by Betsy Tobin
Lili sleeps the sleep of the dead on Angie’s sofa, waking only when Angie rouses her late the next morning with a steaming cup of black tea.
“Oh,” says Lili, sitting up. “I am sorry. I sleep too long.”
“You needed it,” says Angie. “But we should probably get going. I’m worried about Wen.”
“Yes, of course,” says Lili, flushing with embarrassment. She takes a sip of tea: it is strong and hot and her stomach nearly revolts, but she forces herself to drink some anyway.
“I just need to make a call before we go,” says Angie.
Lili nods and rises, carrying the tea into the bathroom. Once inside, she hears snatches of conversation through the door. She cannot make out the words, but the tone of Angie’s voice is urgent and slightly pleading. When Lili finally emerges, Angie is off the phone.
“Ready?” she asks. Lili nods.
When they arrive at the ward, Wen is sitting up in bed, and a nurse is just removing the cannula from his hand. His face lights up when he sees them. They wait patiently to one side while the nurse finishes.
“That’s it for now,” she says. “But I’ll be back in two minutes to change that dressing, so don’t go away.” The nurse smiles at them and picks up her tray, hurrying out of the room.
Once she is gone, Lili comes forward eagerly to Wen’s bedside.
“Are you all right?” she asks in Mandarin.
“Lili! How did you get here so quickly?”
“I came last night. Before I knew.”
Wen frowns slightly. “Why?”
“Jin told me you’d escaped. But I wanted to see for myself.”
“It’s good you’ve come,” he says.
He reaches for her hand and gives it a squeeze. It is a tiny gesture, but Lili feels as if it contains all of their shared history. Wen releases her hand then and his eyes drift to Angie.
“Are you okay?” she asks quietly.
Wen nods. Lili sees a look pass between them, cannot help but feel a small pang of longing.
“I called Ray,” Angie says.
“The police come,” he replies. “This morning. Another police will come later. From Liverpool.”
Angie nods. “Don’t worry,” she says. “Ray will sort it.”
Wen turns back to Lili, forcing a smile. “I have to get out of here,” he says in Mandarin. “The food will kill me.”
Lili laughs. Just then the nurse returns, carrying a tray laden with equipment.
“Right. I’m afraid I’ll have to borrow Mr. Wen for a few minutes. I need to change his dressing. There’s a waiting area in the corridor.”
They find some chairs in the hallway just outside the ward. Angie sits down with a sigh, picking up a magazine. After another minute, they hear the lift open and a heavy-set man in his late forties emerges. Something about him looks vaguely familiar. Lili watches as he pauses and scans the corridor. The man wears a faded black leather jacket and brown corduroy trousers. His jaw is broad and square, and his thick brown hair, greying at the temples, is combed straight back. At once Angie rises to her feet and crosses over to him.
“Thanks for coming down.”
“Family,” he replies with a shrug and a lift of his eyebrow.
Angie turns to Lili. “Lili, this is my brother Ray. This is Wen’s sister, Lili.”
Ray nods briefly at Lili, then turns back to Angie.
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s okay. The nurse is changing his dressing. But the police were already here once this morning. And someone else from the Liverpool squad is due later.”
Ray raises an eyebrow. “Any idea when?”
“No.” Angie shakes her head. Ray sighs and sits down next to her.
“Why don’t I get some coffee?” she asks, rising to her feet.
“Coffee would be good,” says Ray. He and Lili watch as Angie disappears down the hallway. Ray picks up an old newspaper and opens it to the sports page, ignoring her. After a few minutes, the lift opens and a burly man wearing an ill-fitting suit emerges. Lili watches as he stops a nurse, and her heart starts to race when the nurse points in their direction. The man nods and heads towards them, just as Ray raises his eyes from the newspaper. At once he jumps to his feet and moves towards the man in the suit. The latter laughs and shakes his head.
“Lawrence,” says Ray.
“Raymond Wright. What a surprise.”
The two men shake hands. Lili sees the man cast his eyes round, taking in her presence.
“Here on business?” asks Ray.
“Afraid so.” The man cranes his neck towards the ward where Wen is, then turns back to Ray. “You?”
“Just visiting.”
The man raises an eyebrow and gestures towards Wen’s bed. “Friend of yours?”
“You could say that.”
“You’re keeping odd company these days.”
Ray smiles and spreads his hands. “That’s retirement. I like to mix with all sorts.”
“You always did.”
The two men regard each other silently. Ray steps forward and lowers his voice.
“I don’t suppose… you’d consider backing off this one, Larry?”
Lili sees the man raise an eyebrow.
“Just doing my job, Ray.”
“The thing is… this guy’s not who you think he is. In fact, he’s nothing but a ghost.”
“A ghost,” repeats the man.
“You know the type: here one minute, gone the next.”
The man stares at Ray for a long moment. Lili sees his left eye twitch slightly.
“I know the type,” he says eventually.
“Elusive,” says Ray, “But harmless. He’s not mixed up in anything. Just an honest bloke trying to make his way.” The man frowns. “And you can vouch for that?”
“Absolutely.”
The man sighs and scratches his head. Lili’s heart beats so hard she is certain both men will hear it.
“Anyway,” says Ray looking around. “I’m pretty sure you missed him. Must’ve been when you stopped for coffee.” The man in the suit nods his head. “I am a bit peckish,” he says slowly. “Skipped breakfast.”
“The most important meal of the day,” says Ray.
“How long?”
“Ten minutes?”
“Make it five,” says the man.
Lili sees him cast a quick glance in the direction of Wen’s bed, then turn and walk down the corridor towards the lift. She looks over at Ray. He does not take his eyes off the other man until the latter disappears from sight, then he turns to her.
“Time to go,” he says briskly.
They enter the room just as the nurse is opening the curtains around Wen’s bed.
“There you are,” she says, smiling. “I’m through with him for the time being.”
Ray nods politely to her and steps forward, bending down close to Wen’s bed, as she leaves the ward.
“I hope you can walk,” he says.
November 2004
The next morning, Wen shows Lili the work he has done in Angie’s garden. As he walks around, he wonders how he could have ever left. The garden makes him feel oddly content. It is his oasis, his place of refuge from the outside world. For he is suddenly tired of migration: he would like to plant himself somewhere for good. This is the thought that flashed through his mind when he lay bleeding in the car park at the train station.
He pauses in front of Miriam’s roses. They stand bravely in a line against the wall, their spindly stems at odd angles. Though it is late November, the weather has turned slightly warmer in the last few days, and he sees with pride that one of the stalks has sprouted a tiny bright green leaf, in open defiance of the coming winter.
“Rose,” he says in English to Lili.
“Mei gui,” she murmurs, nodding.
“One day I hope they will cover the entire wall,” he adds, waving his hands exuberantly.
He feels a flash of pain in his belly from the wound, and winces s
lightly.
“You should rest,” says Lili.
She helps him back inside and settles him on the sofa. They are alone today, as Angie has gone back to work. Lili makes two cups of tea and carries them into the sitting room, sitting down next to him with a sigh.
“What will you do now?” she asks.
“Stay here. Live well. Honour their memory.”
“With Angie?”
“Yes,” he says. Angie is part of his life now, part of his equation.
“You are not bound here, Wen. Not to this country. Nor to these people.”
Wen tilts his head all the way back, staring up at the ceiling.
“Sometimes,” he says slowly, “a place chooses a person. Rather than the other way round.”
“Are you sure?”
He nods.
“Perhaps you never intended to return,” she murmurs.
Once again he places his hand over hers and gives it a small squeeze.
“What of you? Will you go back home?” he asks. Lili’s eyes drift. “I will stay in London,” she says uncertainly. “for now.”
“London is good for you? You’re happy there?”
Lili smiles weakly. “London is OK.”
Wen returns her smile, but he can sense that she is withholding something from him. The realisation is a sad one, for she has never done so in the past. But he understands that England has altered her, just as it has him. And while they have both ended up here, their lives no longer run in tandem.
November 2004
Two days later, Lili lets herself quietly into Adrian’s house. She had hoped to find the house empty, as she needs to realign herself. But as soon as she steps into the hallway, she sees the tell-tale signs of occupancy: May’s schoolbag, shoes and sweatshirt lie in a heap beside the front door, and Adrian’s leather satchel sits open on the table, a jumbled stack of papers stuffed inside. Lili looks down at the set of keys in her hand, feeling once again like an intruder. Should she run?
She stands frozen in the hallway, her eyes drawn to the framed photograph on the table. Sian stares at her intently, the infant May perched in her arms, as if there is something she needs to convey from the other side of death. Lili wishes that the spirit of this unfortunate woman could somehow guide her.
Further down the hall, May’s bedroom door is closed, but behind it Lili can hear a quiet murmuring. She strains to listen, thinking that perhaps May has a friend to play. But then she realises that the voice behind the door is alone. May is speaking to herself, straddling two worlds, just as she has always done. The voice ceases after a moment, and Lili hears a shuffling. In the next instant, the bedroom door opens and May stops short, startled. She clutches a stuffed rabbit in each hand.
“You’re back.”
“Yes.”
May looks down at the two rabbits. Their soft heads lollop forward, as if she has just throttled the life from them.
“We thought you’d gone.”
“No.”
“Are you back for good? I mean, to live? In your room?”
Lili hesitates, unwilling to lie. “I don’t know.”
May stares at her, her child’s mind turning over Lili’s words.
“If you wanted, we could paint it,” she says tentatively.
“Paint what?”
“Your room. It was Adrian who wanted it white. But we could paint it purple. Purple is your favourite colour, isn’t it?” May’s voice is full of hope.
Lili takes a deep breath. For an instant, she imagines the baby safely cocooned inside warm purple walls, its breath milky and sweet.
“Purple is good,” she says.
“Adrian wouldn’t mind. Not if you were staying.”
May takes a few steps forward, stopping just in front of her. She transfers both rabbits to one hand, and slips her free hand into Lili’s, her small fingers closing tightly.
“Your hand is freezing,” she says then.
“Outside is very cold.”
“Do you want some cocoa?”
Lili looks down at May, unable to answer even this simple question. May searches her face expectantly.
“I can make it for you,” May says earnestly. “I just learned how.”
Without waiting for an answer, she turns and walks towards the kitchen, tugging Lili gently in her wake.
“I could teach you if you like,” she adds over her shoulder.
Lili trails silently after May, the words washing over her.
Yes, she thinks. There is so much she needs to learn.
April 2005
Wen pauses to remove his shirt in the late morning sun. It is the first warm day of spring. A breeze stirs the branches overhead, and with it comes the salt off the ocean. High tide, he thinks absently, picking up the spade. Over the past few months, he has internalised the rhythms of the sea. The sea is a part of him now.
The past several weeks have been rainy, but this morning he and Angie woke to a brilliant cobalt sky. When he opened the door to the garden, he was hit by the pungent smell of new growth. The compost heap he started last summer is already rich and dark, seething with tiny life. After breakfast, he roots around in the old shed for a plastic sack and fills it with fresh compost, hoisting the heavy sack to the front of the garden. For roses need feeding, he muses, dropping to his knees. Just as we do.
He kneels in the moist earth and spreads the peaty matter evenly across the flower bed. Miraculously, Miriam’s roses have survived the winter, weathering several bad frosts and a battery of storms in the early weeks of the new year. Now they look taller and heartier, and have sprouted a profusion of small green leaves. They no longer seem out of place against his garden wall. He peers at one and sees that it has formed a tightly furled, lime-green bud. He smiles. With a bit of luck and trial and error, he will find the one that suits.
NOTES ON THE TEXT
On the night of February 5th, 2004, twenty-one illegal Chinese migrant workers drowned in a tragic incident off the coast of Morecambe Bay. A further two went missing, though their bodies were never recovered. Some weeks later, at a memorial service for the deceased, a member of the local community posited the hope of a better outcome for those who had not been found: perhaps one or both had somehow emerged safely from the freezing waters that night, however unlikely this seemed. Crimson China picks up that thread of hope and spins it into something more tangible, though sadly it remains a work of fiction: the character Wen is entirely my own creation, and bears no similarity to persons living or dead.
The background to the novel is based largely in fact, but there are a few knowing errors: the cockling incident occurred on a Thursday, not a Sunday, as my story suggests; the one-child policy in China was not introduced until 1978, two years after Wen and Lili’s birth; and the vast majority of illegal Chinese workers in Britain come from the south-eastern province of Fujian, rather than from Hebei, as Wen does. The use of Wen’s sister as collateral for a loan by snakeheads is an unorthodox, albeit plausible, scenario – but it is not common practice. If there are other inaccuracies, then I apologise.
When I began this book three years ago, one of my objectives was to write about one of the great forgotten tragedies of modern history: the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, in which more than a quarter of a million people perished. But during the course of writing, I was overtaken by events: in the summer of 2008, another terrible earthquake struck China, this time in the south-west province of Szechuan; and in January of this year, a catastrophe on a similar scale occurred in Haiti. Let Tangshan be remembered alongside both of these.
The experience of illegal Chinese living and working in the UK is indeed fraught with hardship: if anything, the conditions they endure are far worse than anything I portray in this book. The Morecambe Bay tragedy resulted in even greater suffering for the victims’ families in China, as the latter were forced to carry on repaying their debts to the snakeheads without the benefit of foreign wages. In 2004, the Morecambe Victims Fund was established to help the f
amilies of the victims, and thus far it has raised more than £400,000, nearly enough to clear the half-a-million pound debts outstanding.
In the wake of the tragedy, the UK government instigated the Gangmaster’s Licensing Act to regulate those agencies that supply labour to the agricultural and shellfish industries. It aims to reduce the ruthless exploitation of casual workers by requiring employment agencies to carry a licence, but its critics argue that it only serves to drive illegal immigrants and asylum seekers further underground, putting them at even greater risk.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Huge thanks to all those whose editorial comments helped to shape this book: Margaret Glover, Andy Carl, Clive Brill and Flora Drew (who, together with the vital help of her newborn twins, gamely agreed to vet the Chinese content). Xie xie ni! Big thanks as well to Hsiao-Hung Pai for enthusiastically sharing her hard-earned knowledge on the conditions of illegal Chinese working in Britain; to Bill Grant for his expertise on horticultural history; and to Jane McDonagh for legal advice.
As always, I am indebted to the fabulous gang at Short Books, whose matchless enthusiasm, unerring judgement and sheer bravado continue to prove that small is by no means inferior: Rebecca Nicolson, Aurea Carpenter, Vanessa Webb and Catherine Gibbs.
Huge thanks as well to my extremely loyal and long-serving agents: Felicity Rubinstein and Sarah Lutyens and their team in London, and Kim Witherspoon and David Forrer at Inkwell in New York. If you have not yet patronised the inspired bookshop run by Lutyens & Rubinstein in Notting Hill, then you are missing out on one of the great pleasures of literary London.
And for putting up with my near-constant state of distraction, big hugs to all the gang at home: Peter, Theo, Cody, Maddy and Megan.
A CONVERSATION WITH BETSY TOBIN
What prompted you to write Crimson China?
I was haunted by the tragedy at Morecambe Bay. I followed the aftermath and kept a file of clippings before I eventually embarked upon the novel in 2007, some three years after the disaster. For me it had a particular poignancy: the idea that you could journey to a strange land and perish without any lasting imprint of your presence seemed unimaginably sad. As a writer I’ve always been drawn to the notion of identity and culture, and the extent to which we locate ourselves in a particular place and time: what happens to our sense of identity when we are displaced, and what impact does rootlessness have on who we suppose because I left my own country twenty years ago, and I never experienced anything like the extreme isolation of the illegal Chinese community in Britain, who really do operate in a parallel world here. In the words of the character Jin, they are like shadows, and when a shadow disappears, nothing remains. In writing this book, I wanted to create a lasting monument to those who died: to carve them into our collective memory so they would not be forgotten. But I also wanted to conjure a tale of hope, rather than despair.