They left the Chinese City before the gates closed for the night and took the carriage to the Chang Gardens in the International Settlement to round off what Mae called ‘our Chinese day’.
It was dusk and the lanterns set out along the artfully landscaped paths and swinging from the upturned eaves of the park’s pavilions glowed against a pastel sky. A courtesan in a robe the colour of plum blossoms peered at Mae from behind the swaying beaded curtains of her palanquin and Mae waved, eliciting a smile. On the lake, men and women idled in painted pleasure boats, their laughter and the sounds of flute and zither floating on the moist breeze. ‘I could stay in China forever,’ Mae murmured dreamily and Morrison was filled with dumb hope.
They took a table on the second floor of a teahouse overlooking the lake. The waiter placed a miniature terracotta teapot and small cups on the table along with a selection of dainties. There were crisp biscuits coated in sesame; steamed, see-through ‘crystal dumplings’; parcels of meat wrapped in withered beancake skins; boiled peanuts. Morrison watched, besotted, as Mae set to the feast with abandon.
Selecting a steamed bun filled with a paste of peanuts, sugar and salt, she cried, ‘Peanut butter! How funny. It’s all the rage in New York. They served it with watercress in sandwiches at the Vanity Fair Tearoom last time I was there. Have you been?’
‘New York or the Vanity Fair Tearoom?’ Morrison asked, mustering shards of pink ginger around a ‘little basket dumpling’ of minced pork.
‘Either.’
‘I’ve been to New York but my travels were not so well funded that I could aspire to tea on the Upper West Side. I was renting a room on 19th Street for two dollars a week. I was far better acquainted with the ten-cent pork-and-potatoes special at Beef Steak John’s, and that I could only afford to eat once every two days.’
‘Goodness! It’s hard to imagine. You know, I don’t think I shall ever tire of your stories. Even if you have tired of mine. But what on earth were you doing there under such circumstances?’ She levered up a slice of mock goose with her chopsticks.
‘Looking for work. I was fresh out of medical school and still hopeful of inflicting my poor talents on the sick. But when I applied for the post of warder at the New York Hospital on 15th Street, the secretary took one look at my testimonials and demanded, “How do I know these haven’t been written by yourself?”’
‘What did you say?’
‘Had they been written by myself, they’d have been much more flattering.’
Her laughter sparkled. She truly was a gem, every facet gleaming with happiness. He watched with contentment as she tested the braised eel, exclaiming over its subtle texture and taste. ‘You know, Mrs Ragsdale is terrified to dine in any Chinese eatery, certain that if she manages to cheat the plague she will be shanghaied into service in a Chinaman’s brothel.’
‘Mrs Ragsdale has a most fertile imagination.’
‘Yes, and for someone so averse to contact with the male germ, one that frequently occupies itself with sexual matters.’
‘I would not have guessed.’ Morrison’s expression in no way forbade further confidences.
‘When I lace my corset tightly, for instance, she frets that it will prevent my venous blood from returning to the heart, collecting instead in organs where it might cause “unnatural excitement”. Men are lucky not to be the subject of so much vigilance.’
‘As a boy, we were warned about sliding down banisters, but I didn’t understand why at the time. And at medical school there was much talk about the lecherous daydreams induced by the smoking of tobacco.’ Morrison bit into a dry pastry covered with toasted sesame seeds and felt doughy flakes stick to the roof of his mouth and the back of his teeth. He worried them with his tongue. He was so focused on the woman before him and performing this operation without undue uncouthness that he did not notice, amongst the Chinese coming and going, their felt-soled footsteps soft on the stairs, Professor Ho, Sir T’ing and Mr Chia.
‘Mrs Ragsdale,’ Mae said, ‘is a great devotee of Dr Kellogg and his theory that late-night meals and tasty foods like flesh and chocolate are the work of the devil, prone to exciting “morbid sensibilities” and “harmful instincts”. She doesn’t go so far as to follow him into vegetarianism, primarily because Mr Ragsdale will not countenance it. But every morning she urges upon me a bowl of Dr Kellogg’s cornflakes, which have been scientifically formulated to dampen unbidden sexual urges. I have assured Mrs Ragsdale that I do not suffer from unbidden urges, an answer that seems to satisfy her.’
‘You must have much to hide from her.’
‘You never need to conceal anything from people who don’t want to see the truth.’ Mae shrugged. ‘Once, she walked in on me when I was playing with myself. Ha, Ernest, don’t look so shocked. What did you think, honey? I play with myself every morning, even if I’ve had sexual intercourse the previous night. Even if I’m ill. Don’t you?’
Morrison sipped his tea to cover his temporary loss of words as his complexion reddened. ‘I wonder what the good Dr Kellogg would say about that,’ he said finally, in as jocular a tone as he could manage.
‘He would say that masturbation leads to sin and crime, not to mention indigestion, imbecility, dimness of vision, weakness of the knees and backaches. They say he is a virgin who never consummated his marriage, in which case he should know all about masturbation.’ She bit into a glutinous rice ball filled with black sesame paste. ‘Mmm. I fear all this tasty food is rather exciting my harmful instincts. I do hope you’re planning to shanghai me.’ She treated him to a look of pure burlesque. ‘It would seem only right, this being Shanghai and all.’
Morrison patted his brow with his handkerchief. It was already the twenty-seventh of March. He had not written much of import in some weeks—not that his editor seemed to have noticed, for Bell had demanded little else of his star correspondent lately than that he keep track of his colleagues in the field. Although feeling diminished, Morrison was determined to keep up appearances. Besides, such was the nature of journalism that, if one kept looking, a story was bound to turn up somewhere. ‘I’m afraid I have some calls to make. I’ve been neglecting my duties…’ His voice did not carry a great burden of conviction.
Mae’s foot travelled up the inside of his leg. ‘You are surely not going to start tonight.’
If anyone is being shanghaied, it is I. Morrison did not struggle.
As the trap rattled towards the hotel, Mae remarked, ‘You know, I could have sworn I saw your Boy entering the teahouse just then as we were leaving.’
‘Really? I suppose it is a popular place. I wonder why he didn’t come over to say hello.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t wish to disturb us. Maybe it wasn’t even him. They do rather look alike to me, as I am told we look alike to them, hard as that is to credit. I didn’t take too much notice. I had other more amusing thoughts with which to occupy myself
.’‘Like what?’
‘Like how I was going to try doing this once we were in the carriage.’ She drew the blanket over their laps. Her fingers made their nimble way towards his trouser buttons.
The next morning, Morrison took Mae sightseeing. He suggested they start with the Woosung Forts, where he inspected the field guns on the parade grounds and made rather a big deal about taking notes. After that, they visited a church she’d heard about where the missionaries had painted frescoes of Jesus and his Apostles all in Chinese dress, complete with pigtails.
Shanghai offered many divertissements. Whilst mentally making a list of contacts he really ought to call on before dinner, Morrison was content to squire his own, two-legged divertissement about town in pursuit of this or that amusement.
He had been gratified to see that she was determined to keep her promise not to speak to him of other lovers. And if the odd tale about going on an outing in a four-in-hand or a Valentine’s Day card party for which she smothered the chandeliers at Palm Knoll in cascades of fango grass and huckleberry ended a little too abruptly, he silently thanked her. Other men floated like spectral presences at the margins of her stories. But Morrison was a practical sort: not the type to see ghosts and certainly none he did not wish to see.
His plan to return more seriously to his work ended up, like his trousers, shed carelessly in the vicinity of her bed. Yet he told himself he felt happier and younger than he had in years. ‘If only it could be like this forever,’ he said aloud without thinking.
Her eyes narrowed for a second. ‘Ernest, honey,’ she purred, ‘it’s like this now.’ She leaned over to kiss one of his nipples. A loose strand of her hair, soft and fragrant, tickled his stomach. ‘Why wouldn’t it be like this forever?’
That night, back at the Blunts’, Morrison confided to his journal: Days foolishly spent. Her company stimulates me greatly. My head in a whirl of excitement. I feel that the foundation of our affection has been driven even more deeply and strongly. Our natures are curiously dissimilar and yet…she so strongly attracts me and interests me. We are in closer intimacy than ever, in more affectionate converse. This has been a time of unsullied happiness.
He reread the words and blotted the ink before closing the journal. He shook his head. Unsullied indeed. He had scarcely done a jot of work. With a twinge of guilt, he wondered how Lionel James was faring.