A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  The house seemed empty and bare without Beth in it. He stood at the music-room door, staring moodily at the piano that had been specially shipped from Perth. He had always been tolerant about her need to play. He had taken her to concerts night after night in London. Even here in Hong Kong, he lived like a bachelor for most of the day, apologizing for her absence at bridge-parties, at tennis matches, at the racecourse, in order that she could indulge in long hours of self-imposed practice. He felt a prick of irritability. She hadn’t been as tolerant in return. Wanting to return to London was sheer idiocy. He sometimes wondered if she had any idea of the realities of war and was aware, as he had been lately with increasing frequency, of the twenty-four years that divided them.

  He looked at his watch again. It was eleven o’clock. He doubted very much that she would be back for lunch and had no intention of wasting the rest of the day by waiting around for her. He crossed the cool marble-tiled entrance-hall, picked up his golf-bag and strode out of the house towards the garage. He would go to the golf club and have lunch there. And, because he loved her more than he loved anyone or anything, he would call in at the shipping office and book a double berth on the earliest-possible sailing to Singapore.

  ‘I didn’t expect to see you here today,’ Alastair said pleasantly as he walked into the club bar. ‘I thought Fridays and Mondays were your days for a round?’

  Adam slid on to a bar-stool alongside him. ‘I didn’t expect to find you here during the week, either. What’s the matter? Has the Army dispensed with your services?’

  Alastair laughed. ‘Not yet, they haven’t I’m back on duty at six. What do you want? A stengah or a g. and t.?’

  ‘A stengah, please,’ Adam said as the Japanese barman approached. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance now of you being posted to pastures new?’ he said as Alastair ordered their drinks. ‘Not now the government is exercising caution and putting the island on a war footing.’

  The barman filled two long, iced glasses to the brim with a thirst-quenching mixture of whisky and soda-water and pushed them across the bar towards them.

  Alastair took a sip of his drink and said reflectively: ‘I shouldn’t read too much into the government’s action, Adam. It’s a formality, that’s all.’

  Adam looked across at him sharply. ‘You don’t still hold to the view that the Japs are harmless, do you?’

  The barman had turned his back on them, but was still within earshot as he began to polish glasses meticulously.

  ‘No …,’ he said slowly, his eyes on the barman. ‘I don’t think I do. Not when they are so flagrantly in sympathy with Hitler and Mussolini.’

  ‘Makes no difference who the Japs are in sympathy with,’ Denholm Gresby said knowledgeably, walking up to the bar behind them and overhearing them. ‘Japan’s best intentions can only be served by her remaining neutral.’ He clicked his fingers in the direction of the Japanese barman. ‘She’d be a fool to be anything else,’ he snorted as the barman waited for his order. ‘The short-arsed yellow bastards might fight well against a third-rate Chinese force, but they’d get a bloody nose if they ever met with the British army!’

  Adam slid off his bar-stool and carried his drink over to the far corner of the room where he had a good view of the golf-course. Alastair joined him.

  ‘He’s a bit overpowering, isn’t he?’ he said to Adam. ‘I can’t understand why Tom is so friendly with him.’

  ‘If’s probably professional necessity,’ Adam replied, wondering if it mightn’t have been wisest to have booked the later sailing to Singapore rather than the earlier one. He frowned. He would have to telephone Tom and say they wouldn’t be at his party, and he would have to telephone the Ledshams and say the tennis was off, and he would have to cancel a hundred and one other things that he had no wish to cancel.

  ‘Don’t let him get to you,’ Alastair said comfortably, seeing the fierce pull of his brows.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of Gresby. I was thinking of Beth,’ Adam said in a moment of rare candour.

  Alastair raised his eyebrows and remained silent. He had no particular wish to be made a confidant to Adam’s marital difficulties, but if it helped Adam to talk about them, he would willingly listen. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked delicately. ‘Is she … er… having problems?’

  ‘Yes.’ Adam’s voice was unusually tight. He had no intention of talking to anyone about Beth, but he knew that whatever he said to Alastair would go no further, and he badly needed to give vent to his feelings. ‘I’m having to take her away. God knows, I don’t want to. There’s the volunteer force to consider and a score of other things.’

  ‘Where are you taking her?’ Alastair asked awkwardly. He wondered if this particular problem had ever hit the Harlands’ marriage before. In the strong cruel light of the sun, Adam looked every one of his forty-nine years. And Elizabeth was only twenty-five. It was an age difference that many marriages bridged quite happily. Obviously the Harlands were not one of them.

  ‘Singapore,’ Adam said with more bitterness than he had intended. ‘We’ll be there for a few weeks, I suppose. Until she gets it out of her system.’

  Alastair cleared his throat and wondered what was the right thing to say. He couldn’t imagine how he would feel if, after several years of marriage, Helena were to be unfaithful to him. He doubted that he would be quite as rational about it as Adam was being.

  ‘Best thing to do,’ he said at last. ‘She’ll soon forget him. It isn’t as if Elliot’s intentions towards her are honourable. I doubt if the bastard knows what the word “honour” means.’

  Adam had turned towards him, and Alastair carefully avoided his eyes.

  ‘If it’s any comfort to you, Elizabeth isn’t the first and she won’t be the last. Women fall for him like flies. It was the little Chesham girl a few weeks ago, and Mark Hurley’s wife a few weeks before that.’

  Adam was still silent, and Alastair drained his glass, wishing to hell that the conversation had never been started.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Adam said at last, his voice scarcely recognizable. ‘Beth isn’t involved with Elliot! She hardly knows him!’

  Alastair felt the blood leave his face. Slowly and stiffly he turned towards Adam and knew that he had made the most God-awful error. Whatever Harland had been talking to him about, it hadn’t been about his wife and Raefe Elliot.

  ‘God, no!’ he said, forcing a laugh, trying to remember what the hell he had said. ‘You’ve misunderstood me, Adam. What I was saying is that Elizabeth isn’t the first woman to make excuses for Elliot’s behaviour. The Chesham girl and Mark Hurley’s wife both did the same thing when he was awaiting trial for Jacko Latimer’s murder.’ He ran a finger along the trim line of his moustache.

  ‘And Beth?’ Adam asked, the lines around his nose and mouth pinched and white. ‘What has he done that she needs to make an excuse for him? What the devil did you mean when you said that she’d soon forget him, that his intentions towards her weren‘t honourable?’

  ‘I thought you realized he was making a play for her that day we were all at the Repulse Bay Hotel,’ Alastair said smoothly, cursing himself for being the biggest fool in Christendom. ‘Instead of being offended, Elizabeth excused him by saying we were all reading more into it than there was. Give a dog a bad name and all that sort of tosh. And his intentions certainly weren’t honourable. They never are. You’re lucky that Elizabeth paid him so little attention. Now, what do you want? Another stengah?’

  Adam was aware that he was on the verge of making himself look a fool. The trouble was he hadn’t been listening to Alastair very carefully. He had been thinking of the booking he had made for the Blantyre Castle and the numerous arrangements he would have to make before they left. It wasn’t possible for Alastair to have meant what he had thought he meant, and to pursue the conversation would only be to arouse preposterous suspicions in Alastair’s mind.

  ‘No, thanks,’ he said shortly. ‘I must be getting on. Give my love to He
lena. ’Bye, Alastair.’

  He walked abruptly away from him, and Alastair wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, letting out a huge sigh of relief. God, but he’d walked into that one with both feet! He walked across to the bar and ordered another stengah. With a bit of luck he had successfully talked himself out of it, but it hadn’t been easy. Gresby came up to him and asked if he’d heard if Ronnie Ledsham’s horse was running again on Saturday. Alastair said he thought so, but his thoughts weren’t on Saturday’s race. Because of his clumsiness, he realized that he still didn’t know why Adam was so concerned about Elizabeth, or why he was having to take her away.

  ‘Might have a little flutter, then,’ Sir Denholm was saying.

  Alastair ignored him. He was still thinking about Elizabeth Harland. If Adam was unaware of her relationship with Raefe Elliot, what the devil else was she up to that was concerning him so much?

  Adam walked swiftly out of the club, throwing his golf-bag into the rear of his Riley. He no longer had any desire to play. Damn Alastair and his rambling remarks about Beth and Raefe Elliot. What the hell had he meant about her soon forgetting him? He slammed the Riley into first gear and eased down the drive towards the road. He’d said he was only referring to the way Beth had excused Elliot when he had made that unpardonable pass at her at the Repulse Bay. He pushed the Riley’s nose out into the stream of traffic heading towards Victoria. The damn trouble was that he hadn’t really been listening, and Alastair had certainly looked uncomfortable enough when he had rounded on him.

  It was lunchtime, and the traffic was heavier than normal. He overtook a bus and a clutch of Chinese schoolgirls on bicycles. Beth and Raefe Elliot indeed! The whole idea was so patently ridiculous that his anxiety began to ebb. He had misheard. Alastair always was a waffler, never getting to the point of his conversations. He had been talking about Elliot’s notorious popularity with women, and citing Beth as a case in point of a sensible woman who, even so, made excuses for his disgraceful behaviour. He certainly hadn’t been suggesting anything more compromising than that.

  He slewed into Peak Road, travelling far faster than be normally did. He’d been a bloody fool to have reacted in the way he had. Alastair must have thought he had taken leave of his senses. He parked the car in the garage and stared at the empty space where Beth’s Buick normally stood. She had said that she would be home by lunchtime, and it was one-thirty and she was still out. He frowned as he stepped out of his car, slamming the door behind him. The idea of Beth indulging in a wild affair with Raefe Elliot might be ridiculous, but she was certainly spending far too much time away from him and away from home. His shoulders were hunched as he walked into the house. He didn’t relish the thought of having lunch alone. And he didn‘t relish the thought of spending long hours wondering where the devil Beth was, and what she was doing.

  When he heard the sound of the car engine chugging to a halt, he threw down his newspaper and hurried to the porch to greet her. It wasn’t Beth. It was Helena, her open-top little Morgan parked diminutively where Beth’s Buick should have been.

  ‘Hello,’ she said cheerily, walking across to him, her mass of dark auburn hair bouncing glossily on her shoulders. ‘Is Elizabeth in? I wanted to know if she fancied an afternoon’s shopping. There’s a sale on at Lane Crawfords and lots of goodies to be had.’

  In actual fact she had absolutely no intention of spending the afternoon jammed amidst a crush of shoppers. She had driven round expecting to find Elizabeth in by herself, practising on the piano, and Adam at the golf or cricket club. Elizabeth had not contacted her since the dreadful scene that had taken place between her and Raefe at the children’s party, but Helena was sure that she must want desperately to talk to someone. As the only person she could possibly talk to was herself or Julienne, Helena had decided to make herself speedily available. Julienne as an adviser, in the kind of situation that obviously existed between Elizabeth and Raefe, would be a disaster.

  ‘She’s out, I’m afraid,’ Adam said, not succeeding in disguising his gloominess. ‘Probably already down at the sale.’

  Helena did not think so and, by the tone of Adam’s voice, was sure that he didn’t either.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ she said, wondering whether to take her leave or not, and then, seeing the droop of Adam’s shoulders, she said impulsively: ‘Perhaps I could stay and keep you company until she returns. Alastair has begun dropping hints about civilian wives being encouraged to return to Great Britain in case there’s a flare-up of trouble with the Japs. I haven’t the slightest desire to go. You don’t think it will come to that, do you?’

  Adam led the way into the large white-carpeted drawing-room. ‘Not a chance,’ he said with a return of good humour. ‘Alastair never does get his facts right. What will you have, Helena? A gin and tonic, or a Martini?’

  ‘Gin and tonic, please,’ Helena said, sitting herself comfortably on the deep-cushioned sofa, amused to see that her ploy had been successful. Once the conversation had been turned to the Japanese and the threat, or the lack of a threat, of war, Adam would talk happily ad infinitum.

  ‘… so the Japs will chance their arm,’ Adam said as they continued the discussion over a light lunch of scrambled eggs and prawns and a chilled bottle of Graves. ‘But we’ll soon shove them off.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ Helena said with a laugh as he refilled her glass. ‘Have you any hope of being placed in the tennis championships next month? I strained my shoulder a week or so ago, and it’s letting me down. Otherwise Julienne and I were safe favourites for the doubles.’

  They talked of the tennis championships, the horse Ronnie was running at Happy Valley on Saturday, the staggering way anything planted in a Hong Kong garden flourished and spread. To her surprise, Helena found herself not only pleased that she had taken Adam’s mind off Elizabeth’s absence, but also effortlessly enjoying herself.

  He was an easy companion. He never seemed to think it necesssary to bolster up his masculinity by flirting or making the kind of double-edged remarks that Ronnie would have found obligatory in the same circumstances. There was something sweetly old-fashioned about him, a gallantry and dependability that was oddly attractive.

  They took their coffees out on to the terrace, and to her amazement Helena found herself talking to him about Alan. She had never done so before to anyone. Not with the same ease. It had been something in the way they had sat down together after their lunch. Something in the way he had handed her her coffee-cup, after stirring the sugar in for her. Memory had stirred. Alan passing her the toast-rack, the marmalade.…

  ‘And so you don’t feel that you can ever marry again?’ Adam was saying to her.

  She shook her head, her square-jawed high-cheekboned face beautiful and pensive. ‘No. What was between me and Alan was a real thing that we built very carefully for ourselves and, when we built it, it was perfect and satisfying. Just because it was blasted to bits by a drunken driver doesn’t mean that I’m never going to try to build anything else among the ruins. Alan isn’t a ghost, tagging along at my elbow. He would have encouraged me in my affair with Alastair, and if I wanted to many Alastair, why, Alan would have encouraged me in that, too.’

  ‘But you don’t want to marry Alastair?’ Adam prompted gently.

  Her usual grin was back on her face. ‘I don’t know, Adam. I truly don’t know.’

  From behind them they could hear Mei Lin greeting Elizabeth in the drawing-room, and then the french windows opened and she stepped out on to the terrace, her eyes shining, her whole demeanour exultant.

  Helena felt shock stab through her. If this was the way she returned from an assignation with Raefe, then it was beyond belief that Adam had still not guessed about it. As Elizabeth walked swiftly over to them, taking hold of Adam’s hands and giving him a loving kiss on his cheek, she felt a spurt of anger as well as shock. Up until now her sympathy had been with Elizabeth. She had never, for one moment, imagined that it was an affair that was causi
ng her anything but agony and mental torture. Now she was not so sure, and the thought of Adam being betrayed so brazenly enraged her.

  ‘Hello, darlings, I’m sorry I’m so late. I’ve had the most fantastic morning.’

  ‘And afternoon,’ Adam said drily, glancing at his watch.

  She hugged his arm. ‘Please don’t be cross. I really did think I would be back for lunch. I don’t know where the time flew to. It simply vanished.’

  Helena’s eyebrows rose. No doubt it had done. It hardly seemed sensible to admit to it, though.

  ‘I discovered that Li Pi, the Li Pi, who used to teach at the Moscow Central School, is living in Kowloon.’ Her whole face was lit with an inner radiance. ‘I went to see him this morning, and he’s agreed to take me on as a pupil! Isn’t that the most marvellous news, Adam?’

  Helena felt the tension leave her body. Elizabeth wasn’t as insensitive as she had begun to believe. She hadn’t been out with Raefe after all. She doubted if even he could have put such elation into her voice and eyes.

  That’s wonderful news, my love,’ Adam said guardedly. ‘But was there any point in going to see him now, when you are just about to leave for a holiday in Singapore?’

  Helena looked at him in surprise. He hadn’t mentioned one word to her about leaving for Singapore.

  Elizabeth sat down on one of the cane chairs, pouring herself a coffee from the percolator standing on an adjacent table. ‘I thought about that,’ she said, her eyes carefully avoiding his as she added cream to her cup. ‘The important thing is that I’ve made the contact and that he has agreed to teach me. I told him I would be away for three or four weeks, perhaps longer. It isn’t a problem. And he will still be here when I return, and I now have someone to work for! There’s a purpose to everything again!’

  When she had finished stirring her coffee and raised her eyes, she looked not at Adam but at Helena. Everything that she wanted to say and could not say was explicit in her look. They were going away. She was going to get Raefe Elliot out of her system in the only way she knew. When she returned, Li Pi and her piano would be waiting for her, but Raefe Elliot would not be. Helena nodded her head slightly, to indicate that she understood.