My Favourite Wife (34 page)

He was idling at the end of the line, watching the other exit door, and while JinJin laughed as a middle-aged businessman approached the driver holding up her name – ‘Look, William, it’s Mr Li!’ – Bill searched the crowd, wondering who Tiger was waiting for.

And then he saw them.

The boys came out first, those three wild blond monkeys, the small one fiddling with his iPod while the two big ones bickered and slapped each other, and then their parents – Devlin pushing the trolley loaded with luggage, raising a hand to Tiger, and Tess
beside him, giving instructions to the boys, and carrying a carrier bag that said
Chek Lap Kok Airport
.

Back from a long weekend in Hong Kong, Bill registered, just as Mrs Devlin turned her head and stared straight at him.

Then Bill was gone – quickly but far too slow to avoid being seen.

He turned away and headed in the other direction and got lost in the crowd, with JinJin still holding on to him but struggling to keep up, aware that something was very wrong, and he hated the wild panic inside him, it made him burn with shame, but he still didn’t stop or slow down until they were out of the airport and at the end of a mercifully short taxi queue.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said, not getting it, and really wanting to know. ‘Tell me.’

‘Nothing,’ he said, not looking at her, not daring to look at anything, wishing the queue away, wanting to be safely hidden in the back of a cab, and all the while waiting for the moment when he would hear an English voice right behind him say his name.

But the queue moved, and they got into the back of an old Santana taxi, and JinJin let him be. She knew him well enough for that. And she was smart enough to guess.

‘William, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong? Perhaps I can help.’

JinJin was sitting up in bed in a T-shirt and panties, thumbing through a book of crossword puzzles. This was the exotic for them, he realised, this was a special treat. Hanging around the apartment like a normal couple, as though they had all the normal time in the normal world. As though Bill was a good man with no other place to be.

‘I told you,’ he said, his voice thin and tight. He didn’t want to take it out on her, not her, she did not deserve it, but he could not stop himself. ‘Nothing’s wrong, okay?’

‘Was it the woman at the airport? The one who was looking at us? It was the woman from the teahouse, wasn’t it?’

Jesus Christ
, he thought.
What happens now?

He was standing at the window looking down at the traffic on Zhongshan Xilu and the lights of the Shanghai stadium, and not seeing any of it.

He shouldn’t be here. He should have gone home. Change the cover story. Change his life. Because his daughter was waiting for him. Because Tess Devlin had seen him. And now everyone would know. Now his dirty little secret would be released into the world.

The things that had once made him glad to be alive now made him wish he were dead. It wasn’t worth it. To feel this way – it just wasn’t worth it. He felt like he was being torn in two.

‘William?’ He heard her setting down the crossword puzzle.

He didn’t move from the window. ‘What is it?’

‘Are you cross with me?’ she said.

He turned to look at her. ‘Am I cross with you? You do realise – or perhaps you don’t – that nobody talks like that in England? Outside of – I don’t know – Enid Blyton novels. Nobody says -are you cross with me?’ He turned back to the window, hating himself. ‘Your text books were fifty years out of date.’

‘Please don’t be cross with me,’ she said, and he covered his eyes with one hand. He shook his head, almost laughing. Her voice was soft and understanding. She would forgive him anything. She loved him and he knew it. ‘Why don’t you just come to bed?’ she said.

He met her eyes. ‘And why don’t you get out of my fucking life?’

He went into the bathroom, for want of anywhere better to go, slamming the door behind him. He stared at his face in the mirror and he was ashamed of taking it out on her when she had done nothing wrong. He cursed, threw cold water on his face. It was him. It was all him. He was the one who had done everything wrong. He went back into the bedroom so that he could hold her and tell her that he was sorry and let her see that he meant it.

But by then JinJin Li had got up, got dressed and got out of his life.

‘You should see this,’ Becca said.

She was standing at the window, looking down at the courtyard of Paradise Mansions. Bill went across to her, remembering when she had said the same thing on that first night. Looking down at the girls getting into the cars. That first night, when he saw JinJin for the first time, all dolled up for Saturday night and the man in the silver Porsche. There was the same note of amused disbelief in his wife’s voice now.
You should see this
. Then she turned to look at him and he saw the concern on her face.

‘You all right?’ she said, her fingertips on his day-old stubble. ‘God, Bill – you look beat.’

‘I’m all right.’

Bill joined Becca at the window and his wife slipped her arm around his waist. There were raised voices in the courtyard. A Chinese woman in her fifties was screaming abuse as she threw things from a window in the opposite block. Dresses, underwear, bed sheets were tossed out and fell and floated to the ground. Annie was down in the courtyard, desperately gathering up her belongings, weeping bitterly.

‘The wife found out,’ Becca said, indicating the woman at the window. ‘That’s what happened. She just found out.’

‘Well, maybe,’ Bill said, turning away from the window. He
couldn’t stand watching all that raw grief. ‘Or maybe she knew all along but the time came for a crackdown.’

Becca’s smile grew wider. ‘Listen to you. You sound like an expert.’

He grimaced. ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ he said.

There were loud thuds in the courtyard. Annie’s wailing went up a pitch, registering fear as well as misery. The wife had found a store of Louis Vuitton bags. They hit the courtyard like small rocks and as each one fell it brought cries of real anguish from Annie.

Bill remembered the tattoo on Annie’s arm, the beginning of the end. He wondered if the man had confessed to his wife, shopped Annie and himself, and let the wife do the dirty work of evicting her, or if she had found out some other way. He hated this man he had never met.

‘I wonder why they do it,’ Becca said, turning away from the window. ‘These girls, I mean.’

Bill stayed at the window, wanting to help Annie and knowing he could do nothing. ‘They just want to better themselves,’ he said. ‘That’s what we all want, isn’t it?’

Becca shook her head, sinking into the sofa. She picked up a glossy catalogue.

‘A woman has to have something missing to get involved with a married man,’ Becca said. ‘It takes a lack of imagination, or a lack of heart, or – I don’t know – some kind of mad optimism.’

She flicked past images of chairs, tables and wine glasses embossed with Chinese symbols. Down in the courtyard Annie gathered up her beloved bags. A light wind had lifted one of the sheets and wrapped it around her legs. The woman in the window was pointing down and laughing. Faces were appearing at other windows, and calling to their spouses to come and see.

‘It’s just so bloody cruel,’ Becca said.

‘Well,’ Bill said. ‘I guess she’s really angry. It can’t be easy. Finding out something like that.’

Becca looked at him strangely.

‘I’m not talking about the wife, Bill,’ she said. ‘I’m talking about the silly bitch who has been running around with a married man. Can’t you see? She’s the cruel one.’

They went shopping. Suddenly Holly’s expanding social schedule allowed these pockets of time for just the two of them. Perhaps it would carry on like this all through her childhood, Bill thought, and in the end they would not be needed at all.

‘What about these?’ Becca said, picking up a wine glass with a tastefully embossed Chinese symbol. ‘Do you like this, Bill?’

He nodded. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘You know, Bec, Devlin said we should take Holly to the Natural Wild Insect Kingdom on Fenghe Lu,’ he said. ‘It’s aimed at kids. They can hold big hairy spiders. The boys love it, apparently.’

‘I bet they do,’ she said, holding the glass up to the light. ‘Those little horrors. But I’m not sure it’s really Holly’s thing. She’d run a mile if she was presented with a tarantula.’ She touched his arm. ‘You know, we don’t always have to do something.’

He looked bewildered.

‘I know you’ve been trying really hard since we came back,’ she said. ‘Dolphins, bumper cars, creepy crawlies…’ She smiled. ‘But sometimes we can just take her out on her bike to the park. Try and get her off the stabilisers. Or we can stay home. She loves drawing and crayoning and all that stuff.’ She touched her husband’s face. ‘Sometimes we can just be together.’ Becca put down the wine glass and glanced at her watch. ‘We’re going to have to pick her up from ballet soon,’ she said.

‘I’ll get her,’ he said.

‘You don’t mind?’ Becca said, running her hand over the lacquered wood of a red Chinese lamp. ‘I could spend all day in here.’ She picked up the wine glass again and slowly twirled it. The Chinese symbol looked like it had been drawn in frost. ‘Do you have any idea what this means?’ she asked.

‘Double Fortune,’ Bill said. ‘It means a happy ending for both of you.’

‘Full moon,’ said the ballet teacher, and the class raised both their hands above their heads. Bill watched Holly, her pale face frowning with concentration, and imagined her on stage for the Royal Ballet, hugging a bouquet to her chest as she took a standing ovation, her proud father wiping a tear from his eye in the stalls.

‘Half-moon,’ said the teacher, and all the little girls in their pink tutus – and one weird curly-haired boy in white shorts and vest – dropped their right hands to their side, apart from Holly, who dropped her left hand.

Bill smiled as she did a double take at her friends, and corrected herself.

‘No moon,’ said the teacher, and the class dropped the other hand to their sides, and Bill was amazed how the frail little girl Holly had been a year ago was turning into a bundle of endless energy.

She was still thin and pale and slighter than her contemporaries, but the asthma attacks were further apart, and less severe, and she no longer looked as though a strong wind would carry her away.

As the class began running around in circles, their faces beaming with delight, flapping their hands close to their sides – ‘Small wings,’ the teacher had commanded – Bill thought she was growing into the person she was meant to be. She was becoming herself.

After the class he helped her out of her pink leotard, pink tutu and pink slippers and into combat trousers, T-shirt and trainers.

‘I can do it by
myself
, Daddy,’ she said impatiently, as if he was the biggest idiot in the world. He watched her as she attempted to force her left foot into her right shoe.

They were meeting Becca in a coffee shop across the street from the Gubei International School.

‘I need my pens, Daddy,’ Holly said as he scanned the place for a table.

‘I’ve got your pens and some paper, angel,’ he said, and he held her hand as they moved quickly to the one spare table. The tabletop was covered in the crumbs of half-eaten muffins and the sticky circles of stained empty cups. Bill cleaned the table, then got out the crayons and sketchbook from her rucksack.

‘Okay?’ he said.

‘Okay,’ she said, not looking at him, yanking the top off of a felt-tip and already immersed in the act of creation.

He went to get their drinks. When he came back she said, ‘Look at this, Daddy,’ and held up a picture of a stick creature with a lopsided smile, wild yellow hair and a pink dress. Her drawing was getting better. She still drew straight lines to represent arms and legs, but her faces were getting more expressive, the eyes and mouths of the round blob heads conveying real emotion. Perhaps she would be a painter. Perhaps she would be another Matisse. Perhaps his daughter would be the greatest painter who ever lived.

‘It’s brilliant, angel,’ he said, unwrapping a straw and placing it in her orange juice. ‘But what is it?’

Holly looked outraged. ‘It’s me,’ she said, amazed that he was so stupid that he hadn’t got it immediately. ‘Can’t you see?’

‘Now you point it out,’ he said.

They were sitting at the end of a line of booths. In the one closest to them, two white boys in suits were arguing.

‘But you can’t compare Bangkok and Manila,’ one of them said. ‘It’s like comparing a team of battle-hardened professionals with a bunch of happy amateurs.’

‘Well, that’s my point exactly, dickweed,’ said the other suit. Bill realised they were both Brits, although he couldn’t quite place the accents. They were not quite Londoners.

‘The thing about Manila,’ one of them said, ‘is that they will fuck you blind for nothing. Whereas in Bangkok you have to give them a credit-card number before they even look at your knob.’

‘Look at this, Daddy,’ Holly smiled, holding up her drawing. There was a large stick man with a foolish grin in the corner. ‘That’s you,’ said Holly. ‘You’re waiting for me.’

Becca walked into the Coffee Planet and came over to them, all smiles, kissing them both and saying, ‘So how was it?’ as she pulled up a chair. And then, to Bill, looking at his clenched face, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘But Bangkok and Manila can’t compare to Hong Kong in the old days,’ said one of the suits in the adjacent booth. They were loud enough to hear every word. Holly kept drawing. Becca looked at Bill and Bill stared off at nothing. ‘My granddad, right, my granddad Pete, he was in Hong Kong at the end of the war and he got a blow-job through the wire.’

The suits laughed. ‘What?’ said the other suit, not quite believing. ‘He actually had his knob –’

‘I’m telling you – my granddad Pete was on the Hong Kong side, patrolling the border, keeping out the mainland wetbacks, and he had his knob through the wire and was sucked off through the wire. Cost him a shilling.’

‘A shilling?’ said the other suit. ‘What’s a shilling?’