Trudy had laughed at everything Regina did. “So fussy! So pretentious!” she said. “You know, she was a Manchester shopgirl before she married Reggie. All of her airs are very recent indeed. I heard he used to be a very nice man before he met her.”
“That’s very good of you, Regina.”
“But then you took up with that Liang woman. Did you know about her past? I felt she got her claws into you right away. She knows what she’s doing, that’s for sure, that one. She took you off the market before anyone else even knew you had arrived. You know what they call her, don’t you? The queen of Hong Kong!” She laughs. “It’s so preposterous! With her queer half-breed customs and way of thinking she is above everything. Forgive me but she is insufferable. I suppose love makes you blind.”
Will doesn’t know why Regina is talking to him as if he were one of her fellow society matrons and they were gossiping over tea at the Peninsula.
“I don’t know that this is the right time or place for this,” he starts.
“Listen. I have a point. You think I don’t but I do.” Regina Arbogast leans forward. “Reggie met with the governor when he arrived. Governor Young had a secret meeting the first week. The day of the Tin Hat Ball. He wanted to get to know some key people in the colony and ask their advice. He was new to the colony and didn’t know a thing about how it ran. He knew the war was getting close to Hong Kong but he didn’t want it to get out and alarm the general public, the nincompoop. So, at this meeting…” Regina sits back. “Do I have your attention now?
Will looks at her, exasperated and compelled at the same time. “ Regina.”
Satisfied, she leans over again. “At this meeting it was discussed, among other things, what was to happen to the Crown art collection at the governor’s mansion, which, as you might know, contains some priceless pieces, mostly Chinese antiquities that are sensitive because the Chinese think they were stolen, ancient texts and vases and things like that that were excavated. Reggie said they were centuries old, some of them. It was decided that the collection would be hidden away and the location would be divulged to three people in three very different situations so that no matter what happened, at least one would… survive.”
Despite himself, Will is listening, intrigued.
“And, of course, Reggie was one of the three.” Regina permits herself a smile of congratulations. “And he told me about it. But he hasn’t told me where. Or who the others were.” Her smile disappears. “He’s always been irritatingly honorable about that sort of stuff. He values country over anything, something bred into him by his family. I really think he would give me up if it came to that. Maybe even the children. I suppose he was a good choice, then.”
She gets up off the bed and shuffles toward the door.
“I don’t have any proper shoes here, and no one has been able to procure any for me. Do you know anyone? All I have are these terrible slippers that look like they belong in a fish market.”
“ Regina, why did you tell me this? ”
She smiles coyly. It is a grotesque thing.
“I have a feeling, Will. I know things are going on outside, and I know that many secrets and plots are in motion. I just wanted you to know.” She reaches over and clasps his hand in hers. They are dry and reptilian. “Consider it a gift from me.”
Trudy turns up the next week in a well-tailored suit and a hat, carrying the most enormous package will has ever seen.
“The outside is so queer,” she says, pulling off her gloves and sitting down. “There is the oddest society of people you’ve ever seen, a motley crew if I ever saw one. All the Russians who we loathed before are everywhere, and they are even more unbearable. They think they’re somebody now that everybody is gone. They’re worse than the Swiss with their self-righteousness. I was at a dinner with the doctor-you know Dr. Selwyn-Clarke, he’s the official medical adviser to the new Japanese governor who’s arrived, Isogai-and Sir Vandeleur Grayburn, who’s still delicious as ever, although terribly down about everything that’s going on, and this Russian girl, I don’t know if you remember her but her name was Tatiana, always out and about town before, but out in that bad way, drinking a little too much, a little too forward, you know, and she just said the rudest thing to him, the doctor, and she is married now to a Chinese man who is in bed with the Kempeitei and so now she’s bulletproof, or so she thinks… Of course she didn’t bring him to dinner. I think she just married him as an insurance policy. I’m going to shoot her myself when this is all over.”
“Where was the dinner?”
“At the Selwyn-Clarkes’, but you know they have to do it so hush-hush. He had to pretend it was a planning meeting, for supplies and things, which it partly was, but they had guards outside, listening, so it was hardly a casual event. And do you know who’s dead? Crumley, the American who was always at the Grill? I remember the day he came in and told us how he had opened his mouth while he was at a picnic in Shek O and a butterfly flew in and he swallowed it, and now he’s dead. Swallowed butterfly or not. That’s what I think about sometimes, you know.” She speeds up, talking about this and that, nonsense about people.
“Otsubo adores me now and gives me anything I ask for. Look at all I was able to bring you! Ham and coffee, sugar and powdered milk. I’ve unearthed more of that strawberry jam that seems to be everywhere. Honey, even. You do have cause to be jealous now, darling.” But she looks worse than ever, gaunt, with cracked, dry lips and hair scraped back into an untidy bun. Her blouse is very large on her, the collar gaping up behind her neck, as if she’s sinking into it.
“I’ve been trying to think what kind of man he is, and I think I’ve got it. He’s the kind of person who, when you say something, and he doesn’t understand, he will ask you to repeat it, and then again and again, until he understands, whereas most people would politely pretend to get it after the second or third explanation. He’s unrelenting and has no interest in social graces. I suppose that’s why he’s done so well for himself in his career-meticulous and all that.”
“Are you eating? You look like you’re eating nothing.”
“I took Otsubo to Macau and fed him those “beans,” you know, the baby mice that the uninitiated think are beans? He loved them. And they say the Chinese will eat anything.”
“I don’t care about that… you look like death warmed over.” He grabs her hand. “I don’t care if he’s mad about you and you have to do things you don’t want to do… I just want you to be all right.”
She laughs abruptly.
“And how do you know I don’t want to do them?” she asks. “What if I’m a willing participant?”
She thrusts a package toward him. “Here,” she says. “More food.”
“Come into the camp,” he says. “I’ll take care of you.”
“Will, darling.” She cups his face in her hands. “It’s too late. I like it on the outside. I’ve finally got a foothold on the situation, however tenuous.”
The door opens and Edwina Storch comes in with a large package.
“Hullo,” Trudy says. “Are you here to see Mary?”
“Yes,” says Edwina. “Hello, Will. How are you doing?”
“I’m fine, thank you. Mary is as well as can be expected in here. Her good spirits and courage are a boon to the community.”
“Yes, she’s very good,” Edwina says. “What a horrid situation.” She takes in Trudy’s package with a discerning eye. “You’ve gotten a large ration of the jam, Trudy. And coffee! You must know someone very important indeed.”
Mary Winkle enters and the two women embrace, one large, one small. They go into another room.
Trudy looks at the closing door.
“I see her around all the time now,” she says. “She’s quite in evidence in the postwar world.” She pauses. “But I think I like her.”