Julia Paradise Read Free

later, she was back again, this time clutching the arm of a reverend gentleman. He wore a hat, a celluloid collar, a dark suit, and carried his own cardboard suitcase, even though a porter had followed him through the door and was unoccupied. The woman was still panicky and disoriented. When the desk clerk, a Chinese, spoke to them she shrieked, felt behind her for one of the comfortable lobby sofas, sat down and promptly fell asleep, much to the desk clerk’s puzzlement. The missionary gentleman shuffled shyly forward to the desk, still clutching his cardboard suitcase, to make his explanations.
    Ayres followed all this with his usual detached interest and was surprised to see the desk clerk pointing in his direction; then to see the clergyman shuffling forward with his same uncertain gait and removing his hat.
    He was a man of about fifty, Ayres judged, fair, balding with pale blue eyes. When he spoke up, Ayres discovered that his name was William Paradise, that he worked with the Methodist Missions in Shanghai and that, to judge from his harsh accent, he was an Australian.
    â€˜My wife,’ he said slowly, ‘has come in for a bit of a shock lately.’
    Ayres did not appear to be very impressed. He threw the stub of the cigar he had been smoking into the brass spittoon, took out his bandana handkerchief, wiped a speck of phlegm from his mouth, inspected it, then put his handkerchief back in his pocket and began feeling for his pipe.
    â€˜I’m afraid she’s become over-excited about things.’ The man paused and blinked at Ayres. ‘Things have been getting on top of her, rather. I’m afraid she has dropped her bundle altogether.’
    Ayres looked across the hotel lobby at the calmly sleeping woman. She was small, plain, nondescript, of indeterminate age, dressed in a black woollen suit. The Reverend Paradise was saying, ‘You will consent to examine her?’ Ayres found his pipe and examined the blackened tar on its bowl with apparent distaste.
    â€˜You had better bring her upstairs. See if you can wake her. Or, if you like, I’ll get a couple of boys to load her into a barrow and take her up in the luggage lift.’
    The other man said apologetically, ‘My wife’s case has perplexed several physicians before yourself.’ He added as an afterthought, ‘I don’t expect you to perform any miracles.’
    Ayres’ rooms were on the third floor of the building, connected with the ground by a notoriously unreliable lift, an iron cage which groaned and shuddered on its cables and pulleys even when it did work. It was the bane of Ayres’ existence: as a heavy man he hated stairs. On this particular Saturday afternoon, already past the hour when Ayres customarily took his tea, the lift was working, although the lift porter was nowhere to be seen. He passed the little wooden alcove with its sliding window and saw the boy inside wrapped in a blanket, asleep in his chair. He climbed the three steps to the lift landing, opened the iron concertina door and ushered the missionary and his suitcase into the lift. The door closed and he turned the handle. The cables shuddered and whined and they began to ascend. As they did so, Ayres caught a glimpse of two porters loading the comatose little woman onto a wooden barrow.
    At first the Reverend Paradise seemed uncomfortable imparting the intimate details of his wife’s illness to a stranger but, once he had begun his story and got into his stride, he impressed Ayres as a kindly, intelligent man whose main concern was that his wife should get well again. As he spoke he nodded his head from time to time as if to reassure himself of the truth of his words. Ayres was able to piece together the following story.
    During her first year in this country the young woman had been troubled by cravings for sleep during the daytime. She had formerly been extremely energetic in carrying out her teaching duties. In the course of