A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  He took her chin between his fingers, tilting her face to his with almost brutal strength. ‘But you’re not in love with him, are you?’ he rasped. ‘What we just experienced isn’t what you experience with him, is it?’

  She twisted away from him, refusing to reveal to him the barrenness of her marriage bed, knowing that Adam deserved that, at least, from her.

  Her clothes lay scattered on the sand. She began to dress hastily, her hands trembling as she zipped up her skirt and fastened the buttons on her blouse. He watched her silently for a few minutes and then strode across to where his trousers and shirt lay in a discarded heap. She pushed her blouse into the band of her skirt, appalled at the rift that was yawning between them. A rift that was of her own making. He dressed with the speed and panther-wary grace that characterized all his movements. It had never occurred to her before that a man could be beautiful. She could have watched him for hours, riveted by his slim suppleness, his athletic muscular co-ordination, the blue-black tumble of his hair as it curled thickly at the nape of his neck.

  ‘I’m not going to take no for an answer,’ he said, fastening his belt-buckle and picking up his shoes, walking across to her and sliding his free hand around her waist. She tried to pull away, but he held her easily. ‘I want you, Lizzie,’ he said, and there was such burning desire in his voice and in his eyes that she felt her throat dry and the blood begin to roar along her veins. ‘And, to prove to you how much, I’m going to start divorce proceedings immediately against Melissa.’

  She leaned against him as they walked back to the car, only the knowledge of how her action would devastate Adam preventing her from flinging her arms around his neck and telling him that she would live with him anywhere, uncaring of the scandal; uncaring of anything if only they could be together.

  She said, her voice oddly flat as she stepped into the car: ‘Tell me about Melissa. All I have heard are the rumours. That you treat her appallingly. That she turned to Jacko Latimer for comfort.’

  ‘She turned to Jacko Latimer for heroin,’ Raefe said drily, gunning the Lagonda’s engine into life. ‘Comfort she gained elsewhere. Mostly with a major in the Middlesex. Sometimes with a junior diplomat at Government House. Sometimes, before she saw fit to tell me about her major, with me.’

  There was such bitterness in his voice that she hesitated before saying: ‘Did you love her very much?’

  ‘I thought I did.’ There was a sudden flexing of muscles along his jawline. ‘She soon disabused me of the idea.’

  The sky above Mount Collinson was flushed a deep rose as they sped out of Shek-O village and back along the road leading to the Gap.

  ‘Will a divorce distress her?’ she asked curiously.

  His shoulders shrugged imperceptibly. ‘I doubt it. The only thing that distresses her these days is the thought of having her heroin supply cut off.’

  She was silent. She knew nothing at all about drugs. After a little while she said: ‘How does she manage … now that Jacko Latimer is dead?’

  He turned his head, his eyes meeting hers unflinchingly. ‘I supply her,’ he said with a harshness that made her wince. ‘If I didn’t, she would get adulterated muck from Chinese dealers and be dead within six months. As it is, I can regulate the amount she receives. It’s impossible to bring her off it overnight. I tried once, in Australia, before I knew about Jacko, and failed. This way takes time, but at least there’s a chance it will succeed eventually. And at least she’s still alive.’

  There were tight white lines around his mouth. She remembered Sir Denholm Gresby saying that he was a blackguard who had ruined his wife’s life and done his best to ruin her reputation. He had done neither. He had tried to save her life once before and even now, after her behaviour had led to him standing trial for his life, he was still trying to save her and to help her.

  The daffodil sky of evening engulfed them as they crowned Wong Nai Chung Gap and began to descend towards Victoria.

  ‘I haven’t the slightest intention of taking any notice of what you’ve said,’ he said forcefully as he pulled up at the isolated spot at the foot of the Peak Road where she had parked her Buick. ‘I don’t give a damn about your husband or your feelings of loyalty. Your life with him is in the past. It’s your life with me now that matters.’

  She turned away from him, opening the car door, barely trusting herself to speak. He strode round to her, trying to take her in his arms, but she resisted with such passion that he released his hold.

  ‘I can’t do as you ask!’ she cried vehemently. ‘I’ve behaved disgracefully enough already and I can’t behave like that again.’

  ‘Then, why did you let me make love to you?’ he demanded, his eyes burning, his brows flying together satanically.

  She looked up at him for one last time. ‘Because I needed to prove something to myself,’ she said quietly and then, her voice choked: ‘Because I wanted to.’ Quickly, before he could reach out for her, she spun on her heel, running towards her car, not looking behind her as she wrenched the door open, turning the key in the ignition with trembling hands, pressing her foot down hard on the clutch and accelerator.

  He made no attempt to restrain her. She was on the verge of an emotional collapse, and he knew that he could achieve nothing by putting more pressure on her. She had to have time to come to terms with what had happened between them. Time to see that her heart, and future, lay with him and not with Adam Harland.

  Elizabeth sped up the darkened twists of Peak Road, the lights of Victoria glittering exotically to her right, the dark bulk of the mountain towering up on her left. It was nearly seven o’clock. She had been away from the house for nearly five hours. She tried to remember if they were going out to dinner that evening, if guests were coming to them, and couldn’t. She could still feel the heat of Raefe’s hands on her inner thighs, taste the heat of his mouth, feel the hard strength of his body. She had never imagined that lovemaking could be so ferocious, so exquisitely joyous. She slewed off the road on to the secondary road that led her home. And then there had been that moment afterwards, that moment when he had traced her face with his finger and kissed her with all the tenderness of absolute love. She began to shake. It would be so easy to turn her back on everything and live with him as his mistress. So easy and, for her, so very, very wrong.

  She slammed the car into the garage. Adam’s Riley was already parked, his golf-bags still on the rear seat. She caught sight of herself in the dim light of the driving-mirror. Her hair hung dishevelled to her shoulders, her face was bereft of make-up, her clothes looked as though they had been flung on. She stepped out of the car, closing the door behind her. She couldn’t allow Adam to see her like this. He would think she was ill; that she had been in an accident. She hurried round to the rear of the house, entering by the kitchen door as quietly as she could.

  ‘Mr Harland is waiting dinner for you, Mrs Harland,’ Chan, her number one houseboy said, staring at her in surprise as she walked quickly through the kitchen towards the back stairs.

  ‘There’s no need to tell him that I’m home. I’ll tell him myself,’ she said, bewildering him even more.

  ‘Is there anything I can get you, missy?’ Mei Lin asked breathlessly, running after her as she walked quickly towards her bedroom.

  ‘Run me a hot bath, Mei Lin, and lay out fresh underclothes and a dress for me,’ she added, her heart pounding in case Adam should have heard her enter the house; should see her before she had time to compose herself, to bathe and change.

  ‘Mr Harland has been very worried,’ Mei Lin said, pouring Cologne into the bathwater as Elizabeth scrambled out of her clothes. ‘There has been some bad news, I think.’

  Elizabeth stepped into the bathwater, reaching for her bottle of Elizabeth Arden shampoo. The news was probably about Semco. Adam had been spending an increasing amount of time down at the office, and she knew that he had intended lunching with Leigh Stafford before going on to the golf club. She lathered her hair furiously. Whateve
r his news, it could scarcely be as bad as the news she had so very nearly brought home to him. The news that she had fallen in love with Raefe Elliot and intended spending the rest of her life with him.

  She stepped out of the bath, wrapping a towel around her head and another around her chest. There were bruises on her arms where Raefe had seized her when she had told him that she was not leaving Adam.

  ‘Not the short-sleeved dress,’ she said to Mei Lin as she hastily put on fresh underclothes. ‘The turquoise silk with the wrist-length sleeves.’

  She towelled her hair dry, sweeping it up into a smooth chignon, securing it with ivory pins. The turquoise silk dress was cool and elegant. She put on high-heeled, delicately strapped sandals, sprayed herself with perfume and took one last look at herself in the mirror. She didn’t look like an adulteress. Nothing showed outwardly. Her hair, her eyes, her skin were just the same. But she had changed inwardly. She was no longer the same woman who had left the house only hours earlier. That woman had been an emotional virgin, and she was a virgin no longer.

  He was sitting on the veranda, reading the Hong Kong Times, a sundowner on the table by his side. At her approach he turned, his usual smile absent, his face grave.

  ‘Hello, darling, I’m sorry I’m late,’ she said, slipping her arm around his neck and dropping a kiss on his forehead. ‘I went for a drive and forgot the time.…’

  He rose to his feet slowly and took both her hands in his. ‘It’s happened,’ he said, the lines around his mouth grim. ‘The news was broadcast today.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ She was momentarily disorientated, so sickened at the necessity of her cheap lie that her usual perceptiveness deserted her.

  ‘The inevitable,’ he said sombrely, drawing her close into the circle of his arms. ‘Great Britain is at war with Germany.’

  Chapter Twelve

  In Tom Nicholson’s driveway, Chinese chauffeurs leaned against sleek and gleaming Buicks and Packards and Chrysler limousines. It was Jeremy Nicholson’s sixth birthday, and Helena, realizing the limitations of her small Kowloon flat, was holding his birthday party in Tom’s large house on the Peak.

  ‘Oh, goodness,’ she said to Elizabeth, pushing a thick fall of hair away from her face, ‘I’d forgotten that children’s parties were such hard work. Are there really only twenty children here? It sounds like a hundred and twenty!’

  ‘The conjuror wants to know if you want him to perform now or after the cake has been cut,’ Elizabeth said, picking up a small boy who had fallen over part of a train set, a present temporarily discarded.

  ‘Now,’ Helena said unhesitatingly. ‘It may keep the sound-level down. He’s going to perform in the garden, so we had better usher them all outside.’ She turned towards the amahs who were endeavouring to maintain some kind of control over the proceedings. ‘Jung-lu, could you lead the children out into the garden and ask them to sit quietly for the conjuring show? Mei Lin, that little girl is trying to put six chocolate cakes into her mouth all at the same time. Please take them away from her, she’s going to make herself sick.’

  Her warning come too late. Mei Lin, accustomed to the childless order of the Harland household, gave Elizabeth a look of pained reproach at having been brought along to assist and then led the offending child towards the nearest bathroom.

  ‘Oh God, oh hell!’ Helena said as the word ‘conjuror’went from mouth to mouth and there was a stampede towards the garden that nearly knocked her from her feet. ‘What I need is a stiff gin and tonic, but it looks such bad form to be clutching a drink in the middle of a children’s party!’

  Elizabeth giggled and removed a paper streamer from her hair. ‘There’s respectability in numbers. I’ll have one with you.’

  ‘Two very large gin and tonics, Lee,’ Helena said to her houseboy as they walked outside to the veranda, collapsing on the cane chairs that overlooked the garden and the conjuror and the exuberant children. ‘Oh, gosh, that child who was sick is still eating! Who on earth is she? She must have a tummy made of steel!’

  Elizabeth accepted her drink from the houseboy, sipping it gratefully. ‘She’s Lady Gresby’s grandchild,’ she said with a grin. ‘Don’t you remember? She’s out here until Christmas.’

  ‘So that’s the “dear sweet little thing” Miriam Gresby described to me,’ Helena said, marvelling as a fistful of crushed macaroons followed an éclair and two raspberry-jam tarts. ‘Tom says the Gresbys may have her for longer than they had anticipated. Travel to and from Britain is no longer safe now that the cards are on the table. If things get sticky here as well, I imagine that the Gresbys will have to send her on to Canada. That’s where most of the children are being evacuated to.’

  The conjuror was now in his stride, and the noise-level had fallen as the children sat cross-legged before him in rapt fascination.

  ‘It seems hard to think of a war as a reality,’ Elizabeth said, gazing out over the smoothly manicured lawn and the painted Chinese lanterns bobbing gaily between the trees. ‘Nothing has changed here at all.’

  ‘It’s only been a week,’ Helena said, swirling the ice cubes meditatively around in her glass. ‘Give it time. Have you heard of the suggestion that a volunteer force be formed? It’s to be something on the lines of the Territorials. Regular drill and training and open to any man who wants to join. Alastair thinks it’s a good idea. He’s beginning to alter his opinions, I think.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to think the Japanese quite the joke that he used to.’ Her expressive animated face was suddenly sombre. ‘And I don’t think them a joke at all. Jung-lu has family who have just arrived in Hong Kong from mainland China. The stories they have brought with them, of Japanese rapes and murders, are horrific. If the Japanese do invade, it will be the Chinese who will suffer the worst, people like Jung-lu and Mei Lin.’

  ‘Bonjour!’ Julienne called gaily, swinging towards them with an enormous teddy bear in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other. ‘Alors! What is the matter? Has someone died?’

  ‘We were talking about the Japs,’ Helena said with a grin. ‘Not a very jolly conversation, unfortunately.’

  ‘Oh, the Japs …,’ Julienne said dismissively, sinking into a luxuriously padded cane-backed long chair and holding the teddy bear up for inspection. ‘Isn’t he adorable? I couldn’t resist him. Ronnie said I was crazy. That no little boy of six years old would thank me for giving him a teddy, mais, je ne le croix pas.’ She gave a gurgle of impish laughter. ‘He has a very naughty look that reminds me of someone I know very well! If Jeremy doesn’t fall in love with him immédiatement, then I will keep him for myself!’

  ‘Jeremy will adore him,’ Helena said, trying to see any similarity between the cheeky-looking teddy bear and Julienne’s friend in the Royal Scots. There was none. Alastair had told her that he thought the affair was over and that Julienne had a new boyfriend. Helena wondered who it could be. There had been a time when Julienne had flirted outrageously with Adam Harland, but she was quite sure that Adam had never responded. Even if he had, Helena was sure that the affair would have been short-lived. Adam was too steady and staid for a woman of Julienne’s exotic tastes. Which left plenty of other people and one in particular.

  Raefe Elliot had been having a drink with herself and Alastair the previous Tuesday, and she had mentioned Jeremy’s forthcoming party, and the fact that Julienne and Elizabeth would be helping her survive it. She had been surprised when, as they parted, he had said laconically that he would drop in for five minutes or so to wish Jeremy a happy birthday. She had wondered then if he had had an ulterior motive. Now she was sure of it.

  ‘Is Tom not here?’ Julienne asked, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked out over the lawn and the throng of children.

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ Helena said, amused. ‘He allowed me the use of the house on the strict understanding that he wasn’t to have a thing to do with it.’

  Julienne sighed. Her affair with Tom w
as long over, and she had no desire to rekindle it. Nevertheless, he would have been welcome company. To Julienne, a social gathering without a male present was like a gin and tonic without the gin. A slight frown furrowed her brow. ‘He isn’t going to return to England, is he? To – how do you say it in English? – join up.’

  Helena shook her head, a slight frown furrowing her brow. Julienne had an uncanny knack of knowing what people were going to do even before they knew it themselves. ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  Julienne shrugged. ‘There’s been quite a rush for the boats since the broadcast. Three of Ronnie’s friends have booked passages home. They want to enlist and give Hitler a bloody nose.’ A smile hovered at the corners of her pink-painted mouth. ‘And I know of one or two bored husbands who are using patriotism and Monsieur Hitler as an excuse to escape from their very dull marriages!’

  ‘Tom couldn’t go, even if he wanted to,’ Helena said practically. ‘As a junior diplomat he’s in Hong Kong until he’s posted elsewhere.’

  ‘Is there any further talk of the Royal Scots being moved?’ Julienne asked, confirming Helena’s belief that her affair with her Royal Scots major was over and finished.

  Helena shook her head. ‘No. Alastair says most of the men are impatient for a posting where they will see some action, but it doesn’t look as if they’re going to get one. There’s even talk of the garrison here being strengthened.’

  ‘That could be fun!’ Julienne’s eyes sparkled wickedly at the thought of a fresh input of handsome young officers.

  The conjuror came to the end of his performance, producing two doves amid a cloud of smoke. The children clapped and shouted noisily and then, when it became apparent that nothing else was to follow, began to charge back towards the house and the tea-table.