He had tied his horse to the branch of a tree that overhung the sandy bank of the river. He was unbuttoning his jacket as he looked up at her. Behind him the water swirled in deep pools divided by islands of reeds and scrub, which hid the further bank from view. Whether by accident or design they had reached a secluded spot, invisible from any prying eye.
‘You have a choice,’ he said. ‘Lao Zhao and I will be swimming here. You can watch, join us or avert your eyes. You can be maidenly and modest, if you like, but if I were you I’d join us because the weather’s warm and the water just cold enough to be exhilarating.’
‘How can I swim?’ she heard herself saying. ‘I don’t have a bathing-dress.’
‘We were all of us born with one,’ he said. He had pulled off his boots and stockings and now was standing in his shirt and braces. Then he started unbuttoning his shirt. Lao Zhao, more modest but with less to take off, had retired behind a bush. She heard a splash, and a shout, and saw his laughing head wash into view with the current. The fragmented glimpse of brown limbs treading the water suggested that he was naked. He was calling something in Chinese, splashing with obvious delight.
‘You’re wearing a shift, aren’t you, under all those skirts? What are you worried about? Do what Lao Zhao did. Slip in from behind a bush. We won’t spy on you.’
He had now stripped to his undershirt and long johns. She could not take her eyes away. She saw the muscles of his legs and arms swelling under the smooth cotton and the black hairs of his chest in the V of his vest. Half turning, ready to join Lao Zhao in the water, he flashed a white smile: ‘Weren’t you listening to my story?’ he said. ‘You may be prettier than most, but you haven’t got anything that Lao Zhao and I haven’t seen before.’
Then, laughing, he ran to the bank and flopped into the water, landing with a splash beside Lao Zhao. Her cheeks burning with anger and shame, she watched the two heads bobbing in the stream, ignoring her as they whooped and horseplayed and called boisterously to each other in a language she could not understand.
‘Come on, Helen Frances,’ she heard him call. ‘It’s lovely in here. Stop looking like Patience on a monument. Get off your horse and come and join us.’
It was anger more than anything else that made her do it. Perhaps that was what he had intended by baiting her so. She did not go behind a bush, but in front of the two of them disrobed to her shift, then, staring haughtily ahead of her, she marched into the water, the shift billowing around her. Her foot snagged on a stone and she fell and the next thing she felt was the icy shock of the water enveloping her as she went under. She burst to the surface with a gasp, and saw Henry’s head beside her.
‘It’s freezing,’ she managed, against chattering teeth.
‘You’ll warm in a minute,’ he said, ‘and then you’ll burn with the joy of it.’
He continued to look at her admiringly. ‘I must say, you’re full of surprises, Miss Delamere,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never met anyone braver in my life. You know, I never bel—’ But he failed to finish his sentence because at that moment Helen Frances splashed him in the face.
* * *
Laughing, the two of them climbed out of the river, Henry pulling her up behind him. Lao Zhao swam off towards his bush. Only on the bank again did she feel the immodesty of her dress, wondering if the clammy—and cold—cloth was as transparent where it wetly hugged the skin as Henry’s underclothes seemed to be. She averted her eyes from the dark bulge at the top of his legs, and shyly attempted to cover her breasts and loins with her hands, but Henry hardly looked at her. ‘Come on,’ he was saying. ‘Let’s get you a towel. I packed a couple in my saddlebag in case. Here. Catch.’
Nor did he attempt to look at her until she was fully dressed.
She sat on the bank luxuriating. Her skin tingled with freshness. She felt spirited and alive. Her ears, breasts and thighs were burning with a hot glow, and her blood seemed to pound more quickly round her body. She sensed him approach as she was pulling on her second boot. He stood for a moment in front of her, contemplating her.
‘Oh, Henry. That was invigorating,’ she started.
‘You’re invigorating,’ he said, and kissed her full on the lips. She felt the brush of his moustache on her nose, then the softness of his mouth, the flicker of his tongue against her teeth, and his arms around her body as he pulled her tightly to him. She felt the roughness of his tweed jacket, which gave way to a warm languor as she relaxed against him. She closed her eyes, abandoning herself to his strength and the warmth from his mouth suffusing her whole body.
‘I’d better take you home,’ he said, releasing her at last. ‘Lao Zhao’s bringing the horses.’
* * *
Early on the following Friday the Airtons and Helen Frances set out for the railway camp. The doctor and Helen Frances rode, while Nellie, Sister Elena, and the children sat in the back of a mule cart that had been borrowed for the occasion. Sister Caterina, to her disappointment, had to stay behind to look after the mission. Charlie Zhang was waiting for them at the camp, ready to guide them on the next stage of their journey to the point in the Black Hills where the tunnel was ready to be blown. Herr Fischer and Henry Manners had already ridden ahead, to supervise the construction of the tents where the party would stay for two nights. The ceremony to mark the opening of the tunnel would take place later that day, and the whole of the next would be devoted to a picnic, which Herr Fischer and Charlie had lavishly arranged.
It was an adventure for the children and a treat for Sister Elena, who had little opportunity to leave Shishan, and the chilly drive was warmed by cheerful singing and excited chatter. Their spirits were not dampened when the familiar flat countryside gave way to the dark clumps of forest and rocky defiles that marked the beginning of the Black Hills. The new railway line and the track they were using followed a river valley and they soon became used to the roar of the white torrent as it rushed over the pebbled floor of a gully to their left. Meanwhile the tall pines increased in number and size. Above them they could see the jagged peaks of the Black Hills penetrating through the low-lying cloud. The cold began to bite through their clothes. Only a few days ago, Shishan had been celebrating the last blaze of autumn. In the interval winter had come, and if it had not been for the children’s chattering voices, Helen Frances would have found the landscape menacing and sombre. She still remembered her first sinister passage through the Black Hills on the journey to Shishan.
The road dipped and the tall trees arched over their heads like the vault of a Gothic cathedral, or a cave overgrown with stalactites and stalagmites. With a screech and a crash a large bird thumped off its perch and flapped into the gloom. Then they were out in the daylight again and in front of them a tall cliff loomed upwards, the top of the scarred rock face lost in trailing mists of cloud. From high above, a narrow cataract tumbled and divided itself between the ridges and cracks, a mist of spray veiling a deep pool at the bottom. Shadowed by the cliffs, the black water was seldom touched by sunlight. Among the sedge that fringed its banks runnels seeped through mossy channels into the river gully that had led them here. The whisper of the merging streams provided a restless undertow to the crash of the falls. Here, on a grey meadow, Herr Fischer had erected the tents.
Not far away, a tumble of rocks piled against the cliff face indicated where the tunnelling work had started. Charlie had told them that the dynamite was already in place and only required the lighting of a fuse to blow a hole that would connect the tunnel on this side of the mountain with its twin leading from the plain. He had been immensely proud as he described the difficulties they had overcome. It had been his and Herr Fischer’s idea to make this hole through the mountains. It had been hard and costly work, but the distance saved was nearly seventy miles, and probably the detour had cut six months from the schedule of the project. Herr Fischer had promised that Charlie himself would be given the honour of lighting the fuse.
‘Don’t be alarmed, Miss Delamere,’ he had assure
d her. ‘There will be no danger. The explosion will be deep in the heart of the mountain where the two tunnels meet. All you will hear will be a faraway pop and then, when we see the dust and smoke pouring out of the hole at our end, we will drink the champagne!’
In the event, with heavy rain thundering like artillery on the canopy where the bedraggled guests stood (they had all been caught in the downpour as they walked from the tents to the site of the ceremony and nobody had thought to bring umbrellas) none of them heard the explosion. Charlie, ignoring the rain, had pressed the plunger with flamboyant enthusiasm, beaming and bowing in his sodden robes; but afterwards it was difficult to tell if it was smoke or spray from the overhang that filmed briefly the entrance to the cave. Nevertheless Herr Fischer took the initiative and there was at least an audible pop from the champagne bottle as he cheerfully declared the tunnel open. Nellie was preoccupied with calling the children out of the wet into which they had run to dance with an ecstatic Charlie, but the doctor and Sister Elena got into the spirit of the party by clinking their glasses with all and sundry, and singing ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’. Helen Frances only had eyes for Henry leaning against the tent pole sipping his glass and sardonically observing the scene. He turned and smiled at her, and she felt her stomach flutter, and a rush of heat flush her cheeks. It was the first time they had seen each other since they had returned together from the river four days and so many aeons ago.
She had told herself several times over this period that she never wished to see Henry again, and sometimes she actually believed it. Then she would hold her photograph of Tom (she had forced him to pose for it in the studio on the liner: it was as she loved to think of him—he was wearing his cricket sweater and ducks, and his hair was untidy, his face ruddy from the game of deck quoits he had just left). Desperately she would try to recall the tender feelings she felt for him, and sometimes she was successful: she would breathe out a long sigh of relief and smile to herself, and recall their many shared happinesses together, their wanderings through the strange and exciting ports on the way here, his jokes and stories, his occasional endearing bashfulness. This nostalgia would last only as long as it took her to remember Henry, the ride, and everything else that had happened that afternoon.
Now as she watched him standing under the wet awning, the cheerful figures of the Airtons and Charlie and Herr Fischer merrymaking around him, she relived the sensations she had felt when he had kissed her. Everything and everyone else blurred behind him. He stood out alone in vivid detail, a physical presence she felt was touching her despite the space that separated them. He moved casually towards her, his growing proximity fixing her to the spot like a captive in an enchanter’s spell.
‘Tomorrow,’ he murmured, as he passed her. ‘We’ll go riding again. Tomorrow. After the picnic.’
‘Tomorrow, after the picnic,’ she whispered, as if she was making a response in church. Yet she knew, even as she said it, that there would be no going back.
The sense of his presence remained with her even after he had moved behind her, and for the rest of the evening; at the dinner round the campfire when his image danced behind the flames; at night in her restless dreams; all through the following morning when, somehow, she found herself managing to play with the children and even to converse for a while with Dr Airton. It was as if an automaton from inside her had detached itself to operate independently from her real self; steering her through her social functions, laughing, joking, being pleasant as usual, when in fact all her being was concentrated on the figure of Henry whom she could see reading on a campstool by his tent on the other side of the glade. She wished he would look up at her; she envied the battered copy of Virgil that was absorbing his attention—she would have liked to be one of the pages turned by his elegant fingers. ‘Tomorrow, after the picnic.’ His words whispered and repeated themselves over and over in her head, echoing, chattering, increasing in tempo and volume, a screaming chorus for the crashing musical symphony of the waterfall, which in turn was a counterpoint to the pulsing of her blood and the throbbing excitement coursing through her veins. Yet time seemed hardly to move.
It was this detached automaton that made bright conversation with Herr Fischer and Charlie during the picnic. She hardly noticed the spectacular venue chosen by Charlie, high on a rock above the waterfall, the peaks of the Black Hills above them, the carpet of forest below; nor appreciated the efforts the servants had made to carry the rugs and woks and the Hong Kong baskets full of food up the precipitous slope, while the picnic party clambered slowly behind. Her eyes were only on Henry couched on his side against a rock, joking with George and Jenny, being outrageously flattering to Sister Elena and even melting Nellie with his charm. She was counting the moments until they would be alone together.
She was never sure in her memory afterwards just how Henry had managed to extricate them from the activities planned by Charlie for the afternoon. She became suddenly aware of the familiar sensation of being in the saddle again, Henry’s broad back in front of her, hearing the clop of Lao Zhao’s mule behind, and a delicious sense of freedom and anticipation tingling her spine.
‘Mind the weather now,’ she heard the doctor’s voice call after them. ‘Don’t go too far.’
Then the horses were plunging down a narrow bridlepath and they were enveloped in the gloom of the forest. She thought she saw a squirrel disappear into the branches of a tree, but there was no other sign of bird or animal life. It was a wet, silent world; even the sound of their horses’ hoofs was muffled in the soggy leaves on the forest floor. Occasionally a branch of a fir tree would brush her face, sending icy droplets down the back of her neck, and she would shiver involuntarily. Henry rode silently ahead. He seemed tense and preoccupied, but turned with a warm smile when she asked nervously where they were going.
‘There should be a ridge ahead where we break out of these trees and get a view,’ he said. ‘Then we follow an old overgrown rock scree, which winds up the side of the cliff. There’s more forest at the top, and apparently there’s a Taoist temple in there somewhere.’
‘I don’t want to go to another temple. I just want to be with you,’ she said.
‘And I with you,’ he murmured.
‘You ignored me all morning. Reading that book,’ she said.
‘I was looking for something, a passage I learned once at school. Et vera incessu patuit dea. “And in her walk it showed, in truth she was a goddess.” Thought it described Dido, but in fact it was Venus. Anyway, when I saw you in the rain last night I remembered you by the river, and that line popped into my head. It’s what you looked like.’
‘Oh, Henry, what are we to do? How did we get into this?’
He looked upwards at the canopy of trees, the tops of which were beginning to rustle and shake in a growing wind.
‘I think for a start we’d better find some shelter,’ he said. ‘You notice how dark it’s becoming. Like night in here. I think we’re in for a storm. Better get out of the trees. Before the lightning … That temple must be somewhere. Come on.’
He thrust his horse forward. They made a faster pace, but sometimes it was difficult to identify which narrow path, or furrow through the foliage, was the right one, and Henry and Lao Zhao would occasionally stop to discuss which fork to take. For a little time they had been hearing thunder in the distance, then there was a pattering sound and large but separated drops of rain began to fall with a rustle through the trees.
‘It’s on us, I’m afraid,’ said Henry. ‘Look, it’s got to be in that direction. Keep heading upwards and we should break the treeline soon. Follow me, fast as you can.’
They cantered breakneck for about a hundred yards, rain slashing out of the darkness, stinging her cheeks, she concentrating on keeping the rump of Henry’s horse in view as he twisted skilfully through the tall tree-trunks—but there was no indication of the trees thinning out, and after a while Henry had to slow his pace to a walk as the gaps between the firs narrowed. The ra
in was now drumming and crashing all around them, making visibility difficult enough even if they did not have to contend with the darkness. Helen Frances began to feel the weight of water on her tweed riding cape and knew that soon even that thick cloth would not be able to keep out the wet. The thunder was rumbling closer, increasing the oppression and claustrophobia.
Henry was shouting something through the noise. ‘We’re lost,’ she made out. ‘Only hope … keep going upwards … Too far to return.’
She turned, confirming that Lao Zhao was still behind her. She could barely make out his features in the darkness, but she sensed him smiling at her, encouraging her.
At that moment the forest flared with white light and in the pitch blackness that immediately followed thunder cracked above their heads. Helen Frances’s horse whinnied and bucked. Another flash and she saw Henry gesticulating and pointing ahead; his face was a grimace as he yelled ineffectively against the cannonades of thunder. She kicked her frightened animal onwards and in a moment they had broken out of the forest apparently into a black nothingness. A howling wind slammed her and her mount. She felt her reins being grasped by a strong hand, and Henry’s voice was shouting in her ear: ‘Keep to the middle, the middle. Make for the cliff ahead. Careful. There are precipices both sides.’
The world exploded into whiteness and for a timeless moment Helen Frances felt as if she were flying. Stretched below her were the white tops of trees, mountain ranges in the far distance beyond a plain illuminated in ghostly grey. Above her, towering battlements and siege engines of tumultuous cloud warred in the heavens, hurling at each other jagged projectiles of lightning, which cracked the sky where they stabbed. Then she realised they were poised precariously on a narrow saddle of turf that linked two hills. A few paces to left or right, and she and her horse would hurtle down a bottomless gorge. Before the lightning died and she was enveloped again in the unnatural night of the storm she saw the cliff-face on the other side of the saddle to which Henry referred. She willed her horse on, inching through the wind and darkness, terrified of the void on either side, her face and body soaked and her eyes blinded by the blanketing rain. Her numbed mind clung to the image of the cliff-face she had seen in the lightning flash as a place of refuge in this elemental violence. They only needed the protection of a cleft in the rocks, she told herself, a small cleft where they could huddle, and pretend that this nightmare would go away. Thunder pealed around her, shaking her, the noise exploding inside her head. She lost control of her frightened animal, which veered suddenly to the right, towards the precipice. With a despairing cry she threw herself to the side …
The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure Page 25