by Fiona Kidman
‘I can’t eat,’ the other woman said. She glanced round with evident distaste for her poor surroundings, a fretful child near the bench.
‘That boy needs sleep,’ Ming said to Hugo. ‘Put him down.’
He laid Wing Lee on a blanket roll near the fire, tucking the covering around him. As soon as the child touched its soft fabric his eyes snapped into sleep. A silence settled over them. Violet sat down, her hands folded awkwardly in front of her, watching Wing Lee.
‘Come into the garden,’ said Hugo abruptly, after a time in which nobody had spoken. ‘I’ll show you round the place.’
Ming didn’t look at them as they left the room. The atmosphere was alive with her reproach. Outside, a light wind had risen, so that the surface of the lake stirred.
‘I really should get going,’ the woman said, ‘it’ll be dark soon.’
‘I’ll get one of the boys to row back with you later.’ He nodded to two young men carrying sickles and rakes and spades, as they finished their day’s work in the garden. They were swarthy young men with handkerchiefs tied around their heads, wearing old mended clothes. They passed her with curious glances. One of them shrugged, and spat on the ground, but he could have just been clearing phlegm from the back of his throat. He pointed to the boat, saying something quick and sharp in Mandarin.
‘My sons,’ Hugo said. ‘Chun and Tao.’
‘Surely not. They’re too old.’
‘I adopted them. I’m their father. It’s not that difficult.’
‘Neither of them wanted to go back to China?’
‘Well.’ He hesitated, because this was something he had wondered about himself, but his sons had never told him, and he hadn’t liked to ask. ‘I think they’re people of China, but there’s no way back for them really. I wish they’d come here earlier because it hasn’t been easy for them at school. The younger one could have gone to university, but it’s too late now. His mother was disappointed, but I’m sure he’ll be persuaded to leave here. He doesn’t say much. And then we have one of our own, a late surprise, although I’m afraid Joe’s life will be difficult. A problem at birth. Ming feels it’s her fault, but it was a medical problem.’
‘You’ve got your hands full with the spirit of China.’
‘It’s no joke,’ he said sharply. ‘I wish I could have gone there myself. I believe I would have fitted in.’
‘Really?’
He gestured helplessly, unable to convey to her what his family meant to him.
‘I do see,’ she said, as she followed him into the vegetable patch. ‘You might think I wouldn’t, but I understand the way it draws you in, once you’ve started down that path towards Asia. It is so compelling.’
Thinking about the boy she had brought with her, he decided she would know, but like his sons and their secrets, she would be keeping that to herself. They stood among the cauliflower rows, Violet looking out over the water rather than at the garden. There wasn’t much for him to show her. He thought of her inside her clothes, as he had imagined her that summer when Magda was dying. Her presence in the bathroom, the perfume of her body when he lay down in the bath where she had been, the sight of her clothes hung out to dry on his clothesline, the glimpse of her breast as she leaned over the sickbed. She was not a child then, even if she was used to being treated like one. Remembering that summer gave him a ghostly glow, a shiver of recognition, the distance between what was right and what was not. She had been there and he had wanted her, even on the nights when they turned Magda’s rotting body together and comforted her as best they could. He thought the girl felt it too, the way their eyes met over the bed, or her hand brushed his. Magda had been a bird-like woman whose eyes were piercing in their directness, even more so in that last appalling illness. It’s all right, she had said to him one night when they were alone, take care of yourself. Violet will take care of herself, don’t grieve when she goes.
‘You played Schubert in the afternoons,’ he said. ‘And sometimes, Delius. I thought you might have carried on with your music.’
‘Well, I tried. I had a stint at the conservatorium in Versailles but I soon found I wasn’t good enough. All very romantic, those cobble-stoned alleyways and the cathedrals, and music pouring through every window, even the children playing in the streets making polished music. I mean, look where I’d come from. The nuns were very encouraging when I was a child, but it was different over there. I was just a girl from down under.’
‘Perhaps you didn’t practise enough.’
‘Oh, practise.’ She sounded weary. ‘I got sidetracked. There was so much jazz in the cafés at the time. And blues. I liked that stuff. Do you still play at all?’
‘Well, as you know, my hearing’s gone. It’s got worse.’ On what would I play, he might have added.
‘I remember what you told me once when I asked how you knew the piano was tuned.’ She spoke in a normal voice, as if refusing to acknowledge what he’d just said. ‘You said, tuning is constant motion. It’s knowing when to stop, you told me. I can see you lifting each hammer and putting it down on the next pin and settling it. And all the time you were striking the piano key with your other hand, pushing and pulling, pulling and striking. Then you’d stop and you’d know. And I said, how? Do you remember what you said?’
‘Well, it was just the moment to stop,’ he said, embarrassed.
‘You said that you stopped when you heard perfection, not a sound at all. You said it was like silence would be, if we could hear it. Only of course we can’t.’
‘What do you hear now?’ he asked quietly.
‘Chaos. A piano in need of tuning.’
‘I can’t help. This isn’t the way.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said, her eyes filling. She wiped her face with her sleeve, as if hoping he wouldn’t see. ‘If it doesn’t work out, I’ll find some work, do something.’
‘Have you worked before?’
‘Have I worked? Good God, yes, of course, what do you take me for? All over the place, all sorts of jobs. Lady’s companion, nanny, I worked in a flower shop for a while, I’ve even washed dishes in Soho.’
‘You?’
‘And in Paris, of course, when I was in school. The men are beautiful there, but they give you a terrible time when you work for them. Don’t look so shocked. I enjoyed it. One learns a thing or two in places like that. Then I got married.’
‘Oh yes. Your husband?’
‘Pleasant. What do you want to know? Is he rich? Above average, but not fantastically so. It’s not noblesse oblige, nothing like that. His parents’ farm. Country people. He has a brother and an uncle who work on the farm, more than enough men to do the work. My husband was a soldier before this war started, it was a career. My father would have approved. We met when he was on a weekend leave in Paris. We had marvellous times on his leaves. Our daughter was born six months after we got married. The wedding was in London — not his village as you’ll understand, in the circumstances — but our daughter was christened there wearing a lace gown that my husband’s great-great-grandmother had worn. It was yellow with age and I thought Caroline might get asthma from the dust in it, because it was so brittle, of course it couldn’t be washed. It was a relief when the war came. She’s staying with her grandparents now. It’s not that bad, she could have been sent to strangers. Enough? You need some shelter belts round here, don’t you, something to keep off the wind and frosts. I seem to remember the winters are very cold round here.’
He nodded. ‘We’re putting in a row of oaks.’
‘Oaks. You’re still English at heart, aren’t you?’ Violet said. ‘Some people never get over it. I’d have thought closer ground cover would have been better. You should grow tomatoes by the way.’
‘Too much trouble.’
‘People will want more of them, believe me,’ Violet observed. ‘The Europeans depend on them. The next best thing to an onion.’
He smiled at this. ‘Well, I have onions, as you’ll see. People have never had muc
h of a taste for tomatoes in this country. Except cowering among lettuce leaves, plastered in mayonnaise.’
‘Tell me, do they still make it with condensed milk here? My father tried canning tomatoes. It’s true, they were disgusting.’
Both her parents had died since she last saw him. This was something he already knew. His friendship with her father had collapsed after Violet’s defection to him, and then her disappearance, for which, it seemed Hugo was to blame. I should send the police after you, her father had written, this is a clear case of abduction. Don’t think you’ll get a penny out of me. You Englishmen are all the same. Not that Hugo thought her father was sane. He had seen the way he walked through the house where Violet grew up, holding his war-damaged head in both hands and shouting curses. As for Violet, there had been a letter or two, and then silence for years. Until this.
‘The food’s quite different in Europe,’ she was saying.
He sighed, bringing himself back to the present. ‘It must be quarter of a century since I was in Europe. Several lifetimes ago.’
‘Things’ll change here. You’ll see, Hugo, after the war, people will start wanting different things. You should be prepared.’ She took a tin of cigarettes out of her shoulder bag and offered him one. They lit up, his lungs filling with strong Egyptian tobacco smoke. In repose, her face looked naked with grief, lit by the flare of the match he used to light their cigarettes. The dark was settling around them, and he thought that he was making the whole thing worse by the moment, standing outside here with the woman, smoking and talking and gazing at the lake.
‘Hugo, I think I’m going to die,’ she said, leaning against him so that he had no option but to put his arm around her. She reminded him of flowers, even her name, of cool earth and violet light at evening. Like now. He dropped his arm, removing himself from her.
‘Was there nobody else who could look after Wing Lee?’ he asked sharply, hoping to move things along, to come to some resolution. Because he couldn’t promise her that the boy would be able to stay. He found himself thinking about the money on the table and tried to push these thoughts away. I’m human, he told himself and, in the next instant, that the amount she had left there would keep all of them, never mind the boy, for a year or so. He wondered how she had come by so much.
‘Your wife was making dinner,’ she said, straightening up. ‘D’you think it’ll be ready?’ Nearly two hours had passed since her arrival.
Hugo nodded as they turned away from the garden. ‘Just get it straight in your head,’ he said, ‘that if she lets him stay, he’ll become her child. Ming’s suffered a great deal, and I won’t let you play fast and loose with her. I want you to understand what it is you’re doing.’ Their backs were to the chilly lake; the house looked more inviting, crouched in the dark, a light burning inside. Violet walked steadily towards it, without answering, but by the way she had drawn into herself, he knew he had been heard.
In the kitchen, the ducks were cooked, their steam rising from a huge serving platter Ming had placed on the table, along with bowls of rice. She held her fingers to her lips as they came in. Both little boys were now asleep, head to head in front of the fire. It was impossible to tell what Ming was thinking. There was no sign of the money Violet had left on the table.
All the family, except the two sleeping children, seated themselves on planks running down each side of the table, supported by saw-horses. The guest, now she was used to her surroundings, seemed unfazed by their appearance.
‘All these boys,’ she said, without looking at the children by the fire.
Ming motioned for the family to stand back and wait while she served the woman a portion of the duck. Violet tried the food at once, because not to have eaten would have given offence. At once, her face lit up.
‘It’s very good,’ Violet said. ‘You’re a terrific cook, Ming.’
Ming nodded, knowing perfectly well that the food was irresistible, the duck so crisp on the outside, the flesh beneath meltingly tender and full of subtle flavour.
‘Perhaps you could tell me how you did it. A recipe, if you have one.’
‘She just makes it up as she goes along,’ Hugo said, thinking that Violet would know this, but wanting to humour both women.
All the same, Violet persuaded her to tell her what the sauce was made of, writing down the ingredients on a page torn from one of Tao’s old exercise notebooks. Once it was written, Hugo thought she might not look at it again; perhaps it would float away on the lake even as she was leaving. But she’d remember what she’d been told, in the way she could once remember a musical score, as some people remember whole poems, or mathematical equations.
Ming said something in rapid Mandarin to her eldest son, Chun, who also went by the name of Harry, and they both laughed.
‘What did she say?’ Hugo asked the son, because Ming was still laughing and wouldn’t tell him.
Chun hesitated, glancing at his mother. She nodded, allowing him to speak, her eyes suddenly cruel.
‘She says, in China, the duck would be especially tasty because they would have made him dance on a red-hot stove before he died to get his blood racing.’
‘I have to go,’ Violet said, agitated again. She pushed herself violently away from the table, causing everyone seated on the same plank to be pitched backwards. Outside, through the uncurtained window, a crescent moon was rising, a curved slice of light.
‘Tell her,’ said Ming, through her son, ‘that children are without price here. They are not for trade.’ She took the money Violet had given her earlier, and laid it on the table beside the unwashed plates.
The woman’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘I can’t take him back,’ she said.
The two little boys had thrown their arms around each other, nuzzling with tender blind-eyed butting as they shifted in their sleep.
‘The boy stays,’ Ming said, ‘but we do not buy.’
‘What then,’ asked Violet, ‘what am I to do about it?’ She glanced fleetingly at the children and turned away.
‘We’ll take some board and lodgings for him,’ said Hugo, asserting himself at last. ‘That’s all. That’s fair.’ He rolled fifty pounds off the roll of notes. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘That will be enough.’ He looked at Ming so sternly that for once she dropped her eyes. Turning to Violet, he said, ‘Chun will follow you with a flare.’
He expected her to make preparations for leaving, that at least she would say goodbye, bend over the sleeping child and touch his face, perhaps even wake him for a sleepy kiss.
Instead, she walked out of the house without a backward glance, beginning to run, sure-footed and fast, towards the edge of the water where the boat was pulled up on the sand. She shoved it out with one strong heave and jumped in. He followed her, his heart pounding and old. Already she was pushing the boat into the stream.
‘I’ll send you a present,’ she said, ‘after the war is over.’
‘Bring yourself back,’ he said, ‘that’ll be present enough.’
‘Who knows?’ Her oars dipped in the water. Chun, lighting a brand of brush and holding it aloft and flaming in one hand, pulled his boat clear of the shore with his free hand.
‘Tell him not to come,’ she called.
But Chun was following, his strokes longer and stronger than hers, so that he pulled alongside her and rowed with her. By the light of the brand, now wedged in front of Chun’s boat, and the thin moonlight, he saw how her face grimaced with pain, arms stretched to the oars. He thought that her brief presence that night would resonate through the years ahead.
‘Tomatoes, Hugo,’ she called. ‘Be sure to grow tomatoes.’ He strained his ears for a long time until he could no longer hear the stroke of the oars, and then everything was silent, as it was before she came.
PART THREE
THE MOTHERS
1963
JESSIE’S MOTHER
The decision to leave home the day she turned eighteen was not one that Jessie Sandle could explain easily t
o herself, then or later. She knew that her mother would explain it away to people as her sensitivity, a perfectionist’s fear of failure in her university examinations. But that was too easy an answer; Jessie had passed her first half year of law without difficulty.
The head of the china section in the department store where she worked part-time in the late afternoons, and during the university holidays, would say it was because she had broken a valuable piece of china that afternoon. It was a very good piece of Royal Winton no less, so hard to come by, with the length of time it took for things to be shipped from England, and she wanted to get out of paying for it. The woman, whose name was Miss Early, told the women on the jewellery counter that Jessie Sandle was an awkward girl, not suited for the work, and a trifle above herself, which was rich in a place like this that provided a quality experience. For a start, she looked a fright, too bony and angular by far, and her hair all over the place, and her mother was a bit of a worry. You know, with those children who are such a handful in the restaurant. Miss Early was referring to the tearoom, where old women sat at tables covered with heavy white cloths and ate tiny bite-sized cucumber sandwiches made with thinly sliced brown bread, and lifted freshly baked cakes from three-tiered silver stands.
Miss Early spoke of Jessie’s half-brother and two stepsisters as Mrs Pawson’s children, because Jessie had a stepfather and didn’t share the same surname as her mother and those objectionable children. Although, Miss Early had a long memory, short on specifics, the children were at school now. The days had gone when they sat and sucked orange sherbet through their straws and blew fizzy dust back over the nearest tearoom patron, or crawled around under the tables between their feet. Now their mother sat on her own in the tearoom and gazed into space, as if hoping she might conjure up an image of something or someone she barely remembered.
What did Mrs Pawson think about? She read a great many books and often forgot to return them to the library. She’d loved books all her life, she told Jessie, and had said more than once, wistfully, that a girl in her class at school had finished up writing books. She was quite famous. Perhaps if she, Irene, had been cleverer or more forward, she might have got closer to this girl but she had her own best friend already, and it was hard to break into friendships like that. She was such a spirited person, if only she had been like her. What happened to her? Jessie asked. Oh, her mother would stretch and sigh at this point. She went to China and got caught up in the war and then she died.