A Mind of Winter (11 page)
When I got back to my room, I drafted a letter of resignation. There would be no reconciliation. I knew that Penelope would not again appear at my door on Thursday or any other afternoon. It was three weeks to the day that I had made my disastrous speech to the assembled school, not truly the reason for my departure, as I had presented it to Ma Ling, though an important moment in the souring. It was only after the trip to the lake, after that deathly still moment in the doorway of the outhouse, that I knew my long years of devotion to the students at the school had come to an end.
I did not leave, however, with a sense of despair, nor did I feel anything but gratitude toward Penelope. She had shown me that my heart was not barren; it was with Penelope that I had experienced the first real stirrings of love.
I
counted the minutes to my next pipe. Seventy-three. I concentrated on the small face of the clock I wore on a chain around my neck, watching the second hand make its way round and round the dial.
Round and round the merry-go-round
, I said softy to myself.
Round and round we go
.
A knock sounded at the door. I looked up. The door opened a crack, and one wide polished shoe slunk sluglike into view.
Han Shu’s voice was a blast of molasses: “My dear, allow me an audience.” His ample body followed. “I’ve brought you your pipe.” He strode toward me, swinging the pipe before him as if it were some kind of divining rod he was using to determine my mood. When he reached the cot he leaned down, close enough so that his breath blew damply into my face.
“Don’t worry,” he said thickly. “You will get your four o’clock pipe as well. Consider this a gift.”
I took the pipe and waited for Han Shu to prepare the pellet over the small lamp and then, when it was oozy and puffy, place it over the hole in the stem of the pipe. Slowly, I inhaled.
“Word has spread apparently about Ma Ling,” he said, giving an odd little flourish of his hand. “We are on the cusp of a new era. An era of powerful reputation. We might, in fact, start a little specialization.
Private girls
, so to speak. There are certainly more than a few exclusive men like Mr.—like Ma Ling’s gentleman—who prefer the use of a girl who is, well, limited to them.”
Han Shu seemed for a moment to be chewing some pleasing morsel in his mouth. “I imagine they might like to train them too, to their own predilections.” He paused. “Let me come to the point. I must ask you, Christine, to return to that most important of all duties which you have, if you don’t mind me remarking, let slip.”
I inhaled again and watched as the burned little lump of opium shriveled to almost nothing.
“It’s imperative. I’d never thought it possible—people here left and right, selling up and leaving in droves. Even Victor Sassoon! I’ve heard he has plans to remove to some island in the Caribbean. They’re driving away my friends, my comrades—my clientele! Han Shu’s Bar is threatened … after surviving so much …” He placed his hand over his heart, his brow tensed, his dark eyes wide and glistening.
“Manor House is our only future, I see that now. Christine, I must exhort you. We need more girls. I cannot make this more plain. And soon. It’s every bit as much your future as mine, my dear. Would you permit me to remind you of that?”
Han Shu was stroking my hand; his expression of pleading was not one I’d seen before in his face.
“Stick to the street children, of course,” he continued. “A mother catching wind of her daughter’s success might suddenly develop an inconvenient bout of maternal devotion.” He pulled back his lips in what I had learned was supposed to be jocularity, but which gave the impression of a donkey preparing to bray.
“Consider it your contribution to our joint endeavor. I mean it, Christine. With your talents and my business sense—but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’d recommend an evening stroll, my dear. Tonight. Inland, where you had such luck finding Ma Ling. The pickings might be quite …” Han Shu paused, a man preparing to draw his trump card. “Salubrious. Yes! Salubrious!” He turned and left the room.
“You will tell me if I’m chewing your ear off, won’t you?” Archibald began as Barnaby planted himself in his usual chair.
“Strange words to pass your lips,” said Barnaby.
“I know I’m a bit of a scoundrel, but I’m terribly troubled all the same, right at this moment.”
Barnaby glanced at his watch. He had tried to take Archibald’s advice—to put Christine out of his mind, to wait until she resurfaced, until she was ready to seek him out. It had been much harder than he could have imagined; the strain of it was wearing him down.
“I wouldn’t want to keep you,” Archibald was saying uncertainly.
“I’m not meeting the others until ten,” Barnaby replied, trying to be gracious, though seeing the inflamed look on Archibald’s face made him wish he could leave. He ordered a drink and sat back in his chair.
These meetings with Archibald had been a welcome distraction for Barnaby, but he was beginning to tire of his friend’s sordid eccentricities. Perhaps, he found himself thinking, it was time to return home, to reclaim his life on American soil.
“Here’s the point,” Archibald said. “A question, really, that I would put to you. Have you ever smelled a mixture of hot-buttered crumpets and honeysuckle? Picture it, Barnaby, a room in a comfortable boarding house overlooking the hills of the Lake District. Honeysuckle spills from the window boxes, the air coming in at the window is fresh as apples. A maid in a bonnet—no more than a child, really—brings tea and crumpets to your room on a tray. Your senses are reeling, her red cheeks glow. A knob of butter shines on her finger; she’s mortified! Her eyelashes flutter, poor dear, you think she might burst into tears. You want to take her into your arms and comfort her. That buttery odor makes your mouth water, the honeysuckle sends you into a swoon; those plump arms, that tender look of remorse on the child’s face—all make you feel you have clumsily stumbled upon heaven.
I’m sorry, sir, it was an accident
, she whispers.
Come here, my sweet
, you say, and you know by the throaty sound of your voice and the look on the child’s face that you have scared her half to death. So you slip your finger into the middle of the soft crumpet, like Tom Thumb poking about for his plum, and you pull up a lovely warm gobbit of butter and lick it right off. To show the girl that her buttery finger has not upset you in the least. You laugh and hope she will too but there’s terror in her face. She’s staring at you as if you’re the big bad wolf—it makes you sad. You see, more than anything, at that moment you want her company. All those tantalizing fragrances! You spoon some blackberry jam onto the crumpet; you must take a bite, you want to detain her, you try to do both at the same time. An embarrassment of riches: a mouthful of crumpet, the warm sweet jam and melted butter fresh from the farm, and a frightened little beauty by your side, plump as a suckling.
“
And how old are you, my precious?
you say, trying to sound kind.
Thirteen and a half, sir
, she replies. You are surprised; she looks younger.
Well, not to worry
, you say, meaning to put her mind at rest about the buttery finger.
Come over here, let me pat your arm
. She takes a few frightened steps toward you and you pat her plump shoulder. How your fingers ache to caress her! How you long to breathe in the child’s odor from her hair and skin.
“But here’s the problem; you know it as well as the sound of your own name. This is England! There’s a funny look in her face now, piteous, confused, and you realize it is because there are tears streaming from your eyes.
My sweet
, you say, no longer the big bad wolf, just a pitiful fat old man.”
Archibald wiped away a tear. “You spend a good minute or two trying to refrain but you cannot stop yourself, and you let your hand slip to her rump, and you stroke her there a few times, firmly enough to get a sense of her dear shape. The fear is back in her face, and that makes it all the more delicious, and you let your hand linger. Your fingers are aching, how dearly you’d love to … But no.
England
, you say to yourself,
Almighty England
, and you go back to patting the child’s arm.
“
Thank you, my dear
, you say innocently enough,
for the tea
, and she takes that to mean she may go, which she does, and you are left alone with your grief.”
Barnaby pushed his drink away. He was used to Archibald’s waywardness—he had depended on it, in fact, for amusement—and had come over time to admire his friend, in some peculiar, roundabout way. But, for the first time, he found himself feeling frankly disgusted by him. Could it be, he wondered, that all this was
not
bravado, the tawdry musings of a man staring down old age? Could it be that Archibald was, in fact, truly a pedophile?
Archibald swatted his face with his handkerchief, then drained his glass. He began his customary scan of the room, his internal radar set to spot anyone in the post of barman or waiter.
“That, my old fellow, is why I came to the East. Heaven and beyond! Of course, it’s almost impossible to find a plump one here. But I cherish a secret little hope, and mark my words—ah, waiter!” Archibald winked. “Damn the glassful. We’ll take the bottle, my man. From beneath the counter. Harry’s special port.” And then, to Barnaby: “Marvelous, don’t you think? Don’t have a clue where he gets it. But drink up! Never did see you such a nursemaid with a drink as you are tonight, dear fellow.”
Watching Archibald stare impatiently in the direction of the bar, Barnaby remembered the real reason for his visit; he was certain that Archibald knew Christine’s whereabouts.
A moment later, the waiter hurried toward them, carrying a bottle wrapped in a starched white napkin, above which a cracked label was visible. He filled Archibald’s glass then set the bottle on the table. Archibald flicked a note from his billfold and handed it to the waiter, who bowed rapidly several times and mumbled something self-deprecatory in broken English.
“Now, where was I? Oh yes, my little secret. You see, I have found just the girl. I’m trying to fatten her up. Pâté de foie gras, bowls of hot chocolate, that sort of thing—Harry furnishes it all, isn’t he marvelous? It’s all devilishly hard to get hold of here, as you can imagine, but Harry’s quite the resourceful genius.”
Archibald, his face red from emotion and from the very good port, leaned over to refill Barnaby’s glass. Barnaby flattened his hand across the rim and shook his head. He could not bring himself to ask about Christine; he felt desperate to get away from Archibald, and he also felt certain that the man would not in fact yield up Christine. With a sudden pang of desperation, he fancied that she had been swallowed up by this place, had disappeared into some great churning gut from which she would never be released. That she was, perhaps, lost to him forever.
“Saving yourself?” Archibald asked sorrowfully.
“Just trying to slow down the train,” Barnaby said, standing, unable even to attempt a gracious departure. “I’m afraid I really must be going.”
Archibald shook his head. “I suppose you think I am a scoundrel, after all,” he said, setting the bottle down on the table.
I lay perfectly still on my cot in the silence, blinking my eyes in an attempt to relieve the stale itch. I threw the thin cover to the ground but it made little difference. I could feel the perspiration at my temples, at the back of my neck, on the inside of my elbows, behind my knees. And then, a recollection, oozing in upon the bland stupor, so vivid that, for a moment, I wondered if I hadn’t chanced upon a mysterious form of time travel.
There I was again in my rooms at the school, tidying up, putting things away. I could see the tailored green lawns; could feel in the air the orderliness of an orderly people confronting the chaos of war. In my recollection, there was something odd about the set of my face: a stiffness of the muscles, a tightness in my jaw that was both familiar and foreign—a lost habit from the past.
That night, in my rooms at the school, I had glanced at my watch—half-past eleven—and, on a whim, decided to make a quick circuit of the flower garden, which the gardeners had managed to bring to full bloom, despite the constrictions of war. In the hallway, I breathed in the familiar oiled wood smell. Thinking about the sterling roses and the sprays of baby’s breath, wondering whether their fragrance would be different in the dead of night, a noise made me stop. I turned in the direction of the sound. Backtracking the way I had come, I passed the empty rooms of those teachers who were away for the summer. Empty rooms, I thought, an open invitation for rodents. The sound grew louder, a soft padding. Perhaps a squirrel, having entered though an open window and unable to find his way out?