Free A Most Immoral Woman by Linda Jaivin Page A

fortifications.
    Atop the wall, Morrison took a breath and gazed out over his adopted city. Box kites carved colourful grooves in a brilliant blue sky and from all directions came the music of bells: ringing on peddlers’ carts, tinkling from the necks of camels and mules, andchiming from the flying eaves of the city’s temples. It was not a day for guarded emotion. His heart sang. Oh Maysie. What a type , he thought. She excites me passionately, pleases me infinitely.
    Infinitely. His thoughts jumped to Mary Joplin. Mary was the angelic Eurasian nurse who had aided his convalescence from fever in Calcutta at the end of his epic journey from Shanghai to the subcontinent ten years earlier. Sweet Mary, on whose fingers even hydrochlorate of quinine tasted like honey. He had written much of that ilk in his journal at the height of his infatuation: the animation of her beautiful features…the charming grace and noiseless celerity of her movements…
    When he had recovered enough to leave India, Mary tearfully bade him marry a good girl of his own station in life. Yet he could not put her from his mind. In 1899, he persuaded The Times that he needed to visit Assam to report on advances in tea cultivation. He never came within a mile of a tea bush. Mary had fallen on hard times and pawned the jewellery he’d given her—for fourteen rupees, half its worth, he’d noted with displeasure. What was worse, this time quinine could truly compare to her. She wired into me like blazes . Shouted, cried, pummelled his chest with her small, caramel fists. Morrison had done his duty and helped her out as best he could, but his feelings had turned to stone. When he finally left, it was forever, and with relief. He had moved up in the world. Women like Mary, as achingly lovely and tender as she had been, would not perform well under society’s glare.
    A cheery baritone cut into his thoughts. ‘And what are you frowning about to yourself on such a fine day as this, Dr Morrison? Is the war not going to your satisfaction?’
    Morrison looked up with some chagrin. ‘Ah, Mr Egan. What a surprise.’
    The men shook hands. Egan’s grip was strong, assured, his smile as big and white as a sail. He easily matched Morrison in height and athletic physique, though being ten years younger than the Australian was trimmer and tauter of build. Morrison had always found Martin Egan disconcertingly hale and hearty. He possessed the sort of bold good looks that his American self-assurance had a way of amplifying until they reached a state of near caricature. The United States may have been a place full of teeming slums and political corruption, barely recovered from civil war and only recently clean of the stain of slavery, and Americans could be presumptuous and their culture crude, but you couldn’t beat the New World for its confidence, idealism and optimism. All the world loved America for its belief in progress, democracy and a better future for all, and admired its ruddy, irresistible youth. Egan’s grip and his smile spoke of all this.
    Morrison recovered his hand. ‘What brings you to Peking?’ He suddenly remembered Mae saying she’d met Egan in Tientsin and wondered how well he knew her. ‘I heard you were in the country.’
    ‘A bit of business, a bit of pleasure,’ Egan replied. He had recently joined the Associated Press after a stint with the San Francisco Chronicle , and headed up the AP’s bureau in Tokio. ‘The bureau can run itself for a few weeks. There’s no place like Peking, is there? Imagine, the capital of three dynasties and the current one alone older than the United States.’
    ‘ Five dynasties. Liao, Chin, Yuan, Ming, Ch’ing,’ Morrison corrected. He then recalled that Egan had lent Mae his book. He owed the man for that. His tone softened. ‘Of course, the first two were relatively minor as dynasties go.’
    ‘I must read more Chinese history,’ Egan conceded. ‘I always thought the Mongol Yuan was the first.