“Just not as fast as I want them to,” she quoted him.
“Exactly.”
“Maybe. On bad days I think like you do. When I was in Lawrence, covering the strike, I saw how terrible the workers’ conditions were—it was heartbreaking. And the other day one of Ch’ing-ling’s Chinese friends told me that girls in the silk factories here are forced to spin the silk over pans of boiling water so that the steam elasticizes the threads, and their hands are completely crippled within a few years. And then the owners fire them and throw them into the street. How can people like that live with themselves?”
“I don’t know.” It was, he realized, one of those questions he’d given up trying to answer.
“Neither do I,” she murmured, and it felt as if they’d come to some sort of basic agreement.
They reached the Longhua Pagoda early in the afternoon. The site was mostly ruins, the pagoda itself chipped and faded but impressive in a cold sort of way. Like most classical Chinese architecture, it appeared designed to awe rather than lift the spirit. The restaurant nearby seemed reasonably clean, and McColl ordered rice and vegetables for them both. She struggled with the chopsticks, but when he offered to ask if they had a fork, she quickly refused. “It’ll help me get slim,” she said.
When he raised an eyebrow at that, she gave him a look he couldn’t decipher.
They followed the line of the Whangpo back to Shanghai and arrived at one of the southern entrances to the walled Chinese city. McColl arranged for the carriage to collect them up at the northern gate in a couple of hours and led the way into the maze of narrow roads and alleys. They explored for an hour or more, stopping to look at temples, gardens, and the hundreds of small shops. She bought only one thing—a small brass dragon. “A memento,” she said as the shopkeeper wrapped it in cloth. “I could have gotten it for a tenth as much, right?”
“Probably.”
She shrugged happily, and he liked her for that.
They visited the famous Willow Pattern teahouse, heading upstairs for the view across the tiled rooftops. But McColl had other ideas for tea—a new establishment he’d visited a month earlier where the Chinese people brought their caged songbirds and sipped while they sang.
On the way to the gate, they were forced to wait while a line of prisoners yoked in cangues filed past under guard.
“They look like condemned men,” she observed.
“That space outside the first temple we saw is the execution ground,” he explained, without stopping to think.
“Oh,” she said, more interested than upset, turning to watch the receding column.
He half expected a plea to witness the executions, but she just shuddered slightly and walked on toward the looming gateway.
The carriage was outside, the handler feeding one of the ponies from a canvas bag. As they drove north across the French concession, she said, “I don’t want to presume, but I have some shopping to do—presents for the family—and I wonder if you would come with me, as an interpreter. It would make things so much easier.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Tomorrow afternoon,” she suggested. “I’ll meet you in the Whiteaway Laidlaw department store. In the tearoom.”
“All right.”
Perhaps he sounded offended, because she quickly added that she also wanted his company as a friend and placed her hand on his to emphasize the fact. He felt something like an electric shock at the contact and hid his confusion behind an idiotic smile. He had read about such reactions in novels but had never believed they were real.
She was punctual, too, as he discovered the following day. Over tea she asked him what he was doing for Chinese New Year, and he told her he’d be spending it with his brother and Mac. “We’ll probably eat too much and drink too much,” he said, neglecting to mention their date with three opium pipes.
“I’m spending the day with friends of Ch’ing-ling,” she told him. “Seeing how the Chinese do it.”
They passed a couple of hours hopping from shop to shop on Nanking Road and its cheaper side streets, sifting through bronzes and brasses, cloisonné vases and Chinese jewelry, then moved on to Honan Street, famous for its silk and furs. By the time darkness had fallen, she had presents for everyone—jade earrings for her sister, a beautiful shawl for her aunt, and dragon cuff links for her father and older brother. She had already bought an antique map for her younger brother, who apparently loved such things.
When he offered to see her home in a rickshaw, she suggested they take the tram instead. “Rickshaws make me feel guilty,” she said. “I feel like jumping out and walking alongside to lessen the weight. I know it’s silly, I know I’m taking work away from them, but …”
They rode the tram and walked through the European houses to that of her absent friends. He carried the presents into the hall and turned to find her shutting the door. She walked up to him, placed a hand either side of his waist, and told him she would like to be kissed.
He put his lips gently on hers, then matched her more passionate response, his momentary shock at her brazen behavior swiftly subsumed by desire.
Their bodies pressed together with predictable results.
She pulled back slightly and looked him in the eyes. “Jack,” she said calmly, using his name for the first time, “would you like to take me to bed?”
He just stared at her.
“A yes or no will do.”
“Yes, yes, of course. But I have no …”
“I do. Let’s go up to my room.” Taking his hand, she led him up the wide staircase and along the landing to the farthest door. His brain dimly registered the large iron bed facing the screened-off window, the low tables on either side bearing tall brass candleholders.
He might have dreamed a moment like this.
“Light the candles,” she told him. “I’ll be a few minutes.”
He did as he was told, turned out the lights, and took off his shoes and socks. He could hardly believe what was happening. There were so many reasons he should have said no, so many reasons she shouldn’t have asked, but all he felt was longing.
“You’re still dressed,” she said, coming back into the room. She was wearing a Japanese dressing gown, and unbound hair now framed her face. With a smile she discarded the kimono, offering a glimpse of nipples and the dark bush between her legs as she slipped under the blankets.
He removed the rest of his clothes, climbed in himself, and reached to take her in his arms. She held him back with a hand on his shoulder, looking into his eyes, as if for reassurance. Whatever she saw there seemed to satisfy her, and she snuggled up against him, her tongue looking for his, their bodies squirming this way and that with the rapture of embrace.
After he had come, he lay back in wonder at what had just happened. Some whores pretended to enjoy it, but his wife had not even done that—admitting on their honeymoon that she found the whole business disgusting, she had offered herself up with firmly closed eyes and unnerving rigidity. Never in his thirty-two years had he encountered a woman with Caitlin’s sexual passion. For the first time in his life, he knew why they called it making love.
It was wonderful, yet still he felt disconcerted, a ludicrous sense that this was not how it was supposed to be.
She asked him for a cigarette, deepening that sense.
He leaned over, pulled a packet from his coat pocket, and turned back to find her sitting up against the wooden headrest, displaying her beautiful breasts.
She must have caught something in his expression. “In case you’re wondering,” she said, “I don’t sleep with every man who takes me shopping. I’m not a virgin, as you now know, but I haven’t slept with hundreds of men. Or even ten. And you’ve probably slept with more women than that.”
“Probably.”
“So?”
“It’s different for women,” he said, almost reluctantly.
“Why?”
“Men can’t get pregnant.”
“These days wome
n don’t have to, as long as they’re careful. And I am.” She put out the cigarette and got up from the bed. He thought she reached for the kimono, then decided against it. “I’ll be back,” she said over her shoulder.
A few minutes later, she was, and seeing her walk toward him across the candlelit room almost took his breath away.
She climbed back into bed, and while her lips sought his, her hand found his rapidly hardening penis. “I think we’re ready again,” she whispered.
“I don’t think you should stay the night,” she said after they’d both listened to the clock strike eleven. “You know how people are, and I wouldn’t want anyone talking about scandalous goings-on in this house. My Chinese friends have enough problems to deal with at the moment.”
“Of course,” he agreed. “But when can I see you again?”
“I don’t know. I’m staying at my friend’s friends’ for the next two days, but after that …” She smiled wickedly. “I’m sure we can find time to do this again before my ship sails on Friday.”
“Which ship?” he asked.
“The Manchuria—why?”
“I’m booked on the Manchuria.”
“You are?” There was confusion in her eyes, perhaps even a touch of panic. But nothing that looked like delight. “I assumed you were going back to England,” she said, as much to herself as to him.
“I am—via the States.”
“Oh. Well, I expect we’ll see each other on the ship, then.”
“And before that? Can I call you? I saw the telephone downstairs.”
“Yes, why don’t you? I’ll be back here late on Monday—I don’t know when.”
Her smile seemed forced, and he felt a sharp pang of disappointment.
She put on the kimono to accompany him downstairs, watched as he wrote the telephone’s number, and kissed him good night with what almost felt like anger. Walking away down the dark, silent avenue, McColl tried to make sense of what had just happened. And he could find only one interpretation that fit the facts. She had seduced him, and enjoyed the experience, safe in the mistaken assumption that they would be parted by thousands of miles. Once aware of her error, and the impossibility of a brief and finite affair, she had not known what to do with him. Or, more precisely, not known how to tell him good-bye.
It was all for the best, he told himself. He liked to think himself a willing part of a fast-changing world, but perhaps there were some things he just wasn’t ready for.
Which was easier to think than to feel, while all his senses were still dancing to her tune.
When McColl left their hotel late in the morning on Chinese New Year’s Eve, the change in the weather mirrored his mood, and the cold fog hanging over river and city reminded him of the summer’s Fu Manchu stories. Sax Rohmer’s Chinese villain had spun his webs in London’s Limehouse, not Shanghai, but today the cities seemed eerily alike, from the yellow-lit trams to the mournful horns of invisible ships.
Mac and Jed had decided to ignore the fog and drive the automobile to Woosun. He hoped they wouldn’t run over any peasants or end up in some stagnant canal. The two of them would be coming back by boat and had left a note suggesting they all meet at the Carlton Hotel on Ningpo Road. The circled newspaper advertisement accompanying the note claimed that the Carlton was “the one place where you can get a meal that reminds you of home.” And in case anyone conjured up a mental picture of cockroaches clinging to sausages, the kitchen was declared “open to inspection at any time.” McColl could hardly wait.
In the meantime he had an anxious client to placate. After coffee at a Nanking Road café, he reluctantly made his way up to Hongkew for his appointment with Hsi Lun, one of the wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs who had ordered a Maia. The man had asked his son, Chu, to be there—a young man of around twenty who had returned from three years of college in America armed with enough alien habits, quirks, and idiosyncrasies to put anyone’s teeth on edge. Chu’s insistence on checking through every detail of the purchase agreement seemed tantamount to calling the buyer an idiot and the seller a thief, but his father looked admiringly on, and McColl just smiled and bore it. The deal was already signed and delivered, and it always paid to keep a customer sweet, even when you felt like slapping his son.
After this encounter McColl reckoned that a decent lunch and several stiff drinks at the Shanghai Club was the least he deserved. Emerging a couple of hours later, he thought he saw the possible shadow from several days before, but the air was still heavy with mist and he couldn’t be sure. After hiring a rickshaw, he spent much of the journey glancing back over his shoulder, but no one was following. He was imagining it—he had to be—if anyone were following him, where had whoever it was been the last few days? After alighting at the cable office, he stood in the doorway for more than a minute, scanning the street they’d come down, but no one loomed out of the mist.
Inside, he received his first good news of the day—Cumming not only praised him for his work in Tsingtau but had also wired extra funds to cover his “unexpected costs.”
He went back to the hotel, spent the rest of the afternoon reading a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories he found in Mac’s suitcase, then set out for the promised feast. The boys were there when he arrived, and they greeted him with stories of getting lost in the fog and almost driving into the sea—they had obviously had a good time. The meal proved as bad as expected, an impersonation of the British fry-up that tasted completely wrong but looked sufficiently familiar to make you cruelly aware of what you were missing. It didn’t remind them of home so much as of how far away it was.
Chinese New Year’s Eve in Shanghai, he thought sourly, and wondered where in the city she was.
New Year’s Day was at least sunnier, the bitter north wind having driven the clouds away. The three of them lunched rather too well at the Shanghai Club, took a walk down along the Bund for exercise, and enjoyed a late-afternoon siesta ahead of their meeting with China’s bane. McColl had gotten the address of a respectable opium den in the French concession, and soon after dark their two rickshaws were pulling up outside a decrepit-looking building in a side street behind the Chinese Theater. The golden characters above the doorway claimed that it was Heaven’s Gate, which seemed somewhat optimistic. The interior, however, was as rich as the exterior was squalid, a symphony in sculptured wood, embroidered silk, and exquisite watercolors. There was very little noise for a Chinese establishment, and most of those at the dark wooden tables sat alone with their thoughts and their tea.
“Blimey,” was Jed’s first reaction.
“They’re on their way out,” McColl told him. “Getting themselves ready for the outside world. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“Of course,” his brother declared, a sliver of doubt in his eyes.
McColl spoke to one of the staff, who led them upstairs and into a small, paneled room. There was a wooden couch against each wall and a large scroll painting of misty mountains on the one facing the door. The pillows were made of porcelain—and felt like it. In the center of the room, a low Chinese table with upturned ends held a small oil lamp and a joss-stick holder. The latter was already burning, infusing the room with its odor, but McColl could also smell the opium, heavier, sweeter, like bait in a trap.
They laid themselves out on the couches, the other two looking slightly self-conscious, and watched as a young girl lit the oil lamp and heated the sticky balls on wicked-looking needles. The look on her face was intensely serious and reminded McColl of Jed as a small boy, trying to write his own name for the first time.
He took a few deep drags on the offered pipe and lay back. “It’s not instantaneous,” he warned the others, but it felt quicker than the last time he had taken it. The lines of wall and ceiling seemed to soften, curling like a burning piece of paper, only so much slower. He looked across at Jed, who smiled back at him, and the smile itself seemed to stretch, like something out of Lewis Carroll. He looked again and, for once, saw his mother�
�s face in his brother’s. He remembered skipping down the street with her, hand in hand, jumping over those paving stones with cracks and laughing fit to burst. He could feel his own smile stretching, and such pleasure in the memory.
Time loosened its hold. When the girl returned with the pipe, he couldn’t have said whether hours had passed or only moments. Both Jed and Mac had beatific smiles on their faces, and the flame of the oil lamp was dancing shadows on the ceiling. The smoke from the joss stick coiled like Caitlin’s hair, and when he closed his eyes, he saw the green of hers. He felt no anger, no anxiety, no disappointment. And if there was sadness, it was oh, so sweet. Everything was as it should be.
When the girl eventually led them downstairs, his watch said they’d been there for three hours. Tea was provided, and they sat in silence for a while, giving each other Can you believe it? smiles and sipping from the patterned porcelain cups. As the drug began to wear off, McColl felt his sense of serenity slowly start to fracture, and he almost cried out in resentment.
The city itself was still wide awake, and while he settled their bill, his companions decided on a second visit to the Lotus Flower. They tried to persuade him to join them, but Jed seemed more than a little relieved when he refused. “I have a call to make,” McColl explained, without divulging whom it was to or his fear that no one would answer. Back at the hotel, he asked the operator to get him the number, had a moment of hope when the phone was picked up, then listened to the amah intone, after a suspiciously long interval, that “missee not home.” Much to his distress, he could picture Caitlin at the top of the stairs, silently shaking her head.
He thanked the clerk, walked back outside, and worked his way through the traffic on the Bund to the parapet above the river. He just had to accept it, he told himself—it had been wonderful, strange, and for only one night. It might be awkward at first on the ship, but they would soon get over it. She, it seemed, already had.
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