“I see,” the priest said meditatively. “And his wife and son?”
“God knows,” Thomas shrugged. “Probably plotting to blow up the Imperial City. Little Red Devils, they call those Communist-bandit spawn—and they are.”
“Then tell me about Gwinnie and George. Still in New York, I know, but they wrote they might come to Paris this winter.”
“No bloody fear. I saw them three weeks ago. They’re real Americans, all of them—Gwinnie, George, and the two kids. Junior’s eleven. At least nobody ever called you Junior. And Blanche is ten. Typical spoiled American kids. The Doctor’s a big noise in tropical medicine, as you know. But a real American. The State Department warned them not to come. The war, you know, the danger. What war? If they want to see war they should come to China. Christ, I haven’t even had a chance to look for a girl to marry. But, no, they won’t be coming.”
“And Charlotte? Have you seen her yet? I know Mother’s worried about her.”
“With damned good reason. I’m no puritan, you know, but Charlotte! She’s still beautiful—more beautiful, but …”
“Tell me!”
Dropping his heavily jocular manner, Thomas described his eldest sister’s life in succinct, sharp sentences. He paused once to apologize: “Sorry for raking up ancient history, but you’ve been away so long I don’t know how much you’ve heard.”
Charlotte, he recalled, had left Hong Kong in 1931 after her first husband, Manfei Way, was found strangled in their garage. The murder was never solved, but it was definitely the work of the Triad Secret Societies. No one was quite certain as to motive, although Manfei had become an embarrassment to his allies, the Wheatleys. Besides, Sir Jonathan had nurtured a bitter hatred for his treacherous grandson-in-law.
“Verdict not proven, then?” The young priest was deliberately unshockable.
His brother shrugged agreement and continued his account of their sister’s peregrinations. Charlotte had left her son Mokhing in the care of his grandparents, the Mosing Ways. Determined to get away from Hong Kong, she had settled first in London. She found the British stiff, unwelcoming, and patronizing about her chee-chee accent. She’d felt, she said, “chilled,” despite English respect for both the family’s power and the substantial income her indulgent father allowed her.
On the other hand, Parisian society was avid for exotic personalities, eagerly welcoming Laotian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian “princesses.” Charlotte’s Oriental appearance became an asset when she moved to Paris, which even forgave her imperfect French. But she learned quickly and soon spoke like a Parisienne with a charming lilt.
“She was a great success almost immediately.” Thomas signaled the waiter for another round. “The darling of Parisian society … an enchanting new toy. The money didn’t do any harm … or the Rothschild connection.”
An alluring, wealthy widow at twenty-seven, Charlotte established herself as a fashionable hostess. Her salon initially attracted the raffish nobility and the more lively men of business. It was not notable for intellectual brilliance. However, many visiting Americans and Britons—businessmen, journalists, and politicians, as well as those merely rich and idle—attended her receptions, where they could “meet the real French,” but still speak English. Enticed by the confluence of money and power, aspiring French politicians soon appeared at Charlotte’s Wednesday afternoons and vied for invitations to her dinners.
A new Madame de Staël has appeared among us, rhapsodized Gringoire, the right-wing weekly. Madame Charlotte Sekloong Way is as beautiful as Marie Antoinette with flaming hair and piquant features. And she is profound with the ancient wisdom of the Orient.
“Ancient wisdom of the Orient, bullshit!” Thomas snorted. “The ancient wisdom of the hockey fields of St. Paul’s School and a hundred rumble seats.”
Charles impatiently gestured for Thomas to continue. The outlines he knew vaguely, but the living, vital details had not penetrated his cloistered existence at Stonyhurst, the Seminary, and the English College in Rome.
One ambitious politician who frequented Charlotte’s hôtel particulier off the Faubourg St. Honoré was a thirty-two-year-old parliamentary deputy called Raymond d’Alivère, Comte de Samlieu. His Breton family was as notable for its poverty as for its pride and the profusion of heraldic devices on its escutcheon. The two egotists, Charlotte and Raymond, recognized kindred spirits in each other. More important, their needs were complementary. Each could provide what the other needed: for Raymond, funds to further his career; for Charlotte, a title and a man to occupy her bed. In mid-1932, Charlotte Sekloong Way became the Comtesse de Samlieu in a splendid wedding at Notre Dame, and in late-1933, she gave birth to a daughter, who was christened Alaine Marie-Claude Raymonde d’Alivère.
Even in her ruffled cradle, Alaine was beautiful. She was not a red, wrinkled morsel of humanity, but a perfectly formed, miniature adult. As she grew older, her beauty grew more radiant. Her long blond hair glowed with copper undertones, and her soft blue eyes were minutely but intriguingly tilted. Her matte-white skin, too, she owed to her mother’s genes. Even her temperament appeared idyllic, sweetly docile yet spiced with mischievous self-will. She concealed her fury when her mother’s English friends absent-mindedly called her Ellen or Americans chucked her under the chin and called her Ally.
Content with his bargain, Raymond neglected his favorite mistress. He adored his daughter, and he confidently expected that Charlotte would soon present him with a male heir. With logical French practicality, he had ascertained that her family was prolific as well as wealthy before proposing marriage to this creature from another world. But Charlotte was immersed in herself and desired no further experience of motherhood. Her self-love turned her against her own children. She had unconcernedly left Mokhing in Hong Kong, when Mary reluctantly agreed that it was better for the boy to remain in the Colony, rather than join his peripatetic mother in Europe. After her marriage, Charlotte had not suggested that Mokhing join her, since he might be an embarrassment to Raymond. The young Alaine was a plaything, a beautiful doll to show her friends. But Charlotte’s pride in Alaine did not generate tenderness.
Raymond noted her disinterest in their daughter with concern. Charlotte’s attitude was as perversely unnatural to a family-obsessed Frenchman as was the marriage settlement’s stipulation that, aside from a generous allowance to her husband, she would control her own money. He had reluctantly accepted that un-French arrangement at the insistence of the Sekloong lawyers in Paris. Though it gave her excessive power, he had been confident that his flighty wife would not use that power.
Still excited by Charlotte’s enthusiastic inventiveness in the conjugal bed, the Comte de Samlieu nonetheless tired of the heiress who would provide him with neither sufficient funds nor further children. Besides, her lack of conversation bored him. He discreetly resumed relations with his mistress. Somewhat plain, and a year older than himself, she was a tranquil, clear stream after Charlotte’s turbulent, muddy waters—and her conversation was brilliant.
Raymond expected Charlotte to play the conventional role of the neglected wife, amusing herself with fashions and entertaining. He would not object to her seeking masculine consolation, as long as she, too, was discreet. But he could not tolerate her furious rebukes or her public display of her own amours. Charlotte became notorious by flaunting her liaisons in the half-world where the degenerate hereditary aristocracy met the new semi-criminal aristocracy of power and wealth.
In 1937, the regular use of marijuana and morphine was still a social stigma. The haute monde was, however, tolerant of the retired general, rubber millionaire, or colonial governor who returned from Indo-China to smoke a few soothing pipes of opium prepared by a petite Vietnamese mistress. Since that tradition and her Oriental blood obliquely sanctioned Charlotte’s indulgence in narcotics, she was not ostracized. Her wealth, her beauty, and her glamour preserved a simulacrum of respectability.
That was quite enough for Charlotte Sekloong Way d’Alivère
, Comtesse de Samlieu. Her salon flourished, and she was enjoying herself, “as I could not in England, America or, Lord help us, Hong Kong.” Her maintaining a precarious façade of respectability was, however, not enough for the Comte de Samlieu. In late-1937, he left her house. He took their daughter Alaine with him, but he was not too proud to collect his generous monthly allowance until Charlotte could secure a civil divorce. With an eye to the future, he initiated the laborious process of obtaining an annulment from the Rota in Rome, chiefly on the grounds that he had been denied his conjugal rights. He further adduced that Charlotte had entered into marriage with mental reservations, demonstrated by her refusal to give him an heir. His advocates darkly, though irrelevantly, questioned the Comtesse’s moral capability for a true Catholic marriage, since her faith was flawed and her disobedience to the Church was obvious.
“None of this intrigue and vilification has gravely affected Charlotte’s position,” Thomas summed up. “She’s still the darling of a certain group, and that group has power. That’s one of the things I want to talk to you about.”
“Second Elder Brother,” the priest asked softly, “how have her troubles affected Charlotte herself?”
“Damned if I can see any difference!” The general was surprised by the question. “She seems much the same. A little weepy sometimes, but you know women.”
“I see,” the priest prompted. “And that’s all?”
“Well, she did say one thing. Naturally, she wants to see you as soon as possible. But she did say she had a special reason for wanting to see you.”
“But no more? Obviously, I want to see her. Shall we go now?”
“A minute, Little Brother. I didn’t bring you here just to swap family gossip. There’s something more important.”
“More important? What could be more important than Charlotte?”
“I need your help, Little Brother. China needs your help.”
“What can I, a humble priest, possibly do, except pray? I assure you I have prayed long and often for China.”
“You can do a hell of a lot more. You may not realize it, but you’re moving into a position of real power. I want you to use that power for China—and against the Jap dwarves and the Communist bandits. Why do you think I’m here and not in Chungking with the Generalissimo?”
“I never wondered why. I was just delighted to see you.”
“It’s time to grow up, Little Brother. The Generalissimo trusts me and requires my humble assistance at his side. Yet he’s sent me to Europe because we desperately need support—diplomatic pressure, arms, money, and economic sanctions against the dwarves.”
“But,” the priest protested, “I’m a servant of the Church. As a diplomat of the Holy See, I’ve forsworn all other loyalties.”
“You’re Chinese, Little Brother. Don’t ever forget it. And China needs your help. I beg—no, I demand your help for China.”
“I don’t see how I can possibly serve two different masters. But what do you have in mind?”
“Right now I only want you to sound the feelings of the French and British toward China. Toward our war, your war. The Occidentals tell me what they think I want to hear, just to please me. I must know how they really figure the chances and who they really want to win—us or the dwarves.”
“That sounds simple enough. Perhaps too simple, but I’d hate playing the spy.”
“Don’t be so damned naive,” the general exploded. “What’s a diplomat but a licensed spy? I’m asking no more than your superiors.”
“But they are my superiors!”
“And I am your elder brother, your superior. The Generalissimo is the superior of all patriotic Chinese.”
“I must consult my conscience,” the priest temporized.
“Then you will help us. You’ll be asked to do nothing dishonorable, nothing harmful to the Church. How could I ask anything harmful to Holy Church?”
“Give me a better idea, then. But remember I haven’t said yes.”
“Later, perhaps more active support. Right now, just information. Incidentally, the Old Gentleman’s active. He’s squeezing Derwent’s like a ripe peach, striking back at them for collaborating with the Japanese. Iain Wheatley’s screaming like a stuck pig. Derwent’s business has dropped by half.”
“I’m delighted,” Monsignor Charles smiled. Although dedicated to charity and forgiveness, the priest was still a Sekloong, and hatred for the opportunistic Wheatleys had been bred into his bones.
“It’s a patriotic duty—and a pleasure, squeezing the Wheatleys. From you, besides information, we may need a word in the right ear, a little discreet pressure.”
“I don’t see how I could,” Charles demurred. “Spying’s bad enough, but …”
“Little Brother, I tell you again: Grow up. China must have diplomatic support, arms, and money. You must help. Rome certainly doesn’t want the Communist bandits to come out on top.”
“On that we agree completely, Second Elder Brother.”
“All right then,” the general over-rode any additional objections. “Let’s go see Second Elder Sister.”
The small mansion off the Faubourg St. Honoré was a perfect setting for Charlotte, who had, at thirty-six, attained the peak of her attractiveness. The formality of the Louis Quinze furniture was relieved by modern art: a graceful Degas statuette of a washerwoman; a misty Cezanne landscape; an assertive Picasso woman with two blue heads; and a Miró, all swirls and angles in bright primary colors. On the marble mantelpiece of the drawing-room stood a sinuous black-stone Wei Dynasty Bodhisattva, while scrolls in the calligraphy of the Chien Lung Emperor hung beside the fireplace.
Charlotte’s stiff yellow-silk skirt flirted around slender ankles set off by small satin pumps, while her hip-length tunic was caught at the waist by a broad green sash. Her chief adornment was a graduated double strand of glowing off-white fei-tsui jade with a diamond pendant that nestled in the cleft between her full breasts. Her hazel eyes flashed green when she laughed. His sister, Monsignor Charles reflected, hardly appeared a fallen woman in distress of spirit. The consolations of the material world seemed quite sufficient for her.
“Charlot!” she cried, embracing him. “I shall call you Charlot. Would you rather talk English or French?”
“What’s wrong with Chinese?” Thomas growled in Cantonese.
“Tom, don’t be tiresome,” she answered. “You know my Cantonese is so very rusty. We shall speak English. And how are you, Charlot, my baby brother?”
“Well, Charl, quite well,” the priest answered stiffly. “And you?”
“Wonderful.” She flung out her arms. “You see how well I am. I have found my métier. I love Paris, and all Paris loves me.”
“All male Paris, that is!” the General muttered in Cantonese into the priest’s ear.
“But my dear,” Charlotte said, “I am desolate. I must go out almost immediately. The naughty Tom kept you talking too long.”
“Immediately, Charl?” the priest asked.
“I’m afraid so, my Chariot. But I want to see you as soon as we can. My poor baby brother, shut away with all those priests for all these years.”
“Come off it, Charl,” Thomas said. “It’s only us. No need to perform.”
“Tom, I am sincere, and I have a wonderful idea. Chariot must come to the grand masquerade tomorrow. It would be amusing for him to come as he is. Only with a little black mask.”
“Hardly,” Thomas answered. “You really don’t think it’s a good idea, do you, Charl?”
“Well,” she pouted, “perhaps not. But very soon, then. Charlot, come to dinner day after tomorrow. Just the two of us. We shall not ask Tom. Later, you must come to all my Wednesdays.”
“I don’t know about the Wednesdays,” Charles said in doubt.
“Of course you will,” Thomas chided. “It’s your job.”
“Then, ’til Tuesday night, Charlot. À’voir. And, Tom, you are coming tomorrow, aren’t you? I must fly. Give yourselves a
whiskey. My house is yours.”
Charlotte swept out of the drawing-room in a swirl of yellow silk and red-gold hair, leaving the heavy fragrance of Joy floating on the overheated air. Thomas mixed two whiskey-sodas, laying his hands on the bottles with easy familiarity.
“Doubles, Little Brother?” he asked sardonically. “You look as if you could use a double.”
Charles nodded abstractedly. He was bewildered by his sister and deeply concerned. Her hectic gaiety was too intense. It recalled the Old Gentleman’s near manic expansiveness when he was troubled. Charlotte had always been lighthearted and gay, almost light-minded, but she had never been so frenetic. His concern was as much professional as it was fraternal. And why, he wondered, had Thomas, who was so anxious for him to move in worldly society, decisively objected to his attending the masquerade that he would, in any event, have avoided as a matter of propriety?
Charlotte’s hôtel particulier was transformed into a tropical grove by masses of orchids. Their colors ranged from pure white through delicate pink and purple to jet black, and their heavy scent was cloying. An eight-foot-high pagoda of gilded bamboo stood in the passage-way between the drawing-room and the ballroom, for Charlotte was determined to transmute the foggy Paris December into an Oriental spring.
Like Chinese musicians, the twelve-piece orchestra wore loose-fitting scarlet tunics tied with black sashes and flaring black trousers. The musicians’ features were concealed by black half-masks, as were the features of the servants, who wore similar costumes in blue silk. Charlotte had compounded the confusion of identities by masking the entertainers and attendants as well as the guests. It had also amused her to accommodate a visiting district officer from Nongkhay in Laos. Wearing only a coolie’s black trousers and a half-mask, he lay on a red-and-gold divan puffing a long bamboo tube inset with a porcelain bowl to receive the rolled pellets of opium.
Dynasty Page 56