Free Julia Paradise by Rod Jones

chlorate, as well as the magnesium-brilliant, strontium-red, barium-green, sodium-yellow and copper-blue.
    In the garden, where it would be clearly visible from the veranda, Mr Hoy had spent the afternoon constructing the main set piece of the display, which had been designed by Willy Paradise himself. On the edges there would be waterfalls of fire and ‘tree-pieces’, trunks and branches of fire which shot up and remained in the night sky. In the middle, in the position of honour, Mr Hoy had built the framework of wood onto which he had secured the fireworks which would become wheels moving in the vertical and horizontal planes. And there, constructed in bamboo on the wooden lattice framework, the Paradise surprise would reveal itself: the design of the Union Jack picked out in lances of colour.
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    When Ayres arrived at the local station on the two o’clock train from Shanghai, Julia was waiting in the little green motorcar to pick him up. Ayres immediately wondered who had been behind the invitation to celebrate her thirty-first birthday. The invitation had arrived in the minister’s hand, a short and formal note outlining the evening’s proposed activities, and Ayres had replied with an equal formality.
    Julia had just returned to the mission after spending a week at Hangchow. She had been staying in an English-run hotel overlooking one of the lakes there in the care of another missionary lady, one Gerthilde Platz. Ayres, of course, knew all about this. Julia herself had approached him on the subject a fortnight before, while dressing herself at the conclusion of their regular Tuesday afternoon. Willy’s consent to her travelling to Hangchow, she had said, depended on Ayres’ agreement that the trip would not be harmful to her and that it would not in any way interfere with the programme of treatment Ayres had laid out for her and which seemed to be succeeding so well. Ayres had seen that the trip meant a great deal to her.
    Hangchow was 118 miles away by train, a place of lovely lake scenery at the foot of the Eye of Heaven mountains. The proverb has it: ‘There is heaven above and Hangchow below.’ Ayres believed the change of air might have done Julia some good and lifted her spirits. The greatest danger in her going was that any undue excitement might over-stimulate her frail nervous system and precipitate another manic swerve into hysterical breakdown, far from family and friends. If she were to miss one of her regular unburdenings of her psyche to Ayres, her hallucinations might build up in her mind. Nevertheless, he had given his permission in a note to Willy on the condition that she took a first-class compartment, that she stayed in a good hotel, that her German missionary friend ensured that she avoided all excitement, and that she continued to take only regular five grains of morphine by injection upon retiring. All this was promised and Julia had left for her holiday. On the Thursday Ayres had received a picture postcard of the West Lake captioned on the back in her usual violent hand: ‘Dear Doctor, Greetings from the land of the lakes. Wonderful, radiant! And surprise! I am completely cured of animal pains here! Julia Paradise.’ Now, two days later, here she was sitting at the wheel of her husband’s motor car.
    Ayres and Julia drove along the dirt road from the station. It was potholed and rutted; they could travel only slowly. They passed through a region of little farming villages. The countryside was spectacularly lush, the entire river plain a green carpet of crop and vegetation.
    Julia sat calmly at the wheel of Willy’s little car. She seemed less tense, but was relaxed in an unnatural and uncharacteristic way that was not entirely convincing. He thought that perhaps she was merely trying to impress him with the effects of her holiday. The strain on her face, always present in the city, had vanished. There were smiles. There was even, in response