A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘I won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London and then, when I was ten, my mother died.’

  ‘And?’ he prompted gently.

  ‘And my father needed me to be with him.’ There was no resentment in her voice, and he noticed how her eyes softened as she spoke of him.

  ‘He was a gypsy at heart.’ An impish smile touched the comers of her mouth. ‘Though a luxury-loving gypsy! We spent our time travelling between Paris and Nice, Geneva and Rome. There wasn’t much time for piano tuition, although I had a Steinway in our permanent suite at the Negresco.’

  ‘What happened then?’ he asked, intrigued, wondering how the hell she had come to be married to Adam Harland.

  ‘Daddy died when I was seventeen. I moved back to London, began to study once more at the Royal Academy, and six months later I married Adam.’

  ‘Where did you meet him? Was he at the Academy, too?’ He couldn’t imagine it in a million years.

  ‘Oh, no.’ Her eyes widened in surprise, as if she were amazed that he hadn’t realized she had always known Adam. ‘Adam was Daddy’s closest friend. I’ve always known him, ever since I was a little girl.’

  So that was it, he thought intrigued. No parties. No boyfriends. Just a bereavement that had left her entirely alone in the world, and a man she had always known as her father’s friend and whom it had seemed quite natural to her to marry.

  He said: ‘When I was at school in the States, my closest friend was Roman Rakowski, the Polish conductor. He was there because his parents were Jewish and admired the American way of education. He was a brilliant musician, even then. Nothing else mattered to him. Not food; not girls; nothing. I learned quite a lot about musicians through my friendship with Roman. I learned that their duty is first and foremost to their music. Not to parents, lovers or friends.’

  ‘But most parents, lovers and friends cannot understand that,’ she said, and the pain in her voice sliced through him. ‘Daddy didn’t. Adam doesn’t.’

  ‘Then, as much as you love them, you must hurt them,’ he said, his lean-boned face hard and uncompromising. ‘Talent, to survive, has to be exercised.’

  A shiver ran down her spine. She knew that what he said was true, and that there was only so much time she could allow Adam and that already she had allowed him too much.

  ‘Tell me about Roman Rakowski,’ she said. ‘He’s in Australia now, isn’t he?’

  Her hands were trapped once again by his. They were strong hands, olive-toned and well shaped. Hands that gave a feeling of security and safety.

  ‘Yes. As a Jew he found the doors of many of the great European orchestras closed to him. For a time he had been with the Berlin Philharmonic, but Hitler’s racist policies made his position there impossible. He was not allowed to play or to conduct, or even to teach. He’s in Sydney now, and he’s composing and conducting and doing everything in his power to persuade the Australian government to give more assistance to Jews desperate to leave Germany and eastern Europe.’

  She looked down at her wristwatch and saw with disbelief that it was nearly four o’clock.

  ‘It’s late,’ she said, knowing that she must go and that she did not want to. ‘I must be going home.’

  He didn’t argue with her. He would see her again, and when he did she would not have to hurry away from him.

  They sat side by side in his car, and it was as if something unspoken had been stated between them, making words unnecessary. ‘My car is parked at the Peninsula’, she said as they entered the crowded noisy streets of Kowloon.

  He drew to a halt outside the Peninsula Hotel, and she was appalled at the prospect of leaving him. He made no attempt to touch her, to arrange another meeting.

  She stepped from the car hardly able to believe that four hours previously she had driven to her luncheon appointment with no sixth sense of the events that were to follow.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘Thank you for the lunch.’

  ‘You didn’t eat a mouthful,’ he said in amusement, and then Lady Gresby’s voice could be heard exclaiming: ‘Elizabeth! What a lovely surprise. Is Adam with you?’

  ‘This is where I leave you to your fate,’ Raefe said as she bore down on them and, grinning devilishly, he pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator, sweeping out into the maelstrom of late-afternoon traffic.

  ‘Who was that?’ Lady Gresby asked curiously, squinting her eyes against the sun, and then, not waiting for Elizabeth to reply: ‘For one moment I thought it was that terrible Mr Elliot!’

  Elizabeth did not enlighten her. She was suddenly tired and she wanted desperately to find somewhere cool and quiet where she could think. She excused herself from Lady Gresby as quickly as she could and then, instead of returning straight home, she drove right to the top of Victoria Peak and parked her car. Folding her hands on the wheel, she leaned forward on them, staring out over the vista of sea and sky and distant mountain peaks.

  It really had been the most extraordinary afternoon. She had been out with the most notorious man in Hong Kong and she had not had so much as a finger laid on her. And she had wanted him to. Oh, yes, if she was honest, she had wanted him to. Despite the heat, she shivered. She was twenty-five and for the first time in her life she had met a man that she wanted to go to bed with. And she couldn’t do so, for she was happily married to Adam.

  She hugged her arms. He would ask her to meet him again, and she would have to refuse. She wasn’t capable of the kind of affairs that Julienne indulged in. Affairs that seemed to have very little effect on her marriage. If she was unfaithful to Adam, the very foundations of her life would crumble. She would never be able to look into his dear kind face again. And, if he ever came to know of it, he would not be able to shrug the knowledge off as Ronnie Ledsham would. He would be devastated – utterly destroyed.

  Slowly she leaned back and turned the key in the ignition. Raefe Elliot had revealed to her a side of her nature she had never previously believed existed. As she began to drive back down the Peak towards her home and her husband, she knew that she wasn’t grateful to him. That she would far rather have remained in ignorance.

  ‘Did you have a nice day, darling?’ He was sitting out in the garden, reading the Hong Kong Times and drinking a cold beer.

  ‘Yes.’

  He raised his hand towards her, and she gave it a loving squeeze before sitting down on one of the cane chairs next to him.

  ‘How was Julienne? Still miffed at Ronnie?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’

  He put down his paper and looked across at her queryingly. She felt her stomach muscles contract sickeningly. She had never lied to Adam, and there was no need for her to lie now. Her disloyalty to him had not been physical. It had merely been mental. She said, with a quick bright smile: ‘I didn’t have lunch with Julienne. There was a mix-up over the dates. I’m lunching with her next week.’

  ‘You should have come down to the tennis club. I beat Stafford six-two, six-one in straight sets.’

  She smiled, and he waited expectantly. She said: ‘I ran into Raefe Elliot at the Peninsula and he insisted on taking me to lunch so that he could apologize over the drinks incident.’

  He had been looking at her with unfettered pleasure in his eyes. Now the pleasure died, to be replaced by incomprehension. ‘But I thought you spilt the drink on him? It isn’t his position to apologize, surely?’

  ‘Oh, he was quite cross at the time,’ she said, trying to sound carelessly indifferent and failing miserably. ‘I think it was that he really wanted to apologize for.’

  ‘I see.’ His brow was furrowed, and he plainly did not see at all. ‘So what did you do? Have lunch with him at the Pen?’

  ‘No.’ She didn’t turn her head to meet his eyes. Instead, she studiously watched a blue magpie as it darted down through the trees. ‘We went to a restaurant out near Sham Tseng. It was very nice, darling. We must go there ourselves some time.…’

  ‘Sham Tseng?’ he asked incredulousl
y. ‘That’s miles away!’

  ‘Only about fifteen miles,’ she said, her eyes still on the magpie’s glossy plumage. ‘He dropped me off at the Pen and I saw Miriam and she invited us for drinks on Sunday.…’

  ‘Good God! She didn’t see you with Elliot, did she?’ Adam expostulated, jumping to his feet. ‘I told you not even to contemplate having lunch with him!’ He ran his fingers through his still thick hair, seriously perturbed. ‘It will be all over the Club by tomorrow!’

  ‘No, it won’t,’ she said soothingly, rising to her feet and taking his hand. ‘The sun was in her eyes and she didn’t recognize Raefe. There won’t be any talk and, if there is, why should it matter? I was having a perfectly respectable lunch, just as I often have with Tom…’

  ‘Raefe Elliot isn’t Tom Nicholson!’ Adam said savagely, disliking the easy familiarity with which she uttered Elliot’s christian name.

  ‘Any woman seen out alone with Elliot automatically risks her reputation!’

  ‘I can’t imagine why,’ she said crisply, letting his hand go and picking up the newspaper and his empty glass. ‘He was perfectly charming and he didn’t make a pass at me, unlike Ronnie Ledsham who always makes a pass! And who you count as your friend!’.

  ‘You never told me Ronnie had made a nuisance of himself to you,’ he said, his voice dangerously harsh. ‘What happened? When? Where?’

  They were on the verge of a furious row, and she said, desperate to avert it: ‘Oh, goodness, it doesn’t matter, darling. Ronnie makes a pass at everyone. All I’m trying to say is that we should make up our own mind about people. Not simply believe everything that we hear. I had lunch with Raefe Elliot; he made his apology. He didn’t make a pass at me, and I certainly shan’t be having lunch with him again. Now, let’s go indoors and have a drink and forget all about it’She tucked her hand into his arm. ‘Miriam says the rumours about the Royal Scots being transferred to Europe are untrue. They are going to be here for another year at least. Perhaps by the time they do go Helena and Alastair will be married.’

  She had expected that Raefe would telephone her next morning. He telephoned her that night. She was in her bedroom putting the finishing touches to her hair and make-up. They were going to a Russian-style nightclub in Wanchai with a party of friends from the tennis club.

  There was a light knock at her bedroom door and Mei Lin entered, saying in her bird-soft voice: ‘Mr Elliot is on the telephone, missy.’

  Elizabeth’s hand faltered as she put down her hairbrush. ‘Thank you, Mei Lin.’ She walked quickly out into the wide cool hall, grateful that Adam had not been in the room and had not overheard Mei Lin’s message.

  His dark rich voice sent a ripple of pleasure down her spine. I’ll meet you at one o’clock tomorrow at the ferry.’

  ‘No!’ she had meant to sound cool and detached and was furious with herself at the panic she could hear in her voice. Her hand tightened on the receiver. ‘No,’ she said again, this time with more control. ‘I can’t see you for lunch again.’

  ‘How do you know it was lunch I had in mind?’ he said with amusement. She could imagine the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, the dark sheen of his blue-black hair as it tumbled low over his brows.

  ‘Whatever it is, I can’t come,’ she said stiffly.

  There was an infinitesimal pause, and then he said softly: ‘Why? Because you didn’t enjoy yourself this afternoon? Or because you enjoyed yourself too much?’

  ‘Because I enjoyed myself too much,’ she whispered and put the receiver down unsteadily on its rest, not wanting to hear his voice for a moment longer, terrified that she would weaken, that she would tell him she would meet him any place, anywhere, any time.

  When he rang back again in five minutes, she instructed Mei Lin to tell him that she was no longer at home. And all through the next few days she adamantly refused to answer his calls.

  Two weeks later they joined the Ledshams, and Helena and Alastair, at a beach-party at Tsuen Wan in the New Territories. ‘This is the beginning of the Gin Drinkers’Line,’ Alastair said to Adam, pointing up into the hills to a distant line of recently constructed pillboxes. ‘Work began on those in nineteen thirty-seven when there was talk of a division from Singapore reinforcing the garrison. They never came, and so work was halted. Not much use having a defence-line this far forward if there aren’t enough troops to man it.’

  ‘How far does it stretch?’ Adam asked curiously.

  ‘Eleven miles. It zig-zags all the way from here round to Ma Lau Tong on the east side of Kowloon. In some places they did quite a lot of work. For example, near the Shingmun Redoubt, a mile or so east of here, trenches were dug, cement overhead protection added, and fields of fire studied.’

  ‘Why did they call it the Gin Drinkers’Line?’ Elizabeth asked, intrigued.

  ‘Look at the glass in your hand,’ Alastair said, laughing. ‘It’s because this spot, where it starts, is so popular for parties.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll reactivate work on the line if plans go ahead for a civilian Volunteer Force?’ Ronnie asked, lying flat on his back on the sand, Julienne’s sun-hat over his face.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Even if every civilian in Hong Kong was trained and armed, there still wouldn’t be enough men to hold a line so far up-country. The best line of defence is the strait between Kowloon and the island.’

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ Helena said drily. ‘And what happens to people like me, living in Kowloon, if yellow hordes come thundering across the border and the British army is tucked safely away across the straits?’

  ‘They catch the ferry, my love,’ Alastair said easily. ‘And the chances of such an event ever happening are extremely remote. Japan is in no position to attack us or, apart from China, anyone else.’

  Julienne removed a bottle of gin and a bottle of tonic from a capacious picnic-hamper and poured a generous amount of each into a glass. ‘I have heard you have lots of men sick at the moment,’ she said to Alastair. She had terminated her affair with her major, but it had been done in a satisfactory manner. In bed, with a lot of laughter and gossip.

  ‘You mean malaria?’

  Julienne nodded. ‘I don’t understand why anyone should be sick of it. Not when the Army gives out quinine tables and mosquito-repellent cream.’

  ‘The Royal Scots think they are under divine protection,’ Ronnie said with a grin. ‘No creams and tablets for our brave Lowlanders, eh, Alastair?’

  ‘If men do scorn the medication they’re given, then they’re fools,’ Alastair said, refusing to be riled. ‘Mosquitoes are not respecters of persons. They’ll bite a Royal Scot just as soon as they’ll bite an Englishman.’

  ‘I won’t let them bite you, chéri,’ Julienne said to Ronnie, rubbing sun-oil into his shoulders. ‘Mosquitoes, ugh, nasty vicious little creatures!’

  She began to hum happily under her breath. Her affair with Derry was going very well. She smiled to herself, remembering their lovemaking of the previous afternoon. Derry possessed what her major had lacked – sexual imagination nearly as inventive as her own.

  Helena, helped by Alastair, began to spread out picnic food on a crisp white cloth. Yoghurt cheese balls in a jar of golden olive oil, smoked eel páté with crackers, a crunchy apple salad, fennel and salami and black olives, a raised pork and apple pie that she had made herself the previous night, sesame bread sticks, grape tartlets, a melon crammed with raspberries, rum and raisin fudge squares, and, for Alastair, an almond-encrusted Dundee cake.

  ‘Good girl,’ Alastair said with relish; and, seeing the swift deep smile that Helena gave him, Elizabeth wondered if perhaps Helena had changed her mind about not loving him enough. They certainly seemed to be very happy together, and there was a contentment about Helena that had been conspicuously lacking when she had first met her.

  ‘I think I might take a stroll and have a look at those pillboxes,’ Adam said, rising to his feet and brushing the sand from his trousers.

  ‘It wou
ld be much more sensible to have a swim,’ Julienne said suggestively, her eyes telling him that if he accepted it would also be a lot more fun.

  ‘Later,’ he said, unaware of the unspoken invitation behind her words. ‘When I come back.’

  Julienne sighed and then giggled at his preferring a climb in the hills to a swim alone with her. She had been flirting shamelessly with him for the last two months and there were times when she wondered if he were even aware of it. Whatever else Adam was, he was not a romantic. She looked across at Elizabeth and wondered if she minded. She was wearing white shorts and a pink cotton halter top, her long legs seeming to stretch for ever, her skin honey-gold, her hair coiled high in a loose knot, so blonde that it looked like spun silver.

  ‘Why do you never wear your hair down, Elizabeth?’ she asked as she wriggled provocatively out of her dress, revealing a daringly cut French bathing costume.

  ‘It’s cooler like this,’ Elizabeth said, plunging two bottles of champagne into a chilling bucket of sea-water.

  ‘If I had hair that colour, I would wear it down all the time,’ Julienne said, sweeping her own vibrant red curls up beneath her bathing-cap. ‘It would be like a sheet of gold hanging to your shoulders and would make you look even younger than you do already.’ Her eyes widened, comprehension dawning suddenly. ‘Tiens!’she said as she fastened her bathing-cap. ‘So that is why you wear it always so sleek and so prim and proper.’ And she laughed delightedly. ‘I promise I will not tell!’ she said mischievously as Ronnie raised himself up on one elbow, demanding to know what all the hilarity was about ‘I shall be as quiet as the little mouse.’ And, still laughing, she ran down across the beach, plunging into the foam-flecked waves.

  Ronnie looked across at her. Adam was a good hundred yards away, climbing a rocky gulley that led to the first of the pillboxes. Helena and Alastair were sitting, heads dose together, deep in conversation; It was the first time since the débácle of their lunch at the Peninsula that he had had the opportunity to speak to her alone.

  ‘I rather ruined things the other week, didn’t I?’ he said regretfully. ‘Too much to drink too soon, that was the problem.’