by Tony Parsons
And then he realised that there were signs all along the ramshackle buildings of the little backstreet. CONDEMNED, they said, as he slowly walked past them down the unlit street. CONDEMNED. CONDEMNED. CONDEMNED.
TWENTY-FOUR
Some nights he would go to the flat in Hongqiao and let himself in with the spare set of keys and then he would wait for her, he would wait for her until around midnight and when she still had not come he would go back to Paradise Mansions at the time he would be expected home, even though he knew they would be sleeping.
On the first night he wandered the apartment, tormented by the signs and souvenirs of who she was – the Sony Handycam bought to launch her TV career, the stacks of crossword puzzles, the selections that had been made from the piles of CDs and DVDs – a live Faye Wong CD, an obscure Zhang Ziyi film – and the photographs on her bedside table.
The framed picture of the pair of them in the rain on the bridge in Guilin, another picture of him at his desk in the London office, white shirt sleeves and a tie and so much younger, something he had given her when they started, and a third picture of JinJin on graduation day flanked by her mother and her sister, that family of women.
But after the first time he no longer saw these things, the puzzles and the pictures, and they no longer hurt him. By the second time he had stopped calling her mobile, which was always off, and stopped leaving messages. And on the third time he was standing by one of her overflowing wardrobes, holding a green qipao in his hands, burying his face in it, feeling ridiculous but doing it anyway, trying to drown in the memory of her in that dress, when he suddenly looked up, hearing the key in the lock.
She came into the apartment with little ChoCho in her arms. They both seemed surprised to see him. He went to her and wrapped his arms around the pair of them.
She smiled, nodded, and jiggled little ChoCho on her hip. ‘I had to go back home,’ she explained. ‘My sister is working. My mother is sick. In the hospital.’
‘What’s wrong with your mum?’
She clenched her fist. ‘Stiff,’ she said. ‘All stiff. Pain.’
‘Arthritis?’ he said. ‘Rheumatoid arthritis?’
JinJin grimaced. ‘Getting old,’ she said. ‘Getting old lady.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry I said those things.’
He squeezed her tight. She laughed and kissed him. ChoCho slowly stared from one to the other with his huge solemn eyes. Then a young man walked into the apartment carrying a folded stroller and a battered suitcase.
‘Ah, thank you, Brad,’ she said, all polite formality and gratitude.
Brad? Who the fuck was Brad?
Bill watched him carry her things inside. He was not the typical Shanghai suit. He was in T-shirt and Levi’s, pumped up and wearing glasses. He had that Liam Neeson speccy-hunk thing going on. The glasses made him look vaguely sensitive, but the muscles stopped him looking like a nerd. Maybe one of those wasters who teach English as a foreign language instead of working for a living, Bill thought, narrowing his eyes at Brad – fucking Brad – and then JinJin.
‘Brad – this is my boyfriend Bill,’ JinJin said, smiling from one to the other. The two men shook hands and Bill’s features froze into civil indifference. I don’t care, his face tried to say. You mean nothing to me.
‘I live upstairs,’ Brad said. Australian accent. No, a bit more clipped than the Aussies. A kiwi, Bill guessed. ‘I was coming back from the gym when I saw the pair of them getting out of the cab.’ He had the nerve to stroke ChoCho’s cheek with a hairy finger. ‘Well, I’ll let you crack on,’ he said, beaming at JinJin. Bill knew what he wanted to do to her, and it wasn’t just carry her luggage. Fucking Brad…
When he had gone, Bill took ChoCho and watched JinJin busying herself in the flat. Relief had been replaced by suspicion. As she crashed about in the kitchen, he rocked the child and went over the encounter in minute detail. The way that Brad had smiled at JinJin as he kindly carried her things into the flat. The way she had touched his arm when introducing him to Bill. The way she had called Bill my boyfriend – what was that? Goading the nice man upstairs? Letting him know that she was in demand? Letting him know that the good ones are always, always taken.
JinJin smiled at the sight of him holding her son and he smiled back, knowing that there would be plenty of opportunities for the nice New Zealander upstairs to knock on her door when the boyfriend was not around, and knowing that he could not trust her, this man who knew that he could not be trusted, this man who knew he would betray her in the end.
For there was a part of Bill that could not help believing that JinJin Li was just like him.
‘We were up at Yangdong and it’s going to be so beautiful,’ Tess Devlin said, lifting her voice above the restaurant din. ‘It’s incredible what they’ve done up there – these magnificent houses rising out of goat farms, or whatever they were…’ She glanced at her husband. ‘And we’re thinking of buying one, aren’t we? If next year’s bonus is as big as we all hope.’ She lifted her glass to Shane and Bill. ‘Got to work hard, boys.’
Bill and Shane laughed dutifully. ‘We’re doing our best,’ Shane said.
‘Is the air better up there?’ Becca said. ‘The air must be better.’
‘And it’s so good to get out of the city for the weekend,’ Tess nodded, signalling for the waiter to bring another bottle of champagne. ‘Give the boys somewhere to run wild.’
‘Indeed,’ Devlin said, stiff with dignity. He was drunk. They were all drunk. The dinner was to celebrate the return of one wife, and to begin the search for a new one, but it had gone on for a few bottles too long, as dinner on the Bund always did. ‘Let the little buggers wear themselves out,’ Devlin chuckled.
There were six of them. Bill and Becca. Tess and Devlin. And Shane placed next to a blonde South African woman, somebody Tess Devlin had found in her Pilates class, one of the new fashion people that had suddenly washed up in Shanghai – a stylist, she told them, as if any of them had any idea what that meant. Well, maybe Becca and Tess did. But Shane and the South African had not hit it off – he was too much the straight macho suit for her tastes, and Shane was still in mourning for his wild young bride. He looked sullen, shy, closed up in the presence of all this domestic chitchat. But by the time the table was littered with bottles, the stylist was starting to look better.
‘Any chance of a shag tonight?’ Shane asked.
‘Every chance of a shag,’ said the South African, staring straight ahead. ‘But not with you.’
‘Saw some of the locals,’ Tess was saying to Becca. ‘Talk about the great unwashed. The children look like little chimney sweeps. Like urchins out of Dickens, you know? The Artful bloody Dodger or something. And they just gawp at you with their little black faces. They just stand there and gawp. Gawping – it’s the only word for it.’
The South African turned to Tess. ‘I’ve seen some of those migrant workers selling fake watches outside Plaza 66,’ she said, suddenly animated. ‘They’re filthy. I nearly puked.’
Bill smiled, shook his head. ‘But, Tess,’ he said gently, ‘those kids – half of them never see the inside of a school. That’s why they’re so dirty – they’re in the fields all day. You know what the schools out there spend half their budgets on? Wining and dining school inspectors. They can’t tell those important men there’s nothing for dinner…’
‘Oh Bill,’ Tess laughed, shaking her head, as if he were pulling her leg.
‘It’s true!’ he insisted, wanting her to believe him. But he had drunk too much. He knew that. He shouldn’t have started with this. But he thought of the boy he had seen being beaten at Yangdong, and he could not keep his mouth shut. ‘The kids of those farmers up at Yangdong have been left behind, and they’ll always be left behind. There’s no difference between them and some laid-off state factory worker in the Dongbei. China doesn’t need them.’
Becca got up to go to the rest room. Bill noticed her catch his eye and tap her watch with her index finger.
They had to get back to Holly and relieve the ayi.
‘It’s true there are certain inequalities that have to be addressed,’ Devlin said. He lifted his glass to his lips but it was empty. He did a double take. What had happened to his drink?
‘I agree,’ the South African stylist said, not quite grasping Devlin’s point. ‘Those migrant workers for a start – the police should do something about them.’
Bill felt his wife’s hand lightly touch the back of his head as she drifted away from the table.
‘Certain inequalities?’ he said to Devlin, ignoring the fashion airhead.
‘Have another drink, mate,’ Shane said, holding out a fresh bottle, attempting to fill his glass, trying to distract his friend.
Bill ignored him. ‘But the whole thing is built on inequality,’ he said. ‘By the middle of the century China will have a bigger economy than America. And they’ll still have five hundred million people living on two dollars a day. They’re meant to be Communists, for fuck’s sake.’
‘They haven’t been Communists for a long time,’ Devlin said with irritation. ‘You know that.’
‘And anyway – whose side are you on, Bill?’ Tess laughed.
‘But you would expect at least a token nod towards equality, wouldn’t you?’ Bill said, really wanting Devlin to understand. He drained his glass. ‘Even if it was just going through the motions, a nod towards fighting injustice, or giving a damn about the poor. Like those kids from the farms in Yangdong. But they don’t want equality here. Equality wouldn’t work here.’
Devlin looked pained. Shane looked for a waiter and waved for another bottle.
‘Without the millions of poor buggers who will work for a bowl of noodles,’ Bill said, ‘and can be cheated out of even that, this place loses its attraction. China gets rich as long as most of its people stay poor.’ He looked up at Shane impatiently. ‘Where’s that drink?’
‘Oh, Bill,’ Tess laughed. ‘Bill, Bill, Bill…’
Shane refilled their glasses. Bill sipped his champagne. He was tired of champagne. Something about the enforced jollity of the drink was wearing him down. ‘Oh what, Tess?’ he said. ‘What, what, what?’
She leaned across the table, as if it was just the two of them now. ‘Without all that horrible inequality, Bill,’ she said, in not much more than a whisper, ‘you would lose everything.’
He leaned towards her with a faint smile. ‘How’s that, Tess?’
She shook her head, suddenly disgusted. ‘Spare me your tears for the great unwashed, Bill. Everything we have is built on things being exactly the way they are – everything you have right now, everything you will have when you make partner – and everything you’ve had.’
‘What do you mean?’
The table was silent now.
He knew exactly what she meant.
‘Without the great unwashed – that big supply of desperate humanity who are anxious to work, anxious to spread their legs, anxious to clean our toilets, anxious to eat – we would not have our nice lifestyles, our second homes, our bonus,’ she said, and then she seemed to hesitate, then decide something, and plough on. ‘All of the things we currently enjoy. And you would have missed out on your great little adventure.’
He waited.
Daring her to spell it out.
They stared at each other for a long moment.
‘Is that the time?’ Shane said. He barked at the nearest waiter in Mandarin. Devlin laid a hand on his wife’s arm. She didn’t seem to notice.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tess,’ Bill said, but beyond the comfortably numb feeling of the booze, he felt the panic rise.
‘Can’t you see, Bill?’ Tess said. ‘Don’t cry for the great unwashed, because it’s all fake. Everything they sell.’
‘Those watches are definitely fake,’ said the South African. ‘I was going to get one for my brother in Durban but I said to him, I said, Peter, they look so cheap.’
Tess Devlin let the contempt show. ‘Fake DVDs and fake software and fake watches. Fake orgasms, no doubt. Fake love? Certainly.’ She drained her glass, banged it down empty on the table and held his stare. ‘Love with Chinese characteristics.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Bill said. ‘You haven’t got a clue. I doubt if you ever really knew one Chinese.’
‘In the Biblical sense, you mean?’ Tess said.
‘Oh, go home,’ Bill said.
‘Steady on, Holden,’ Devlin said. ‘That’s my wife you’re talking to.’
Shane was on his feet, clapping his hands. ‘Come on, mate, let’s get you home,’ he said to Bill. ‘Tiger’s waiting.’
‘Can someone call me a cab?’ said the South African stylist. ‘The Bund is crawling with beggars.’
Bill stayed where he was and Tess Devlin jabbed a finger at him across the table. ‘I warned you when you started,’ she said. ‘I warned you when you started with your little Manchu slut and you would not listen, Bill. I told you that it ends one of two ways – you either leave your wife or you don’t. I told you – I fucking told you, Bill, and you would not listen – it ends one of two ways and it always ends badly.’
Then she looked up and so did Bill and they saw Becca standing at the end of the table, the blood draining from her face, finally understanding everything.
Somewhere a champagne glass broke and there was laughter and Shane was shouting in Chinese.
Qing bang wo jiezhang, hao ma?’ he said, snapping his thumb and index finger together.
Time for the bill.
Tiger had seen it all before.
He drove them back to Gubei, glancing at them in the rear-view mirror, and wondered why he’d ever thought that these two would be different. But few marriages were ever improved by Shanghai.
What was different about the boss and the lady was that they said nothing. There were none of the flashes of pain and rage, no words spat out as if they tasted bad.
The boss and the lady sat in complete silence all the way home, as if the words they had to say to each other were too terrible to speak, and too terrible to be heard.
Like a normal married couple they let themselves into the apartment and they were both friendly and polite to the ayi, and she told them that Holly hadn’t been sleeping very well, and when the ayi had gone Becca went to the second bedroom and from the master bedroom Bill could hear his wife soothing their daughter.
‘It’s all right, darling, it’s all right, darling, I’m here now, it’s all right, darling.’
Bill was sitting on the bed when Becca appeared in the doorway.
He looked up at her and he couldn’t bear it.
‘Who is she?’ Becca said, all business-like, stepping into the room and pushing the hair off her face. ‘Is she one of the whores who live here or is she one of the whores at Suzy Too?’ She smiled bitterly at the look on his face. ‘Oh yes – I know all about that place. You think the wives don’t know all about that place? So what is she? One of the whores from there or one of the whores from here?’
He muttered something and she took a step closer to the bed. ‘What?’ She had a hand cupped to her ear. ‘Can’t hear you.’
He raised his eyes. ‘I said,’ he said quietly, ‘she’s not a whore, Becca.’
She hit his face with a flurry of furious blows. ‘Stupid…stupid…stupid…’
Left right, left right, hitting his mouth his eyes his nose. He lowered his head but did not try to cover up. He felt her ring finger catch the side of his nose and bring tears to his eyes.
‘Oh fuck you and fuck her too,’ Becca said, dismissing it all. ‘You’re welcome to each other. You deserve each other. What did you tell her?’ Slipping into a mocking sing-song voice, a grotesque parody of romantic sweet nothings. ‘My wife doesn’t understand me…we haven’t got along in years…it will not always be this way, baby…trust me, baby, we can work it out…you’re the best thing that ever happened to me…’
And perhaps that’s w
hat it was, he thought, and what it would always be. A grotesque parody of the real thing. She sat next to him on the bed and covered her face with her hands.
‘You broke my heart,’ she said, her voice choked. ‘You broke my bloody heart, Bill.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, putting one hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He said her name. He said it again, and he made her name sound like a question. ‘Please don’t stop loving me,’ he said.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, and he took his hand away. She took a deep breath, stopped crying, wiped her nose, suddenly all icy calm. ‘Don’t touch me when you’ve been touching her,’ she said. It was like a new rule for their new life. ‘And don’t kiss Holly with a mouth that’s been on that dirty Third World whore.’
‘Don’t kiss my daughter?’
Becca nodded. ‘You stay right away from her.’ She narrowed her eyes to thin slits of loathing. ‘You stay right away from my daughter, you fucking bastard.’
He stared at his hands, and weakly muttered something that she didn’t get, although it made her look up at him with eyes blazing, snot and tears on her face. ‘What?’
‘I said – she’s my daughter too.’
She bared her teeth at that. ‘Well, maybe you should have thought more about that before you started. How does it work, Bill? Do you have exclusive fucking rights? Or have you got her on a time share?’ Becca shook her head. ‘Are you going now or in the morning?’
He hung his head. ‘Never.’
‘What?’ She was up now, pacing around the master bedroom, her arms folded across her chest.
‘I’m not going.’ There was no blood in his voice. All the blood had gone. He said the words but he didn’t sound convinced. It was as if his wife had all the power now. ‘I’m never going.’
Her voice was perfectly reasonable, but a little impatient, as if she was explaining something obvious to the village idiot.
‘But, Bill – we don’t want you here.’
‘You mean you don’t want me here.’
‘That’s right. I don’t want you here.’