by Betsy Tobin
“You’ll be wanting these,” she says.
The Chinese man stares down at the items.
“How much?” he asks.
The chemist points to each of the items in turn.
“Two pounds nineteen for the bandage and three twenty-nine for the disinfectant.”
The Chinese man reaches in his pocket with his good hand and pulls out a small roll of ten-pound notes, perhaps seventy or eighty pounds in all. The week’s wages, thinks Wen. The man holds out one note, then points to the box of bandages.
“This,” he says.
“You’ll be needing the disinfectant,” she admonishes. “Otherwise the wound could get infected.”
The Chinese man shakes his head. “No,” he says, tapping the box. “This.” The chemist shrugs and rings up the item, handing him the change.
“You should see a doctor for that. It may well need stitches,” she says, now a little peeved. The Chinese man stares at her blankly. Wen resists the urge to explain to him what she is saying. “The hospital,” she repeats a little too loudly. “Do you know where the hospital is?”
“No,” says the Chinese man. He grabs the box and turns, leaving the shop quickly.
The chemist sighs and shakes her head at her colleague, who raises an eyebrow. Then both women shoot a glance at Wen. He colours, feeling as if he ought to explain the man’s actions. It is obvious that his presence prevents them from censuring the wounded man openly, as they might have done. He moves to the front of the shop and watches through the window as the man jumps into the van and the other cocklers slide the door shut. The engine sputters a few times and the van pulls out into the traffic, disappearing eventually round a corner.
A part of him feels bereft, though he is not sure why. He does not know these people, and he certainly does not envy their circumstances, so why should he regret their leaving? He walks out onto the street, the image of the injured man burned into his mind. An illegal Chinese would have to be on the verge of death before he would dare to seek medical treatment in this country. Doctors and hospitals were a link in the chain of authority that led to police, government officials, immigration and deportation. They could lead to a fate that, for some, was worse than death.
Last summer, a friend of Wen’s from the restaurant in London had the misfortune to be hit by a car while waiting for a bus. He was knocked unconscious and when he came to, he was in a hospital bed. When he failed to answer the social worker’s questions, a supervisor was called. She in turn called the police, who then notified immigration. Before his injuries had even healed, he was back on a plane to China. Once home, he faced a stiff fine from the Chinese authorities and he was still seven thousand pounds in debt to the snakeheads. Now he must pay off his debts on a fifteenth of the salary he was making in England, a task that would take him a lifetime, with nothing to show for it. One night in January while Wen was on the drive back to Liverpool, he had received a despairing phone call from his friend: drunk and weeping, he lamented that he lacked the courage to take his own life. Such tales were legion in the Chinese community. Newcomers quickly learned the twin tenets of life here: caution and forbearance. If one suffered, one did so in silence. Never ask for help, treatment or protection of any kind. Because there were no entitlements.
Wen pulls the hat down low and heads in the opposite direction, away from the bay. He walks to a post office where he buys an envelope and stamp and posts the photos to Jin, together with a hastily scrawled note. I am sorry to trouble you, he writes. I hope this will be the last time.
When he returns home, he is full of restless energy. He washes up the dishes from breakfast and mops the kitchen floor, but even then does not feel anything like the bone-numbing tiredness he used to experience after a day of digging cockles on the beach. Seeing the van-load of his compatriots reminds him that he has not truly laboured since the accident. For the past several weeks he has done nothing but study English, cook and do housework. He is not built for such inactivity; he realises this now. Perhaps it is perverse, but suddenly he aches to feel that sort of tiredness again. He looks around at Angie’s already tidy kitchen and his eyes alight on the back door to the garden. He tries the door and finds it locked; he has never seen Angie use the garden. He rummages through the kitchen drawers until he finds a clear plastic bag full of keys, which he tries one by one. After a few minutes, he succeeds in opening the door, and for the first time he steps out into the garden.
It is long and narrow and densely overgrown, so dense, in fact that he cannot see the end. At one point there must have been lawn down the middle, but now it is knee-high weed, overlaid with shrubs from the borders that have flung themselves wildly across the centre. The garden has several trees, some of which he recognises: on the left is a mature elder that has spread unchecked in every direction, opposite what appears to be a very old and gnarled fruit tree that lists heavily to one side, perhaps an apple or plum. Further back, a pair of oddly shaped conifers sits on the right, and an enormous oak towers over the end of the garden, shrouding everything in gloomy darkness. Beneath the long weedy grass at his feet, he sees a winding path of mossy stone set into the earth. He steps from one to the next, trying to make sense of the layout.
The garden is thickly planted along the edges mostly with shrubs that are now so overgrown that they are unrecognisable. Winter is only just ending, yet many have already sprouted new leaves. Wen knows little about plants and flowers, though his stepmother kept a kitchen garden while he was growing up, and he often helped her with the heavier tasks, such as turning the soil and spreading the manure they exchanged for produce with a local farmer. His stepmother grew all kinds of vegetables: long beans, garlic, spring onions, radish and winter melon. Every inch of earth was cultivated, as the family depended on the proceeds.
Wen looks around at the profusion of unchecked growth around him: a plot of land of this size would be a great luxury in today’s China, especially one that was not used to grow food. He pushes his way to the back of the garden until he comes up against a crumbling brick wall several feet higher than his head. On the right is an old wooden shed, its door hanging lop-sided on rusty metal hinges. He pulls open the door and finds an array of rusty tools covered in cobwebs: two long rakes, a large, slightly bent pitchfork, a pile of shovels and small-handled spades and a pair of shears. To one side sits a towering stack of empty plastic pots and several pairs of old canvas gloves, now cracked and mouldy with damp. He picks up a glove: too small for a man, he decides. It must have belonged to a woman, together with the tools. Someone planted and nurtured this garden, a long time ago. He wonders who? For it was certainly not Angie.
He goes to work at once, taking out the tools and testing them one by one. The shears are so rusty they will not close, but he cleans and oils them, then sharpens the blade by grinding it in circular motions against a flat paving stone. Soon the shears are sharp enough to cut again, and he starts at the back of the garden and works his way round, trimming back the trees and shrubs to some semblance of their original shape. After a brief time, he strips off his jumper, working only in a t-shirt and jeans, his face covered in sweat. He works solidly for the next few hours, his arms and back burning from the effort, the way they used to after a day hunched over the sands with a tamping board. The more tired he becomes, the more satisfied he feels, for it is a relief to labour once again.
The plants are different from those at home, but he has an instinctive feel for what is uninvited, can recognise those whose sole purpose is to impede and strangle the progress of others. These he rips out ruthlessly and systematically, making sure he gets the ends of the roots. By the time darkness begins to fall, he has worked his way through much of the garden, amassing an enormous pile of debris out of sight in a corner at the back, against the wall. He does not stop until his hands erupt in blisters from the wooden handles of the shears. Only then does he make a cup of tea and settle himself on the threshold of the back door to survey his efforts, his t-shirt now mudd
y and damp.
His stepmother used to say that a garden could not thrive without affection. Though she had only a tiny plot of land by the river, the care she lavished on it was extraordinary. The vegetables were laid out in neat rows with no space in between, as she considered even an inch of unplanted soil to be wasteful. She had enclosed the plot with walls of woven matting on three sides, leaving one end open towards the river, believing that the proximity and sight of running water was vital to the garden’s chi. On summer evenings, after the weeding was done, she would light incense and sit for hours in the darkness watching the waters flowing past, listening to the tinkle of a tiny metal chime suspended in one corner. It was important always to hear the wind, she had told him. She taught him how to crush dried bones and eggshells between two rocks, and spread them carefully over the soil, as well as how to distinguish between those insects which were pests and those which were beneficial, and therefore to be spared. Her own father had been a farmer, and he wondered sometimes whether she missed life in the countryside, having married a factory worker and settled on the outskirts of a small city. But if so, she never said.
He does not hear Angie enter through the front door, so absorbed is he in the gathering dusk of his thoughts. When he does realise, she is standing just behind him in the open doorway, her eyes trained on the garden.
He jumps to his feet and turns to her expectantly. She stands frozen, staring out at the garden. Then she retreats inside without a word. Wen follows her into the kitchen and watches silently while she removes a tumbler from the cupboard, reaches for the bottle of whisky under the sink and pours herself a generous glass. She raises the glass to her lips and drinks, then lowers it to the counter.
“Angie?”
She turns to him, and he sees her chest rise and fall. She opens her mouth to speak, then decides against it and takes another drink of whisky.
“What is problem?”
“The garden,” she says finally. She breaks off, motioning towards the outside. “You didn’t tell me.”
“It is gift. From me.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Wen,” she replies with a sigh. “Especially not that.” She nods towards the garden. She turns back to the counter and refills her glass, and at once he understands that it is not the fact of the giving, but the nature of the gift that has upset her.
“Why not garden?” he asks, taking a step forward.
Angie does not look at him, but instead focuses her eyes on the tumbler of amber liquid in her hand, turning the glass round and round in circles, watching the swirl of it.
“This house belonged to my mother. The garden was hers,” she explains, almost swallowing the last word.
Wen waits for her to say more. They sit in silence in the darkness of the kitchen for what seems like an eternity.
“My mother was good with plants,” she says finally. “She could grow just about anything. But she was rubbish with people.”
“I am sorry.”
Angie takes a deep breath and exhales, as if trying to purge herself of the past.
“My mother had her garden. And my father, by all accounts – because I never met him – my father had his whisky.” She pauses and picks up the bottle, frowning at it.
“So I guess I take after him. Or maybe there’s a little bit of both of them in me.”
Wen has not recognised all of her words, but the tenor of her voice is enough to make him understand. It is the first time she has spoken of her family, and now he realises why. He steps forward and reaches for the glass. She releases it to him, and he sets it down on the counter, pulling her into his arms. She buries her face in his shoulder and inhales deeply.
“You smell like mud.”
Her voice, muffled against his shirt, is already thick with alcohol. He pulls back and looks down at her, marvelling at her ability to confound him.
“What is mud?”
Later, after they have gone to bed, he strokes her hair in the darkness.
“I do not make garden,” he says quietly.
“No,” she protests, arching around to look at him. “Please. Make the garden. Make it anyway you like. It’s your garden now.”
She turns away and pulls him in close behind her, so that his body is wrapped entirely around hers. Wen buries his face in her hair. He feels her body start to unwind, feels the shiver of her muscles as they release, and within a minute hears her breathing settle into whisky-induced sleep.
Roses, he decides. That is what he will plant. English roses for an English garden.
October 2004
Lili doesn’t see Jin for several days and wonders whether she is avoiding her. The weather has turned cold, and when she steps outside Adrian’s house each morning, she can smell the crisp onset of winter. Overnight the trees that line the street have lost their leaves, and the afternoons are no longer punctuated by warm bursts of sun. Instead, a thick layer of pale grey cloud seems to have descended over London, and Lili wonders whether this will be the colour of the English winter. On impulse, and in defiance of what she knows would be Jin’s scorn at the price, she buys an expensive black wool coat at a shop in Oxford Street. She desperately wants to look as if she belongs, and the belted red jacket she purchased from a department store in Tangshan just before she left now seems woefully out of place: it is the wrong cloth, the wrong cut, the wrong colour. She can see that now, even though she had thought it was the height of fashion at the time.
When she collects May from school wearing her new coat, May stops and surveys her approvingly. “Nice coat,” she says. “Better than your old one,” she adds, slipping her hand into Lili’s. Lili feels a small flush of pride, as if she has passed some sort of test, even though May is only a child. At home she carefully folds the red coat and stows it in the bottom of her wardrobe; she knows she will never wear it, even after she returns to China. It strikes her that the coat marks a tiny shift in her persona: how many others have there been since coming to this country, and what will they add up to?
Over the next few weeks, Adrian works later in the evenings, several times phoning home and asking if she will put May to bed. It is as if Lili’s presence has suddenly freed him from the burden of fatherhood. Lili doesn’t mind; she is happy to be of use, though she finds herself wondering about his life outside the house. May seems pleased to have her there and Lili relishes being part of a family again, even if the family is not her own. She and May quickly settle into a pattern: homework, Chinese study, dinner, a few reruns of Friends and then bed. Sometimes they draw or play board games after dinner.
One night, May enlists Lili’s help in making a Halloween costume for a fancy dress disco at school. May is busy cutting cat shapes out of black paper, while Lili sews a costume out of an old sheet May has persuaded Adrian to donate.
“What’s the word for ‘ghost’ in Chinese?” May asks.
“Gui zi,” says Lili. May repeats the word out loud a few times, careful to copy Lili’s tone.
“I can’t decide whether I want to be a ghost or a devil,” she adds. “How do you say devil?”
“That is also gui. But this time we say mo gui. Like a ghost with evil power.”
May looks at her askance. “But devils and ghosts aren’t the same.”
“No. But in Chinese, we use the same word. In fact, we used to call foreigners gui zi. A long time ago.”
“Why?”
“Because when Western people first came to China, to us their skins look very pale. We think they are dead spirits who have come back to life. So we called them yang gui zi, which means ‘ghosts from across the ocean’ or actually, ‘foreign devil’.” Lili grins mischievously at May.
“So if I went to China, would I be a yang gui zi?”
“No, not you. You would be a hua qiao. An overseas Chinese.”
“Would Daddy be a yang gui zi?”
“Yes. But people do not use this word so often now. It is not so… polite.”
At once Lili regrets her frankness
: the word stems from a dark corner of China’s history and dishonours those it describes. But such things are beyond May’s comprehension.
“So what do they call foreigners now?”
“They call them wai guo ren. That is like: outsiders. Because to us, that’s what they are.”
“Do you feel like an outsider here?”
“Sometimes. But not with you.” Lili smiles reassuringly at May.
“We all feel like an outsider sometimes,” says May with a shrug. “Do you have Halloween in China?”
“No. But in summer we have Ghost Festival, when we honour the spirits of the dead.”
“Do you get sweets?”
“Not really. But we leave food for the ghosts.”
May frowns. “Why?”
“Well, during that time, we say ghosts are free to wander the earth. And perhaps they are hungry.”
May stops cutting. “You mean for real? People believe ghosts wander around and eat stuff?” She raises a sceptical eyebrow.
Lili shrugs. “Not everyone believes this.”
“Do you?” May pinpoints her with her gaze.
Lili feels her pulse quicken.
“I believe that sometimes, the spirits of dead people are here with us,” she says carefully.
“You mean like now?” May looks around the kitchen. “Here?”
“Maybe not now. But sometimes. I believe they are here to help us, to look after us.” Or perhaps we are here to look after them, she thinks.
“So you’re not afraid of ghosts?”
Lili’s mind flies to Wen and his easy smile. How could she ever be afraid of Wen?
“No,” she answers, her voice suddenly disappearing.
“What would you do if you saw one?”
Lili hesitates. If Wen came to her, she would ask him why he left. “I don’t know,” she says finally.
“I’m not afraid of ghosts either,” says May, returning to her colouring.