David was silent, having made his point, and Gabriel resumed savagely: “The city’s duly looted, as everyone feared. Not by the Taipings, but by the gallant European soldiers.”
“This battle will be remembered, Gabe. All Chinese will remember it: a glorious failure for the Taipings and a shameful victory for the barbarians. But we can’t report that the Taipings behaved like angels in Zikawei. That wouldn’t go down well at all.”
“It’ll damned well have to, even if it doesn’t please our masters. You know, Davy, I’m tired of this play-acting.”
“Count your gold, Gabe. That’ll make you feel better.”
“Only in China, Davy. Only in China could a junior naval officer make a young fortune in trade with his superiors’ happy assent.”
“They get their share, after all. That’s the way it works. Even my appointment as a Mandarin—my father Saul’s influence and bribes did it.”
“I wish Saul could do something for your brother. Otherwise Aaron will run wild and ruin himself. He’s so bitter about failing the examination.”
“My father will do it, Gabe. He’ll see that Aaron is all right.”
“Saul’s not God, you know, Davy. I respect him, but he’s not God.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just look at Fronah. That wasn’t the smartest move, marrying her off to Henriques.”
“She needs time to settle down, Gabe. They’ve only been married two years. The maxim says a new wife, like a new saddle, takes three years to break in.”
“I’ve had enough Chinese maxims for one day.”
They rode on for fifteen minutes, the usually voluble Gabriel unspeaking and the usually irrepressible David preserving a hurt silence. When the flames to the north glowed ruddy on their faces, Gabriel spoke again.
“Two years from betrothal to marriage was sensible. But Fronah should have stalled longer.”
“My mother Sarah was frantic, and my father Saul finally did as she wished. You weren’t around for the family quarrels, Gabe. Fronah fought the marriage hard—until they finally argued her down. Believe me, she couldn’t have stalled a minute longer.”
“Anyone can see it, Davy. She’s not happy. And Henriques is a cold fish if I ever saw one.”
“Maybe she’s not, Gabe. But she hasn’t said a word to anyone. Not to me. Not even to Maylu.”
“She wouldn’t, would she? But the bloom’s gone off her. She used to sparkle, but she doesn’t any more. An occasional flash, is all.”
“Oh, the fire’s still there.”
“I guess so, but it’s smoldering, not leaping.”
“What do you make of Henriques, Gabe?”
“He’s a mystery to me. He’s always cool and polite, but talking to him is like shouting through a sheet of glass.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do.” David shrugged off his concern. “It’s too late—much too late.”
The flames of Shanghai laced the low-lying clouds with crimson. Silhouetted by the glow, the American and the Chinese rode toward the French Concession. Their black shadows brushed the still corpses of hundreds of Holy Soldiers.
CHAPTER 35
August 28, 1860
SHANGHAI
“We could, of course,” Lionel Henriques drawled, looking up from his book. “We could sail for England tomorrow.”
“Then why not, Lionel?” Fronah wanted to put down her book and kneel beside his chair, but feared that such offensive mawkishness would make him even more difficult. “Why can’t we go just for a year or so?”
“It wouldn’t be right, Fronah. It’s just not done.”
“You miss London, I know,” she cajoled. “Why not go, for heaven’s sake?”
“Please don’t distress yourself, Fronah. I hope we’ve left all that Oriental emotionalism behind us. We’re living in a nineteenth-century British settlement, not a medieval ghetto. I am sorry, but of course you understand.”
“No, Lionel, I don’t really. I do know you’re not terribly busy here. And you just said we could go.”
“I’m afraid you don’t understand.” He smiled patiently. “Actually, a gentleman needn’t busy himself like a barrow boy—or a merchant. I’m not in trade, you know. Still, I can’t just pull up stakes.”
Fronah was momentarily furious. After two years of marriage, she had thought herself inured to his occasional sneers at their common Jewish heritage, as well as his occasional oblique, perhaps unintentional, denigration of her father. The Haleevies had been scholar-rabbis in Spain when his ancestors were ragged peddlers trudging through the mud between the hawthorn hedges of English country lanes.
“Lionel, I’m troubled about the gifts we keep taking from Papa,” she said evenly. “He’s too generous. And I simply don’t see why you can’t pull up stakes for a time.”
“As I’ve told you, it’s only a loan to tide us over the temporary embarrassment of remittances delayed.” He was still patient. “Your father understands perfectly.”
“Perhaps, Lionel.” She could not match his patience. “But why can’t we even talk about going away?”
“We are talking, my dear, and I want to go as much as you do,” he laughed. “But it would be an inexcusable breach of trust to whisk off to England. I can’t break faith with Samuelsons. I have responsibilities here, heavy responsibilities, even if I don’t make a show of busyness.”
“You carry them lightly, my dear, quite lightly.” She almost regretted that facile retort. “But I suppose you’ll say that’s unfair.”
Fronah wondered bleakly why she had ever hoped marriage would bring her independence. Her freedom was now far more circumscribed than it had ever been by her usually indulgent father or even her sometimes acerbic mother. Besides, her parents’ occasional frank anger was more natural than Lionel’s cool reasonableness. Like the hot-blooded Chinese, he prided himself on restraining his emotions. However, when she pierced his complacency, he would occasionally reveal the affection he felt for her—and her own affection for the complex man she had married would rise again in spite of her anger at his obduracy.
Fronah persisted in her demands that they leave for a time because Shanghai had become hateful to her. She felt imprisoned by its complacent insularity and by the Taiping threat, which made excursions hazardous. Her idealistic dreams of serving China, frustrated by the apparently interminable civil war, had therefore been supplanted for the time being by her desire to make a voyage to England.
She was appalled by the fires that, after raging in the native quarters since the Loyal King’s withdrawal ten days earlier, were finally burning themselves out. Their lingering stench recalled the conflagration that had swept the South City in 1855, when the Chinese rebels burned so many dwellings to cover their retreat. The rapacious European troops had pointlessly put hundreds of houses to the torch, though the fire consumed the valuables they hunted.
Lionel himself had joined the troops on the wall to pour bullets into the milling ranks of Holy Soldiers, who had been ordered not to return the fire. Having once believed the Settlement an island of good sense and good will amid a sea of Manchu folly and cruelty, Fronah now hated the foreigners’ brutality just as the Chinese did. Though the Europeans were, she supposed, her own people, she felt far more sympathy for the Chinese.
“Lionel, please, you must understand how I feel,” Fronah urged, knowing he was not wholly insensitive. “You must try.”
“I am trying, my dear, though it’s hard,” he replied. “What’s bothering you? Why are you so set on leaving? Do tell me.”
“Remember, I’ve really never seen any other place—and I want to desperately. When you talk about London, you’re very casual. But to me London is a fairyland.”
“Hardly that, my dear. London is a city much like any other. But, I promise you, just as soon as I can in honor, we will go.”
Lionel Henriques hated fencing with his wife, and he disliked dissembling. However, he simply could not return to England just yet. It would be
inconvenient, devilish inconvenient—impossible, in fact.
“Very soon, I hope!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Lionel, I’m bored—so bored.”
“Honestly, I don’t see why. Not with your historical studies and … and all this.”
The sweep of his hand embraced the drawing room and the adjoining morning room of the villa that had been Saul Haleevie’s wedding present. Completed only seven months earlier because the merchant demanded the finest craftsmanship, heedless of expenditure that made his wife blanch, it was the most elegant house in the Foreign Settlement. The Chinese called it Lo Wo, the Nest of Joy, because it was so exquisitely proportioned and so auspiciously situated.
Fronah had for a year and a half been happily occupied in ensuring that her house would be perfect. She had fended off her mother’s pleas for thrift, and she had resisted Maylu’s predilection for gaudy opulence. Lionel and she had moved into the Nest of Joy on her twenty-first birthday, February 3, 1860, and until late July she had been absorbed in her role as its mistress. Then, so abruptly she surprised herself, she began murmuring in discontent.
Lionel Henriques took no great notice of female vapors. The ladies didn’t think but only felt. Hysteria, Dr. William MacGregor said. The Greeks had coined the term some two and a half millennia ago from hystera, the womb, to explain not only female frenzies, which bedeviled sensible men, but female fancies, which confounded all logic.
Perhaps that was the explanation. Perhaps Fronah was pregnant. A son would not only carry on the Henriques line, but would ensure his father-in-law’s eternal gratitude. Giving Saul Haleevie a grandson would make him wholly secure.
Lionel dismissed the pleasant speculation. Naturally, he did not impose himself upon her so frequently as to know the rhythm of her menses. But he had a few days earlier learned from Dr. MacGregor that she was not carrying a child.
“Perhaps it’s only a passing fancy, this notion of yours about England,” he reiterated complacently. “Probably you’ll soon get over it.”
Lionel ignored Fronah’s exasperated gasp. His thoughts turned to the two sinuous Wei Dynasty statuettes he had seen yesterday at Old Curiosity Soo’s shop. The dancing girls, pale green and faded rose, would beautifully frame the turquoise swan with the graceful neck that stood on the white marble mantelpiece. But he still owed for that relatively modern piece, and the dancing girls were expensive. He could not stretch his credit further.
He thought resentfully of Saul Haleevie, who seemed to dominate his life. The merchant had built the Nest of Joy as much to display his wealth as to indulge his loving daughter and reward his dutiful son-in-law. Besides, the plot lay between his own compound on Szechwan Road and Derwents compound on the river. The merchant had gained a window on the Bund, the center of commerce, finance, and fashion, which was to Shanghai all that Park Lane, Bond Street, Pall Mall, and Threadneedle Street were to London.
Although Fronah loved the Nest of Joy’s bijou charm, her husband felt it too small, only a grace-and-favor cottage in the shadow of Saul Haleevie’s mansion. Besides, he found the villa’s exotic splendor disquieting. Although he had imposed some restraint on the Oriental fantasies of his wife and her father, the tented ceiling of the morning room recalled a pavilion in a desert. The velvet drapes and furniture were reassuringly substantial despite their barbarically glowing colors. But there was a superabundance of heavy Chinese satins, gold-embroidered Indian tissue silks, and particolored Persian rugs.
Lionel started as the door opened without warning. The stout number-one houseboy glided into the drawing room, belatedly announced by the rattle of dishes as the number-two houseboy wheeled in the silver-mounted tea wagon. Chinese servants were eerie, either shuffling about in cloth slippers or making a horrendous clatter. He longed for a bluff, heavy-footed English butler instead of these slinking Asiatics.
Nonetheless, he smiled jovially as the houseboys arranged the paraphernalia of high tea: the silver teapots, creamers, and sugar bowls surrounded by delicate blue-and-white china. The second houseboy smiled in return, but number one’s plump features were set as he offered cucumber-and-watercress sandwiches, poundcake, and scones accompanied by strawberry jam and clotted cream. Lionel smiled again and rubbed his hands together. This was proper food, not the airy Chinese delicacies his wife craved.
“Allee piece chiles belong you allee numbah-one fine, boy?” he asked expansively. “Cow chile belong you fine? She very good look at.”
“Mis’ible cow chile fine, Mastah.” The number-one boy grinned nervously. “More better Mastah no worry ’bout mis’ble cow chile. Maybe cow chile go ’way look-see old auntie.”
“Good! Good!” Lionel beamed, as he took a scone. “All very fine.”
Fronah wondered why Lao King was playing the fool with her husband. The houseboy was normally dignified, and his pidgin was not normally the travesty he spoke to Lionel. Did a hint of insolence, she wondered, shadow his demeanor? Was he mocking his master? Did she sense a rebuke in his response? Or was it fear? She told herself she must talk to Lao King.
“Lionel,” Fronah said when the door closed behind the servants, “it’s just not good enough saying I shouldn’t be bored.”
“How so, Fronah?” He twisted the gold signet ring on his little finger.
Fronah’s throat tightened. Lionel was masterful, though casual, in a shantung shirt and tight-fitting nankeen trousers secured under his patent-leather half-boots by elastic straps. Neither his patrician appearance nor his cool manner had altered perceptibly in the four years since their betrothal. After each of their misunderstandings, which seemed more frequent lately, he left her half-convinced that it was her fault alone.
“I don’t know why I feel so empty,” she persisted. “But I’m sure a trip would help. And I do so want to see London before I’m too old to enjoy it.”
“Twenty-one isn’t so old nowadays, even for a female,” he replied judiciously. “Though, of course, it’s high time …”
“Yes, Lionel?” she prompted as he chewed a sandwich. “High time for what?”
“High time, I was about to say … ah … that we gave your parents a grandchild.”
“Do you really think having a child will stop my … my foolishness?”
“Well, it’s not unknown, my dear. Most mothers do settle down happily.”
“I do want a child, Lionel. But not just yet. There are so many things I want to do, so many places I want to see. I don’t want to be tied down so soon.”
“Why ever should you be tied down?” He raised an astonished eyebrow. “There are such things as nannies and baby amahs. You wouldn’t carry it in a sling on your back like a Shanghai amah. Good Lord, a child’s no obstacle to traveling nowadays. We could even bring a reliable nanny from England.”
“And see her married within six months?” Fronah laughed. “Lionel, I couldn’t abandon our child. Besides, if I did, I’d be back where I started. This strange boredom, this listlessness, would come back again.”
“Good Lord, Fronah, I’m not suggesting abandoning our putative child. It is possible to be a mother and still lead a normal life, you know. Women do feel differently when they’re mothers. Fulfillment the medical Johnnies call it. Something to do with glands, I believe.”
“Glands, Lionel, glands? Is that what I am to you? Glands and an empty womb?”
“No need to be coarse, my dear. It’s scientifically established, you know.”
“You haven’t understood a word I’ve said, have you, Lionel?” Her pent anger erupted. “You’re just humoring a foolish female, aren’t you? You haven’t the slightest intention of even thinking about a journey to London till it suits you, do you?”
“I’ve explained to you that I can’t. I can’t commit a breach of trust.”
She pressed her lips together. Her large eyes glinted with unshed tears, and she blinked her long eyelashes to flick them off. That delightfully childlike gesture accentuated the minute fullness around her mouth. Though he normally considered her somew
hat overblown, Lionel found the effect remarkably sensual.
“Only when it suits you,” Fronah riposted. “Otherwise, trust doesn’t mean much to you, does it?”
“What ever can you mean?” He raised an eyebrow again. “What are you talking about?”
“Do you ever intend to repay the loans you’ve wheedled out of my father? No, he hasn’t told me. But I’d have to be blind not to know, the way you leave papers around. Several thousand dollars already—and no end in sight.”
“You’re right. I am temporarily embarrassed. But Saul knows I’m good for that bagatelle. You know a lady doesn’t pry into her husband’s financial affairs.”
“I haven’t pried, Lionel. I just couldn’t help knowing. How can we … I … face my father if you don’t repay him soon?”
“Just leave that to Saul and me, my dear. It’s such a small matter I hardly think about it. Nor does Saul.”
How she would storm if she knew the full extent of his indebtedess to her father. Not several thousand Shanghai dollars but almost £10,000 sterling. Saul said tolerantly that he regarded the sum as an advance against future earnings from their joint business ventures. But those ventures were not promising. Fronah must produce a grandchild for Saul Haleevie very soon, Lionel concluded.
He had believed marriage would solve his financial problems. Despite the merchant’s open-handedness, it was not working out as he had planned. He could not deny that bleak reality, and he was already far too dependent on his father-in-law. Worse, he was ultimately dependent on his wife. Though Fronah behaved as if theirs was a normal marital relationship, with both her property and her person legally at his sole disposal, she could always appeal to her father, who had cannily placed only a nominal sum in her name on their marriage. He must not provoke her so that fury succeeded her present anger, for she could ruin him. He would also have to simulate greater ardor—not only to placate her, but to get that invaluable infant. Besides, her distress pained him, though it was difficult to reach over the walls that enclosed his emotions to comfort her.
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