A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘I’d thought of inviting her to spend Christmas Day with us,’ Raefe said to Elizabeth as he helped her fix coloured streamers across the hall.

  ‘Then, why didn’t you?’ she asked him. She had still not met Melissa, but they had talked several times on the telephone and a hesitant friendship had sprung up between them.

  ‘She’s spending the day with Derry. Apparently his affair with Julienne is not going too smoothly at the moment. She’s spending less and less time with him and has told him she can’t see him at all over the holidays.’

  Elizabeth secured the last paper streamer and stood back to admire it. ‘Ronnie will be pleased. I don’t think he has a girlfriend at all now.’

  Raefe grinned. ‘Julienne has quite some way to go before she’s in the same position. Even if she puts an end to her affair with Derry, there’s still her little liaison with Tom. That’s been going on ever since Lamoon disappeared.’

  They were silent for a moment. Lamoon’s disappearance had affected Tom deeply. He rarely socialized now and, apart from Julienne, there had been no subsequent girlfriends.

  ‘What’s he doing for Christmas?’ Elizabeth asked, frowning in concern.

  ‘God knows. Helena asked him to spend the day with her and Alastair and Adam, but he refused. I asked him to come to us, but he said he’d prefer not. As Ronnie and Julienne are coming, I can’t say I blame him. I don’t suppose Julienne would mind, but Ronnie might.’

  ‘Poor Tom,’ Elizabeth said compassionately as Raefe’s arm slid around her shoulders. ‘I can’t bear to think of him being so unhappy. Perhaps if he knew for certain what had happened to Lamoon he would be able to begin to forget her.’

  ‘If he knew what had happened to her,’ Raefe said sombrely, ‘it might even make it worse.’

  There was a glimmer of good news in January when Tobruk fell to the Allies, but there was no other good news. German U-boats continued to sink Allied shipping in the Atlantic. German planes continued to bomb London and major cities such as Bristol and Plymouth and Glasgow.

  ‘I feel so guilty,’ Elizabeth said to Julienne as they kneeled on the floor of a church hall at a first-aid meeting, cutting up old sheets for bandages. ‘Everything is so horrible. Hitler and Mussolini, and London being ravaged by bombs.…’

  ‘Why feel guilty?’ Julienne, who had never felt guilty in her life, asked practically. ‘You are not responsible for Hitler and Mussolini, are you?’

  Elizabeth grinned. ‘Don’t be an ass, Julienne.’

  ‘Then, why feel guilty?’ Julienne persisted.

  Elizabeth leaned back on her heels. ‘Because it is such a terrible time for so many hundreds of thousands of people, and because I have never been so happy.’

  ‘Alors! Is that all?’ Julienne asked in disbelief. ‘Never feel guilty about happiness, Elizabeth. It is far too precious an experience. Do you think this bandage will ever be of any use? It started off three inches wide, and now it’s nearly a foot wide! It will have to be a very curiously shaped soldier who finds need of it!’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In March, Raefe and Melissa’s divorce was made absolute. ‘Now there is only your divorce to wait for,’ Raefe said to Elizabeth, holding her close. ‘Why the devil do these things take so long?’

  She hadn’t answered him. After her stillborn baby, Adam had begun to waver about the wisdom of a divorce. He had withdrawn proceedings and had only recently, reluctantly instituted them once again. She said instead: ‘Will Melissa leave Hong Kong now?’

  Raefe frowned slightly. His sense of responsibility for Melissa was still strong, but the future he had envisaged for her, and which she had been looking forward to so much, was now no longer possible. A return to London was out of the question. And Melissa had no friends or family in Australia or America. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, his frown deepening. ‘There was a time when she couldn’t wait to shake the dust of Hong Kong off her heels. Now she says she would much rather stay here than go to a place she doesn’t know.’

  ‘You can’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to go alone to Australia or America, either.’

  They were silent, both of them knowing that the day might come when she would have to go. Last summer’s invasion scare had died down, and many of the women who had left aboard the evacuee ships had returned; but, though an increasing number of people now believed it would never happen, invasion by the Japanese was still a possibility.

  ‘It might help if her father could be persuaded to leave for Perth or Los Angeles,’ he said, his voice full of exasperation as it always was when he spoke of his former father-in-law. ‘She won’t live with him here, but she might in a different environment.’

  ‘Have you told him that?’

  His mouth tightened. ‘I’ve tried to, but he won’t even speak to me on the telephone, let alone meet me!’

  Three hours later he drove up to the Peak to speak to Melissa. She was on the telephone when he arrived, but she brought her conversation to a quick conclusion, saying: ‘That will be lovely, Julienne. I’ll look forward to it.’

  ‘Was that Julienne Ledsham?’ Raefe asked as he moved towards the drinks-trolley, pouring himself a Scotch and soda.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was stilted. She had received the same documentation in the post that morning as he had, and she had known that he would call to see her. She had had a long time in which to adjust to the idea of no longer being his wife, and she had thought she had done so. The sensation of bitter shock she felt at the reality came as an unpleasant surprise.

  He dropped a couple of ice cubes into his drink. There had been a time when he had been unable to approve of any of her friends. Now he said with a grin: ‘What is Julienne up to these days? Is she still leading Derry a dance?’

  Melissa felt her tenseness begin to seep away. ‘Yes,’ she said, a slight smile touching her mouth. ‘The last time I saw him he said he was thinking of asking her to marry him.’

  At the thought of a confirmed bachelor like Derry even contemplating marriage, Raefe’s grin deepened. ‘He stands no chance. Julienne is quite happy as she is.’

  The slight smile that had touched Melissa’s mouth faded. There was never any dislike in Raefe’s voice when he spoke of Julienne, and yet Julienne was quite immoral. When she had behaved in a similar fashion, he had not shown an iota of tolerance. He had simply refused ever to sleep with her again. She said, with an edge to her voice: ‘The Ledsham marriage survives adultery. Why didn’t ours?’

  He felt a familiar heaviness weigh on his shoulders. Because you are not Julienne, he wanted to say. Because there was no generosity in your promiscuity. No regard for my pride. No love for anyone but yourself. He said instead: ‘Because we are not Julienne and Ronnie. When they married, it was with the understanding that faithfulness was not necessary to them. It was for me. It still is.’

  ‘And is Elizabeth faithful to you?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was no doubt in his voice. No equivocation.

  She felt a flare of her old vindictiveness, wishing with all her heart that he would, one day, find his precious Elizabeth in bed with another man. Jealousy surged along her veins. If he did, would his reaction be the same as it had been with her? Would he discard her and never have anything more to do with her? Or had he discarded her so totally because he had been relieved by her adultery? Because it had given him the excuse he needed to free himself of her? She said passionately, with sudden insight: ‘My unfaithfulness didn’t end our marriage! Our marriage was over long before I tried to make you jealous by sleeping with someone else! It was over within weeks of the wedding when you realized that you weren’t in love with me! That you had never been in love with me!’

  He turned away from her, unable to deny it, putting his glass back down on the trolley. ‘I came here to talk about the future, not the past,’ he said tersely. ‘You know that you can have the use of this house for as long as you want, but you need to think of where you’re going to go when you leave here.’
r />   ‘London,’ she said with equal curtness. ‘When this bloody war is over and life returns to normal.’

  He sighed, aware that their new-found friendliness was fast slipping away. ‘God knows when that will be,’ he said, turning once more to face her. ‘Hong Kong isn’t the safest place in the world, Mel. I’d rest far easier if you were in America or Australia.’

  Her eyes met his unflinchingly. ‘Elizabeth isn’t in America or Australia. Julienne isn’t. Nor is Helena Nicholson or Miriam Gresby or a score of other women I could mention. I don’t particularly want to stay here, though things aren’t quite so bad now that I seem to be socially acceptable once more. If the Germans weren’t intent on bombing London to a pulp, I’d be on the first ship home. As it is, I’ll wait. Living alone in a city I don’t know holds no appeal for me at all.’

  ‘What if I could persuade your father to leave as well?’

  She gave a derisive laugh. ‘My God! The thought of my father in Australia hardly makes Australia more palatable! And he certainly wouldn’t go if the suggestion came from you. He still thinks you’re hell-bent on ruining me. If you suggested he should accompany me to Australia, he’d be convinced it was because you had inside information and knew that the Japs were about to land there at any moment!’

  He knew that what she said was true. ‘Would you leave if Julienne left?’ he asked, his eyebrows arching curiously.

  ‘I might, but I can’t imagine Julienne leaving without Elizabeth. And I can’t imagine the three of us decorously sitting out the war together, can you? The best you can hope for is that Hitler comes to a sticky end, the Germans say “Sorry, chaps” and beat a hasty retreat to their own borders, and the Japanese don’t get ideas above their station. Then no one will have to go anywhere unless they want to, and those that do want to will be able to go where they choose. Which in my case is London.’

  Raefe chuckled, knowing that there was no use in pursuing the subject further, at least for the time being. ‘Bye, Mel,’ he said, relieved that they were at least parting amicably. ‘Give my regards to Julienne when you see her.’

  She felt a catch in her throat, not wanting him to go. Not wanting to be left. ‘’Bye,’ she said, digging her nails into her palms. Damn it all, she was a grown woman, not a child! And her new-found pride would not allow her to pine any longer after a man who had never loved her.

  ‘Bye,’ she said more firmly, walking to the door with him. She was going to Julienne’s party in an hour’s time. She wondered whether to wear her red chiffon or her sapphire-blue silk, and decided on the red chiffon. It would be her first night out as a newly single woman. And at Julienne’s anything could happen.

  Julienne wandered through her flower-filled drawing-room, checking that the houseboys had distributed enough ashtrays and enough small dishes of savouries. She enjoyed giving parries and did so with effortless ease. However, this evening’s party was going to be one with a difference. It was going to be the last party she would ever give as a happily faithless wife.

  The flowers were perfect. She had arranged them herself earlier in the day, great lavish bouquets of jungle flowers that filled the house with heady fragrance. In the dining-room, on the buffet-table, silver gleamed and cut glass shone. It was really quite a momentous occasion. The beginning of a life of monogamy, perhaps even of motherhood. A small smile played on her wide full mouth. The idea had at first appalled and then intrigued her. But before her plans could be put into practice there were one or two things that had to be dealt with.

  The first little difficulty was Derry. She was excessively fond of Derry. He possessed a careless gaiety and a zest for life that matched her own. And he was an extremely satisfying lover. She sighed a little. She was going to miss her laughter-filled, crazily athletic, passionate afternoons with Derry. She restraightened an already perfectly straight Georgian silver table-knife. It was a pity, but it was a necessity. She could no longer bear to see Ronnie looking so downcast. He tried to hide his dejection from her, still resolutely flirting with all her friends, but she knew that he did so without any real enthusiasm. It was as if he had outgrown his days of philandering and was waiting wistfully for her to follow suit.

  She stepped back from the laden table, appraising it for a second time. So … she had come to her decision, and there would be no more Derry, and no more Tom, and no one to replace them. It would, no doubt, be strange at first, but Ronnie would be happier and that would be compensation enough. All that remained was to inform Tom and Derry of her decision.

  She crossed to the cocktail-cabinet, mixing herself a very dry Martini. Derry would think she had taken leave of her senses. He might even miss her quite deeply, but he would recover. She wasn’t worried about Derry. It was Tom who was causing her concern. She opened the french windows, stepping from the dining-room on to the terrace that ran the breadth of the house. Fairy-lights had been strung among the trees, and Chinese lanterns glowed in the deepening dusk. Tom was not in love with her, but she had become his one source of comfort. Since Lamoon’s disappearance, he had withdrawn into himself, no longer socializing, blaming himself for what had happened and for the suffering he was sure Lamoon was undergoing.

  No, she could not leave Tom with the same ease as she could leave Derry. He would not trouble to find a replacement for her and he would need one, very much. As it was a task he would not undertake for himself, she knew that she must do it for him, though without his knowledge. She had pondered long and hard over a suitable candidate and had been surprised at the conclusion she had reached. Melissa Langdon.

  She wondered at first if her usually sound judgement was letting her down, but on reflection had decided that it wasn’t. Melissa was beautiful, lonely, and emotionally insecure. Tom was a good-looking man who possessed a strong sense of protectiveness. The battle that Melissa had successfully waged against heroin addiction would raise her in his estimation, not diminish her. The more Julienne thought about it, the more sure she became. Tom’s old-fashioned gallantry had been appalled at the public disclosure of Melissa’s private life at the time of Raefe’s trial, but Julienne felt that his dismay had been more for the humiliation that Melissa had endured than it had been for the revelations themselves. From the front of the house there came the distant sound of a doorbell ringing. Her guests were beginning to arrive. She sipped the last of her Martini, put down her glass and stepped back into the house to greet them.

  By the time Derry arrived the ground-floor rooms were crammed with people, the crush crowding the stairs and spilling out into the garden.

  ‘How are you, old boy? Nice to see you,’ Leigh Stafford said to him expansively as he eased himself into the drawing-room trying to locate Julienne.

  ‘Hello there, Derry. Are you going to be playing in the rugger match against the Middlesex?’ someone else shouted to him.

  A white-jacketed houseboy squeezed his way towards him, proffering a tray of drinks.

  ‘I hear that horse of Ronnie’s is still performing miracles!’

  ‘And so it looks as if poor old Roger will have to marry the girl now!’

  The laughter and raised voices were deafening. Derry ignored the back-slapping from old acquaintances, continuing his search for Julienne. It didn’t perturb him in the least that the party was in her marital home. What did disturb him was the presence of Tom Nicholson’s Packard in the drive outside. His suspicions about Julienne and Tom had increased over the last few months, but he still wasn’t sure. Were they having an affair? Or was the idea ridiculous? He pushed his way towards the far side of the room where he thought he could see the tell-tale glint of Titian hair. God damn it! She couldn’t be having an affair with Nicholson! He was too taciturn. Too strait-laced. Sir Denholm Gresby detained him, wanting to know if it was true that Ronnie’s horse was odds-on favourite for Saturday’s race. Derry didn’t know and didn’t care. A peal of delighted laughter confirmed that it was Julienne in the centre of the nearby dinner-jacketed group, and as he approached them
he saw that one of the dinner-jackets belonged to Tom Nicholson.

  He pushed his way determinedly to her side.

  ‘Alors, chéri! How lovely to see you!’ Julienne said uninhibitedly, kissing him on the cheek. ‘You know Tom, don’t you? And Charles Mills, and Graham Storey.…’

  ‘I want to talk to you!’ he hissed in her ear.

  ‘Later, chéri. For the moment I have to be the hostess.’ Her voice was regretful. When Derry approached her in a crowded room with that took in his eyes, and that expression in his voice, it meant not that he wanted to talk to her, as he said, but that he wanted a quick reckless coupling in a bathroom or a convenient bedroom.

  The last exhilarating escapade had been when they had excused themselves from the table at a mutual friend’s dinner-party. The nearest available room had been a spare guest-room, the bed piled high with coats. Julienne had been fascinated to discover, as she rearranged her lingerie, that the topmost coat on which they had just fornicated belonged to Miriam Gresby. Ever since, whenever she had seen it on its owner’s back, she had eyed it with affection and a dimpling smile of reminiscence.

  ‘To hell with being a hostess!’ Derry whispered savagely. ‘I need to talk to you, Ju!’

  She shook her head firmly. ‘Non!’ she said, turning away from him to greet Melissa who had just entered the room. ‘Later, chéri!’

  There was nothing he could do. Tom Nicholson was regarding him coldly. Mills and Storey were eyeing him curiously, and his sister was approaching them, wearing a dazzling red chiffon dress and something of her old sparkle.

  ‘Nice to see you out and about,’ he said to her when Julienne had kissed her and completed the introductions.

  ‘Nice to be out and about,’ she said drily. Both of them knew that since her return from the New Territories she had not been inundated with party and dinner invitations. The truth, not believed at the time of the trial, had since gained credence. Melissa Elliot was a heroin addict. The fact that she had apparently beaten her addiction cut no ice with the leaders of European Hong Kong Society. They had been extremely reluctant to welcome her back into the fold, and social invitations had been few and far between. It had been Julienne, inviting her to join their party at the racecourse, at the beach, at the tennis club, who had turned the tide.