That evening found Morrison slumped in his seat in the auditorium at Gordon Hall, staring at the stage from under his lowered brow. In poor, untrained voices, the singers tortured the melodies whilst stout matrons old enough to be grandmothers coquetted about pretending to be fair maidens. Stolid bankers playing young gallants flung their pork-knuckle hands here and there in lieu of acting. The painted set fell over in the first act and, when one of the younger actresses made a hash of her lines, she burst into tears. The most astonishingly rotten amateur performance I have ever seen, Morrison thought morosely. Dull ye gods! Not that much in the way of theatre could hope to compete with the performances to which I’ve been witness these last few days!
On Morrison’s right sat Menzies, rigid and dutiful even in his approach to entertainment. On his left, Dumas squirmed, apologetic. The only uplifting aspect of the evening was the sight in the crowd of a handsome and amorous young couple whom Dumas identified to Morrison as Zeppelin and his fiancée. She had arrived the day before from Holland.
After congratulating Mrs Dumas and company, Morrison pleaded exhaustion and an early start the next morning. He returned to a hotel room redolent of sex, perfume, blood and champagne and thickly haunted by the ghosts of other men.
That night, he dreamed feverishly of cakewalks and sleighing and buggy rides, of men, men and more men, around, on and in his Maysie, in her sweet cunt, her squeezable arse, her smiling lips, her soft, moist lips, her red, red lips. He woke with a start in the middle of the night, covered in sweat, though he had thrown the eiderdown clear off the bed. His tooth hurt. His joints ached. His nose threatened another eruption. Bloody Willie Vanderbilt. Son of the richest man in the whole world. How could one compete with that? Should one have to? Morrison rolled over in a huff, as though to leave Mae’s vast collection of beaux out of sight on the other side of the bed. Her sweet cunt. Her squeezable arse. Her soft red lips.
With a great effort, he turned his thoughts to more appropriate concerns, the subjects of his other conversations in Tientsin. The war. The politics of the railways. The war. Shipments of coal and arms. The ongoing Siege of Port Arthur. The coolie trade to South Africa. The war. The port of Tientsin doomed by its sandbar worsening every year. The war. The arms trade. The war. And what the devil was up with James—URGENT, URGENT, URGENT? Morrison yawned, felt the ache in his jaw, and thought that if he met Mae in Shanghai he could see the dentist there as well. That, in turn, caused him to recollect the tale of Jack Fee. He groaned. Her smiling lips, her sweet cunt. Blood. He finally fell asleep, a paltry three hours before he was due to rise for his train to the port, where he would catch the steamer sailing southeast through the Gulf of Bohai to Wei Hai Wei.
Morrison was nervy with a dearth of sleep when Kuan, who had been distinctly underemployed for several days, woke him for the train. At the station they ran into C.D. Jameson, just off the train from Peking and plainly as thrilled to see Morrison as Morrison was to see him.
‘Well, hello.’
‘Morning, Jameson. What brings you to Tientsin?’
Jameson mumbled something about mines and concessions. He smelled of rum, even at that hour.
Jack Fee, Bobby Mein, George Bew and Willie bloody Vanderbilt were of the past, Zeppelin out of action with the arrival of his fiancée, and Martin Egan, he had ascertained, safely back in Japan for the moment. But Jameson? Even Mae had her limits, surely. Morrison refused to place Jameson within the frame of this increasingly crowded picture. The grubby old duffer had merely heard the rumours and thought to start one about himself.
‘And you, old chap?’ Jameson’s rheumy eyes flickered. He adjusted his false teeth with his pinky. ‘What’s been your business here? Seeing Miss Perkins, I presume?’
Morrison, the nerves behind his eyes hammering, felt his hackles rise. He is down after the fair Mae, that is certain sure. He shoved his gloved hands deep in his pockets. ‘I may have seen her in passing. This city of one million is a small town, after all. Ah, there goes the whistle. I shall bid you adieu. Good day, sir.’