Crimson China

by Betsy Tobin

  She walks tentatively up to the plate glass window and peers inside: Johnny is behind the counter, serving a dark-skinned teenage boy wearing a hooded sweatshirt and baggy jeans.

  When she pushes open the door, Johnny doesn’t notice her at first. She watches as he hands the boy a white plastic bag containing a small polystyrene container.

  “Hey,” says the boy. “You got any chopsticks?”

  “Sure,” says Johnny. He hands a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks over the counter.

  “Can I get some more?” asks the boy.

  Johnny fixes him with a look.“How many?”

  “Like, six or seven?”

  “For one dish of fried rice?” In that instant Johnny sees her, and a slow smile spreads across his face. He nods to her over the boy’s head.

  “Yeah,” says the boy.

  Johnny shakes his head. “Help yourself,” he says with a shrug, grabbing a huge fistful of chopsticks and handing them across the counter.

  “Hey thanks,” says the youth appreciatively.

  “No worries,” says Johnny. Lili steps to one side as the hooded teenager brushes past her, then walks up to the counter.

  “So Hebei,” says Johnny in English. “What’s wrong? You tired of hotpot?”

  Lili laughs.

  “I thought you forgot me,” he continues in Mandarin.

  “Impossible,” says Lili.

  “Excellent,” says Johnny. “You’re just in time. I’m off in ten minutes.”

  He takes her to a nearby Starbucks, and though Lili blanches at the price of coffee, she doesn’t let it show. They sit in leather armchairs by the window. Johnny tells her that his family is from Shanghai, and that he has been in London studying for almost three years.

  “No wonder,” she says. “You seem so accustomed to it all.”

  He laughs. “Only in comparison to you,” he replies. “Believe me, I’m still just as much an outsider. I don’t even need to open my mouth. They can tell just by looking.” He glances surreptitiously around at the other customers, as if they are adversaries.

  “But now I do it too,” he adds with a shrug. “I’ve got so I can tell who was born here and who wasn’t.”

  Lili looks at the people sitting around her: two young Muslim women with headscarves huddled over hot chocolates, a blonde woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a business suit working on a laptop, and two middle-aged men in anoraks who are deep in conversation in a language she doesn’t recognise. These people could be from anywhere, she thinks. She turns back to him.

  “How?”

  “The people from here look like they deserve to be here,” Johnny says easily. “Like it’s their entitlement. The rest of us look as if we are scrambling to find a way in.”

  He takes a sip of cappuccino, and a small fleck of foam remains on his upper lip. Lili’s eyes are drawn to his mouth: his lips are beautiful, full and perfectly formed. She considers reaching out and dabbing at the fleck of white with her napkin. She forces her gaze away.

  “You don’t look like you are scrambling,” she remarks, stirring her coffee with a wooden stick.

  “Well, I am,” he says. “We all are. The good news is,” he adds, “there are so many foreigners here, we almost outnumber them.” He flashes her a grin.

  He is too handsome, she thinks suddenly. And too confident. Not like Wen, who had a quiet self-assurance. She cannot help but compare them. Her brother’s looks were unremarkable, but he had something that drew women to him like swallows to a nest. She was fourteen when she first noticed, barely into puberty. One day, two girls followed her and Wen out of school, nudging each other, their eyebrows arched knowingly. They looked straight past her, as if she wasn’t there, and boldly asked Wen if he would help them with their homework. Lili often did Wen’s homework for him, so she was surprised when he readily agreed. After that she grew used to approaches from other girls, could discern at once the predatory look in their eyes. And though it grated on her each time, she eventually learned to steel herself against them. It helped that Wen did not attach himself to any one of them. He ranged freely across them, always coming back to her in the end.

  “Hey Hebei,” says Johnny in English. “What’s up?”

  She looks at him, startled.

  “I lost you for a moment,” he says in Mandarin.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, blushing. “Everything is so new,” she adds a bit feebly.

  “No worries,” he says in English.

  She wishes this were true. For she does have worries.

  “Do you have a car?” she asks suddenly. Johnny raises an eyebrow.

  “My uncle does,” he says. “Where do you want to go?”

  “To the seaside,” she replies.

  •

  Later, they go for dinner in a crowded pizza house, where Johnny orders a large pitcher of beer to wash down their meal. Afterwards, he takes her hand and walks her to a small park. When they reach an empty bench, he pulls her down beside him and into an embrace. His kiss is tentative at first, but quickly takes on urgency when she responds. She feels his hands searching out her softer places, and feels herself stirring, a little reluctantly, somewhere deep inside. But almost at once, a part of her seems to detach and float away, as if this second self is above her looking down. A sudden thought alarms her: perhaps Wen is watching too? Instantly, she pulls back from him. Johnny struggles for breath, as if she has winded him.

  “Hey,” he murmurs, leaning forward to nuzzle her ear. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she says quietly. “We should go.” He draws back and looks at her a long moment.

  “No worries,” he says then.

  It is only the second time she has kissed a man. Unlike most of her classmates, she managed to avoid any romantic entanglements at university. The first time was only four weeks after Wen’s death, when she went out to a bar with friends and drank too much in a bid to forget. That man was another young teacher she had known vaguely for a few years. Towards the end of the evening, he had taken her outside and led her down a dark alley, where he had pressed her ardently up against a wall. His movements were clumsy and unpractised, and she was unwisely tempted to laugh. That night she had allowed herself some drunken licence: she was twenty-eight years old, had lost her only blood relation and had never been with a man. But she had stopped short of having sex. Even so, the next morning she woke with a creeping sense of self-hatred. The teacher rang and she refused to see him. In the weeks that followed, he plagued her, calling constantly and waiting outside her building after work. In the end he wrote a letter asking her to marry him, which she sent back along with her refusal. It was about this time that she admitted to herself a truth that she had known all along: men made her uneasy. And the only one who didn’t was dead.

  •

  A few days later, Johnny rings to say his uncle has agreed to let him borrow the car the following day. But when he hears where she wants to go, his tone alters.

  “Hebei,” he says, uncertainly. “I was thinking maybe Brighton.”

  “Lancaster is only three hundred kilometres,” she says. “If we start early, we can be there by lunchtime.” In truth she has only guessed at the distance. But Jin has told her that the highways in the UK are as smooth as glass, and that cars can travel at alarmingly fast speeds compared to home. Since buying the atlas, the desire to get to Morecambe Bay has threatened to devour her. She wants to run her fingers through the water of Wen’s grave and feel its bitter chill. She will walk there if she has to.

  “Please,” she says to Johnny, a note of desperation creeping into her voice.

  “Okay,” he says after a moment.

  After she hangs up the phone, Lili wonders what she will have to offer in return.

  The next day he collects her from Hounslow Station at eight in the morning. Inevitably, they lose their way getting out of London, and in the end the journey takes more than five hours. After three hours, they stop for petrol at a service station
just past Birmingham. By then Johnny’s good humour is wearing thin, and Lili wonders whether she has overstepped his kindness. When she sees the price of fuel she is horrified; the bill comes to nearly forty pounds.

  “So much money,” she says, her eyes widening. “I didn’t know.” She reaches in her purse, wondering whether she has even brought that much.

  “It’s okay,” says Johnny, waving her away. “My treat,” he adds in English.

  She watches a little uneasily as he pays at the counter.

  He suggests they go for coffee, so they drive to another part of the service area. It is built like a shopping mall, filled with shops and restaurants of all kinds, as if it is a destination in its own right. Outside the car park is nearly full, and inside there are throngs of people milling about. It had not occurred to her that petrol stations could be so elaborate, nor provide so many services; at home they usually consisted of a single pumping station. She insists on paying for the coffee, and when they are finally seated opposite each other, Johnny crosses his arms and fixes her with a look.

  “Okay,” he says. “Now is the time.”

  “The time for what?” She smiles nervously.

  “The time for you to tell me your story,” he replies. “The one you’ve not been telling me.”

  Lili hesitates; her eyes drift around the café. Across the aisle, an enormous woman wearing pale blue stretch trousers wedges her massive frame into a booth. Her short dark hair looks artificially curled and her face is bright red with exertion. Lili frowns at the women’s bulging thighs. She has seen more obese people these past two weeks than in her entire lifetime. She turns back to Johnny.

  “I had a brother,” she says finally. “He died in Morecambe Bay.”

  Johnny frowns.

  “You mean this year? In February?”

  She nods. He leans back, clearly surprised, and draws a breath.

  “I’m sorry,” he says then. “I didn’t know.”

  Lili shrugs. A lump rises in her throat. Beside her, the woman in pale blue trousers bites into an enormous cheeseburger. A large dollop of ketchup squeezes out and falls onto the table, but the woman does not notice.

  “I should have told you earlier. I just wanted to go there, and see.”

  Johnny eyes her for a moment.

  “So this trip,” he says slowly. “It’s about you and him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He looks away for a few moments, scans the other people at the tables that surround them, then finally turns back to her.

  “So am I.”

  They drive on and the atmosphere between them is strained. Lili keeps the map book open on her knees and as they approach Lancaster, she directs him on a series of roads leading towards the coast.

  When they finally reach the broad promenade overlooking Morecambe Bay, she feels almost ill with anticipation. Johnny pulls into a disabled parking bay and stops the car, turning to her.

  “Now what?”

  Lili stares out at the water: it is high tide now, the waves rolling in at even distances. The day is overcast, and the wind whips along the seafront. As she looks around she sees nothing that is familiar; no sign that he was here. This place is completely strange to her, and she wonders how that possibly could be. A creeping sense of disappointment steals over her, and she resists it with all her might.

  “Drive on,” she says impulsively. “Go further up the shore.”

  Johnny pulls the car out and drives further north along the shore for a few minutes.

  “Here,” she says finally. “Stop here!”

  He pulls over and parks the car. Without waiting, Lili jumps out and begins to walk down towards the water, until her feet crunch against pebbles and sand. She carries on walking until her shoes are almost in the surf. Ice cold water washes inside them, startling her with its chill. She reaches down and plunges her hands into the water. When she straightens she sees a lone male figure behind her up the shore. Wen, she thinks fleetingly. But it is not Wen, of course. It is Johnny. She looks back towards the endless grey of the ocean.

  They order pasta in a café across the road, just as a line of dark clouds comes sweeping across the bay. Lili picks at her spaghetti while Johnny wolfs his hungrily. When they have finished, he pushes his plate to one side and takes out a pack of cigarettes, lighting one.

  “Smoke?”

  She shakes her head. He takes a deep drag and exhales.

  “How long was he here?”

  “In Morecambe Bay? A month or so. Maybe two. Not long, I think.”

  “Was he illegal?”

  Lili nods, watching his eyes narrow slightly with judgement.

  “Wen was different,” she says earnestly. “He wasn’t like the others.”

  “Different how?”

  “He didn’t come here to get rich.”

  “It’s no crime to be rich,” says Johnny.

  “I know. But he wasn’t after money.”

  “Then what did he come for?”

  Lili falters, searching for the right words.

  “He was restless. Things weren’t good for him at home.”

  “In what way?”

  “He needed to go abroad. To see other places, to see other ways of… being.”

  “We all wanted that.”

  “Wen wanted it more.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It was like he was looking for his place in the world.” She shrugs a little self-consciously and glances over at the next table, where an older couple sits chewing in silence.

  “Did he find it?”

  Lili shrugs. “I don’t know. But that’s why I came to London. To find out.”

  “How?”

  “By looking for him.”

  Johnny looks at her askance.

  “His spirit, I mean. I know he’s here. But I can’t find him.”

  Johnny raises an eyebrow, then leans forward to tap ash onto his plate.

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”

  Lili shakes her head.

  “You don’t understand. Wen and I were twins. In ancient times we would have been left to die at birth. They would have called us ghost spouses.”

  “He was your twin?”

  “Yes.”

  Johnny leans back in his chair, regarding her. “Like two halves.”

  “I guess so.”

  “So what does that make you now?”

  Lili swallows. “Broken.”

  As they rise to go, it begins to rain, and they are forced to run the brief distance back to the car. Once inside, Johnny turns to her. “Are we finished?”

  She nods. He turns the car around and heads south down the coast road. After a few minutes, they pass a long pier jutting out into the bay. At once, her eyes alight on a stone statue halfway down the jetty.

  “Wait! Pull over, will you?”

  Johnny pulls the car into the side of the road and puts it in park.

  “I’ll just be a moment,” she says, jumping out. She dashes down the jetty towards the statue, pausing just in front of it. An enormous stone bird stares down at her. Without a doubt, the photo of Wen and Jin was taken here. Lili stands staring up at the bird, wondering why Jin has lied to her a second time. After a minute, she returns to the car.

  “Okay?” he asks.

  She nods.

  They head out of town and as they hit the motorway, the weather deteriorates. Johnny is forced to slow his speed. Darkness falls early due to the storm, and soon they are both straining to see through the windscreen. Johnny looks increasingly tired, running his hand every minute or so through his short cropped hair, as if struggling to stay awake. Lili too feels exhausted, both from the journey and the emotional energy it has cost her. She dozes off just past Birmingham, waking with a guilty start when Johnny pulls off the motorway into a rest area. He parks the car in a deserted area and switches off the engine. She turns to him, and a shot of apprehension runs through her: she barely knows this man, nor whether she can trust him
. She feels her chest tighten. Johnny rubs his face in his hands.

  “Ta ma de,” he swears through his hands. He lowers them and looks at her. “I need to sleep.”

  “Okay,” she says, her voice faltering a little. She is flooded with relief as he climbs into the back seat and stretches out across it, balling his jacket into a cushion. He closes his eyes and gives an enormous sigh, and within moments is asleep.

  Now Lili herself is wide awake, staring out into the deserted car park, watching the rain run in tiny rivulets down the windscreen. The night Wen died the weather was similarly bad, according to the news reports. She wonders whether it was the waves that finally overcame him, or the freezing cold. She feels guilty that she is now warm and dry, as if she should be out there somewhere, battling the elements, just as he was forced to.

  With dismay, she remembers that she had meant to look for cockles on the beach, or at the very least, buy some in a local shop. She has never seen a cockle, much less eaten one. Wen said in his letter it was easy to spot the tell-tale pockmarks in the sand just after the tide had gone out: that when you raked the sand they lay like buried treasure just beneath the surface, their pale white feet pointing downwards. Once he had pocketed a few small ones and later pried them open with a kitchen knife. They had the taste and texture of salty elastic bands, he had written. Perhaps steamed with ginger and spring onion they would be palatable, but the English ate them cold from polystyrene cups with only a small squeeze of lemon, and this he could not fathom.

  A sharp knock on the window startles her, and Lili looks out to see a tall figure looming in the darkness. She glances anxiously towards the back seat, but Johnny is still fast asleep. Slowly she lowers the window, and is relieved to see a man in a police uniform. He leans down to speak to her.

  “Everything all right here, miss?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not allowed to stop here overnight.”