by Naoise Dolan
i needed to be with julian before i could love you. i was scared the first time i had sex with him. i thought i’d be bad and he’d hate me. everything i did, i was scared. i was scared with you as well, but i was ready to be scared.
The evening before I went to meet Mrs Zhang, I’d voiced my concern that I only used Edith’s English name and asked if I was ignoring a plank of her personhood. She laughed and said her family used ‘Edith’ more often than ‘Mei Ling’ and that she identified more strongly with the former. She didn’t say I was being condescending. She didn’t need to. I wished I had her talent for making herself understood.
‘Miss, is this good?’
I looked and saw that Anson Wu had circled ‘a kilo of books’. They could certainly weigh that much, I thought, and more if they were Julian’s, but the answer key didn’t see it that way.
46
Julian, Miles and I went back to St John’s Cathedral the third Sunday of November. The sermon was on the final exam down the road. Before Jesus, we would be accountable for everything: words, actions, thoughts. I looked at the royal pew and remembered RV, Victoria Regina, on the bell tower. In 1841 Victoria wrote: ‘Albert is so much amused at my having got the island of Hong Kong.’ Edith had told me that, adding that she, too, would find it droll if the Qing dynasty handed her a fiefdom.
That night Julian and I talked in the lounge. He said his ex-girlfriend at Oxford had been like me. She’d hummed the Darth Vader theme when he told her he was applying for City internships. This was fairly galling from someone whose hedge-fund father was bankrolling her to do unpaid ones at publishing houses, having secured her said placements by ringing editors he’d met at Cambridge. The ex was probably a better person now, he said. Everyone was terrible aged twenty. I said: ‘Don’t worry, at twenty-nine you’ve still got it.’
‘Wait,’ I added, ‘was this Charlie the anarchist?’
‘No, Charlie was cool. This was Maddy.’
‘You and your left-wing flings.’
‘Kat’s a Tory.’
‘So’s Kate Bush,’ I said. ‘No one should name their daughter Katherine.’
It would have been funnier if I’d said: let’s not name our daughter Katherine, but I sensed Julian feared, as straight men often did, that I secretly wanted his babies.
I also avoided quips available to me about why he liked women whose animosity he could claim was ideological. Or why, if you followed the narrative late-twenties Blairites often held of having graduated into centrism, then he had matured to loving a Tory, lost her, and regressed to what I was quite sure he thought of as fucking a girl with campus opinions. Or why he hated himself for it, for reasons I did not understand him well enough to torture myself with in detail. Or why the obvious presence of those reasons nonetheless made it hard to look at him while he thought his private thoughts about how at least I knew not to pull the Rosa Luxemburg shit at parties while his friends looked down my dress and discussed me at what they felt was a volume loud enough that he’d hear and soft enough that I wouldn’t, despite their standing in fact much closer to me, something they very much liked to do.
There was no more Clos de Vougeot, so we had Clos de la Roche. I said Ollie from Melbourne at work had told me Australians drank wine from a bag. It was called goon. Statisticians debated whether it was more responsible for Australia’s birth rate or its death rate.
‘By the way,’ I said, ‘I broke up with Edith.’
‘Fuck. You okay?’
‘No.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘No.’
‘Want more Pinot Noir?’
‘No.’
‘Want goon?’
‘You don’t have goon.’
‘I have Pinot Noir.’
As he poured, he told me it had a mineral palate, round tannins and a long finish. I said it smelled like wine. He said ‘clos’ just meant ‘vineyard’ in French. Our vaunted Clos de Vougeot (‘Your vaunted Clos de Vougeot,’ I said; ‘I don’t vaunt vineyards’) was founded by Cistercian monks. It and Clos de la Roche were among France’s many appellations d’origine contrôlée, which made it illegal to use the name of the region without passing quality control.
‘When Kat ended it,’ Julian said, as though this flowed naturally, ‘on the phone I’ll add because importantly she wasn’t in the room, I wanted to throw a bottle. I decided not to because it was my wine.’
‘So throwing other people’s wine is a sensible response to heartbreak.’
‘Yes.’
‘How attached are you to the Merlot?’
‘More attached than I am to you.’
‘That’s not saying much,’ I said.
He agreed.
‘So,’ I said, ‘can we have sex?’
‘Now?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather throw the Merlot?’
Somehow I wanted to have sex with him, and somehow I enjoyed it. It was probably the catharsis of accepting he’d never be my boyfriend. I said nothing satirical and accepted his compliments without caveating that I knew just because he liked my body didn’t mean I could. It was like drinking something I’d been holding till it cooled, finding it still too hot, and gulping anyway because I’d been cold too long.
Since I felt confident now and hadn’t the last time I’d had sex with him, there were theories one could form about who’d really helped me change.
And we still had to make it mean nothing afterwards, for different private reasons.
‘Eight out of ten bad decision,’ I said.
‘Nine, surely.’
‘Eight-point-five. And seven of that is me.’
‘Rob thinks you’re a nine. Which goes to show lawyers can’t add.’
Julian had quietly swapped dreamy Seb for Rob since the party in February. I’d know to avoid Rob if the name changed again.
For a while we said nothing, and then he said he was often nervous around me. A year ago, I would have given the world to hear that. Now I barely noticed. I said what he wanted me to: that I’d never realised. He’d spent years at public school learning to feign confidence, he said, probably too much of it for some people’s liking and certainly for some caustic Irish women presently in his bed’s liking – but there were nerves.
I wanted to ask what made him nervous, but knew I would be doing so in the hope that he’d call me caustic again. He could just as plausibly say: you make me nervous because you often seem to genuinely loathe me. He could add: if you hate me so much then leave. Granted I am not someone anyone with a healthy attitude to intimacy would want to be with, but if I were, you wouldn’t be here. You don’t really want to try coke, and claiming you do is not a good look for a communist. Your interest in colonialism is at times morally serious and at times something you draw on when you’re bored of hating me for being rich and male and you can’t hate me for being white because you’re white, too. When you find someone you can’t hate for those reasons, like the cleaning lady, you pretend they don’t exist. You’re actually very good at getting what you want. You often get it without stating or even privately acknowledging that you want it, which lets you keep seeing yourself as someone who floats. Really you’re more of a salt-water goddess.
(He would surely specify a classical deity, but it wasn’t my fault I hadn’t gone to Oxford.)
He could continue: the above is all true – not always, but often enough that it’s part of your character. Beneath it, though, the main reason you hate me, when you do, is that you’re terrified of vulnerability. This is so both because others have been unkind to you in the past, and because you don’t like yourself and are sure anyone who gets close will agree. That’s what makes people afraid to offer you intimacy. They know you’ll reject it. You broke up with the love of your life because you saw how much power they had to hurt you.
‘Who’s the salt-water goddess?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘In Greek mythology.’
‘Salacia. Roman, not Greek. Neptune’s consort.’
‘I resent that you won’t give me coke.’
‘Get your own,’ he said. ‘Jesus.’
* * *
Edna Slattery was after painting the front door puce. She’d paid for the paint, also the house, also the painter, so Mam did concede that legally it was all above board. But it was an unfortunate hue. You couldn’t trust the Slatterys in matters of decor. Jim had partial colour-blindness, which everyone remembered except Edna. She’d ask his opinion and he’d say it was grand because he didn’t want to be forever reminding the missus of his sundry visual impairments. Edna had enough to be contending with. She’d tell you so herself. Where other people had hobbies or interests, Edna Slattery had contentions. And that, Mam said, was how puce doors happened.
‘How’s Dad?’ I said.
‘Doesn’t like the door. He drives past it on the way to work.’
‘Poor Dad.’
‘And Auntie Kathleen’s over next week,’ Mam said. ‘You don’t mind if we put her in your room?’
‘It’s more Tom’s room now.’
‘I’ve already asked him.’
‘Tell Auntie Kathleen I was asking after her.’
‘She tried to send you a birthday card, but it got sent back to her. She rings saying I gave her the wrong address, and then she reads it out to me, and she’s after writing: “Mid-Levels, Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong, Korea.”’
‘Where’d she get Korea from?’
‘The same place she got Uncle Ger,’ Mam said.
We discussed when they’d call the abortion referendum. I hoped they’d give enough notice for me to get my flight cheap. I told Mam my British friend – she didn’t know him – had refused to believe me when I said I had to fly back to vote. ‘That can’t be how a country functions,’ he’d said, and then he’d spent half an hour researching the matter before coming back and explaining that I had to fly back to vote.
‘That’s Brits,’ Mam said.
She’d told me before about her year working in a London restaurant. She was nineteen. The Troubles were in the papers and the Brits asked whether she was from ‘their bit’ or the ‘other bit’, or else ‘Éire’. (I felt Brits loved two things more than life itself: showing they knew foreign words, and avoiding having to say ‘Republic’.) Camden was where London put the Irish then, Mam said. I said London put us everywhere now. Had to, on account of numbers.
‘Mam,’ I said, ‘have you ever been afraid to say sorry?’
She said yes. If you weren’t afraid then you probably weren’t sorry.
‘Then how do you say it?’ I said.
Mam said: ‘You don’t have to say everything. Just say as much as you’re sure of.’
I didn’t ask what to say if you weren’t sure of anything.
* * *
I found it easier picturing myself with Edith now she was gone. We could live anywhere we wanted. No matter what our apartment was like, she’d find a way to make it nice. She would get animated about things, and tell me she loved me, and tell me she felt scared sometimes. I would start thinking along those lines, then realise that much of this wasn’t an imagined future. It was things we had shared in the recent past. I’d broken up with someone who told me how they felt, and I’d gone back to someone who either did not tell me, or felt nothing.
47
There was a problem, Julian said, with the division of labour at the Starbucks on Caine Road. Of the quartet on duty, there would normally be two taking orders, a third making the drinks, and the fourth alternating between that task and running to the stockroom. But they’d chosen Sunday morning to induct a trainee barista, causing a double-edged dearth of labour. They only had three competent employees, and one of them was spending half their time on their own tasks and the other half mentoring the tyro.
It was the last week of November. It felt like he’d been back much longer than three months, and I wondered if time ever made sense in Hong Kong.
We slowly advanced up the queue. I said it was hilarious that the sign on the counter invited ‘New Partners’ to apply, but that I worried my amusement reflected a belief that minimum-wage jobs didn’t warrant grandiose titles.
‘You never switch off, do you?’ Julian said.
‘You’re the one analysing their manpower shortage.’
‘It says a lot about us, what we think is worth delving into. I suppose it’s like how Irish has all those different words for seaweed.’
I didn’t think the analogy made sense but was glad he’d remembered about the seaweed. He didn’t normally retain much of what I told him about Irish.
Once we’d sat down, Julian told me his bank was moving him to Frankfurt.
I dropped my wallet. The coins clanged against the floor. ‘Leave it,’ I said, but he’d already picked them up. I took them and clutched them to cool my hands down, but the metal went lukewarm in my grip.
It was my turn to speak. I knew I should find a germane question. I said: ‘When are you leaving?’
‘Mid-December,’ said Julian. ‘So three weeks from now.’
I started stacking the Hong Kong dollars into piles of fifty. That probably wasn’t five euro anymore. Currencies fluctuated. European politics played a role, of course.
‘That’s short notice,’ I said.
‘They told me two months ago.’
He stirred his coffee in punctilious circles, as though producing the whirlpool to a requested circumference.
I said: ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought, with Miles – they told me last September. I thought I’d decline it if – there was no point in telling anyone until I’d made up my mind.’
I’d had more of my drink than Julian had of his, which meant it was again my job to make conversation.
‘Are they giving you a raise?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
This news was consoling. At least he wasn’t abandoning me for the same money in a colder and less interesting country. I counted my stacks: 300 Hong Kong dollars in all. It was perhaps four hours’ rent.
‘I wanted to tell you in a neutral space,’ he said.
I wanted to tell him not to worry because the news wasn’t important to me, but I couldn’t find a natural way of putting it.
‘Will you miss me?’ I said.
I hoped my voice conveyed that I knew it made no sense to be sad simply because someone I’d just resumed having sex with was moving away.
‘I need a cigarette,’ said Julian. ‘Could we come back to it later?’
‘I’m ready,’ I said.
‘You’re quite important to me.’
‘ “Quite”?’
‘We’ve discussed this.’
‘Oh, the “quite” thing.’
‘Yes. But if you prefer, you’re “very” important to me.’ (I could have done without the air-quotes.) ‘You should visit.’
That was the closest he’d get to telling me he didn’t want me to come with him.
‘You’d be too busy to see me,’ I said. ‘Especially if it’s an important position.’
He smiled like I’d just paid a small debt and thanking me would embarrass us both. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I wanted to ask – could you keep checking in with Miles when I’m gone? I know he’s doing better now, but he could use the company.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
My Hong Kong dollars were probably worth thirty euro, but maybe less now. The Hong Kong dollar was pegged to the US dollar, but that was only any use if you knew how the US dolla
r was doing, and their respective liquidities impacted their value on the forex market. Traders had names for currency pairs: euro, cable, gopher. Some of the coins were grubby and some were new, but they were interchangeable because money was fungible. I’d known that word generally, fungible, but Julian had told me how economists used it. He’d told me lots of things.
I said: ‘Does Miles know you’re leaving?’
‘Yes, I told him a few weeks ago.’
‘Right.’ I said it the same way he always did.
‘And by the way,’ Julian said, ‘we need to work out where you’ll live.’
‘I’ll manage,’ I said.
‘Can you? I know you said your salary wasn’t very high.’
‘It’s good compared to locals’. They all live somewhere.’
‘With their parents, or else in coffin homes.’
‘It’s really got nothing to do with you,’ I said. It wasn’t what I’d planned to say, but my mouth was twitching like someone else controlled it. ‘Thanks for the guest room. That’s all. We’re done. Thanks.’
We mutually agreed, through certain expressions, to pretend I wasn’t about to cry. I thought that was generous of us.
‘You brought me here so I couldn’t react like this in front of everyone,’ I said.
‘Clearly bringing you to Starbucks has been a very successful way of preventing your reacting like this.’
‘I didn’t say it worked. I said that was what you were trying to do.’
‘That’s not helpful, Ava.’
‘Why do I have to help you?’
‘You don’t have to help me. But it’s probably in both our interests if you try to help with the situation.’
‘The situation between us? I don’t think there’s anything I can do to help with that.’
I found it deeply unfair that he’d known what he was going to say before I knew the conversation would even happen. Logically, I knew this was not a valid complaint. You had to arrange things in your head before you said them aloud, and it was a fact of leaving that one person knew before the other did. Really my grievance was that he was in charge and not me. But I couldn’t conscript him into staying with me, and anyway I didn’t like him very much. And I didn’t need him to tell me how much Hong Kong dollars were in euro. There was an app for that.