Deep Night

by Caroline Petit

  15

  HOW PLEASED SHE was to wake in the children’s bedroom. She admired the starkness of the room: its bare plastered walls, the wooden desk, the large globe and the windows covered by fluttering voile curtains. Nothing bad could happen here. Getting up, mindful of her painful shoulder, she opened the desk drawer with her good arm. Inside was a box of broken, half-melted crayons, their waxy smell instantly recalling hot days spent in dull classrooms. It was so different from her childhood room.There was no mystery here, no patterned wallpaper of misty Asian landscapes, no intricate Chinese boxes hiding secrets, no ancient bronze mirror to reflect one’s changing face. No An-li, her amah, watching her every move as she navigated her stormy way through adolescence, growing up under Theo’s tutelage in beauty and Chinese antiques.

  Without warning, she ached to see Theo and feel his comforting presence. If he had lived, her life would be very different. It would be a domestic life, she supposed, although she had never craved a husband or spared a thought about children. In this alternate life, she would dabble in antiquities as she looked after a husband, and if she must, children, with of course, plenty of servants to lighten the burden. Or maybe, there wouldn’t be any children she thought with a purr of satisfaction, just Jonathan and her, living together in a haze of rosy happiness. Yes, except now she and Theo would be imprisoned together at Stanley.And what kind of birthday would that be? She was twenty-five today. Theo always made such a fuss about birthdays, discovering the most ingenious presents—from a centuries old Chinese writing desk when she started school, to a whole collection of tin performing Chinese acrobats, to more grown up gifts like the ancient bronze mirror and fine jade. Jonathan was more conventional— French perfume and jewellery—but last year he had produced the most wonderful Nile green silk and she had it made into an evening gown. The gown was probably ripped to shreds now, or on the back of a Korean prostitute brought in to service the Japanese.No, she wouldn’t think about birthdays and crept back into bed feeling low and incredibly old.

  Albemarle knocked on the door and in a cheery voice asked if he could enter. He inquired how she’d slept, then roamed around the room, inspecting for dust, opening the curtains and staring out into the garden. The mess from Guy Fawkes Day had been tidied up, only a faint trace of blackened bricks showed signs of the fire. Uneasy, he turned back, unable to keep his gaze from her bare shoulders.

  Leah pulled the sheet up to her neck.

  “I thought it best for you to have this room,” he apologised as he busied himself again, arranging a chair by bed.

  “It’s peaceful.” She watched his eyes. They were far away. He was looking through her, perhaps seeing his daughter lying happy and content in her place. She waited, not wanting to hurry him.

  “I worry when this war is over if Anne and Conrad will regard me as an interloping stranger,” he confessed. “I’ll just be this man whom they must be kind to for form’s sake.”

  He tried to make light of his feelings with a disparaging smile, but Leah saw the care and lost love in his eyes. She reached for his hand and squeezed it in sympathy.

  He got up too quickly to pace around the small room. He came to rest and folded his arms, struggling to place the conversation on an impersonal footing. “The police haven’t a clue. Too difficult. Too many political ramifications.” He patted a bulge under his jacket. “See,” he said, undoing his buttons to reveal a holster and the gun. “What a world we live in now.” He ran a hand through his greying hair, a look of bafflement in his brown eyes. He blurted out, “Spencer is convinced it was you, not me, they wanted to kill. He’s obsessed with it.Won’t shut up about it. He thinks you were involved in that, that . . . port business.”

  “He knows about me?” she asked in a panic.

  He sighed deeply. “No. He’s got it completely the wrong way round. I just ignore him when he gets wound up. It’s the way he is. Difficult. Always into plots and subterfuge. All in his own mind. He got into financial trouble—I won’t tell you the details,” he said, waving them away as if they were only annoying and not deeply disturbing. “It was easier to ship him to Macau and let him rot. He’s bitter about that. If truth be known, he’s bitter about most things. I’m afraid, my dear, he resents you. He knows nothing about your real duties, simply feels he’s been passed over.” Albemarle stopped, upset. Afraid that now was not the time to tell her. But he knew there wasn’t a good time. He loitered by the window. “I have to tell you this,” he admitted. “There is no polite way to say this. He thinks you’re my mistress. Put here by the Japs or the Chinese—he’s not sure which—to spy on me. He thinks you were involved in Moy’s death too. He’s mad, but I can’t get rid of him.”

  “Oh,” she said quietly, trying to take it all in.

  “I’ve told him to stop. Macau is a small place. Rumours abound. I don’t want your reputation tarnished. It’s so unfair,” he concluded, throwing up his hands in despair. “Anyway, I’m going to tell Whitehall and explain you’re off the agent list. It’s too damn dangerous. You could have been killed.”

  He perched on the chair by her bed. “I couldn’t live with myself if . . . I feel so God damn responsible.” He kissed her cheek. There were tears in his eyes. “I am so sorry, Leah.”

  The devotion in his face threatened to overwhelm her. “I’m fine, sir.”

  “Please call me Stephen.You’re my guest here . . .” His words trailed off.

  “I need to rest, Stephen.”

  “I’ll see you at dinner, if you’re up to it.”

  “If I’m up it,” she echoed.

  He closed the door quietly. “Rest.”

  Leah heard his footsteps fade. Evading Stephen’s concern and guilt would be tricky. He was a man at loose ends. She didn’t want to be the one to pick up the pieces, only rest and lie low. If she took a long time to get well, she could avoid many complications. She slept.

  STEPHEN was a gracious host, bringing her leather-bound books he must have had since childhood: Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and The Arabian Nights. She sympathised with Scheherazade and enjoyed her stratagems. The consul shifted his large radio cabinet into her room so she could listen to music and radio talks in English by the Macau Radio Club. That’s what he called it now, her room—no longer the children’s.

  He was preternaturally kind, anticipating her wants before she knew them herself. They ate as much seafood as the cook could scrounge from the market or local fishermen.Other days, they made do with a bowl of rice, occasionally topped with shrimp paste. It was dry and inedible, but they ate it with gusto, washing it down with good Portuguese wine. Stephen insisted the best china be used.

  After a few weeks together, they had worked out their relationship: a jokey familiarity that allowed the consul opportunities to pay compliments and Leah to parry them and imply she was lovesick for Jonathan. At dinner, Stephen talked a great deal about his youth, as if he yearned to be a contemporary of hers; or perhaps she was reaching and he was missing his wife and was simply sad and nostalgic. He described the time he had Mildred down to Oxford and how once after a dance, they had walked all one summer’s night through the town’s quiet streets. He made jokes and Mildred laughed. He could no longer remember the jokes. Perhaps they were no longer funny? He looked to Leah for reassurance. And she laughed and said she thought they must have been very funny to evoke such happy times. In her room, he found music on the radio and danced by himself, his arms around an imaginary Mildred, demonstrating his ability to whirl her around the floor. She clapped and he bowed, out of breath.

  The Macau Radio talks were broadcast after dinner. If he didn’t have other engagements, Stephen sat in a chair as Leah, fully clothed, lounged on the bed.Together they listened to the familiar cadences of the announcer as he proceeded to give erudite lectures on British history.

  It was a lovely time together. They both relaxed, drinking more wine, letting the English words wash over them as if they were in a war
m classroom on a summer’s day listening to the buzz of the teacher. For Stephen, his working days were becoming more stressful. The Japanese were tightening their stranglehold on Macau.Teixeira had granted the Japanese the right to raid schools looking for anti-Japanese elements. The consul knew the small English school would be first on the list, followed by the refugee schools, especially Sang Tak Secondary School, a pet project for wealthy Chinese.

  The radio announcer was stuck on the boring genealogy of the various royal houses. Stephen poured himself more wine and mused aloud about his marriage. “At the start we both wanted the same things. But as the postings changed, it became harder for Mildred. It’s a slow rise through the ranks. Or perhaps she just missed home. She doesn’t miss me.” He stared into his nearly empty wine glass.

  Leah didn’t respond. She was not an expert on husband-and-wife matters. On the radio, the speaker finished.They eyed each other, now the important part came. They leaned forward to hear the announcer read out greetings meant for friends and relatives in Hong Kong in the hope they would be passed to those interned at Stanley or in POW camps. “You should send your fiancé a message. It would mean so much.”

  Leah paled. “No. I might hurt him. The Japanese are convinced the greetings are coded messages.” If Sawa found out about Jonathan . . . No. Sawa would demand she tell him everything about the consulate, down to the last thank you note and expenditure. And Jonathan . . . She erased the thought.

  Albemarle sighed. “Are we that transparent? Harris thought it a good idea. He started it. Paid for the radio time.”

  She gasped. Who and what was Vasiliev telling? “You’ve heard from him?”

  Stephan looked uncomfortable. “I was going to tell you when you were a bit better.We are getting reports of more organised Chinese civilian resistance in Sheung. I put it in my report.”

  “Are you sure its Harris’s doing?”

  “He says it is.”

  “He’s back?”

  “He’s managed to get a few messages through. Seems he’s working with our friend Chang.”

  “I’m feeling very tired tonight.”

  Stephen sprang to his feet apologising. “I’ve tired you out. That’s no way to treat a guest.”

  “You’re a wonderful host,” she declared as he hovered. She reached up to give him a friendly kiss goodnight.

  Stephen hugged her with enthusiasm. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he managed; then, he fled.

  Leah heard him walk quickly down the hall, then the loud slam of his bedroom door. Taking the consul as her lover would make her bullet proof. She could live at the consulate for as long as she wanted. God, how calculating she had become, but war was about survival. If she crossed this divide, she felt there would be no going back. She heard the consul in the bathroom turning on the taps. She pictured him in striped pyjamas, his feet in carpet slippers. He would have bony ankles.Would his skin be wrinkly? Stop this. Soon, she would be indistinguishable from Vasiliev. Jonathan wouldn’t know her. She turned out the light and held the pillow over her head to block out the consul’s gargling.

  THREE weeks later, a servant knocked shyly on her door. He handed her Boris Harris’s calling card. On the back, was scrawled: Urgent!

  “Tell him to wait,” said Leah. The poker-faced servant bowed and left.

  Leah ran a brush though her hair with her good arm and smoothed down the skirt of her dress. She looked in the mirror and noticed the fright in her eyes. She closed her eyes, opened them and breathed in and out slowly. The panic on her face disappeared.

  Vasiliev sat ensconced on one of the high-backed, intricately carved armchairs, part of a suite. The wooden arms were carved like wheels, held together by spokes to give them stability; the cushions were covered in green patterned silk.They were beautiful to look at and very uncomfortable. Vasiliev’s eyes went straight to her sling. He didn’t bother to rise. He had shaved off his moustache. It was a mistake. Instead of genial blandness, it drew attention to his large greedy mouth and his hooded eyes. Now, he looked like a cunning peasant.

  “You shouldn’t be here. The consul does not want to be seen . . . How did you get by the guard?”

  “He knows me,” said Vasiliev, rubbing his thumb on his finger miming a bribe.

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Is that anyway to treat a comrade in arms?”

  She ignored this and sat on the edge of the couch.The cushioned backrest made slouching impossible and the seat was too low, her knees were in danger of touching her chin.

  “Have you heard about my successes?” he asked.

  “I’ve been away,” she said dryly.

  He clucked, “I heard.Nasty.You’ll be glad to know my boys have inflicted real damage, blowing up ammunition dumps and off-duty Japs.” He licked his lips.

  She couldn’t imagine Vasiliev as a guerrilla. He didn’t like Spartan living and his step was as heavy as a rolling cannon. In all likelihood, he had set up camp in a village guesthouse and paid others to steal Japanese munitions and then sold the weapons to Chinese resistance groups at immense profits and claimed all the credit. Or he had done even less, simply pocketed the five thousand pounds. No, he would have given a bit to the Communists and the majority to the Kuomintang and sat back and enjoyed the mayhem. Then again, maybe he only backed the Communists Mao Tse-tung and Chou-en Lai in a deal he brokered with the Soviets. Anything was possible.Whatever he had done, he had made a profit.

  “How about a drink or tea and cakes? Ask your servants, I deserve it.”

  “They aren’t my servants.”

  He winked.

  If she fed him, he’d leave sooner. She rang for a servant.

  “That’s better,” he said as the servant left. “Such a clever girl, Leah. You’ve landed on your feet,” he said, his eyes roaming the consul’s reception room, nodding approval at the rich furnishings and paintings.

  “What was so urgent?”

  The servant returned with a tray, placing it on the coffee table between them. “I’ll play mother,” he said, looking at her sling.

  Delicately, he picked up the Wedgwood teapot in his fat paws and poured. He sipped his tea, used the napkin to blot his mouth, then bit off a piece of cake. “Not bad.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You think I’m a terrible man. A man with a large appetite who can’t be trusted.”

  What could she say? He was a man accustomed to using people. He cared for no one but himself, was grasping and dangerous. She had seen him in action. There was nothing to like.

  He shrugged. “I can’t convince you. But ask the Chinese guerrillas. They’ll tell another story. I must have more money. The Japanese are losing. Look how they’ve lost their toeholds in the Pacific. Now is the time to demoralise them in China. Honan Province is where they will strike next. They need its coal fields.”

  “It’s also the birthplace of Chinese culture.What treasures are you buying cheap and selling high?”

  “I’m putting my own neck at risk,” he protested. He pointed to Leah’s sling. “Mr. Chang told me why it happened.”

  Her heart thumped and now there was an awful ache in her shoulder.

  “And you begrudge me a little business on the side. There is a word for people like you.”

  “Get out.”

  “Hypocrite.” He gave a nasty laugh and sniggered, “What did you think I was going to say?”

  “Leave, or I’ll call the servants.”

  “Your consul know about your Jap lover and how you helped him?”

  “I’ve already told him,” she glared.

  He stared. “You know, Leah, you are a very convincing liar. But I know the British. You wouldn’t be here if Albemarle thought he was harbouring a Jap whore and spy.” He paused to see the impact his words had made. She was white and was massaging her shoulder. “A 100,000 pounds would be the amount to put our operation into practice. The results are guaranteed.”

  “I won’t.”

  For
a large man trapped in a difficult chair, he sprang agilely to his feet to stand over her, breathing heavily. He placed a restraining hand on her bad shoulder. She attempted to wrench away. His quick fingers found the bullet scar and applied pressure. She bit her lip and gasped. He released his hold and looked into her grey eyes. “You know, just for a moment, I could see Theo in you. I know how he was killed.”

  “You weren’t even in Hong Kong,” she shot back.

  “You know nothing.Convince Albemarle to get the money. I’ll keep your secret and tell you one in exchange. I’ll make my own way out. You look tired.”

  He left, whistling a tune. After awhile it came to her: Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree. He was a real bastard.

  16

  “I CAN’T,” SAID Albemarle in the privacy of Leah’s room. “I don’t have access to those kinds of funds. I’d have to stop all refugee allowances for months. I can’t let our own people starve. Even in war, there are channels.”He sighed. “I don’t think Whitehall sees me as the lynchpin in the Chinese resistance movement. Harris will have to be patient.”

  “Would it help if I wrote a report to Whitehall?”

  “Too dangerous. Even in code. One never knows . . .”

  “Could we get the Macau Chinese community—”

  “—Don’t even consider it. Sawa has the right to enter the consulate now. He can’t search our papers, but he could have me arrested.”

  “De Rey would never—”

  “De Rey is a good man, but he’s political animal. If ordered, he will have to comply.You and Spencer could issue diplomatic protests on my behalf, but it wouldn’t help. More likely, they’d arrest Spencer too. I might end up sharing a cell with him.”