bobbing lantern, which he judged to be about a quarter of a mile away and moving very slowly.

  ‘There we have it,’ said Frank. ‘Be ready in a tick.’

  Tom blinked at the sudden blaze of light. Then he heard a cry from Frank, the lamp clattered to the ground and went out. Frank’s horse reared, startling his own, which bucked. It was all he could do to stay in the saddle, and inadvertently his finger squeezed the trigger and his gun went off with a flash and a bang. It took some moments for him to bring his nervous mount under control again, then over the horses’ snorts he heard Frank whisper, ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘See whom?’ Tom also felt impelled to whisper.

  ‘The priest,’ said Frank. ‘The blind fellow. The one who scared Helen Frances. The Boxer priest. The sinister bugger Charlie was telling us about. I saw him sitting in the middle of the road.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There. Right under our bloody feet, no eyes in his head but he still looked baleful and menacing. Sort of jumped up when the light went on and crashed into me. Felt cold and flabby when I grabbed him, and he slipped from my grasp like an eel. By then the light was out and the horses were leaping all over the place. Lucky he didn’t stick a knife in my ribs, isn’t it? Hold on, where’s the damn hurricane? Let me get it going again.’

  After more puffing and tinkling the lamp was lit. Frank held it high so its beams shone on as wide an area as possible, but the roads and the bare fields on every side were empty.

  ‘Damn, he’s got clean away,’ said Frank. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, would you? Makes me think I imagined it.’

  ‘You sure it wasn’t some animal, sir? A wild cat? A small deer?’

  ‘No, no, looked like a man. Felt like one. Sort of. And I won’t forget the empty eyeholes. Look, Tom, no word to Helen Frances about this, all right? You and I are off to Tsitsihar for a few weeks and I don’t want her frightened while we’re gone.’

  A clatter of hoofs and Henry Manners and Helen Frances rode into the circle of light. Lao Zhao, with the mule and the lantern, followed close behind. Manners had his rifle unslung as did Lao Zhao.

  ‘We heard a shot,’ said Manners, surveying the scene, relaxing, holstering his gun. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. You know me,’ said Frank heartily. ‘Clumsy oaf. Going for my whisky bottle in the saddlepack. Trod on the horse’s foot. He reared. One thing led to another. Tom’s fingers slipped on his blunderbuss. Bloody French farce, eh? God knows how we’re going to manage on the road to Tsitsihar.’

  ‘Father, Tom, are you both all right?’ asked Helen Frances, her riding hat awry, eyes wide with concern.

  ‘Right as rain, old girl. Aren’t we, Tom?’

  ‘And anyway, we’re the ones who’ve been worried. Where have you been?’ asked Tom, leaning from his saddle to peck his fiancée on the cheek. ‘HF, we really thought you must have been lost.’

  ‘We saw this glorious temple. There was a tomb and a sort of crenellated wall around a mound. Henry helped me climb up to the top and—’

  ‘Sounds wonderful, darling,’ said Tom. ‘Thank you, Henry, as always. But we’ve got to be going. We really must. HF, you know it’s the last night in town for your father and me, and we did promise to call in at the doctor’s on the way. Henry, will you be going back to the rail camp? Of course you’re welcome to ride with us.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Lao Zhao and me, old boy. We’ll be all right. One Miss Delamere sealed and safely delivered, that’s our duty done. You really should come with us one day on these rides. You don’t know how you’re losing out.’

  ‘Maybe when I get back from Tsitsihar,’ said Tom. ‘I am grateful, Henry, the way you’re looking after her.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Manners. ‘And don’t worry about anything while you’re away. You know you can trust Lao Zhao and me to continue to—’

  ‘Thanks, Henry,’ said Tom, his tone a trifle brittle. ‘I know she’s in good hands.’

  ‘The very best,’ murmured Manners. ‘I’m talking about Lao Zhao, of course. Knows the country like a tracker. Every temple and monastery for miles.’

  ‘You mean you’re going on more rides while we’re away?’ asked Frank grumpily. ‘How many more damn temples are there to see around this town, anyway? Don’t you two get fed up with it all?’

  ‘Oh, Papa,’ said Helen Frances irritably.

  ‘Actually, there’s going to be a bit of a treat while you’re away, Mr Delamere,’ said Manners. ‘Sorry you two won’t be here for it. We’ll be blowing the tunnel in the Black Hills and Charlie’s arranging a weekend of picnics. I think the Airtons are coming as well.’

  ‘If the Airtons are there, that’s fine,’ said Frank. ‘They’re in charge of Helen Frances while Tom and I are gone. That’s where she’s staying too, by the way. They’re her chaperones—not that I trust chaperones, these days. Tom was meant to be her chaperon on the ship coming over here and look what bloody happened with him.’

  ‘Hope you’re not disappointed, sir,’ said Tom.

  ‘That’s an understatement if ever there was one. Still, if I have to marry my daughter off to a gorilla, I might have picked a worse one.’ He climbed heavily into his saddle. ‘Come on, then, you chaps. Are we going or not? ‘Bye, Manners. See you in a month or so. Enjoy your temples. Om mani padme hom and all that. I expect you and Helen Frances to be thoroughly enlightened by the time we get back. Living Buddhas at the least. ‘Bye.’

  ‘Thank you, Henry, for a lovely day.’ Helen Frances reached out her hand and touched the flank of his horse, close to his knee.

  ‘I’ll call on you at the Airtons’ in a couple of days,’ said Manners.
‘Have a good journey, Tom. You’ll like the hunting up there. Don’t worry about Helen Frances.’

  Tom turned. ‘Why do you keep telling me not to worry about HF, Henry?’

  ‘’Bye,’ said Manners, saluting with his crop. ‘Zoule, Lao Zhao!’ Turning his horse he was quickly swallowed up by the night.

  ‘He doesn’t want you to be concerned about me while you’re away, that’s all,’ said Helen Frances, perhaps because she felt somebody had to fill the silence.

  ‘Question is, just what am I not to be concerned about?’ said Tom.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Helen Frances, after a while.

  ‘I don’t either,’ said Tom, after an equal pause. ‘Let’s forget it, shall we? Tell me about your day with Henry.’

  * * *

  When the party was gone, and Frank’s lamp was only a glint in the distance, a figure rose from the ditch by the side of the road. While the sightless eyes gazed expressionlessly in the direction of the vanishing party, the figure moved his right hand to his left shoulder and probed with long fingers into the hole in the flesh made by Tom’s gun. A soft mewing sound came from his mouth. After a while he located the crumpled bullet and slowly withdrew it. He held it for a moment in his open palm, then placed it casually in his mouth and swallowed it. Then, picking up his bowl and staff, ignoring his wound, he began to shuffle in the direction of Shishan.

  * * *

  More than ever Helen Frances looked forward to the afternoons with Henry and Lao Zhao, if nothing else as a relaxation from the good behaviour she was expected to show in the presence of Mrs Airton. After the interminable lunches with Nellie and the nuns, she would plead tiredness and wait by the window of her room. Her heart would leap when she saw the horses emerge round the clump of pines and climb the hill toward the mission. By then she would be changed into boots and riding dress, and at the first sound of the doorbell, flush-cheeked, she would step out into the hall where Ah Lee would be waiting with her hat and crop.

  Henry would not often come into the house. He would lounge against the porch smoking a cheroot, or squat in the yard with the children, carefully unwrapping his handkerchief to show them a grasshopper or a beetle or whatever he had found for them on his ride over from the camp. As often as not he would reach into his other pocket and produce another handkerchief, and this time unfold an orchid or other wild flower for her to pin on her lapel.

  Mrs Airton, who would never fail to be present for their departure, if only to register her disapproval, would offer a sour smile when he extended a similar courtesy to her, and tell him, in her Scottish coo, what a beautiful wee bloom it was and hand it to Ah Lee to put into a jar. She never failed to ask Henry what time exactly he would be returning with Miss Delamere, reminding him that with children in the house supper times were punctual, as indeed was the daily service beforehand, not that young people nowadays observed religion with the punctiliousness that had been expected when she herself was a girl. Henry would invariably disarm her, describing the route he intended to take that day, the sights they would see on the way, assuring her that even if they were unfortunate enough to be late for prayers, he would bring back Helen Frances in time for supper, safe and sound, having worked up an appetite that could only do justice to Mrs Airton’s magnificent cooking.

  And then, at last, she would be galloping down the hill, wind in her face, blinding her eyes, unravelling her hair, thudding in her ears, Henry laughing and egging on her horse to go faster, wilder, racing her, daring her with his white smile and crinkling eyes, and she would cry out with the joy of being free, delighting in the rhythm of the hot, powerful muscle beneath her, the pulsing blood, the abandonment and the control, kicking with her heels and slashing with her crop. The two horses would pound past the mission and the clump of firs, into the plain and beyond, reining in by the poplars on the road, with Lao Zhao grinning in a cloud of dust as he trotted up behind.

  ‘Well, where to today, now you’re flushed and hot and unladylike?’ Henry asked her, one afternoon after one of these gallops, patting the neck of his horse.

  ‘A temple?’

  ‘Sorry. Run out of temples—though I’m still inventing notional ones for Mrs Dragon up there.’

  ‘I don’t care where we go, as long as it’s away from the Airtons.’

  ‘Och, noo. What a braw ungrateful thing ye are, so discourteous to your poor kind hosts.’

  ‘The doctor’s all right, I suppose. Bit of a bore. The children are sweet, funny things. It’s Nellie I loathe—and those cheerful nuns.’ She giggled. ‘God, those nuns. They’re so damned … jolly.’ And she threw back her head and laughed. A curl, loosed from her riding hat, drifted across her cheek and over her eye. Henry reached across and brushed it to the side, his fingers lightly tracing the line of her eyebrow. Startled, she pulled her head away, stiffening, her pupils dilated.

  ‘Your hair. A strand was loose,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she muttered. Her cheeks were hot and she wondered if she was blushing.

  ‘All right,’ he said, after a moment’s silence. ‘We’ll go for a ride, shall we? I’ll take you to the river. Come on.’

  As she followed him she thought again, not for the first time, about the choices she might some day have to make.

  * * *

  The issue was much simpler for Lao Zhao, although he kept his own counsel and nobody ever asked him anyway. He was a herdsman who knew the ways of mares and stallions. It had been obvious to him from the beginning, when they had journeyed over the plains to Shishan, that Ma Na Si Xiansheng by asserting his superiority and authority over the other big Englishman, Tom, had secured the right to his red-headed woman who looked like a cat. There had never been a moment on that journey when her eyes had not hungrily followed Ma Na Si’s movements, especially when he was mounted on his horse. She had already belonged to him, well before he formally claimed her in public, during those executions in Fuxin, when he had ridden after her bolting horse and taken her in his arms. The only thing that puzzled Lao Zhao was why the two of them had done nothing about it afterwards, except to talk and talk. Every day they rode together he could see the physical desire growing between them, and he would often absent himself out of tact, unnecessarily attending to the horses or pretending to sleep away the afternoon while they strolled round ruins, but as far as he could see they never took advantage of their moments alone with each other. He assumed that it was some English custom or erotic game. Abstinence heightened desire, so perhaps this deliberate delay had the object of making the ultimate lovemaking (for any fool could see that that was where this slow courtship was leading) even more passionate and delicious. He had heard of such techniques—in fact, once, in Mukden, a harlot had teased him for three whole days before finally offering her lotus, and fragrant it was after all the expectation—but he wished all the same that they would hurry up with it. Winter was coming on and he did not relish standing in the snow outside some temple while they dillydallied inside.

  Today the weather was hot, a last burst of autumn sunshine with only a little breeze; a good day, thought Lao Zhao, picking a morsel of mutton fat from his teeth, for hunting, for riding, for any other kind of sport, and here the two of them were, just talking again. At this rate it would be spring before they got on with it. He didn’t care. He was well paid and well fed and this was an easy job. Lucky the man who worked for an ocean devil: they were all pleasantly mad and never knew the value of money. ‘Ta made,’ he cursed, and, lazily thwacking his mule, followed them across the fields.

  * * *

  ‘Henry,’ Helen Frances was saying, in a manner she imagined was artful and fashionable, ‘it’s vexing for a girl—you know how silly and curious we all are—but every time I try to find out something about you you brush it away with a joke.’

  ‘Nonsense. I’m an open book. Transparently in love with you. All adoration. And envy of Tom.’

  ‘There you go. Being foolish. But, admit it, you are a man of myste
ry. You’ve never told me anything about yourself.’

  ‘I spend every hour of every day telling you about myself. Answering your questions about life in London, and high so-ci-et-y. “Ooh, Henry, do, do tell me again about Lady Dartmouth’s ball,” for the hundred and tenth time, or is it the hundred and eleventh?’

  ‘All right. Laugh at me. But it’s true, I don’t know anything about you. Except the obvious things.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘That you’re a wonderful rider. And witty. And handsome. And … and…’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And good to me. Kind to me.’

  ‘And are you kind to me in return?’ he asked lightly.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘As a friend. As Tom’s friend.’

  ‘And if Tom were not my friend, would you still be kind? How kind would you be if neither of us had ever met Tom?’

  ‘I am sure that we would be friends.’

  ‘Only friends? Come, Helen Frances, tell me, if there had never been a Tom, how kind would you be then?’

  ‘Are you flirting, Mr Manners? How kind would you want me to be?’

  ‘Oh, I’d want you to be very kind,’ said Henry quietly. His face was suddenly serious. ‘But tell me, Tom’s fiancée, you said you wanted to know more about me. All right. What do you want to know?’

  ‘You promise not to make another joke? You’ll really tell me?’

  ‘Try me. Go on.’

  ‘All right.’ Her green eyes flashed defiantly. ‘Why was it that you left the Horse Guards and joined an engineering regiment in India?’

  Henry seemed to be concentrating on the way his horse was picking its path through the millet stubble. A straggle of thin sheep grazed in a corner of the field, the afternoon sunlight slanting on their fleeces. A kestrel and a magpie were competing for territory in the sky.