My Favourite Wife

by Tony Parsons

  It was only the last micro moment of his life, but he was aware of all the good things he had known, and how fleeting it had all been, and how could he feel anything but the stab of sadness you get when you know that something so sweet and strange and wonderful will never come again.

  PART FOUR:

  SEE YOU AROUND

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  They had told him it was a village, but it was not quite that – just a jumbled collection of shacks surrounded by rain-lashed paddy fields on one side and a broad, rising river on the other. There was a thick red slime on the banks of the river. That was the reason Nancy Deng was here.

  The car bumped down a dirt-track road and the firm’s new driver, the driver who wasn’t Tiger, an older man who was less likely to rush off to join the gold rush, clung to the wheel and tried to avoid an old woman wheeling her bicycle, her bare feet sloshing through the mud. There were no other cars here.

  ‘I can see her,’ Bill said. ‘Pull over.’

  He could see Nancy out in the fields. She was surrounded by a group of villagers, small figures in transparent plastic macs, looking like ghosts against the lush green landscape. Bill got out of the car and took one of the paths that weaved through the paddy fields, his umbrella buckling in the wind. There were streams running through the fields. They were the colour of rust. He said her name and she looked up.

  ‘I’m so sorry about…Shane,’ she said, saying his first name for the first time.

  Bill nodded. The villagers began to drift away, their heads bowed in the rain. They moved in single file down the path between the paddy fields towards their homes, and he thought it looked like a funeral procession. He stared down at the orange-coloured water beneath their feet.

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘From the factories.’

  Nancy pointed down river. ‘I have a scientist who helps me. Pro bono.’ She took off her glasses and wiped them with her fingers. ‘He has found traces of heavy metals in the water from the factories.’ She put her glasses back on. ‘They dump their waste in the river and nobody can stop them.’

  The rusty water was soaking through his shoes. ‘What do they make?’

  ‘Pesticides. Insecticides. Fluorides. Plastics. The villagers rely on the river for their rice crop, for their drinking water. The rice crops have failed because of the poisoned water. Babies are being born with birth defects. This place has a population of a few thousand, and hundreds of them have died.’

  Bill looked at the pitiful little shacks. A cancer village. That’s what they called it. ‘But what can you do, Nancy?’ he said.

  ‘Stop them,’ she said. ‘Establish the link between the factories and the sickness. Force the government to apply its own laws. Prove that the factories upstream have poisoned these people. Protect the living. Compensate the bereaved. Care for the sick. There are children here with no parents. There are mothers and fathers who are dying. Everybody has let them down. They have nobody. Not the party. Not the government. Nobody to fight for them.’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘They do now.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m nothing. I know that. But there are others like me. At legal aid centres. Running hotlines. Working within universities. All over the country.’

  He had always felt hope for the future when he looked at Nancy. He knew that there were countless villages like this one, but he also knew there were young Chinese lawyers like her, offering their services for nothing, or a pittance, sometimes holding down jobs in commercial law firms to fund their pro bono work, or until they could afford to quit and do work that meant something beyond a fat salary and a glittering future. And Bill guessed that’s exactly what Nancy had been doing in all her years at Butterfield, Hunt and West. Saving up for the day when she knew she would have to work for nothing.

  ‘What I want,’ she told him, ‘what I want is for the poorest people in the land to have access to the law of the land.’ She looked down at the rust-coloured water on her boots. ‘You will miss him so much,’ she said. ‘Your good friend.’

  Bill looked away. ‘I miss him, we all miss him.’ He looked back at her. ‘That’s why I’m here. Devlin sent me. We’ve got more work than we can handle. There are new guys coming in from London, but it’s not going to be enough. The firm wants you to come back. We need you.’

  She shook her head, and indicated the plastic-coated ghosts disappearing into their modest homes. ‘They need me more,’ she said.

  He did not push it. He had known that she would never come back. He had told Devlin that she would never come back. And in his heart he did not want her to come back. He wanted her to stay here and fight for these people. He did not want her to be like him.

  ‘You need to be careful, Nancy,’ he said. He had heard what could happen to idealistic young lawyers who did pro bono work for the poor. ‘You’re dealing with people who get away with murder.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ she said, sounding as if she believed nothing could touch her, and he knew she was wrong. ‘It doesn’t matter how rich we get. China will always be a Third World country until the courts are willing to protect the little man. Until we have the rule of law, we will be a nation of peasants.’

  ‘You sound like Mad Mitch,’ he said.

  ‘He was the one who talked to me about the rule of law. Did you notice? He talked about it all the time. The rule of law means that the law applies to everyone in equal measure. Where the rule of law does not apply, legal solutions are imperfect. The rule of law is the root and branch of democracy. Mitch believes that what we do is a sacred profession. Like a doctor, you know? He’s a good lawyer.’

  ‘But all wrong for this place,’ Bill said. ‘There’s not a lot of the sacred in the PRC.’

  ‘And how are you?’ Nancy asked him.

  He seemed almost embarrassed. ‘They’re making me a partner.’

  She congratulated him, smiling for the first time, really pleased for him, because she knew it was what he wanted, and why he was here, and everything he had worked for.

  Bill thanked her, and they stood under his umbrella watching the rain on the paddy fields and the red-etched river beyond, and he knew that he would be long gone from this place before it ever broke its banks, but that she would still be here.

  Shane’s parents were old and bewildered and dumbstruck with grief.

  Bill accompanied them to the Australian consulate on the twenty-second floor of CITIC Square and gently steered them through the paperwork required by two nations for the release and transportation of their son’s body.

  They were staying almost next door to their consulate, at the Portman Ritz-Carlton in the Shanghai Centre, but Bill had decided that in this rain it would be best to make the short trip by car. This was a mistake. The traffic was not moving on Nanjing Xilu and while Shane’s parents sat in stunned, red-eyed silence in the back of the firm’s car, Bill sat up front and stared out at the crowds. And that was when he saw them. His wife and the man. They were at a window seat in the Long Bar.

  Becca and Dr Sarfraz Khan.

  Bill’s first thought was Holly. They were talking about Holly and her asthma. But it might not have been asthma. Or it might have been Holly and other things. He did not know. They were sitting on opposite sides of the table, leaning across, Khan talking urgently and Becca listening, his wife just listening.

  And he knew that she was right – there are always options, there are always options for all of us. And for the first time Bill saw that it wasn’t the seeking and straying and coming apart that was touched by magic, but the staying together.

  They stood on the tarmac at Pudong and watched the men loading the coffin on to the plane.

  Shane’s parents huddled together under an umbrella bearing the name of their hotel. You should not have to do this, Bill thought. You should not have to bury your child. Nobody should have to do what you are doing. He could not imagine life beyond losing your child. What life could there be after that?

  Bill sto
od on one side of Shane’s parents and on the other was a man from the Australian consulate. He must have been one of the junior staff, still in his twenties, but his presence gave the act a ceremonial feel.

  As the coffin was loaded into the plane, on the same slow-motion conveyor belt they used for the luggage, the young man stood very erect, stiff with decency and respect. Bill was glad he was here, although as the coffin slid into the hold he could almost hear Shane’s mocking laughter. Any chance of an upgrade, mate? They’ve got me in with the bloody suitcases.

  The mother, a large grey-haired old lady, seemed to shudder as her son’s coffin disappeared into the plane, and Bill felt like hugging her. The father – shorter and smaller than his wife, and determined to keep a grip on his feelings – was harder to warm to. But then in Bill’s experience, fathers always were.

  The coffin disappeared into the plane. They watched the hold close. It was the last act before flying. The young man from the consulate glanced at his watch. Shane’s mother turned to Bill and put her arms around him, clinging to him as if he was holding her up. Then she abruptly pulled away.

  ‘You come and see us,’ she said. ‘In Melbourne. With your wife and little girl.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ Bill nodded, knowing it was unlikely that they would ever meet again. There was a battered leather holdall at her feet. Shane’s overnight bag. He had seen it a hundred times. Tossed into the boot of Tiger’s car. In the back of the helicopter to Macau. Sitting on Shane’s desk in the office, about to accompany its owner on a trip around the country or the continent. The mother picked up the bag and held it out to Bill.

  ‘They found this in the car,’ she said. ‘Mostly work things.’

  ‘We don’t want it,’ the father said.

  The bag was partially open, as if it had been rifled and found uninteresting. Bill could see files, a print-out of an unused e-ticket in a plastic envelope, Shane’s laptop. Clothes and a toilet bag. A thick green paperback. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire by Lawrence James.

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ he said.

  The father stuck out his hand and Bill shook it. Although he was a small man – all of Shane’s bulk came from his mother – the father had one of those old-fashioned handshakes where they think you are effeminate if you don’t at least try to break a few bones. Or perhaps it’s just the grief, Bill thought. Perhaps he doesn’t realise what he is doing.

  ‘How could this happen?’ asked the old man, his voice trembling at last, baring his teeth with the hard physical effort of not coming apart. ‘That’s what I don’t understand.’

  Bill shook his head. He had no answers. The death itself was the only answer. ‘Shane was lonely,’ Bill said. ‘I just think he was very lonely.’

  The old man exploded. ‘Rubbish!’ he said with such anger that Bill stepped back. ‘How could he be lonely?’ demanded Shane’s father. ‘He was married, wasn’t he?’

  He was sitting on the bed watching their daughter sleeping when he heard Becca’s key in the lock. Holly kicked back the duvet and he gently covered her again. She had her fists lifted above her head like a weightlifter.

  He heard Becca come quietly into the room but he didn’t look at her. Her hand touched his shoulder. He reached out and brushed a swathe of blonde hair from Holly’s forehead.

  ‘What happened to the ayi?’ she said, her voice very soft in the sleeping child’s room.

  ‘I sent her home,’ he said quietly.

  ‘She could have put Holly to bed.’

  He still hadn’t looked at her. ‘I like doing it,’ he said.

  She put her arms around his neck. He felt her face close to his cheek. Her hair falling, her breath in his ear. He could smell her perfume and wine. The smell of someone else’s cigarettes.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Bill,’ she whispered.

  He was silent for a long moment. ‘What are you sorry about?’ he said.

  ‘Shane,’ she said, straightening up, sounding surprised. ‘I’m sorry about Shane. It’s a terrible thing. His parents – I can’t imagine what his parents are going through.’

  Holly moaned in her sleep and Bill reached out and stroked her shoulder. ‘There’s nothing anyone could have done,’ he said. He looked up at his wife as she stood above him and he wondered what life would be like after she had left him. ‘Something bad was always going to happen to Shane. I loved him, but the way he lived, it was inevitable.’

  She dragged her fingers through her hair, pulling it off her face. And she shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s this city. It’s Shanghai.’ She turned and left him watching the sleeping child alone. ‘It brings out the worst in people,’ she said as she went out the door.

  And then he went to see her again.

  He went to see her again because he didn’t know what else to do. He went to see her again because he couldn’t stay away from her. He could see no reason why the spell would ever be broken. That’s how stupid he was back then.

  But she was gone. JinJin was gone and nobody knew where. The old Paradise Mansions girls were in her apartment, making dumplings the way they had the first night he had really met them.

  At first he felt as if they were stalling him, the difficult ex-boyfriend, the obsessive got-it-bad schmuck who doesn’t know when it is time to move on.

  But as they took his wet coat and gave him a few pieces of kitchen towel to dry his hair and as he turned down their offer of a plate of dumplings, he realised that it seemed to be true. They really didn’t know where she had gone. She had packed her bags and called Jenny Two, leaving a message on her phone saying that she was leaving the keys under the mat and that they were welcome to use the place in her absence.

  ‘There’s a neighbour,’ Bill said, glancing at the ceiling. ‘A guy upstairs she was friendly with. Brad. He might know. She might have said something to him.’

  They looked at each other and it took him a few seconds to understand, but he was there before the words came blurting out of Jenny Two. How stupid men are, he thought. And how stupid I am. How could I not have seen this coming? How could I have believed that her heart would never change?

  ‘They left together, William,’ Jenny Two said, and she squinted at his face, as if it hurt her too. There was no way back from this moment, and it was not a good moment. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He nodded, and smiled like a happy idiot, smiled as if he had heard nothing but good news all day long, and sat down between Annie and Sugar, facing the two Jennys, swallowing the sob of grief that rose in his throat. So this is how it ends, he thought. She goes off with the first guy who comes along. It was almost funny.

  Asked again, he accepted their offer of a plate of dumplings, and he realised that he did not want to run away from them and hide his feelings. The taste and smell and sound of the frying dumplings brought back her voice, and the pride she had taken in being a Dongbei ho. ‘Jiaozi dumpling from Shenyang. Like ravioli. You know?’

  They told him their stories. Annie had returned to the bars after being run out of Paradise Mansions but had met another American boy who was taking her back to Hawaii. ‘I shall drive a Mustang and surf,’ she said proudly. ‘You watch. I post on YouTube.’

  Jenny Two had been left enough money in her old boyfriend’s will to start her own business. She was wavering between a food stall and an Internet café. ‘I shall be part of my country’s economic miracle,’ she said. Bill suddenly realised that she was no longer wearing glasses and gestured at her eyes.

  ‘Laser surgery,’ she said. ‘In shopping mall.’

  Jenny One’s Frenchman had come back. Bill could see how it might yet work out for her, he could understand how a lonely married man in Paris might wake up one night and believe that the woman he thought was his bit on the side was actually the love of his life. He could see how that might happen.

  Sugar was working in one of the new bars on Mao Ming Nan Lu, but the thought did not seem to depress her, perhaps because she alone had
never expected to be rescued.

  And from Sugar he learned that the bars were changing. After the best part of a hundred years, the old anarchy of the Shanghai night was passing into history as the freelance girls finally came under control of the bars where they worked. The boomtown was not exactly getting respectable, but it was becoming increasingly regulated.

  ‘And I got a promotion,’ Sugar told him. ‘I was a Customer Care Agent but now I am a Guest Relations Officer.’

  They were all happy endings, of sorts, and he was grateful for them because he had reached the stage of his life when he was struggling to believe in happy endings. But then they were in Shanghai, where the act of survival was a happy ending.

  Then it was time to go. They gathered around him at the door.

  ‘See you around,’ Jenny Two said, and it sounded like a phrase recently mastered in a language class.

  ‘Yes,’ Bill smiled, and he kissed each of them on the cheek, and they hugged him like they cared, and as if they were so sorry that it had ended with him and JinJin, and as if he – soon to be a partner at Butterfield, Hunt and West – was the one to be pitied. ‘See you around, girls.’

  And he left, knowing that he now had his reason to never go back, to never see her again, and to finally get her out of his blood, and out of his life. In the end it was so obvious. He should have expected it all along.

  A new man. Of course. What else?

  He wondered how he could ever have been so dumb, how he could ever have believed that she was really any different to him.

  She was just another girl. She was just another woman. How could it possibly end any other way? She had met some new guy. Right. Of course. He almost laughed. But somehow the banality of it all was impossible to grasp. A new man? JinJin with a new man? Yes, we all have our options. There was a part of him that still found it incredible.