In Which the Number of Courses in a Western
Meal Passes Without Remark and Miss Perkins
Demonstrates One Way to Eat a Boiled Pheasant

Once they had given their orders to the waiter, Dumas leaned in towards Morrison. ‘Eminently squeezable that one. And not a false tooth or clammy hand in sight.’

‘She thinks me self-important,’ Morrison replied gloomily. ‘And so I acted. I could kick myself for mentioning the flags of Geelong flying at half mast. All that Hero of the Siege business doesn’t help either. I might as well go a-courting with the medals I received from Queen Victoria.’

‘Young men woo with charm, energy and looks. Older ones woo with their wealth or, if that is lacking, their accomplishments.’

‘I don’t find that very reassuring.’

Dumas shrugged. ‘I believe she likes you. Perhaps you have prospects for the Year of the Dragon after all.’

‘Tosh. Even if that were true, I could hardly afford to keep an heiress.’

‘That’s the good thing about heiresses. They keep themselves. If you will not have her, perhaps I will. Not that she noticed me. When I spoke up just then, she looked over as though trying to remember who I was.’ Dumas made mournful eyes at his champagne and then tipped it down his throat.

‘I thought you learned your lesson. Your wife, if I recall correctly, has only just agreed to return to you.’

Dumas grimaced. ‘I must watch my step. I am rarely allowed to forget the high position my father-in-law holds in the Foreign Office. My wife is currently threatening to have him return us to India, despite being well aware that I am in the toils of the native money-lenders there. But with regards to the tasty Miss Perkins, a man can dream, can he not?’

‘Feel free,’ replied Morrison, affecting indifference. ‘I myself am neither a dreamer nor a poet.’

‘Though,’ Dumas pointed out, ‘you dress like one. With your soft collars and all.’

‘This conversation has degenerated from gossip to fashion. Before we mutate into a pair of old hens, I move that we discuss something of more pressing import. The number of Japanese troops surging up the Korean peninsula towards the Yalu River, for example.’

‘Granger says—’

‘Granger?’ Morrison exclaimed, so piqued he forgot entirely about the ravishing young lady at the other table. ‘That little dwarf’s a deuced fool. He has managed to get closer to the action than any of my newspaper’s other correspondents and yet every sentence he writes is of dubious veracity. He admitted that the information about troop movements conveyed in his last telegram was gleaned from a Chinese carter. Next he will be reporting the gossip of ricksha pullers. What’s more, he echoes whatever the Russians tell him; he will swallow any wild claim so long as it is washed down with enough vodka. I have had to field complaints from the Japanese Legation. They know I am The Times’s senior correspondent and so they blame me for his telegrams.’

‘And yet,’ Dumas noted, ‘as we saw again this morning, our Japanese friends are not entirely forthcoming either.’

‘Indeed. They have obliged us with a war but not with any worthwhile information about its progress.’

‘The Japanese tell you more than they tell anyone else; of that, at least, I am certain.’

‘Sparse comfort.’

Dumas snapped his fingers. ‘I forgot to mention that the Japanese consul in Tientsin claimed to me that his army had already sunk fifty Russian ships off Port Arthur.’

Morrison shook his head. ‘I doubt it. The entire Russian fleet consists of only seventeen vessels.’

‘Surely not.’

‘The part that is not tied up in the Baltic Sea awaiting the thaw, most assuredly so.’

Dumas popped a sugared almond into his mouth and chewed. ‘Granger. Is he really a dwarf?’

Morrison shrugged. ‘He’s short.’

Dumas barked with laughter. ‘And you’re tall. Henceforth I will call you a giant.’ Reading his companion’s expression, he added hastily, ‘Which, of course, you are.’

‘Making sense of this war requires background and experience,’ Morrison grumbled. ‘The motley collection of roustabouts whom my editor has hired as war correspondents have neither. They have spent most of their time, as far as I can see, re-creating naval battles in bars up and down the China coast, sinking a battleship with every beer. Those who’ve actually made it to Port Arthur spend most of their time investigating the syphilitic marvels of Maud’s Brothel. The rest are still in a complete cloud as to where Port Arthur even is. One old veteran, Tulloch, recently landed in Chefoo, on the Shantung Peninsula, armed to the teeth and mistaking the treaty port for the front! We’re lucky he didn’t fire on the British officers’ mess. And yet The Times has made the decision to anchor me to Peking to act as an exchange clerk for these incompetents and their dispatches. It is incomprehensible.’ Morrison neglected to mention that his employer’s decision had been, at least partly, in response to his own belly-aching on the subject of his health. ‘I have told Bell that I really must see some action myself, and not to send any more men.’

‘You are most severe in your judgment of others. It makes me quite fear to leave the room. You may have wondered why you find me sticking so doggedly by your side.’

‘Clever chap, Dumas. I have never thought otherwise. But you of all people should know that I reserve my harshest judgment for myself.’

‘Don’t we all?’ Dumas’s expression grew serious. ‘I did wish to ask your opinion on something. I know that in all your telegrams and public statements you are sanguine about an early victory for Japan. But aren’t you worried that if the war drags on, Britain, as an ally of Japan, might be dragged into the conflict? As you know, the Boer War depleted our military resources. My superiors fear that should the Russians be defeated in Manchuria—’

‘Which they will be…’

‘—the Tsar may invade Afghanistan and upset the balance of power on the subcontinent.’

‘Balderdash. You might as well say that if the Japanese succeed in displacing the Russian sphere of influence in Manchuria, they will go on to occupy all of north China.’

‘Perhaps not. But surely, following victory, Japan could possibly grow to rival Britain in commerce. People are saying—’

‘People will say anything.’

Dumas bowed his head to the pigeon-egg soup.

Morrison regretted his brusqueness. ‘I don’t need to tell you that of course. You are no fool.’

Dumas, heartened, drew his hand over his beard, which rained crumbs.

Morrison grew aware of a sensation on his cheek like the tickle of sunshine. Out of the corner of his eye, he looked towards the ladies’ table. With a prick of disappointment, he allowed that he might have been mistaken. Miss Perkins appeared absorbed in her conversation with her chaperone.

The waiters removed the men’s soup bowls and placed before them anchovy on toast, broiled chicken and salad à la Russe.

Over at the ladies’ table, Miss Perkins rearranged her skirts. One fashionably narrow boot peeped out from under her hem. Whether it had been revealed by accident or design was a question that taxed Morrison. He imagined a pale foot, smooth toes, a delicate but firm arch, finely turned ankles.

He wrenched his attention back to Dumas. ‘I am glad that we came,’ he insisted in a tone that implied his companion had suggested otherwise. ‘It is poor work sitting in a drawing room in Peking whilst battles are raging in the neighbourhood.’

‘Indeed,’ Dumas concurred, patting his mouth with his napkin. ‘Though I don’t think you need to fear being accused of poor work as far as this war is concerned. You have done so much to advance the Japanese cause in the public mind that I’ve heard a number of people referring to the conflict as “Morrison’s War”.’

Morrison pretended to be surprised. ‘Is that so?’

‘You can’t fool me.’ Dumas watched the waiter top up their glasses before turning back to his friend. ‘You’re flattered.’

‘It is not every man who has a war of his own,’ Morrison conceded with a quicksilver smile.

Just then, Miss Perkins erupted in laughter. Morrison was stabbed by anguish. Had she overheard? As if she does not already think me self-important enough. But if she had been the least bit cognisant of the men’s conversation, she gave no sign of it. He was torn between disappointment and consolation.

The waiter placed before the gentlemen a platter of cold baked ham with an accompaniment of tomatoes and candied yams. Across the room, the ladies were partaking of boiled pheasant.

Morrison’s eyes met those of Miss Perkins. Holding his gaze, she speared a morsel of pheasant with her fork and conveyed it to her mouth. Fluttering her lashes and pursing her lips with a burlesque air, she inhaled the gamy scent of the meat, her bosom swelling over the line of her corset. As she exhaled, her throat, encircled in black ribbon, seemed to vibrate with pleasure. ‘Mmm.’

She did not so much nibble as seduce the meat off the tines. Chewing slowly, she tipped her head back to let it slide down her throat. Her lovely round cheeks flushed and perspiration beaded her top lip.

Mrs Ragsdale observed her charge with palpable unease. ‘Mae, dear, people are looking.’ Her voice rang into the hush that had fallen over the room. Morrison, clearly, had not been her only audience.

Miss Perkins’s astonishing reply, made after she had patted her glistening lips with her napkin, was thus heard by all. ‘Yes. I suppose they are. I am so very glad I made an effort with my toilette.’

Dumas let out a squeak of laughter, which he parlayed into a cough.

‘Mae!’ gasped Mrs Ragsdale. She opened her mouth to say something else and then closed it, as though realising it was no use. Morrison felt he could almost see a homily wilting on her tongue.

‘Quite a performance,’ Dumas whispered.

Morrison was too lost in inner turmoil to reply.

The men’s pudding arrived.

Not long after, the women finished their meal and passed out of the room, Miss Perkins with the air of an actress taking leave of her fans.

Swallowing down a final spoonful of tapioca and cream, Dumas patted the swollen mound of his stomach. ‘If I lie down on the floor right now, I’d look like the Fourteenth Ming Tomb.’

‘Raise the dead,’ said Morrison. ‘It is time to join the ladies.’

Dumas studied his companion for a moment. ‘Is the great G.E. Morrison falling in love?’ he asked.

‘Love does not come into the equation, my dear Dumas.’

Morrison could be powerfully persuasive. He almost believed himself.