obediently on his back, ridiculous and vulnerable, gripping his lifted shirt-tails in both hands. He gazed up anxiously past Dr McEwan's shoulder as he leant over to examine him. A large black fly was flitting erratically round the motionless blade of the punkah that hung from the ceiling. Dr McEwan's hand felt cold. Denton's body stiffened slightly in recoil at the impersonal insult of his touch.
'Pish, man, there's nothing wrong there,' the doctor straightened with a sigh. 'It's your conscience that's bothering you, not your health. And I'm not the man to cure that.' He glanced wrily down at Denton as he spoke, and Denton caught the definite warm scent of whisky on his breath. He dressed quickly, his chest light with relief, shivering slightly in the cold of the unheated consulting room.
'Keep away from the cheaper places, if ye can't keep away from it altogether,' Dr McEwan advised drily at the door. 'You'll be running very little risk if ye just use your noddle. And come back to see me in six weeks' time, just to be sure.'
Again, as he passed the doctor, Denton caught that warm smell of whisky on his breath.
His health assured, Denton determined to keep his vow. He attended the Christian Youth Fellowship on Thursdays and covered his inward yawns with a outward expression of piety. He went to choir practice on Friday evenings and both services on Sundays. On Saturdays, to escape the sounds of Mason's love-making in the afternoon, sounds which had become agonisingly disturbing now that he understood their meaning, he left his room and walked along the Bund. There was the municipal band to listen to in the public gardens, and, in the evening, the brass concert from the balcony of the German Club, the players smoking cigars and drinking great stone tankards of beer between pieces, looking down on the shifting crowd that gathered in the street below with genial, well-fed smiles. And on weekday evenings he worked at his Chinese.
Wei had gone away for three weeks, to visit his ancestral village for the New Year celebration. When he returned, he suggested their usual restaurant for their weekly dinner. But Denton asked if they could go somewhere else for a change. He didn't want to meet Su-mei again. Images of her face and body tempted him still at every unguarded moment, especially when he lay in bed at night, and he felt he wouldn't be able to resist her if he saw her in the flesh - still less so, now that he knew the fears which had been the greater part of his guilt were groundless.
Wei took him to another restaurant in the old Chinese city, where the streets were so narrow that two rickshaws could barely pass. He began telling him, while they ate their Peking duck, about some Chinese revolutionary called Sun Yat-sen who had been imprisoned in the Chinese Embassy in London and escaped with his life only by throwing messages into the street, which some passer-by had found and taken to the police. Wei was just describing how the handwriting on the notes was recognised by an Englishman who'd been Sun's teacher, and Denton, listening, was just taking a slice of the brown, crackly-skinned duck from the dish between them, when he saw Su-mei being ushered past their table by the head waiter. Their eyes met. He felt his outstretched arm pause while something throbbed for an instant in his chest, as it might have if he'd just missed a step.
'... he is in Japan now,' Wei was saying, 'waiting for a chance to return....' His eyes followed Denton's gaze, but he went on smoothly with scarcely a break, switching however for some reason into English. 'He has many wester' idea', such as democracy and other new thing'. The Manchu try to kill him, but I think she - he - win in the en'.'
Denton nodded absently, noting detachedly how Wei, like so many Chinese, often mixed up the genders of English pronouns, Chinese having no genders itself. But he could not have repeated Wei's last sentence - that little grammatical error was the only thing he'd heard. His arm trembled slightly as he dipped the slice of duck into the black soya sauce and watched his chopsticks carry it to his mouth. Su-mei had gone on, into one of the private rooms; but, as she passed, the faintest smile had touched her lips, and her eyes had lingered on his for one appealing second before she looked away.
'Sun was educate' in the British colony of Hong Kong,' Wei went on. 'Therefore he was learn' many wester' liberal idea'.'
Denton didn't respond and for a few moments they were awkwardly silent. Then Wei swallowed his rice wine with screwed-up eyes as it burned his throat, and coughed, smiling at Denton indulgently as he reverted to Chinese.
'Your mind is on other things. Shall we ask if she is free to join us later on?'
'No, no,' Denton blushed, shaking his head too emphatically to be believed, 'I'm sorry, I was only thinking....'
'She has a good voice and she is good to look at,' Wei urged gently.
'Yes, but not for me, not just now. If you want to hear her...?'
Wei shook his head, his shrewd little eyes smiling in their pale folds of skin. 'I have two wives already, that is enough for me.'
After the almond soup and the oranges, when they had wiped their hands with the steaming towels the waiter brought them, Denton stayed sitting as long as he dared without being discourteous, hoping he might see Su-mei leave, or at least hear her voice. Wei waited patiently, talking still about Sun Yat-sen although he must have known Denton was only half-listening. But Su-mei didn't appear again and his strained ears heard nothing except the usual lively clatter of a Chinese restaurant. Just as well, he told himself at last when he got up to go. But why then did he feel so disappointed, so forlorn?
He was writing a letter home late that night when he heard a sudden shouting and screaming in the street below. There were men's voices, angry and harsh, and a woman's, shrieking wildly in protest. He raised his head, listened a moment with a frown, then lowered it again. Then he jumped up. The woman was calling his name, screaming between what seemed to be blows. And it sounded like Su-mei's voice. He pushed the veranda doors open and leant over the rail. It was Su-mei. She was cowering against the wall while two men struck at her with their fists and feet. People passed by on the other side of the street, gaping but indifferent.
Denton shouted out, but nobody heard - the men went on striking her at will. He dashed out the room, down the stairs, through the lobby. Mason and some others were coming out of the lounge, attracted by the noise.
'What's going on?' Mason asked.
'Quick, they're beating a girl!'
He rushed past them down the steps. Su-mei's hair was loose and she had fallen to her knees. One of her assailants, a vast heavy man, was slapping her face with his open hand, while the other, grabbing her hair, was swinging her into the blows. There was blood on her mouth. Denton felt an immense surge of anger carry him over the threshold of violence. He slipped his arm round the smaller man's neck and swung him round against his braced leg, flinging him to the ground. The fat man stopped, his hand raised to strike Su-mei, and stared at him with flat, expressionless eyes. It was like being stared at by a toad. Denton heard Mason and the others running up behind him, cheering loudly, hallooing like huntsmen. Su-mei raised her head slowly, whimpering. She put her hand up tentatively to touch the blood at her lip and looked down at her fingertip wonderingly, as though she couldn't believe it.
Denton glared at the fat man, panting heavily while the other scram-bled to his feet. It was the man he'd seen at the house with green shutters in rue Molière. He recognized him at once. The same small unwinking eyes stared like opaque beads into his.
'What's going on?' Mason shouted. 'Kick their teeth in!'
But the two groups merely stared at each other like two packs of dogs, the Chinese silent, the British, except for Denton laughing and threatening at the same time, secure in their colour and their numbers. Denton's heart was pumping wildly, his pulse thumping unsteadily in his ears. He'd never struck a man before, and he felt elated and fierce, as if he'd broken some barrier that had been hemming him in.
'Get out!' he said with jerky breathlessness to the toad-like fat one. 'Go on, get out!' He didn't even realise he was speaking in English.
The great bulk didn't move. He stared calmly at Denton a second longer, then spoke slowly, in the level, throaty voice that Denton immediately recalled from before. 'Cette fille,' he said slowly, 'Cette jeune fille … moi.'
'No!' Denton shouted fiercely. He stabbed his chest with his forefinger. 'Mine!