My Favourite Wife

by Tony Parsons

  But in the end Shane could not really explain to his friend why he needed a weapon in this city.

  He knew it was somehow related to his jokes about the Great Unwashed, and his habit of getting drunk every night, and the need to see the money piling up, and the longing for something that felt like real love.

  That’s why he had a fifty-year-old gun in his home.

  Anything to convince himself that this place could never hurt him.

  Not every client wanted to be taken to Mao Ming Nan Lu. Not every businessman who engaged the services of Butterfield, Hunt and West wanted to see the girls in Suzy Too. But they all wanted to see what they thought of as the real Shanghai.

  The city, in all its frenetic modernity, encouraged the belief that you were somehow always missing the real Shanghai. The selfconsciously epic skyline of Pudong, the girls dancing on tables in Bejeebers-Bejaybers with a Guinness in their fist, the cappuccinos on every corner – this could not be the real Shanghai, could it?

  The girls that came out at night on Mao Ming Nan Lu, or who lived in the apartments of Paradise Mansions, were no less citizens of Shanghai than a street barber on Fuyou Lu. These days, loving Starbucks was considered authentically Shanghainese – it was said that Shanghai now had more of the coffee shops than Miami – yet at the same time the city harboured a chippy need to show the developed world that China had not only caught them up but was about to pass them by and leave them for dead in the dust.

  It was all the real Shanghai, if you wanted it to be.

  Bill was happy when their client from the health-care company – a sickly-looking Miles Davis fan from Geneva – announced at brunch that what he really wanted was to see the jazz music at the Peace Hotel.

  Bill knew that Shane secretly sneered at the Peace Hotel as a tourist trap, so he let his friend cry off, because he looked like hell, and anyway Bill always enjoyed sipping a Tsingtao and listening to those Glenn Miller standards being played for the millionth time. He sat there and thought of Becca and Holly, and how they must be walking home from school right now, as he watched the jazz band who had been teenagers when the Japanese marched in, now sprightly old cats in their eighties, and still banging out their spirited versions of ‘In the Mood’ and ‘String of Pearls’ and ‘I Love My Wife’.

  When the client had had his fill, and his jet-lag was kicking in hard, Bill got Tiger to drive his guest back to the hotel while he caught a cab home to Paradise Mansions. He let himself in, happy that he still had the Book City carrier bag with him.

  He had been carrying the bag around for hours and had been afraid that he would leave it under the table in the bar of the Peace Hotel. It contained a wide selection of crossword puzzles. Every book of crossword puzzles that he could find in Book City.

  His doorbell rang and he flew to it, expecting to see her face on the other side of the door. But it was Jenny One, holding a steaming takeaway container wrapped in a white linen napkin.

  ‘Noodle soup,’ she said, as if that explained everything. ‘You need noodle soup.’

  She came into his apartment and examined it with expert eyes. ‘Company pay,’ she observed, looking for somewhere to place the soup. ‘You don’t ’ave to pay.’ She went into the kitchen and rattled around looking for pots and plates.

  ‘You’re very kind,’ he said. ‘But why do I need noodle soup?’

  ‘Wife gone,’ she said.

  Did they all know? And what did they think? Did they think that Becca had gone for good?

  ‘Only temporarily,’ Bill muttered, watching the taxi dancer heating up the noodle soup.

  The soup was good. Full of vegetables, thick noodles and juicy pieces of pork. She watched him wolf it down, declining his invitation to join him with a Gallic shrug.

  ‘Good chopsteek technique,’ she said, turning down the corners of her mouth with approval. The Book City bag caught her eye and she peered inside. ‘Ah.’ She looked at Bill with a knowing smile. ‘Are these for Li JinJin?’

  He shook his head, feeling his face redden. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re for me. I like crossword puzzles.’

  She folded her arms, unconvinced. ‘Is good soup?’

  ‘It’s very good. Thank you, Jenny One.’

  ‘I think he love her very much.’ She nodded. Bill kept eating, his eyes on his noodle soup. ‘I think he does. I think he leave his wife for Li JinJin. In the end.’

  He said nothing, but he saw that Jenny One wanted JinJin to have a happy ending, the ending that had eluded the taxi dancer with the French accent.

  And Bill also saw that although the girls of Paradise Mansions scandalised and appalled the expat world he moved in, they all dreamed very conventional dreams – dreams of relationships that lasted, dreams of marriage, and monogamy, and children. At best they were kept women, there was no denying it, but what they really wanted, and what not one of them had, was someone who would stay the night.

  ‘You love ’er,’ Jenny One said, and he riled at the casual Chinese use of the word. The way they tossed it around as though it meant nothing, or as though it meant you had a soft spot for someone.

  ‘I love my wife,’ Bill said, thinking of the song in the Peace Hotel, and Becca and Holly walking home from school. ‘That’s who I love.’

  ‘And maybe Li JinJin love you,’ Jenny One continued, ignoring him. She was serious now, and he saw that this was the real reason for the visit. It had nothing to do with noodle soup. She had to tell him something, something that he was just too dumb to realise. ‘But she has to think about her future,’ Jenny One said, and she counted off the strikes against him. ‘Married…foreigner…no future.’

  She got up to go. There was nothing else to discuss. Bill thanked her for the soup, saw her out and when Jenny One had gone he went to the last window of the master bedroom and looked down at the courtyard. The silver Porsche was parked and empty. The man had come round, but they were not going out tonight. And in his mind he saw with hideous clarity the image of the man fucking JinJin Li and her loving it, and moaning, and begging for more.

  Bill watched the lights in her apartment until they all went out and when that finally happened he stuffed the Book City bag containing all the crossword puzzles into the bottom of the rubbish bin.

  And that was the real Shanghai too.

  They could walk from Holly’s paediatrician in Great Portland Street all the way to Becca’s sister’s house in Primrose Hill and their feet touched nothing but grass almost all the way.

  Becca bought two ice creams by the little lake in Regent’s Park, the last ice creams of summer, smelling the zoo in the distance, and London felt like a city built on a human scale, a city where a child could breathe.

  They came out of Regent’s Park, walked past the zoo and across Prince Albert Road on to Primrose Hill. They were some distance from the zoo when two giraffes suddenly loomed out of nowhere.

  ‘Look, Mummy!’ Holly cried. ‘The secret giraffes!’

  This was what they thought of as one of their family secrets. The giraffes at London Zoo were kept on the far side of the road to the entrance, well away from the main body of the zoo, and it meant that the giraffes could suddenly appear as if by magic, their heads swaying above the trees as if they were free to roam the busy North London streets.

  ‘We saw them with Daddy, didn’t we?’ Holly said excitedly. ‘Remember? We saw the secret giraffes with Daddy.’

  ‘That’s right, darling,’ Becca said, taking her daughter’s hand as they looked up at the giraffes. ‘We saw them with Daddy.’

  FIFTEEN

  The next night the old man called.

  The phone was ringing as Bill came through the door, worn down from twelve hours at the office and a few more taking clients down Mao Ming Nan Lu. His spirits sank when he heard the fury in his father’s voice. He was too tired for an argument with the old man.

  ‘You have to come back,’ the old man told him. ‘You have to be with your family.’

  How long had he bot
tled this up? Days? Weeks? Bill could see the old man brooding as he went about his daily routine of shopping, telly and tea. The life of quiet domesticity that always had this great store of rage bubbling under the game shows and the cosy chats at the local supermarket. His father would be angry until the day he died.

  ‘I can’t come back, Dad,’ Bill said. ‘I have a contract. And this is my chance. My big chance to become a partner.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ the old man said, and Bill knew that was exactly the problem. The old man didn’t understand and he would never understand. Because the old man had broken his back for peanuts all his life. ‘Why is becoming a partner so important, Bill? What does that mean?’

  Bill took a breath, let it go. ‘Partners don’t work for the firm, Dad,’ he said. ‘Partners are the firm. Partners are not salaried employees. They share in the firm’s profits.’

  The old man mulled this over. ‘If there are profits,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If there are profits,’ the old man repeated. ‘You can only share in profits if there are profits. You can’t take a share of air pie and windy pudding, can you? You can’t take a percentage of bugger all, can you?’

  Bill laughed with disbelief. ‘Technically that’s true,’ he said. ‘But it’s not going to happen out here. Trust me, Dad. It’s not going to happen in Shanghai. The economy is going through the roof over here. The firm has more work than it can handle.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ the old man said, ‘but I suppose a partner has to share costs as well as profits, doesn’t he? I mean, you can’t just share the good times, can you? But of course I don’t know anything about it.’

  How technical did Bill have to make it to show his father that he was a stupid old bastard? He was aware that his head was throbbing. From banging it against a brick wall, he thought. From banging it against the old man.

  ‘You’re right, Dad,’ Bill said calmly, rubbing his temples. ‘A partner is taking on the entire liability of the law firm. That’s why there’s what’s known as a capital call when you become partner. You have to invest in the firm. About £250,000. The firm helps you take out a loan.’

  There was a moment of stunned disbelief at the other end. ‘You have to take out a loan of a quarter of a million quid when they make you a partner?’

  It was more money than the old man had ever seen. It was more money than he could imagine. He lived in a little suburban house that had taken his entire working life to buy. You could buy four of those little houses with that kind of money.

  ‘You invest in the firm so that you are in the same boat as the partners,’ Bill said. ‘For better or worse, for richer or poorer.’

  ‘Like a marriage,’ the old man said.

  ‘Yes, Dad – just like a marriage.’

  More silence. And then the real reason for the call.

  ‘Come home,’ the old man told him, his voice gruff with emotion. ‘Come home now.’ It wasn’t a suggestion. It was an order. ‘Walk away from it, Bill. Your baby needs you.’

  ‘Holly? But she’s doing well. Becca told me she’s –’

  The rage suddenly flared up in the old man, and for a moment Bill believed that his father truly hated him.

  ‘You think you know everything, don’t you?’ the old man said. ‘But you know nothing. Absolutely nothing. Holly’s not even staying with her mother. Did you know that?’

  Bill felt his stomach fall away. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s right, Einstein. That’s right, Mr bloody know-it-all. The poor little thing has been palmed off on Becca’s sister. What do you think about that?’

  Becca’s sister? Holly was staying with Becca’s mad sister? Everything changed every few years or so with the sister. Career, hair colour, man.

  Fighting the panic and the anger, Bill got the old man off the line as quickly as he could and tried to call Becca. Engaged.

  Probably at the hospital with her father, he thought bitterly. The excuse for everything.

  He found the address book and tried calling the number he had for her sister. It was out of date. He called the old man back but he only had Becca’s number and Bill hung up without bothering with goodbye.

  Why didn’t Bill have the sister’s number? Because that was another thing that changed with dazzling frequency. Her phone numbers. The mad sister was always changing her phone numbers to shake off her mad ex-boyfriends and sometimes their angry wives.

  Bill pictured his daughter staying with her unstable Auntie Sara, and for the first time in this whole sorry mess he was angry with his wife.

  What was happening in Sara’s life right now? Whose marriage was she currently trying to destroy? What was she into this week – Tantric sex or an organic vegan diet or crack cocaine? It could be anything. Bill didn’t care how sick Becca’s father was, he didn’t care how bad it was getting. There was no excuse to pack Holly off. How could she do such a thing? Somewhere on the other side of the world his daughter was being looked after by Becca’s unstable, promiscuous, messed-up sister.

  And whoever was living with her.

  Bill flung the phone across the room and it came apart with a crash against a copy of Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers.

  In the morning he saw that someone had slipped a note under his door. A sheet of ‘Hello Kitty’ paper folded in half. Please call me, it said, and then JinJin’s name in both English and Chinese characters and a mobile phone number.

  He looked at it for a moment and then screwed it up and tossed it in the bin that still contained the crossword puzzles. This was all bullshit. He was tired of adolescent games, tired of being fed things he never asked for, tired of watching the light in her window.

  He started getting ready for work. He couldn’t call London yet. Too early here, too late there. Whatever way you looked at it, the timing was all wrong.

  Then, late on Sunday afternoon, when he had nothing to do but wait for the working week to start, JinJin knocked on his door.

  ‘You know how to work?’

  She had a Sony Handycam, still boxed up. It was the latest version of the camera that he had used to record his daughter growing up.

  ‘Any idiot can use one,’ he told her.

  She nodded happily, holding out the Handycam.

  He was the idiot she had chosen.

  They went back to her apartment and while Bill charged up the Handycam, she disappeared into the bedroom and eventually came out wearing an immaculate red qipao and far too much make-up – some hideous skin-whitening stuff that made her look like a ghost of herself, apple-red blusher, and some sort of sticky goo that made her mouth look all wet. He shook his head, hardly recognising her as the same young woman who never used cosmetics beyond the permanent lines of black mascara around her eyes.

  ‘What do you think?’ she said, her natural beauty buried under a thick layer of powder and paint. ‘Very nice,’ he lied.

  JinJin Li had not built all her dreams around the man in the silver Porsche. More than anything, she dreamed of reading the evening news on China Central Television. That would solve all her problems. To sit solemnly behind that desk with a picture of the Shanghai night skyline behind her, reading an autocue that brought glad tidings of China’s latest triumph – she seemed to want this even more than a happy home.

  She fussed around the flat until she found a spot for him to film her. They were both nervous. JinJin because she seemed to believe that this was her big chance to break into show business, and Bill because he couldn’t work out how to turn on the Handycam. It had been a while since he had filmed his daughter.

  When the little red light finally came on he gave JinJin the nod and she delivered a piece to camera about herself in formal Mandarin, while he attempted to keep the Sony Handycam steady. CCTV, the state TV channel, was looking for trainee presenters, and JinJin was looking for a change of career, another life, a way out of Paradise Mansions.

  It was a touching and pathetic dream, Bill thought. It rem
inded him of seeing her refusing to let go of the microphone in the karaoke bar. It seemed a strangely juvenile fantasy, as though there was a neglected part of her that craved attention, that made her want the world to notice her.

  But who was he to sneer at anyone’s dreams? He felt a surge of unearned pride in her – why shouldn’t she be reading the evening news on CCTV? She was more beautiful than the girls they had on CCTV. Or perhaps she just had more life in her.

  He lifted the camera and her funny Valentine face filled the frame. Her mouth was too small. Her chin was a little weak. Her black-brown eyes were big and seemed even bigger in the small head that rested on the long lines of her body. Even without the teeth-filled smile she was not quite a classic beauty. Would someone hire her as a TV presenter? He did not know. But as he lowered the camera and kept looking at her, he could see very easily why someone would love her.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘There’s nothing wrong, JinJin.’

  Her fingertips flew to her face. ‘Is it my skin?’

  ‘Your skin is fine,’ he said. In truth her troubled skin was invisible to the naked eye under all that make-up.

  ‘Do I look ugly?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and laughed shortly at the absurdity of the question. ‘You could never look ugly.’

  ‘I have very sensitive skin,’ she said, staring at the fingers that had touched her face. ‘You’re lucky. You don’t have sensitive skin.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘I have very insensitive skin.’ He lifted the camera and then brought it down again. ‘But a sensitive heart.’

  ‘Hah,’ she said, and her buck-toothed smile came out like the sun. ‘English joke.’

  ‘You’re lovely, JinJin,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know that? Haven’t a thousand guys told you that?’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, and he saw the uncertainty in her. ‘Being told is not the same as knowing.’

  ‘Is that a wise Chinese saying? Or did you just make it up?’