The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure

by Adam Williams

  ‘Mr Manners. Henry. I very much hope that we may meet again,’ said Nellie, proffering her hand. ‘You will visit us one day before we leave?’

  Henry nodded automatically, his eyes still fixed on Helen Frances. He rose, shook the extended hand, and slumped back into his chair.

  ‘Tell the amah I won’t be long,’ said Helen Frances. She watched Nellie thread her way gracefully through the tables. A waiter came up to where they were sitting. ‘A chilled glass of muscatel, please,’ she ordered, ‘and another brandy for Mr Manners.’

  ‘Well, Henry,’ she asked softly, when the waiter had left, ‘what were you going to ask Nellie to tell me?’

  Henry felt that his tongue was frozen in his mouth.

  ‘Was it perhaps that you loved me?’ asked Helen Frances, her green eyes watching him solemnly. ‘At one time I would have been overjoyed to hear those words from you.’

  ‘And now?’ It came out as a croak.

  ‘Well, of course I’m still very pleased. Thank you,’ she said to the waiter, as he put the glasses on the table.

  ‘Pleased?’ Henry managed.

  ‘Yes, I’m flattered that you still remember me fondly,’ said Helen Frances. ‘Should I not be? I realise the expected response from a girl when a man says those words to her is to repeat them back to him—but I’m not sure that I can do that now.’

  ‘I see,’ said Henry.

  ‘I certainly did love you,’ she said, sipping her wine. ‘I do still love the memory of our days together, and I regret nothing. No, nothing. And I’ll always be grateful to you. You were—you once meant the whole of life to me.’

  Did he imagine that small quiver of her brow as she said this? But her green eyes continued to observe him steadily.

  ‘But not any more, apparently?’

  ‘No,’ she said. Again he saw the slight furrow of her brows. ‘I—I think I’m over you now. Too much has happened. I’m sorry, Henry. This is difficult for me.’

  Henry sighed. Helen Frances looked uncomfortable.

  ‘I heard a little from Pritchett of the hardships you underwent,’ he said, after a pause. ‘It must have been a frightening experience.’

  ‘Yes, it was terrible for a while,’ she said, ‘but—but there were good things too. The shepherd we stayed with. He was kind.’

  ‘Pritchett said he was some kind of shaman.’

  ‘He was a healer. Yes,’ said Helen Frances. ‘He—he helped us.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that some of these aboriginal types have the ability to tap into deep wells of wisdom,’ said Henry. ‘There’s a lot that our clever scientists can’t begin to understand.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Helen Frances. ‘You’re quite right.’

  ‘Are we to sit here exchanging banalities?’ asked Henry, after a short silence. ‘If it helps, I would like to tell you that I understand. And I appreciate that you came downstairs to see me, and to tell me to my face. You—you don’t lack courage, Helen Frances. Or generosity. I would have understood if you had avoided me altogether after the terrible trials I inflicted on you. If I could have found any other way, I would have sought to spare you. Please believe that I did what I did only because I could think of no other way. That you despise me now I accept…’

  Helen Frances started. ‘But I don’t despise you, Henry,’ she said. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘I treated you abominably,’ he said.

  ‘You were never anything but gentle with me. You honoured me in the only way in which a man can honour a woman,’ she said. ‘And you saved my life, and that of my child—our child.’

  ‘Honoured you, you say? I—I whored you,’ whispered Henry. ‘I can never forgive myself.’

  ‘Yes, you were even prepared to make that sacrifice,’ she said. ‘You were nobility throughout. I mean it.’ She put the half-full wine glass back on the table. ‘Don’t ever think of—the other,’ she continued, a look of pain pinching her features. She turned her head away. ‘It never happened,’ she whispered. She closed her eyes. ‘No, it did happen. Of course it happened. It must have been terrible for you who watched. Oh, Henry, how I feel for you—but for me, for me…’ She picked up the glass again and put it down untouched. Her face twisted in perplexity as she tried to form her words. ‘It was a dream, Henry, a bad, bad dream. Like the opium dreams. Not real. It didn’t hurt me. At the end of the day, they didn’t hurt me. They couldn’t hurt me. Not the real me. I’ve learned that now. Oh, Henry,’ she reached across and grasped his hands, ‘you must put that memory behind you too. It doesn’t matter. Forgive them, for only then will you be able to live with yourself.’

  Henry slowly pulled his hands away from hers. ‘What are you saying? That I should forgive Major Lin?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Major Lin, all of them,’ she said urgently. ‘I have.’ She reached for his hands again. ‘Goodness, what a conversation to be having in the tearoom of the Hôtel de Pekin.’ She smiled.

  Henry observed her coldly. ‘I see that the Airtons’ Christianity has got to you,’ he said.

  Helen Frances laughed. ‘You don’t know how wrong you could possibly be,’ she said. ‘Well,’ she considered, ‘maybe you’re right in one way. I—I don’t think I’m a Christian, not as they would like me to be, but maybe it all comes to the same thing.’

  ‘I see,’ said Henry. ‘It’s all dreams, then. Was I a bad dream too, one that you’ve managed to put behind you now?’

  ‘There was never anything bad about you,’ she said. ‘Oh, God,’ she cried suddenly, throwing herself back against the sofa, her self-control breaking down momentarily. The waiters’ heads turned. ‘I don’t know, Henry. I don’t know.’ Her voice was shrill, piercing. Heads turned at other tables. ‘What do you expect? You’ll have to give me some time. I’m—I’m different now. I’m not the girl you knew.’

  ‘I think that I can see that,’ said Henry. He wanted to tell her that, in her passionate outburst, she was more beautiful than he had ever seen her, but the logic of this strange conversation somehow prevented him and the opportunity passed.

  Helen Frances had recovered from her lapse into hysteria, but she spoke angrily. ‘You can’t just come back from the dead like this and expect to—expect to carry on where you left off. What was I to you, anyway, but a silly schoolgirl conquest? A diversion while you did whatever important things you were doing.’

  ‘Is that what you really believe?’

  ‘Yes.’ Helen Frances glared at him defiantly, but immediately her shoulders slumped. ‘No. Of course I don’t believe that,’ she whispered, ‘but perhaps that’s all I should have been to you. Why, Henry, why did you love me? What could you possibly have seen in me? Why did you give me so much?’

  A look came into Henry’s face, half smile, half surprise. His eyebrows lifted as his blue eyes observed her quizzically—and this appeared to infuriate her the more.

  ‘Oh, come on, Henry, how much more stupidly or irresponsibly could I have behaved?’ she demanded. ‘I was like a child in a sweetshop, so greedy was I for you. Greedy for everything about you. The freedoms you opened up for me. The secret assignations. The love-making. The opium—even the opium. What a holiday I was having. Helen Frances goes to China and experiences it all—but that’s all I was. A tourist, a silly tourist. I don’t belong in your world. I never did. You intoxicated me, that’s all—but I’ve sobered up now. By God, how I’ve sobered up. Talk about the School of Hard Knocks. Anyway, I think I know who I am now. What I want. What I should have wanted all along.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ asked Henry.

  Helen Frances bowed her head. ‘To be no one,’ she said woodenly. ‘To be ordinary. Just to be me. Ordinary, provincial me. Believe me, Henry, I wouldn’t be a wife who could make you happy. You’d tire of me, I’d be a slow drain on your spirit, I’d pull you down into the depths—and I couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘I’d been rather counting on you to pull me up out of the depths,’ murmured Henry. ‘I’m not the hero and paragon you and Nel
lie make me out to be. I’m not much of anything, if truth be told. The idea of an ordinary life rather appeals.’

  ‘There’s nothing ordinary about you, Henry Manners. Nothing. Let me tell you something. When you died, and the doctor told us you did die, I felt nothing but relief. Relief, do you hear me? Because I knew I wouldn’t have to go on loving you any more. Dr Airton thought he’d poisoned me against you with a whole lot of lies about how you had organised my rape, and that was why I didn’t show any shock or horror when I heard you were dead—but that wasn’t the reason. I never believed Airton. He just hated you because he envied you and you always showed him up—no, Airton’s lies weren’t the reason I didn’t mourn you. It was relief for myself, Henry, sheer, sheer relief. With you gone, with that great, shining presence out of the sky, I felt that in my dim, dreary way, I might, just might, be able to get my life back again. And I had your child inside me, and that was enough. It would be my memory of you but it wouldn’t be you. I felt I could manage loving the child, the baby. It wouldn’t make any demands on me as you did—’

  ‘You know you’re talking rot, Helen Frances. Demands? What demands did I ever make on you?’

  ‘None,’ she said. ‘None. That was the problem. You didn’t need me. You kept saving my life every five minutes. How can a girl possibly be a wife to a man who keeps saving her life, in the most noble, noble way? Old Tom. He just went off and got himself martyred. You were so perfect you just martyred everyone else around you. Do you know? When I was on the floor being raped and you were tied to the bedpost, do you know what I thought you looked like? Christ, Henry. Christ on the Cross. I could see my own suffering in your eyes. And I hated you then, I hated you. I hated you…’ Her shoulders were shaking and she began to sob.

  Henry reached into his pocket and passed her his handkerchief. ‘Come on, old girl,’ he said. ‘Take this. You’re—you’re making a scene.’

  The shaking subsided at last. She blew her nose noisily. This time he reached for her hands, and she allowed him to hold them.

  ‘I got over you,’ she whispered. ‘I got over you. In the grasslands I had a dream about you. It was a beautiful dream. We made love and we said our farewells, and I was at peace.’

  ‘Dreams again,’ said Henry.

  ‘Yes, Henry, dreams. Wasn’t it—wasn’t it somehow always a dream?’

  ‘Not to me,’ he said.

  ‘I’m a mother now,’ she said. ‘I have somebody else to look after. Oh you should see Catherine, Henry. She’s so, so beautiful, and little, and vulnerable.’

  ‘I’d like to see her,’ said Henry, and something perverse made him add, ‘Tom Cabot’s daughter.’

  ‘That hurts you, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘But I should always have married Tom. It’s his world I come from. The counties. That’s the real me. I’m not decent and honourable and good like Tom was, but I could be. I want to be. Well, now I have the chance. I can at least pretend, and it won’t really be acting. Deep down, deep down, that really is me. Dull. Provincial. It’d be an honest life—even though I’m getting there by a deception. But I know it would have been what Tom wanted. It won’t be an exciting existence, not like yours—but I don’t want excitement any more. I’ve had my holiday. My dream.’

  ‘Catherine is not a dream, Helen Frances. I’m her father. For God’s sake, I’ve never heard such madness in my life. You love me, so therefore you hate me—and you’re going to be Tom’s widow, because that’s the real you. What is this, Helen Frances? I can’t even follow you.’

  Helen Frances frowned. ‘Don’t you think we owe something to Tom, Henry? We hurt him so badly.’

  ‘To be frank, I don’t. No, we don’t owe him anything. To be crude, my dear, you made your bed with me. I’m living. He’s dead. We love each other, for God’s sake. Why can’t we just accept that? Never mind the past. All right, call it a dream if you have to. But let’s live the future together—because we can, you know.’

  Helen Frances let go of Henry’s hands, which she had been holding all this while. ‘Oh, Henry,’ she said. ‘How I’ve hurt you. How bitter you’ve become.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he drawled, ‘I think I’ve taken it rather well, all in all. It’s not every man who would accept that his child has been given another man’s name.’ And as he said this, a voice inside him cried out at his own stupidity and wilfulness.

  Helen Frances was shaking her head sadly. ‘It’s done now, Henry,’ she said. ‘Tom’s parents are waiting to see their granddaughter. We’re taking the train next week to Shanghai from where we’ll catch the boat home. I’ve already agreed to accompany the Airtons, who are planning a long furlough in Scotland. You know they’ve got two children there. They say they’ll come back to China. I—I don’t know if I will.’

  ‘But it’s all a lie, Helen Frances. A damned lie. You never married Tom. It’s not his child.’

  ‘He said he would marry me. He said he would do the right thing. He would have married me, and become father to Catherine. Would you, Henry? Would you have married me?’

  ‘Look at me,’ he said, ‘all fopped out in my best clothes. I came here today to propose to you. I still would, if you wanted me.’

  ‘If only you had done so then,’ she whispered. Her eyes had welled with tears. ‘But it’s all different now.’

  ‘Why?’ Henry’s fists drummed the table and the glasses rattled. The waiters looked away. ‘Why is it different?’

  ‘Oh, Henry, I’m crying again and I wanted to be so brave. But it is. It just is.’

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ said Henry. ‘Why is it different?’

  ‘Because I can’t bear to be near anything any more that reminds me of that dreadful time in Shishan,’ Helen Frances screamed. ‘And you’re part of it. You’re all of it,’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, I loved you. I still do love you. You don’t know how I sometimes long for you—but I’m different now. I’m different. I’m not that silly convent girl you once seduced. Not any more. Not any more.’ She picked up a napkin and started fiercely dabbing her eyes. ‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘I’m making a scene. There goes the reputation I’ve been so careful to cultivate as the respectable widow, Mrs Cabot.’

  ‘Is that what it’s all about?’ said Henry softly. ‘Reputation?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Partly.’ She giggled through her tears. ‘I wouldn’t find any respectability married to you, would I?’

  ‘No,’ said Henry. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Henry. You’re living with that prostitute, Fan Yimei. Not that I hold anything against her. I admire her. She’s fine, and brave. But the whole town gossips about you two.’

  ‘I suppose they do,’ said Henry sadly.

  ‘I don’t care if you’re sleeping with her. That’s got nothing to do with my decision.’

  ‘So it’s a decision?’ he asked gently. ‘An irrevocable one?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Why are you pushing me? Oh, Henry, don’t you see I need time? Away from you. Away from China. This terrible place. I’ve the means to be free now. I can be my own woman. Isn’t that the modern thing to want to be? To be one’s own woman. I have an adorable child. I’m a respectable widow. Yes, with money. More money than I could possibly need. God, Henry, I want air to breathe. Don’t you understand that? You of all people?’

  ‘Pick up your glass,’ said Henry. ‘Here. Here’s to your freedom.’ He clinked her wine glass with his brandy tumbler. ‘I won’t drink to your respectability, however, Mrs Cabot.’

  ‘So you accept it?’ she breathed. ‘My going, I mean?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I think it’s mad.’

  ‘You could—you could come and woo me in Lincolnshire,’ she said.

  ‘Somehow I don’t think that would work,’ he said. ‘I’ve rather outgrown England.’

  ‘Oh, Henry, how I love you,’ she whispered.

  ‘And I love you too, my darling,’ he replied. ‘But that’s not quite good enough any m
ore, is it?’

  For a long time they sat facing each other, saying nothing.

  ‘Henry, I don’t want us to end up this way. Can we not be friends? Please take up Nellie’s invitation and visit us before we go. See Catherine. At least come and see Catherine.’

  He promised. It was the easiest course. Henry was not a man to stay at the gambling table once he knew he had lost his winnings.

  Quietly they finished their drinks. Henry smoked his cheroot. Suddenly he stabbed it into the ashtray. He contemplated Helen Frances coolly. There was a hint of a smile on his face. ‘I don’t think I’ve told you tonight how beautiful you look,’ he said. ‘Lincolnshire’s in for a bit of a shock. Come on, my darling, let me escort you out of here. Hold your head high, ‘he added, taking her arm. ‘After all, we both have our reputations to consider, don’t we?’

  They left the tearoom arm in arm. The heads of the few remaining guests turned away as they passed, but the room buzzed with animated chatter in their wake. Henry winked conspiratorially. ‘I don’t think they’ll forget Widow Cabot for a time,’ he smiled—and after a moment she smiled back.

  Henry escorted her to the foot of the stairs.

  ‘You’ll come to see me again before you go?’ she asked urgently. ‘You’ll come to see the baby?’

  ‘Try to keep me away,’ he said.

  He leaned forward to kiss her cheek. She grabbed his head and pulled his mouth to hers. In full view of the doyens of the Hôtel de Pekin, they made a last, passionate kiss. It was Helen Frances who broke away, running up the stairs as fast as her dress would allow her. The gossipmongers afterwards could not agree whether they were pants or sobs they heard, as she turned the corner and disappeared down the corridor.

  Somehow he managed to keep the smile on his face until she was gone, but when he turned he had the face of a dead man.

  Henry made his way slowly to the door, leaning heavily on his stick.

  He did not immediately call a rickshaw. He hobbled slowly down Legation Street in the direction of the canal. Night had fallen and the sky was glittering with stars. He smoked a cheroot. Its smoke coiled into the cold air. After a while the pain in his leg tired him, and he hailed a passing rickshaw.