My Favourite Wife

by Tony Parsons

  Then she saw it. While Bill and Holly were still fidgeting with irritation and looking elsewhere, Becca saw the giraffe suddenly sway into view above the tree line, looking at the three of them out of the corner of its eye, ruminatively chewing a mouthful of leaves, and before she could cry out there was another, and then another, all of them gazing down on the little family with quizzical disdain.

  ‘Look, look, look!’ Becca was crying, afraid that her grumpy companions would miss them, but by then Bill and Holly were laughing too, squinting up into the pale winter sunshine and applauding wildly at the sight of the secret giraffes.

  Bill wanted them to check into a hotel, but Sara would not hear of it.

  Holly was in with the two girls and Becca and Bill were in the guest room. Becca knew it was not what he wanted. Bill was anxious to be alone with his family again, and to close the door on the rest of the world. On his last night, he watched her as she came towards the bed in just her panties and a T-shirt, and she knew that look. She stood by the side of the bed, smiling at him.

  ‘Bill, I’ll be back in Shanghai next week,’ she said. ‘And these walls are really, really thin.’

  He shrugged. ‘We could just have a cuddle.’

  ‘Yeah, right. I know your cuddles.’ She slid into bed beside him and he wrapped his arms around her as if he had been waiting for a long time. He whispered her name, and then said it again.

  ‘We would have to be really, really quiet,’ she said, stifling a laugh. ‘I mean it, Bill.’

  He nodded, ready to promise anything, pushing up her T-shirt. ‘I’ll put on my silencer,’ he said, and she felt his mouth on her lips, and on her face, and on her ribs, and she could feel how much he wanted her, and it felt familiar and new all at once.

  Later he lay on his back and she lay on her side in his arms, the pair of them drifting away to sleep, the way they always used to.

  Becca wondered – when had they stopped sleeping like this? After they were married? After Holly was born? When had sleeping in his arms become something that she no longer did?

  ‘Come back with me,’ he whispered. ‘In the morning. The pair of you. I can get you on my flight. It’s not too late, Bec.’

  ‘Soon,’ she said, patting his chest. ‘Very soon.’

  He seemed desperate.

  ‘Why not now?’

  ‘Holly’s school. My dad. Our house. These people we’ve been renting to have made a bloody mess of it, Bill. I have a million things to do. Just give me a few days. Next week, okay?’

  In the morning he flew back alone.

  TWENTY-TWO

  From the back seat of the car Ling-Yuan watched the factory workers stream out of the gates, her pretty face trying to hide the fear as her big sister sat in the driver’s seat talking to her quietly in Mandarin. Encouraging her, Bill thought. Taking care of her even as she prepares to let her go.

  A bell was ringing to signal the end of the shift. The workers were mostly young and female and many of them were still in the light blue coats that they wore at their workstations. Some of them were eating as they walked, their chopsticks shovelling noodles from plastic bowls held just a few inches from the mouth. They looked worn out, ravenous, like refugees in their own land.

  ‘What do they make?’ JinJin said, turning to him.

  ‘They make Christmas decorations,’ Bill said. The sisters looked at him blankly. ‘Santas and reindeers. Angels and silver bells. You know – the stuff they hang on a Christmas tree.’

  They didn’t know. Not really. All the Christmas trees they had ever seen were in shopping malls – giant merry monsters strung with strobe lights, although both of them had vague memories of seeing the more domestic Yuletide tree in half-watched Hollywood movies. But they got the point. ‘Like a toy factory,’ JinJin concluded. It didn’t really matter what they made here. The factories were all the same in the end.

  Ling-Yuan said something and her big sister barked back at her. Bill looked at JinJin.

  ‘She’s talking about modelling again,’ she told him, then directed a stream of angry advice at Ling-Yuan. ‘I tell her – forget about modelling for now.’

  Ling-Yuan wanted to be a model. One of those new Chinese dreams, Bill thought. And she was young enough and pretty enough. But even Bill could see that she was too short and too heavy to do much more than hand over the money that JinJin had given her for a one-month modelling course in Shenyang. The course had been completed, a certificate awarded, but no modelling offers had materialised. So now they sat outside the factory gates as the workers flowed around them and JinJin said something to her sister, more softly now, and Ling-Yuan leaned towards him, her face pale with worry.

  ‘Thank you, William,’ she said.

  He shook his head. He wished he could have done more, he wished he could have found her a better job. But there were no economic miracles for an untrained young woman. ‘Shall I come in with you?’ he said.

  JinJin shook her head. ‘I have the name,’ she said, studying a scrap of paper. They got out of the car and started walking towards the factory gates, one sister so tall and lean, the other so small and round. Ling-Yuan was carrying a small Hello Kitty bag. In the West she would be going to the gym, Bill thought. Here she’s going off to a new life. No wonder she’s terrified.

  He wished he could speak to the little sister in her own language and tell her that he knew what it was like to be that scared, to be that petrified of change. But she’s a kid, he thought. Just a kid. She’s too young to feel like that.

  The sisters disappeared inside the factory gates, and Bill sat watching the shattered faces of the workers until JinJin came back out alone.

  * * *

  They made love in the new apartment, the one she had rented with the money he had transferred to her account, and he needed her and he loved her and he was so ashamed of her, so ashamed that she had quit her old life as a school teacher for the other man, the man before him, the man who had paid for the flat in Gubei and everything in it, including her, and Bill was so ashamed of himself, and even as they lost themselves in the big new bed in the beautiful unfurnished apartment, he knew that they would never have a happy ending, not in a million years, no matter how much they loved each other, because the shame would see to that.

  ‘This is our flat,’ she said firmly, and her innocent optimism broke his heart. It was not their flat. The lease was in her name. It was the least he could do, and the most he could do. Because he already had a home.

  They were happy. That was the funny thing. That was the madness. They laughed at nothing, they laughed at everything. They were always happy when they were together. But then came the moment when he had to get out of bed and get dressed and go home. She buried her face in the pillow, the black hair tumbling over her eyes, and she never confronted him, she never issued ultimatums, and that made it worse.

  ‘I can’t stay,’ he said, preparing to go back to the real world. ‘You know that.’

  She knew that. She was ready to sleep. Like a normal person. And he was tired too. But it was time to get dressed and step out into the night. It had been a long day – the drive out of the city to the factory in the northern suburbs, saying goodbye to the sister, coming back to Shanghai, making love, holding each other, the clock running.

  Any normal person would be ready for sleep.

  And as Bill looked in on his daughter tucked up in dreams in his old room, and then went into the master bedroom and slid into bed next to his sleeping wife, he knew that he would never feel like a normal person again.

  She had knocked on his door.

  After Holly and Becca had come back, and she had known they were there, JinJin had done the unthinkable and crossed the courtyard and knocked on his door with a smile on her face. That was the thing that shook him when he opened the door and saw her standing there – she was smiling.

  ‘Denial,’ Shane said later. ‘That’s what they call big-time denial, mate.’

  Bill did not know if it wa
s denial. How does anyone deny a wife and a child? But he could not believe it was an act of malice. Despite all she had seen of the world, there was an innocence about JinJin. She probably just wanted to see him. It was as simple as that. She followed her heart. And she just wasn’t being practical.

  ‘But JinJin,’ he said, genuinely not understanding what she was doing there, wondering what would have happened if Becca had opened the door, what would have happened if his wife and daughter had not been sleeping off their jet-lag, ‘you can’t come in here.’

  And she didn’t. She went away. Then she cried for a few days. It was all crazy. What did she expect? And when he finally went to her new flat he had to hold her and tell her as gently as he could what he had told her long ago and what she could not have forgotten – I’m not free – and just hold her some more and let her break her heart in his arms until she was ready to let him lead her to the bed.

  ‘Who was that at the door?’ Becca had said.

  ‘Nobody,’ he had said.

  His friend was right. They call it denial.

  Then he did not see her for a month.

  His family were back and he was sick of secrets and in the remnants of the week when he was not at work he was with Becca and Holly, watching the dolphins in Aquaria 21 at Changfeng Park on Saturday afternoons, and on Sunday mornings going on the slides and rides at Fun Dazzle in Zhongshan Park, and then eating brunch together at the Four Seasons or the Ritz-Carlton or M on the Bund. One time he thought he saw her. But there were a million girls who looked like her. And none of them were her.

  In the end he found himself back in the rented apartment, hating himself for leaving her alone for so many nights, flinching at the sight of her crossword puzzles, knowing that on any of those nights he could have gone from the office to her flat before going home, and as they ate the noodles she had prepared, he plotted how to steal a tiny piece of time.

  The city was suddenly different. There were places that were safe and there were places that were not safe and there were places where you took your chances but you just didn’t know.

  New Gubei was off limits. The Bund was out of bounds. Hongqiao, where they had rented her apartment, was reassuringly foreign ground, but he soon tired of the local restaurants because they were full of wealthy men who had installed their sleek mistresses in the lush anonymity of the Hongqiao apartment blocks. It wasn’t the girls who appalled him. It was the men. Bill couldn’t stand being around those men. He could not stand the thought that he was one of them.

  Trips were best. There was much less chance of being seen together on a trip. When they started to feel the pressure of being confined to her bland new neighbourhood, JinJin suggested a short boat trip down the Chang Jiang, the Long River, the Chinese term for what Westerners knew as the Yangtze.

  It was believable, both at home and in the office, that he could have pressing business in Chongqing, the big ugly capital of southwest China, and their departure point for a trip down the Yangtze. After they flew to the filthy old port, Bill even had a brief meeting with Chinese clients at a freight company while JinJin bought their boat tickets for their trip down the Yangtze.

  The best lies were the ones that stayed closest to the truth, Bill realised, the lies that you could almost believe yourself.

  Or were they the worst lies?

  Outside their cabin window the rain lashed down on the green limestone cliffs.

  There were white man-made markings high up on the cliffs, even higher than the wispy clouds of mist that clung to the rock face, and these white markings indicated where the water would rise to when the Three Gorges dam was completed. Bill found it hard to believe, but in a few years all this impossible beauty would be gone forever, and it would be as if it had never existed. It was like concreting over the Grand Canyon to turn it into the world’s biggest parking lot. Yet somehow the Chinese expected you to be impressed. The boat’s PA system was a constant tinny blare boasting in Mandarin about the march of progress. And it wasn’t just the land they were destroying. Two million people were being moved from their homes. Entire communities would be under water. It made him feel physically sick, it made him feel a long way from home.

  Their Yangtze trip was wrong from the start.

  ‘I don’t know why you can’t go back to teaching,’ he said, pacing the tiny cabin. ‘You were good at it. Your students loved you.’

  JinJin was sitting on one of the cabin’s single beds studying the smiling face of a CCTV presenter. ‘A good horse eats going forward,’ she said, not looking up.

  ‘I don’t know what that means,’ he said, though he knew exactly what it meant. It meant you can’t go back. ‘What’s that? Another wise old Chinese saying?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, in that clear, quiet voice she used when they were about to argue. ‘Another wise old Chinese saying. It is true there are so many.’

  He turned and looked at the sheer green tower outside his window. All this useless beauty, he thought. What good does it do anyone? They will only kill it, cover it with concrete and tons of water and the dumb bastards will still want to take their photographs.

  The boat was horrible. Like a floating block of council flats, Bill thought. Ms Kongling is a deluxe cruise ship of the most up to date facilities, perfect functions and a great variety of amusements of almost all kinds, said the leaflet that JinJin had proudly presented to him as they waited to board. The Three Gorges are celebrated for their majestic steep crags, secluded beauty, dangerous shoals and magnificent stones and sceneries. When the Three Gorges Project completed, these treasures will be covered by water, so please to be welcome to the unspoiled pristine Three Gorges, a natural landscape gallery of unique beauty, peril and serenity, where you will escape from the worldliness and remain fresh and healthy in Nature and Beauty.

  But they were rarely fresh and healthy in Nature and Beauty on that floating eyesore full of tourists, and in the dining room at every meal they had to share their table with two silent Taiwanese men who shovelled in food held an inch from their faces while staring at Bill and JinJin as though they had never seen such a sight.

  There were a few game old American tourists in baseball caps and khaki shorts, and on the first night one of them borrowed JinJin’s camera to take a picture of Bill and JinJin dancing. A patch of deck in the restaurant had been designated a dance floor and as Faye Wong sang a love song Bill held JinJin in what he imagined was the old-fashioned style, the way his father would have held his mother. As the kind old American took their picture, they could not stop smiling. That was the best time.

  Apart from Bill and the elderly Americans, everyone else on board was Chinese, and he knew that this was the real problem with the good ship Ms Kongling. This was a luxury ship only if you were Chinese. If you were not Chinese, then it was like a prison, but with poorer food and more rules and regulations.

  A bell rang signalling lunch and above their heads they could hear the tourists scrambling to be fed. Bill’s heart sank at the thought of the Taiwanese eating with their mouths open. JinJin tossed her TV magazine to one side and crossed her legs. She was wearing a white mini-skirt, boots and a black roll-neck sweater. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he liked it that way, because it meant you could see her face. No matter how simply she dressed, she always looked great. They looked at each other and she smiled at him and they both knew they would not be going up for lunch.

  The boat drifted by the Three Gorges in the rain and he knew that this was the biggest problem of all. His head said forget it, but his heart said that he could never forget it.

  Not when the Three Gorges was as lost as Atlantis, not when the waters rose and the mountains fell, not in a thousand years.

  There was one Chinese character that had lodged in his mind and that he always recognised and it was the character for her family name. He could read Li when he saw it written in Chinese. So when they came through domestic arrivals at Pudong airport and he saw one of the hordes of drivers holding
a sign with her name on it he pulled her arm and nodded at the sign and they both laughed with pleasure. Then he saw Tiger.

  He was idling at the end of the line, watching the other exit door, and while JinJin laughed as a middle-aged businessman approached the driver holding up her name – ‘Look, William, it’s Mr Li!’ – Bill searched the crowd, wondering who Tiger was waiting for.

  And then he saw them.

  The boys came out first, those three wild blond monkeys, the small one fiddling with his iPod while the two big ones bickered and slapped each other, and then their parents – Devlin pushing the trolley loaded with luggage, raising a hand to Tiger, and Tess beside him, giving instructions to the boys, and carrying a carrier bag that said Chek Lap Kok Airport.

  Back from a long weekend in Hong Kong, Bill registered, just as Mrs Devlin turned her head and stared straight at him.

  Then Bill was gone – quickly but far too slow to avoid being seen.

  He turned away and headed in the other direction and got lost in the crowd, with JinJin still holding on to him but struggling to keep up, aware that something was very wrong, and he hated the wild panic inside him, it made him burn with shame, but he still didn’t stop or slow down until they were out of the airport and at the end of a mercifully short taxi queue.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said, not getting it, and really wanting to know. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, not looking at her, not daring to look at anything, wishing the queue away, wanting to be safely hidden in the back of a cab, and all the while waiting for the moment when he would hear an English voice right behind him say his name.

  But the queue moved, and they got into the back of an old Santana taxi, and JinJin let him be. She knew him well enough for that. And she was smart enough to guess.

  ‘William, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong? Perhaps I can help.’

  JinJin was sitting up in bed in a T-shirt and panties, thumbing through a book of crossword puzzles. This was the exotic for them, he realised, this was a special treat. Hanging around the apartment like a normal couple, as though they had all the normal time in the normal world. As though Bill was a good man with no other place to be.