Morrison gazed upon the sleeping form by his side. The room was dark, the moon having set. He listened to the rhythm of her breathing and watched the slow dance of her curves under the satin quilt. Her head was tilted to one side, her chin doubling slightly in repose, her long hair fanning out over the pillow. Under heavy, tasselled lids her eyes rested, guarded by the thick natural crescents of her eyebrows. Even asleep, those lips seemed to smile at some private entertainment. He felt all of his repressed longings fold themselves around her shape. Brushing a lock of hair from her cheek, he inhaled her musk of perfume, perspiration and sex. He described all this to himself, a correspondent in love.
‘Mae,’ he whispered, ‘it’ll be dawn soon. They mustn’t find you here.’
Without opening her eyes, Mae flattened the palm of her hand against the top of his head, urging him down towards her thighs, via her breasts.
Time passed memorably. He was well pleased with himself for having had the foresight to pack several ‘riding coats’. Fashioned from the oiled and stretched intestines of lambs, they were not much protection from the pox. But they were fairly reliable at preventing what was known in polite society as an ‘interesting condition’.
Outside the window, the sky began to shimmer with a premonition of dawn. Morrison slid under the warm quilt to bury his nose in Mae’s bosom, occasioning all manner of delicious gasping and squirming. With great reluctance and greater willpower, he finally pulled away from her and sighed. ‘We mustn’t get caught. I don’t want to cause a scandal for you.’
‘Don’t worry, Ernest, honey,’ she said, snuggling close again. ‘I am perfectly capable of causing my own scandals. I have been doing so since I was seventeen. Don’t look so alarmed. You remind me of my father when you look alarmed and that won’t do at all.’
He winced at the comparison. ‘What scandal did you cause at seventeen?’ The journalist in Morrison required information. The man in him wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. Morrison had been relieved that she was not a virgin. Yet he would prefer not to discover that she was a tart. Even when it was a patently absurd presumption, he preferred to think that a woman had flowered uniquely under his tutelage.
‘Oh, it was all rather silly. It happened about eight or nine years ago. The Daily Examiner reported that Fred Adams, who was in Oakland society, was to marry a divorcee who called herself Miss Potter. Can you imagine, a divorcee!’ She threw her hands up to her face, her eyes and mouth perfect circles of mock horror. ‘Well, the paper would report that he had met this unsavoury creature at a gathering I had hosted. My father was furious.’
Morrison, his hyperactive imagination having produced far worse scenarios, was relieved and amused. ‘Scandal, as Oscar Wilde wrote in Lady Windermere’s Fan, is but gossip made tedious by morality.’
‘I must store that one away.’ She tapped her temple with her forefinger. ‘I am quite sure it will come in handy.’
‘So what did your father do? Were you punished?’
‘He was away in Washington at the time. You know he’s a senator. He wrote a letter to my mother, urging her to tighten my reins.’ Raising herself on one elbow, Mae switched into her father’s voice: ‘“It seems that this Miss Potter was a friend of one of Mae’s friends and had been passing herself off as a young girl, although she was at the time a divorced woman!!!” There were three exclamation marks, the final one of such vigorous a pen stroke that it tore the paper. He said, “As long as I let Mae do as she pleases, wear bangs”—he underlined the word—“and run around having a wild time with questionable boys and girls, I am a dear, good papa, but when I insist that she must go to school and socialise with respectable young people, why I am another kind of man!”’
Morrison shook his head. ‘You frighten me. For a moment there, I could have sworn your father had slipped into bed between us. Have you ever thought of becoming an actress?’
‘Of course. I’ve loved the theatre ever since Mama took me to my first play at the Alcazar in San Francisco. Do you know the Alcazar? It’s the most elegant Moorish hall in all the world, or at least that’s what is printed on its playbills. Gas-jet chandeliers, classical busts on pedestals here, there and everywhere, and all society dressed in their finest, raising gold opera glasses to the stage. From the first encounter I wanted to be on that stage, to be the one they were all watching. And so I declared to Mama then and there that I would become an actress.’
‘What was her reaction?’
Mimicking her mother’s light Anglo-Irish lilt, Mae slipped into character: ‘“Young lady, are you so determined to disgrace the family? An actress is but another name for a fancy woman! It would kill your father!”’
‘If your talent for mimicry is any indication, I would think you could have enjoyed a stellar career on the stage.’
‘So you say. But I might as well have told her I was running away to join the circus. Which, like being a sailor, is something I also dreamed about when I was little. I wanted to be the girl with the feathered headdress who rode the pony and got the tigers to leap through hoops. But speaking of ponies, let’s find some and ride out to the seabeach at the end of the Great Wall.’
‘Now?’ Morrison recoiled. ‘But it’s so pleasant in bed.’
‘I will go alone then.’
‘You mustn’t do that. It wouldn’t be proper. Or safe.’
‘So come with me.’
‘Can’t you linger with me a while longer?’
‘And if we are discovered?’
‘Hmm. I feel a sudden desire for exercise.’