by Tony Parsons
‘I told you,’ he said, his voice thin and tight. He didn’t want to take it out on her, not her, she did not deserve it, but he could not stop himself. ‘Nothing’s wrong, okay?’
‘Was it the woman at the airport? The one who was looking at us? It was the woman from the teahouse, wasn’t it?’
Jesus Christ, he thought. What happens now?
He was standing at the window looking down at the traffic on Zhongshan Xilu and the lights of the Shanghai stadium, and not seeing any of it.
He shouldn’t be here. He should have gone home. Change the cover story. Change his life. Because his daughter was waiting for him. Because Tess Devlin had seen him. And now everyone would know. Now his dirty little secret would be released into the world.
The things that had once made him glad to be alive now made him wish he were dead. It wasn’t worth it. To feel this way – it just wasn’t worth it. He felt like he was being torn in two.
‘William?’ He heard her setting down the crossword puzzle.
He didn’t move from the window. ‘What is it?’
‘Are you cross with me?’ she said.
He turned to look at her. ‘Am I cross with you? You do realise – or perhaps you don’t – that nobody talks like that in England? Outside of – I don’t know – Enid Blyton novels. Nobody says -are you cross with me?’ He turned back to the window, hating himself. ‘Your text books were fifty years out of date.’
‘Please don’t be cross with me,’ she said, and he covered his eyes with one hand. He shook his head, almost laughing. Her voice was soft and understanding. She would forgive him anything. She loved him and he knew it. ‘Why don’t you just come to bed?’ she said.
He met her eyes. ‘And why don’t you get out of my fucking life?’
He went into the bathroom, for want of anywhere better to go, slamming the door behind him. He stared at his face in the mirror and he was ashamed of taking it out on her when she had done nothing wrong. He cursed, threw cold water on his face. It was him. It was all him. He was the one who had done everything wrong. He went back into the bedroom so that he could hold her and tell her that he was sorry and let her see that he meant it.
But by then JinJin Li had got up, got dressed and got out of his life.
TWENTY-THREE
‘You should see this,’ Becca said.
She was standing at the window, looking down at the courtyard of Paradise Mansions. Bill went across to her, remembering when she had said the same thing on that first night. Looking down at the girls getting into the cars. That first night, when he saw JinJin for the first time, all dolled up for Saturday night and the man in the silver Porsche. There was the same note of amused disbelief in his wife’s voice now. You should see this. Then she turned to look at him and he saw the concern on her face.
‘You all right?’ she said, her fingertips on his day-old stubble. ‘God, Bill – you look beat.’
‘I’m all right.’
Bill joined Becca at the window and his wife slipped her arm around his waist. There were raised voices in the courtyard. A Chinese woman in her fifties was screaming abuse as she threw things from a window in the opposite block. Dresses, underwear, bed sheets were tossed out and fell and floated to the ground. Annie was down in the courtyard, desperately gathering up her belongings, weeping bitterly.
‘The wife found out,’ Becca said, indicating the woman at the window. ‘That’s what happened. She just found out.’
‘Well, maybe,’ Bill said, turning away from the window. He couldn’t stand watching all that raw grief. ‘Or maybe she knew all along but the time came for a crackdown.’
Becca’s smile grew wider. ‘Listen to you. You sound like an expert.’
He grimaced. ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ he said.
There were loud thuds in the courtyard. Annie’s wailing went up a pitch, registering fear as well as misery. The wife had found a store of Louis Vuitton bags. They hit the courtyard like small rocks and as each one fell it brought cries of real anguish from Annie.
Bill remembered the tattoo on Annie’s arm, the beginning of the end. He wondered if the man had confessed to his wife, shopped Annie and himself, and let the wife do the dirty work of evicting her, or if she had found out some other way. He hated this man he had never met.
‘I wonder why they do it,’ Becca said, turning away from the window. ‘These girls, I mean.’
Bill stayed at the window, wanting to help Annie and knowing he could do nothing. ‘They just want to better themselves,’ he said. ‘That’s what we all want, isn’t it?’
Becca shook her head, sinking into the sofa. She picked up a glossy catalogue.
‘A woman has to have something missing to get involved with a married man,’ Becca said. ‘It takes a lack of imagination, or a lack of heart, or – I don’t know – some kind of mad optimism.’
She flicked past images of chairs, tables and wine glasses embossed with Chinese symbols. Down in the courtyard Annie gathered up her beloved bags. A light wind had lifted one of the sheets and wrapped it around her legs. The woman in the window was pointing down and laughing. Faces were appearing at other windows, and calling to their spouses to come and see.
‘It’s just so bloody cruel,’ Becca said.
‘Well,’ Bill said. ‘I guess she’s really angry. It can’t be easy. Finding out something like that.’
Becca looked at him strangely.
‘I’m not talking about the wife, Bill,’ she said. ‘I’m talking about the silly bitch who has been running around with a married man. Can’t you see? She’s the cruel one.’
They went shopping. Suddenly Holly’s expanding social schedule allowed these pockets of time for just the two of them. Perhaps it would carry on like this all through her childhood, Bill thought, and in the end they would not be needed at all.
‘What about these?’ Becca said, picking up a wine glass with a tastefully embossed Chinese symbol. ‘Do you like this, Bill?’
He nodded. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘You know, Bec, Devlin said we should take Holly to the Natural Wild Insect Kingdom on Fenghe Lu,’ he said. ‘It’s aimed at kids. They can hold big hairy spiders. The boys love it, apparently.’
‘I bet they do,’ she said, holding the glass up to the light. ‘Those little horrors. But I’m not sure it’s really Holly’s thing. She’d run a mile if she was presented with a tarantula.’ She touched his arm. ‘You know, we don’t always have to do something.’
He looked bewildered.
‘I know you’ve been trying really hard since we came back,’ she said. ‘Dolphins, bumper cars, creepy crawlies…’ She smiled. ‘But sometimes we can just take her out on her bike to the park. Try and get her off the stabilisers. Or we can stay home. She loves drawing and crayoning and all that stuff.’ She touched her husband’s face. ‘Sometimes we can just be together.’ Becca put down the wine glass and glanced at her watch. ‘We’re going to have to pick her up from ballet soon,’ she said.
‘I’ll get her,’ he said.
‘You don’t mind?’ Becca said, running her hand over the lacquered wood of a red Chinese lamp. ‘I could spend all day in here.’ She picked up the wine glass again and slowly twirled it. The Chinese symbol looked like it had been drawn in frost. ‘Do you have any idea what this means?’ she asked.
‘Double Fortune,’ Bill said. ‘It means a happy ending for both of you.’
‘Full moon,’ said the ballet teacher, and the class raised both their hands above their heads. Bill watched Holly, her pale face frowning with concentration, and imagined her on stage for the Royal Ballet, hugging a bouquet to her chest as she took a standing ovation, her proud father wiping a tear from his eye in the stalls.
‘Half-moon,’ said the teacher, and all the little girls in their pink tutus – and one weird curly-haired boy in white shorts and vest – dropped their right hands to their side, apart from Holly, who dropped her left hand.
Bill smiled as she did a double
take at her friends, and corrected herself.
‘No moon,’ said the teacher, and the class dropped the other hand to their sides, and Bill was amazed how the frail little girl Holly had been a year ago was turning into a bundle of endless energy.
She was still thin and pale and slighter than her contemporaries, but the asthma attacks were further apart, and less severe, and she no longer looked as though a strong wind would carry her away.
As the class began running around in circles, their faces beaming with delight, flapping their hands close to their sides – ‘Small wings,’ the teacher had commanded – Bill thought she was growing into the person she was meant to be. She was becoming herself.
After the class he helped her out of her pink leotard, pink tutu and pink slippers and into combat trousers, T-shirt and trainers.
‘I can do it by myself, Daddy,’ she said impatiently, as if he was the biggest idiot in the world. He watched her as she attempted to force her left foot into her right shoe.
They were meeting Becca in a coffee shop across the street from the Gubei International School.
‘I need my pens, Daddy,’ Holly said as he scanned the place for a table.
‘I’ve got your pens and some paper, angel,’ he said, and he held her hand as they moved quickly to the one spare table. The tabletop was covered in the crumbs of half-eaten muffins and the sticky circles of stained empty cups. Bill cleaned the table, then got out the crayons and sketchbook from her rucksack.
‘Okay?’ he said.
‘Okay,’ she said, not looking at him, yanking the top off of a felt-tip and already immersed in the act of creation.
He went to get their drinks. When he came back she said, ‘Look at this, Daddy,’ and held up a picture of a stick creature with a lopsided smile, wild yellow hair and a pink dress. Her drawing was getting better. She still drew straight lines to represent arms and legs, but her faces were getting more expressive, the eyes and mouths of the round blob heads conveying real emotion. Perhaps she would be a painter. Perhaps she would be another Matisse. Perhaps his daughter would be the greatest painter who ever lived.
‘It’s brilliant, angel,’ he said, unwrapping a straw and placing it in her orange juice. ‘But what is it?’
Holly looked outraged. ‘It’s me,’ she said, amazed that he was so stupid that he hadn’t got it immediately. ‘Can’t you see?’
‘Now you point it out,’ he said.
They were sitting at the end of a line of booths. In the one closest to them, two white boys in suits were arguing.
‘But you can’t compare Bangkok and Manila,’ one of them said. ‘It’s like comparing a team of battle-hardened professionals with a bunch of happy amateurs.’
‘Well, that’s my point exactly, dickweed,’ said the other suit. Bill realised they were both Brits, although he couldn’t quite place the accents. They were not quite Londoners.
‘The thing about Manila,’ one of them said, ‘is that they will fuck you blind for nothing. Whereas in Bangkok you have to give them a credit-card number before they even look at your knob.’
‘Look at this, Daddy,’ Holly smiled, holding up her drawing. There was a large stick man with a foolish grin in the corner. ‘That’s you,’ said Holly. ‘You’re waiting for me.’
Becca walked into the Coffee Planet and came over to them, all smiles, kissing them both and saying, ‘So how was it?’ as she pulled up a chair. And then, to Bill, looking at his clenched face, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘But Bangkok and Manila can’t compare to Hong Kong in the old days,’ said one of the suits in the adjacent booth. They were loud enough to hear every word. Holly kept drawing. Becca looked at Bill and Bill stared off at nothing. ‘My granddad, right, my granddad Pete, he was in Hong Kong at the end of the war and he got a blow-job through the wire.’
The suits laughed. ‘What?’ said the other suit, not quite believing. ‘He actually had his knob –’
‘I’m telling you – my granddad Pete was on the Hong Kong side, patrolling the border, keeping out the mainland wetbacks, and he had his knob through the wire and was sucked off through the wire. Cost him a shilling.’
‘A shilling?’ said the other suit. ‘What’s a shilling?’
‘Bill?’ Becca said, but he was gone, stumbling over the Simply Life bag that he had placed between his feet.
Then both the suits looked up to see Bill standing over them, leaning into the booth, his knuckles resting on their table.
‘You want to keep it down?’ he said. He was trying to stop his voice from shaking, but it was no good. His voice was shaking all over the place. ‘I’ve got a little girl here.’
The two suits looked at Bill and then at each other. They smiled uncertainly. They were accustomed to doing what they liked. Then one of them laughed.
‘It’s a free country,’ he said, and they both had a real chuckle at that, and they kept laughing until Bill picked up a large glass sugar shaker and hurled it at the wall between them. The suits sprang to their feet, glass and sugar dusting their jackets and shirts, scrambling out of the booth.
For a long moment he thought he might have to fight them. And that was a horrible prospect, the idea of rolling around on the floor of a Coffee Planet with a couple of his fellow countrymen, but it was fine too. He would beat them or, more likely, they would beat him. He didn’t much care. All he cared about was that it ended. The talk that his daughter should not have to listen to. But they did not want to fight him and Bill turned to watch them go. He was aware that the crowded coffee shop was completely silent. His wife was holding his daughter and they were both staring at him as if they had never seen him before.
‘Jesus Christ,’ one of the suits shouted on his way to the door. ‘De-caf for Dad from now on.’
Bill sat down with Becca and Holly and tried to pick up his coffee. But his hands were trembling harder than ever. He put the cup down. He didn’t speak, and he did not touch anything. He was too shaky. So he just stared at the table, waiting for his breathing to come back. He hoped that Becca might say, Thanks for standing up for us, Bill, thanks for being a man. But he knew there was no real chance of that happening.
‘Do you know what you do with idiots like that, Bill?’ Becca said.
Bill looked up at her, and swallowed hard when he saw Holly burying her face into her mother’s chest, hiding behind her hair, watching him through the blonde veil. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’ he said.
‘You ignore them,’ she said. ‘Because they are nothing. And if you get down to their level, then you make yourself nothing too.’
He wiped his eyes. He was so tired. He wanted to curl up in the booth and sleep. Then he realised that he had kicked Becca’s shopping across the floor when he jumped out of the booth.
He reached for it, picked it up and placed it on the table like an offering for his wife and daughter, and he watched Becca flinch as she heard the soft shifting jingle of broken glass.
He had looked for her for most of the night. He had to look for her. How could he not look for her?
He had looked for her on Mao Ming Nan Lu and on Tong Ren Lu, pushing his way through the hard-core crowds that refused to go home. He thought he saw her face across the mobbed dance floor of Real Love, silhouetted against the red neon heart that throbbed on the wall. Then he thought he saw her again in a beer-stained red leather booth at BB’s, a Chinese girl with a ponytail, her face covered by the cropped blond head of a Westerner. He pressed his face close, blood pumping, and then the kissing couple broke and as the man raised a fist, Bill realised with a gasp of relief that it wasn’t her.
And he saw her in his head, in the blackest parts of his imagination – beaten in the back of a car, raped in an alley, murdered behind locked doors. Dumped in the street. Or back in the arms of her married Chinese man, tired of the endless drama with her Englishman, happy to be back between familiar sheets, murmuring sweet nothings and second chances in her own language, and moaning with pleasure.
&
nbsp; Oh, he saw that all right.
He had no trouble seeing that.
But he looked for her and did not find her.
He went to the police station on Renmin Square to report her missing. Nobody on the front desk spoke English. Nobody even came close to understanding him.
Men who looked like migrant workers were being dragged down to the cells. A ten-year-old beggar boy sat weeping and wiping his bloody, broken nose on his sleeve. A taxi driver and his passenger screamed at each other and had to be held apart by laughing cops. Bill went away, suddenly knowing where she would be.
At the roller-skating rink he thought he saw her face – the hair flying, the lovely face with its goofy grin of pleasure, long legs in faded denim expertly balanced on ancient skates – but it was not her, it was just someone with the look, and the city was full of them.
At the edge of the rink a girl, no more than fifteen, pulled at his sleeve. He turned to her with the hope flooding through him. Was it one of her ex-students? She had the red-cheeked face that you saw on the migrant workers.
‘You looking for girl, boss?’
‘Yes,’ Bill nodded. ‘Li JinJin – do you know her? She was a teacher –’
The girl was nodding emphatically. ‘You take me with you, boss. I’m a nice girl.’
Then there was another one, talking to him in Mandarin, and another one with just a few jagged shards of English, and another one that could only say, Nice girl, boss, as though she had learned it in night class. Prostitution for Beginners, Module One, he thought, as grubby hands slipped into his pockets to explore whatever was in there, until he pushed his way through them, feeling as if he was suffocating.
Outside there was a sign in English plastered across the side of the ugly concrete building that housed the roller-skating rink. ACQUIRED FOR DEVELOPMENT, it said. LUXURY SPACE TO RENT.