the missionaries' work in China next month. I expect I will go.
Mother and Father send their best wishes and ask to be remembered to you.
Love from Emily.
PS I am sending this to the address you gave me. Hope it is right.
As he finished reading, Denton became aware again of the quiet clacking of billiard balls, then of Mason's high piercing laughter. He read the letter through once more, this time painting images to accompany the words. He saw her wavy brown hair, her hazel eyes, the way she held her head a little on one side and forward when she listened.
Folding the letter slowly, he put it back into the torn envelope, smoothing the rough edges of the flap down as if he were trying to seal it again.
They hadn't done much spooning, only holding hands and walking to the Band of Hope together, sitting side by side at lectures in the college and on the tram there and back. But he felt how pure their love was, unsullied by the sordid lusts of such as Mason, whom he heard again laughing loudly and penetratingly in the billiards room. Their love was spiritual, he thought solemnly, spiritual and undefiled.
He stood up, sliding the letter into his tunic pocket, and walked towards the stairs. She would wait for him, he would be faithful to her. Eventually he would send for her....
Lighting the gaslight in his room, he took off his tunic and drew the letter out again. A strange, slightly greasy smell seemed to cling to it. He frowned, holding it closed to his nose. Surely she hadn't used scent or perfume - not Emily? Then he remembered the threads of opium Mason had stuffed into his pocket. He felt deep inside until he could pick up the twisted little strands between his fingers. Rolling them between his finger and thumb, he sniffed cautiously. Yes, it was the same smell. Perhaps it wasn't so unpleasant after all - just very, very rich. He dropped the opium into the waste paper basket and wiped his hands carefully with his handkerchief. Opium, he was sure, was wrong, just as intoxicating liquor was wrong - a danger to religion and morals. Yet, in its rich, heavy way, that clinging smell wasn't at all unpleasant really...
13
THE CATHEDRAL'S PEWS were nearly all filled when Denton arrived, and a grave, tall sidesman with watery brown eyes motioned him to a chair in the aisle. He leant forward, covering his eyes, and whispered a prayer. When he sat upright again he had already forgotten the words he'd muttered, as though he'd prayed mechanically, as unconsciously as he breathed or blinked. He glanced round at the grey stone arches of the nave and up at the tall stained glass windows, which the burning sunlight outside struggled to pierce. Everything was new; the dark wooden pews, the unworn flagstones, the vivid colours in the windows, the fresh grey pillars. Musing treble notes wandered up and down the bass drone of the organ like ivy caressing a great broad tree. Denton thought of St George's at Enfield - so much smaller and dimmer than this magnificent airy building. He thought of Emily in her pew with her parents, lowering her eyes with a secret smile when he glanced at her from the choir stalls.
He clung to the poignant image, part-memory, part-fiction, until his eye was caught by the figure of Mr Brown walking up the nave toward a pew near the pulpit. A tall, stout lady rested her hand on his arm. They progressed at a stately gait, their heads erect and motionless until they reached their pew, when Mr Brown handed his wife in first with a grave inclination of his massive-browed bald head.
Denton glanced over the rest of the congregation, sweat oozing from his pores despite the gently-squeaking punkahs that fanned the air above their heads. All the people in the nave were evidently rich - taipans, he supposed. You could tell by their clothes, the women in gorgeous dresses and sweeping, wide-brimmed hats, the men in faultlessly-cut silk suits. Watching them, Denton felt vague confused, feelings both of envy and of alienation. He knew that he wanted to wear fine clothes like Mr Brown, to have a sedan chair waiting outside the cathedral, to belong to the Shanghai Club, to be looked upon with awe by people like himself. Yet he felt he was not like Mr Brown and the other taipans, and never would be. There was some essential difference that would always keep him removed from them, their lives unassimilable. His mind slipped off to the church at Enfield, where the congregation were all workmen and shopkeepers in stiff dark suits with frayed button holes and shiny collars, the grime still under their fingernails.
Shanghai was beginning to unsettle him. He was becoming dimly aware of possibilities in the distance that had lain far beyond the level horizon of his life even when he'd been accepted for the teachers' training college and his father had said he was out of it now, he'd never have to work in a factory.
To stifle his unease, he joined in the opening hymn with a loud voice, following the choir's tenor descant.
Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him,
Praise the everlasting King.
Denton waited, listening to the hushed coughing and the closing hymn books and the shuffling feet, determined to concentrate now on the worship of God. He gazed up at the gaunt face of the Dean, who had turned by the altar to face the congregation. But even while he was watching the Dean's grey head and penetrating, deep-set eyes, his fickle mind had slipped off again, and he was wondering about Emily his hand surreptitiously straying up to the pocket where her letter nestled. What would she be doing now? Sleeping? What would she be wearing? A nightdress? And under the nightdress? a voice whispered, while the memory of the girl on Mason's veranda, her breast uncovered beneath his tunic, floated across his mind. He jerked his mind guiltily back to the Dean, who had begun intoning in a high, strained voice, his eyes fixed in vacant reverence above their heads.
'If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves....'
He could feel a warm slow trickle of sweat rolling slowly down his cheek. Behind the Dean, over whose head a punkah moved slowly to and fro as though it were a blessing hand, he saw the choristers turning the pages of their hymn books, the leaves fluttering like little white butterflies.
14
Dear Sir,
I am honoured to accept to teach you the Chinese language, mandarin
or Shangahi dialect according to you choosing. My fees are $5 per
hour, for which you receive compensation from imperial customs service
on receipt. I will call at you in your rooms on Tuesday 9th August
at the 4 o'clock and esteem your honoured favour.
Wei Lam-tung.
Denton drew his watch out and held it away from him, letting it hang and slowly spin upon its chain. Five to four. He read the letter through again and replaced it on his desk. One of the little green lizards that had so disquieted him on his first day rippled along the wall above his head. He watched it pause in stone-like immobility then dart forward to take a little fly with a flick of its whiplash tongue, gulping it down before returning at once to that watchful immobility.
One minute before four there was a shuffling outside the door and a knock. The boy entered and wordlessly gestured a spare little Chinese with glinting, metal-rimmed spectacles towards Denton.
Denton stood up as the Chinese, dressed in a grey silk tunic and trousers, offered him a small, limp hand. 'Mr Denton?'
'Yes. Mr Wei?' Denton noticed the long, curling nail on the little finger of the man's other hand - a polished claw two inches long, just like the agent's on the Alexander the First. The hands were pale and hairless, paler than his own sunburned, reddish ones, which seemed, with their dark hairs, to be suddenly crude and coarse beside them. The long fingernail and anaemic pallor of Mr Wei's hands made him wonder a moment whether he could be related to the agent - Ching, wasn't that his name? But Ching was tall and uncomfortably mocking, whereas Wei was short and seemed to be open and eager.
'How do you doing?' Mr Wei smiled with a bird-like jerk of his neck. A gold tooth winked moistly in his lower jaw. 'Please' to meet you.' He was holding a leather satchel. He opened it deliberately and took out two books, placed them carefully on the arm of the chair Denton offered him, then perched himself on the edge of the seat as if ready to take flight. 'Mr Denton,' he asked,