From Worth’s pattern Madame Rachelle had produced an airy confection that should draw every male eye—and kindle envy in every female eye. The cream-satin skirt flared from the high waist, while the green-and-mauve embroidered bands extending from the bustline to the hem outlined her figure. The bodice, scooped to reveal the upper swell of her breasts, was supported by two bands embroidered with the same green-and-mauve pattern.
Reassured, Mary told Ah Fung that she was prepared for their mutual ordeal. The amah sighed and slipped the corset around her. It was blessedly lighter than either the formidable stays of her youth or the corsets de rigueur only last year to create the S shape favored by King Edward’s favorite, Lily Langtry. No longer need she submit to the exquisite torture of a bosom relentlessly thrust forward and a derriere protruding behind. The new modified-S silhouette, which distorted nature’s handiwork only slightly, left her breasts free under the gauzy shift. Mary clung to the bedpost, and her amah pulled on the long corset laces.
A peremptory knock sounded. In the same instant, the door opened, and Charles entered wearing a quilted blue dressing-gown. His color was high, and his eyes sparkled. Mary waved the amah out of the room. The corset fell to the carpet, and she stepped out of the confining ring. Realizing that she was shielded only by the semi-transparent shift that barely covered her hips, she groped for her wrapper.
“Why bother, Mary?” His words were slurred. “You’re charming that way.”
“Now, Charles,” she sparred. “We do have guests coming, you know. And you could wait an instant after you knock.”
“No need, my dear. You’d hardly be up to anything embarrassing, would you? You never are.”
“What do you mean?” she countered, tying the sash of her wrapper.
“Just that you lead such a blameless life. You’re infatuated only with those damned, fat, thick, square ledgers—too blameless, really. So I blame myself.”
“Charles, that’s silly. What do you really mean?”
“You won’t be sorry to see me go, will you? Give you more time to plot with the old man and Metcalfe, more time to dream up mad political schemes and make poor Harry carry the can.”
“Charles, that’s not true. You’ve been wanting to go to Europe. Besides, I’ve promised to join you in the autumn.”
“You don’t understand. I said I blamed myself.”
Mary realized that he was maudlin drunk, much further gone than she had originally judged from his flushed face and liquid eyes.
“What happened to the girl I married?” Charles demanded. “Lady in the drawing-room and tigress in bed. Must be my fault—who else’s?”
“It’s no one’s fault,” she temporized. “Besides, I thought you were happy with …”
“With the Swatow concubine and my little bits of fluff, you mean? A man’s entitled to more children. But I must’ve failed you. Otherwise, why get yourself so involved with the damned business? It’s not right, not at all.”
Mary was alarmed. Charles inebriated was not a new problem. But Charles self-reproaching rather than self-justifying was beyond her experience and, perhaps, her ability to cope.
“That’s not fair,” she stalled. “The business does fascinate me. But I’ll be glad to get away this autumn and to see Europe again—with you.”
That much was wholly true, she reflected, seating herself on the edge of the chaise longue. She longed to escape the oppressive Hong Kong heat, broken only briefly by the equally depressing chill winter. She was, further, appalled by the callousness of the Chinese toward each other and by the compulsive money-grubbing of the foreign community. Europe beckoned alluringly.
“Do sit down and stop glowering, Charles.”
“All right, you’ll come when it suits you.” His tone was aggressive. “But it’ll be a long time alone for me.”
“I’m sure,” she replied with a trace of malice, “that you’ll manage to find consolations.”
He ignored her taunt. “Besides, God knows what new deviltry you and the old man’ll get up to. Sometimes I think I’m the only sane one in the family.”
“Perhaps, Charles,” she placated him. “You know I’m sad to see you go. But we agreed it was best …”
“Best for who? The old man and your schemes? Without me holding you back, next thing you’ll be building railroads to Tibet!”
Mary smiled defensively. Charles had come too close to the truth deliberately kept from him. Dr. Sun Yat-sen was obsessed with the vision of a railroad that would run more than 1,000 miles west from Wuhan in Central China to Chengtu in Szechuan Province and thence to Lhasa in Tibet, almost 1,500 miles further through the world’s highest mountains. Hilary Metcalfe and Harry Sekloong were bemused by Dr. Sun’s grand design, while Sir Jonathan discussed the project seriously with the republican leader’s emissaries. If Sun Yat-sen proposed building a rocket to the moon, she suspected her father-in-law would pretend earnest interest. Sometimes, she felt she was living in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land and all the Sekloong splendor would vanish abruptly one morning. The Chinese, who boasted of their hard-headed practicality, were given to wild fancies. Worse, they often attempted to transform those visions into reality.
“Surely not a railway to Tibet, Charles,” she parried. “Not right now, anyway.”
“I suppose not,” he agreed glumly. “You’re not as daft as that. But almost anything else. And you keep it from me. I just do the work, give the firm a little solid respectability so you lot can spin your crazy schemes.”
“Charles, you can’t blame me. Why not talk to your father? He’s the lo-ban, the boss.”
“Who the devil can talk to the old man?” Charles exploded. “I can’t, haven’t since I was twelve. And I do blame you.”
“I won’t take that,” she snapped. “I’ve tried to be a good wife to you, tried not to interfere, but …”
“But, but—always but. If you acted like a normal woman, found your pleasures at home with the children—if you did, things’d be different.”
“If you behaved like a normal husband, not a rutting he-goat, things might be different.”
“But I do.” He was genuinely surprised. “I do behave normally. A little pleasure outside the house, that’s only normal. Everybody does. It was my duty to take a concubine and get more children. And I’ve taken only one concubine. It’s perfectly normal.”
“Normal, perhaps—to you Sekloongs. Not to civilized people. How would you feel if I …”
Mary flung up her arms in disgust, though she knew she was on dangerous ground. Her loosely knotted sash slipped, and the wrapper opened to reveal her glowing body, veiled only by the shift.
Charles pulled her up from the chaise longue. His arm around her waist thwarted her efforts to retie the sash.
“No, Charles, no!” she protested. “Not now! The guests’ll be here in a minute. And it’s the wrong time.”
“Wrong time be damned!” He slipped the wrapper over her shoulders. “There’s still one thing I can do you can’t!”
“Charles, please!” Her words were faintly ludicrous to her own ears. “Charles, mind my hair.”
She had forgotten his strength. Holding her powerless, he broke the straps of her shift. The filmy undergarment slipped to the floor, leaving her naked. She stiffened in resistance, but he lifted her effortlessly and carried her to the bed.
Despite herself, she responded to his hands on her thighs and his lips at her breast. He was by no means abhorrent to her, though she hated this forcible approach, as if she were a street-girl. Determined to remain passive, she responded involuntarily when he entered her. But, she promised herself, she would not forgive him this violence—not, at least, for a long time.
May 13, 1909–May 31, 1909
“Welcome, Motherly and Auspicious. Your humblest subject welcomes you to your domain.”
Harry bowed theatrically low and opened the door to Mary’s minuscule office, which was still known as the Junior Clerks’ Room. The desk and chair were battered
by long use, and the chief sign of her occupancy was an orange double hibiscus in a 160-year-old vase painted with spindly crickets and plump butterflies. He lifted the veil from her narrow-brimmed straw hat and, dodging a menacing ostrich plume, kissed her.
“As lovely as ever,” he sighed. “More lovely than even poets imagine, oh Motherly and Auspicious.”
“I’m not quite old enough for an Empress Dowager,” she laughed. “Moderate your transports!”
“If I but could! The gallant knight commands our presence, most delectable mistress of my heart, upon whom no man can look unmoved—especially me. Is that better?”
“Much better,” she replied. “But what does His Majesty’s trusty and well-beloved knight want today?”
“Don’t know, but be careful. He’s in high good humor, roaring ferocious good humor. Maybe we’re buying Buckingham Palace. Perhaps St. Peter’s is up for sale.”
“You really don’t know why he’s so pleased?”
“I’m not sure. Of course, he’s still burbling like a tea kettle over your news, and his spies write that Charles is doing well. Solid London bankers are bowled over when a proper British gentleman appears in black coat and striped trousers, instead of the wily, pigtailed Oriental they expect. So Charles gets what he wants.”
“I’m so glad, Harry. It’s what Charles needs, a success on his own. No wonder Father’s delighted.”
“His joy’s not undiluted. He’s torn between paternal pride and profound misgivings about the younger generation. You’d think Charles was twelve years old. But that’s not all.”
“What else? Have we discovered a goldmine?”
“I’m afraid not, though the Canton–Kowloon Railroad’ll be finished next month, and there’s gold in those rails. Otherwise, I don’t know. But let’s let him tell us.”
Pierced for ventilation by louvers just below the fourteen-foot-high ceiling, the walls of the narrow corridor were drab as befitted the frugal dignity of commerce. Business was, after all, a serious business. But Sir Jonathan had added his personal touch. The walls were not hung with the customary sepulchral portraits of the Royal Family and half-forgotten princes of commerce. Instead, bright paintings on glass advertised the charms of Shanghai courtesans and the stars of Shaohsing Opera troupes.
Sir Jonathan’s corner office, austere compared to the library in The Castle, was itself palatial compared to the mazes where his clerks toiled. Only the black upright telephone distinguished the room from the study of a Confucian scholar. It was dominated by a long desktop set on ebony pedestals, which were inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Behind his high-backed chair hung twin scrolls inscribed with the bold writing of Kang Yu-wei, the master of modern calligraphers. Kang Yu-wei was also the intellectual mentor of the Reform Movement that, having signally failed to transform the Manchu Dynasty into a progressive, constitutional monarchy in 1898, reluctantly supported the republican revolutionaries in 1909. “All under Heaven ordered for the benefit of all the people,” the right-hand scroll promised, in the terse, classical language of the Book of Rites, which had, early in the first millennium before the Christian era, already described and lamented China’s long past mythical Golden Age. The left-hand scroll exhorted in the words of the same canonical work: “It is not meet to leave wealth unproductive as if buried in the ground.”
Sir Jonathan, this once, wore a cream-colored pongee lounge suit with high-set lapels and a flowing red-damask four-in-hand tie under a stiff wing collar. His narrow head and aquiline features completed the illusion; it seemed that a European gentleman was awaiting the Chinese scholar to whom the study belonged. But Sir Jonathan was very much at home behind a copy of The China Mail.
“Come in, come in,” he called. “’Twould be a lovely morning, even if the Chinese weren’t finally getting down to completing their stretch of the Canton–Kowloon Railroad. I want to give you some news from the old China Mail.”
The Irish lilt was pronounced. His panatella, an unusual indulgence in the morning, described an expansive arc as he spoke.
“Harry’s little adventure is coming up roses. Reading between the lines, but not too far between them, I’ve learned that it was old Dick Wheatley who ordered the hijacking of the Taishan—that rascal Dick Wheatley.”
“Richard Wheatley, they say?” Mary echoed incredulously.
“Yes, my esteemed step-father, presumably to corner the market. The newspaper johnnies don’t have to make sense as long as they draw readers. If they lose their childlike faith or learn to distinguish between reality and falsehood, they lose their jobs. So we learn from their broad hints that Dick Wheatley conspired with pirates to seize a ship carrying his own cargo.”
“Why, in God’s name?” Harry asked. “How can anyone believe that?”
“It’s so ridiculous, it’s believable,” his father replied. “The explanation runs so: Twenty-six Hong Kong opium divans were closed down two months ago. The rest’ll be padlocked by year’s end. No one can now legally export big smoke to any place that forbids its import. So the opium traders are uneasy.”
“Of course they are,” Mary said. “But that doesn’t explain why Dick Wheatley should turn pirate in his old age.”
“He’s always been a pirate, but that’s another story. Anyway, the writer hints my esteemed step-father wanted to corner the remaining supply. Then he’d smuggle to prohibited areas.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Harry said. “The traders now face a glut, not a shortage.”
“True, but newspaper logic makes a world all its own. Better still, the House of Sekloong is reportedly incensed at losing its portion of the cargo, and relations between Sekloong and Wheatley are very bad.”
“That’s true enough,” Mary commented, “even if the reason is upside down.”
“A moment, my dear. There’s better to come, a large and gritty grain of truth. The Mail says flatly, no beating around the bush, that the piracy was organized for Wheatley by Sam Chivers, our perennial Deputy Colonial Secretary. Just listen: ‘It is well known in commercial and legal circles that S. Chivers is in league with all the pirates of the China coast.’ All, mind you, all! Exaggerated, but not much.”
“How delightful,” Mary smiled. “There’ll be a lovely libel suit.”
“But,” Sir Jonathan said, “we hold only a few percent of the Mail. Our liability’s trifling.”
“How much did it cost you,” Harry asked, “to fob this fantasy onto the editor?”
“Not a brass farthing. He hadn’t a jot of an idea where it came from, but was overjoyed to print it. He’s been itching for revenge since Chivers and Wheatley got him expelled from the Hong Kong Club for habitual drunkenness. From the Hong Kong Club for drunkenness! Unbelievable!”
“Father,” Mary asked, “should we root in mud this way? Mud can stick.”
“Don’t be silly, darling,” Harry interjected. “Of course, it’s worth it. This goes beyond the gentlemen’s agreement among thieving hongs. The scandal’ll split the business community. Our honorable associates will scuttle to line up against Chivers and Wheatley. Better, we’re the injured party, and the traffic will dwindle more. Congratulations, Father.”
“I thought it wasn’t a bad move.” Sir Jonathan smiled away his daughter-in-law’s scruples and complacently accepted his son’s praise.
Over-ruled, Mary did not object again. She could not really quarrel with striking at the opium traffic and benefiting the House of Sekloong, even if she could not quite rejoice in the means employed. Much crueller stratagems were normal business practice on the China Coast. Perhaps her distaste sprang from her condition, for her concern was, once again, turning inward. The new life growing within her daily absorbed more of her psychic energy hardly four months after she had yielded to Charles at the wrong time. Though her sixth pregnancy was still concealed by flaring skirts, she had confided in Lady Lucinda.
“And, Mary, Charles wrote me of his joy over the new child,” the Old Gentleman added. “Wants to name it Philip or Ph
ilippa after your father.”
“So he’s written me,” she acknowledged. “We’ll see.”
Harry glowered. Her lover was acting like a betrayed husband because she was carrying a child by her lawful husband. But Harry was too good-humored to sulk for long. Sir Jonathan proffered just the right words to soothe his wounded pride.
“Any rate, we needn’t think for a while about Harry’s marrying. Plenty of heirs already.”
“Is there anything else, Father?” Mary asked. “I have some things to attend to.”
“Nothing in particular. Remember, I want the whole family, including children, to turn out for my installation as chairman of the Tung Wah Hospitals. We must follow the proper rites, even if the honor will cost much time and many dollars.”
“Charity doesn’t come cheap,” Mary observed dryly. “Nor do your plots.”
“I don’t mind the money. What worries me is knocking some sense into the directors’ heads. They won’t let a Western-style doctor in. I’ve got two young fellows, local boys with advanced training in England. They’re eager to help. But the directors won’t play. They say patients want herbal medicines and acupuncture. The old ways were good enough for grandpa and grandma.”
“Everyone knows,” Harry declaimed, “that Western doctors cut up Chinese patients, maim their bodies, their ancestors’ sacred legacy. Then the foreign doctors sell Chinese eyes and brains to alchemists to make magical medicines.”
“Why take on the chairmanship?” Mary asked. “It sounds like a lot of trouble and a waste of time.”
“Because,” Sir Jonathan replied, “it’s necessary. Hong Kong’s our base. Some things I must do for Hong Kong, even if they’re much trouble. Anyway, I might do some good.”
“So, if the drought would only end, your cup of joy would overflow,” Mary said. “You know, if we don’t get rain soon, there’ll be no water for drinking or the rice-fields. Vegetable prices’re already soaring.”
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