by Jean Moran
She smiled at his comment. If only he knew. Her grandmother had had the most melting brown eyes, the blackest of hair, and her sari had made a swishing sound when she’d moved. ‘She was.’
‘Then she would approve of you coming along with me. Wouldn’t she?’
‘You are incorrigible, Mr O’Connor.’
‘Eight o’clock tomorrow evening.’
‘It’s a date.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of you asking me up for a nightcap?’
‘I don’t suppose there is.’
She was still smiling as she watched him vanish into the night. His initial refusal to serve her with a drink no longer mattered. His music and his voice were still in her head.
2
Reggie Stuart wanted to take her to dinner on the night she had arranged to meet Kim Pheloung but had been persuaded to settle for lunch on Wednesday in the British-run café across the road from the house she shared with three nurses.
‘Did the car behave appropriately?’ He was reminding her that he had done her a favour so she owed him one in return.
‘I can’t see you on Saturday. I’m on duty at St John’s maternity clinic. They’re having trouble getting staff at the moment. Once that’s over, it’s a rest and back to the military facility they’ve set up at St Stephen’s. They’re short-staffed. The army need my help.’
‘Tonight?’
Tonight she was off with Connor O’Connor to the Irish bar, but Reggie had been kind. She didn’t want to hurt him. Prodding at her lunch, she felt a pang of guilt for leading him on and decided there and then that she had to put him straight.
She placed the cutlery to one side of her plate and leaned back in her chair. ‘Reggie, we’re friends and I don’t think we can ever be anything else.’
‘Well, that’s putting it pretty bluntly.’
‘I can’t help it, Reggie. That’s the way I feel.’
*
Connor arrived in a double rickshaw, his fiddle gripped firmly between his knees. He looked her up and down appreciatively. ‘You’re certainly wearing the right colour. You look very fine. Very fine indeed.’
‘Green. I thought it the only colour to wear to an Irish pub.’
It was just off Nathan Road and, judging by the raucous welcome, Connor was very well known. He bought her a gin sling without asking her what she wanted and settled himself down with a double whiskey. Everyone else seemed to be drinking Guinness.
‘I thought all Irishmen drank Guinness.’
‘I like a whiskey,’ he said, raising his glass after he’d found them a pair of chairs and a table. He leaned close and whispered, ‘To tell you the truth I don’t like the black stuff.’
Shouts began to ring out for him to get to his feet. ‘Give us a tune, will you?’
Connor began with fast-moving jigs, which set feet tapping. Those who knew the words sang them in loud slurred voices.
A few more drinks and a few more tunes.
‘The next song I’m dedicating to my lovely companion. She’s a doctor so she is. Can you believe that?’
Rowena found herself blushing as she became the centre of attention and a great roar of approval went up when Connor introduced her. ‘My very own Star of the County Down – or in this case Hong Kong.’
Putting his fiddle aside, he began drumming on the table and singing ‘Star of the County Down’.
By the end of the evening, she was singing and dancing with the rest and even drinking a glass or two of the famed black stout.
He helped her back into the same double rickshaw they’d arrived in. Hong Kong was still buzzing with life in the dimly lit bars where more was offered than drink. Soldiers, sailors and airmen mingled with the merchant seamen of all nations and the girls who hung around the docks.
She felt his arm resting on the folded hood at the rear of the rickshaw, jolting slightly in time with the footfall of the runner pulling them along.
‘Did you enjoy yourself?’ he asked.
‘Didn’t it look as though I did?’
‘Aye, but what’s outside doesn’t always reflect what’s inside.’
‘Inside and out, I enjoyed myself.’
‘I’m free Saturday.’
‘I’m not. But, then, you already know that.’
‘You’re still going to see him?’ He sounded incredulous.
‘Kim. Yes. Why shouldn’t I?’
‘I’ve already told you, he collects women.’
She laughed. ‘You mean like another man might collect stamps or antiques?’
‘Something like that. Yes.’
She eyed him reproachfully. ‘Are you saying I’m as sticky as a postage stamp or an antique?’
‘That’s a silly thing to say and is not what I’m meaning at all.’
In an angry movement, he removed his arm from along the back of the rickshaw. ‘I’m trying to put this as delicately as I can. He’s—’
‘A criminal.’
He looked surprised. ‘Basically, yes.’
‘So how come you know him?’
‘It’s business.’
‘So you consort with criminals?’
He shook his head. ‘No… No, not in so far as the business is concerned. As I told you, it’s something to occupy Harry and me when we’re not tramping the parade ground or cleaning our guns.’
‘Harry was with you the other night.’
‘That’s right. He’s my senior officer and business partner. It’s how we deal with the soldiering side of our life – a chance to let off steam.’
She thought of the way they’d looked together, similar in appearance, wearing the same clothes.
‘We’re just friends,’ he said suddenly, as though reading her mind.
A fine shower of rain was misting the darkness when they finally arrived back at her house. A lamp flickered on in an upstairs room splashing a pool of light onto the narrow strip of garden. Suddenly aware that they were not alone, two figures in the doorway broke apart and hurried away.
‘I’m not going to ask if you’ll be inviting me in for a nightcap because I know you won’t.’
They alighted onto the damp pavement.
‘True.’
‘And you’ll be off to dinner with Kim Pheloung, no matter how much I nag you not to go.’
‘That, too, is true.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ll give up your career, marry me and wander round the pubs of Ireland singing while I play my fiddle?’
Laughing, she shook her head. ‘You have to be joking.’
‘Oh, well. Early days.’
‘I’ve had a wonderful time.’
‘We need to have wonderful times while we still can.’
She nodded, her smile persisting. ‘I feel like Cinderella. No carriage and fine horses, just a rickety old rickshaw and a bloke between the shafts with very strong legs.’
‘You make me laugh.’
‘Good. Goodnight.’
His kiss was soft. ‘I’ll be calling on you again. I think tomorrow might be a good idea seeing as you’re off with that other fellow on Saturday.’
‘You’re very pushy, Connor O’Connor. You don’t own me, and neither does the other “fellow”.’
His smile was beguiling. ‘Not yet.’
*
As they had agreed, he came calling the next night, his violin tucked beneath his arm and wearing his uniform, strong legs in shorts, shirt undone at the neck.
She was wearing a blue silk dress embroidered with a silk flower on each shoulder. As the evening was warm, although it was December, her hair was fixed with pins into a cottage loaf style so her neck was exposed.
‘You look a picture,’ he said, taking her hand and kissing her fingers. ‘Not much of a limousine, but the best I could do. The man between the shafts is Yang’s brother – you may recall my barman?’
‘I thought he was your manager.’
‘Both.’
His smile lit the night and made her heart pound.
&nb
sp; As before, the pub was packed with people, smoke, loud conversation, while the smell of Guinness and whiskey hung in the air.
A shout went up as Connor entered. ‘Come on, man. Play us a jig.’
‘Be fair, lads. You’ll give me time to get a drink for me and my lady here.’
‘Enough to wet your whistle.’
‘Keep yourself sober for singing – and for wishing your lady a goodnight later on.’
‘Or giving her a good night later on...’
‘I’m sorry if they offended you. They’re out for a good time.’
‘I’m having a night in an Irish bar. It’s only to be expected. If I can’t take it, I shouldn’t come through the door.’
After he’d brought her a drink and found her a spot to sit, Connor was lost to her, lost in traditional Irish music, songs that made some cry and jigs that made them dance.
Sweat soaking his shirt, he kept going, stopping only to get her another drink or down one of the beers or whiskeys bought for him by his audience.
When his fingers were sore and his voice cracking, he came back to sit with her.
‘That was wonderful.’
‘I was thinking the same about you. You’re wonderful to sit here and understand what I was doing.’
‘Did I understand what you were doing?’
‘I think so. Go on. Tell me.’
She looked around the young men, who were all drinking and smoking too much and laughing too loudly. ‘You made them forget. Nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen next, but I think most people realise that Hong Kong is vulnerable.’
‘A moment to enjoy themselves and forget they’re soldiers. I do my best.’
‘You have a heart of gold.’
‘Now don’t get too sentimental, Doctor.’
‘Stop calling me Doctor. My name’s Rowena.’
‘Does that mean we’re more than friends now?’
‘If that’s what you want.’
He leaned closer and stroked her nose with his fingertip. ‘I want you as a lover. And before you refuse me, I know it’s a tried and tested line, that it could be our last chance to feel alive and that I might be dead by this time next week, being a soldier and all that. So what do you say?’
Her jaw dropped. ‘What? You’re nothing if not blunt, Connor O’Connor. I’m shocked.’
There was humour in his eyes when he smiled. ‘I was just testing the water.’
‘No, you were not. You meant it.’ She looked at him accusingly, but couldn’t stop the smile, then the laughter.
He joined in, braced his arms around her and pulled her out into a dancing space, him bawling a song in her ear as they swung around. ‘Early days, you’ll say, but you are my star, Rowena. Have you any objection to that?’
‘No.’
*
The rickshaw rumbled on through the darkness, the lantern hanging around the runner’s neck throwing a fragile light into the blacked-out streets.
Rowena shivered. ‘It’s so dark.’
Connor’s arm lay warm and solid behind her. As the rickshaw tossed over a bump in the road, his hand gripped her shoulder and brought her closer. ‘Like the world,’ he said.
For the first time since meeting him she heard fear in his voice. ‘Tonight was wonderful.’
He put his arms around her. The gentleness of his kiss and the softness of his lips surprised her, and all the time she heard his words in her head, what he’d asked her, and despite herself, she did not find his suggestion objectionable.
She asked herself if wanting what might very well be one last moment of passion was so wrong.
The sounds of the night, the crispness of the air and the darkness made her feel as though they were somehow separate from the world, master and mistress of their own desires.
‘Do I get that nightcap?’ he asked suddenly.
She hesitated. ‘I’m on duty in the morning. If it wasn’t for that...’
She looked up into his eyes and he stroked her hair.
‘I’m a good lover.’
‘And I’m a good doctor. I owe it to my patients to be alert tomorrow.’
‘I’m on duty for the next few days. I won’t be around. It’ll be next Monday before I’m back here, asking again for a nightcap. Do you mind?’
She shook her head. ‘No. But it might only be a nightcap.’
‘I don’t think so.’ He stroked her hair. ‘Whatever happens, you’re every song I ever sing, every tune I ever play. It’s for you, Dr Rowena Rossiter. Just for you.’
3
Connor O’Connor. She was doodling his name on a writing pad, over and over again. The man remained fixed in her mind, like a bookmark that kept a favourite page or chapter. And that’s what he is, she thought. A favourite page I want to revisit.
Kim Pheloung was also in her mind. Just thinking of him made her tingle all over. She imagined the softness of his skin stretched without a crease over the hard muscles beneath. Connor had insisted that he was a good lover, but she couldn’t imagine being in bed with him. Kim, though, created images of their bodies entwined in silk sheets, the smouldering of perfumed candles, the lilting music of a harp or a flute.
She picked the lighter out of the pocket of her white lab coat and looked at it, turning it in her hand. The dinner date at the Jockey Club would bring welcome relief to her busy schedule, though so, too, would another night with Connor O’Connor.
Two attractive men in her life, but of the two Kim, the silk merchant, was the most intriguing.
Alice was still pressing her to rethink her dinner date at the Jockey Club.
‘I’ve nothing else on,’ she said to her friend, ‘so I may as well go.’
‘The singing Irishman won’t be available?’
‘Not until Monday.’
‘Are sure about this?’
‘About Connor? Of course I am.’
‘No. The other. The foreigner.’
‘You don’t like foreigners, do you?’
‘I didn’t say that, I’m just not sure about him. How do you think he makes his money?’
‘He’s a silk merchant. That’s what he told us.’
‘I suppose that’s all right.’
‘Do you ever know that much about your date before you go out to dinner with him?’
‘That’s different. He’s not one of us.’
‘You mean of European descent.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean. You don’t have anything in common and that includes background.’
‘So I should only date men I can relate to.’
‘It makes sense to stick to your own kind.’
A look of whimsy came into Rowena’s eyes as she smiled. ‘Didn’t you ever want to fly away on a magic carpet with Sinbad when you were a little girl?’
‘No. I did not.’
‘I did. I used to read One Thousand and One Tales of the Arabian Nights. I always wanted to fly away on a magic carpet with Sinbad – or Aladdin. It didn’t matter which.’
‘Weeell, I did read them, and I did quite like them, but...’
‘They were foreign.’
‘They were just stories.’
‘Of course they were.’ Rowena sighed beginning to lose patience with the conversation.
‘And what about Connor? Will he continue to serenade you with his Irish flattery and that honey brown voice?’
‘Honey brown, is it?’
‘I heard him playing his fiddle outside your window, and I saw him drop you off the first time, then the second. Grand limousine. No expense spared.’
*
Reggie phoned again to ask her out on Saturday night and again she gave him the excuse that she was on duty when in fact she was keeping her date with Kim Pheloung at the Jockey Club. Unfortunately what had begun as a lie became truth.
‘Serves you right for lying,’ she muttered to herself, on being told that she was needed on duty on Saturday evening.
‘Mrs Chandler has come in early. She’s gettin
g pains on and off. Although birth isn’t imminent it’s not far off, and Dr Mercer has broken his ankle.’
‘Playing golf?’
‘He got in the way of his opponent’s hefty swing.’
‘Well, that’s all right, then,’ said Alice, when Rowena told her.
‘Shame. I was looking forward to it.’
‘You’ll have to tell him.’
‘Of course. I’ll give the club a ring and ask them to pass on my apologies. After that I’d better keep my date with Mrs Chandler and see when she plans to have her fourth child.’
*
It was gone six o’clock in the morning when twenty-seven-year-old Mrs Joan Chandler gave birth.
Aided by a midwife, Rowena was present, but once it was all over she handed the cleaning up to the nurses. An hour or two later, she visited the ward to see how Mrs Chandler was getting on. ‘A beautiful baby girl,’ she said. All babies were supposed to be beautiful, so the words fell like raindrops off a roof. This particular infant had a slightly Roman nose and a wrinkled red face. ‘Have you thought of a name for her?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Chandler, with a rueful grimace. ‘I thought I’d like to call her Enough. That should give my husband a strong hint.’
Rowena was still chuckling when she gained the double doors that led to the outside world, a new dawn and her chance to get home and sleep for the next six hours or more.
There were arches along the front terrace of the hospital, which gave shade to the wards and offices beyond the metal-framed windows. At this hour solid darkness was giving way to the slate grey before dawn.
Rowena rubbed her tired eyes with forefinger and thumb. In her mind she could already see the water splashing into the bath along with a good handful of pink and yellow bath salts. Until her eyes were assaulted by a pale green Lagonda with chrome exhaust pipes hugging its gleaming paintwork.
Kim Pheloung, the dinner date she hadn’t been able to keep, was leaning back against the car in a casual fashion, one leg folded across the other at the ankle. The brim of the white fedora shadowed his face and one hand was posed ready to whip it off in a pronounced wave of acknowledgement.
Sensing her there, he did just that, bowing slightly from the waist.
The sight of him, his sheer exoticism, took her aback. His black hair was shoulder length and tied in a thick bunch at the nape of his neck, a plait turned in upon itself. His smile was slow and languid, silvery wrinkles radiating like sunbursts at the corners of his eyes.
