A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Tiens!’ Julienne cried, seizing her drink as the table beside her was rocked beneath the stampede. ‘I think I must go now!’

  ‘You will do no such thing,’ Helena said mercilessly. ‘You can help hold the dear little things at bay while Jeremy cuts his cake.’

  With a horrified expression on her face, Julienne followed Elizabeth into the large, airy, balloon-filled dining-room. ‘Merde!’ she said expressively as she was surrounded by sticky faces and sticky fingers. ‘What on earth possessed Helena to invite so many children? There must be hundreds here!’

  ‘Twenty,’ Elizabeth said with a grin, removing a brightly painted papier méché figure from a child who was trying to eat it.

  Julienne trod into a cream cake that had been inadvertently dropped to the floor. ‘I don’t believe it!’ she moaned, looking down in horror at her ruined suede shoes. ‘They are like an invading army! Who on earth is that child trying to eat an almond slice and a fairy cake and a brandy-snap curl all at the same time?’

  Elizabeth giggled. ‘Lady Gresby’s grand-daughter. She’s quite talented at getting several things into her mouth at the same time.’

  Julienne shuddered and, following Elizabeth’s example, reluctantly joined hands with the children at either side of her as the candles were lit on the cake and everyone began to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Jeremy.

  It was Mei Lin who saw him enter the room. Her eyes flew to Elizabeth, but she was lifting a child up to see the cake and the candles as Jeremy began to huff and puff ready to blow them out. He strolled towards the laden buffet-table, a lavishly wrapped present tucked beneath one arm, a white silk shirt open at the throat, white flannels hugging his hips. Julienne, immediately sensing the presence of a member of the opposite sex, looked away from the cake, her eyes meeting his, her eyebrows lifting in surprise and pleasure.

  ‘Happy birthday to youuuu, happy birthday to youuuu,’ the children chorused gustily. ‘Happy birthday, dear Jeremy, happy birthday to youuu.’

  To Julienne’s chagrin he did not accept the invitation in her eyes to come and stand beside her. Instead he weaved his way imperturbably between the rioting children, towards his hostess.

  With a great exhalation of breath, Jeremy succeeded in blowing out the last candle, and amidst frenzied cheering Helena hugged him tight and then looked up and saw Raefe. Her mouth widened into a welcoming smile. ‘My goodness! You actually came! How brave of you! There isn’t money enough in the world to tempt Tom to a children’s party!’

  ‘It is a bit fearsome,’ he said with a grin, handing Jeremy his present, not looking as if he found it at all fearsome.

  Jeremy tore the paper off his present, revealing a magnificent clockwork sports-car. He whooped in delight, and Helena said promptingly: ‘Say “thank you” to Mr Elliot, Jeremy.’ As she did so, she turned towards Jung-lu. ‘I think it’s time for the children to be given their kites now, Jung-lu. They can take them outside to fly them and, Lee.…’ Her houseboy moved forward. ‘Drinks, please. A whisky and soda for Mr Elliot and two gin and tonics and a glass of white wine, please.’

  Relieved that the end of the party was in sight without any accidents material or physical, she pushed her hair once more away from her face and said to Elizabeth: ‘Gosh, and to think there’ll have to be another one next year, and another one the year after that, until he’s at least twenty-one!’ She was laughing, but as she looked across at Elizabeth her eyes widened and her laughter faded.

  Elizabeth hadn’t moved from her position near the table, only now there were no children crowding round her. Her eyes were wide and dark, her finely etched face so pale that Helena thought she was about to faint.

  ‘Elizabeth, are you all right?’ she began in concern and then she became aware of Raefe, his eyes holding Elizabeth’s, the expression in them of such burning, blazing desire that she fell back in stunned shock.

  The children had surged into the garden, Jung-lu and Mei Lin in their wake. Lee had handed both herself and Julienne their drinks and was standing beside Raefe and Elizabeth, his silver drinks-tray proffered deferentially. Neither of them made the slightest move towards removing their glasses. Helena doubted if they were even aware of his presence.

  ‘Why won’t you speak to me on the telephone?’ he asked her harshly. ‘Why won’t you at least talk to me?’

  Her hands opened and closed at her side as if-seeking for a support that was absent. She was wearing an amethyst silk shirt and a white linen skirt, little gold sandals and not much else. With a fresh wave of shock, Helena realized how sexy and effortlessly chic her friend was, how unknowingly provocative.

  ‘I told you that I wouldn’t see you again.…’ Her voice was barely audible, her eyes bruised with pain.

  ‘Mon Dieu …,’ Julienne whispered beneath her breath, staring from one to the other in disbelieving comprehension.

  Helena raised her eyebrows sharply in Lee’s direction, indicating that he remove himself with all speed. The less he heard the better. As it was, Jung-lu and Mei Lin would be treated to a highly descriptive account of what had happened, and before the end of the day, the Chinese love of gossip being what it was, the staff of every household on the Peak would be cognizant of the facts. Including Adam’s.

  ‘This is ridiculous.…’ His voice was brusque, full of such deep need that Julienne felt a shiver run down her spine and a flush of heat surge through her groin. ‘I must see you, must speak to you!’

  She shook her head stiffly, as if she could barely force herself to move. ‘No,’ she repeated, through parched lips. ‘We have nothing to talk about, Raefe. Nothing to discuss.’

  ‘Like hell we have!’ His hand shot out, encircling her wrist, and as Elizabeth cried out like an animal in pain Helena stepped forward, saying urgently: ‘For God’s sake stop it! The children will be back at any minute.’

  Elizabeth sucked in a deep shuddering breath and with sudden strength wrenched free of his grasp. ‘You shouldn’t have come here!’ she flared at him, her eyes brilliant with anguish. ‘You shouldn’t have come!’ She pushed past Helena, running from the room, tears pouring down her face.

  ‘Lizzie!’ He sprang after her, catching up with her in the mosaic-tiled hall, seizing her wrists in a grasp she couldn’t escape. ‘Listen to me, for God’s sake! I telephoned Roman last night. He’s given me—’

  ‘Did you tell him we were lovers, as well? Just as you’ve so publicly told Helena and Julienne? Just as you might as well have told Adam!’

  ‘I told him you were a brilliant pianist,’ he rasped, his hawklike face as agonized as hers. ‘I told him you needed a teacher! A great teacher.’

  ‘Did you tell him that you’ve never heard me play?’ she sobbed in fury, tears of rage and grief mixing inextricably. ‘Did you tell him I was a married woman who was bored with her husband and wanted a little diversion?’

  ‘I told him I loved you!’ he shouted at her, his fury demonic. ‘I told him you were dying inside by inches because your fool of a husband had cut you off from your musical life-blood! I told him—’

  ‘Adam’s not a fool!’ If she could have clawed his face, she would have done. She hated him; hated herself; hated the spectacle they were making of themselves in front of Helena and Julienne. ‘He’s good and he’s kind and he’s twice the man that you are!’

  ‘There’s a man in Kowloon,’ Raefe continued, not deigning even to respond to her last, furiously flung words. ‘His name is Li Pi, and Roman says he’s one of the greatest piano teachers alive today. He’s in retirement now, but Roman has spoken to him and he’s willing to see you—’

  Her hand at last twisted free, and she slapped him across the face with all the force she was capable of. ‘Never! I shall never take anything from you, Raefe Elliot! Not ever again!’

  As she broke free of him, running from the house, the children surged out into the hall, kites and carefully wrapped slices of birthday cake in their hands. He took a step after her, and Helena rushed forward grabbi
ng hold of his arm. ‘For God’s sake, no!’ she hissed. ‘It will be all over the island!’

  He stopped short, his hands clenched, a nerve twitching furiously at his jawline, watching as she hurled herself into her Buick, ramming it into gear, disappearing down the drive in a cloud of dust.

  Other cars began to motor slowly towards the open door. ‘Timothy, your car is here,’ Helena said in a cracked voice, forcing a smile and despatching one of her guests with relief. ‘Jonathan, your chauffeur is waiting. Lydia … Rosalind.…’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Raefe said to her tautly, the abrasive masculine lines of his face harsh as the children tumbled out into the drive. ‘I didn’t intend there to be such a scene.’

  ‘I don’t know what has happened between the two of you, Raefe,’ she said bewilderedly. ‘But, whatever it was, there can be no future in it. Her marriage is a good one. She won’t throw it away. Not for you or for anyone.’

  A mirthless smile touched the corner of his mouth. ‘She will, Helena,’ he said with utter certainty. ‘Just give her time and she’ll leave him and come to me and she won’t ever regret it!’

  ‘Ce n’est pas possible! I could hardly believe it!’ Julienne said, rolling away from Ronnie and lying on her back in their big double bed. ‘I thought he was forcibly going to pick her up and carry her away!’

  Ronnie pushed himself up against the pillows and reached towards the bedside table for his cigarettes and a lighter. ‘What the devil does Elliot think he’s playing at? The news will be all over the Peak by sundown.’

  ‘Mais oui,’ Julienne said admiringly, turning towards him, leaning her weight on her elbow. ‘But he obviously does not care.’ She took his cigarette from between his fingers and drew on it meditatively. ‘What I want to know, chéri, is when did this all start? I had no idea, and I could see from Helena’s face that Helena had no idea, either.’ She handed him back his cigarette and leaned her chin on her hand. ‘Raefe Elliot and Elizabeth! It is incredible, is it not? I always thought her so calm, so sensible, so … so very English.’

  Ronnie grinned. There were times when Juli was not half as perceptive as she believed herself to be. ‘Still waters run deep,’ he said, pulling her close against his chest. Above her tousled red curls his eyes were speculative. Had Raefe and Elizabeth already been embroiled in an affair the day he had lured her to lunch at the Pen? Or had that been the beginning? Had he, Ronnie Ledsham, been inadvertently responsible for this most intriguing turn of events?

  Julienne’s fingers ran lightly and arousingly over the smooth hard contours of his chest and down to the heavy weight of his sex. ‘I always thought that you were more than a little interested in la belle Elizabeth yourself,’ she said coaxingly. ‘Perhaps you were, chéri, and perhaps she was not interested?’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Ronnie lied good-naturedly, his penis throbbing and hardening in the warm grip of her hand. ‘La belle Elizabeth is too cool and contained for my taste.’

  Julienne giggled as he rolled his weight on top of her, taking a small erect nipple into his mouth. ‘I think you are wrong, mon amour,’ she said, sliding her legs around his waist, arching herself towards him with pleasure. ‘Yes, where Elizabeth is concerned, I think you are very wrong!’

  ‘I’ve never been so devastated in my whole life,’ Helena said to Alastair, her eyes dark with worry. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered where they had been; they could have been at a reception at Government House and it wouldn’t have made an iota of difference! He would still have thundered at her that he loved her; that he had to see her; had to speak to her.’

  ‘And Elizabeth?’ Alastair asked with interest. ‘What did she say in return?’

  ‘I thought she was going to faint. She was so white, so still. She said that they had nothing to talk about. Nothing to discuss.’

  ‘Then, whatever there has been between them is all over,’ Alastair said dismissively, regarding Helena’s wide-hipped, ripe, lush body with satisfaction.

  They were in bed at her Kowloon flat. Tom was taking Jeremy and Jennifer to the zoological gardens the next day for a birthday treat, and so Helena had left them with him for the night and had returned home alone.

  Helena shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, pleasantly comfortable in the circle of his arms. ‘If you had heard the passion in their voices, seen the expression in their eyes, then you would know that despite all her protests to the contrary it was far from over.’

  Alastair’s forefinger traced the line of her neck down to her shoulder, to her breast, to the full dark aureola of her nipple. ‘The man’s a bastard,’ he said succinctly. ‘I don’t know why you bother with him.’

  ‘I like him.’ She shifted her position so that he could reach both her breasts, loving the slow unhurried deliberation of his hands. ‘I like his go-to-hell attitude that takes no account of what people say or think. I like the way be takes his Malay girlfriend with him to all the places he would take a white girl. There’s something very feral and primitive about him, something barely veneered by the politeness civilization demands.’

  ‘Good grief,’ Alastair said, sitting bolt upright and staring at her in shock. ‘You wouldn’t like it if I behaved in the same manner! Squiring other women around when he has a perfectly sweet wife at home. Thrashing Jacko Latimer so that the man dies of his injuries! Gambling tens of thousands at Happy Valley! Racing around in that damned Lagonda of his as if the island were his personal racetrack!’

  Helena slid her hands up and around his neck, pulling him affectionately back down against her. ‘Of course I wouldn’t, silly,’ she said agreeably. ‘I like you just the way you are.’

  His light blue eyes darkened fractionally. It was still ‘like’and not ‘love’. He said, with a trace of harshness: ‘The fellow is a rogue. He doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong there,’ Helena said as he rolled her gently over on to her stomach and she raised herself up on her hands and knees, her heavy mane of hair swinging down on to the bed, her breasts hanging like full rich fruit, her legs apart as he kneeled behind her. ‘I think he cares very much about Elizabeth. He mentioned a teacher he had found for her. A piano teacher.…’

  He was no longer listening to her. The firm head of his penis pushed hard into the entrance of her vagina, his hands tightening convulsively on her buttocks. ‘Oh God!’ he groaned, thrusting deep inside her in an agony of relief. ‘Oh God, but I love you, Helena! Jesus, but I love you!’

  For the second time, Elizabeth slammed the Buick into the double garage beside Adam’s Riley. Her hands were trembling when she took them from the wheel. Damn him! Damn him! Damn him! How dare he compromise her in such a way in front of Julienne and Helena and God alone knows how many servants and children?

  There was a piece of paper tucked securely beneath one of her windscreen-wipers, but she did not bother to remove it. Several of the cars parked in the Nicholson drive had been littered with party streamers. Her house-boy could remove it when he cleaned the car.

  She entered the house, knowing very well what it was she had to do. She should never have come to Hong Kong, never have abandoned her musical studies in London. She was twenty-five, for God’s sake. In musical terms that was old. If she wanted to make an international name for herself as a pianist, then she had no time to lose. She had already won two major prizes, and for a short time they had placed her where she wanted to be – on the concert platform. But they had not been enough to establish her. There had been no frantic letters from promoters, demanding that she return to England and undertake engagements for them. She was out of sight and out of mind. To save her sanity – and her marriage – she had to win another major prize and so make a triumphal return.

  ‘Hello, my love. Was it a good party?’ Adam asked, stuffing tobacco down in his pipe as he walked towards her.

  ‘Yes … no …,’ she replied, appalled at how distressed she still felt.

  He laughed, putting his arm around her shoulders. �
�Make up your mind, love. Either it was or it wasn’t’.

  She forced a laugh. ‘Oh, you know what children’s parties are like. The noise was indescribable.’

  ‘It was far too quiet here,’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘I hate it when I come home and you’re not in.’

  ‘That’s what I’d like to talk to you about,’ she said, knowing that this time she couldn’t be a coward; that this time she had to tell him exactly how she felt. ‘I want to go back to London, Adam.’

  They had walked through the downstairs rooms to the long veranda that ran the length of the house at the back. It was Adam’s favourite retreat at dusk. He liked to sit with a sundowner at his side, looking out over the garden and the hillside beyond and the magnificent views of Victoria and the harbour and the distant hills of the Kowloon Peninsula.

  He sat down in his cane long-chair, saying good-temperedly: ‘We’ve been through all this before, Beth. There can be no question of you returning to London now that war has broken out. Good heavens, children are being evacuated away from London in their thousands.’

  ‘I’m not a child, Adam,’ she said, sitting down beside him, struggling for calm and control. ‘And it isn’t because of the war that I want to return. It’s a far more selfish reason.’

  A closed shuttered look came down over his face. It was a look that she had grown familiar with. These days, whenever she spoke of her music, he would be conscientiously polite, but the same shuttered expression came into his eyes. He no longer wanted to hear about it. As far as he was concerned, her music had begun to be an intrusion. He had encouraged her in the early days of their marriage, taking pleasure in indulging her, but when it had come to a choice between moving to Hong Kong, which he wanted to do, or remaining in London so that she could pursue her career, then there had been no choice at all. Just as there had been no choice when her father had wished to live in Nice.

  ‘I’m twenty-five, Adam,’ she said forcefully. ‘If I want to continue my career – and I do want to continue it – then I have to win a major international prize. You know as well as I that it’s the quickest and most effective route to a concert career, not only because of the publicity and prize money involved, but also because important orchestral engagements are guaranteed to the winners.’