A Most Immoral Woman Read online

  ‘Tosh. Even if that were true, I could hardly afford to keep an heiress.’

  ‘That’s the good thing about heiresses. They keep themselves. If you will not have her, perhaps I will. Not that she noticed me. When I spoke up just then, she looked over as though trying to remember who I was.’ Dumas made mournful eyes at his champagne and then tipped it down his throat.

  ‘I thought you learned your lesson. Your wife, if I recall correctly, has only just agreed to return to you.’

  Dumas grimaced. ‘I must watch my step. I am rarely allowed to forget the high position my father-in-law holds in the Foreign Office. My wife is currently threatening to have him return us to India, despite being well aware that I am in the toils of the native money-lenders there. But with regards to the tasty Miss Perkins, a man can dream, can he not?’

  ‘Feel free,’ replied Morrison, affecting indifference. ‘I myself am neither a dreamer nor a poet.’

  ‘Though,’ Dumas pointed out, ‘you dress like one. With your soft collars and all.’

  ‘This conversation has degenerated from gossip to fashion. Before we mutate into a pair of old hens, I move that we discuss something of more pressing import. The number of Japanese troops surging up the Korean peninsula towards the Yalu River, for example.’

  ‘Granger says—’

  ‘Granger?’ Morrison exclaimed, so piqued he forgot entirely about the ravishing young lady at the other table. ‘That little dwarf’s a deuced fool. He has managed to get closer to the action than any of my newspaper’s other correspondents and yet every sentence he writes is of dubious veracity. He admitted that the information about troop movements conveyed in his last telegram was gleaned from a Chinese carter. Next he will be reporting the gossip of ricksha pullers. What’s more, he echoes whatever the Russians tell him; he will swallow any wild claim so long as it is washed down with enough vodka. I have had to field complaints from the Japanese Legation. They know I am The Times’s senior correspondent and so they blame me for his telegrams.’

  ‘And yet,’ Dumas noted, ‘as we saw again this morning, our Japanese friends are not entirely forthcoming either.’

  ‘Indeed. They have obliged us with a war but not with any worthwhile information about its progress.’

  ‘The Japanese tell you more than they tell anyone else; of that, at least, I am certain.’

  ‘Sparse comfort.’

  Dumas snapped his fingers. ‘I forgot to mention that the Japanese consul in Tientsin claimed to me that his army had already sunk fifty Russian ships off Port Arthur.’

  Morrison shook his head. ‘I doubt it. The entire Russian fleet consists of only seventeen vessels.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘The part that is not tied up in the Baltic Sea awaiting the thaw, most assuredly so.’

  Dumas popped a sugared almond into his mouth and chewed. ‘Granger. Is he really a dwarf?’

  Morrison shrugged. ‘He’s short.’

  Dumas barked with laughter. ‘And you’re tall. Henceforth I will call you a giant.’ Reading his companion’s expression, he added hastily, ‘Which, of course, you are.’

  ‘Making sense of this war requires background and experience,’ Morrison grumbled. ‘The motley collection of roustabouts whom my editor has hired as war correspondents have neither. They have spent most of their time, as far as I can see, re-creating naval battles in bars up and down the China coast, sinking a battleship with every beer. Those who’ve actually made it to Port Arthur spend most of their time investigating the syphilitic marvels of Maud’s Brothel. The rest are still in a complete cloud as to where Port Arthur even is. One old veteran, Tulloch, recently landed in Chefoo, on the Shantung Peninsula, armed to the teeth and mistaking the treaty port for the front! We’re lucky he didn’t fire on the British officers’ mess. And yet The Times has made the decision to anchor me to Peking to act as an exchange clerk for these incompetents and their dispatches. It is incomprehensible.’ Morrison neglected to mention that his employer’s decision had been, at least partly, in response to his own belly-aching on the subject of his health. ‘I have told Bell that I really must see some action myself, and not to send any more men.’

  ‘You are most severe in your judgment of others. It makes me quite fear to leave the room. You may have wondered why you find me sticking so doggedly by your side.’

  ‘Clever chap, Dumas. I have never thought otherwise. But you of all people should know that I reserve my harshest judgment for myself.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’ Dumas’s expression grew serious. ‘I did wish to ask your opinion on something. I know that in all your telegrams and public statements you are sanguine about an early victory for Japan. But aren’t you worried that if the war drags on, Britain, as an ally of Japan, might be dragged into the conflict? As you know, the Boer War depleted our military resources. My superiors fear that should the Russians be defeated in Manchuria—’

  ‘Which they will be…’

  ‘—the Tsar may invade Afghanistan and upset the balance of power on the subcontinent.’

  ‘Balderdash. You might as well say that if the Japanese succeed in displacing the Russian sphere of influence in Manchuria, they will go on to occupy all of north China.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But surely, following victory, Japan could possibly grow to rival Britain in commerce. People are saying—’

  ‘People will say anything.’

  Dumas bowed his head to the pigeon-egg soup.

  Morrison regretted his brusqueness. ‘I don’t need to tell you that of course. You are no fool.’

  Dumas, heartened, drew his hand over his beard, which rained crumbs.

  Morrison grew aware of a sensation on his cheek like the tickle of sunshine. Out of the corner of his eye, he looked towards the ladies’ table. With a prick of disappointment, he allowed that he might have been mistaken. Miss Perkins appeared absorbed in her conversation with her chaperone.

  The waiters removed the men’s soup bowls and placed before them anchovy on toast, broiled chicken and salad à la Russe.

  Over at the ladies’ table, Miss Perkins rearranged her skirts. One fashionably narrow boot peeped out from under her hem. Whether it had been revealed by accident or design was a question that taxed Morrison. He imagined a pale foot, smooth toes, a delicate but firm arch, finely turned ankles.

  He wrenched his attention back to Dumas. ‘I am glad that we came,’ he insisted in a tone that implied his companion had suggested otherwise. ‘It is poor work sitting in a drawing room in Peking whilst battles are raging in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Dumas concurred, patting his mouth with his napkin. ‘Though I don’t think you need to fear being accused of poor work as far as this war is concerned. You have done so much to advance the Japanese cause in the public mind that I’ve heard a number of people referring to the conflict as “Morrison’s War”.’

  Morrison pretended to be surprised. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘You can’t fool me.’ Dumas watched the waiter top up their glasses before turning back to his friend. ‘You’re flattered.’

  ‘It is not every man who has a war of his own,’ Morrison conceded with a quicksilver smile.

  Just then, Miss Perkins erupted in laughter. Morrison was stabbed by anguish. Had she overheard? As if she does not already think me self-important enough. But if she had been the least bit cognisant of the men’s conversation, she gave no sign of it. He was torn between disappointment and consolation.

  The waiter placed before the gentlemen a platter of cold baked ham with an accompaniment of tomatoes and candied yams. Across the room, the ladies were partaking of boiled pheasant.

  Morrison’s eyes met those of Miss Perkins. Holding his gaze, she speared a morsel of pheasant with her fork and conveyed it to her mouth. Fluttering her lashes and pursing her lips with a burlesque air, she inhaled the gamy scent of the meat, her bosom swelling over the line of her corset. As she exhaled, her throat, encircled in black ribbon, seemed to vibr
ate with pleasure. ‘Mmm.’

  She did not so much nibble as seduce the meat off the tines. Chewing slowly, she tipped her head back to let it slide down her throat. Her lovely round cheeks flushed and perspiration beaded her top lip.

  Mrs Ragsdale observed her charge with palpable unease. ‘Mae, dear, people are looking.’ Her voice rang into the hush that had fallen over the room. Morrison, clearly, had not been her only audience.

  Miss Perkins’s astonishing reply, made after she had patted her glistening lips with her napkin, was thus heard by all. ‘Yes. I suppose they are. I am so very glad I made an effort with my toilette.’

  Dumas let out a squeak of laughter, which he parlayed into a cough.

  ‘Mae!’ gasped Mrs Ragsdale. She opened her mouth to say something else and then closed it, as though realising it was no use. Morrison felt he could almost see a homily wilting on her tongue.

  ‘Quite a performance,’ Dumas whispered.

  Morrison was too lost in inner turmoil to reply.

  The men’s pudding arrived.

  Not long after, the women finished their meal and passed out of the room, Miss Perkins with the air of an actress taking leave of her fans.

  Swallowing down a final spoonful of tapioca and cream, Dumas patted the swollen mound of his stomach. ‘If I lie down on the floor right now, I’d look like the Fourteenth Ming Tomb.’

  ‘Raise the dead,’ said Morrison. ‘It is time to join the ladies.’

  Dumas studied his companion for a moment. ‘Is the great G.E. Morrison falling in love?’ he asked.

  ‘Love does not come into the equation, my dear Dumas.’

  Morrison could be powerfully persuasive. He almost believed himself.

  In Which We Find That Miss Perkins Shares

  Morrison’s Missionary Position and, Following

  Talk of War, Geishas and Small Feet, a Form of

  Exercise Is Proposed

  As they seated themselves by the hearth with their coffees, Dumas accidentally set Mrs Ragsdale off on an exposition on her health, alarming in its thoroughness. Her constitution was evidently more delicate than her sturdy architecture suggested. Miss Perkins, plainly familiar with the topic, nodded sympathetically but distantly, playing all the while with the ribbons on her skirt. She managed to appear both bored and charming.

  The Victorian in Morrison found Mrs Ragsdale’s catalogue of complaints vulgar. If he was also wont to dwell on his own indispositions, at least he did so in private—most of the time, anyway. But his focus was elsewhere. Much attracted to the maiden preening on the chaise before him, he feared that she considered him but some vainglorious and avuncular figure. To presume more might lead to the sort of humiliation that he did not need on a day that had begun with rheumatic pains and the discovery of incipient jowls. And yet there was that most interesting business with the pheasant. He could not help but wonder if there was a message there for him.

  Just as Mrs Ragsdale blessedly ran out of steam on the subject of her maladies, an American missionary couple entered the drawing room and made a beeline for their party. Morrison’s heart sank. He had taken tea in Reverend Nisbet’s grim parlour soon after settling in Peking seven years earlier. He would never forget his first sight of the anaemic Mrs Nisbet, perched on a comfortless armchair underneath an engraving of The Soul’s Awakening by James Sant. With an expression eerily parallel to that of Sant’s rapture-stricken subject, and in a voice as thin as her own neck, she avowed that she had never felt the Lord so near to her as in China. She had urged Morrison to join their prayer meetings. Though he came from a God-fearing family and carried with him a thumbnail-sized book of psalms his sister had given him, Morrison was not enamoured of the Church. He had avoided the Nisbets ever since.

  ‘We’ve been in the Philippines,’ Mrs Nisbet announced in a flat, Midwestern voice. ‘Awful place. Hot and pestilent. I don’t know why we had to go acquiring it from Spain.’

  Her husband concurred, reciting a litany of horrors. Amongst these was a lack of natural modesty and innocence in the native women, which, from his observation, was a common problem across the Extreme Orient.

  The Nisbets found a sympathetic listener in Mrs Ragsdale. Back in California, Mr Ragsdale had been active in the anti-coolie movement. When an unsolved murder, in which a Chinese laundryman was a suspect, inflamed racial tensions in Sonoma County, he editorialised in The Daily Republican that the Chinese were a race that possessed ‘neither conscience, mercy or human feeling’, and was composed of ‘monsters in human form, cunning and educated, therefore more dangerous and vile’. It had come as something of a shock to both Mr and Mrs Ragsdale to find that the road out of scandal and financial ruin in the US led them to China itself. To the Nisbets, Mrs Ragsdale now confessed that her experience of China had only deepened her natural suspicion not just of Chinese but of native cultures generally.

  ‘They are so very, very far from Christendom and civilisation,’ Reverend Nisbet agreed.

  ‘Not to mention soap and carbolic,’ interjected Mrs Nisbet. ‘Despite all our efforts. You’ve been in China for years now, Dr Morrison, and have travelled widely in this region. Have you not also found it difficult living in heathen society for as long as you have?’

  ‘I can’t say that I have, Mrs Nisbet. I, myself, found Manila a highly civilised city. And whilst I confess I came to China possessed of the strong racial antipathy towards the Chinese common to my countrymen, that feeling has long since given way to one of lively sympathy, even gratitude. In spite of the Boxers. For the most part, I have experienced uniform kindness and hospitality from the Chinese, not to mention the most charming courtesy.’

  Mrs Nisbet looked as though she was trying to smile through a mouthful of lemon juice. Reverend Nisbet studiously fumbled lumps of sugar into his coffee.

  Miss Perkins, who had scarcely uttered a word in all this time, caught Morrison’s eye. A complicit twinkle passed between them. Turning to the others, she said, ‘I find what you say quite fascinating, Mrs Nisbet.’

  Mrs Nisbet’s eyes filled with dewy gratitude. Both Nisbets glowed devotionally at Miss Perkins. Like many who laboured in voluble service for the poor, the Nisbets lived in tacit awe of the rich.

  ‘I, for one, adore native cultures,’ Miss Perkins continued. ‘They can be so clever. I think the Chinese are perfectly marvellous for inventing silk and gunpowder and printing, and for those lovely scrolls they do. In fact,’ she said, pausing for effect, ‘sometimes I think it would be wonderfully instructive to take a native husband.’

  Reverend Nisbet had been sipping his coffee as Miss Perkins spoke. The quantity he did not instantly expel, he sucked down the wrong set of pipes. It took some muscular back-thumping on the part of the surprisingly strong Mrs Nisbet before he fully recovered.

  Dumas let out another squeak, and both he and Morrison found themselves beset by minor fits of throat-clearing.

  ‘Oh, Miss Perkins has such a sense of humour,’ Mrs Ragsdale rushed to say, her smile tight. It was clear that, entrusted as she was with Miss Perkins’s moral as well as material welfare, Mrs Ragsdale was near palpitations at the thought it could all end in miscegenation.

  Morrison would have found such an outcome equally scandalous. But he believed that which Mrs Ragsdale only willed to be true: the maiden was having a joke. He told himself that he should never fear boredom in the company of one so audacious.

  ‘Dr Morrison,’ Miss Perkins said. ‘You are so very knowledgeable about this fascinating country. I have many questions I would like to ask you. We two shall go sit over there by the window. That way, we will not bother the others, who, not being as interested in the topic, might find our conversation tedious.’

  Moments later, her heels were clicking over the parquet in the direction of the window seat. Morrison, bowing a half-hearted apology to the others, followed post-haste.

  As they seated themselves, he said, ‘I fear I’m not that much of an expert, Miss Perkins. But what would you like to know?
’

  She leaned forward, smiling mischievously. ‘Nothing really. I just wanted to escape that dull conversation and have you to myself. Goodness, but don’t the missionaries speak badly of the natives!’

  ‘You should hear how the natives speak of the missionaries.’

  She laughed. ‘You are not fond of missionaries either?’

  She has a naughty giggle. ‘It has been my observation that the primary effect of civilising by the missionaries is to make the natives of any country lying, fawning, cringing, deceitful and as bad as possible. The only time I ever found myself in agreement with the Empress Dowager was when she asked why missionaries didn’t stay in their own countries and be useful to their own people.’

  Miss Perkins’s eyes filled with horror. ‘Oh, but dear God, no! Then we should never be free of them. I don’t think I would be able to take it. You know,’ she said, glancing back at the Nisbets, ‘Mrs Nisbet’s irritation with the Philippines may stem from disappointment at not being sent somewhere like Africa, where she at least would have had the chance of seeing Reverend Nisbet boiled and eaten.’

  Morrison chuckled. He had not expected such a wicked wit in one already so blessed with beauty and sensuality.

  She leaned towards him, breasts straining against her bodice. ‘Dullness is a terrible crime against society, don’t you agree, Dr Morrison?’

  ‘Certainly. And please, call me Ernest.’

  ‘Then you must call me Mae.’ She studied him for a moment and smiled wistfully. ‘You remind me of someone, Ernest. Someone back home.’

  ‘I hope it is someone you care for and not the opposite,’ he said, awkward as a lad.

  A cloud passed briefly over her eyes. ‘I shall tell you about him another time.’ She looked up again, her expression impenetrable.

  Morrison simultaneously darkened at the thought of this mysterious other and brightened at the promise held out by her use of the future tense. He recalled Dumas mentioning something about a scandal. His imagination threw up several florid scenarios. All involved some version of a passionate deflowering and its aftermath. He concluded that this would not be a bad antecedent. To the contrary, it was ideal. The consequences of seducing the virgin daughter of an upstanding, wealthy and prominent family were not worth thinking about. Oh pray God, do not let her be a virgin. In the next instant, he berated himself for his presumption.