A Most Immoral Woman

by Linda Jaivin

  ‘A penny for your thoughts.’

  Her eyes, he felt, were already unwrapping them. ‘Oh, I was…I was just reflecting on the latest developments in the war.’ Pompous! Stupid!

  ‘I did not expect you to say that. But Martin—Mr Egan—has told me that you are a great booster of the Japanese cause.’

  ‘That I am. The Japs won the Liaotung Peninsula fair and square in the Sino-Japanese War eight years ago. It was wrong for the Chinese to lease Port Arthur to the Russians.’

  ‘Is it not their port to lease to whomever they like?’ She shook her head. One curl came loose, momentarily mesmerising Morrison with its languid sway. ‘I don’t know much about it but I can’t help feeling that war is rarely a good thing. If I hear of a ship sunk in battle, all I can think about are the poor sailors who sank with it.’

  ‘Women are natural pacifists. But sometimes there’s good reason for war. Your own President Roosevelt once said he’s not sensitive about killing, as long as the reason is adequate.’ Her ears, he noticed, were exquisite—delicate shells the colour of cream.

  ‘I know you are a brave and proven man, Dr Morrison—Ernest—so I don’t mean this personally. But it has been my experience that it is normally men not themselves called to battle who maintain the most zealous appetite for war. I have known good, brave boys from the Mount Tamalpais Academy who burned with desire to serve their country as officers and gentlemen. Those who had the chance rarely returned with the same lustre about them. My own dear brother Fred nearly didn’t come home at all from the Spanish-American War—and for what? For people like the Nisbets to go tormenting our new subjects with their dreary pieties?’

  Here was a lively one! Morrison’s last lover, the customs official’s wife, had proven insufferably insipid when they finally got around to talking. It had not been an isolated experience, and went some way towards explaining his enduring bachelorhood. ‘I admire the moral sentiment that drives your argument,’ he said. ‘Yet some wars are just and necessary. Your own Civil War, whilst brutal, did end slavery and maintain the unity of the nation.’

  ‘True,’ she said, her tone conciliatory. ‘So the Russo-Japanese War would, in your opinion, be a righteous war?’

  ‘Most definitely,’ he answered with gusto. ‘The British Empire has brought good governance and peace to backwards and downtrodden peoples wherever it has touched them. Japan’s constitutional monarchy, which subscribes to the values of the Enlightenment, has similar ambitions.’

  ‘You are very passionate about this.’

  ‘Truth be told, if there had been no war, I would repine that my whole work in China had been a failure.’ What had begun as a flirtatious conversation was in danger of turning into a political discourse, Morrison realised. In as jaunty a tone as he could muster, he added, ‘Besides, if war failed to break out, I should hardly have known how to pass the winter.’

  ‘Is that so?’ she responded playfully, twirling the errant curl around one finger. ‘I would have thought a man of your resources, and passion, could have found other diversions easily enough.’

  Her expression, Morrison couldn’t help but feel, suggested one or two. Yet perhaps he only hoped that was the case. He proceeded with care. ‘So, what brings you to China, Miss…Mae?’

  ‘It’s a long story. But I do adore travel for its own sake. It’s most broadening. I know that you are a great traveller, too.’

  ‘It’s in my blood, actually. My family hails from Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. Our clan badge is a piece of driftwood.’

  She laughed. ‘Travel is in my blood, as well. My papa made his first voyage as a twelve-year-old stowaway. Now, of course, he owns a shipping company. Our home in Oakland is full of maritime portraits. When I was little, I used to stare at the paintings of boats and imagine where I might go. I had the most darling little sailor suit. So I was very cross to learn that a girl couldn’t be a sailor. It seemed terribly unfair. I am twenty-six now and have only just got over the injustice of it all.’

  ‘So why China?’ he asked, picturing her in her sailor suit.

  ‘Well, I’d been to Europe.’

  ‘That’s it?’ he teased. ‘You’d been to Europe?’

  The mysterious shadow passed over her features once more. Though it piqued his curiosity, she quickly recovered her natural ebullience.

  ‘One cannot deny the allure of the Orient. I am quite mad for Japan, too. I’ve seen the Mikado three times. Yet I hadn’t thought Japan to be such a popular destination until I sailed from Honolulu on the SS Siberia and Captain Tremaine Smith—’

  ‘I know Tremaine Smith. Fine figure of a man.’

  ‘Indeed.’ She dimpled. ‘Well, Tremaine…Captain Smith told me his ship is always packed to the gunwales with people who are crazy for Japan. All the men are in love with geishas, or at least the idea of them, and all the women want to become them, or so it seems. Captain Smith said to me,’ and here she adopted the accent of a Liverpudlian, ‘“They all think they’re about to disembark in the Town of Titipu!”’

  She is very entertaining. ‘I don’t understand the frenzy over the geisha myself. Amongst other things, I find their habit of blackening their teeth with dye of powdered gall-nut and iron quite repellent.’

  ‘And yet the idea of the geisha, who turns every aspect of being a woman into art and who may love freely, with neither limitation nor compunction, is so romantic. We have nothing like that in the West. It seems one can only be a good woman or a prostitute. I admit that I, too, have been in love with geishas since seeing the sublime Sada Yacco perform in San Francisco a few years ago.’

  ‘I’ve heard of Sada Yacco. But I still think the Chinese woman is more fair to look at. And her lot is certainly better than that of her sisters in many other heathen countries.’

  ‘Even taking into consideration those awful little bound feet of theirs?’ Miss Perkins sounded incredulous.

  ‘Most certainly.’

  ‘Why, truly, do they do that? Bind their feet, I mean.’

  It was a sexual thing, as far as Morrison knew. Feminists like Mrs Little of the Anti-Footbinding Society carried on about how the custom was intended to limit and control women’s mobility. Morrison had heard more engaging stories from Confucian gentlemen about how the swaying walk of the bound-footed woman had the effect of multiplying the folds in their vaginas. He knew that Chinese men loved to play with ‘three-inch golden lotuses’, kissing, squeezing, licking and sucking on them. They even drank from wine cups placed in the little shoes. But it was hardly the sort of topic to raise with a young lady of recent acquaintance. ‘It dates back to the Tang Dynasty, about a thousand years ago. There was a dancer beloved of the Emperor whose feet were naturally small. It became a fashion and then a custom. To have bound feet is considered evidence that a woman is respectable.’

  ‘That’s most intriguing,’ replied Miss Perkins, putting a finger to her lips, which were beautifully shaped and impossibly rosy. ‘And I’d always heard there was a sexual motivation.’

  Morrison’s heart stopped at the sound of the word ‘sexual’ coming from those lips. He felt himself colour. He convinced himself that he had misheard her. So tangled in thought was he that he failed to comment at all.

  She shrugged. ‘I would dearly love to have a pair of the little shoes as a souvenir, but I understand they are hard to come by.’ She turned and lifted the heavy velvet curtain at the window. ‘Oh my,’ she said, standing. ‘Look at this!’

  Morrison hastened to her side. He felt both the chill of the night air through the glass and the heat of her body, so close to his own that they were almost touching. They gazed together at the new snow glittering like white jade in the moonlight. It was almost as bright as day. The ancient stones of the Great Wall glowed softly in the distance.

  ‘That moonlight is enchanting.’ Her eyes shone. ‘Let’s climb the Great Wall!’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  The heavy meal had excited his gout, and dyspe
psia threatened. Thanks to his old spear wound, cold, dry air always put Morrison in danger of nosebleeds. The sensible part of him yearned for an early night and a warm bed. The sensible part of him was not in the ascendant. ‘Marvellous idea,’ Morrison said. ‘Splendid.’

  By then, the Reverend and Mrs Nisbet, needing a lie-down after the near-fatal choking incident brought on by Miss Perkins’s shocking suggestion, had scuttled off to bed. Dumas, lulled by the combined exertions of digestion and conversation, was scratching at his beard and suppressing yawns. When Miss Perkins revealed the plan, Mrs Ragsdale drew a sharp breath. ‘It’s terribly late, dear. The ground will be most treacherous.’

  ‘Oh, please, Mrs R.!’ Mae pouted, squeezing her chaperone’s hand and pecking at her cheek.

  The sight of those innocent kisses made Morrison feel weak. He plied his friend with a gaze both meaningful and apologetic. ‘Dumas?’

  Dumas, Morrison was pleased to see, saw his use. ‘A postprandial would be grand.’ Morrison would owe him one.

  Dumas placed Mrs Ragsdale’s hand in the crook of his arm. ‘Mrs Ragsdale, would you do me the honour?’

  In Which Morrison and Miss Perkins Arrive at

  the First Pass Under Heaven

  Rugged up in scarves, hats and furs, the ladies’ gloved hands tucked into rabbit-fur muffs, the party set off down a road leading eastwards from the hotel towards the Wall. It was a short stroll, only a quarter of a mile. Kuan and Mrs Ragsdale’s Boy, Ah Long, summoned from the conviviality of the servants’ quarters, walked ahead, dangling paper lanterns from sticks. Animated by a sense of shared adventure, they tramped through the soft white landscape towards the ancient battlements, their boots crunching through the snow, their noses shocked crimson by the cold. Morrison stole a sideways look at Mae and felt his blood thrill.

  The Great Wall divided the world between known and unknown, domestic and wild, civilised and barbarian. It was less a coherent wall than a confusion of fortifications scattered across the north of China like a game of pick-up sticks across a carpet. It hadn’t served any real function since 1644. That year, the Ming General Wu San-kui opened the gates at Mountain-Sea Pass to a powerful army led by Manchus, the very people this section of the Wall had been designed to keep out. General Wu had asked the Manchus to help quell a rebellion against the Ming Dynasty. He hadn’t foreseen that, having done so, they would enthrone their own dynasty, the Ch’ing. Once thrown open, gates in even the most carefully defended walls could be difficult to close. Morrison, relating this history to Mae and Mrs Ragsdale, never considered there might be a lesson there for himself.

  Upon arriving at the Wall, Mrs Ragsdale panted and patted her chest. ‘I fear I am not up for such a climb. You young folks go on ahead.’

  ‘I shall keep Mrs Ragsdale company,’ offered the faithful Dumas.

  ‘You want me to come?’ Kuan asked Morrison, looking unsurprised by the answer.

  Morrison clasped Mae’s small gloved hand as they negotiated the stone steps, slippery with snow. When the heel of her boot caught in a crack and she stumbled, he caught and held her for a moment, his heart banging in his chest like a schoolboy’s.

  Atop the summit, they surveyed the glittering landscape. The full moon had sown the snowy fields with diamonds and silvered the rippling corrugations of the Gulf of Bohai where, not far from where they stood, the Wall finished its discontinuous journey of thousands of miles, abutting into the sea.

  The path along the Great Wall became less treacherous as they approached the old garrison town of Mountain-Sea Pass, nestled against the magnificent watchtower of the First Pass Under Heaven. The snowfall had laid an ermine stole over the Wall’s towers and parapets and the undulating roofs of the town dwellings. Below, on deserted streets ragged with moonshadow, a nightwatchman, plump in padded robes, swung his painted lantern, calling out the Hour of the Rat and, in a gesture as self-defeating as it was traditional, banging together wooden clappers to warn thieves of his advance. Beyond the Great Wall, a caravan of shaggy, two-humped Bactrian camels, bells jingling from their necks, loped ahead of a Mongolian herdsman on a pony. A thin breeze tinkled the chimes hanging from the eaves of a Buddhist temple inside the town. In the distance, the Great Wall, leaving the town, snaked over serrated mountain ridges.

  Morrison felt as though he had never been so alive to wonder and possibility. He spread out his cloak and they sat down side by side on it, enveloped in the magic of the night. Though every part of him was yearning to touch Mae, Morrison found himself beset by an accursed shyness that might have surprised acquaintances who thought of him as the most confident of men. He took a deep breath to calm himself, but the cold air seared his lungs and he had to stifle a cough.

  Mae looked up at him with a playful expression. ‘How long must I wait before you kiss me?’ she demanded.

  Mae Ruth Perkins’s soft mouth tasted of minted chocolate and black coffee, with a hint of meat and onions. She did not—thanks ye gods!—kiss like a virgin. Surprise quickly gave way to gratitude, and gratitude to sensuality. After some minutes, he pulled away to look at her, placing an ungloved hand on her cold cheek. She grasped it in both her own and, locking her eyes on to his, kissed it in such a silky manner that he felt dizzy. More revelations followed. Layers of clothing—not to mention freezing temperatures and a bed of ancient stone—proved no obstacle to her ability to deliver and command pleasure; her hands were as cunning as her kisses.

  By the time they were ready to turn back, Morrison’s senses were aflame and his legs atremble; he felt as though his bones had been reduced to gelatine. She, on the other hand, had grown irrepressibly gay and was humming American show tunes as though nothing out of the ordinary had transpired.

  ‘Do you know “Good Old Summertime”? No? Blanche Ring sings it in the musical play The Defender. I saw it in New York’s Herald Square. She was wonderful.’ Mae launched into the song in a voice as husky, warm and throaty as that of Ethel Barrymore. ‘Come on. Your turn. What songs do you know? Court me with something.’

  He hemmed and hawed.

  ‘You must know this one. “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do…”’

  ‘Maysie, Maysie…’

  ‘I like that.’

  ‘Oh, look,’ called Morrison, as they came upon the others, ‘here we are. Hello.’

  It was hard to say whether Mrs Ragsdale, Dumas or the two servants were more relieved at their return. All were too frozen to complain. As the little group straggled back to the Six Kingdoms, only Mae appeared as fresh as if the evening had just begun.

  Morrison, head still spinning, had just changed into his nightshirt when he heard a soft, insistent rapping on his door.

  George Ernest Morrison had had considerable experience of forward young women in his two and two score years. Saucy Pepita, devastating Noelle, naughty Agneth. Three nameless Scottish tarts who allowed him to sprinkle their bodies with brandy and soda one memorable night whilst he was studying medicine in Edinburgh. The harlots, grisettes, bad girls and worse wives of a dozen countries. But nothing had prepared him for Miss Mae Ruth Perkins, who looked like a lady, was every bit a woman, but took her pleasure like a man. And whose charms, he already sensed, would prove more addictive than opium.

  In Which the Sun Comes Up on a New Era in

  Morrison’s Life, a Scandalous Conversation

  Ensues and Our Hero Accepts an

  Invitation to Ride

  Morrison gazed upon the sleeping form by his side. The room was dark, the moon having set. He listened to the rhythm of her breathing and watched the slow dance of her curves under the satin quilt. Her head was tilted to one side, her chin doubling slightly in repose, her long hair fanning out over the pillow. Under heavy, tasselled lids her eyes rested, guarded by the thick natural crescents of her eyebrows. Even asleep, those lips seemed to smile at some private entertainment. He felt all of his repressed longings fold themselves around her shape. Brushing a lock of hair from her cheek, he inhaled her musk of perfum
e, perspiration and sex. He described all this to himself, a correspondent in love.

  ‘Mae,’ he whispered, ‘it’ll be dawn soon. They mustn’t find you here.’

  Without opening her eyes, Mae flattened the palm of her hand against the top of his head, urging him down towards her thighs, via her breasts.

  Time passed memorably. He was well pleased with himself for having had the foresight to pack several ‘riding coats’. Fashioned from the oiled and stretched intestines of lambs, they were not much protection from the pox. But they were fairly reliable at preventing what was known in polite society as an ‘interesting condition’.

  Outside the window, the sky began to shimmer with a premonition of dawn. Morrison slid under the warm quilt to bury his nose in Mae’s bosom, occasioning all manner of delicious gasping and squirming. With great reluctance and greater willpower, he finally pulled away from her and sighed. ‘We mustn’t get caught. I don’t want to cause a scandal for you.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Ernest, honey,’ she said, snuggling close again. ‘I am perfectly capable of causing my own scandals. I have been doing so since I was seventeen. Don’t look so alarmed. You remind me of my father when you look alarmed and that won’t do at all.’

  He winced at the comparison. ‘What scandal did you cause at seventeen?’ The journalist in Morrison required information. The man in him wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. Morrison had been relieved that she was not a virgin. Yet he would prefer not to discover that she was a tart. Even when it was a patently absurd presumption, he preferred to think that a woman had flowered uniquely under his tutelage.