A Most Immoral Woman

by Linda Jaivin

  And so it transpired that over the next two days, up and down the high streets and low of foreign Tientsin, Morrison collected and dispersed information, facts, figures and rumours, dined well, drank moderately, slept poorly, and, as was his wont when disturbed by other matters, fretted about the state of his health. When temptation threw herself into his path, which she did on a regular basis, he failed to resist and he stopped pretending that he was interested in doing so. But he was very clear in both head and heart—it was not love. Like him, she was a hunter, an explorer, a collector. A conqueror. He had been a fool not to have understood this earlier, to have become so emotionally involved. He took her more roughly than he’d ever done before on that first day back in Tientsin, more like a whore and less like a lover, and was both scandalised and titillated to see how readily she responded to it. The second day, she took him the same way—and he was equally astonished by how much it electrified him. He realised that, as a great actress, she not only played any role on offer but made it her own. And she had a few scripts she’d written herself. He stayed in Tientsin longer than anticipated. There was, of course, much there to be done.

  ‘The dentist,’ she suggested one day, ‘the boy, Tommy,’ the next. ‘Willie Vanderbilt Jnr and his maid.’ He had drawn the line at Zeppelin. She asked him to propose some scenarios as well, and, overcoming his initial reticence, he told her about Noelle and a time in the Bois de Bologne. Whether acting out fantasies or just revelling in sensuality, the sex he had with her made all that had come before it seem like curry without spice, bland and meaningless. But it was not the stuff of eternal union and on that point he was as clear as the spring skies over Tientsin. She was the quintessential courtesan. He didn’t raise the issue of marriage again and she acted as though it had never come up in the first place. He could see no reason not to partake of the pleasures that were so freely offered to him. He was just a man, after all, even if she had never been just another woman.

  On the train back to Peking, Morrison met a Miss McReady who was travelling in the company of a British diplomat’s wife. She was in her early twenties, small-chinned and thin; Morrison guessed that the attractively generous appearance of her hips was aided by bustle pads. She was pretty enough, however, with cornflower-blue eyes, clear pale skin and glossy black hair. She had a practical, demure air about her, and the habit of pausing before speaking, as though tasting her words first to ensure they were not too salty. There was nothing extravagant about her clothes, constructed from more workaday fabrics than those with which Maysie adorned herself, and she wore them with an appealing modesty. Miss McReady, he caught himself thinking, was the sort of girl he could introduce to his mother.

  As she related her experiences in China to Morrison, which included a recent boat trip up the Yangtze, he stifled his boredom. Her observations were hackneyed, those of every other traveller. On the other hand, he was flattered by her keen interest in his own experiences as well as his work. The conversation flowed all the way back to Peking. If Miss McReady had none of Mae’s demonic spark, he told himself that this commended her to him all the more. She’d be staying as a houseguest at the home of the diplomat. When he bade her and her hostess goodbye at the station, he promised to call on them soon and was immediately overcome with enervation at the prospect.

  He saw a plausible version of his life stretch out before him, full of predictable small joys and sorrows; children, yes—and that would be wonderful; his mother happy—and that would be more than grand; and himself respectable at last in the eyes of all—Chinese and foreign.

  Dull, dull, dull.

  He had just met Miss McReady. He didn’t have to marry her.

  But if that was not the whole point with a woman like that, what was?

  Morrison expelled a long breath.

  He and Kuan bounced along in the back of a covered Peking cart on their way home. ‘What do you think, Kuan? Would Miss McReady be a suitable match for your master?’

  ‘I think,’ said Kuan, ‘my master is very smart. I think he knows the answer. He does not need his poor servant to tell him.’

  ‘That’s a “no” then, is it?’ Morrison chortled. ‘You’re probably right there, old boy.’

  They arrived home. In the main courtyard, they ran into Cook, off to the markets with empty baskets dangling from the ends of his carrying-pole. ‘I think my master is very lucky,’ Kuan said as they waved Cook off with some requests for the evening meal. ‘He can choose who to marry.’

  ‘That’s the theory,’ Morrison replied abstractedly.

  Inside his library, Morrison greedily inhaled the comforting animal smell of leather bindings, the woody scent of paper and the mineral wafts of ink that hung in the air like motes of dust. His dominion, his kingdom. He reflected, cringing, on the amount of time he had spent over the previous six weeks in feverish thrall to that incantadora, that fox spirit. He’d neglected the war for her—his war. Morrison was supposed to be keeping a watch over those colleagues dispatched to cover the war. If a scandal blew up now over the Haimun, he would have to answer to his editors.

  The drone Bedlow arrived from Wei Hai Wei two days later and installed himself in the main guest room whilst awaiting his papers. He brought word that a Japanese mine had blown up the Russian warship Petropaulovsk. Admiral Makarov perished with all his crew. Tonami and James, at least, should be content with that glad news.

  Morrison called on Miss McReady and offered to ride with her to the Western Hills, though already he knew that he would not pursue her.

  On his fourth day back, a letter came from the malevolent Jameson. ‘She is like a bitch on heat,’ wrote the indefatigable knave. Hands shaking, Morrison ripped the note to shreds. He ceased to think about Mae every waking minute.

  As for the war, rumours flew as fast as the telegraphists’ hands could punch out the dots and dashes. Facts—reliable, verifiable—remained scarcer than hen’s teeth. ‘They’re certainly scarcer than the journalists who come to hunt them down,’ Dumas remarked. He was visiting Morrison and the pair had gone walking on the Tartar Wall to avoid what Morrison called the ‘damned nuisance’ of Bedlow.

  ‘I have been up and down the China coast a fair bit in recent weeks,’ Dumas told him, ‘and everywhere I go they’re there—correspondents, illustrators and photographers come to cover the war, stagnating in watering holes, sinking men o’ war and evacuating towns before the advancing armies with every whisky. And still the Japanese control access as if the frontlines were their own virgin daughters. They say this will be the most reported war in history, but the devil knows what the reports are going to contain if this situation continues.’

  ‘Indeed. Thanks to all the work done on Japanese customs by war correspondents unable to reach the front, readers in the West now know more about the balloon man of Uyeno Park, the intricacies of the tea ceremony and the routines of the geisha than they do of the diversions of Paris or New York. I have heard from my colleague Brinkley in Tokio that a Japanese nobleman, Baron Mitsui, is personally funding the veteran war correspondents to compile an anthology of their writings on previous wars. It will be called In Many Wars.’

  ‘Just not this one,’ quipped Dumas. ‘And how goes Lionel James with his quest?’

  ‘He goes. Mainly back and forth between Wei Hai Wei and the Korean coast. The Japs still won’t let him get close to Port Arthur. He told me he once picked up a fellow in Korea, a journalist from a rival newspaper who’d managed to witness a land battle before getting arrested by the Japanese and dumped on the Korean coast. He was half-starved, filthy and desperate to get to a telegraph station. James had just wired a report on the same battle but based on Japanese sources. He hadn’t received confirmation from the station at Wei Hai Wei that his report had been received and relayed to The Times. He didn’t want to be scooped, especially by an eyewitness. So the Haimun’s crew prepared a hot bath and fresh clothes for their exhausted guest and plied him with food and drink until he put his head down on the table a
nd snored. Captain Passmore then ran the Haimun into Wei Hai Wei as fast as he could. James checked that his report had gone off to The Times and they steamed off again. When the correspondent finally woke up, they deposited him somewhere safe and sound and none the wiser.’

  Dumas squeaked with laughter.

  ‘And what are you gentlemen smiling about on this fine spring day?’ The speaker was Koizumi, a Japanese diplomat of Morrison’s acquaintance.

  ‘The rumour that the Japanese have recently taken Vladivostok,’ Morrison bluffed. ‘Is that battle won, then?’

  Koizumi sucked air in through his teeth. ‘You are a good friend of Japan,’ he said. ‘I can tell you that the truth is that the assault on Vladivostok was less than successful. Our navy expended considerable time and materiel bombarding an abandoned post.’

  I did the same thing recently. Morrison had attained, he thought, a certain philosophical distance from his affair with Mae. He was almost beginning to see the humour in it. ‘And so you have given up on Vladivostok?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Koizumi replied. ‘The Russian stores will not withstand even one more month of blockade. It is the same at Port Arthur. I am sure that we will have good news for you soon. Ah, and by the way, my government is not very happy with the dispatches of your colleague Granger. He seems to be rather too well embedded on the Russian side.’

  ‘More well embedded than you know,’ Morrison acknowledged, for his sources told him that Granger had thrown aside his American whore for a Russian one of even less appealing aspect. ‘But if the Japanese government wishes to see the Japanese side better represented, then it needs to open up access to the front to the foreign correspondents.’ Arguing eloquently on behalf of the foreign press, Morrison realised that he had found a worthy new outlet for his energies.

  He continued to champion the journalists’ cause to a sympathetic Dumas for some time after they’d taken leave of Koizumi.

  ‘You’re back with us,’ remarked Dumas as the pair ambled back towards the Avenue of the Well of the Princely Mansions.

  ‘I never left,’ Morrison lied.

  He smelled the perfume before he saw the envelope with the familiar, disgracefully poor penmanship. He tore it open with a sense of dread. Ernest, honey, come back to Tientsin. I am dying to see you. I send you many kisses and many more after that.

  Scratching so hard with his pen that he nearly ripped through to the blotter, Morrison composed a telegram: DEEPLY REGRET NO IMMEDIATE PROSPECT COMING TIENTSIN. ADVISE YOU ENJOY YOURSELF. GOD BLESS YOU. THINK OF ME SOMETIMES.

  It tears my heart strings!

  He poked his head outside the library door. Kuan was in the courtyard, talking quietly with Yu-ti. Something about the tenor of their conversation made him hesitate a moment before calling Kuan’s name. At the sound of his voice, both servants jumped. ‘Kuan. Take this to the telegraph office, chop-chop.’

  That night, Morrison went to bed with a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s new volume of poetry about the Boer War, The Five Nations. He always found Kipling’s full-blooded pride in the Empire as heartening as his virile wit was inspiring. But the unrhythmical nature of some of the verses in this collection left Morrison feeling discomposed. He closed the book just as the nightwatchman called the Hour of the Tiger. Three a.m. He was still tossing and turning when the watchman called the Hour of the Hare at five. He was beset with an overwhelming sense of foreboding. His knees were sore. His sinuses ached. A dull throb in one testicle prompted worried thoughts of gonococcus; dragging himself out of bed, he measured out ten grams of sodium salicyl and swallowed it down as a preventative.

  He was plagued by the thought that something, somewhere, had gone horribly wrong. He took a sleeping draught and awoke late and alarmed to find an over-excited Bedlow bursting into his room.

  ‘Bedlow. What on earth—’

  ‘Last night, Secretary Kolossoff—you know him?’

  Morrison’s head ached. ‘Yes. Kolossoff. Of the Russian Legation. I know him. And to ascertain this you’ve come to disturb my sleep?’

  ‘I’m sorry for that, G.E. But I thought you’d want to know. Early this morning he shot himself in the head.’

  Morrison jerked himself upright. ‘Dead?’

  ‘No. The bullet lodged in his brain but he did not die. He’d apparently been drinking for days. Blames himself for failing to give his government adequate warning of Japan’s intentions.’

  ‘Leave me. I’ll be down in a few minutes.’

  As Bedlow closed the door behind him, Morrison slid back under the covers. He felt sorry for Kolossoff, whom he’d always considered an agreeable enough sort—for a Russian. He wondered what it would be like to care about something—war, love, anything—so strongly that one could raise a gun to one’s own head and fire. He feared knowing the answer.

  In Which Bedlow Stays, Granger Goes and Our

  Hero Endures a Veritable Fusillade

  The following morning a crashing downpour transformed the capital from dustbowl to mudpit, slicked the paving stones of Morrison’s courtyard and made dank the lime-and-plaster walls of his study. In the streets outside, the open sewage ditches overflowed, a festering, perilous slurry. The weather was unpleasant enough to keep even the most intrepid indoors. And so indoors on this mid-April day Morrison stayed, working, pacing, cataloguing a year’s worth of missionary journals, tending to his correspondence and pacing again, full of roiling emotion. A second missive had come from Mae, insisting he come to see her. The lady’s tone is most imperious.

  Morrison marvelled at her newfound enthusiasm for correspondence. It was eminently clear that she was displeased with how he had cooled towards her. She once told him that as a little girl she had always got her way; her renewed overtures seemed the petulant act of a spoiled child. She wanted everything—and everyone—on her terms. That might work on the likes of Egan but not him. He retained fond remembrances of their times together. He did not discount the possibility of future liaisons of the sort they enjoyed this last time in Tientsin but he was not her plaything; the scales had well and truly dropped from his eyes.

  Morrison was in the midst of these ruminations when Bedlow stomped into the library in a funk, his hair plastered to his head by the rain, giving him a more fishfaced appearance than normal. He was waving a sodden telegram. ‘The War Office has ordered me back to London “as soon as possible”. It is most unfair. I have only just got here. I am keen to see action and keener to be published, as action I have seen before. What am I to do? You must help me.’

  Must I? Not only am I expected to act as hotel, concierge, encyclopaedia and exchange clerk for these colleagues but now I ‘must’ solve all their problems as well. ‘Calm yourself, Bedlow. I shall wire The Times and get them to cancel the order to rescind you.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

  Damned nuisance.

  ‘Oh, by the way, gossip is Lionel James has secured a Japanese commander on board the Haimun—but you probably know that already.’ Bedlow, beady eyed, studied his host for confirmation.

  ‘I’m not sure you’ll need to be repeating that last fact—if it is indeed a fact—too widely.’ His indiscretion knows no bounds.

  Bedlow shrugged. ‘You don’t mind if I stay for a few more days, do you?’

  ‘You’re most welcome,’ Morrison replied, grinding his teeth.

  Kuan entered and handed him a telegram. His heart gave a jolt when he saw who’d sent it. From a poor correspondent, this was quite a fusillade.

  IF YOU HONESTLY CARE YOU WILL COME. GO TIENTSIN DO.

  Go Tientsin do? He shook his head. Fairly lucid for a feminine dispatch. Telegrams worked well for professional purposes but they lacked nuance. What in heaven’s name is all this urgency?

  ‘Is it about me?’ Bedlow asked.

  He’d forgotten Bedlow’s presence. ‘No.’

  Bedlow looked disappointed. ‘I’ll leave you to it then, shall I?’ He rose from his seat with a tentative air.

&n
bsp; Morrison did not stop him.

  It stormed all that night. Raining like heaven’s wrath. The following day snow fell. Where has spring gone? The new leaves on the trees shivered under the onslaught. The city walls seemed to hunch under a squat sky, grey on grey. Morrison, his mood in tune with the weather, lunched with Miss McReady. Stripped of travel’s shine, her conversation struck him as more banal and predictable than previously, her humour weak, her mode of speech schoolmarmish. Even her eyes were less blue than he remembered. He returned home dispirited, only to receive yet another telegram from Mae.

  AM STAYING TIENTSIN TO SEE YOU. WIRE IF PLEASED.

  If pleased? Of course I would be pleased. I will not respond. I am not her toy!

  Kuan informed Morrison that Bedlow would join him for dinner. Life was one test after another.

  After dinner, a telegram arrived from Bell giving him the power to act with regard to Granger. He wasted no time in drafting his letter: Sir, your retention in our service has been left to my judgment. In my judgment your retention is undesirable. Please send resignation by telegraph.