Opium (21 page)

She had to get help.

She pick up the lantern and stumbled into the hall. Cicadas that had somehow found their way inside the house from the garden banged into the light. A storm was raging around the house and somewhere a door crashed violently in the wind. The forces of nature were gathering and she could not control them.

Baptiste!

She remembered him standing on the bonnet of the Packard, holding the plastic roses. So beautiful, so irresistible. Our passions rush us to dark and lonely places, but it's life that takes us to the consequences. I don't want his child any more, I don't want to endure this pain that's coming, I don't want to be married to a murderer ...

Another contraction came and she cried aloud and sank onto the floor.

It was like someone was prising her spine apart with a blunt lever. The pain racked her, a long wave of it, rising to a crest where she thought she would break, and she screamed. Just when she thought she could stand no more it set her down fragile and shaking. Like waves on a big sea, she could already feel the next trough forming.

She staggered to the back door and tumbled out into the black, pitching night. Rain whipped her face. The servant's quarters were in darkness. She called for Chao but her voice was drowned by the hammering of the rain.

A palm frond snapped like whipcord, black bats tumbled and darted away. She beat on the door of the hut and Chao came out, wide-eyed with fear. She screamed for help and she and the two
boyesses
dragged Noelle back inside the house.

***

Chao shrieked instructions to the other servants, then picked up the phone, punched her fist on the connection then dropped the receiver onto the floor. The storm has knocked down the power lines, Noelle thought. The telephones only worked half the time even in the dry season.

Rain hammered on the roof like a barrage of stones.

She lay on her back on the marble tiles, knew she did not have the strength to get back to her bedroom. She braced herself for the next contraction.

Chao told the cook-boy to run to her father's house, nearly a mile away, and fetch help.

Baptiste should be here, Noelle thought. He should be here.

The thought was snatched away by another snarling grab of pain.

***

Baptiste woke up naked, sticky and hungover. He looked around. He was on one of the narrow cots upstairs at the White Rose. His mouth was gummy and foul, and his head throbbed with pain from the bottle of cognac he had drunk the day before. He lay there listening to the rain, fighting back familiar twists of guilt and sorrow, already compiling the justifications he would need later to soothe his conscience.

Suzie lay naked next to him. Another girl -he didn't know which one, it didn't really matter, he supposed - lay curled on the floor beside the bed. He didn't even know if he had paid them yet. Well, he would leave the money anyway. At two dollars a time there was no reason to be cheap.

It is Noelle's fault, he told himself. If she wasn't such an irascible bitch. He was only a man, after all. What was he supposed to do?

He eased himself out of the bed and fumbled for his clothes in the darkness. Something from yesterday nagged at him like a toothache. He knew there was something he did not want to remember. He slipped on his clothes and stumbled outside.

There were still a few survivors downstairs in the bar, sprawled over chairs. One of the bar girls looked up hopefully. She was practising with a cigarette; Suzie had competition.

“Smoking's bad for you,” he said.

She looked at his clothes and gave him a deprecating grin. His shirt and trousers were caked with dried mud. He remembered the fight with Noelle yesterday.
Merde alors
.

With that, the rest of it came tumbling back. Jean-Marie. Not guilty, he told himself. I just carried out her precious papa's orders. I didn't put the bomb on the plane. I was messenger and paymaster, that's all. It was meant for Francisci. How was I supposed to know it would all get fucked up?

His headache was getting worse. There was a rhythm to the dull pain. Murderer, murderer ...

“I have to go home,” he said to no one in particular. He felt as if he had fallen into a black pit. There was no way back up to the light.

***

Bonaventure took the front steps of the villa three at a time. It was on dawn, a greasy light leaked from the overcast. It had finally stopped raining.

He burst through the door and found Noelle crouched naked on the floor, panting against the pain. Chao was half supporting her, clutching her arms.

“It's started, papa.”

Chao had had two babies of her own so she knew what to expect. She had sent the servant boys out of the room and pulled off Noelle's nightgown. Her body was slick with sweat, and her breasts looked swollen and bruised. But it was her eyes that told the story; they were crazy with fear and pain.

“Where's Baptiste?' she shouted.

Bonaventure sank to his knees. He didn't know what to do. My little girl, my baby. “I've sent Tao Koo to find the doctor,” he said.

“I want Baptiste! Why isn't he here?'

Bonaventure cradled her head in his arms. Please let nothing go wrong, let the doctor get here soon! “Everything will be all right,” he said. Her hand crushed his fingers. Noelle gasped and her face puffed to the colour of purple, until he thought the veins in her cheeks would burst.

Chao shouted a warning and made a quick examination with her fingers.

“What's happening?' Bonaventure said.

“Baby come now,” Chao said.

***

Chao dangled the slippery, squawking thing by the heels to clear its nose and throat, and then laid it on her belly. The umbilicus snaked between her legs to the child's stomach. It was still pulsing.

The doctor was there. She heard him say: “She's haemorrhaging,” and she looked up at the aghast faces of her father and the servants but there was no fear left in her, just relief that it was all over.

“Put the baby to her breast,” Leveque said and Chao guided the baby's mouth to her nipple and she felt the tugging of its little gums. Almost at once, the contractions started again but now it was smaller, bearable pain.

“Good, it's working,” the doctor said.

“What's happening?' Bonaventure said.

“It's all right, the bleeding's slowing down.”

He slipped on some rubber gloves and prepared to deliver the placenta. Bonaventure slumped against the wall. His face was grey and his hair was plastered across his skull from the rain. He suddenly looked a hundred years old.

Noelle just wanted to sleep. She felt like a piece of raw meat.

“What is it?' Bonaventure said.

Noelle looked down at the squirming, pink thing in her arms. “It's a boy,” she said.

Chapter 38

B
APTISTE stared at Bonaventure's Mercedes parked in front of the house. The front door was wide open. What was going on?

The baby! Noelle!

He ran inside. Bonaventure was there with Leveque, the doctor. They stared at him as if he was a housebreaker. He realised how he must look, his suit muddied, his face lidded and worn from the long night with the bottle of cognac and the taxi girls at the White Rose.

Another sin to add to his crimes.

He heard a child crying.

“She's in there,” Bonaventure said.

Chao had washed her and brushed her hair, tied it in a long pony tail. She looked pale and tired, but there was stony resolution in her eyes. She sat on the bed in a clean white nightgown, cradling the baby in her arms.

“Noelle?'

“It's a boy,” she said.

He stood by the bed, did not know what to do.

“Can I hold him?' he said.

Noelle stood up, staggered and almost fell. He reached out a hand to steady her. She shook herself free and carried the baby to the white cane bassinet in the corner of the room. She laid him down gently, pulled her gown closed, and tied the cord.

Then she crossed the room and slapped Baptiste's face as hard as she could. “Get out,” she said.

“Noelle, please.”

“Espèce de con!'

I want to see my son,” he said.

“Where were you last night?

“You know where I was.”

“You spent the whole day and night there?'

“Jean-Marie's death hurt me too.”

“That is how you explain it? That's how you deal with your grief?'

He did not answer her.

“A woman is more than just a receptacle for your sperm, Baptiste. You may see your son later. For now, I want to be alone.”

She stumbled on her way back to the bed. He reached out a hand and she slapped it away.

“Don't touch me!'

He turned for the door, then walked defiantly to the bassinet and gently stroked his son's head. The baby started to cry.

“See. An hour old and he knows what sort of a man you are.”

“We'll call him Lucien,” he said, and walked out.

Chapter 39

Hong Kong

T
HE shark moved in, eyes bright. The serrated rows of teeth were pink with blood. The water sucked at his legs, leaving him helpless.

He kicked out desperately and screamed. But it was no good, the fish had him now, it shook him like a dog, tearing at his flesh. He writhed like a worm on a hook. It dragged him down into the dark and when it finally let go he saw a part of himself in its mouth. It swallowed the skin and muscle in a gulp, like a pig at a trough.

But it had not finished with him. It rushed in again, clamped onto his leg again, he saw more of his flesh, raw and pink, in the creature's maw. The water clouded in a red mist.

He sat bolt upright.

His heart was pounding and he thought he was going to vomit. The thin cotton sheets on his bed were soaked and screwed into knots on the floor. His chest worked like bellows as he gulped in breath after breath and tried to calm himself.

Every night since they had pulled him from the water it had been the same dream. He was sure it had not been like that. He did not remember them pulling him onto the patrol boat or the rushed trip in the Royal Navy helicopter. He had vague collections of the bright lights of the casualty room of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, a nurse shouting at him to stay awake.

The dream was not like it was; he didn't even see the shark that had crippled him. They told him it was only a small one, or he would have lost his whole leg. But in his dreams it was always the same, a monster the size of a motor car, and he was under the eater, not on top of it, so he could see it coming. In the way of dreams, there was no escape. The terror went on and on until he woke.

He wondered if he would ever be free of it.

Eyrie of the Dragon Fist

The blue and white Pan Am 707 passed so low overhead that the walls trembled as if it was an earthquake. Douglas imagined that if he leaned out of the window he would be able to touch the wings. For a moment the black shadow blotted out all the light and then it roared on, another great silver bird settling on the concrete lake of Kai Tak.

Dragon Fist sat at the table counting Hong Kong dollars and arranging them into piles. He wrapped a thick rubber band around them and put them in a black briefcase. There was a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

“I want him dead, Sharkfin,” he said to Douglas.

The attack in Half Dog Street was almost a year ago, but it was not been forgotten, not by Dragon Fist, or his soldiers, or any of the inhabitants of the Walled City. He had lost face, even though he had escaped uninjured. The triad who had led the attack was a 14K Red Pole by the name of Ma Shen-Fu - better known as Tiger Claw Ma, because he sometimes fought with barbed wire wrapped around his knuckles. Dragon Fist's spies told him that Tiger Claw had disappeared, his 14K bosses knew his continued presence inside the Walled City would trigger another gang war. But now he was back, had even ventured into Half Dog Street, swaggering around as if owned it.

Douglas was chief of Dragon Fist's personal bodyguard. He slept separately from the other 49's in the Dragon's Eyrie, went everywhere with his uncle whenever he came to
Hak Nam
. It was his reward for the wounds he had taken on his uncle's behalf and for the skill he had shown in the fight. After the battle, he had spent just over a week in Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Now, a year later, the hair had grown back over the wounds in his scalp, but there were still raw, pink cicatrices on his left forearm, where Tiger's Claws soldiers had slashed him with their cleavers.