(Five)
WATER LILY COTTAGE
MANCHESTER AVENUE
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA
1730 HOURS 13 AUGUST 1942
Ellen Feller was annoyed when she returned from the Doomben Tennis Club to see that the Studebaker was not there. She parked the Jaguar drophead coupe Fleming Pickering had left for her to use and went into the house.
She wondered why it should annoy her that the car-and thus, Sergeant John Marston Moore-was not there. She concluded that it was because it left her with the choice of either driving to the Lennon Hotel for dinner, which she did not like to do alone, or making herself something to eat, alone, here. Neither option was appealing.
She was desperately thirsty. The water at the tennis courts tasted as if it had been stored for a decade in a rusty barrel; and of course the Turf Club was closed for the duration, so there was no place to get even a soft drink.
She found a bottle of water in the refrigerator. And beer. She shrugged and reached for a beer bottle and opened it. And since there was no one around to see her, she drank from the neck. It was good beer, more bitter than American beer, and reminded her somewhat of the beer she'd grown to like in China.
On the sly, of course, she thought. The wife of the Reverend Glen T. Feller of the Christian and Missionary Alliance could not afford to have the recent heathen see her sucking on a bottle of beer.
I wonder what that bastard is up to these days?
The Reverend Feller had elected to go about The Lord's Work during the war years by bringing the Gospel to the Indians in Arizona.
Which is probably where he has the jade he smuggled out of China when we left. I know it's nowhere around Baltimore or Washington. If it was, I would have found it.
He's probably waking up right about now in bed with some well-muscled, smooth-skinned young Indian lad in whom he was taking a special interest.
Well, what's wrong with that? There is a lot to be said for being in bed with well-muscled, smooth-skinned lads. Like Sergeant John Marston Moore, for example.
Oh, God, is that why I was so annoyed when I found out he wasn't here? Am I in that dangerous condition again? That's absurd. I know better. Only a stupid ladybird dirties her own nest, to coin a phrase.
She finished the bottle of beer and was surprised at how quickly she did it.
It was the lousy undrinkable water at Doomben. I'm dehydrated. I'm not even very sweaty.
She tested this theory by raising her arm and sniffing her armpit. There was an unpleasant odor, but not what she expected after an hour and a half on the court with an Australian woman who was built like a boxcar but who moved around the court with really amazing speed and grace.
Ellen opened the refrigerator door again and started to reach for another bottle of beer, and then changed her mind.
It will make me flatulent and probably keep me up all night.
There was a quart can of Dole's pineapple juice in the refrigerator.
Moore's, she thought. Lieutenant Hon got it for him somewhere.
Well, fuck him, I'm thirsty.
There you go again. Dear. Thinking dangerous thoughts.
She took the can of pineapple juice from the refrigerator, punched a hole in the top with a beer can opener, and then poured it in a glass and added ice cubes.
After that she walked into the living room, to the array of bottles on a table, and went through them. She could find neither gin nor vodka, but there was a bottle of rum. She carried that back into the kitchen.
I wonder what that will do to pineapple juice? For that matter, what does straight rum taste like?
She took a pull from the neck of the rum bottle.
God! That's awful! It burns like cheap whiskey!
She poured rum into the pineapple juice, stirred it with her finger, and then licked her finger.
Not bad!
She took a tiny sip from the glass, then a much larger one. She was pleased with the taste.
She put the glass on the table and went into the refrigerator again, looking for something she could make for dinner after she had her shower. She saw the remnants of a leg of lamb. Nothing in the world tastes worse than cold lamb. In the pantry, she found a dozen cans of chicken and dumplings, furnished, she supposed, by Lieutenant Hon.
I wonder what he does about his sinful lusts of the flesh? God knows, no respectable Australian girl would dare to be seen with an Oriental, even one wearing an American officer's uniform.
I wouldn't mind trying a few relatively hairless muscular young male bodies again; but that would be even more stupid than doing something with John Marston Moore.
She took one of the cans of chicken and dumplings from the pantry, carried it into the kitchen, and set it on the sink. Then she picked up her drink and finished it.
She could feel the warmth spread through her body. You have another one of those, Dear, you'll have trouble finding the bathroom. And God knows how you'll manage to get in and out of the tub.
She put more ice, pineapple juice, and rum into the glass, stirred it with her finger, licked her finger, took one little sip, added another little drop of rum, stirred, licked, and tasted again. Satisfied, she carried it with her out of the kitchen and into the master bedroom, where she would have it when she finished her bath.
She undressed, and put the soiled tennis dress and her underclothes in the hamper. When she turned, she saw her reflection in the mirror over the chest of drawers. She remembered what Fleming Pickering said the night he saw the same thing, the night she arrived in Australia: "I wondered what they would really look like."
She smiled to herself. Making love to Fleming Pickering had been a wise move. He regarded their sex together as far more important than she ever dreamed he would. It was the first time he had been unfaithful to his wife, he told her, and she believed him. But Ellen was truly surprised to hear it. Someone as good looking and as rich and prominent as Fleming Pickering should have had women jumping into his bed the moment word got out that Mrs. Pickering wasn't in it. Anyway, doing it had accomplished her intentions. It put Fleming Pickering permanently in her corner. It was sort of a living, breathing insurance policy. And she needed that. There was still a chance-more and more remote as time passed, to be sure-that the smuggled jade would become a matter of official attention. If it did, she would need a bit of insurance.
Back in China before the war, Ken McCoy told her that the Marines knew all about the jade. McCoy was a member of the 4th Marine's escort detachment then. They were guarding the missionaries from the mission to Shanghai when they had to get out.
But she didn't know exactly what he meant: The junior officers of the guard detachment? Or just the other enlisted men? Or Captain Ed Banning, who had been the 4th Marines Intelligence Officer? She hadn't thought to ask until it was too late.
For a while, Ellen Feller thought the whole matter of the jade was water under the bridge. So far as getting in trouble for smuggling it out of China was concerned, at least. Getting her fair share of the money from her husband would have to wait until the war was over.
But then she'd taken a job as a Japanese language translator with Naval Intelligence in Washington, and both McCoy and Banning had turned up again. McCoy by then had been commissioned, and Banning had been promoted to major.
She hadn't thought that McCoy would be a problem. She could buy his silence in Washington the same way she had bought it in China...
Here come those smooth, muscular young male body thoughts again, Dear...
But Banning was one of those moral, highly principled men who would have loved to blow the whistle on her. His sense of right and wrong would have been offended if he ever found out that his Marines had risked their lives to protect jade that missionaries were illegally removing from China to line their own pockets.
But nothing was ever said about that. Ken McCoy kept his mouth shut, apparently. And just as apparently, Major Ed Banning did not know about the jade. Otherwise he would have blown the whistle.