And then what? What would I do then? Retire to the moors and shoot grouse? Throw vast parties in London? Or go into Parliament and sleep in the Back Bench while the bloody Socialists give the country to the Communists? Christ, I’d be bored to bloody death! I’d …
“What?” He was startled. “Oh sorry, Penn, what did you say?”
“I just said that all sounded like bad news!”
“Yes. Yes it was.” Then Dunross grinned and all his anxiety dropped away. “It’s joss! I’m tai-pan,” he said happily. “You’ve got to expect it.” He picked up the bottle. It was empty. “I think we deserve another … No, pet, I’ll get it.” He went to the concealed refrigerator that was set into a vast old Chinese scarlet, lacquered sideboard.
“How do you cope, Ian?” she asked. “I mean, it always seems to be something bad, ever since you took over—and there’s always some disaster, every phone call, you work all the time, never take a holiday … ever since we came back to Hong Kong. First your father and then Alastair and then … Isn’t it ever going to stop pouring cats and dogs?”
“Of course not—that’s the job.”
“Is it worth it?”
He concentrated on the cork, knowing there was no future in this conversation. “Of course.”
To you it is, Ian, she thought. But not to me. After a moment she said, “Then it’s all right for me to go?”
“Yes, yes of course. I’ll watch Adryon and don’t worry about Duncan. You just have a great time and hurry back.”
“Are you going to do the hill climb Sunday?”
“Yes. Then I’m going to Taipei, back Tuesday. I’m taking Bartlett.”
She thought about Taipei and wondered if there was a girl there, a special girl, a Chinese girl, half her age, with lovely soft skin and warmth, not much warmer than herself or softer or trimmer but half her age, with a ready smile, without the years of survival bowing her—the rotten growing-up years, the good and terrible war years, and childbearing years and child-rearing years and the exhausting reality of marriage, even to a good man.
I wonder I wonder I wonder. If I was a man … there’re so many beauties here, so anxious to please, so readily available. If you believe a tenth of what the others say.
She watched him pour the fine wine, the bubbles and froth good, his face strong and craggy and greatly pleasing, and she wondered, Does any woman possess any man for more than a few years?
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, loving him. She touched his glass. “Be careful on the hill climb.”
“Of course.”
“How do you cope with being tai-pan, Ian?”
“How do you cope with running a home, bringing up the kids, getting up at all hours, year after year, keeping the peace, and all the other things you’ve had to do? I couldn’t do that. Never could. I’d’ve given up the ghost long ago. It’s part training and part what you’re born to do.”
“A woman’s place is in the home?”
“I don’t know about others, Penn, but so long as you’re in my home all’s good in my world.” He popped the cork neatly.
“Thank you, dear,” she said and smiled. Then she frowned. “But I’m afraid I don’t have much option and never had. Of course it’s different now and the next generation’s lucky, they’re going to change things, turn things around and give men their comeuppance once and for all.”
“Oh?” he said, most of his mind back on Lando Mata and tomorrow and how to get the 100 million without conceding control.
“Oh yes. The girls of the next generation aren’t going to put up with the boring ‘a woman’s place is by the sink.’ God how I hate housework, how every woman hates housework. Our daughters are going to change all that! Adryon for one. My God I’d hate to be her husband.”
“Every generation thinks they’re going to change the world,” Dunross said, pouring. “This’s great champagne. Remember how we did? Remember how we used to bitch, still do, about our parents’ attitudes?”
“True. But our daughters have the pill and that’s a whole new kettle of fish an—”
“Eh?” Dunross stared at her, shocked. “You mean Adryon’s on the pill? Jesus Christ how long … do you mean sh—”
“Calm down, Ian, and listen. That little pill’s unlocked womanhood from fear forever—men too, in a way. I think very few people realize what an enormous social revolution it’s going to create. Now women can all make love without fear of having a child, they can use their bodies as men use their bodies, for gratification, for pleasure, and without shame.” She looked at him keenly. “As to Adryon, she’s had access to the pill since she was seventeen.”
“What?”
“Of course. Would you prefer her to have a child?”
“Jesus Christ, Penn, of course not,” Dunross spluttered, “but Jesus Christ who? You … you mean she’s having an affair, had affairs or….”
“I sent her to Dr. Tooley. I thought it best she should see him.”
“You what?”
“Yes. When she was seventeen, she asked me what to do, said most of her friends were on the pill. As there are various types I wanted her to have expert advice. Dr. Too—What are you so red about, Ian? Adryon’s nineteen now, twenty next month, it’s all very ordinary.”
“It isn’t by God. It just isn’t!”
“Och laddie but it is,” she said, aping the broad Scots accent of Granny Dunross whom he had adored, “and my whole point is that the lassies of today know what they’re aboot and dinna ye dare mention it to Adryon that I’ve told ye or I’ll take my stick to your britches!”
He stared at her.
“Health!” Smugly she raised her glass. “Did you see the Guardian Extra this afternoon?”
“Don’t change the subject, Penn. Don’t you think I should talk to her?”
“Absolutely not. No. It’s a … it’s a very private matter. It’s really her body and her life and whatever you say, Ian, she has the right to do with her life what she pleases and really nothing you say will make any difference. It’ll all be very embarrassing for both of you. There’s face involved,” she added and was pleased with her cleverness. “Oh of course Adryon’ll listen and take your views to heart but you really must be adult and modern for your own sake, as well as hers.”
Suddenly an uncontrollable wave of heat went through his face.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I was thinking about … I was just thinking.”
“About who was, is or could be her lover?”
“Yes.”
Penelope Dunross sighed. “For your own sanity, Ian, don’t! She’s very sensible, over nineteen … well, quite sensible. Come to think of it I haven’t seen her all day. The little rotter rushed out with my new scarf before I could catch her. You remember the blouse I lent her? I found it scrumpled up on her bathroom floor! I shall be very glad to see her off on her own and in her own apartment.”
“She’s too young for God’s sake!”
“I don’t agree, dear. As I was saying, there’s really nothing you can do about progress, and the pill is a marvelous fantastic unbelievable leap forward. You really must be more sensible. Please?”
“It’s … Christ, it’s a bit sudden, that’s all.”
She laughed outright. “If we were talking about Glenna I could unders—Oh for God’s sake, Ian, I’m only joking! It never really occurred to me that you wouldn’t have presumed Adryon was a very healthy, well-adjusted though foul-tempered, infuriating, very frustrated young lady, most of whose frustrations spring from trying to please us with our old-fashioned ideas.”
“You’re right.” He tried to sound convincing but he wasn’t and he said sourly, “You’re right even so … you’re right.”
“Laddie, dinna ye think ye’d better visit our Shrieking Tree?” she asked with a smile. It was an ancient clan custom in the old country that somewhere near the dwelling of the oldest woman of the laird’s family would be the Shrieking Tree. When I
an was young, Granny Dunross was the oldest, and her cottage was in a glade in the hills behind Kilmarnock in Ayrshire where the Struan lands were. The tree was a great oak. It was the tree that you went out to when the deevil—as old Granny Dunross called it—when the deevil was with you, and alone, you shrieked whatever curses you liked. “… and then, lassie,” the lovely old woman had told her the first night, “… and then, lassie, there would be peace in the home and never a body has need to really curse a husband or wife or lover or child. Aye, just a wee tree and the tree can bear all the curse words that the deevil himself invented….”
Penelope was remembering how old Granny Dunross had taken her into her heart and into the clan from the first moment. That was just after she and Ian were married and visiting for the second time, Ian on sick leave, still on crutches, his legs badly burned but healing, the rest of him untouched in the flaming crash-landing but for his mad, all-consuming anger at being grounded forever, she so pleased secretly, thanking God for the reprieve.
“But whisht, lassie,” Granny Dunross had added with a chuckle that night when the winter winds were whining off the moors, sleet outside, and they all warm and toasty in front of the great fire, safe from the bombing, well fed and never a care except that Ian should get well quickly, “… there was a time when this Dunross was six and, och aye, he had a terrible temper even then and his father Colin was off in those heathen foreign parts as always, so this Dunross would come to Ayr on holiday from boarding school. Aye, and sometimes he would come to see me and I’d tell him tales o’ the clan and his grandfather and great-grandfather but this time nothing would take away the deevil that possessed him. It was a night like this and I sent him out, the poor wee bairn, aye I sent him out to the Shrieking Tree….” The old woman had chuckled and chuckled and sipped whiskey and continued, “Aye and the young deevil went out, cock of the walk, the gale under his kilt, and he cursed the tree. Och aye, surely the wee beasties in the forest fled before his wrath and then he came back. ‘Have you given it a good drubbing,’ I asked him. ‘Aye,’ he said in his wee voice. ‘Aye, Grandma, I gave it a good drubbing, the very best ever.’
“‘Good,’ I said. ‘And now you’re at peace!’
“‘Well, not really, Grandmother, but I am tired.’ And then, lassie, at that moment, there was an almighty crash and the whole house shook and I thought it was the end of the world but the wee little bairn ran out to see what had happened and a lightning bolt had blasted the Shrieking Tree to pieces. ‘Och aye, Granny,’ he said in his piping little voice when he came back, his eyes wide, ‘that really was the very best I ever did. Can I do it again!’”
Ian had laughed. “That’s all a story, I don’t remember that at all. You’re making it up, Granny!”
“Whisht on you! You were five or six and the next day we went into the glade and picked the new tree, the one you’ll see tomorrow, lassie, and blessed it in the clan’s name and I told young Ian to be a mite more careful next time!”
They had laughed together and then, later that night, she had woken up to find Ian gone and his crutches gone. She had watched and waited. When he came back he was soaked but tired and at peace. She pretended sleep until he was in bed again. Then she turned to him and gave him all the warmth she had.
“Remember, lassie,” Granny Dunross had said to her privately the day they left, “if ye want to keep your marriage sweet, make sure this Dunross always has a Shrieking Tree nearby. Dinna be afeared. Pick one, always pick one wherever you go. This Dunross needs a Shrieking Tree close by though he’ll never admit it and will never use it but rarely. He’s like the Dirk. He’s too strong….”
So wherever they had gone they had had one. Penelope had insisted. Once, in Chungking, where Dunross had been sent to be an Allied liaison officer after he was well again, she had made a bamboo their Shrieking Tree. Here in Hong Kong it was a huge jacaranda that dominated the whole garden. “Don’t you think you should pay her a wee visit?” The tree was always a her for him and a him for her. Everyone should have a Shrieking Tree, Penelope thought. Everyone.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m okay now.”
“How did Granny Dunross have so much wisdom and stay so marvelous after so much tragedy in her life?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps they built them stronger in those days.”
“I miss her.” Granny Dunross was eighty-five when she died. She was Agnes Struan when she married her cousin Dirk Dunross—Dirk McCloud Dunross, whom his mother Winifred, Dirk Struan’s only daughter, had named after her father in remembrance. Dirk Dunross had been fourth tai-pan and he had been lost at sea in Sunset Cloud driving her homeward. He was only forty-two when he was lost, she thirty-one. She never married again. They had had three sons and one daughter. Two of her sons were killed in World War I, the eldest at Gallipoli at twenty-one, the other gassed at Ypres in Flanders, nineteen. Her daughter Anne had married Gaston deVille, Jacques’s father. Anne had died in the London bombing where all the deVilles had fled except Jacques who had stayed in France and fought the Nazis with the Maquis. Colin, the last of her sons, Ian’s father, also had three sons and a daughter, Kathren. Two sons also were killed in World War II. Kathren’s first husband, Ian’s squadron leader, was killed in the Battle of Britain. “So many deaths, violent deaths,” Penelope said sadly. “To see them all born and all die … terrible. Poor Granny! Yet when she died she seemed to go so peacefully with that lovely smile of hers.”
“Perhaps it was joss. But the others, that was joss too. They only did what they had to, Penn. After all, our family history’s ordinary in that. We’re British. War’s been a way of life for centuries. Look at your family—one of your uncles was lost at sea in the navy in the Great War, another in the last at El Alamein, your parents killed in the blitz … all very ordinary.” His voice hardened. “It’s not easy to explain to any outsider, is it?”
“No. We all had to grow up so quickly, didn’t we, Ian?” He nodded and after a moment she said, “You’d better dress for dinner, dear, you’ll be late.”
“Come on, Penn, for God’s sake, you take an hour longer than me. We’ll put in a quick appearance and leave directly after chow. Wh—” The phone rang and he picked it up. “Yes? Oh hello, Mr. Deland.”
“Good evening, tai-pan. I wish to report about Mme. deVille’s daughter and son-in-law, M. Escary.”
“Yes, please go ahead.”
“I am sad to have the dishonor of bringing such bad tidings. The accident was a, how do you say, sideswipe on the upper Corniche just outside Eze. The driver of the other car was drunk. It was at two in the morning about, and when the police arrived, M. Escary was already dead and his wife unconscious. The doctor says she will mend, very well, but he is afraid that her, her internal organs, her childbearing organs may have permanent hurt. She may require an operation. He—”
“Does she know this?”
“No, m’sieu, not yet, but Mme. deVille was told, the doctor told her. I met her as you ordered and have taken care of everything. I have asked for a specialist in these things from Paris to consult with the Nice Hospital and he arrives this afternoon.”
“Is there any other damage?”
“Externally, non. A broken wrist, a few cuts, nothing. But … the poor lady is distraught. It was glad … I was glad that her mother came, that helped, has helped. She stays at the Métropole in a suite and I met her airplane. Of course I will be in the constant touch.”
“Who was driving?”
“Mme. Escary.”
“And the other driver?”
There was a hesitation. “His name is Charles Sessonne. He’s a baker in Eze and he was coming home after cards and an evening with some friends. The police have … Mme. Escary swears his car was on the wrong side of the road. He cannot remember. Of course he is very sorry and the police have charged him with drunk driving an—”
“Is this the first time?”
“Non. Non, once before he was stopped and fined.”
�
�What’ll happen under French law?”
“There will be a court and then … I do not know, m’sieu. There were no other witnesses. Perhaps a fine, perhaps jail; I do not know. Perhaps he will remember he was on the right side, who knows? I’m sorry.”
Dunross thought a moment. “Where does this man live?”
“Rue de Verte 14, Eze.”
Dunross remembered the village well, not far from Monte Carlo, high above, and the whole of the Côte d’Azur below and you could see beyond Monte Carlo into Italy, and beyond Cap Ferrat to Nice. “Thank you, Mr. Deland. I’ve telexed you 10,000 U.S. for Mme. deVille’s expenses and anything else. Whatever’s necessary please do it. Call me at once if there’s anything … yes and ask the specialist to call me immediately after he’s examined Mme. Escary. Have you talked with Mr. Jacques deVille?”
“No, tai-pan. You did not instruct this. Should I phone?”
“No. I’ll call him. Thank you again.” Dunross hung up and told Penelope everything, except about the internal injuries.
“How awful! How … how senseless!”
Dunross was looking out at the sunset. It was at his suggestion the young couple had gone to Nice and Monte Carlo where he and Penelope had had so much fun, and marvelous food, marvelous wine and a little gambling. Joss, he thought, then added, Christ all bloody mighty!
He dialed Jacques deVille’s house but he was not there. He left a message for him to return the call. “I’ll see him at the dinner tonight,” he said, the champagne now tasteless. “Well, we’d better get changed.”
“I’m not going, dear.”
“Oh but…”
“I’ve lots to do to get ready for tomorrow. You can make an excuse for me—of course you have to go. I’ll be ever so busy. There’s Glenna’s school things—and Duncan gets back on Monday and his school things have to be sorted. You’ll have to put him on the aircraft, make sure he has his passport … You can easily make an excuse for me tonight as I’m leaving.”
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