by Tony Parsons
His eyes light up behind those broken spectacles when he sees the back of Vanessa’s golden head and I know immediately who he is, even before he begins to tap on the door’s little window. She turns around, gasps—really gasps—and then stands up, staring at our visitor in wonder.
‘We often use the past perfect when we mention two past situations,’ I am saying, ‘and we want to show that one happened before the other. For example—when he saw the woman, he knew he had been waiting for her all his life. Get it? He had been waiting.’
Nobody is listening to teacher. They are all watching the face at the window.
When the man opens the door, we see that he is carrying a stuffed travelling bag. He comes slowly into the classroom. We all stare at him, waiting to see what happens next.
‘I’ve done it,’ he tells Vanessa. ‘I’ve left her.’
Then they embrace, their mouths stuck together, their foreheads bumping awkwardly, his travelling bag hitting the ground with a soft thud, the broken spectacles rising from his face in protest.
I look at my class—Hiroko and Gen, Yumi and Imran, Zeng and Witold, Astrud and Olga—and we exchange self-conscious grins.
We know that we are watching two lives—three lives—no, even more than that, because doesn’t this man have children he has left behind?—being turned upside down and inside out before our eyes. All those lives that will never be the same again after today.
So we smile nervously, a little embarrassed, wanting to look away but unable to quite manage it, uncertain what our reaction should be, undecided if what we are seeing is gloriously romantic or totally ludicrous.
But something about the man’s broken glasses touches my heart—he had been waiting for her all his life—and makes me feel like giving them the benefit of the doubt.
30 June 1997. Changeover night. The night that the British gave Hong Kong back to the Chinese when the clock struck midnight. The night that the skies above Victoria Peak opened and it rained as it had never rained before, as if the heavens were heartbroken because this glittering place was being given up.
The nobs were down in the harbour. Prince Charles and the last Governor. The soldiers and the politicians. Watching the bands march and lowering the flag. But we were in Lockhart Road, Wanchai, with what felt like the rest of the ex-pat population.
Rose in a Mao suit. Josh in black tie. Me in a Mandarin number looking like a particularly pasty member of the old Imperial Court. And a crew of boys and girls from Josh and Rose’s shop, all of them either in formal dinner gear or Chinese drag.
We splish-splashed and bar-hopped through the flooded streets of Wanchai, once upon a time the old red light district, now more of a drinking trough for big-nosed pinkies like us.
And we wondered how we should feel.
Were we celebrating or in mourning? Were we meant to be happy or sad? Was this a party or a wake?
There wasn’t much joy in the air. We started drinking early and didn’t know when to stop. We were not the only ones.
Fights were breaking out all over the Wanch. Outside an ex-pat bar called the Fruity Ferret we saw a man in a rain-sodden tuxedo being head-butted by a youth in a torn West Ham away shirt. They were both British. The Chinese were not fighting in the streets of Wanchai. The Chinese had better things to do.
We ducked inside the Fruity Ferret. Josh and I pushed our way to the bar. He had been in a mean mood all evening, muttering about the ingratitude of the People’s Republic of China, getting steadily stewed on shooters and Tsingtao. But as we waited for the Australian prop forward behind the bar to notice us, he seemed suddenly sober.
‘Not long to your wedding,’ he said.
‘Next month.’
‘Didn’t fancy getting married back home?’
‘Hong Kong is our home.’
‘Your folks coming over?’
‘That’s right.’
He sighed.
‘Before you get married to Rose, there’s something I want to tell you.’
I looked at him to see if he was joking. But he wasn’t. I turned away, shouting at the bartender for service. The big Aussie was busy up the other end of the bar.
‘I mean it. There’s something you should know, Alfie.’
‘I’m not interested.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t care. Whatever you’re going to say, I’m not interested. Save it.’
‘It’s about Rose.’
‘Fuck off, Josh.’
‘You need to hear this.’
I shoved him away and although the Fruity Ferret was packed to the rafters, he still went flying. Glass smashed and someone cursed in a London accent, but I was already gone, pushing my way through the mob, past a bewildered-looking Rose and the crew from the shop, all of them in their rain-soaked fancy dress.
‘Alfie?’
But I was out of the bar and into the street, a red-and-white cab swerving to miss me as I walked into the middle of Lockhart Road and all the beautiful fireworks suddenly started to explode over the harbour.
Midnight. The night that everything was supposed to change forever. The night when they expected us to believe that the dream was finally over. As if it’s so easy to stop dreaming.
Then Josh was standing by my side, pulling my arm, the rain flattening and darkening his nice yellow hair, his dinner jacket sopping wet, his bow tie skewwhiff.
‘You stupid bastard,’ he said. ‘She’s just another girl. Are you such a soft-head that you can’t see that? Rose is just another girl.’
I shook him off and went back inside the Fruity Ferret. Somebody from the shop had got a round in. Rose handed me a Tsingtao and I kissed her face. I loved her so much.
‘What was all that about?’
‘Nothing. He’s had a few too many. Come on. Dance with me.’
She laughed. ‘But there’s no dance floor. And no music.’
‘Dance with me anyway.’
And she did.
A couple of months later my father gave us a video of our wedding day. And, as is the nature of all wedding videos, my dad wasn’t quite sure who was important to the happy bride and groom and who was more of a casual acquaintance. So he tried to film everyone.
The image that sticks in my mind from that wedding video is the slow, panning shot of the guests outside the Happy Valley church as Rose and I posed for our wedding photographs.
In the middle of all those aunts and uncles, those college friends and work colleagues, there is old Josh, a big handsome fellow in his morning suit, his arms folded across his chest.
He is watching the bride and groom.
And he is very slowly shaking his head.
I’m waiting for Jackie Day when she comes out of the Connell Gallery in Cork Street.
There’s some kind of launch party going on in there tonight. A mob of casually well-dressed people are all talking at once. Glasses of wine in their hands, ignoring the paintings behind them.
I say her name and she sees me, nowhere near as surprised as I thought she would be. I hand her the envelope.
‘What’s this?’ she says.
‘That’s your money back. I’m sorry, Jackie, I really am. But I can’t teach you any more.’
She looks at the envelope. Then at me.
‘Why did you change your mind?’
‘It’s just not going to work out. I’ve already got too much on my plate. You’d be better off at night school. I’m sorry.’
‘I told you. I need to be flexible. For personal reasons.’
‘I understand. I know it must be difficult. Working, bringing up a child alone.’
‘You probably think I’m stupid. The Essex girl who wants to go to university. Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? It really does. It is a joke. Oh, I’ve heard all the jokes. And not just from your friend Lenny the Lech.’
‘He’s not exactly—’
‘There are a million like him out there. And you’re one of them. That’s fine. It’s okay if you think it’s
a joke. It’s okay if you think I’m stupid.’
‘Jackie, I don’t think you’re stupid.’
‘People have been telling me I’m stupid all my life.’
‘I don’t—’
‘My parents. My teachers. My ex-husband. That bastard. But I thought you were going to be different.’ She looks at me carefully. ‘I don’t know why. I thought I saw something in you. Some spark of decency. Or something.’
I find myself hoping that she’s right. ‘Jackie—’
‘You don’t like the way I dress.’
‘The way you dress has got nothing to do with me.’
‘I’ve seen you looking at me. Down your nose. The Essex girl. I know.’
‘I couldn’t care less how you dress. You can paint yourself with woad for all I care. Okay?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you something, mister.’ Her voice is shaking now. ‘I think the way I dress is pretty. I think the way I dress is nice. What’s so great about the way you dress? Like some old tramp, you are.’
‘I’ve never been much of a snappy dresser.’
‘No kidding. You look like you should be sleeping in a doorway. You know what your problem is, Alfie? You think you’re the only person that anything bad ever happened to.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘I’m sorry your wife died. Rose. I really am. But don’t blame me.’
‘I don’t blame you. I don’t blame anybody.’
‘You blame the world. I know all about your hard life. You want to hear about my hard life? You want to hear about a man who got me pregnant when I was doing really well at school? The same man who knocked me around every time he got pissed for the next ten rotten years? You want to hear about any of that?’
I don’t say a word. There’s nothing I can say. There are tears of defiance in her eyes.
‘I’m going to get this exam, mate. With or without you. I’m going to put it with the two I’ve got already and I’m going to the University of Greenwich to get my BA. It’s not Oxford or Cambridge, you’re right. But that’s my dream. You can sneer at it if you want. It’s still my dream.’
‘I’m not sneering.’
‘And when I’ve got my degree, my daughter and I are going to have a better life than the one we’ve got at the moment. That’s my plan. If you can’t help me—if going around breaking some poor foreign girl’s heart is more important than that—then I don’t know what you are, but you’re certainly not much of a teacher. And not much of a man.’
We stare at each other for a long time. Behind her, the launch party is in full swing. All those overpaid, over-educated people talking too loudly. And I realise that what she thinks matters to me.
‘I wish I could help, Jackie. I really do.’
‘But you can. You can make a difference. You don’t believe it, do you? You think the world is out of your control. You can’t imagine the changes you can make in someone’s life. It’s not too late for you, Alfie. You can still be one of the good guys.’
I don’t know what comes over me.
‘I’ll see you Tuesday night then,’ I say.
Now how did that happen?
twenty-three
George teaches me Tai Chi in three stages.
First I learn the movement, carefully attempting to replicate his unhurried grace, although I often feel I must look like a drunk mimicking a ballet dancer. But I am starting to see that every single move has its purpose.
Next I learn to put the breathing to the movement, inhaling and exhaling as instructed, slowly filling my lungs and just as slowly emptying them. It is like learning to breathe again.
And finally and most importantly I learn—what? To relax? To do something without making excessive effort? To be in the moment and only in the moment? I don’t know.
As I try to clear my mind and calm my heart, to forget about the world that is waiting for me beyond this little patch of grass, I am not even sure what he is teaching me.
But it feels as if it has got something to do with letting go.
It is near midnight now and the hospital ward is as dark and silent as it gets, for this place is never completely dark and never totally silent. There is always a kind of twilight because of the lights blazing through the night in the nurses’ office at the entrance to the ward and there are always the sounds of distant voices, the creak of trolleys being wheeled across polished floors, the murmur of disturbed sleep, the soft sighs of pain.
When my nan is sleeping, I watch her face for a while and then leave the ward to find my father. He is in the hospital canteen, a half-eaten sandwich and a cold cup of coffee in front of him.
My old man comes to the hospital every day, but he is not good at sitting by his mother’s bedside. He likes to feel that he is doing something useful, so he jumps up and talks to the doctors about my nan’s progress, asking how she is doing, working out when she will be able to go home, or he runs endless errands to the hospital shop to get her the little things she suddenly discovers she needs.
He would rather be off buying her another bottle of orange cordial—she refuses to drink plain water, even when I tell her that it has been filtered through the glacial sands of the French Alps—than sitting by her bed. He can’t just be with her. He doesn’t feel as if he is doing enough.
‘Is your grandmother asleep?’
I nod. ‘I think she’s still getting a lot of pain from that tube in her side. But she doesn’t complain.’
‘That generation never does. They don’t know how to whine. That began with my lot.’
‘Anyway. They’ve nearly got all the fluid off her lungs. So she’ll be home soon.’
‘Yes.’
‘And how are you?’
He looks surprised at the question. ‘I’m all right. A bit tired. You know.’
‘You don’t have to come here every day. Mum and I can take care of her. If you’re busy. If you’ve got a lot of work to do.’
He sort of laughs and I know that he is still not writing. ‘Work’s not the problem it once was. But thanks for the offer, Alfie.’
I am thinking of the night I saw him in the Bar Italia, dressed in his John Travolta drag.
‘How’s Lena?’
‘I haven’t seen her for a while.’
‘You haven’t seen her?’
‘She walked out.’
‘I thought she was going to be your PA. I thought she was going to be your wife.’
‘It didn’t work out as planned.’
‘What happened?’
‘It wasn’t the same. It can’t be the same, can it? Not the same as when you are stealing the odd hour here and there.’ He looks up at me. ‘The odd night in hotels. Away for the weekend.’
Business trips, I think. All those business trips.
‘It’s exciting,’ he says. ‘It’s romantic. But it’s not the same when you’re living together and the boiler is on the blink. When one of you has to put the rubbish out. I couldn’t quite get used to the idea that the girl in those hotel rooms was the same girl who told me that we needed a plumber.’
‘But sooner or later we all have trouble with our pipes. And you knew it wouldn’t be the same. Come on. You must have known that.’
‘I guess so. I’m old enough to know better, aren’t I?’
‘What do you think?’
‘It was more of a disappointment for her. She thought she had landed this—I don’t know—this older man. Mature. Sophisticated. A couple of bob in his pocket.’
‘The author of Oranges For Christmas. Mr Sensitive Bollocks.’
‘And then he’s sitting around the house all day staring at his computer screen, and he doesn’t like the same music as her—in fact, he thinks the music she likes sounds like a burglar alarm—and he doesn’t want to go dancing in the kind of clubs where people wear their rings in their belly buttons. Then you don’t seem like an older man. You just seem like an old man.’
‘Is she still in the flat?’
He shakes hi
s head. ‘She moved in with some guy from Wimbledon she met at Towering Inferno. On the night I saw you. Christ, she was all over him.’
‘What’s Towering Inferno?’
‘It’s the seventies night they have at Club Bongo Bongo. You don’t keep up, do you?’
‘I’m trying.’
‘Don’t bother. It’s exhausting. She says she’s not having sex with this guy. She says he is just giving her a futon in his living room until she gets settled. Until she can find a place of her own.’
‘You don’t believe her.’
‘There’s no such thing as a free futon.’
For a moment I glimpse the world restored. I see Lena finding true love on that futon in Wimbledon. I imagine my father begging my mother to take him back, and her eventually relenting. And I glimpse a future where my mother is happy in her garden, my father is writing his brilliant, bestselling follow-up to Oranges For Christmas in his study and my nan never has to go back into hospital to have her lungs drained.
Then my old man spoils everything.
‘I’ll get her back,’ he says, and it takes me a few seconds to realise that the mad bastard is not talking about his wife or his mother. ‘I mean, I ask you—a futon in Wimbledon. She’ll see sense in the end. I know she will. And I just can’t live without her. Does that sound stupid, Alfie?’
No, I think.
That sounds like trouble.
* * *
If I have a Tai Chi lesson after work I eat an early dinner with the Changs at the Shanghai Dragon.
The Changs eat around six, after Diana and William have had their daily lesson and before the restaurant is open for business. These children study something almost every day, violin for Diana, piano for William, Wing Chun Kung Fu and Cantonese for both of them. It feels like they are either eating or being educated.
The food the family eats bears little resemblance to the menu of the Shanghai Dragon. It is plainer, fresher, fiercer. Nothing is drowned in sweet and sour sauce, nothing is wasted. Tonight we are eating steamed fish, served whole, the head and tail intact, the fish eyes glistening blankly, with plain boiled rice and lots of vegetables—bean curd, baby corn, bean sprouts, Chinese cabbage and mushrooms.