A Most Immoral Woman

by Linda Jaivin

  ‘With regard to Sir Claude? It sounds to me like you’ve worked it out rather well.’

  ‘No. I’m speaking of the whole distasteful business with Jameson. It has been eating at me.’

  ‘Ah. Why not call Jameson’s bluff?’ Dumas suggested. ‘If he’s telling the truth, then it’s better that you know. If he was only trying to rile you, that should become apparent soon enough. Ask him over in company and see if he sticks to his line.’

  ‘Good thinking.’

  Morrison dashed off a note asking Jameson to luncheon the next day. He also invited some others to whom he owed invitations, including the British military officer Colonel Bagshawe, a man so placid he appeared somnambulant, and his excitable wife; Mrs Williams, a platitudinous Englishwoman whose husband owned a Yangtze steamer; and, gritting his teeth, the Nisbets.

  And so it was over lunch the next day that Jameson, unprompted, regaled Mrs Bagshawe and Mrs Nisbet, between whom he was seated, with the details of what he claimed to be his ongoing affair with Miss Mae Perkins. The shock on Mrs Nisbet’s face and the delight on Mrs Bagshawe’s roused Jameson to deliver an oration as slanderous as it was detailed.

  Villainous man, Morrison seethed. Clearly a sordid fantasy all of his own and nowise amusing! He’s read Venus in Furs and let his wretched imagination run away with him! She is not that way inclined. She had suggested nothing of the sort to him anyway, not that he would have submitted to it. Jameson’s own perversions, he concluded, were clearly of the most wretched nature.

  His mood grew acerbic. When Colonel Bagshawe playfully mentioned British Legation Secretary Reginald Tower’s propensity to fall asleep at formal dinners, Morrison snapped, ‘No one is ever sorry about that, much preferring Tower asleep to Tower orating.’ Mrs Williams mentioned that on their last visit to London she and Mr Williams had seen ‘that other famous Australian’, Nellie Melba, in concert. ‘Madame Melba!’ Morrison exclaimed. ‘That woman has the manners of a lime-juicer. She drinks, uses foul language and at her table permits a ribald conversation that would shock any decent lady.’ Though probably no worse than I have just tolerated at my own

  . His guests bent to their plates. Dumas worried his sideburns until they stood at angles from his cheeks. Jameson remained offensively cheerful.

  Morrison was as relieved as everyone else when the luncheon drew to a close. Worn out by his own cantankerousness, he tidied his correspondence, went out to pace the Tartar Wall and retired early that evening to read. Two days before, Menzies had sent him a gift of a large box of books from the English bookseller in Tientsin. On top of the pile, a slim volume with an attractive dustcover caught his eye: Anna Lombard, the latest novel by Victoria Cross. Anna Lombard had sold millions of copies worldwide to become the bestselling book of its time. Morrison had heard that the author identified with the New Woman movement and that the novel had stirred considerable scandal. This had intrigued him but he had not been able to procure a copy before now.

  Turning up the spirit lamp, he settled himself in his favourite reading chair, tie loosened and carpet slippers replacing his brogues. Despite the advent of spring, the northern Chinese evenings were still chilly. He pulled a woollen rug over his lap. Kuan had placed a brazier at his feet. The kettle on the potbellied stove wheezed softly. A cart mule clip-clopped along the lane with heavy footsteps, bell tinkling with every sway of its neck.

  Morrison lost himself in the voluptuous Indian night of the novel, in which the purple sky was ‘throbbing, beating, palpitating with the light of stars and planets’, and in which the ‘soft, hot air itself seems to breathe of the passions’ and tropical flowers released their cloying perfume. He chuckled to himself at the male narrator Gerald’s description of the cackle-headed females at a colonial ball. He grew as interested as Gerald himself in the appearance of the cultivated and passionate beauty Anna Lombard. He nodded with recognition as Gerald remarked that, having come to the East, he wished never to return, for the Orient ‘holds one with too many hands’. And he suffered a shock almost equal to Gerald’s when he discovered that the brilliant Anna had not only taken a native Pathan for a lover but, outrageously, a husband. The authoress lingered long on her staggeringly wanton descriptions of the Pathan’s masculine yet sensual beauty—as if that excused the white woman’s passion. His indignation mounting, Morrison turned the pages ever more swiftly, appalled by how Gerald passively accepted every insult to his British manliness. Loving Anna with a steadfast heart, Gerald waited for her to come back to him with almost—it had to be said—female devotion. Reaching the last page, Morrison snapped the book shut. He now understood why some of the critics called the book ‘disgusting’ and ‘thoroughly impure’, even as others—no doubt women hiding behind male pseudonyms—pronounced it ‘remarkable’ and ‘difficult to praise too highly’.

  The illusion of subcontinental heat disappeared from the cold Peking night. He would go to bed, but not before recording in his journal in a firm, certain hand that Anna Lombard was the most immoral work he had ever read. George Ernest Morrison could be very assured in his opinions about the immorality of other people and particularly women: Nellie Melba, the Empress Dowager, Anna Lombard and…No. Jameson was a liar, a masturbatory fabulist.

  Morrison’s dreams that night were dense and scented with jasmine.

  The following morning, the eighteenth of March, snowflakes swirled through the air. Spring may have been retreating but Morrison was advancing. He bounded out of bed.

  ‘Kuan! We’re going to Tientsin. Get us tickets on the first train out.’

  In Which Morrison Is Vastly Relieved by

  Miss Perkins’s Attentions, and Bonnets Are

  Discussed and Immediately Forgotten

  Stamping snow from his boots, Morrison stepped into the oasis of the Astor House Hotel. Soon he was following the Chinese bellhop through the familiar panelled corridors to the second floor. Sending Kuan out on some errands, Morrison sat down at the escritoire and penned a note. My dear Mae, I must know…Jameson said…of course. I don’t believe…He tore it up and wrote another, far milder in tone and neutral in content, blotting it carefully. He told Kuan to deliver the chit with utmost expediency after which he could take the day off. I will confront her in person.

  Morrison did no such thing. He knew from the first sight of Mae that C.D. Jameson was nothing but a mendacious old windbag. From the manner in which her eyes softened at the sight of him. The way she flung herself into his arms. The urgency with which furs and hat and gloves and shoes were discarded and top bodice, under bodice, gored skirt, petticoat, corset cover, busk, corset, chemise and drawers whispered to the floor. The tattoo of their hearts. Her inquisitive lips. Her delicious unfurling. Her nimble pleasure at his own excitement and the inventiveness with which she sought to increase it. Her own quivering hunger. Nothing existed outside the intoxicating dance, the mingling of flesh, the mutual conquering and vanquishing. Not China, not war, not care nor suspicion—and certainly not C.D. bloody Jameson.

  Afterwards, he wrapped her tightly in his arms, inhaling the sour-plum smell of their spent passion. He excoriated himself for listening to Jameson’s calumny. He could have wept for his lack of trust. But Morrison was not the sort to weep. And there was only so long a man could hold such a magnificently buxom and callipygian form in his arms before rising once more to the siren’s song.

  But for a commitment to a late luncheon with Mrs Ragsdale and Mrs Goodnow in the Astor’s glass-domed dining room, they would never have left his room at all.

  Mrs Goodnow was the wife of a prosperous British merchant who was a notorious seducer of other men’s wives and who also kept a Chinese concubine on the side. Society was much tested by the question of whether Mrs Goodnow was aware of her husband’s infidelity, for she was of an invariably cheery disposition—only increasing public sympathy and kindness in her direction as all awaited the thrilling moment when all would be revealed. The truth was that Mrs Goodnow, an attractive and vivacious woman in her
forties, not only knew but was complicit in her husband’s debaucheries. She took a range of interesting lovers herself, including, on one apparently spectacular occasion, a Khamba warrior from Tibet, and occasionally slept with her husband’s concubine either in front of him or by herself. Morrison had long suspected she was not the innocent victim she seemed to be. Mae, who had become Mrs Goodnow’s confidante, confirmed it. She told Morrison that Mrs Goodnow had confessed to greatly mourning the passing of Queen Victoria; should sexual mores grow too relaxed under the reign of King Edward, already famous for his womanising, Mrs Goodnow had declared, she would have to find another vice with which to amuse herself. Mrs Goodnow was more than happy to provide Mae with alibis; that day, the pair of them had supposedly been at Bible study, a ruse that pleased Mrs Ragsdale no end.

  Morrison, nerves sparking and limbs languid, was barely able to focus on a word any of the ladies said. And though the Astor’s dining room was famed for the excellence of both its cuisine and wine cellar, Morrison did not know or care if he was eating fish or ham, and if blindfolded would have been unable to say if the wine he was drinking was white or red. Mae did not aid the project of concentration with her outrageous half-mast gaze and hinting lips, nor Mrs Goodnow with her barely suppressed hilarity. After the coffee and petits fours, Mae remarked that she wished to purchase a bonnet before the shops closed and asked Morrison if he and Mrs Goodnow would accompany her to the department store on the Ho Ping Trade Road. Bonnet shopping was not high on Morrison’s list of favourite recreations. ‘I would be delighted,’ he said. Mrs Ragsdale, amiably stupefied by food and drink, allowed them to see her into her carriage.

  After the three of them waved her off, Mrs Goodnow, eyes twinkling, bade them a pleasant afternoon and departed for an assignation of her own. Mae snuggled her hand into the crook of Morrison’s arm—‘Shall we?’ Fresh snowfall had left a hush over the garrulous streets. Drifts lay across the branches of trees like lazing cats. The air’s cold breath tingled in Morrison’s nose and mouth. She fixed him with an irresistible look.

  ‘I take it that Miss Perkins is not too pressed on the matter of bonnet shopping?’ he asked in a voice full of hope.

  ‘I do wish to purchase a new bonnet. But perhaps this is not the best time for it.’

  Blessed relief! ‘And what would mademoiselle prefer to do?’

  ‘Ernest, honey, need you ask?’

  Mae knew better than any woman he had ever encountered how to make a man happy without for a moment neglecting her own pleasure. In fact, her capacity for pleasure was so voracious, Morrison worried a little for his heart.

  Dinner that night with Mr and Mrs Ragsdale, Menzies and other anodyne company was dull passing belief, Morrison later recorded in his journal. It was nonetheless entertaining to hear Maysie explain, in answer to Mrs Ragsdale’s enquiry, how she’d tried on ‘dozens of bonnets, and yet none suited me; isn’t that so, Ernest?’ He’d replied that she had looked lovely in all of them and that it was the bonnets’ loss that none had been chosen to accompany her home.

  After the meal, the men gathered in Mr Ragsdale’s library for cigars and brandy. Out of habit and curiosity, Morrison scanned his host’s bookshelves, finding nothing to impress him and several titles that provoked his contempt. He was just beginning to enjoy himself when the men clustered around him, quizzing him about ‘his’ war. Was he surprised, after his predictions of a swift victory for the Japanese, that Japan had still not taken Port Arthur from the Russians? And what of his colleague Lionel James’s wireless scheme—did he really think the Japanese would allow it? Were the difficulties experienced by the Japanese military behind its reluctance to open the war to the correspondents generally? Morrison expounded with more confidence than he felt on Japan’s chances and intentions, though in truth, after such a day, he struggled to keep his mind on the war at all. After the weeks of agonising doubt as to whether Mae cared for him, his relief was visceral. He stifled an uncharacteristic urge to fling open the room’s french doors, sail out onto the balcony and proclaim her name aloud to startled streets, to dance, to sing, to rush back into the room where the ladies were gathered, to scoop her into his arms and carry her off. He felt young with joy. He willed the evening to a close, for he wished to hasten with sleep the coming of the following day and his next assignation with the lover he named in his journal the flashing-eyed maiden.

  In Which Morrison Impresses Miss Perkins

  with the Mark of his Spearhead, Miss Perkins

  Confesses to Having Engaged in a Certain

  Amount of Diplomatic Activity and a Question

  About Love Receives a Most Surprising Answer

  The following morning Morrison awoke in good cheer and, he fancied, with the energy of a man twenty years younger. Whistling, he set out for his various appointments, interviews and meetings. To Westerners he spoke of gold and tin and quicksilver and the many ways Japanese control over Manchuria and Korea would benefit Britannia and her allies. To Chinese he spoke of the advantage to their country of allowing this to happen by remaining neutral. He filled his head with facts and his journal with information, ruminations and figures.

  ‘Do you think Japan and England rule China better than Chinese?’ asked Kuan as they were hurrying between appointments. His expression was itself a perfect model of neutrality.

  ‘No, of course not. Not in the sense that China should abandon its sovereignty. But if the Chinese government was smart, it would let the English look after China’s defence. It’d be as quiet as Sunday school then. You could bring in all sorts of changes—your reforms—and you wouldn’t have any more problems from the likes of the Boxers. Or anyone else for that matter.’

  ‘If China had a modern army we would not need British. It is better, I think, to defend ourselves.’

  ‘It’ll be a long while before that happens, Kuan. You know that.’

  Kuan started to say something, then caught himself.

  Morrison did not pursue the conversation. His mind was already on other things.

  At the age of twenty, Morrison had packed a swag with a bedroll, a billy can and some beef jerky. He soaped the inside of his stockings, slapped a panama hat on his head, and stuck a sheath knife in his belt. Breaking a raw egg into each of his boots for lubrication, he set out to walk more than two thousand miles from Normanton, near the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, to Adelaide. His goal was to retrace in reverse the footsteps of the explorers Burke and Wills. They had died attempting to traverse Australia twenty-one years before that, just before Morrison was born. People told him he was mad, suicidal. They warned of poisonous spiders and snakes. They said that if the critters didn’t get him, the blacks would. He smiled and waved goodbye. And when he found himself up to his armpits in swamp, or tramping across clay flats on which grew little but salt-bush and mallee, or when he was tortured by heat and thirst, or tested by cyclones, he exulted no less than when he found himself in sun-dappled thickets of yapunyah or watching mobs of kangaroos grazing at sunset or sitting around a friendly campfire with the people of the bush. Humbled by the great sky above his head and covered in red dust from the earth below his feet, he knew he wouldn’t die. Not when there was so much to do in life. And certainly not in the midst of such life, such beauty.

  Optimism and confidence, vital to the overlander, are helpful traits for a lover as well. Nestled with Maysie later that afternoon, Morrison felt happy to the point of giddiness. In a moment of egg-down-the-boots optimism, he whispered into her hair, ‘Maysie, dearest, dare I think that you are as happy as I am right now?’

  ‘Oh, honey,’ she answered, ‘it’s in my nature to be happy.’

  He had anticipated a number of answers to his question. This wasn’t one. ‘I meant—’

  ‘I know, honey. Of course I’m happy here, now, with you. You should know that.’

  The way she said it, and a look in her eyes that seemed a lot like pity, made him uneasy.

  ‘Let me explain it another way,’ she
said. ‘I went to the Chinese opera one night last week.’

  ‘I see,’ said Morrison, more confused.

  ‘The costumes, the make-up and the gestures were magnificent. And the story was wonderful, all about a scholar who finds a painting of a beautiful woman and falls in love with her.’

  ‘Peony Pavilion. I know it. It’s a famous story.’

  ‘I felt it had such universal truth in it. Perhaps a particular truth, too.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘That men fall in love with an ideal image of woman,’ she replied.

  ‘And women don’t do the same? I believe that the heroine first died of a broken heart after meeting the scholar in a dream. He came upon that picture after her death, dreamed about her in turn, and brought her back to life.’

  ‘True, but the story was written by a man, so of course he wrote it that way. I think that, contrary to general opinion, we women are the less romantic sex. Don’t look so incredulous. We may be mistaken for the more romantic, due to the sentimentality of expression that’s so common in women’s books and magazines. But don’t ever forget that we have an inherent—or perhaps well-taught—desire to please. That commonly entails letting a man feel that he is the centre of our world when that centre might just as easily be…I don’t know…bonnets or novels or entertaining.’

  ‘’Tis a sad day when a man feels he must compete with a bonnet. You’re teasing me. But what are you saying, my dear Maysie?’

  ‘Maybe that what you see is not who I am.’

  ‘What—that this charming, sensuous, joyous, intelligent and loving creature in my arms is, in fact, some dour and doughy old spinster? Or perhaps one of those mischievous sprites the Chinese call fox spirits? Or, I don’t know, a Mandarin in the Imperial Court?’ Morrison found it hard to respond with any seriousness.