its worst. Purge his mind how he would, the same lascivious images would come back again and again in that suggestive silence, images no less sinful for being vague and ill-informed. He imagined the girl he'd first seen there, soft, filmy clothes slithering off her shoulders. He saw her on the bed, a bed just like his, her breasts rippling as she raised her arms to embrace Mason and pull him down on top of her, her lips parting for his, her black hair spread like a fan on the pillow beneath her. Or was it not Mason he imagined sinking down on her softness, but himself? He jerked his mind guiltily away from all these images and forced himself back to the dull dead words on the page in front of him. He could go on determinedly with his letters, and yet his mind would still stray, he would still catch himself gazing dreamily at the wall, his head slightly cocked, listening for the first drowsy sounds of their awakening.
Then at last it would come, the lazy, unhurried yawning of Mason on the veranda again, his languid murmurs followed by the girl's brighter replies. The street below would be throbbing with the usual noises - hawkers, coolies, rickshaw boys and bearers of sedan chairs, servants, cooks, beggars, masters, mistresses and children, all talking, laughing, shouting and complaining in their quick, shrill voices. But in all that clamour, his keen ear unerringly picked out the low, playful or indolent voices of satisfied lust next door.
Sometimes he took Emily's last letter out and read it through, to return his mind to purer thoughts. But while his eyes were scanning the words he now knew almost by heart, his imagination would sidle off to titillating visions of the Chinese girl's swelling breasts, her round brown nipples, the smooth flat paleness of her belly and the exquisite darkness between her thighs.
It was on one of those Saturdays early in December, when the sun was so weak that it was welcome now and Denton would actually seek it in the room, pulling his chair closer to the window, that Ah Koo came in with his laundry. Denton was sitting, unfinished letter in hand, gazing out over the veranda at the paling blue of the sky as the sun went down. He was half-consciously listening for the awakening sounds from Mason's room. After the usual giggles and laughter there had been a silent stillness there for over two hours. Denton had even begun to wonder whether they'd slipped out and stealthily crept away - as if they knew he was listening, or cared if they knew! But then they came, the mutterings and sighs and yawnings, the easy, indulgent murmurs. He looked down at what he'd written with an effort of concentration, but his eyes were soon unfocussed as he strained to hear.
Ah Koo cleared his throat loudly and swallowed. 'Master wantee young gir'?'
'What?'
'Wantee young gir'?' He stood with Denton's pressed shirts neatly folded over his arm. 'You wantee, I bring. Very young. First time gir'.'
'No.' Denton frowned indignantly, his cheeks tingling.
'All same Mr Mason. I bring young gir' Mr Mason, he not likee, send away. I bring you other one gir', very goo'. Mr Mason same same you?'
'Certainly not!'
'Not wantee?'
'No. Not wantee.' His confusion had robbed Denton momentarily of even the simplest Shanghainese and he stumbled into the pidgin he was trying to grow out of.
'Wantee young boy?' Ah Koo's face seemed utterly impassive. Nothing moved in it except his mouth. There was neither disgust nor gloating in his eyes, nothing but the faint shrewd glimmer of inquiry. He might just as well have been asking where the shirts over his arm should go. 'Not wantee gir', not wantee boy?' he asked, shaking his head faintly.
'No.' Denton turned away. A low, throaty giggle sounded voluptuously from Mason's veranda, almost as though the girl had heard Ah Koo and was doing her best to help him corrupt Denton. Mason's voice muttered something, then he laughed.
'You wantee, you say,' Ah Koo said, unabashed, as he opened the wardrobe and put the shirts carefully away. 'All same same Mr Mason. He very likee. Say Ah Koo bring young gir', I bring chop-chop. I bring you same same. Never mind boy or gir'.'
Denton had ostentatiously bent his head over his letter again, but now he turned round and spoke in carefully rehearsed Shanghainese. 'I do not want girl, I do not want boy.'
Ah Koo listened to him from the door, his corrugated face still impassive. 'You wantee, you tell Ah Koo,' he said. 'Japan gir', Chinese gir', Portugal gir'. Ah Koo bring chop-chop.'
A few days later, Mason paused by Denton's table in the mess, where he was sitting with several other young inspectors. 'Ah Koo's a bit worried about your health, you know,' he said, leaning on the back of Denton's chair.
'Ah Koo?'
'Yes. Wonders if there's something wrong with you.' He surveyed the expectant, grinning faces all round the table. 'Says you don't care for girls.'
Denton looked back at his half-empty plate silently, feeling his cheeks beginning to flush.
'Perhaps you prefer boys?' Mason suggested. 'Only Ah Koo said you weren't interested in them either.' He laid his hand companionably on Denton's shoulder.
'You know perfectly well I'm engaged,' Denton said, his voice wavering between a show of amusement and a show of indignation. He wanted to shrug Mason's hand off and yet at the same not to antagonise him - rather to treat his teasing casually, as though he was indifferent to it, or even faintly amused himself. After all, it is only a joke, he told himself uneasily.
'We know perfectly well you say you're engaged,' Mason answered, winking at the others. 'But some of us are beginning to wonder if that isn't an excuse. In any case, even if you are engaged,' he straightened up, brushing his moustache with his knuckles and glancing significantly round the table again, 'you need to get a bit of practice in, don't you? I mean it might be years before she comes out here, mightn't it? You wouldn't want to disappoint her, would you?' And while he basked complacently in the sniggers that rippled round the table, his heavy hand patted Denton's shoulder amicably as if to assure him that honestly, he was only joking.
24
WHEN EMILY' S LETTER CAME at last, he felt a little quiver of fear as though he knew already what it would say. She hadn't written for nearly two months and Christmas was only three weeks away, so when he saw the slim small envelope peeping out of his pigeon-hole that morning as he left for duty, he tried to tell himself it must be her Christmas greetings. But there was an unbelieving anxious tremor about his fingers as he tore the flap open.
He read it in the rickshaw that was taking him to the Lower Section wharves. It was only one page long, and when he saw that, he felt his illusions fluttering away like plucked feathers. She was very sorry, she wrote in that clear large hand without a sign of emotion, but she did not think she could ever be his wife. She had come to realise that she could not bring herself to leave everything in England to live in Shanghai. And he ought to know from her first, because people would be bound to tell him anyway, that she had met someone recently, nobody he knew, to whom she thought she was better suited. But she would always have the fondest thoughts of him and hoped that he would not blame her too much, and might even one day be able to think of her kindly.
He read the letter through twice, the first time with his heart thumping unsteadily, the second time with it still as a stone. Then he folded it carefully in the same creases, slid it back into the envelope and buttoned it away in his tunic pocket - the very pocket in which he'd put her first letter, close to his heart. The air was cold, although the rising sun was warm on his face. He gazed dully at the alleys and streets, the cold dark waters of the canals, at the rickshaw coolie's back with its bony wing-like shoulder-blades sticking up under the torn cotton jacket, at the pyramid of mandarin oranges on a hawker's stall, and at the cabbages and spinach lying higgledy-piggledy on another stall while a woman with torn grey hair and a hunched back sprinkled water over them to make them look dewy and fresh. For some minutes, it seemed, he thought of nothing but what passed before his eyes, as though her letter had slid straight through his mind without leaving a trace. Then, slowly, her words began to recur, as if they hadn't disappeared at all, but had only been taking their time to sink into his brain, to take root. They began to echo in his ears, as though she were quietly speaking to him, to form themselves in her handwriting across his eyes, and he felt a blank, numb chill stealing