The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure by Adam Williams

changing some of your bad habits, and I’m not just talking about your drinking.’
    â€˜Well, I won’t deny you have a point. Can’t have Helen Frances thinking her old man’s a roué . Responsibilities of parenthood, and all that. Think I really can reform?’
    â€˜I doubt it,’ said the doctor.
    â€˜So do I. Oh, well, I hope she hasn’t inherited her mother’s temper as well as her looks.’
    They walked on in silence. The street had resumed its bustle. In a moment they reached the market square. A crowd was gathered round a spectacle by the temple. Artisans in blue cotton pyjamas were laughing and gesticulating. Gentlemen in brown gowns and black waistcoats were peering curiously. Over the shouts and jeers and the general racket they could hear the sound of a trombone playing the familiar notes of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. Through the heads of the hecklers they could make out a tall blond man who was apparently conducting a woman and several children through the hymn.
    Delamere groaned. ‘Sorry, old boy, I’m sloping off. The last thing I want to face today is the bloody Millwards trying to convert the heathen.’
    â€˜They don’t do it very effectively,’ observed the doctor. ‘It shames me to say it, but I rather agree with you about the Millwards—yet we must be charitable.’
    â€˜You be charitable. I think they’re a disgrace to the human race.’
    â€˜To the dignity of the white man, perhaps,’ said Airton, ‘but they mean well. Delamere, before you go, I truly am delighted by your news, and I’m sure that Nellie will be thrilled to have the company of your daughter when she comes. There’ll always be work for her in the hospital if she wants it. Let me organise a dinner for her—and Cabot, is it?’
    â€˜Yes, Tom Cabot.’
    â€˜As soon as they arrive in Shishan. Nellie can play the piano and I’ll get Herr Fischer up with his violin. We’ll have a merry evening, what do you say? We ought to welcome the new arrivals in a proper style.’
    â€˜Thank you, Airton. I’ll look forward to it.’ Delamere turned to go. Then his face lit up in a wide grin. ‘I still can’t believe it, you know. My daughter really is coming!’ And the doctor’s breath was taken away by another resounding slap on the back.
    A trifle reluctantly he turned his steps in the direction of the Millwards. As a medical missionary his own focus was more on the healing of bodies than souls, but he felt some obligation to his evangelical colleagues even though they belonged to a different mission. The Millwards were American Congregationalists who had arrived fresh from New Jersey three years before without, in the doctor’s opinion, the slightest training or qualification for a vocational task. He was not even certain to which actual missionary society they were attached. They were not well supported: they never seemed to receive money or mail. As far as Airton could make out they subsisted on alms from the Buddhist monastery, as embarrassing a state of affairs as one could imagine.
    What they lacked in professionalism, however, they made up for in boneheaded idealism and blind faith. Septimus Millward was a tall, long-limbed man in his late thirties, with narrow, humourless features and thick pebble spectacles. Round spectacles, in fact, seemed a hallmark of the Millwards. Septimus’s wife, Laetitia, and three of their eight children wore them too—the smaller the child the thicker the lenses. For the doctor, it was the uniformly thick glasses that gave the final seal to the outlandishness of their appearance. On his arrival Septimus Millward, out of some notion that they would be more acceptable to their flock if they dressed like them, had burned all their western suits, even their boots, and had clothed his whole family in patched Chinese gowns. He had also shaved the front