A Most Immoral Woman

by Linda Jaivin

  Anyway, I am feeling much better now and would be so very glad to see you…

  The dear, sweet girl. Morrison read the letter twice through, sniffed the perfume still clinging to its pages, and held it to his heart.

  ‘Are you all right, old chap?’ called out C.D. Jameson from just inside the library door.

  Morrison started. ‘Yes, yes, just…composing my next cable.’ How did that bandy-legged old dipsomaniac sneak in here unannounced? Morrison hastily slipped Maysie’s letter into a pile of papers on his desk and rose to greet his guest. ‘Thank you for delivering my letter to Miss Perkins, by the way.’

  Jameson, flashing a greasy smile, fell heavily into Morrison’s favourite chair. ‘’Twas a pleasure,’ he slurred. ‘Handed it to the young lady myself just yesterday morning.’

  Fighting his natural revulsion towards the man and in the hope of gleaning more news of Mae, Morrison invited Jameson to stay for dinner. ‘Dumas is expected as well; he’s been staying.’

  ‘That’d be grand.’

  Kuan brought in a tray with glasses and the good sherry. Jameson pounced on the drink.

  ‘I’ve heard some interesting scuttlebutt,’ Jameson said as he drained his first glass and poured a second.

  ‘Go on,’ said Morrison, a jealous eye on the decanter.

  ‘I’ve heard…’ Jameson hesitated and swept the room with his rheumy eyes, as though spies from the Empress Dowager’s court might be hiding behind one of the towering bookcases or peering in through a high, latticed window. He lowered his voice. ‘I have heard that her favourite eunuch, the one they call “John Brown”—’

  ‘Li Lien-ying.’

  ‘Yes, Li Lien…that Li is no eunuch at all!’

  ‘Which is why he is her favourite,’ Morrison said flatly. ‘He has kept his “precious”, and not in a jar like the rest of them. He’s the only eunuch who doesn’t fall into hysteria at the sight of a teapot with a missing handle or a dog without a tail.’

  Jameson’s laugh threatened an imminent expulsion of phlegm. He slapped at his chest. As he calmed down, he grew thoughtful. A smile played around his brutish lips. He leaned forward suddenly, causing the chair to creak in complaint. There was a conspiratorial glint in his eye. ‘I have to thank you for something.’ He smirked. ‘You did me a great service the other day when you asked me to deliver that letter to Miss Perkins. I have seen something quite unforgettable as a result.’

  An intuition told Morrison he was not about to receive glad tidings. Had Jameson discovered her with another suitor? It was settled. He would return to Tientsin as soon as possible. ‘And what was that, pray tell?’

  Jameson didn’t answer immediately. Chortling to himself, he rose from his chair. Lifting the dustcover on one of the bookshelves, he rifled through a stack of rare pamphlets from the Diocese of West China. Dust motes flew into the milky light and hung there.

  ‘Easy on,’ Morrison snapped, for as little as he cared for missionaries as a species, he did treasure their publications. ‘Those pages are brittle and liable to—’

  ‘Keep your garters tied, old boy.’ Jameson let the cloth drop into place. He grinned, exposing a mouthful of nicotine-stained false teeth. ‘Miss Perkins is quite the nymphomaniac, isn’t she?’

  Morrison flushed with surprise and outrage. ‘You dishonour Miss Perkins!’

  Jameson laughed. ‘Miss Perkins has as much hold on honour as the Empress Dowager.’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Tsk. The only thing keeping that girl from an asylum and a clitoral excision is the uncommon wealth and influence of her dear father.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Morrison leapt to his feet. Had there been a glove handy, he would have thrown it down before the man. Crass-natured, whacking great liar! Cantankerous freak!

  ‘Hear me out, old chap.’ Jameson waved him back down. ‘You’re hardly one to moralise. Besides, we have shared a woman before. Does the name Anna Bullard, of 52 Water Tower, Shanghai, mean anything to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Morrison snapped. ‘An ear-splitting laugh, the pox, and champagne at five dollars a bottle. It is hardly germane!’

  ‘My dear Morrison, no need to dissemble. Miss Perkins told me herself what you two got up to.’

  ‘She talked about me? I don’t believe it for an instant.’

  Jameson sniggered. ‘Do the words “Mountain-Sea Pass” mean anything to you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Morrison fumed. ‘’Tis the place where the Great Wall meets the sea.’

  ‘You are a true gentleman, G.E.,’ said Jameson, bowing grandly and nearly tipping over in the process. ‘I fear I am your inferior in this regard. I can barely keep from singing her name aloud as I walk the streets. It was only because the dear girl was still suffering the effects of the grippe that I could be persuaded to return to Peking at all.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Jameson was an extravagant liar and a lush. He’d heard gossip from someone who’d been at the hotel in Mountain-Sea Pass and seen Morrison stroll out with her that night. Morrison told himself it was nothing but a poor joke. There was no other possible explanation, no credible one anyway. Morrison regretted asking the lecherous old croak to dinner.

  Kuan entered to say that Colonel Dumas had left word that he would be joining them soon and that, as he was off to Kierluff’s for some supplies, Yu-ti would serve in the meantime. Did his master require anything?

  The removal of this oaf from my presence. ‘No, thank you, Kuan.’

  When Jameson again extended a paw in the direction of his books, Morrison overcame his repugnance to place a hand on his guest’s shoulder, the better to march him out of his library, across the courtyard and into the parlour. There, Jameson immediately spotted a fine ivory netsuke, a belt ornament, and began to fondle it. Morrison, gritting his teeth, bade him be seated.

  Yu-ti appeared in the doorway, carrying a tray with more sherry. She hesitated.

  ‘Lai, lai. Come in.’ Jameson beckoned to her with his forefinger. She reddened as though slapped. Her eyes shone for an instant with something that, if Morrison was not mistaken, seemed like defiance. Giving Yu-ti an apologetic look, Morrison held out his hand palm down, and curled his fingers inwards.

  ‘Jameson, in all your years in this country, have you not yet learned that in China only a dog is called with one finger?’

  ‘Is that so? Well blow me down. That certainly explains a few things.’ Jameson sniggered.

  ‘Come,’ Morrison urged the still reticent Yu-ti. ‘Lai.’ Pointing to the table, he mimed setting down the tray.

  The breath caught in her throat as she approached them. Morrison knew that to many Chinese, ‘Hairy Ones’, as Westerners were called, smelled nauseatingly of beef and cow’s milk. Jameson was not fragrant even to Western nostrils. Holding her breath, eyes downcast, Yu-ti placed the tray where Morrison had indicated.

  Jameson leered at her. ‘Speakee English?’

  ‘Not a word,’ Morrison answered for her, wondering as he spoke if that was really true. He had never asked.

  ‘Pretty little thing, isn’t she?’ Jameson observed. ‘Bertie Lenox Simpson says that native women are exceptionally soothing in bed.’

  Yu-ti blushed, though whether from general shyness or comprehension, Morrison was not sure. ‘All right, tsou, tsou,’ Morrison said, waving Yu-ti away. She bowed her way out and hastened back to the kitchen.

  ‘Bertie says that once you’ve had a native, you’ll never go back to Western women, who either view fornication as the ultimate sacrifice or are complete and natural harlots. Which of course leads us back to the subject of—’

  ‘Bertie is a syphilitic dunderhead,’ barked Morrison before Jameson had a chance to finish the sentence. ‘He’s also a liar, for he’s certainly gone back to Lady Bredon countless times.’

  ‘Interesting character, Bertie. Speaks five languages, can imitate the call of the Peking muleteers and wrote a rather amusing memoir of the siege. I believe it sold rather well.’

  Stupidly well, Morrison
thought. He’d heard some readers actually preferred Bertie’s loose account of events to his own. His irritation momentarily drifted in the direction of Bertie Lenox Simpson before returning to its mooring. ‘Anyway,’ he said, with a pointed glance at Jameson’s paunch, ‘I don’t really care what Bertie does. But I do have some affection for Lady Bredon and believe she could do better than Bertie, whose stomach enters the room long before his nose.’

  ‘I heard that.’ Dumas appeared in the doorway, one hand patting his own belly. ‘I shall remind myself to enter rooms sideways from now. Hello, Jameson.’ His voice contained some surprise at finding Jameson in Morrison’s parlour but he shook the man’s hand as if it were an everyday occurrence.

  ‘What news, Dumas?’ Morrison asked, relieved to see his friend.

  ‘I met the Japanese military attaché Kamei today at lunch. It seems the Russian minister is trying hard to convince the Chinese to assist the Russians against the Japanese in Manchuria. Kamei, naturally, is insisting to the Chinese that they maintain their neutrality in the conflict.’

  ‘A bit hard, don’t you think, considering it’s being fought on Chinese soil?’ Jameson interjected.

  The other two turned and stared at him.

  ‘Think about it,’ Jameson said. ‘The last time the Japanese invaded Manchuria, what, ten years ago during the Sino-Japanese War, they massacred thousands of Chinese citizens at Port Arthur alone. Razed whole towns to the ground. Burnt crops. No wonder that although the Treaty of Shimonoseki gave the Liaotung Peninsula to Japan, the Chinese were only too happy to invite in the Russians.’

  ‘Nothing to do with natural justice,’ Morrison said with a dismissive flip of the hand. ‘The Chinese let the Russians take Port Arthur only because the Russians helped pay off China’s war debts to Japan.’

  Jameson shrugged. ‘Agreed. I’m just saying that the Chinese are bound to be wary of seeing Japanese troops in Manchuria again. That’s all. But I’m not criticising the war. I’ve got mining interests in Manchuria and wish to see them protected just as much as the next fellow.’

  Morrison was still working out his retort when Kuan, who’d returned, rang the bell for dinner.

  Morrison’s table was not the most fashionable or elaborate in Peking but, unlike its host, on this particular evening it was welcoming enough. Candles in tall silver candelabras flickered warm light over a damask tablecloth. Branches of cherry blossom protruded from a modest vase at one end, and an unpretentious epergne stacked with sweetmeats and dried fruits occupied the centre.

  The men took more sherry with their soup, and hock with their fish. They worked their way through mutton with fried potatoes and beer, rice and curry with ham, a custard, some cheese and salad, bread and butter and port wine, all delivered to the table in good order by Kuan. But Morrison was in a choler. The food, as good as it was, incited his dyspepsia. He said little as Jameson nattered on about gold mines in Jehol and passed on more spurious news from the Forbidden City. He nodded with exaggerated enthusiasm as Dumas shared some minor revelations about the Russian army’s difficulty with supply. They’d just started on their liqueurs when Morrison, unable to contain himself a minute longer, turned to Dumas and announced, ‘Jameson here is in love.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Dumas asked, turning to Jameson. ‘And who is the lucky girl?’

  ‘Miss Mae Perkins,’ Morrison answered for him.

  ‘Oh, truly?’ Dumas could barely contain his mirth. That he doubted Jameson’s chances very much was clear from the twitch of his eyebrows.

  ‘Truly,’ Morrison confirmed, as gloomy as a eunuch contemplating his ‘precious’.

  Dumas cocked his head. His smile dimmed.

  ‘Jameson here says the girl is a confirmed nymphomaniac. He says he has confirmed it himself.’

  Dumas looked alarmed. ‘Well, isn’t that remarkable?’

  ‘She’s quite the coquette.’ Nodding and smiling like the cat that had swallowed the canary, Jameson popped a cherry into his mouth. ‘Completely man-crazy.’ He followed the cherry with a finger, making a minute adjustment to his false teeth. ‘Nice little mole above her left hipbone.’ As if the others might not be aware of that anatomical part, he poked at his stomach where his own hipbone might possibly be found, if only by way of excavation.

  Morrison was filled with such a hot fury that he half expected his brandy to ignite in its snifter. He took a deep breath and counted to himself before raising his glass. ‘Here’s to Miss Perkins.’ That little courtesan. That strumpet. That trollop.

  ‘Miss Perkins,’ the others chorused.

  In Which Our Hero Passes a Damned Stupid

  Day, After Which He Is Both Revived

  by Beauty and Thwarted by Duty

  The following morning, Morrison awoke with an aversion to sunlight and a head pounding from the previous night’s excesses of alcohol and revelation. He thought despairingly, then crossly, of Mae. Jameson. How could she? He told himself that that was it. He was finished with her. Lesson learned. He was a busy man. He had more important things to think about than some faithless little American tart with such poor taste as to succumb to one such as Jameson. She was uncommonly charming and as accomplished in bed as any prostitute. But none of that was worth a farthing in the face of such duplicity and betrayal—not to mention lapse of taste. Jameson? Morrison had only had her that one time. It wasn’t as if they were betrothed. Thank ye gods!

  No, he thought. It is impossible, inconceivable that she has ever been with Jameson as she has been with me. And yet, that mole…Perhaps she had mentioned it to Jameson. She was, after all, a most uninhibited conversationalist and, for all her mother’s strictures, something of an actress as well. She might have spoken of it just for effect, much as she’d declared her intention to marry a native that night after dinner in Mountain-Sea Pass. As much as it pained him to think that she would make such a personal revelation to the undeserving other, he concluded that he’d been a fool to have taken Jameson at his word. Jameson was an accursed liar. Morrison had done Mae a terrible disservice to think otherwise. He leapt out of bed and splashed his face with cold water. Hair wild, thoughts feral, he raced into his study.

  Snapping open his rolltop desk, he snatched up the letter he had received from her the day before, reread it and smiled with relief. He smoothed down his blotting paper and dipped the nib of his pen in his inkwell. In a melting reply, he kissed her from the palms of her hands to the inside of her elbows, stroked her hair, held her close, called her ‘my darling Maysie’ and beseeched her to be true. He added a few barbed witticisms at the expense of C.D. Jameson, asked after her health and expressed his wish to be remembered to the Ragsdales. Sealing the envelope with wax, he impressed it with his seal and bid Kuan to post it forthwith. There would be no more entrusting of such missives to unreliable messengers, that was for certain.

  The day passed in a flurry of work as Morrison gathered the material for another telegram to The Times. There were rumours that the Japanese were bombarding Vladivostok. Morrison did the rounds of Japanese diplomats and military attachés, each one of whom claimed to know less about it than the one before. When he tested some of Granger’s information on the Japanese military attaché Colonel Aoki, Aoki’s response was a single word, as dismissive in English as it was in French: ‘Canard!’

  That afternoon, a new cable arrived from Granger with the instructions, ‘Say it comes from a reliable source but not from me or Newchang.’

  Granger’s ineptitude nettled him. The whole point was reliability. If one was to make a reasonable judgment about a situation, one needed to know the facts. He could not rely on the bungling Granger for the truth about the war. It would be like relying on the malign Jameson for news about Mae. ‘All my work comes from a reliable source, otherwise I would not send it,’ he muttered as he consigned Granger’s work to the fire.

  He was just replacing the poker when Kuan entered with another telegram, this one from James. A vision of himself as Gulliver in Lilliput, a
ssailed and tied down by small men, came to Morrison as he took James’s cable to his desk to read. Good god. The report, intended for publication, was replete with news and speculation as to present and future movements of the Japanese army. Morrison considered this a shocking failure of judgment coming, as it did, from a correspondent who had seen action in the Boer Wars and the Sudan. How the Russians would have relished this information! Screwed up into a ball, James’s telegram followed Granger’s into the potbelly stove.

  Younger men like Granger and James—and Egan for that matter—had vigour on their side; Morrison would happily acknowledge that. But discretion, reasonableness, calm-headedness and wisdom—such was the province of age.

  As night fell, Morrison agonised over whether to write Mae another letter. He was not sure why he felt such a desperate need to persist. The pride that drove him also gave him pause. Jameson’s calumnies had rattled him more than he cared to admit.

  On the following morning, Morrison slapped on his trilby, slung his cape over his shoulders and loped through the dusty streets towards and then through Ch’ien-men Gate. Once south of the gate, he plunged into the familiar, roiling public excitement that the Chinese called ‘the hot and the noisy’, which characterised that part of Peking just south of the Tartar Wall known as the Chinese City. Here was enterprise, from the streetside barbers, scribes and fortune tellers to the bustling shops. Overhead dangled painted shop signs in the shapes of the goods on offer—wooden combs, decorative glass grapes, gourds for wine, the soles of men’s boots. From a pharmacy, with its infinite small drawers of herbs, wafted the mysterious, close smells of Chinese medicine into the street. From a teahouse came the staccato of a storyteller’s clappers, and already a crowd was forming outside the Heavenly Happy Tea Garden in Polishing Street, where one could watch moving pictures—‘electric shadows’—on equipment brought all the way from Germany. Further south were the wilder diversions of the Heavenly Bridge district, famous for its sing-song girls, flower houses and efficient gangs of tatterdemalions who could strip a man of his watch and purse before he sensed them coming.