The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure

by Adam Williams

  More German forces arrived under the imposing General von Waldersee, who took over the high command from the avuncular General Chaffee. Denied any role in the actual destruction of the Yellow Peril, which the Kaiser had so thunderously denounced as he launched so publicly his latter-day crusade, his generals made sure that they were active after the event in punishing any Boxers on whom they could lay their hands—and since anyone on whom they did lay their hands was automatically considered to be a Boxer, the execution squads were kept busy for a good season. The inhabitants of Peking, who had decided it was safe again to come out of doors, returned to their homes, and waited for the furious flight of the Hohenzollern eagle to pass.

  It did pass, as all things do.

  The leaves began to fall. Autumn turned imperceptibly into winter. As cold winds blew through the strands of the willows drooping over the moat of the still occupied Forbidden City, embers of life revived among the frozen populace.

  By the first snowfall in late November, the streets of Peking were back to their usual bustle. Haughty nobles being carried in their sedan chairs between their palaces thought it below their dignity to notice the foreign sentries who stood on the cold intersections of the Tatar City. Officials, who had returned to their offices in their various yamens, paused on their way home by the food stalls in Wangfujing or Hatamen to buy toffee apples for their concubines or children, and brushed shoulders with the red-faced corporals and sergeants from the occupying forces who were using their off-duty hours to explore the town. In the busy alleys of the Chinese City, which sprawled beyond the still ruined Qianmen gate, merchants discussed the price of silk in their now unboarded shops, and scholars might be seen peering over ancient scrolls in Liulichang, while others sought bargains among the many new curio shops that were suddenly flourishing and doing a roaring trade. In the chaos after the siege it had not only been the foreign soldiers who had indulged in looting: many Chinese fortunes had also been made. Few restaurant owners could remember a better season, and in the gambling halls and teahouses singsong girls were adapting themselves to a cruder, more exotic trade. There were, indeed, several new houses in the Chinese city that specialised in the entertainment of the ‘lobsters,’ as the foreign soldiers were, not unaffectionately, called.

  The Legation Quarter had not yet been restored to its former glory but gangs of coolies were toiling day and night to build even grander residences for the representatives of the foreign powers among the ruins of their old establishments. The litter of the siege had finally been removed from the British Legation and one night the windows of the Residence had blazed with light and music as Lady MacDonald launched her first ball. The only difference that anyone might have noticed between this ball and those that had preceded the siege was the greater preponderance of military uniforms on the glittering dance-floor. As usual, Monsieur and Madame Pichon from the French Legation had been the last to leave, and the American counsellor, Herbert Squiers, newly promoted from first secretary, and the journalist, George Morrison, had had a heated argument at the drinks table. Some things never changed.

  The diplomats were, of course, very busy now. The acceptable old minister, Li Hung-chang, had returned to the Tsungli yamen and was heading the interim government until terms could be agreed that might allow the Empress Dowager to return from exile in Shansi. The price for this, it was made clear, would be extremely high. Rumours were circulating that the indemnity, which would now certainly be imposed, would exceed a hundred million pounds sterling, not to mention further cessions of territory. The loud boys at the bar of the Hôtel de Pekin, headed by the now very wealthy B. L. Simpson, who had somehow managed to evade all warrants for his arrest, were vocal in their criticisms of the pusillanimity of the diplomatic representatives, declaring that if justice were to be done, the corrupt Ch’ing should be forced to pay out a sum ten times this amount. And the Empress Dowager, if she should be allowed to return at all, should be publicly horsewhipped in front of the Palace. B. L. Simpson had volunteered cheerfully to do the job himself.

  Henry Manners hardly ever attended these gatherings. In fact, since his injury during the period of the lootings, he had hardly been seen out at all. At first the Customs boys had joked lewdly about his absence. It was well known that he had brought back with him a particularly beautiful singsong girl from wherever he had escaped from in the north. He had been quite the hero of the hour then—but as time passed, as is the nature of these things, he had been forgotten.

  It was believed that he lived in a house somewhere in the Chinese Quarter. Once B. L. Simpson and his gang, at the end of a drunken evening, had set off in rickshaws to find him. They had thrown stones over the wall and yelled insults, waking the whole neighbourhood, who feared that another round of looting might be beginning, but they had been greeted by an overwhelming silence from the courtyard of the house they had been told belonged to Henry Manners. The big wooden gate had remained closed, and after a while they had become bored and gone off to one of the new brothels.

  Henry Manners kept himself to himself. If any of the Customs boys had managed to climb over that wall, they might have been surprised to find that their old comrade was not disporting himself lasciviously, as they thought, in the arms of his dusky beauty. He slept alone, and in the daytime he sat alone in a leather armchair, or on sunny days in a wheelchair in the courtyard, often with an unlit cheroot in his mouth and a vacant expression on his face. Occasionally Lao Zhao would come out and examine his leg. Sometimes he would say something to make Henry laugh, and then the tired blue eyes would flash with some of their old sardonic humour. Usually the two friends would sit in the yard in silence. Fan Yimei would bring them tea. In the evening she would sometimes prepare an opium pipe. The household would retire to bed early, and Henry would invariably rise late.

  Lao Zhao and Fan Yimei would often discuss Ma Na Si Xiansheng’s strange malaise—or, rather, Lao Zhao would proffer various explanations: Ma Na Si’s wounds were not completely healed; he was waiting for something to happen; he was lying low, biding his time until the coast was clear for them to go back to Manchuria and collect the gold; he was hiding from the spies of the British Legation who would surely wish to follow him there; he was holding on until the Russian soldiers who roamed those parts should leave … Fan Yimei would listen in silence, watching him with her sad eyes. When he asked her for her opinion, she would silently shake her head. After a while, Lao Zhao would light his pipe, declaring: ‘Well, to be sure. Ma Na Si knows what he’s doing. You wait. You’ll see.’

  Fan Yimei never told him about the long conversations she had with Ma Na Si on those nights when he could not sleep, when he would walk across the courtyard to her room and sit softly on her bed, waiting for her to wake. The first time he had done this she had turned back the bedclothes and invited him to lie beside her, but he had only smiled and taken her hand. What he told her she kept to herself, never revealing her pain, pretending that she had never seen his tears. In the morning she would greet him with her usual sad smile.

  On rare occasions, the Englishman, Pritchett, from the Legation, would call. He and Ma Na Si would sit together, talking quietly. He never stayed for very long. Fan Yimei hated him, she could not tell why: he always treated her with elaborate politeness, but his cold eyes never looked her directly in the face, and he seemed eager to get away. Usually, on the evenings after his visits, Ma Na Si would ask for the opium pipe.

  One evening, towards the end of December, Pritchett visited at a much later time than his usual calls. He did not stay long with Ma Na Si, and left hurriedly to his waiting rickshaw. When she looked into Ma Na Si’s room afterwards, she saw him sitting stiffly in his chair, looking intently but unseeingly at the wall. In his hand was a crumpled piece of paper, which appeared to be a telegram.

  That night he visited her room and told her that Dr and Mrs Airton, their children and Helen Frances had been discovered by Russian soldiers in Mongolia. Helen Frances had given birth to a child. They had be
en brought by rail to Tientsin, and were expected to arrive in Peking any day.

  * * *

  By coincidence, on that very afternoon, the Airtons, with Helen Frances and baby Catherine, had called at the offices of the British vice consul in Tientsin. A waggish, insensitive man, with a good lunch inside him, he had remarked, in his arch manner, how pleased he was to meet a respectable family from Shishan; they were a marked improvement, he told them, on the last fugitive he had met from there. The Airtons had expressed some puzzlement at this remark, and he, laughing uproariously, had recounted the tale—one of the best in his repertoire—of how Henry Manners had arrived on the train. Or, rather, he started to tell the story—but he had to break off in midflow because the young widow, Mrs Cabot, suddenly turned deathly pale, rose to her feet, exclaimed loudly, staggered, and sat down again, pressing her fist to her mouth. Unfortunately in doing so her elbow brushed against a vase stand and one of the vice consul’s best pieces, a rather fine statuette of Guanyin, shattered on the floor. It had all been very embarrassing, and extremely irritating, the official told his friends in the club that evening, but what could one expect from hysterical missionaries—female ones at that? He supposed that she had been shocked by his impropriety in mentioning Manners’s concubines.

  Twenty-two

  I don’t want to be a bandit. It’s winter and the old people need me. Let the New Year bring rain.

  Henry was leaning on his stick, half obscured by the potted plants that grew in profusion at the entrance to the tearoom of the Hôtel de Pekin. Inside, a thé dansant was in progress. A mournful-looking Hungarian violinist was playing a Strauss waltz. Accompanying him on the piano was a bejewelled matron whose eyes were closed in ecstasy as her fat fingers moved over the keys. Nobody was dancing. The deferential waiters in their long brown gowns moved softly between the tables, bearing silver teapots on trays or holding aloft pagodas with teacakes, sandwiches and scones. A swell of loud conversation, punctuated by brittle bursts of affected laughter, would occasionally drown the sound of the music altogether. The ladies were sporting fur hats and boas in the Petersburg fashion that was all the rage this winter season. It had been a long time since their men had assumed bush hats and khaki. The elegance of their frockcoats and tweeds would not have been out of place in any salon in Paris or Vienna.

  Henry looked down at his shining oxfords—Lao Zhao had spent the whole morning polishing them to perfection. The creases of his trousers were immaculate, and the jacket of his recently tailored Harris suit hugged his trim waist, rising in neat lines to encase his broad shoulders. The rose, which Fan Yimei had placed in his lapel as he left his house, still emitted a faint scent, or perhaps that was the eau-de-Cologne, which he had patted self-consciously onto his chest and neck. In the gilded mirrors, that hung on either side of this fin-de-sìecle lobby, he could see his slightly elongated reflection. He was no less elegant than any of the other cosmopolitans who thronged this hall, but he observed critically the grey hairs that bordered his temples, the shadowy patches under his eyes, and the lines that had become ever more noticeably furrowed on his forehead.

  A Belgian woman of the demi-monde, leaving the tearoom, glanced at him with approval, noticing as she passed how distinguished was this handsome man loitering like a tiger among the aspidistras. There was something that excited her imagination: the unmistakable look of experience on his face, the element of mystery, even danger, in his cool, cruel eyes; the presence of waiting energy ready to uncoil. She observed how he leaned upon a stick and wondered what adventure might have caused the injury to his leg.

  Henry, however, was not aware of either her or her admiring glance. In his preoccupied, censorious state, he saw in the mirror’s reflection only an ageing, haggard ruin of what he had once been. The pain in his leg, which forced him to hobble like an old man, diminished him in his present frame of mind to the status of a cripple. For the first time that he could ever recall, he lacked confidence in himself, and as he peered timidly through the pot plants into the tearoom, he suddenly knew that he had not the faintest idea of what he intended to do. Inching down his spine, like a trickle of cold water, was an entirely new sensation. It might have been fear.

  He had seen them immediately when he first looked into the room. They were seated at a table in the furthest corner away from the piano, having tea with a couple to whom he had once been introduced long ago. He even remembered their names: Mr and Mrs Dawson. Horace and Euphemia Dawson; they were the Babbit and Brenner representatives in Peking. They worked for the company that had employed Helen Frances’s father and Tom Cabot. They looked comfortable and prosperous, like all the other Peking swells who were gathered in the room. Horace Dawson sported three chins and a large gold watch-chain, and Euphemia was wearing a veiled hat decorated with a peacock’s feather.

  Dr Airton, Nellie and Helen Frances were sitting in a submissive row on the sofa, like country clients before a city bank manager; their clothes were as subdued as their countenances and they were listening intently to Mr Dawson, who seemed to be the only one speaking, although his wife would interject smiling remarks as she poured the tea, glancing with superior smugness at her husband, who would nod in approval and continue his flow. Occasionally he would wave his pudgy hand in the air to make a point. It was obvious to Henry that he was talking about money.

  Not that he cared. He had eyes only for Helen Frances. She was dressed in a sober green gown with a neat white collar, which modestly matched her pile of auburn hair. Her skin was darker than he remembered, and there was something different about her expression, a cool contemplativeness, a watchfulness, a sophistication, even, that he did not associate with the spontaneous girl of whom he had been dreaming these last weeks and months. For a moment he thought he was looking at a stranger. It was only when she smiled, at some inconsequential remark of Mr Dawson’s, and he saw her green eyes flash with momentary humour—or might it have been scorn?—that his heart beat with an almost agonising pang of recognition. He leaned his head against the pillar, and closed his eyes while a kaleidoscope of memories tumbled in his mind, like a pack of cards spilling on a table. He was too far away from her to distinguish any sound, but he seemed to hear her peal of laughter, and he had a sudden clear vision of her turning her head, her red hair flying as she spurred on her horse, daring him to pursue. For a moment he was back in Shishan, and it was with a sense of dislocation that he returned to the reality of the Hôtel de Pekin, the hubbub of conversation and the strain of the violin.

  When he looked back she was no longer a stranger to him. There was Helen Frances as he remembered her, only she had grown in stature since he last saw her. She had acquired the grace and maturity of a full-grown woman; and the image of her that flickered before his eyes—which, to his surprise and alarm, had blurred with tears—was more beautiful than he had ever seen before.

  Ashamed of his weakness, he tore his gaze away from her. He focused on the quiet, white-haired man beside her, and felt a shock of sympathy. Airton had aged. There was an unfamiliar stillness about him, and he appeared to have shrunk in size. The eyes, which had always twinkled before, were rheumy and sad. He sat pathetically holding his teacup, which jittered slightly in his shaking hands.

  Nellie was little altered, however. She sat erect on the sofa, dignified, composed, impressive as he had always remembered her. There were lines on her face, which had not been there before, a stretched quality to her skin, perhaps, and her hair had become distinctly grey—but her swan neck rose from her black dress, and her calm eyes observed the Dawsons with patience. She still looked magnificent, her integrity and serenity shining in this roomful of chattering people.

  Henry tried to imagine the hardships they had undergone. Douglas Pritchett had told him something of what they had been through. He had a vision of Helen Frances, in hungry, pregnant state, staggering through the mountains and deserts. It was too painful to contemplate. Again, he closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw the composed young woman
who had once, unbelievably, been his lover, raise a teacup elegantly to her lips. He marvelled, awed by her poise, sensing the strength and courage that lay within her.

  It was gradual, like the coming of night, but he became aware of his own unworthiness in comparison; and deep inside him he felt the fires of hope, which had impelled him to come here, begin to fade.

  A terrible paralysis overcame him. The coward in him told him to slip away, to avoid the confrontation, but something fixed him to the spot. Like moths to a consuming fire, Henry’s burning eyes were drawn to Helen Frances’s beauty, yet it did not inflame him; instead, he felt a numbing chill in his veins. The more intensely he looked, the more inaccessible she seemed to become. He peered through the aspidistras in a sort of creeping terror. He felt like a drowning man sinking into fathomless depths, the light of everything for which he yearned fading in a murk of despair and self-contempt. The room captain, an imposing Chinese in a black gown, approached him to ask whether he wanted a table, but there was something in Henry’s expression that obviously made him think better of it and, muttering an apology, he backed away.

  As he watched, the party at the table made their preparations to move. Mr Dawson signed the chitty. Mrs Dawson leaned her face forward to be pecked. In a rustle of silk and platitude, they said their goodbyes. Henry backed deeper into the pot plants and they did not see him when, like two proud frigates, they passed him imperiously by. He remained hidden when the Airtons followed, Nellie and Helen Frances supporting the doctor by his arms.

  She was passing only a few feet away from him. He could see the mole on her neck. He could even smell her scent. He felt an overpowering desire to throw himself forward, to embrace her and kiss her, or to prostrate himself at her feet begging her forgiveness—but he held back, hardly daring to breathe, his frantic eyes following her as she moved with the doctor towards the staircase. He heard her speak, that husky voice he remembered: ‘I’m sure you’ll be fine in the morning, Doctor. It can only be a chill.’ He wanted to cry out after her, but he remained frozen where he was. In despair he saw the green hem of her dress sliding up the stairs. In a moment she would turn the corner and disappear.