by Emily Hahn
“Running to me, then, the minute you felt hard up–– “
“Now wait a minute, Blondie, wait a minute. I did no such thing. Dorothy and I’ve been washed up for months. Leave her out of it. I thought of calling you a dozen times, but I knew you’d say, ‘Running to me the minute you felt hard up––’”
At his mincing imitation she giggled. He squeezed her hand and released it. She felt as if a flood of warm water had found its way into her heart, gently thawing it, and “Oh lord,” said Jill to herself, “here I go again.”
It was good, though, to be free of that numb, heavy ache she had been carrying for such a long time. It was very good not to have to hate anyone. Without her hate for Ray she was able to like everyone else again, instead of looking upon them all as allies of the enemy or as feeble reflections of him.
They went out to the Lido to bathe. It was a still, fine day, the air all clear and blue. They swam out until the shrill voices of paddling children melted into an unflagging distant echo. Floating on the slow rocking swell, Ray looked around him at the blue and green hills, the blue and green water, and he sighed loudly.
“This is it, Blondie,” he said. “This is what I’ve been wanting: Hong Kong, the Lido, and you.”
“Oh, I know. Never another thought in your head all these weeks.”
“Well, to tell the truth, now and then I got thirsty as well. Blondie…”
She splashed the water with her feet, swimming in slow circles around him.
“Well?”
“Blondie–– No, stop splashing a minute; damn it all, I can’t shout it out to the whole bay. It’s going to be all right for us, isn’t it?”
“Well…”
“Oh, come on, honey. You know you’re going to say yes.”
“Not quite,” said Jill. “I mean, yes, of course, but it won’t be the way it was, and I don’t know if you’ll like it as well this way.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ray, trying to sound worried. They began to swim back toward the beach, facing each other in the water. “Explain yourself, Blondie,” he said.
“You’ll have to come closer, then. I don’t want all Repulse Bay to hear. This time I’m not being a fool; I mean I’m hanging onto Andy. Do you see?”
Ray made a face. “Okay,” he said. “I see your point.”
“And if Andy shows signs of minding about you,” said Jill, “you’re the one I drop. See?”
“You don’t mean that,” said Ray with assurance.
“I do, though. After all, what good have you ever done me, I should like to know? Dropping in and dropping out whenever you feel like it–what’s there in it for a girl? You don’t do me any good at all.”
“Well, you do me good,” said Ray. “And that’s the main thing.”
Almost, she was happy enough to forget about her opium. Almost, though not quite. Sometimes she wondered if she were not a complete nitwit to dull the ecstasy of those days with smoking, but at other times she knew that a sharper joy would be too painful. It was quite strong enough, the feeling she had now when she looked at the mountains against the blue sky through a drowsy, benevolent opium haze; she felt as if she were drifting on a lazy ocean in a softly cushioned boat, drifting toward some unknown but certainly pleasant destination. There was no more tearing, envying, scratching desire for a lost Ray and a lost life with Ray; he was back, and if he did not seem quite so perfect as he had in Shanghai, well, that was because she was learning. Little by little, in easy stages, she would learn more. She would learn not to love Ray, not to love anyone but herself. She need not even love herself ultimately. In easy stages she could stamp out desire, and then she would be free, so that not even Ray could ever again make her hate.
She was very careful. Andy must not feel that she was slipping away. She had no intention of slipping away from Andy. She was wise now, she told herself, and she needed Andy quite as much as he needed her.
Drowsily, delightfully, the days went on; she was with Ray whenever she could get away, and it did not look as if his office would want him to leave Hong Kong for a long time. But sometimes through the mist of smoke she groped for sensation as she had known it long ago in Shanghai; her happiness was hard to describe now that much of her sensual world was disappearing. She ate without tasting her food; she drank wine without smelling its fragrance. Ray’s kisses became a mystic joy rather than a thrill. It was better, after all, to think about his kisses during the hours she stole, lying next to her tray while Mei-li prepared the pipes, than to kiss him.
“I’m smoking too much,” she said one afternoon. “I ought to cut down.”
Mei-li nodded. She had heard the same thing many times from many smokers. Like the others, too, Jill felt appeased after she had said it; the cutting down was as good as done. She allowed herself another pipe on the strength of it.
There were moments, though, at night in her flat when she was alone, or in the morning when she could no longer sleep, when the mist suddenly vanished as if a cold wind had swept down on it. Then all the worries that would have beset her in the old days, one by one and weakly, seemed now to concentrate on torturing her. Memory, apprehension, an exaggerated, unreasoning terror took hold of her. The only way to shake off the mood was to telephone Ray, or to hurry out early to her appointment with Mei-li. Yet when the little storm was over she knew that she would be safe again for a space of time, cozy and warm and smiling, rocking away in her little boat on pellucid, emerald water.… It was over for that time, and with opium one need never look ahead.
One morning she vomited.
It was her amah’s sidelong glance at her as she lay in bed afterward which gave Jill the first inkling of what that nausea had meant.
“I’m caught,” she said to herself, and for a moment she was only vexed, as any girl at Annette’s would have been, because an abortion would mean expense and several days’ inactivity. “I wonder why I didn’t think of it sooner,” she reflected. “I’ve never gone so long like this before. Hope it’s not too long.”
Then she began to think further. She wondered whether to tell Ray. Thinking as a girl from Annette’s, she knew it would be bad policy and bad business, but then she wasn’t a business girl any more. It was not simply a matter of going whining to a man, trying to convince him that he was indeed responsible, and wheedling the money for the operation out of him.
“I can manage the money from Andy or somehow,” thought Jill, “and if I tell Ray after it’s all over he may like me for it. I won’t tell him until afterward, and that way nothing’ll be spoiled.”
She lay back against her pillows, trying to doze again, but her brain was fully awake now and suddenly offered her a thought that made her sit upright.
“Suppose I go through with it!”
She thought of Mei-li and the little girl she had never seen, though she had so looked forward to helping with a baby. Ridiculously she thought, “Mei-li will be awfully pleased. I really owe it to her.” Then she thought of Ray again. It would mean breaking with Andy in spite of all her resolutions, but…
“It would be exciting,” she decided. She knew that it would be more than that. She got up and dressed and went out walking, up the hill behind Blue Pool Road and over toward the Peak tram. There were trees along both sides of the road, so thick with leaves that only now and then could she catch a glimpse of the harbor. She moved slowly, thinking in shifting dreams of what it would be like when the baby was old enough to walk with her and to talk.
“I don’t suppose Ray will like the idea at all,” she thought, “so I won’t say anything yet. Men never want babies.”
In the afternoon, however, when she met him for cocktails, it was not possible to act as though nothing had happened. She was so absent that Ray became worried, and in spite of her objections he phoned a doctor and made an appointment for her. “I’ve noticed for some days you weren’t looking well,” he insisted. “You’re pale and off your food. If Andy doesn’t take care of you I’ll have to.”
“Oh well, I might as well find out for sure,” she said.
“Find out what?”
“I think I’m having a baby,” said Jill.
“Oh.” He raised his eyebrows and whistled. There was a pause. “We’ll hope for the best, anyway,” he said. “Let old Doc have a look before we start worrying.”
“Don’t be like that,” pleaded Jill, but Ray was not listening; he was too worried. They made a date with the doctor that same afternoon.
“Well?” he asked her as she came out of the office.
She nodded, smiling.
“What does that mean?” he demanded. “Is it all right?”
“I’m pregnant, if that’s all right. Three months.”
“Oh, my God. Come on, we’ll have to talk about it.”
They drove all the way around the island, and by the time they had arrived back again they were both angry.
“You’re nuts,” he said for the tenth time. “Stark-staring crazy. I tell you I won’t hear of it. Why, what on earth would you do? You can’t earn enough for yourself and the kid, and I can’t help out. I won’t, in any case; I don’t approve of it. Why should I be saddled with a kid I don’t want?”
“You were glad enough to help start it!”
“You know perfectly well I didn’t want to start a baby. Good lord, if a woman of your experience–– “
“That’s right. I knew that was coming. I knew that was coming.”
“You don’t have to twist everything I say around like that. I’m telling you it’s insane.” He rubbed his head and began to speak in a softer tone. “You haven’t been trained to buck the world with a bastard, Blondie. Any woman who has a kid has got to make a home for it; what sort of home can you give him? Who’s he going to call Dad? Andy? I suppose you could talk Andy round for a while, but do you think he’ll stand by that long? And I tell you flat, Jill, I can’t help you out.”
She hung her head and began to wipe her eyes. They were parked in front of the flat now, and the sun was setting. Andy was coming to take her out to dinner.
“I’ve got commitments in the States,” said Ray. “Look here, you must realize what it’s like. A decent man doesn’t go around the world leaving kids here and there when he can’t take care of them. God knows, if I could marry you, Blondie, I would, like a shot, but I’d have to be three or four people at once if I married everybody I’d like to, a traveling man like me.”
He waited; still Jill said nothing and wiped and wiped her eyes.
“I know it’s the sweetest thing you could possibly want,” he continued. “It’s a big compliment to me, but––”
“You needn’t preen yourself about it,” said Jill. “I’m not trying to trap you. It’s the baby I want, not you. Don’t you think I’ve had about enough men?”
“Well, but––”
“If you say it’s nothing to do with you, why, that’s that,” she said. She picked up her bag. “I’ll go ahead with it on my own, in that case.”
“You can’t do it, Blondie, you just can’t do it. I won’t allow it.”
“And how can you help it?” she snapped. She glared at him. “If it had been your wife you wouldn’t be like this.”
“No, I suppose I wouldn’t,” he admitted. “Dot never had one, though. Thank God,” he added as an afterthought. Jill winced nevertheless.
He thought for a moment. “I won’t talk about it any more tonight,” he said at last. “You think it over. What I said goes, as far as I’m concerned: I won’t change my mind, if that’s what you’re hoping.”
“Afraid I’ll start sending you blackmail letters and telegrams?”
“Yes,” said Ray, and closed his teeth tightly. “You think now you won’t, but I’ve seen how these things work before.”
“Well, so long,” said Jill. She stepped out of the car and ran toward her door.
“Think it over tonight,” called Ray. “I’ll phone in the morning.”
Jill shook her head and slammed the door behind her.
She thought it over that night at home after dinner with Andy. She lay in bed and thought and thought. It was difficult to push her mind beyond the visions she had played with in the morning, the little boy talking to her and the days full of something to do, someone to watch and to take care of. Someone there in the morning who would not have to rush away after breakfast.
Then she thought about her cherished bank account. She had been very careful, and with a little more time and saving there would be enough, perhaps, for two years or so. But after that? She had never before tried to look far ahead.
The baby would not be big enough to understand in two years. It might be easy as long as he was a child and didn’t ask questions; after that, though, how was she going to fill in the years with him before they could have that heart-to-heart talk, that talk which was to put everything right between them forever? She lay on her pillows and cried occasionally and grew calm at intervals.
At last she fell asleep, her head aching. She was still asleep when Ray’s call came through at ten in the morning.
“That you, Blondie? What have you decided?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Oh, Blondie, for God’s sake. Look here, we’re both going to be miserable for weeks and weeks if you don’t and I’ve got to go away soon.”
“I’m sorry, Ray, but I haven’t decided. You don’t have to see me in the meantime, you know.”
“Of course,” she said to herself, “he’ll go away. They always get out of things.”
For a week she saw nobody but Mei-li and, occasionally, Andy. Ray gave up telephoning her, and she missed the drives and the bathing out at Repulse Bay. She walked and smoked and talked to Mei-li about trifles. She did not ask the Chinese girl’s advice because she knew what it would be: Mei-li would not advise an abortion, but the idea of keeping a child without any income would appall her. It was easy enough in China; you had children and then lost them one way or another after they were born. If you were Chinese you didn’t telephone Rosalie and arrange in cold blood for a doctor to mess you about, to leave you feeling lost and ill and old and alone. Mei-li would have been shocked to her heart’s core by such a direct sort of murder. It would do no good talking to Mei-li.
Jill walked and thought and wept a little and thought again. One night at the end of a week, when Andy was beginning to notice her low spirits, she tried hard to sleep but could not. She had smoked too much, and the dreams would not wait for sleep: they began to worry at her, persistent as jackals. She remembered long-ago moods and scents and faces, ghosts out of her childhood, little pains and great humiliations and the disappointments that are never really forgotten. She turned and twisted, trying to get away from all of them. A question suddenly broke in on her: Who would want to wish this life on anyone else?
With a gasp she switched on her bedside lamp and looked at her watch and cursed. It was only one o’clock: there would be hours more of darkness and her thoughts.
“I can’t bear this,” said Jill aloud. The air was heavy and hot, and out in the street the night was full of noise, that endless rattle of voices and movement that make up a night in a Chinese city. Everywhere, on every square foot of ground, there were people out there, lying in the street, trying to get breathing space–old people, children, little and big bundles of dirty rags; there were more people under the ground in layers, and the last layer, the living, were simply still on top, above the paving for a little while. Even with the light on Jill could see those layers of bodies, bones at the bottom and flesh clothing the bones deeper and deeper as you looked higher in the mass. She couldn’t smell any more, but she knew what the smell would be like. She clutched at her cheeks to keep from screaming. Yet even if she had screamed there was no one who would have paid any attention.
“I can’t bear it.”
Rosalie would not be asleep at one o’clock in the morning. Jill seized the telephone and dialed her number. Afterward she wrote a short note to
Ray.
“I’ve decided,” she said. “It’s all going to be fixed up tomorrow and you needn’t worry about me any more. I’m sorry I was silly.”
Turning off the lamp, she was wearily aware that she was not, after all, free of hate.
XVII
Several months before Pearl Harbor, Jill received a mysterious communication from a governmental office purporting to deal with housing preparations. She could not make it out at all. The paper was headed, “Urgent and Confidential,” and it gave complicated directions about moving out of her flat in case of emergency. Somebody seemed to have a notion that vast floods of people would shortly be seeking refuge in other people’s houses, and Jill was advised that she must move up the Peak, leaving her flat open for these fleeing unknowns when the moment came. At the same time the message was couched in such soothing, reassuring words that the final effect was extremely confusing. Jill shrugged and threw away the paper without committing any of its directions to memory. She never had occasion to remember it, at any rate.
Like most other people, she was literally waked up by the war when it happened. She had dined out with Andy the night before and was impatient with him because he seemed worried and absent. “What if it does come?” she had said irritably. “Glooming like that isn’t going to keep it away.” He had gone home early, to listen to the radio, she said mockingly.
The bombing of Kai Tak airport woke her up. With recollections of the war surrounding Shanghai she went without much excitement to the window to scan the sky for black smoke. Her flat did not look out over the bay, and she saw nothing but excited neighbors and their servants running down the street to get a better view. She was hesitating about taking a bath before putting on her clothes when the phone rang: it was Andy, of course, notifying her that war had indeed come to the Colony.
“All right, all right,” she said. “I’m used to it, you know. We had it in Shanghai.”
“This is different.” Andy was stuttering, as he always did when he was excited. “Look here, dear, I can’t come over to see how you’re getting on. I’m one of the fire wardens, you know, and we’re mobilized; I’ll phone you up as soon as I have a chance, but––”
