The following day dawned cloudless and warm, a perfect summer day. Morrison had rushed to Yokohama straight after breakfast only to learn that Mae had gone yachting with her putative chaperone Mrs Goodnow and that lady’s sea captain in the cliff-lined bay just south of Yokohama, which the Japanese called Negishi and the foreigners Mississippi.
He took a walk to a street where postcards were sold and distracted himself for an hour or two by shopping for war-themed postals and illustrated journals. He was particularly cheered by the find of an excellent woodblock print illustrating the battle between Japanese and Cossack cavalry on the banks of the Yalu the previous month and a magnificent triptych showing the destroyers Hayatori and Asagiri sinking Russian men o’ war during a snowstorm in one of the earliest battles for Port Arthur. He returned to Kaigan Dori but since there was still no sign of the yacht, he settled himself on the veranda of the Grand with a lemonade and some English-language papers to await Mae’s arrival.
Cackle-headed, that’s what she is. Cackle-headed, controlling, presumptuous—and breathtakingly lovely when she finally appeared back at the hotel in a splendid white dress, windswept and sun-kissed and, best of all, wreathed in smiles at the sight of him waiting there for her.
‘Honey, thank you for agreeing to come tonight. Martin’s been dreadful. Threatened to break off our relationship and everything. He said he knew that we had been together because whenever you and he run into one another, you look sheepish.’
‘Sheepish! He’s the one who just yesterday, upon seeing me in the dining room, walked the long way round just to avoid having to say hello.’
‘I know, I know,’ she soothed, weaving her arm into his as they strolled into the hotel. ‘He’s just being childish.’
‘You’re not making me look forward to this evening’s dinner, I must say.’
‘We’ll have a bully time, honey. He has promised to behave. I reminded him that he’d always liked and admired you and that the two of you were friends.’
‘It is not such a great sign of friendship when friends must be reminded that they like one another,’ Morrison countered glumly as they waited for the hotel boy to open her suite. ‘Where’s Egan now?’
‘He had some meetings or interviews or something.’ They entered the room. ‘Let me show you some of the things I’ve bought since I’ve been here. So much silk and brocade that I had to buy a beautiful carved tea chest to hold it all. That makes thirteen pieces of luggage, by the way. Yesterday I found the most beautiful hairpins, including one made from the shinbone of a crane that I shall give to my darling sister, Pansy, and matching ones of tortoiseshell for my dear mama.’ She burbled on, giving him scant opportunity to return to the topic of the evening’s entertainment. When she ran out of things to show him, she related how she’d spent the previous evening lounging about her suite in a satin dressing gown whilst eating Japanese bonbons and reading about the life of an ancient courtesan. Then, scarcely pausing to draw breath, she launched into details of Mrs Goodnow’s affair with her sea captain. ‘He lashes her to the mast, imagine that!’
Mae pressed herself against the bedpost and held out the silk tie of her dressing gown. ‘Imagine that!’ she repeated. ‘Can you?’
Morrison could.
Her skin was seawater-salty and rosy from the sun. He took her like a sailor, urgently and hard against the bedpost. He wanted, on this day more than ever, to fill her up completely and in every way possible. She responded with a hunger equal to his passion. She would go to dinner, he was determined, with his impress upon her every cell.
By the time they untwined their bodies, slick and limp with bliss, it was getting late. Singing to herself, she went to run a bath. Morrison stretched, looking around for reading matter. Something on her dressing table caught his eye. He picked it up and his heart jolted. It was a ticket for passage on the Mongolia, which was sailing for San Francisco on the twenty-sixth of June, only five days away. The passenger’s name was listed as Miss Mae Ruth Perkins.
He rushed into the bathroom. ‘What’s this, Maysie?’
‘Oh, honey, I had to go home eventually. Neither of us will be here forever. You knew that.’
Morrison grabbed a towel and held it to his face. His nose was bleeding like his heart.
The men shook hands with excruciating cordiality. Morrison, still wan from his nosebleed, perceived Egan to be more square-jawed and ruddy-cheeked than usual. He took some comfort from the fact that Mae had chosen to wear the bracelet he’d bought her in China.
An eager young Western man entered the dining room with a striking Japanese woman on his arm. Mae waved familiarly. The man waved back. The Japanese woman smiled and bowed.
‘He’s the nephew of the financier J.P. Morgan,’ Mae explained. ‘Our families know each other back home. I met up with him just the other day.’
Morrison and Egan looked over at the couple with interest. ‘And the woman?’
‘She was a geisha in Kyoto. A very famous one too, apparently. He was mad for her at first sight. Head over heels. She didn’t like him at first, wouldn’t even think of going with a Westerner. But he finally won her over and is marrying her later this year, here in Yokohama. But since her family won’t accept the match, the two of them are going to live in France.’
‘Does he speak Japanese?’ Egan asked.
‘No,’ Mae said. ‘Not more than two words. That’s about the extent of her English too. And I don’t think either speaks much French. The truth is that they can barely understand a word the other says.’
‘That would make it a fairly typical relationship for a man and a woman,’ Morrison quipped.
Although Mae insisted it wasn’t that funny, Egan laughed and Morrison liked him for that.
Morrison and Egan, in truth, had many topics of common interest. To Morrison’s relief the conversation proceeded more easily from then on. In his father’s day, such a situation—had such a situation been conceivable—might have ended in a duel. It really is a new century, he thought.
However, when Egan proudly mentioned his acquaintance with the famous novelist and reporter R. Harding Davis, Morrison could not resist at least one thrust of the foil. ‘Of course you would have heard the anecdote about him and Stephen Crane, the author of the Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage?’
Egan admitted he had not.
‘Do tell,’ encouraged Mae.
‘Well, I’m sure you’re well aware that Davis’s infinite conceit of himself is at least as well known as his books.’
‘I wouldn’t—’
‘So the two of them, Davis and Crane, had gone out to dine. The restaurant was crowded. As there were not enough tables, the pair pressed themselves on to one already occupied by two others. Davis thanked the men whose table they were joining, adding with something of a patronising air: “Perhaps you might like to know to whom you have done this favour. I am Mr Harding Davis; this is my friend Mr Stephen Crane.” With ready wit, the man replied, “You might like to know who has favoured you. I am John the Baptist and this is my friend Mr Jesus H. Christ.”’
Mae laughed heartily and Egan did his best to make it seem as though the joke was not partly at his own expense. Morrison wondered if Egan knew of her imminent departure and was stabbed again by the memory of finding her ticket just hours earlier.
Egan asked about the Haimun and the conversation turned to the adventures various correspondents had experienced trying to get to the front.
Mae tipped her head to one side, observing them coolly. ‘I hear both of you talk about the war all the time. You analyse the casualty figures as though discussing the score of a sporting contest and you tell amusing stories about the ways correspondents endeavour to elude the censors. But I never hear you talking about the ethics of fighting itself. Men, in my experience, seem far more tested by the morality of a woman than they do by the morality of war.’ Her tone was matter-of-fact. Morrison found himself exchanging glances with Egan. Both men watched as, having spoken her piece, she tucked into her braised sweetbreads aux petit pois with her usual gusto.
‘You know,’ Egan remarked after a pause, ‘the great Lord Byron hated to watch a woman eat. He liked to think of the fairer sex as too ethereal to require actual nourishment. If a woman insisted on sharing his table, he could not stand to see her consume more than the tiniest portion of lobster salad, washed down with champagne.’
Mae replaced her fork and knife on the table. ‘Well, I could not stand to see Lord Byron then. Who are men to set these rules, anyway?’ She turned her attention to the terrine de foie gras.
Egan gave Morrison a conspiratorial look. Morrison sensed his rival was on the verge of serious misstep. He was not disappointed.
‘Men always set the rules,’ Egan said with cheery assurance. ‘It’s the way of the world.’
Mae set her toast back down on her plate. ‘Not of my world. And in my experience, when men prefer their women to eat like birds, it’s so they can keep them in gilded cages. This is 1904—it’s the twentieth century—and I, for one, will not be kept in a cage. By anyone.’ She dabbed at her lips with her napkin and smiled sweetly. ‘If you two hadn’t noticed. Oh, and before either of you ask me again, honestly, I don’t know whose baby it was. And, yes, I’m sad. More than I can say. And it really is better that I don’t marry anyone. It’s not that I don’t love either of you. I love you both. But I don’t think I am suited to the institution of marriage. As you both know, I shall be sailing for America in a few days’ time. Now, which of you would like to claim me tomorrow and which the day after? This evening I shall rest with the correspondent John Fox Jnr, whom I met the other day whilst walking at Mississippi Bay.’
The modern duel, won by a woman.