A Most Immoral Woman (21 page)

‘Just not this one,’ quipped Dumas. ‘And how goes Lionel James with his quest?’

‘He goes. Mainly back and forth between Wei Hai Wei and the Korean coast. The Japs still won’t let him get close to Port Arthur. He told me he once picked up a fellow in Korea, a journalist from a
rival newspaper who’d managed to witness a land battle before getting arrested by the Japanese and dumped on the Korean coast. He was half-starved, filthy and desperate to get to a telegraph station. James had just wired a report on the same battle but based on Japanese sources. He hadn’t received confirmation from the station at Wei Hai Wei that his report had been received and relayed to
The Times
. He didn’t want to be scooped, especially by an eyewitness. So the
Haimun
’s crew prepared a hot bath and fresh clothes for their exhausted guest and plied him with food and drink until he put his head down on the table and snored. Captain Passmore then ran the
Haimun
into Wei Hai Wei as fast as he could. James checked that his report had gone off to
The Times
and they steamed off again. When the correspondent finally woke up, they deposited him somewhere safe and sound and none the wiser.’

Dumas squeaked with laughter.

‘And what are you gentlemen smiling about on this fine spring day?’ The speaker was Koizumi, a Japanese diplomat of Morrison’s acquaintance.

‘The rumour that the Japanese have recently taken Vladivostok,’ Morrison bluffed. ‘Is that battle won, then?’

Koizumi sucked air in through his teeth. ‘You are a good friend of Japan,’ he said. ‘I can tell you that the truth is that the assault on Vladivostok was less than successful. Our navy expended considerable time and materiel bombarding an abandoned post.’

I did the same thing recently.
Morrison had attained, he thought, a certain philosophical distance from his affair with Mae. He was almost beginning to see the humour in it. ‘And so you have given up on Vladivostok?’

‘Of course not,’ Koizumi replied. ‘The Russian stores will not withstand even one more month of blockade. It is the same at
Port Arthur. I am sure that we will have good news for you soon. Ah, and by the way, my government is not very happy with the dispatches of your colleague Granger. He seems to be rather too well embedded on the Russian side.’

‘More well embedded than you know,’ Morrison acknowledged, for his sources told him that Granger had thrown aside his American whore for a Russian one of even less appealing aspect. ‘But if the Japanese government wishes to see the Japanese side better represented, then it needs to open up access to the front to the foreign correspondents.’ Arguing eloquently on behalf of the foreign press, Morrison realised that he had found a worthy new outlet for his energies.

He continued to champion the journalists’ cause to a sympathetic Dumas for some time after they’d taken leave of Koizumi.

‘You’re back with us,’ remarked Dumas as the pair ambled back towards the Avenue of the Well of the Princely Mansions.

‘I never left,’ Morrison lied.

He smelled the perfume before he saw the envelope with the familiar, disgracefully poor penmanship. He tore it open with a sense of dread.
Ernest, honey, come back to Tientsin. I am dying to see you. I send you many kisses and many more after that.

Scratching so hard with his pen that he nearly ripped through to the blotter, Morrison composed a telegram:
DEEPLY REGRET NO IMMEDIATE PROSPECT COMING TIENTSIN. ADVISE YOU ENJOY YOURSELF. GOD BLESS YOU. THINK OF ME SOMETIMES.

It tears my heart strings!

He poked his head outside the library door. Kuan was in the courtyard, talking quietly with Yu-ti. Something about the tenor of their conversation made him hesitate a moment before calling Kuan’s name. At the sound of his voice, both servants jumped. ‘Kuan. Take this to the telegraph office, chop-chop.’

That night, Morrison went to bed with a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s new volume of poetry about the Boer War,
The Five Nations
. He always found Kipling’s full-blooded pride in the Empire as heartening as his virile wit was inspiring. But the unrhythmical nature of some of the verses in this collection left Morrison feeling discomposed. He closed the book just as the nightwatchman called the Hour of the Tiger. Three a.m. He was still tossing and turning when the watchman called the Hour of the Hare at five. He was beset with an overwhelming sense of foreboding. His knees were sore. His sinuses ached. A dull throb in one testicle prompted worried thoughts of gonococcus; dragging himself out of bed, he measured out ten grams of sodium salicyl and swallowed it down as a preventative.

He was plagued by the thought that something, somewhere, had gone horribly wrong. He took a sleeping draught and awoke late and alarmed to find an over-excited Bedlow bursting into his room.

‘Bedlow. What on earth—’

‘Last night, Secretary Kolossoff—you know him?’

Morrison’s head ached. ‘Yes. Kolossoff. Of the Russian Legation. I know him. And to ascertain this you’ve come to disturb my sleep?’

‘I’m sorry for that, G.E. But I thought you’d want to know. Early this morning he shot himself in the head.’

Morrison jerked himself upright. ‘Dead?’

‘No. The bullet lodged in his brain but he did not die. He’d apparently been drinking for days. Blames himself for failing to give his government adequate warning of Japan’s intentions.’

‘Leave me. I’ll be down in a few minutes.’

As Bedlow closed the door behind him, Morrison slid back under the covers. He felt sorry for Kolossoff, whom he’d always considered an agreeable enough sort—for a Russian. He wondered what it would be like to care about something—war, love, anything—so strongly that one could raise a gun to one’s own head and fire. He feared knowing the answer.

The following morning a crashing downpour transformed the capital from dustbowl to mudpit, slicked the paving stones of Morrison’s courtyard and made dank the lime-and-plaster walls of his study. In the streets outside, the open sewage ditches overflowed, a festering, perilous slurry. The weather was unpleasant enough to keep even the most intrepid indoors. And so indoors on this mid-April day Morrison stayed, working, pacing, cataloguing a year’s worth of missionary journals, tending to his correspondence and pacing again, full of roiling emotion. A second missive had come from Mae, insisting he come to see her.
The lady’s tone is most imperious
.

Morrison marvelled at her newfound enthusiasm for correspondence. It was eminently clear that she was displeased with how he had cooled towards her. She once told him that as a little girl she had always got her way; her renewed overtures seemed the petulant act of a spoiled child. She wanted everything—and everyone—on her terms. That might work on the likes of Egan but not him. He retained fond remembrances of their times together. He did not discount the possibility of future liaisons of the sort they enjoyed this last
time in Tientsin but he was not her plaything; the scales had well and truly dropped from his eyes.

Morrison was in the midst of these ruminations when Bedlow stomped into the library in a funk, his hair plastered to his head by the rain, giving him a more fishfaced appearance than normal. He was waving a sodden telegram. ‘The War Office has ordered me back to London “as soon as possible”. It is most unfair. I have only just got here. I am keen to see action and keener to be published, as action I have seen before. What am I to do? You must help me.’

Must I? Not only am I expected to act as hotel, concierge, encyclopaedia and exchange clerk for these colleagues but now I ‘must’ solve all their problems as well.
‘Calm yourself, Bedlow. I shall wire
The Times
and get them to cancel the order to rescind you.’

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

Damned nuisance.

‘Oh, by the way, gossip is Lionel James has secured a Japanese commander on board the
Haimun—
but you probably know that already.’ Bedlow, beady eyed, studied his host for confirmation.

‘I’m not sure you’ll need to be repeating that last fact—if it is indeed a fact—too widely.’
His indiscretion knows no bounds.

Bedlow shrugged. ‘You don’t mind if I stay for a few more days, do you?’

‘You’re most welcome,’ Morrison replied, grinding his teeth.

Kuan entered and handed him a telegram. His heart gave a jolt when he saw who’d sent it. From a poor correspondent, this was quite a fusillade.

IF YOU HONESTLY CARE YOU WILL COME. GO TIENTSIN DO.

Go Tientsin do
? He shook his head.
Fairly lucid for a feminine dispatch.
Telegrams worked well for professional purposes but they lacked nuance.
What in heaven’s name is all this urgency?

‘Is it about me?’ Bedlow asked.

He’d forgotten Bedlow’s presence. ‘No.’

Bedlow looked disappointed. ‘I’ll leave you to it then, shall I?’ He rose from his seat with a tentative air.

Morrison did not stop him.

It stormed all that night.
Raining like heaven’s wrath.
The following day snow fell.
Where has spring gone
? The new leaves on the trees shivered under the onslaught. The city walls seemed to hunch under a squat sky, grey on grey. Morrison, his mood in tune with the weather, lunched with Miss McReady. Stripped of travel’s shine, her conversation struck him as more banal and predictable than previously, her humour weak, her mode of speech schoolmarmish. Even her eyes were less blue than he remembered. He returned home dispirited, only to receive yet another telegram from Mae.

AM STAYING TIENTSIN TO SEE YOU. WIRE IF PLEASED.

If pleased? Of course I would be pleased. I will not respond. I am not her toy!

Kuan informed Morrison that Bedlow would join him for dinner. Life was one test after another.

After dinner, a telegram arrived from Bell giving him the power to act with regard to Granger. He wasted no time in drafting his letter:
Sir, your retention in our service has been left to my judgment. In my judgment your retention is undesirable. Please send resignation by telegraph
.

Kuan entered with a telegram. For a spine-tingling moment, Morrison imagined that through some extraordinary act of
telepathy, Granger had realised what he was doing and was attempting to pre-empt him.

It was not from Granger.

WHY DON’T YOU ANSWER IF ABLE MEET ME TIENTSIN?

Why don’t I answer? As if it is not obvious! She only wishes to complete my humiliation. I am only fooling myself—I am quite sure I am fooling none of my friends—if I think that I will remain unaffected by her. It must not continue. I must stay strong and guarded.

The next morning, Molyneux, up from Chefoo, dropped in for a visit.

‘
Comment va la mademoiselle
?’ Molyneux asked.

‘
Elle va, par habitude.
She wants me to follow. It is absurd under these circumstances. I am entirely disinclined to do so.’

‘And yet,’ Molyneux rejoined, ‘you are tempted. I can see that from the ferocity with which you deny your interest.’

‘It is true,’ Morrison conceded. ‘Have you ever done such a thing?’

‘Invariably I do. Then again, I’m married. It makes things simpler.’

‘So you say. I have yet to see any evidence that marriage makes anything simpler.’

‘And your life, my dear G.E.?’

‘A paradigm of simplicity. And so it shall stay.’

About an hour after Molyneux left, Kuan returned with another telegram. Morrison braced himself: Maysie or Granger? It was from Moberly Bell. Morrison’s jaw dropped in disbelief. RESCIND BEDLOW YOURSELF TAKE PLACE.

So now, after all, I am to go to war. They might have asked me.
It rankled him that he had been ordered to go in such a summary
manner. For all his complaints about being left behind and all his grousing about the quality of the roustabouts, amateurs and dunderheads employed by
The Times
, he was not eager to take Bedlow’s place amongst the war correspondents. The
Haimun
’s problems were still unresolved and there was no guarantee, even with his connections, that the Japanese would let him get to the front when they were blocking all the others. He loathed the thought of how it would look if he, George Ernest Morrison, turned out to have no better access to the front than the rest of the rabble; it was insupportable.

He replied to Bell, stating that he would not shrink from going whilst also implying that he was too big a man to be ordered to take the place of a much smaller one. He girded himself for the drama of informing Bedlow that he himself was to replace him. He made a list of instructions for Kuan, whom he’d leave in charge of the household. He asked Blunt to take over as
The Times
’s chief correspondent in China while he was gone. He considered what he would need and what he could carry if on the march with the Japanese army. There was much to think about, much to do.
STOPPING TIENTSIN EN ROUTE JAPAN. STAYING ASTOR HOUSE.
And thus I am guided by an inscrutable Providence back into her orbit. Back into her arms. And thence to war.

The brass band of the Sherwood Foresters was playing an afternoon concert in the octagonal alcove of the Astor House and all Tientsin was there for the diversion. He had not realised such would be the case when he had suggested in his note to her that they meet there for tea. By the time he arrived, she was already seated and it was too late to suggest a change of plans. Morrison sensed that the entertainment was considerably enhanced by the sight of the famous correspondent and the scandalous American together again. He caught eyes darting in their direction from behind raised teacups and fans. It was all so intriguing that it was a miracle the Sherwood Foresters even got a look-in.

‘And so I’m off to the front. Or at least that’s the intention. The Japanese are still being most obstreperous on the topic of permissions.’

‘If the war is as righteous as you claim,’ she said, ‘then why are the Japanese so reluctant to be observed in the practice of it?’

Flibbertigibbet.
‘Strategic reasons,’ he said with more conviction than he felt. Her question irritated him. ‘But as I
remarked in our first conversation, women are natural pacifists. That is why they are unsuited to govern nations. They do not have the marrow to enact the necessary.’

‘You didn’t answer my question. Besides, does that make Tolstoi a woman?’ Mae retorted, responding to his tone. ‘He has written a most moving pamphlet arguing the case against war in general and this one in particular, calling it contrary to the teachings of both Jesus Christ and Lord Buddha. He says war brings needless suffering and stupefies and brutalises men. I found his reasoning quite persuasive.
Bethink Yourselves!
is the title in English by the way.’

‘I know it. And yet,’ Morrison countered with a dismissive air, ‘one of Tolstoi’s own sons is so much in favour of the war that he has enlisted to serve. And the old man himself rides out from Isnaia Poliana every few days all the way to Tula to catch the latest news from the front.’

‘Well of course he is eager for the news if his own flesh and blood is fighting. Do you deny that Tolstoi has any point?’

‘He makes a very good point. He states that Manchuria is to Russia an alien land over which it has no rights.’
Why are we arguing about this
?

‘Who has rights to Manchuria except the Manchus? I, at least, am persuaded by Tolstoi’s words.’

Morrison had never appreciated Russian literature less. He took a deep breath. ‘You’re very feisty today, Maysie. But surely you didn’t send me all those telegrams urging me to come to see you only because you wished to argue the case against war.’

‘No,’ she replied, her fire suddenly extinguished. ‘Honey, you will be careful, won’t you?’

‘Of course. I’m not foolish. And I’m not going to do battle—only report on it.’

Her lips trembled. ‘I’m afraid.’

‘Please don’t worry, Mae. I’ll be fine.’ He patted her hand. This was becoming tedious.

Her eyes filled with tears.

Now what?

A teardrop fell onto her gloves, leaving a damp spot. She blinked down at her hands for a long while.

Truly she has missed her calling. The stage is the poorer
. Her carryings-on, her stories and her flagrant infidelities had finally registered with the saner part of him. Though he could not have known for certain until he had seen her again, observing her now he was satisfied that he had banished her from his heart.

Another tear fell. He grew irritated and restless, thinking of the many appointments he still had to attend to in Tientsin before sailing to Wei Hai Wei and thence Japan.

She took a sip of tea and replaced the china cup in its saucer. ‘There is something I have to tell you.’

Morrison waited, his patience thinning.

She folded her hands in her lap again and looked him in the eye. ‘It seems that I am not infertile after all.’