He continued to watch the couple at the table. The feminine tenderness of Moira Wang’s manner filled him with fresh anger at the thought of Elizabeth, who for so long had starved him of his masculine due. He began to feel an almost intolerable yearning. He had never been troubled by a promiscuous desire for women. But now he hungered for a woman—for tenderness, for love. He made up his mind. He turned to Wildblood and said bluntly: “Where can I get a Chinese girl?”
Wildblood gave him a peculiar look, then avoided his eyes. “Why ask me? I wouldn’t go with a Chink if you paid me.”
“Come off it, Wildblood,” Ben said. “You know where one can get a girl.”
Wildblood said he had heard that the taxi girls at Chinese dance halls were really tarts—but he wouldn’t know.
“I can’t go to a dance hall,” Ben said. “Too public. I’ve too many Chinese clients.”
“Then go to a Chinese hotel. They’ve always got girls laid on.”
“But I can’t speak Chinese. I wouldn’t know how to ask for one.”
“You don’t have to ask. Take a room in a Chink hotel, and there’ll be six lined up in the corridor before you’ve closed the door.”
“Six?”
“All shapes and sizes—take your choice.” He admitted that he had been to the odd Chinese hotel in his time. Not intending to have a girl, of course—but you were obliged to take one in the end, otherwise they went on knocking on your door all night so that you couldn’t get a wink.
“Tell me the name of a hotel,” Ben said.
“Dozens of them. They’re all brothels, these Chink places.”
Now that he was faced with practicalities, Ben began to get cold feet. But his nature was stubborn. He felt committed to his decision, if only as an act of defiance against Elizabeth. He put down another double Scotch to bolster his courage, then left the club. Outside he took a taxi. He told the driver what he wanted, and presently they stopped outside a hotel in the back streets of Wanchai. It looked so sordid that he refused to go in. Next the driver brought him to the Nam Kok. He booked a room at the reception desk and went upstairs. There was no sign of any girls so he rang for the floor boy, who explained that the hotel really only catered for sailors, and that he would have to get a girl from the bar downstairs. Ben was self-conscious enough already, without having to perform this shady transaction before a crowd of matelots, and he gave the boy a hefty tip to bring some girls to the room. Then he collapsed on the bed, his head spinning.
Soon the floor boy returned with four girls, who stood in line for his inspection. He dragged himself up on his elbow and looked them over. They all seemed dull-eyed and indifferent. They showed no signs of distaste at his drunken condition, indeed hardly bothered to look at him. He did not want any of them. His yearning had gone, and he half wished himself back at home with Elizabeth. But he still felt stubbornly committed. He pointed to the girl second from the end, who happened to be Suzie, and said, “That one.”
Suzie at once brightened and seemed delighted to be chosen. She was very tender and sweet; and when he apologized for being tight, she tactfully assured him that she would hardly have known. He remembered his revelation about oriental femininity—how right he had been! Unfortunately, however, he had drunk too much. He was useless.
“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling rather absurdly the need to apologize. “It’s only the whisky.”
“I expect you will feel all right soon,” Suzie encouraged him.
But her patient ministrations had been of no avail, and presently she had given up and dragged him along, somewhat unwillingly, to my room. And now he was still feeling humiliated by his failure: he was worried that Suzie had not really believed that it was due to the whisky.
“I’m sure she did,” I said. “Anyhow, it was probably the best thing. You’ve made your gesture of defiance, but you can still go home with a clear conscience. You’ve both had your cake and eaten it.”
But this argument did nothing to encourage him. He sat brooding for a minute, and then said, “I still don’t think she believed it was the whisky. I think she thought I was impotent.”
I laughed. “Well anyhow, what on earth does it matter?”
“Perhaps I am impotent.” He paused. “Listen, there’s something I didn’t tell you. I don’t know what sort of picture you’ve got of Elizabeth. I’ve probably given you quite a wrong impression—made her out to be a sort of monster. But actually she’s a damned attractive girl—bright, witty, the life and soul of every party. I’m the opposite, rather a dull old dog. A bit of a bore. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I married her.
“Well, Liz used to talk a lot about sex. Make brittle, sophisticated jokes, and give the impression that she jumped into bed with men at the drop of a hat. I secretly rather admired that. I was terribly innocent and inexperienced myself. I’d been wrapped up in the Navy, besotted with it, and I’d not had a woman all through the war. I was flattered because after I met old Liz she never looked at another man. I’d ousted all her lovers. Then we got married and I found she was a virgin. There’d never been any lovers. It was all talk. She was practically frigid. And when I made demands on her, it was just wifely duty so far as she was concerned.”
He drained his whisky. I reflected that probably Elizabeth’s frigidity accounted for her possessiveness, for a woman who could not take possession in bed would try and take it elsewhere.
“Anyhow, it was obviously so disagreeable to her that after a time I stopped bothering her. I haven’t touched her now for over a year. I can’t say it’s worried me much. I’ve always thought that this sex business was overrated. The only thing that has worried me, if you see what I mean, is that it hasn’t worried me more. I’ve kept wondering if I was impotent. Of course it’s absurd, because if one’s not interested in sex, why should it matter? One should be thankful that one’s spared from making a fool of oneself—having to go through that ridiculous performance. But it’s bothered me more and more. It’s mad. I can’t make it out.”
“I don’t think it’s so mad,” I said. “Nobody wants to be impotent.”
“Anyhow, it’s become a sort of obsession. And that’s one reason I decided to have a girl tonight—to prove to myself that I wasn’t.”
“You didn’t give yourself much of a chance with that whisky.”
“If it was the whisky. Anyhow, it was a bloody waste of that beautiful girl. Ah, talk of the devil. . . .”
Suzie had reappeared, twinkling and breathless, in the balcony door. “Sorry I took so long. My baby was so sick—cough-cough, cough-cough! I had to sing him songs. Then he went to sleep, and I ran the whole way back. Oh, I am so exhausted! Wait, I will just get some tea. . . .”
She skipped back inside, completely at home in my room. Ben watched her appreciatively through the open door. “A little enchantress,” he said. And then turning back to me, “Only I don’t quite see where you come in.”
“I’m just a friend of the family.”
“Well, look here, old man, I was just wondering—1 mean, I’m not going to be any use tonight. You wouldn’t mind if I saw her again?”
I said, “It wouldn’t make any difference if I minded or not. She’s her own boss.”
“Yes, but I mean—” He broke off as Suzie reappeared with her glass of tea.
“You know what my amah just told me?” she said, bursting with high spirits. She perched herself on the balcony table and swung her legs. “She told me that today an Englishman came to the house. He looked at the drains and said ‘Ugh!’ Then he looked at my baby and said, ‘That baby is very good-looking!’” She giggled. “‘Very good-looking—a very beautiful baby.’”
Ben said, “Look here, what are you doing at twelve o’clock tomorrow?”
“Night?” Suzie said indifferently.
“No, morning.”
“You only paid for all night, you know. Tomorrow you must pay more money.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“All right. You come and find me in the bar.”
Ben said that he felt too conspicuous here, and so they arranged to meet at noon at a hotel which Suzie had often patronized when she was working at the Granada. Then he said he must go home, and since he had left his own car outside the Kit Kat, I took him round to a little back-street garage where there was a taxi and the proprietor did not mind being wakened at any hour of the night.
When I got back to my room Suzie was sitting on the bed looking at a book of London photographs. She would sit absorbed in this for hours, her brow puckered as she studied every detail of the pictures.
She held the book out to me, pointing to one of the figures in the photograph of a crowd outside Buckingham Palace. “That woman, what’s she got in her hand?”
“It looks like a loaf of bread,” I said. “She must have been shopping.”
“Maybe she brought it for the Queen.” She was always interested in the Queen. She closed the book. “All right, I go now.”
“Don’t forget your appointment for tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t think I will go. That man was too drunk. I think he will forget.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Anyhow, he is no good at making love.”
“Wasn’t it just the whisky?”
“No, he is a big man, very strong—but too much worry up here.” She tapped her head with a red fingernail. “Too much shame. He can’t manage anything.”
Suzie may not have read Freud, but as a psychological observer she was pretty shrewd.
Chapter Two
She had been mistaken, however, about Ben not keeping the date for the next day. He not only kept it but, when Suzie did not turn up, proceeded to the Nam Kok in a taxi, sent the driver to dig her out of the bar, and bore her off to the hotel—where they ordered a Chinese lunch in the room, went to bed, confirmed their joint suspicions that the origin of Ben’s failing was something more than alcoholic, and parted with their union unconsummated but a similar appointment for the morrow. Thereafter they met at twelve o’clock every day. And towards the middle of the second week Suzie, who had no inhibitions about reporting progress to me, was able to announce with some satisfaction, “He is all right now—it was just nerves.”
Meanwhile the relationship had been established on a permanent footing, for Ben had agreed to pay her one thousand dollars a month for exclusive rights. And thus Suzie, happily set up once more with a regular boy friend, had withdrawn her custom from the sailors.
I did not see Ben again myself for nearly a month after his first visit to my room, since he avoided the Nam Kok. Then one morning as I was strolling through the Central District I heard my name called, and saw Ben grinning at me from a car pulled up at some traffic lights. He leaned over from the steering wheel to open the passenger’s door. “Quick, man, jump in—the lights are changing.”
I climbed in beside him, astonished by his affability. I had supposed that my knowledge of his personal affairs might make him feel embarrassed about meeting me again.
“That door properly shut?” The car shot forward. “Sorry to kidnap you, old man, but it’s awfully good to see you. You’re not busy? Fine, come and have a coffee at the Kit Kat. I’m meeting old Liz.”
“Won’t that make it a bit difficult?”
“Difficult? Why?”
“I mean, how will you introduce me?”
“Oh, we’ll think of something. No, I’ve been wanting you to meet her. I’ve had a guilty conscience ever since that night in your room when I did nothing but run her down. Of course I was tight as a coot. Actually she’s a damn good sort, old Liz. I’m sure you’ll like her enormously.”
This surprised me even more than his affability. He spoke with such warmth and enthusiasm that one would have supposed him to be the most faithful and adoring of husbands; yet I knew for a fact that in less than two hours’ time, at twelve o’clock, he would be meeting Suzie for his regular lunchtime tryst. Moreover he knew that I knew—so how on earth could he talk of Elizabeth so shamelessly?
“Yes, I’m sure that you two’ll get on like a house on fire. God, isn’t it the devil, this parking. . . .” We were cruising round looking for somewhere to put the car. “I’ve been nabbed twice this month already. I can’t get away with it like old Liz. She’s marvelous—you ought to see her.” He grinned with uxorious admiration. “She just turns on the old charm, and the policeman’s had it—melts like butter. . . .”
We finally abandoned the car in front of a “No parking” sign and made off quickly, so that if he was going to be fined he could at least get his money’s worth of parking first. We entered a near-by building and went up to the Kit Kat on the first floor. It was a single room with a long polished bar, a dart board and pin table, and a number of dining tables with table lamps decorated with English pub signs. The place was deserted except for a waiter and two women having coffee. We sat down at the sign of the Marquis of Granby, and Ben grinned across the table at me, looking ten years younger than at our first meeting, and said, “Well, old chap, I certainly bless my luck in stumbling on the Nam Kok that night.”
I said, “We’re always glad to hear from satisfied customers.”
“Suzie’s a marvelous girl, you know—marvelous.” Sober, with eager boyish look and plummy wardroom voice, he was the typical naval officer again; and indeed his dark suit, with white starched collar and neatly knotted black tie, gave almost the impression of naval uniform.
“Yes, she’s a little charmer,” I said.
“I don’t mind telling you, it’s changed my whole life.” He glanced to make sure that the waiter was out of earshot, then inclined towards me confidentially, as if to tell me about the fantastic performance of the ship’s new radar. “You see, the fact is, old boy, I was brought up to believe that sex was shameful and dirty—a hole-in-the-corner business that decent chaps had as little to do with as possible. But that’s all rubbish. Because it’s something bloody marvelous—something that, instead of being ashamed about, we should go down on our knees and thank God for.”
I laughed. “Well, coming from a man who a few weeks ago was talking of ‘that ridiculous performance’ . . . !”
“I was talking through my hat. Because those psychology chaps are absolutely right when they say that sex is behind everything. I know that now from my own experience. I know that it can affect one’s whole outlook—how one feels, how one behaves. I mean, why are some people such bastards? Why are they so bitter and disagreeable? Because they’re all twisted and dried up inside—because they’re frustrated. And in my opinion half the world’s troubles are due to just that—to frustration.” And he went on to say that it was all the fault of our narrow and unenlightened upbringing. He was horrified to think how long he himself had struggled in darkness and ignorance. His own first sexual experience had been at the age of nineteen with a London prostitute. He had gone with her because he had been ashamed of his virginity. She had asked for two pounds, then demanded another pound before she would properly undress. He had not got another. “All right, then, dear, hurry up,” she had said, and he had been out in the street again within ten minutes of leaving it. For months afterwards he had lived in fear of disease. Then he had had a fumbling affair with an inexperienced girl of his own age and lived in fear of her having a baby. Soon after this he had joined the Navy. He had decided that sex was a sport for the lower deck, and had had nothing more to do with women until he had met Elizabeth. The marriage had kept him in ignorance of the true importance of sex for another seven years—and only the advent of Suzie had at last brought him enlightenment. And since the fruits yielded by the lunchtime lunch sessions were still increasing in proportion to their growing knowledge of each other, even more wonder
ful joys lay ahead.
“But what about Elizabeth?” I asked. “You haven’t told her about Suzie?”
“Told old Liz? Oh, my dear chap! Oh, good Lord, no!”
“But how are you getting along with her?”
“Marvelously.”
I waited for an explanation of this paradox, but just then Ben caught sight of the door opening and his face lit up with pleasure.
“Ah, good old Liz! And she’s brought Binkie. Here, Binks boy! Binks, Binks, Binks!”
Elizabeth let her dog off the lead and it scampered towards us, skidding on the polished floor. It was a Scottie with an absurd, sad, long face. It looked very old. It rolled on its back by Ben’s chair, its paws in the air. Ben scratched its pink tummy.
“Silly boy! Silly Binks! Wouldn’t think he was only a puppy, would you? How’s that, Binks—nice scratchy-turn?”
“Sorry I’m late, darling,” Elizabeth said, sailing up. “And I can’t stay a second. I promised to meet Gwen Mathers at the hairdresser’s—she wants to copy my hair style. Oh, Binkie darling, look at you! You really are a Thurber dog!” Her manner was brightly artificial, and I fancied that she was acting a little for my benefit. She was in her early thirties, good-looking, and dressed in a coat and skirt of such stylishness, and with all her accouterments so perfectly matching and in place, that she might have stepped straight out of a fashion plate.
“What the devil’s a ‘Thurber’ dog?” Ben said.
“Darling, you’re so uneducated! He’s that marvelous man who draws nothing but ridiculous dogs like Binkie. Now I can’t bear the suspense a minute longer. I’m waiting to be introduced to your fascinating friend.” She flashed her smile at me. It was as beautifully tailored as her clothes.
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