Chapter Seven
The doors slammed behind her, and she strode full tilt into Julienne.
‘Steady on,’ Julienne said, laughing. ‘There’s no need for us to leave yet. I’m not meeting Ronnie for another hour.’
Elizabeth drew in a deep steadying breath. ‘Sorry, Julienne. I have to be going. I’ll see you later.’
‘Oh, come on. Just one more gin and tonic,’ Julienne coaxed, looking genuinely disappointed.
Elizabeth shook her head. There wasn’t money enough in the world to tempt her back into the bar and Raefe Elliot’s obnoxious presence. ‘Sorry, Julienne, I really must be going. We’re lunching with the Gresbys, and I’m going to be late.’ As she spoke, she continued to walk briskly, hurrying across the lobby and out into the sunshine.
Julienne gave the doors to the bar a last, regretful look and then followed her. There would be other opportunities to waylay Raefe. And next time he might not have a friend with him. ‘Well, as you’re in a hurry, and I’ve got time to spare, let me give you a lift,’ she said, surmounting her disappointment with her usual bouncy optimism. ‘I wouldn’t mind a lunch-time drink at the Pen. The barman there mixes the most wonderful Manhattans.’
As they stepped into Julienne’s little Morris, Elizabeth felt her anger begin to subside. Raefe Elliot was an ill-mannered bore, but the friendliness of Julienne and her husband, and Helena and Tom Nicholson and Alastair Munroe, more than made up for it. They didn’t think Adam a fool. They liked him, and it was their opinion that mattered, not the opinion of an arrogant ne’er-do-well like Raefe Elliot.
As if reading her thoughts, Julienne said suddenly; ‘Did you see the two men who walked into the bar just before you came out? One of them, the tall dark one, was Raefe Elliot. I saw them when I was on the telephone to Ronnie. I must say he doesn‘t look very ruffled by his court appearance – or by the new rumours that are beginning to fly around.’
Elizabeth knew she shouldn’t ask, but curiosity overcame common sense. ‘What rumours?’ she asked as Julienne swung the Morris recklessly out on to the busy road.
Julienne’s black-lashed eyes sparkled. ‘That he’s banished Melissa to one of his farms in the New Territories. That he’s refusing her a divorce and is keeping her a prisoner, not even allowing her father to know where she is.’
‘But, my goodness, can’t the police interfere?’ Elizabeth asked, shocked.
Julienne giggled. ‘He is her husband, and the judiciary won’t want to interfere with Raefe again in a hurry, not after he made them look such fools over the murder charge that was brought against him. You can bet your life that Colonel Langdon, Melissa’s father, would have been far less eager for charges to have gone ahead if he had known in advance that Raefe’s defence would depend on revealing that Melissa was a heroin addict! Mon Dieu! You should have heard the intake of breath when Raefe was forced to part with that little piece of information!’
‘And was it true?’ Elizabeth asked, remembering Sir Denholm’s impassioned avowal that it was a monstrous slander. That Raefe Elliot had grossly defamed his wife’s reputation in order to save his own neck.
Julienne sped down Chatham Road with scant regard for other traffic and none at all for the pedestrians who leaped hurriedly out of her way.
‘Who is to say?’ she said with a Gallic shrug. ‘Raefe says that she is; her father and everyone else who knows her say she is not. But the jury did believe that Raefe was speaking the truth when he said that he returned from a business trip to Singapore and found Jacko Latimer in her bed, and Jacko was a well-known pusher of drugs among the European community in Hong Kong. For myself, I believe Raefe. What other reason would Melissa have for being in bed with an unpleasant unprepossessing little man like Jacko? He was the kind of man that has to grovel for sex, not the kind that has it showered on him by a woman as beautiful as Melissa. No, if Melissa allowed Jacko Latimer into her bed, then it was not because she wanted him there. It was because she was paying him for something, and that something could only have been heroin.’
They drew up outside the Palladian-style splendour of the Peninsula Hotel.
‘But as to why he is refusing her a divorce and is keeping her a prisoner in the New Territories, je ne comprends pas. That I cannot understand. I would have thought he would be glad to be rid of her. Certainly I do not believe he is still in love with her.’
She giggled naughtily as they walked into the coolness of the Peninsula’s lobby. ‘If he had still been in love with her, the blow that killed Jacko would not have been an accidental one, and would never have been mistaken for an accidental one! He would have torn Jacko limb from limb, and been magnificently unrepentant!’ She gave a delicious shiver. ‘Can you imagine how superb a man like that must be in the bedroom, Elizabeth? If only he didn’t prefer his Chinese and Malay girls.’ She ran the tip of her tongue suggestively over her full lower lip and said, her voice full of laughter: ‘If only he would give la belle France a chance to show what she can do instead!’
After lunch with the Gresbys, Elizabeth excused herself and went to her room to lie down. She still found the humid heat enervating, and the scene with Raefe Elliot had disturbed her far more than she had been willing to admit.
She slipped out of her blouse and skirt and closed the rattan blinds, plunging the room into cool shade. ‘Damnable man,’ she muttered as she lay down on her bed and closed her eyes. How dare he speak of Adam like that? And how dare he suggest that she share a drink with him? Her cheeks flushed as she remembered the way he had looked at her; the naked appraisal in his dark eyes; the lazy amusement in his voice; the sensual, confident, arrogant demeanour that had so unnerved her.
‘Damnable man!’ she said again savagely, turning her pillow over and thumping it with her fist. Julienne was welcome to her daydreams of him. In Elizabeth’s eyes she was displaying a gross lack of judgement and taste. Raefe Elliot was not an admirable, sexy man coping with an unfaithful and drug-addicted wife. He was an insolent, ignorant, loud-mouthed braggart who was not only a flagrant womanizer and brawler, but possibly even a murderer as well.
She thumped the pillow again for good measure and tried to sleep. It was impossible. It wasn’t only her unfortunate confrontation with Raefe Elliot that was disturbing her; it was her own increased knowledge of the geography of Hong Kong and the conclusions she was drawing from it.
When she had sailed from Southampton aboard the Orient Princess, the only thing she had known about Hong Kong was that it was an island off the coast of China, under the jurisdiction of Great Britain. Whatever Adam had told her about it she had believed. That Japan was aggressive towards it, would eventually attack it; that there would be fighting in which he would be able to take part and which would take place ‘up-country’; that when it was over he would be able to return to England and, though not able to don a uniform and join in any fight against Hitler that might take place, his pride would be intact; that he would tie able to say he had helped give the Japs a bloody nose in the East. That he would have nothing to feel ashamed of and, more important, he would not feel as if he was an old crock, too ancient to fight for his country. All this she had understood. But now, after only a few days in Hong Kong, she understood far more.
It wasn’t the diverging views as to whether the Japanese would or would not attack that disturbed her. It was the overwhelming consensus of opinion that, if they did attack, they would soon be sent packing.
She had been shocked when she had first seen a map of Hong Kong. She had thought it was a large island, several miles off the coast of China, with an impressive harbour and a fleet to match. It wasn’t an island in the way she had thought, at all. It lay – only eight miles wide and eleven miles long – a mere stone’s throw from the mainland. Across the narrow channel of water lay the Kowloon peninsula and an area of over 360 square miles known as the New Territories. This was the area that Adam was presumably referring to when he spoke of fighting taking place ‘up-country’. The only defence that
the island and the mainland had against the Japanese warring across the border in China was two Regular Army battalions. The 2nd Battalion Royal Scots, in which Alastair Munroe served, and the 1st Battalion, the Middlesex Regiment. There was no air force to speak of and only a handful of ships in the harbour.
‘Is that it?’ she had asked Alastair Munroe in amazement when he had answered her questions regarding the island’s defences.
‘It’s more than enough to see off the Japs,’ Alastair Munroe said with amusement. ‘No point in having a surfeit of men and ships out here when it looks as if they’re going to be needed elsewhere against Hitler.’
Elizabeth had said: ‘No, possibly not.’ But she hadn’t been convinced. It seemed to her that it would be exceptionally easy for the Japanese to pour over the border into the New Territories whenever they wanted to. And that, once they did, the narrow channel of water between the mainland and Hong Kong Island would not deter them for long.
Later that afternoon they picked up the keys to the house, and the next morning they moved out of the Peninsula Hotel and into their new home on the Peak.
‘Household staff is no problem,’ Helena Nicholson said when she came round to help Elizabeth measure up for new curtains and blinds, bringing her two children aged two and five with her. ‘Hobson’s will supply them for you, but tell them you only need houseboys and a cookboy and a wash-amah. Tom’s houseboy has a sister who is looking for a position. She is only seventeen, but Lee says she is very efficient, and it would be nice for them if they were in neighbouring households.’
She wrote down the measurements of the last window and pushed her untidy mane of auburn hair away from her face. ‘You didn’t mind me bringing Simon and Jennifer with me, did you? Since Alan’s death they hate me to be out of their sight, poor lambs.’
‘Of course not,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘It’s lovely to have them playing out in the garden.’ Her eyes had lit up at the mention of the children. ‘It makes the house seem already a home.’
Helena looked across at her curiously. ‘I would have thought you and Adam would have adored parenthood,’ she said in her blindingly forthright manner, ‘Do you just not want any, or is there a problem?’
‘There’s no problem,’ Elizabeth said, rolling the tape measure into a very tight ball. ‘They just haven’t arrived as yet. There’s plenty of time.’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Helena said easily, but her eyes remained curious. There was something odd about the Harlands’marriage, but she couldn’t for the life of her think what it could be. They seemed happy enough, and she couldn’t, for one moment, imagine Ronnie Ledsham or anyone else luring Elizabeth into an extramarital affair.
The children’s voices could be heard, laughing and shrieking as they played hide-and-seek in the garden. She looked out of the window towards them, her blue eyes clouding. It seemed such a little time since they had been playing in front of their house in Singapore. Since Alan had been striding up the path, and they had toddled to meet him.
Elizabeth said quietly: ‘Is it still so very bad, Helena?’
She nodded ‘Yes, even after a year it still seems … impossible. There’s a part of me that can’t truly believe it. Sometimes, in the morning, before I’m fully conscious, I think he’s there beside me, or that he’s away on a trip and will be coming home, and then I wake properly and I remember, and it seems too monstrous to be true. How can he be dead when I loved him so much?’ She wiped the tears quickly from her eyes and gave a self-conscious laugh. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to come on the poor-little-widow bit I don’t usually talk about it at all. It was just seeing the children in the garden, and remembering.…’
They were silent for a little while, and then Elizabeth said tentatively: ‘Alastair Munroe is a very attractive man.…’
Helena grinned, her grief once more under, control. ‘He is, and what you mean is that he seems to be in love with me and why don’t I marry him.’
Elizabeth laughed. There was no way of coping with Helena’s forthrightness except by being equally forthright. ‘Something like that, yes.’
Helena sighed. ‘He is an attractive man, Elizabeth, and I’m terribly fond of him, but I don’t love him in the way I loved Alan. I don’t feel ill with worry if he’s late, or faint with excitement at the thought of seeing him. I don’t want to die with pleasure when he touches me, or feel sick with fear at the thought of losing him. I don’t want to marry him and him to know he’s only second-best. I want to be in love with him as I was in love with Alan. As you are in love with Adam. And I don’t think I ever will be. Not with anyone, ever again.’
That night, lying beside Adam in the darkness, Elizabeth felt curiously restless. It was foolish to allow Helena’s innocent words to perturb her. There were more ways than one of being in love. Helena’s way certainly wasn’t Julienne’s way. Helena had loved one man faithfully and wholeheartedly in a way that Elizabeth doubted Julienne had ever done. So why did it matter if her way of being in love with Adam was different from their way of being in love?
Adam’s rhythmic heavy breathing deepened into a slight snore, and she eased herself away from him and rolled over on to the far side of the bed. She knew the answer to her question. It was because, though Julienne and Helena loved differently, they both loved with a physical passion that she was incapable of. She knew the word that described her sexual responses, and it was an unpleasant one. For the thousandth time she wondered if Adam were aware of her frigidity, and if he ignored it and accepted it out of his very deep love for her. There was no way of knowing. In many ways he treated her as if she were still a child. A frank discussion between them about sex would be as unthinkable to him as it would be difficult for her.
She sighed and slipped out of bed, walking barefoot on to the balcony, looking out over the silk-black mountainside to the distant lights of Victoria. She was suffering increasingly from insomnia. Night after night she found herself making cups of tea while Adam slept, reading the latest Agatha Christie novel or browsing through her sheet music. She picked up the score of Busoni’s ‘Turandot’ Suite that she had been reading earlier in the day. He was an exciting composer, and Professor Hurok had been eager that she familiarize herself with his work. She felt a surge of determination. Lack of work was surely the main reason for her restlessness and dissatisfaction, and lack of work was something she could rectify herself. She would buy a piano tomorrow. Helena would tell her where a suitable one could be obtained. And she would set six hours a day aside for practice. If Adam wanted to swim and sunbathe and play interminable tennis, then he could do so with the new friends they had made. She would accompany him to parties and dinners as she had always done, but through the day she would have her music. And her restlessness and dissatisfaction would surely disappear.
‘It’s going to take them at least six weeks to ship in the kind of piano you require,’ Helena said to her as they came out of Lane Crawford, Victoria’s largest department store. ‘In the mean time, why don’t you appropriate Tom’s piano? It isn’t exactly concert-platform quality, but it’s better than nothing.’
‘That would be super,’ Elizabeth said gratefully, ‘but wouldn’t Tom miss it?’
Helena laughed. ‘Until you arrived in Hong Kong, that piano was only played at Christmas and birthdays – and then always appallingly.’ She opened the door of her little open-topped Morgan. ‘And, if time is hanging heavy on your hands, there’s another favour you could do for me.’
Elizabeth slipped into the passenger-seat next to her. ‘What’s that? Arrange for a cooling breeze? An English shower?’
Helena shook her head, her mane of untidy hair bouncing around her shoulders. ‘No, nothing so easy. The dog I bought Simon for his birthday isn’t a dog at all. It’s a bitch and she’s just had puppies. I’ve found homes for two of them, but I’m left with the runt. Will you take it? If I don’t find a suitable home for it soon, I’ll have to have it put down.’ She pulled out into the main stream of traffic, head
ing towards the Parisian Grill where they were meeting Tom for lunch. ‘It’s a sweet little dog, but a little … indeterminate. The mother is a golden cocker spaniel and the pups seem to have inherited mainly spaniel characteristics. Will you take it?’
‘Of course I will,’ Elizabeth said, smiling across at her. ‘Does it have a name?’
‘No. The christening can be your privilege, but try to be a little more imaginative than my son. He calls ours “Boy”, and every time Tom calls the dog the houseboy scurries into the room to ask him what he wants!’
Tom Nicholson was already sitting at a table, sipping a Scotch and soda, when they arrived. He looked up at them appreciatively as they entered. They were both tall girls. Elizabeth slender and graceful in a white linen suit and open-necked scarlet silk blouse, her wheat-gold hair swept into a glossy knot. Helena magnificently Junoesque and brimming with health and good humour.
He was excessively fond of his sister-in-law. He knew Alastair Munroe wanted to marry her and he wished that she would encourage him. Alan was dead, and she had to build a new life for herself and the children. She didn’t possess Elizabeth’s head-turning beauty or Julienne Ledsham’s flirtatious femininity, and it wasn’t every man who would want to take on the responsibility of two small children. If she didn’t encourage Munroe, there might be a long wait before another suitor appeared on the scene, and that would be a pity. His nephew and niece needed a father, and Alastair Munroe would fit the bill admirably.
‘Were you successful in your hunt for a piano?’ he asked as they sat down.
‘No, Lane Crawfords say it will take at least six weeks to ship one in, and so I’ve arranged for Elizabeth to borrow yours,’ Helena said with her usual directness. ‘I’ve also arranged that she will take the last pup off our hands.’ She turned to the waiter hovering at her side. ‘A large ice-cold gin and tonic, please,’ she said, pleased with her morning’s work. ‘I’ve also got some more news. I’ve decided that I’ve presumed on your hospitality long enough, Tom. There’s no sense in returning to England with the children until we know what that nasty man, Hitler, is going to do. And we can’t possibly stay with you ad infinitum. So I’ve been to Hobson’s and arranged to take a three-bedroom garden flat in Kowloon. I’m moving there tomorrow.’
A Multitude of Sins Page 14