Half the World Away

by Cath Staincliffe

  Underfoot there is a mishmash of patterned concrete, block paving, textured tiles, slabs and bricks, much of it cracked and uneven. There are sections with raised dots or lines that are less comfortable to walk on. I think these must be for people with visual problems, like at home.

  At the junction, the road we meet is six lanes wide, three in each direction, with a smaller cycle lane by the pavement. There are traffic lights and a crowd gathers, waiting to cross. The lights opposite begin to count down 10, 9, 8 . . . People edge and jostle. Then the lights change to green for us and we begin to walk, but there’s a blur of movement, loud toots to my left. A stream of cars and scooters and bicycles are riding at us. Tom grabs my arm and pulls me with him. ‘They can turn right on red,’ he says. We almost collide with a scooter that jinks past us.

  As we reach the other side, traffic from the opposite direction is turning right and we have to wait for a gap and run, dodging the scooters and bikes that plait in and out of pedestrians.

  On the corner there is a wide plaza and a shopping mall. Outside there’s a giant screen playing something. I’m too busy concentrating on not getting run over to look at it for long. Everywhere skyscrapers thrust up, as tall as the ones behind the hotel. We continue threading our way through the crowd until we reach the next block and take a turn to the left.

  Along this street there are places to eat, a spicy smell in the air, like star anise, and I catch a faint whiff of sewage as we walk. The small shops have apartments above, clothes hanging on balconies. In some places there are plastic stools and tables out on the pavement and people eating. I see noodles on one table and at another I spot a bowl of rice. Does Lori come here, eat here? Spiciness is a bit of a euphemism. We’re talking chilli at industrial concentrations.

  We stop at a pedestrian crossing, black and white stripes. A boy, about Isaac’s age, stares at us. ‘Hello,’ he says.

  ‘Hello,’ I reply. His mother smiles and pats his hand.

  ‘Hello, hello,’ he repeats, his face alight with glee.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. Tom echoes me and sketches a bow. The woman laughs and the boy skips on the spot. Then a gap opens in the traffic and we cross, among the scooters that glide silently around us. They must be electric.

  The trees along the edge of the pavement hang low and we have to stoop to go past the branches. A woman, her face wrinkled like a walnut, sells insoles for shoes, cigarette lighters and hairbands. There is a man on a motorized tricycle, the back piled high with greens.

  My body is still travelling, a tremoring in my innards, in the marrow of my bones, droning in my ears. The ground ripples as I walk.

  Another crossing, and then we reach the river. There’s a promenade with a stone balustrade. Trees provide a canopy of shade – willows I know from home but the others I cannot name.

  Construction cranes straddle the skyline and below, far below, the birds that gave them their name glide across the river, dive for fish. The Jinjiang river is a milky green and cuts between pale stone walls. The white cranes gather along the edges, fly up and perch on the parapet, paddle in the weeds. They are smaller, prettier than the herons at home, and each has a few white feathers sprouting from the back of its head, like a scraggly ponytail. Tom says they’re storks, then looks them up on his phone and tells me they’re little egrets.

  My neck aches and I’ve a dull, thudding pain in my temples. My eyes feel glassy.

  A pagoda frames the entrance to the park, richly carved and coloured. At ground level there is a deep wooden cross-bar that we have to step over and another at the far side. Flower displays greet us. Paths split off among bamboo groves. We follow one round and every so often smaller paths lead to different sections; we glimpse teahouses and a waterfall, an area of sculptures made of bamboo.

  It’s still busy in the park but the cacophony of the traffic is muted and the shade from the trees makes the atmosphere more pleasant. In an open area, a calligrapher draws characters in water on the ground with a brush as tall as he is. A ring of children around him try their hand. The characters are ephemeral, drying in minutes. Gone like the breath of a breeze in the trees.

  I think of Lori’s post: Call me Bird’s Net Jasmine.

  The bamboo groves have been landscaped with rocks and ground-cover plants and small labels identify each variety. The largest plants have canes as thick as lampposts. ‘Graffiti,’ Tom says, pointing out where past visitors have scratched their names on them. I spy a sign that admonishes, ‘No Scribbling’. At the edge of the path a woman has a stall and is drawing with spun sugar. The filigree signs of the zodiac that Lori mentioned. The boys worked ours out back in January when the school had a Chinese New Year celebration. The fact that Lori was in China and that 2014 was the year of the horse, Lori’s sign, made it all the more exciting for them. Finn was delighted to be under the sign of the dog (the same as me). Isaac was born in the year of the rat and Nick the monkey.

  People gawk at us and a couple say, ‘Hello, where are you from?’

  ‘England,’ Tom says.

  ‘Ah! First time in China?’

  ‘Yes.’

  In China, everyone is into everyone else’s business – there doesn’t seem to be any notion of privacy. People stare and interrupt and join in and interfere all the time.

  ‘Our daughter,’ I say, ‘she is here.’

  ‘University?’

  ‘Teaching English.’

  We haven’t got the leaflets yet or I would show them. Missing – please, have you seen her? Edward at Missing Overseas has arranged for them to be printed here in English and Chinese and delivered to our hotel. I can imagine how these expressions of welcome, the interest in us, would curdle in the light of them.

  I need to pee. Luckily there are plenty of public loos, unlike at home. But here the stink is overpowering. The toilets are the squat type, in cubicles. Do I face forwards or backwards? I can’t tell. Lori never blogged about toilet etiquette. I balance on the white-tiled footplates undo my drawstring and crouch, pulling my trousers away from my ankles, gagging at the smell of old piss. There’s no toilet paper. I read about this but forgot to bring tissues or hand wipes out with me. I wriggle my clothes back up and press the foot pedal for the flush. There is a cold tap near the entrance – I rinse my hands and flap them dry.

  In the next clearing there’s a teahouse, a large wooden pagoda with seating in front, plastic chairs and square tables. Most are occupied. People are playing mah-jong or cards, eating snacks. Large vacuum flasks are on or beside the tables – perhaps they hold tea or hot water. The noise is dense, percussive, the chatter, and the clatter of tiles. A waiter walks among the patrons clicking metal tongs together.

  ‘We’d better ring the consulate when we get back,’ Tom says, ‘tell the guy we’ve arrived.’

  ‘I wish we’d insisted on meeting this afternoon,’ I say, ‘to get things moving.’ But we had been persuaded that it would be wiser to wait until the day after our long journey.

  We take a small path that leads onto a humpback bridge where there is a gazebo above a fish pond.

  ‘Stop a minute?’ I say.

  I lean on the bamboo bench there, burnished smooth with wear, and peer down. The water is dark, reflecting the delicate tracery of leaves in the canes high above. Large koi, deep orange, some golden, weave and turn. Umbrella plants and ferns, the sort of things we’d keep as houseplants, ring the shore.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Tom says.

  ‘Wiped out – like I’m still on the plane.’

  He grunts agreement, gets out a cigarette. I drink some water.

  Fatigue ripples through me and my legs soften. ‘Head back?’ I say.

  As we follow the path round the outside of the park to the gate, music starts to play though some PA system in the trees, a flute, I think, cool notes that tremble and dip, then climb.

  The calligrapher is there still with his brush, the characters on the ground ghosts beneath our feet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREEr />
  Retracing our steps, we pick our way among the crowds along the side street, my eyes roaming over all the faces, the dark heads of hair. I ignore the stares I get in return, the expressions of interest and open-mouthed curiosity.

  That’s her! My stomach falls. ‘Lori!’ I grasp Tom’s arm, clutching tight. Yell her name – ‘Lori! Lori!’ Ahead of us, walking away.

  I let go of him and chase after her, knocking into people, running out into the road when the throng is too busy to get through, my bag bumping against my hip, the dusty air dry in my mouth.

  ‘Lori! Lori!’

  I reach the corner where a woman sits, selling orange fruits laid out on a blanket. Panting, I search frantically, right then left, eyes running over heads and faces. Tom is at my side.

  ‘It was her!’ I say. My heart is hammering in my chest. ‘I can’t see her now.’ I bend forward, brace my hands on my knees, a stitch stabbing my side.

  ‘Was it?’ he says. ‘Are you sure?’

  I only saw her for a moment, her hair, the back of her head, the right height . . .

  ‘Jo, are you sure?’

  How to answer him? That second, that first glimpse, I was convinced. Every cell in my body sang with recognition. I knew. But now? A few yards down the street a woman throws a bowl of dishwater out onto the pavement. I watch the water flow across the stone into the gutter and feel my certainty drain away.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I straighten up, push my hands into the small of my back, then look up past the trees and the tangle of overhead wires where the cloud still blankets the sky.

  The world keeps turning.

  A couple, young and beautiful, arms wrapped about each other, walk past. An elderly woman with a baby in a buggy stops to buy fruit.

  My throat aches, so dry it feels as if there are blades in it. I open my bag and get out the water.

  ‘Hello, hello.’ Two little girls with, I think, their grandmothers. Tears burn my eyes.

  ‘Hello,’ Tom says.

  They giggle and one of the women says, ‘English?’

  I turn away, teeth gritted, trying to breathe through my nose.

  ‘Bye-bye,’ Tom says. ‘Bye-bye.’ He touches my elbow, edges us away and back onto our route to the hotel.

  Was it Lori? Already the image I have is fading, like a dream, the details evaporating, melting away. Wouldn’t she have heard me when I shouted? There is a film, Don’t Look Now, with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in it. The couple have lost their child. She is dead and they are in Venice and keep glimpsing her, always in the distance, elusive. A bright shock of colour in her red coat.

  We eat in the hotel restaurant, on the top floor with views over the city. The menu includes Asian and European dishes. Tom has steak and chips; I choose pork with noodles. It’s all I can do to stay awake.

  Back in my room, I call Nick. The boys are still at school. I tell him the flight was OK, the hotel fine. I don’t mention my chasing after an apparition. ‘I’m going to bed soon. Give my love to the boys. I’ll try you tomorrow after we’ve had the meetings.’

  It’s dark now. The building opposite is illuminated; changing neon colours cascade in lines down the edges, reminding me of the fairy lights we had on sequence. Lori loved the flashing but I always changed it to a steady glow.

  I pour some water but it’s tepid and barely touches my thirst. In bed, the mattress is hard, unyielding, and my hips ache. I still feel the thrum of motion, and the drone of the plane engine echoes in my head, and when I sleep, I dream of flying, beating my arms to rise with the egrets up and above the cloud, into the sun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Peter Dunne, the consul, is balding and tanned, with short silver hair and a close-clipped beard. He wears a white chambray shirt, open at the collar, and black trousers. Wire-rimmed glasses. Some citrus type of cologne. His greeting is warm and sympathetic as he shakes hands and checks that everything is OK with our accommodation.

  We meet in a private lounge on the ground floor of the hotel. He orders tea, asking if we want black or green. We choose green. It is grassy and refreshing.

  He checks his watch and explains we’re expected at the police station in an hour.

  ‘There are some things we can sort out now before we meet the police,’ Peter Dunne says. ‘You’ve arranged to have posters and leaflets printed?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tom says. ‘We’ve draft copies here.’ He pats ‘the file’, the growing sheaf of papers related to Lori’s disappearance. ‘Just need to email the document to the printer and they’ll do them for us overnight.’

  ‘May I see?’ Peter Dunne says.

  Tom finds a copy and Peter Dunne reads it through. It’s similar to the text on the Missing Overseas website, but also gives a number for the PSB, the Chinese police, that Edward at Missing Overseas found for us.

  ‘Good,’ Peter Dunne says. ‘And you’ve got an interpreter for yourselves?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tom says. ‘Missing Overseas have found someone for us. We’re meeting him this afternoon.’

  ‘I’ve brought you a city map,’ Peter Dunne says. ‘It’s in English as well as Mandarin – there are useful numbers and so forth on the back.’ He unfolds it and shows us the three ring roads. Points to where we are, near the second.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘We want to talk to Lori’s friends. Dawn’s getting people together for us this evening.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Peter Dunne says. ‘My understanding is that the police have already spoken to them and we should hear about that in the meeting. I would like to stress that the police will be in charge of the investigation and they will determine the direction of enquiries. Anything you feel might be relevant, please tell me and I’ll pass it on to the investigator.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Also we want to visit Lori’s flat.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll explain that to the PSB.’

  ‘We’ve heard nothing from them in all this time,’ Tom says, ‘apart from the fact that they checked her apartment—’

  ‘Hopefully anything further they do know will be made clear,’ Peter Dunne says. ‘Had there been any breakthroughs, I can assure you we would have heard and you would have been informed. If you will address any concerns, queries and so on through me, we can ensure things go as smoothly as possible and that nothing gets lost in translation, as it were.’ His voice is light, his manner gracious, but there is warning in what he is saying. ‘The authorities are understandably cautious in cases like this. Imagine if the situation was reversed and a Chinese family came to the UK looking for their daughter. We would expect them to understand that the police are the investigating authority and have the resources, experience and, most importantly, the legal powers to undertake a comprehensive inquiry. And for the family to be guided by them as to campaigning activities.’

  He adjusts his glasses, then tugs at his shirt cuffs. ‘The authorities are committed to resolving the situation. Chengdu is a growing city, a hub of economic development, eager to welcome overseas partnerships, foreign visitors and workers. They bend over backwards to extend hospitality to the international community so they’re understandably concerned that Lorelei is missing.’

  ‘What publicity has there been here?’ Tom says.

  Peter Dunne twists his cup to and fro. ‘The consulate has issued an appeal for information.’

  ‘Where?’ Tom says.

  ‘On our website, on the Chamber of Commerce site and on English-speaking networking sites.’

  ‘How do people know it’s there? They have to visit these sites?’ Tom says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can’t we get it on television – in the papers?’ Tom says.

  ‘I hope so. That’s one of the matters we’ll discuss today,’ Peter Dunne says. ‘It’s a sensitive time. The anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre is coming up – twenty-five years.’

  My first encounter with Tom as I drummed up petition signatures and publicized our vigil. His prediction: ‘When the Chinese
government have had enough, they’ll clear the lot of them out. Water cannon or whatever. None of this will make a bit of difference. Put money on it – the protest is quashed, the Commies carry on and you have a drink with me.’

  ‘You want me to bet on people’s lives? Talk about shallow.’

  Then the horror unfolding. The tank man with his shopping bag. The ruthless slaughter.

  Our first date.

  ‘So you’re saying we’re not free agents?’ Tom’s got his knees crossed and swings his foot. It reminds me of a cat waving its tail, a sign of mounting aggression.

  ‘I’d be lying if I told you otherwise,’ Peter Dunne says. ‘I’m a diplomat, and that’s what I’m here for, to make communication, co-operation, work as well as possible. I promise I’ll do everything I can to get the action we want from the PSB and the media.’

  His phone beeps and he answers, speaks briefly in Chinese, then tells us the car is ready.

  The air is almost solid, a thick, steamy heat, as we step outside and walk to where the car waits. The haze remains thick over everything. Inside, the big, black SUV is comfortable and pleasantly cool.

  Peter Dunne sits up front with the driver and we are in the back. The journey is slow, erratic. Short bursts of speed are curtailed by sudden braking and long waits until we lurch forward again. A stop-go, stop-go, stop rhythm. The traffic is bumper-to-bumper and scooters and bikes weave in and out. There are lots of taxis, green saloons. We draw up beside one and I can see, painted on the bonnet, a picture of a panda clutching bamboo. The cab driver is shaving. We race away and then we’re flung forward when our driver hits the brakes to avoid a car cutting in from the left. A chorus of horns screams. My hands are gripped in my lap, my stomach tense – I’m not a great back-seat passenger at the best of times. An emergency siren starts up, a lazy chime that rises and falls as though someone had slowed down a British version to 33 revs per minute and channelled it through an ice-cream van.