A Most Immoral Woman

by Linda Jaivin

  Miss Franklin, Morrison noticed, had an endearing giggle. ‘It is unusual to find a woman in the job of war correspondent,’ he commented.

  Miss Franklin gave a little snort of derision. ‘The age we live in celebrates feats of daring and acts of genius, as long as they are performed by men. Society’s highest expectations of women are that they are obedient, orderly and modest. I see you two smiling, but you cannot deny that when men praise our virtue they are normally lauding our passivity and tractability. When they say we are looking beautiful, it is usually because we have tormented our feet into narrow, heeled boots and our bodies into tightly laced corsets.’ She gestured down at her masculine attire. ‘I would not be able to do the job I do were I dressed in women’s clothing.’

  She is another sort of handful. The young women of this new era, it seems, have myriad new ways of confounding us. Morrison could not help but admire Miss Franklin’s spirit and intelligence; she was going to be a boon companion. ‘Why then,’ he asked with a twinkle in his eye, ‘do not more women abandon their corsets and other fripperies and adopt the male style of dress outright, I wonder?’

  Miss Franklin was quick to respond. ‘Because most women are complicit in their own oppression.’ She went on to deride the tendency of women her age to devote themselves to pleasure and trifles over education and duty. ‘I have a friend—perhaps you know him?—Martin Egan.’

  Until that moment the conversation had been so genuinely diverting that Morrison had ceased to ruminate upon his nerve-racking situation. Upon hearing Egan’s name, his heart skipped a beat. ‘I am acquainted with Mr Egan. What of him?’

  ‘I shouldn’t speak of it,’ Miss Franklin replied, although the rush of her words made it evident that she was pleased to be able to do so. ‘Mr Egan is such an intelligent and forthright sort of man, and not old-fashioned in his thinking either, so I would have thought that he would be attracted to, well, a more modern sort of woman. A woman who takes a responsible, active place in the world. But no, he is well enamoured of a creature of leisure, a woman devoted to little more than her own pleasure, and it is…’ Her words seemed to dam up all of a sudden. ‘It is all too distasteful,’ she said finally.

  ‘You would be referring to Miss Perkins.’ Morrison’s voice gave nothing away.

  Miss Franklin appeared nonplussed. She spoke her next words carefully. ‘Are you acquainted with the lady?’

  ‘We are acquainted, yes,’ said Morrison.

  ‘What is your opinion of her?’ Miss Franklin asked after a pause.

  ‘I agree that she is just the sort of woman you describe,’ Morrison acknowledged. ‘And more.’

  ‘How…fascinating.’ She started to say something, but stopped herself.

  ‘Her father is a Republican senator in the US Congress,’ Morrison added.

  ‘Yes, I know. He is an interesting case. Member of the Freemasons and Knights Templar, shares in mining, shipping, milling, ranching, whaling—you name it. Whilst governor, he pardoned many of California’s young prisoners after interviewing them personally. Has a reputation for being so well-disposed towards business monopolies in his law-making that people joke that should he ever get into deep water, Standard Oil would send a tanker to rescue him.’

  ‘You know much about Miss Perkins’s father,’ Morrison remarked. Even he had not done so much research.

  ‘I am interested in politics, that is all,’ shrugged the precocious Miss Franklin.

  The topic turned to the Haimun and its wireless. Miss Franklin’s interest and sympathy for their project gratified and somewhat mollified the fretful James. As they conversed, Morrison’s mind stayed on the vexatious problem of Egan. He would see him and speak to him, man to man, about Mae and everything else. That’s it—I will see Egan first.

  He couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right. He’d see her first.

  He’d see them together.

  He’d see neither of them.

  He’d see only Mae.

  She would have got the telegram he’d sent from Wei Hai Wei. Unsure how long they would be staying in Nagasaki, he’d told her she could contact him in Kobe.

  Night fell on the Yellow Sea. Morrison looked to the stars for guidance. It was not forthcoming.

  In Which Our Hero Considers the Possibility

  That an Oyster Pirate Has Been Diving in Home

  Waters and Receives an Urgent Summons

  The time spent aboard the Haimun and then in Nagasaki, where another small repair delayed them for some days, passed agreeably enough, though Morrison’s anxieties increased as they got closer to their destination. Finally, Kobe came into view with its redbrick godowns and sprawling foreign settlement, the lush Rokko Mountains rising in the distance. Japanese boatmen, naked but for their indigo loincloths, unloaded passengers, luggage and other cargo. It was hot and humid. The throb of the ship’s engines still in his ears, Morrison loped through Bund Park and along the orderly streets, past neat cricket pitches, tidy homes and bustling shops. Kobe, almost odourless even in June, thanks to its underground sewers, well deserved its reputation as the ‘model settlement of the Far East’, as far as he was concerned.

  At the Telegraph Office, he found a long line of people waiting to be served. Just ahead of him was a Japanese man in a Western suit, a young European lady with an air of Gibson Girl about her, and a Chinese merchant in vest, silk shirt and loose pants, his hat lifted clear off his head by the coiled queue underneath it. The line inched forward. I nerve myself and bow to the will of Heaven. What is to be the decree? Am I to meet Maysie, and under what circumstances? Is she still to love me or am I displaced forever by the beatus providents? Am I to have happiness or pain?

  ‘May I help you, sir?’ The Englishman in charge of the Telegraph Office looked as though he’d rather be in Clacton-on-Sea. Morrison introduced himself and asked if any telegram had come for him.

  The pace at which the man looked through the poste restante suggested he was reading the addressees’ names one letter of the alphabet at a time. Morrison stood on one leg, then the other. Under his straw boater, sweat coursed down his temples; he could also feel it trickling from his underarms. At long last, the man turned and gave him an anaemic smile. ‘I’m afraid not, Dr Morrison. Is there anything else I can do for you?’

  The clouds burst as he emerged from the Telegraph Office. Rain splashed off the brick footpaths, and pastel-coloured parasols bloomed in a field of black bumbershoots. Morrison, raising his own umbrella, hastened towards the haven of the Kobe Club. He had time to spare before meeting James and Tonami for the overnight train to Tokio. Catching up with the newspapers in the club’s reading room, he scanned the published list of guests at Yokohama’s Grand Hotel. The names Miss M. Perkins and Mr Martin Egan appeared side by side. It pains me, though who can blame either? Am I to be forever excluded by the lucky Egan?

  Morrison composed a wire to the Grand Hotel informing Mae he’d be checking into the Imperial Hotel in Tokio by two the following afternoon. HOPE YOU ARE WELL HAPPY ENJOYING YOURSELF. ERNEST.

  It stopped raining. The mountains’ steamy exhalations hung over the landscape. Morrison, more restless than usual, strode up the hill to Kitano in search of diversion. He wandered past the dollhouse-like homes of the foreigners, which, with their lush green lawns and neat flower beds, presented a vaguely sinister vision of domesticity. Then he stalked the streets of Native Town until it was time for the train.

  Aboard the sleeping car for Tokio, Morrison, Tonami and James talked of ships and politics—concerns solid and masculine. Comforting. Yang. The following afternoon, the train pulled into Tokio, the blast of its whistle cutting into Morrison’s nerves like a knife.

  The neo-Renaissance façade of the magnificent Imperial Hotel abutted the Imperial Palace and rose out of the surrounding neighbourhood like a hallucination of Paris. Fourteen years old and modelled after the grand hotels of Europe and America, its décor was an artful mélange of East and West, its service the best of both. The Empero
r himself had held his birthday ball there the previous year.

  The impeccably attired Japanese manager greeted Morrison in French, ran his finger down a ledger, and sucked in an apologetic breath. ‘Je suis desolée, Docteur Morrison.’ The world’s correspondents, still only intermittently and selectively able to cover the war, had spread themselves rather more efficiently over the hotel. They had taken all the rooms. The manager regretted that the hotel could only accommodate Morrison in two days’ time.

  Disappointed, Morrison took a hired trap to the British Legation. Having settled into a guest room there, he telephoned the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, heart banging like a steam hammer.

  ‘Darling.’

  He was astounded by how quickly the music of her voice erased a month’s accumulation of jealousy, anxiety, heart-worry and sorrow.

  ‘Mae. Maysie. I’ve been so worried about you. Ever since I heard about…’

  ‘I’m all right, honey. Please don’t worry about me.’

  ‘The baby…’

  Her voice quavered. ‘Really, I’m all right. It was such a shock. I mean, the whole thing. I never expected…anyway, this is for the best.’

  Morrison sensed some hesitation in her voice. ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes. Martin’s gone to Tokio to see off Jack London.’ Her voice recovered its normal bounce. ‘Jack has had his fill of the war.’

  ‘Has he?’ Morrison felt the familiar sour taste of jealousy on his tongue.

  ‘Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say he’s had his fill of no war. He said,’ and Maysie lowered her voice to what Morrison assumed was pitch-perfect imitation, ‘“There’s nothing to see, nothing to write about save the woes of correspondents, swimming pools and peaceful temple scenes.”’ She laughed. ‘It’s funny. He grew up in Oakland, too, though our paths never crossed. He lived in the poorhouses and worked in a skittle alley and then a cannery, all before he was fifteen when he became an oyster pirate. Exactly the sort of boy we were warned never so much as to look at for fear he would take advantage or sully us in some way.’ She sighed. ‘I shall miss dear Jack.’

  Morrison, grim-lipped, derived consolation from the fact that if the oyster pirate had indeed boarded the good ship Maysie, or ‘sullied’ her in some way, it would have caused even more acute distress to London’s good mate Egan.

  ‘I can’t talk long, Maysie. James is waiting for me. What are your plans?’

  ‘Martin doesn’t return till tomorrow. Come down to Yokohama for dinner tonight. I’m crazy to see you.’

  He felt the silken web close around him once more

  .

  In Which Our Hero Battles with the American

  Military for Access to the Front

  An appointment in Tokio with James and their colleague Brinkley detained Morrison beyond the hour at which he had hoped to get away. By the time he stepped off the train at Yokohama, it was eight-thirty.

  The deep-water port of Yokohama was the Wild West of Japan, seething with gaijin of every description, from beachcombers, deserters and adventurers to scholars and correspondents. The whores in ‘Dirty Town’, as numerous as in the London Haymarket, spoke English—at least the madam at Number Nine promised they did—and Yokohama’s Bloodtown brawled like New York’s Bowery and San Francisco’s Barbary Coast rolled into one. Morrison had explored the darker places of Yokohama in the past, but on this balmy June night he travelled towards the Grand Hotel along streets that were lit by arc lamps and that wouldn’t frighten a Mrs Ragsdale. The only untamed darkness was that which he carried within himself.

  Mae was waiting for him on the hotel’s wide veranda, seated on a wicker throne and sipping a lemon squash. From the hem of a skirt trimmed with shimmering silk bows, one white court shoe with a small Louis heel and glass beading waggled. The extravagance of her outfits had already begun to strike Morrison as excessive. He recalled her prodigal habits and was pleased, for he wished to cling to at least a modicum of rationality.

  On a plate before her was a half-eaten array of tiny Japanese cakes sculpted to resemble the flowers and fruits of summer: hydrangea, azalea, iris and plum. There was an empty chair by her side. As Morrison approached, she affected surprise.

  ‘Goodness gracious, it’s Dr Morrison. What a pleasant surprise to run into you here.’

  ‘Miss Perkins.’ He bent over her gloved hand. What is this new game?

  ‘I’m so glad to see you, Ernest, honey,’ she whispered quickly, ‘but we must be awfully careful.’ Before she could elaborate, a little American military man with an air of complacency and a face like a desiccated apple strode towards the empty chair, his air proprietorial. Mae introduced him as Captain Haymes of the US Artillery.

  Captain Haymes shook Morrison’s hand with the firm formality of the congenital bore. ‘Yes, of course, pleasure, pleasure, how do you do?’ His smile revealed teeth like a row of old tombstones. ‘Miss Perkins speaks most highly of you, Dr Morrison, yes. Of course, there can hardly be a soul in the Extreme East, not one, who has not heard of Dr Morrison of Peking.’

  Anxiety rose in Morrison’s breast like a miasma.

  ‘You are acquainted with Mr Egan as well, one hears. Fine chap, Egan, fine chap.’

  Morrison’s heart could not have sunk lower if it had been dropped into Yokohama Bay. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Captain Haymes kindly escorted me to Moto-machi today,’ Mae cut in a tad too brightly. Morrison regarded her uneasily. ‘We had a bully time, didn’t we, Captain Haymes?’

  Captain Haymes nodded. ‘A bully time,’ he repeated, the youthful argot echoing in the necropolis of his mouth.

  ‘I bought so many splendid little things. An obi with circled dragons and phoenix, and a kimono with the most delightful pattern of thatched pavilions, ginkgo trees and bamboo; did you know it takes nine thousand silk cocoons to make one kimono? I also found a black lacquered jewel box with mother-of-pearl inlay, which I will give to Mama, and another box for pens in a fine burnt-orange lacquer for Papa. I bought a bowl for tea, too. The shop owner told us it was once owned by an imperial concubine—’

  ‘So he claimed, yes,’ Captain Haymes interjected.

  ‘Oh, Captain Haymes did not believe the story about the concubine. I wish to believe it and so I shall believe it, Captain Haymes.’ She patted his arm with a show of fondness.

  He shall have to get used to that logic if he wishes to keep her company.

  ‘Anyway, it’s either for thick tea or thin tea—I forget now. Tea drinking is a very complicated business here, it would seem. As is buying and selling, isn’t it, Captain Haymes?’

  Haymes nodded gruffly. Maysie turned again to Morrison, who was amused despite himself.

  ‘But the best part was when we called in on a seller of native artworks. I bought some lovely old woodblock prints.’

  Captain Haymes harrumphed. ‘It’s not much like our notion of painting, no, though one or two make a stab at perspective. One knows something of art, of course, being an amateur watercolourist oneself, yes.’

  ‘Isn’t he clever?’ Mae batted her eyelids at Morrison.

  ‘Quite,’ Morrison agreed. He had no doubt that Egan had put Haymes up to the task of occupying her time and watching over their assignation. Surely even Maysie could not consider taking such a man to her bed. Those teeth! Then again, he reminded himself, that’s what he had thought about C.D. Jameson.

  Haymes pivoted in Morrison’s direction. ‘So, Dr Morrison, what brings you to Yokohama? The war, of course, yes?’

  Morrison rapidly established that Captain Haymes had nothing useful or new to offer in the way of information. Feeling that he could tear out his own hair from nervous tension, Morrison was glad when Mae suggested they go in to dinner.

  A row of ionic columns bordered the hotel lounge. Mae suddenly extended her arm and swung herself around a column. As she flung herself back into the men’s company, she took Morrison’s arm and gave it a squeeze. What a creature she is! He could not tell if the gesture
had been intended as consolatory, comforting or conspiratorial. Her expression, fiercely gay, gave nothing away. Haymes, Morrison was pleased to see, looked most disconcerted.

  The Japanese waiter poured the champagne into crystal glasses and took their orders in French.

  The conversation over dinner was excruciating. Haymes had much to say to Morrison, none of it interesting. Morrison had nothing to say to Haymes. He and Maysie had much to say to one another but nothing that could be said in front of Haymes. Morrison, poking listlessly at his duck with his fork, had the unpleasant sensation that, thanks to the knot in his stomach, each beautifully presented course was piling on top of the last one inside him, until the dessert—cream pudding—threatened to turn the whole lot into gorge.

  Captain Haymes thought they should take a stroll after dinner. He suggested they follow Kaigan Dori—Seashore Street—to the famous Tamakusu Tree, where Admiral Perry had signed the Treaty of Kanagawa that had opened Japan to the outside world fifty years before. Or, if they were feeling equal to more vigorous exercise, perhaps they could climb up to the scenic General Cemetery on the Bluff. Where his teeth would feel right at home. Mae protested that she’d done so much walking that day that her poor feet couldn’t take another step. She urged Haymes to go ahead, saying she’d sit in the lobby for a while with Dr Morrison before retiring. Haymes then suggested a game in the hotel’s billiards room. Morrison pleaded work commitments; he would only be able to stay the shortest while. Mae insisted that Haymes at least take a walk. When they finally managed to wave him off, she looked at Morrison, opened her eyes wide and exhaled. ‘Room 105,’ she said, spun on her heels and, with pert footsteps that nowise indicated pedal difficulties, exited in a cloud of ribbons and French perfume, her heels clicking over the marble floor and a wave of bobbing hotel attendants marking the trail to her room.