My Favourite Wife (13 page)

‘Ah,’ she said, shaking the old man’s hand. She didn’t seem so awkward this time. ‘You take care of your father. Very good.’

The old man shot her a wicked grin. ‘Him take care of me? That’ll be the day, love,’ he said.

‘And these are my children!’ JinJin said, indicating the boys and girls standing self-consciously behind her, struggling to keep up their good mood.

‘You have a lot of children,’ the old man said.

‘From when I was a teacher!’ JinJin said. She was hot and happy. Bill had never seen anyone so happy. ‘I bring them here once a month.’ She searched for the correct idiom. ‘We stay in touch.’

Bill was taken aback. ‘You were a teacher?’

‘Number 251 Middle School, Shanghai,’ she said, as if he might want to check up. She ruffled the hair of a large boy standing near her. The boy blushed furiously. The kid had a crush on her, Bill
saw. A crush that would probably last a lifetime. But he guessed that they were all in love with her. Why wouldn’t they be? A teacher who looked like that. And who took you roller-skating.

‘Well,’ she said, rolling backwards from the barrier. ‘We must press on.’

‘Yes,’ Bill said. ‘You press on. Have fun.’

She nodded politely at the old man as she rolled away. ‘Nice to make your acquaintance, sir,’ she said.

Nobody in the world ever really spoke English the way she did. It should have been obvious to Bill that she had been an English teacher.

‘You too, sweetheart,’ the old man said.

JinJin smiled at Holly. Not the polite smile in the courtyard but big and wide and unrestrained. It was a toothy sort of smile, just the wrong side of goofy, a little heavy on the overbite, but Bill liked it. And then he realised there was something he needed to ask her.

‘Didn’t you like teaching?’ he called, and JinJin Li laughed happily.

‘I loved it!’ she said, just before she was gone.

And Bill was glad that he wasn’t quite dumb enough to ask the obvious question –
Then why did you give it up?
Because he knew.

‘Come on, slow coach, we’ll race you,’ the old man suddenly said, and he took off holding Holly in front of him, wheeling her between his legs, the pair of them laughing wildly over their shoulders at the sight of Bill lumbering behind, his face creased with effort, losing ground all the time, and aware that he could try as hard as he liked but he would never catch up.

‘Let the healing begin,’ Bill said, clapping his hands.

The old man lay flat on his back wearing a T-shirt and swimming trunks, lifting his head as the acupuncturist prepared the needles. The table he was lying on took up most of the little room, and Bill pressed himself flat against the wall, smiling at the worried look on his father’s face.

‘I’m not sure about this,’ the old man said. He winced as the acupuncturist slipped the first needle into his big toe.

‘Relax,’ Bill said. ‘The Chinese have believed in this stuff for thousands of years.’ The needles were deftly slipped into his father’s calf, thigh and hand. It seemed as though the acupuncturist hardly punctured the old man’s skin. ‘Mind you,’ Bill said, unable to resist it, ‘they also believe that eating the testicles of a tiger will make you more virile.’

The old man shot him a doubtful look, and Bill laughed.

The acupuncture had been Becca’s idea.

She had seen the aches and pains of Bill’s father, seen how his body had been worn down by a lifetime of manual work. His back, his knees, the joints in his hands – she had seen the grimaces of pain on his face when he was playing with Holly, seen him flinching when he swung her above his head, or bent down to play on the floor, and she knew that he
intended to put up with these pains for the rest of his life.

But Doris the ayi had her rheumatoid arthritis cured by this acupuncturist and so here they were, in a small room in a Chinese medical centre in the old French Concession while Becca and Holly went shopping in the Xiangyang market, and Bill chuckled with amusement as a needle was slipped into the top of his father’s head and, finally, the old man cried out.

‘Now that hurts,’ he told the acupuncturist and the doctor nodded with academic interest. They had been assured by Doris that acupuncture was a gloriously relaxing experience, but to Bill it looked about as relaxing as root-canal treatment.

‘And could you describe the pain?’ said the acupuncturist in perfect English.

‘I’ll try,’ the old man said. ‘It feels like someone just stuck a needle in my head.’ He craned his neck and looked at the needles rising from his body. ‘I hope you’re going to take them all out again.’

The acupuncturist lifted a hand, asking for patience. ‘Must leave for thirty minutes,’ he said, gently rotating the needles.

‘Or I’ll be picking up Radio Two,’ said the old man.

Bill leaned back against the wall, laughing harder, and then the acupuncturist left the old man with the needles settled in the meridians of his body, and soon Bill could hear him through the thin wall in the next room, speaking Chinese to another patient.

The old man lay perfectly still, his eyes closed, his breathing steady, and Bill’s smile slowly faded as he contemplated the thin needles in that hard, scarred old body, and made a silent wish that, in a city full of fakes, this might be the real thing.

They went to see the brides.

They had not seen the brides since that first Sunday, when they had watched them in the park from the top of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. Now they were in the park, among the brides and their
grooms, and there were all sorts of brides. Young and old and plump and pretty. Loud and subdued and flat-bellied and pregnant. As different as snowflakes, Bill thought, and he wondered how anyone could ever believe that the Chinese all looked the same.

Bill and Becca held hands and smiled at the brides and the grooms and each other as the multi-coloured fish food was thrown on the water and bright flashes of orange splashed and shimmered to the surface. The young men in their suits held the arms of their new wives as they lifted the hem of their wedding dresses and fed the carp.

The old man held his granddaughter in his arms and Bill wondered if the brides made the old man think of his own bride, Bill’s mother, while Holly solemnly contemplated the dozens upon dozens of young women in their white wedding dresses, her eyes wide with awe and wonder, as if every last one of them was a real-life Disney princess, and as if every one of their stories would surely end with a happy ever after.

That was a good day, Becca thought, as she stepped back to admire her
Sunflowers
. The muted yellows and burnished gold of the painting made her remember walking through the art market with her husband and daughter, Bill and Becca hand-in-hand with Holly, playing the game they called one-two-three, swinging her up between them on the count of three, as people stared and smiled at the little family.

Becca knew what they had looked like, that perfect picture, and it made her feel better than anything in the world. The handsome husband. The beautiful wife. And the adorable child, shrieking with pleasure as she swung between them, her thin legs flying. That’s what she wanted, Becca realised, hearing the soft voices of Bill and his father coming from the second bedroom. She wanted them to always be that perfect picture.

As Doris the ayi made up Bill’s bed on the sofa, Becca slowly turned full circle, and there was a
Sunflowers
on every wall of the living room. She had a moment of doubt. Did all these fake Van Goghs look ridiculous? Too camp, too ironic – as if they were trying to say,
Look at what they do in this crazy place? Isn’t it hilarious, darling?

No, she decided, they looked lovely. And the
Sunflowers
, with
The Sower
in the spare bedroom, and the
Starry Night
in the master bedroom, made her hold on to the day just gone, as if it was something she could keep.

There was packaging all over the floor, all the thick protective cardboard and thin wood that the paintings had been packed in. With the help of Doris, Becca gathered it all up and stuffed it into two large green rubbish bags.

‘I’ll take this down, ma’am,’ the ayi said, but Becca shook her head.

‘No, Doris, they’re not heavy,’ she said. She didn’t want to become one of those expat wives who treated the ayi like a pack mule. ‘You listen out for Holly. But I don’t think she’s going to wake up.’

With a rubbish bag in each hand, Becca caught the lift down to the basement. A car was pulling out of the underground car park, and for a moment its lights dazzled her, making her shield her eyes. Then the car was gone, and the basement was silent apart from the soft tread of Becca’s footsteps as she walked across to the long line of giant black rubbish bins.

She threw in the first sack and had just lifted the second when she heard the noise.

A thin, mewing sound that made her smile.

I bet it’s that mangy old ginger cat, she thought. The one that Holly is always following around.

It seemed to be close but she couldn’t see it.

‘No milk tonight, puss,’ Becca said aloud, and her voice echoed strangely in the basement.

She lifted the second sack, and was about to throw it into a bin when she heard the sound again. And she froze.

She walked slowly along the line of giant black bins and the sound seemed suddenly closer, and Becca swallowed hard because the mewing was recognisably crying, horribly and undeniably human, and she knew in a terrible second that it wasn’t an animal that was in one of these rubbish bins.

Then Becca was tearing desperately at the black bins, pulling out sacks and ripping them open, clawing through the trash, her fingernails breaking and blood on her hands from somewhere, one bin turning over banging hard against her hip, and she was almost screaming now, still scrabbling through rubbish in front of the overturned bin, on her hands and knees, the stinking cans and the unwanted food and the broken bottles spilling out, until finally she saw the fragile white living flesh of the baby, an exposed limb that her fingers closed around and refused to let go.

Then the baby was in her arms and Becca was desperately patting her pockets with her hand and, there it was, thank God, she had brought her phone with her, and the numbers were there, all the numbers you would need if the worst happened: 110 for the police; 119 for the fire brigade. And 120 for an ambulance.

She speed-dialled 120 and the woman came on the line immediately with a questioning,
‘Wei?
’ and Becca was explaining and pleading and slowly spelling out the address of Paradise Mansions, but the woman at the other end of the phone just said,
‘Wei?
’ and then there were a few phrases of impatient Mandarin before the woman hung up, and Becca was running for home with the baby in her arms, skidding in the trash, heading back towards the lift, and she wondered why she had been so stupid, why she had believed she could just store the
numbers and everything would be fine, why she had ever assumed that when the worst happened she could call the emergency services and the person on the other end of the line would be able to speak English.

She had forgotten what it felt like to hold a newborn baby, she had forgotten the milky smell, she had forgotten the weight in her arms.

It is next to nothing, Becca thought. So light that it is hardly there at all.

Then Bill was stuffing money into the hands of the taxi driver and they were running through the lobby of the International Family Hospital and Clinic on Xian Xia Lu, and there were nurses around them immediately, taking the baby from her arms and then Becca saw the best sight of all, Dr Sarfraz Khan, taking charge, issuing orders, asking Becca questions about the when and where of finding the baby, all the while moving down that over-lit hospital corridor, leaving Becca and Bill behind as he pushed through a door marked ICU.

An hour later he came to see them, when Becca was feeling sick to the stomach with the coffee that Bill kept bringing her because he had to do something. And sick to the stomach with the thought of what would have happened.

‘She’s a healthy little baby,’ Dr Khan said. ‘Although that’s thanks to you, not me.’

Becca shook her head. She was so tired. ‘I feel like I bother you all the time.’

Khan laughed. ‘You’re not bothering me. You bring me sick children to look after. That’s what I do.’

‘Thank you,’ Becca said, her face in her hands. ‘Oh God. Thanks, Sarfraz.’

She burst into tears.

And Bill looked at his wife, stroked her arm and thought –
Sarfraz?

It was almost time for the old man to go home.

The next morning, leaving Becca in bed, Bill and his father took Holly and her bike to the park and only had one minor row about when was the right time for a child to dispense with stabilisers. When they arrived back at Paradise Mansions there were voices on the child monitor.

They had forgotten to turn it off when they came back from the hospital, sent the ayi home, and crawled into bed exhausted, Holly between them and sleeping through it all. The monitor must have been on all night because now the little lights glowed green with indistinct murmurs coming from the master bedroom. Like the sound of lovers in another world, Bill thought. The old man was holding Holly. He kissed her cheek, put her down and went into the spare room.

‘What’s Granddad Will doing?’ Holly said.

‘Granddad has to pack,’ Bill said.

She turned her face to her father. ‘Is goodbye?’ she said sadly.

As the ayi whisked Holly away, all good cheer and agreement, Bill hesitated in the living room, listening to the sound of Dr Khan talking to Becca, and understanding none of it. The monitor wasn’t built to pick up the sound of a man and woman talking.

He paused for a moment, then went into the bedroom. Becca was in pyjamas, sitting up in bed but on the edge of sleep. One sleeve was rolled up and she was pressing a plaster against her arm. Dr Khan was standing by the side of the bed. He had just given her a shot of something and Bill flinched at the sight of the syringe. She said Bill’s name and he went to the bed and wrapped his arms around her and kissed her face and squeezed her until he thought perhaps he was hurting her. Her eyes were sore and puffy and it was clearly an effort to keep them open.