“Yes. Although I would be rather devastated if anything happened to the jacket, so I’m forced to change for dinner. We only had a hundred yards of this particular silk. I can’t have another one made.”
“We will all be changing for dinner,” said Marcelle, taking him by the hand. Their fingers wound tightly together, they approached the other guests, who were sitting on teakwood-and-rattan veranda chairs with rounded, carved armrests in a modern deco style. Next to them, on a square table, was enough champagne to last a week.
Khoi stepped away from Marcelle when we reached the group so that I stood between them. “Madame Lesage. Jessie Lesage. May I present Jacques Barbier, who is with the press. He just started work at a new newspaper, a monthly, L’Information d’Indochine. The first issue was printed just a few weeks ago. Next to him is his lovely friend Pham Hanh. And Monsieur Renaud and Madame Claire Angevine,” he continued as they all stood to greet me. “Renaud also works in textiles. And of course, Wang Jing from Saigon and his wife, Wang Li,” he added as a Chinese couple stood up. “Monsieur Wang works in … natural relaxation remedies.”
“A pleasure. So lovely to make your acquaintance,” I said in a loop, greeting the crowd that Marcelle already seemed to know intimately.
“I will just show the ladies their rooms,” said Khoi, turning to his servants and saying something in Annamese. They put down our bags and crossed to the table, removing the covers from two silver dishes nestled among the champagne bottles. They contained perfect pyramids of cooked and seasoned clams. “So huyet, which translates to blood clam, named for the red flesh. A delicacy of the bay,” Khoi said. He picked up our bags himself. “Ladies, please,” he said to Marcelle and me.
This man, though I’d only been in his presence mere minutes, seemed tailor-made for Marcelle. Though I didn’t wish ill on anyone, it did seem unfortunate that Arnaud hadn’t just conveniently fallen off a horse, like awful Dorothy’s husband had. The hand of fate really chose the wrong woman to bless.
As we walked, Khoi pointed out features of the boat to me: a round window where there was a particularly dazzling view of the water, the bathrooms and the kitchen if I should find myself hungry in the middle of the night. “There will be someone there to make you a meal at any hour,” he added, without a hint of boastfulness. Marcelle and I were shown to two separate bedrooms, although I doubted Marcelle’s would be used for anything but as a place to set her bags.
I thanked Khoi as he left, then sat down on my bed, which was covered in silk linens, all a deep inky blue a few shades darker than my slippers. The bed itself stood on a wooden platform, rounded at the edges, with a subtle foliage motif along the base. I quickly freshened up, changing into a pair of high-waisted striped trousers and a matching blouse, taking a light jacket with me, too, in case the weather turned cooler. I paused in the doorway of my cabin, where Marcelle stood waiting. I might as well have been a million miles from my farmhouse in Virginia.
“What a whirlwind this all is,” I said to Marcelle, looking around the cabin. “Even this bed looks too beautiful to sit on. And the people upstairs. Everyone is so handsome. And such a diverse group. I didn’t know that such things happened in Indochine.” I was referring to the sight of Asiatiques socializing with the French. “Of course, I knew it happened behind the scenes, like you and Khoi, but not so openly. I certainly haven’t seen it at the club.”
“Not everyone has the Michelin name to uphold,” said Marcelle. “They’re not afraid to live a little. Besides, aren’t we still behind the scenes here?”
“I suppose,” I said, looking around again. “Although one of those men is a journalist, is he not?”
“Don’t mind that journalist,” said Marcelle, slipping her hair out of her pins. “All he reports on is conflict, and not the domestic kind.” She pointed upstairs. “You just don’t know about all this,” she said, “because those sorts of couplings don’t happen at the club, unless it’s a Frenchman pulling one of the poor working girls into his bed at night.”
By the time we joined the group on deck, the sails were tight, and the boat