My Favourite Wife (7 page)

But when Holly had settled Becca went back to the living room and found Alice smiling as if something had just come back to her.

‘Hey Bec,’ she said. ‘Remember when I pierced your ears?’

They couldn’t practise law in China.

That was the joke played on the Western lawyer in Shanghai, and Shane liked to mention it whenever the clock was creeping close to midnight and the lights were going out all over Pudong and they were sipping their cold coffee at desks still crowded with paperwork.

It said
Foreign Lawyer
on their business cards, because it was different for foreigners. If you were a foreign lawyer working for a foreign firm in Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China restricted you to the role of legal representative and kept you in your place. Even a Chinese lawyer like Nancy Deng could not practise PRC law at a foreign firm and was designated
PRC lawyer, non-practising
. Butterfield, Hunt and West had to get all their Chinese contracts rubber-stamped by some tame local lawyer.

But despite not being real lawyers in the eyes of the PRC, most nights the endless bureaucracy of doing business in China kept Bill in the office until he was too tired to see straight, and too full of caffeine to contemplate sleep.

‘For blokes who can’t practise law here,’ Shane said, ‘we sure are busy little buggers.’ He yawned and stretched, and sat on Bill’s desk, squashing a stack of files marked Department of Land and Resources. ‘Enough for one night, mate. More than enough. Let’s get a beer.’

A beer sounded good. Bill knew that Becca and Holly would have gone to bed hours ago. Now that he was sleeping in the second bedroom so as not to disturb them when he came back late, and when he left for work early, it didn’t really matter when he got home. A little unwinding sounded like just what he needed.

‘I’m going to tell you how it works out here,’ Shane shouted, raising his voice above a song that Bill couldn’t quite place. Something about making things more complicated. ‘I’m going to tell you what we call the Kai Tak rules, okay?’

‘The what?’

‘The
Kai Tak
rules. Pay attention. The Kai Tak rules are very important.’

They were in a place called Suzy Too. ‘Everybody comes to Suzy Too,’ Shane said. It was loud, smoky, crowded beyond belief. There was a dance floor in one corner, although people were dancing all over the place, including on the bars.

There were young Chinese men with dyed blond hair and Western women in jeans and T-shirts and Western men in stained polo shirts or business suits with their ties hanging off and Chinese women in short skirts or
qipao
or jeans that said Juicy on the back. Lots of them.

A woman pulled at Bill’s sleeve. She looked hungry. She tapped in some numbers on her mobile phone and showed it to him. It said
1000
.

‘One thousand RMB,’ Shane said, taking Bill’s other sleeve. ‘That’s about £70.’

‘But eight hundred is okay,’ the woman said. She blinked, dazed by the smoke and exhaustion.

Bill stared at the handset, trying to understand.

‘Are you looking for a permanent girlfriend?’ she asked him.

Bill had pushed his face close to her, just to hear what she was saying. Now he reared back. ‘I’m married.’

The woman took this in her stride. ‘Yes, but are you looking for a permanent girlfriend?’

‘No thank you,’ Bill said, aware that he sounded as though he was declining a second cucumber sandwich at the vicar’s tea party.

Shane put a cold bottle of Tsingtao in his hand.

‘You know Kai Tak?’ the Australian said. ‘No? Kai Tak was the old airport in Hong Kong. Kowloon side. Your missus said she visited the Big Noodle as a kid. She would remember it. Before your time, mate.’ Shane’s free hand, the one that wasn’t holding a Tsingtao, impersonated a plane making an erratic landing. ‘Where you came in through the blocks of flats hanging their laundry on the balconies and you would often land with someone’s pants wrapped around your neck. Sometimes your own.’ He winked, clinking bottles with Bill. ‘And that’s the point.’

The woman with the mobile phone said something in Chinese as she draped an arm around Bill’s shoulders, an act more of weariness than desire.

‘You’re beautiful,’ Shane told Bill.

‘Who says that?’ Bill asked. ‘You or her?’

‘Her,’ Shane said. ‘To me, you’re just about cute.’

The woman turned to Bill and said something, her eyes half-closed.

‘She loves you,’ Shane said.

Bill stared at her. ‘But we just met,’ he said.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ the woman said in English, leaning against him. ‘I have financial issues.’

Shane laughed, said something in Shanghainese and she turned away with a shrug. Then he looked quickly at Bill. ‘You didn’t want her, did you?’

Bill just stared at him. He managed to shake his head. Shane leaned in. This was important. This was crucial.

‘Kai Tak rules means that we never talk about what happens when we are on an adventure, okay?’ he continued. ‘Kai Tak rules mean
omerta
. It means loose lips sink ships.’ Shane gently prodded a thick finger against Bill’s heart. ‘Kai Tak rules means keep your cakehole shut, mate. You do not talk about it with your wife, your girlfriend, or the married stiff in the office. Whatever we get up to, you do not confess to Devlin, you do not boast to Mad Mitch. It’s the first rule of Fight Club. You do not talk about Fight Club – right? What happens on tour stays on tour.’

‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,’ Bill said. But he sort of knew. Already there was the first glimmer of understanding.

It was different out here.

There was an eruption on the dance floor. Notes had started to fall from the sky. They looked up and saw one of their German clients – not the old rock and roller but the other one, Jurgen, the conservative-looking one – grinning foolishly from the DJ box. He was throwing his cash away with both hands, making a Papal gesture every time he released a fistful of RMB, as though he was blessing the crowd.

‘This will all end in tears,’ Shane predicted, as the dancers fought each other to get at the cash, which drifted slowly to the dance floor before it was seized upon by leggy Chinese girls in
qipao
and sweating Western businessmen.

Two women wrapped their arms around Bill’s waist, laughing and sighing and smiling as if they had mistaken him for Brad Pitt on an off night. Shane made a slight motion with his head and they went and did exactly the same thing to a small bald Frenchman who was slumped at the bar. He was about sixty-five and they acted like they had mistaken him for George Clooney. Bill stared at Suzy Too with appalled wonder.

‘Does this go on every night?’

Shane nodded. ‘And some say that Shanghai’s commitment to late nights shows just how few people in this city really have serious business in the morning,’ he said. He swigged Tsingtao. ‘They may well be right.’

A woman with wild eyes and a Louis Vuitton handbag was dancing on a table, slowly moving her narrow hips, looking at the mirror on the wall, lost in herself. Another woman, all sinewy length and hardened flesh, no waste, was out on the floor, laughing as she eased herself into a scrum of businessmen clumping their feet to some thirty-year-old rock song.

Bill was certain that he had seen both of them at Paradise Mansions in the scrum of women who had gathered around the stalled red Mini. And, now he came to think of it, the one with the mobile phone looked familiar too. But it was not easy to tell who was touting for trade and who was just out on the town.

‘Are these women all prostitutes?’ Bill said.

Shane thought about it. ‘It’s prostitution with Chinese characteristics,’ he said, looking up at Jurgen the German in the DJ box. The money was all gone but Jurgen was still standing up there with that foolish grin, as if he had made some kind of point. ‘There goes Jurgen’s profit margin for the last fiscal quarter,’ Shane said. ‘Prat.’ He nodded at the laughing girls at the bar. They were stroking the Frenchman’s head and cackling. ‘I know those two. They’re teachers. Mathematics and Chinese. They’re just making a little money on the side for their designer handbags and glad-rags. Prostitutes? That seems a little harsh, mate. That seems a little brutal. Some of them are just here to dance the night away. They’re as innocent as you and me. Well – you. The Paradise Mansions girls are saving themselves for the right man – even if he is married to someone else. That’s the theory – at Paradise Mansions they are all good little second wives – although of course they do have a lot of lonely nights. The others, they just want their small taste of the economic miracle that they’ve seen on TV, and they can’t
get that on what a bloody teacher earns, which is, oh, a few peanuts above nothing.’ He thoughtfully chugged down his Tsingtao.

‘And the authorities just condone all this, do they?’ said Bill. He knew he sounded like a prude. He knew the tone was all wrong. He liked Shane. He wanted to understand. But the world was turned upside down. Commercial sex was not morally reprehensible out here. It was a career option, or a part-time job, or something a teacher did when she should have been marking homework.

‘Not at all,’ Shane said. ‘When they hear about it the authorities are shocked – shocked! Let’s see – year before last we were all in Julu Lu. Last year we were all in Maoming Nan Lu. Now we’re in – where are we now? Oh yeah – Tong Ren Lu. Next year we’ll be somewhere else. Every now and again, the authorities get tough and move us a block down the road. That’s China.’

A skinny woman in her middle thirties danced herself between Bill and Shane, her arms above her head, a smile splitting her face. She was ten years older than most of the women in here, but in better shape. It was the one who looked like a dancer. She was a beauty, Bill could see that, but the beauty had been worn down by time and disappointment. You would not mind growing old with a woman who looked like that, just as long as you met her early enough. For he could not help believing that some man or some men long gone had had the best of her, and he thought that was a terrible thing to believe about anyone. But he could not help it. She was smiling in his face.

‘This one won’t dance,’ Shane told her. ‘Please don’t ask as refusal can cause offence.’

‘I teach,’ she said. ‘I give lessons.’ She had an improbable French accent.
Teech
, she said. I
geeff
. She actually spoke English with a French accent. How did that happen? Shane said something in Chinese and she shrugged and danced away, giving Bill a little wave. He watched her go, with a pang of regret. Shane laughed.

‘Forget about that one if you’re looking to get your end away,’ he said. ‘You get all sorts in here, mate. That one’s a taxi dancer who’ll boogie all night but that’s it. She dances with men for money and then goes home alone to Paradise Mansions. A taxi dancer in the twenty-first century! Strange but true. Then there are the pro-ams.’ He gestured his empty beer bottle towards the teachers. ‘Shanghai is completely unregulated. It’s not like other parts of Asia. Not like Manila. Not like Bangkok. Not like Tokyo. The women in here don’t work for the bar. They’re punters, like you and me. They work for themselves. Like the great Deng Xiaoping said, “To get rich is glorious.” But don’t think they’re promiscuous. It’s not that. They’re just
practical
, it’s just too hard a place to not be practical. Hard for them, that is – not hard for the likes of us. China’s not a hardship posting for you and me, mate. Don’t listen to what those whining expats tell you – mostly Poms, mate. No offence intended.’

‘None taken,’ Bill said, sipping his beer. Maybe he should be getting back. Maybe he should have gone straight home. His suit was going to reek of cigarette smoke.

‘China is an easy place to live because
everything is on a clear financial basis,’
Shane said. ‘It’s only complicated if you choose to make it so.’

Then the woman with the mobile phone was back, yanking at Bill’s sleeve, giving him a gentle shove and as he turned to her he saw that peculiarly Shanghainese gesture for the very first time -the thumb and the index finger rubbed together, followed by the open palm.

Give me money, mister
.

He would see that gesture a thousand times before he left this city. They might have four thousand years of civilisation behind them, but they weren’t too big on
please
and
thank you
.

In her free hand the woman was holding a photograph of a small, unsmiling boy. He was about the same age as Holly.

Bill fumbled with his wallet and gave her a 50-RMB note. She
stared at it for a moment and then turned away with a disgusted snort.

‘They don’t take fifties,’ Shane laughed, putting an arm around him. ‘There’s a minimum payment of one hundred, even if you’re just being nice.’

‘How the hell can there be a minimum payment for being nice?’ Bill said.

‘Because their motto is “Haven’t you got anything bigger?”’ Shane said. He slapped Bill on the back. He was happy that Bill was here. Bill had the sense that despite living on a beauty mountain, his colleague had been lonely. ‘You’ll get the hang of it,’ Shane said. ‘And then you’ll find you’re in the closest place to heaven.’

‘Yeah,’ Bill said bleakly. ‘Poverty is a great aphrodisiac.’ He watched the woman with the son and the mobile phone being ignored by a group of young tourists.

‘That’s right,’ Shane happily agreed. ‘And don’t forget – Kai Tak rules.’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Bill said, suddenly irritated by Shane’s assumptions, and by all of the big Australian’s unearned intimacy. ‘I can keep my mouth shut. But I’ve got a wife and kid at home.’

Shane frowned, genuinely perplexed. ‘But what’s that got to do with anything?’

Bill looked at the skinny dancer. She waved at him. She was too old to be in here, he thought. But then everybody in here was the wrong age. Too young, too old. He looked away. ‘So I’m not going to be playing around,’ he said, not caring what he sounded like.

But Shane just studied the golden glow of his Tsingtao and said nothing.

And then Jurgen was asking them for cab fare, because he had thrown all his cash away, the stupid bastard, and Bill was looking at his watch and Shane was shouting for just one more round,
just one more, come on, Bill, you’re not like the rest of those miserable Poms
, and Bill agreed, he wasn’t like the rest of them, those pampered
private school wankers, and then suddenly it was three o’clock in the morning and they were having one absolutely last drink, a nightcap,
you have to have a fucking nightcap, mate
, in a dive Shane knew where a Filippino band did songs by Pink and Avril Lavigne, and some other girl was showing Bill a picture of her daughter and Bill was pulling out his wallet to show her a picture of Holly, and giving her a 100-RMB note, and then giving her another one, and then another, and wishing her luck and telling her that she was a wonderful mother, and Shane was singing along to ‘Complicated’ in his hearty Melbourne baritone and then huddling with Bill in a cramped red leather booth somewhere else and saying,
But there are just so many of them, Bill, just so many women in the world – how can you ever choose the special one, how can you ever really know?
just before the two teachers turned up, bombed out of their brains and calling loudly for more mojitos all round, and they stumbled off into what was left of the night with Shane sandwiched between them, all laughing happily, as though it was the most innocent thing in the world.