The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure by Adam Williams Page A

of his head and tied his thin, yellow hair into a pigtail, which achieved the effect of incongruousness because he had preserved his full western beard.
    His elder son, a sour-looking boy of fourteen or fifteen, called Hiram, also wore a pigtail. Airton saw that it was Hiram who was playing the trombone, not badly but, from his sullen expression, it looked as if he wished he were a hundred miles away. Who could blame him with such a father? He had been impressed however, by the boy’s intelligence. He spoke fluent Chinese, which was more than could be said for his parents, whose indecipherable pidgin when preaching sermons was an embarrassment. On occasion the doctor had seen him playing with some of the rougher local street urchins. He wondered that the boy was not tempted to flee the nest altogether. What a nest! Airton had once made a call on the compound in which the family lived. Any Chinese peasant would have been ashamed of the squalor and poverty of their mean hovel, yet it was here that the Millwards raised their family and also brought in abandoned babies and other strays. Airton knew that this caused deep suspicion among the locals, but he could hardly prevent the Millwards saving lives. He and Nellie helped as best they could. Nellie, who was worried about the children, sometimes sent round hot meals. Septimus Millward took this charity as his due. Nellie had once asked Laetitia if she wished to have a job in the hospital. Her husband had answered for her that there was no time when doing God’s work, with souls out there to be saved, to pander to the indulgences and ailments of the mere body. That had been too much even for Nellie to take and she had given him a piece of her mind. Not that it did any good: Septimus had gathered his whole family round him on their knees to pray for her.
    The hymn came to a triumphant finish as Airton reached the edge of the crowd. Laetitia Millward’s shrill descant echoed on a bar or two after the trombone coughed to a stop. Septimus began his sermon, and for a moment there was a bemused silence as the onlookers tried to make out what he was saying. Ordinarily Septimus had a deep, not unpleasant but commanding voice. When attempting Chinese, however, he adopted a mangled falsetto that screeched and wavered through the Mandarin tones like an out-of-tune violin. With little correct vocabulary, his grammar was arbitrary and the tones he was valiantly attempting were, in almost every case, the wrong ones. Since tones governed meaning, the most incongruous words would come out. The doctor struggled to make any sense of what he was saying.
    â€˜Jesus elder brother and little sister,’ Septimus started. Presumably he meant ‘Brothers and sisters in Jesus’. ‘I bring good questions. You are all going to die. But Jesus has old wine for you. Yes, it is true. He will bring you to God’s pigs. But you must first say sorry to your robbers. The Bible tells you you are good, so you must leave the house of ink.’ With a stern frown he turned and pointed to the temple behind him, where two plump bonze s—Buddhist priests—in their saffron robes were smiling at him from inside the gate. ‘There!’ he cried. ‘There is the ink house!’ ( Mo Shui ? Ink? Airton was baffled. Then he realised Septimus had meant Mo Gui —devil.) ‘But I will teach you to eat the hearts of little children,’ Septimus cried, ‘and Jesus will drink your wine! Beware, the robber’s fees are silk!’
    The majority of the crowd were smiling good-humouredly but Airton noticed hostile expressions here and there. Septimus was speaking gibberish but his intent was quite clear. His position in front of the temple and his angry gestures at the priests were expressive enough. The doctor wished, not for the first time, that the Millwards would adopt a less confrontational approach. Septimus Millward’s Mandarin was comic but some of his garbled