My Favourite Wife

by Tony Parsons

  The six musicians were in their eighties now, the very same bunch of swing-obsessed Chinese boys who had been playing when the Japanese army marched into Shanghai a lifetime ago, and as the waitress fussed over Holly’s hair and Bill and Becca sipped their Tsingtaos while the band swaggered through Glenn Miller’s ‘String of Pearls’, for a few sweet dreaming minutes Becca thought it truly seemed as though the old world had never been pulled apart.

  The next day Bill came back from work early and joined his daughter at the window. Devlin had packed him off home. He wanted Bill’s family to be happy. He wanted them to stay.

  ‘That’s my favourite one,’ Holly said, indicating a half-starved ginger kitten that was patrolling the perimeter of the fountain. ‘That’s the best one.’

  There were no pets allowed in Paradise Mansions but from their window Holly would watch the stray cats who haunted the courtyard – emaciated creatures that preened themselves in the shade of the straggly flower beds, or lapped delicately from the pools of water created by the mother-and-child fountain, or gnawed at bones they had foraged from the rows of huge black rubbish bins in an alleyway behind the main building.

  Bill laughed. ‘So why do you like her best?’

  Holly thought about it. ‘She’s the smallest.’

  ‘Shall we feed her, angel?’

  Holly’s eyes lit up. ‘Shall we feed her? Shall we, Daddy?’ Holly hopped around with excitement while Bill got a carton of milk from the fridge and a saucer from the cupboard. Becca, in the bedroom getting ready to go out, frowned doubtfully, called something about fleas, but Bill and Holly were out of the apartment before she really had time to object.

  Down in the courtyard, they watched from a respectful distance while the ginger waif lapped up its saucer of semi-skimmed and then took itself off to a flower bed where it collapsed with contentment in the dirt. Bill and Holly approached tentatively. The ginger kitten permitted Holly to stroke its back. Then Bill was suddenly aware that they were not alone.

  The tall girl was standing there watching them with the cat. She was wearing a green qipao that made her long, slim body look even longer and her hair was hanging down. She was dressed to go out.

  ‘Hello there,’ she said, smiling at Holly, and Bill saw that she was holding his jacket. She had had it dry cleaned, and it was still in a cellophane wrapper that said Da Zhong American Laundry. He could see that they had not managed to remove the handprint.

  ‘Tse-tse,’ she said, holding out his jacket. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘Bu ke-qi,’ he said.

  ‘That means “you are welcome”,’ Holly told her, and they both laughed and the tall girl touched Holly’s hair. ‘So fair,’ she said, ‘I adore her,’ and that was the first time he really heard her English, and the strange weight that she put on certain words, and the unfathomable choices she made with the language. I adore her. It somehow clanged. And yet it wasn’t wrong. He could not say that it was wrong.

  He held out his hand and she shook it lightly and awkwardly and quickly, as though she had never shaken hands with anyone in her life. Her hand was small and cool.

  ‘Bill Holden,’ he said, and he touched his daughter’s head. ‘And this one is Holly.’

  ‘Li JinJin,’ she said, and he knew that she was putting her family name first, in the Chinese fashion, the family coming before everything, the family name forever inseparable from the first name.

  ‘Hello, Holly,’ she said. Holding the slit of her qipao together with a modest gesture, she crouched down so that their eyes were on the same level. ‘What are you up to with your daddy?’

  Holly squinted at her. ‘We’re look aftering this cat,’ she said, and the woman and the child silently contemplated the mangy ginger cat as it lolled in the flower bed. Bill sensed that JinJin didn’t know quite what to say about the stray moggy. The Chinese were not sentimental about animals.

  Bill looked at JinJin when she stood up. The mark on her face looked better in the daylight. Not so raw. Or maybe he was just prepared for it now. And now he could see that it was from an airbag. He could tell that a human hand hadn’t made it. But even with that mark on her face, there was still something about her, Bill thought. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman he had seen in Shanghai. She wasn’t even the most beautiful woman he had seen in Paradise Mansions – that would have to be his wife. But when JinJin Li smiled, she seemed to have this inner light. He had never seen her smile before.

  ‘Have a good day in Shanghai,’ she said, and now it was his turn to be lost for words as he struggled for something to say about the other night, to put it in its rightful place, but nothing came, and it did not matter because at that moment the silver Porsche pulled into the courtyard and she gave him one last smile before she started off to where the car was waiting for her, its powerful engine still running, ready to take Li JinJin off to her life.

  Becca’s night on the town had been fun, although she enjoyed it more in retrospect than she did at the time.

  Alice had taken her to a bar on the Bund, plied her with ludicrously potent mojitos, and Becca had spent the evening with her mobile phone in her hand, just in case there was some problem with Holly. But Bill never called and they were both sleeping when she got home. Becca moved quietly through the apartment, checking on her family, and free at last to savour the evening, now that she knew everything was fine.

  Holly was in the middle of the king-size bed, looking tiny. Breathing normally. And Bill in the spare room. His feet sticking out the bottom of the single bed. Looking comically big for it. Becca took off her clothes. He gasped and tried to sit up as she slid in beside him. She placed a soothing hand on his chest and kissed his face.

  ‘She okay?’ Becca said.

  ‘Fine,’ Bill said sleepily. ‘She’s been fine. What time is it?’

  Then he felt her hands on him. She said his name. Not much more than a whisper. Her mouth touched his mouth. She felt his hands lightly run down her ribcage, the swell of her hip, the long flank of her thigh. Soft kisses in the darkness.

  ‘Bill?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t make love to me,’ she said. ‘Not tonight. Just fuck me, okay? You can do that, can’t you?’ He could do that.

  EIGHT

  Bill’s father came through the arrivals gate at Pudong, his tough old face lighting up at the sight of his granddaughter.

  ‘Granddad Will,’ Holly said, squirming out of Bill’s arms and running to him.

  Picasso, Becca had said the first time she met the old man. That’s exactly what Picasso looked like. Bald, broad-shouldered, eyes that stared straight at you and never looked away. Bill didn’t know about Picasso. He thought his father looked like a bull. Old and strong. A tough old bull.

  He had a suitcase in one hand – the only suitcase Bill had ever known him to own, the old man was very monogamous when it came to luggage – and tucked under his free arm was an inappropriately gigantic teddy bear.

  ‘Dad,’ Bill said, ‘they have trolleys, you know,’ and the old man said, ‘Do I look like I need a trolley?’ and so they nearly had a row before they had even said hello, which would have been some kind of record.

  ‘Please be nice,’ Becca murmured to Bill as Tiger led them to the car, and the old man listened patiently to one of Holly’s meaningless monologues about a character she called her ‘third-favourite princess’. Bill didn’t remember that kind of patience when he had been growing up. Maybe everything was different with grandchildren.

  Becca’s father had been scheduled to be the first one to come out to visit, but a heart murmur and endless tests had kept him confined to London. It felt like more than ill health. For someone who had spent his life on the move with Reuters, Bill thought that Becca’s father seemed very reluctant to stray far from home. But Bill’s old man was hard as nails. He blinked back the effects of a ten-hour flight as if he had just woken from an afternoon nap.

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ Becca said as they drove to
Gubei. The Bund was passing by the window. But the old man didn’t take his eyes from his granddaughter. Bill felt he couldn’t look at her without smiling.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I want to see the Great Wall, of course.’

  Bill and Becca looked at each other.

  ‘That’s Beijing, Dad,’ Bill said. ‘The Great Wall is near Beijing.’

  Becca was looking concerned. ‘We could fly up there at the weekend,’ she said to Bill. ‘If you could get off work on Saturday…’

  Bill shook his head impatiently. Silly old sod. He probably hadn’t even looked at a guide book. ‘What else, Dad?’

  ‘How about the Forbidden City? That looks nice.’

  ‘It’s very nice,’ Bill said. ‘But the Forbidden City is right in the middle of Beijing.’

  The old man looked at him. ‘I don’t want to be any trouble. If it’s too difficult…’

  ‘Oh, it’s not too difficult at all,’ Becca said happily.

  ‘Granddad, Granddad,’ Holly said, disappointed that his attention had been diverted. She kicked the back of the seat and Becca told her to please not do that.

  ‘It’s not too difficult, if that’s what you want to see, Dad,’ Bill said, with the exasperated impatience he knew so well. ‘But it’s like expecting the Tower of London when you’re in Paris.’ He felt his wife’s restraining hand resting lightly on his shoulder and said no more.

  * * *

  They were all up early the next morning. As Holly played with her grandfather, Becca took Bill to one side.

  ‘Make the most of it,’ she said, and Bill thought that she was thinking about her own father. ‘He’s not going to be around forever.’

  ‘No,’ Bill said, watching his father down on the carpet, doing one-arm push-ups with his granddaughter on his back. Holly squealed with pleasure. The old man’s thick builder’s hand pressed into the freshly cleaned carpet of the company flat. ‘It just feels like forever.’

  Holly lost her balance but righted herself by gripping what was left of her grandfather’s hair. They both laughed. Holly held on tight and the old man changed hands and continued with his one-arm push-ups.

  Bill made a move towards them but Becca stopped him. ‘Leave them,’ she said.

  ‘But it’s dangerous,’ Bill said.

  His wife shook her head, and he went to work before anything started.

  Becca was making tea and toast when Bill’s father came into the kitchen with Holly in his arms.

  ‘His Lordship gone off to work?’ he said, settling the child on the floor. She clambered up into her special chair.

  Becca smiled and nodded. ‘The pair of you were having such fun, he didn’t want to disturb you.’

  ‘Bill has an early start,’ he noted, spooning three sugars into his tea.

  ‘He has to work to get money,’ Holly said, repeating the party line. She took a sip of her juice and half of it failed to go inside her mouth.

  ‘Early starts and late nights,’ Becca said, mopping the juice off the child’s face with a piece of kitchen towel. Then she sat back in her chair and smiled at the unusual sight of three people sitting down for a meal. ‘This is so nice,’ she laughed.

  ‘Long days,’ the old man observed as Becca lavished butter on to a slice of toast, cut it into four triangles and placed them on a plate featuring the Little Mermaid.

  ‘Well, he’s either working late at the office or he’s out with clients,’ she said, placing the plate in front of Holly. ‘So yes – they’re very long days.’

  The old man frowned with disapproval. ‘He should slow down a bit. There’s no end to that kind of life.’

  Becca felt the need to gently defend her husband. ‘He just wants a good life for us,’ she said, buttering more toast for everyone. ‘That’s all. That’s why we’re here.’ She picked up a tissue and wiped a greasy smear from her daughter’s chin. ‘That’s what everyone wants, isn’t it?’

  The old man chewed his toast. ‘Suppose so,’ he conceded. ‘I think Bill always thought I was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud.’ He looked almost shy. ‘That I shouldn’t have been satisfied with our little house. My little job. My little life.’

  Becca placed a hand on his arm. ‘I’m sure he never thought that,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, he did,’ insisted the old man, warming to his theme. ‘And he still thinks it.’ He looked defiant, a slice of toast poised halfway to his mouth. ‘But that’s the difference between me and His Lordship, Bec. He wants it all. And I only wanted enough.’

  ‘But it was my idea,’ she said. ‘Coming out here. I pushed him. And he’ll do anything I ask him to do. Because he loves me.’ Now it was her turn to look embarrassed. She felt her face turning red. ‘Because he loves us,’ she amended. ‘And he’ll make it work,’ she said, lightening the tone. ‘He will. He’s like you – a grafter.’

  ‘Never got his hands dirty in his life,’ the old man said, but with a rueful grin.

  And Becca could see the pride that the father felt for the son, although she felt like she was the only person in the world who did.

  At first Shane took it for a burn. But it was some sort of birthmark, a light brown stain on her darker brown skin, a birthmark the size of a hand mirror that she could never quite hide, no matter how hard she tried, or how carefully she adjusted her ponytail.

  Rosalita had a waterfall of jet-black hair that she wore tied back and tossed in a thick ponytail over one shoulder. When she was on stage at Bejeebers-Bejaybers she sometimes tugged at the pony-tail, as if making sure it was still in place.

  Shane had watched her sing often enough to know that she did it to hide the mark on her neck and something about that birthmark, and the way she tried in vain to hide it, undid Shane, and filled him with unbearable feelings of tenderness. There was no real pleasure in the feeling, just a kind of tormented rapture.

  Rosalita and her band, the Roxas Boulevard Boys, finished their set with a spirited ‘Bad Moon Rising’ and she came off stage smiling and shining with sweat. Shane watched with hypnotised misery as the tiny Filippina joined a party of Portuguese businessmen, the small curvy figure surrounded by tall men in suits, clinking glasses and laughing. Every once in a while she looked down the bar and flashed Shane one of those merciless bone-white smiles. He turned away.

  There was a woman sitting further down the bar who looked as though she had just got off the bus. She was glancing around Bejeebers-Bejaybers nervously, clutching her fake Gucci bag, as though anybody in here would bother to steal it.

  There was an untouched fruit juice in front of her. Shane ran expert eyes over her. Seeking her fortune in the big bad city, Shane reflected. Ah, aren’t we all, mate? he thought, surrendering to his philosophical tendencies.

  So he bought her a fruit juice. And then another fruit juice. And although he couldn’t quite get a handle on her Fujianese dialect, they shared enough putonghua – literally common language, meaning Mandarin – for Shane to work out that she had not long arrived in the city from Fuzhou, her accommodation was conveniently close to BB’s, and she thought that friendly old Shane was potential boyfriend material.

  That would show Rosalita, he thought. Show her bloody good, mate. But when he looked up, Rosalita was leaving the club, with the paw of a Portuguese businessman acting as a rudder on her round Filippina rear.

  So then Shane got stinking, stonking drunk on Tsingtao, while his quiet, doe-eyed companion knocked back cranberry juice after cranberry juice, and when Shane was starting to sing along to songs that had ended hours ago, and all the cranberry juice in Bejeebers-Bejaybers had gone, they decided to go. Shane was so rat-faced that he almost left his laptop on the bar stool, which would have been a major disaster for all concerned, but he tucked it under his arm and they went back to her place, where she insisted that he took his shoes off at the door and kept silent until they were in her cosy little room.

  Shane did as he was instructed, and when they were alone and he lay on her touching little single bed watching
her get undressed, he thought – you can’t care too much about them. Care too much and they will just kick you from here to kingdom come. The trouble was, everything felt stronger when you cared too much.

  In the morning, while the woman from Fuzhou slept on, heavily sedated by a couple of injections from Dr Love, Shane got out of bed buck naked and strolled into the kitchen, yawning widely and scratching his scrotum. Then he stopped dead. And so did the Chinese family eating their breakfast at the kitchen table. They froze with a sharp intake of appalled breath, brown eyes widening with horror and disbelief, spoonfuls of congee and cornflakes halfway to their mouths.

  The family were all there. The middle-aged man in glasses, already dressed in a shirt and tie, ready for the office. His wife, the plump housewife with an unfortunate perm and those ridiculous mini stockings they wore in Shanghai that only covered the ankles. And their two children – a podgy crop-haired boy of about eleven and a long-haired girl in her mid-teens with her hands on her mouth and her sickened eyes on Shane.

  And as Shane covered himself with a carton of orange juice and the mother covered her daughter’s eyes with a packet of Cheerios, Shane understood two things with blinding clarity.

  The woman from Fuzhou was an ayi who was unclear about her terms of employment.

  And it was time for him to settle down.

  The old man didn’t really want to see anything. That was the truth. Bill stood at the window watching him smoking a roll-up down in the courtyard of Paradise Mansions and he knew that his father could live quite happily without ever seeing the Great Wall or the Forbidden City or the entire contents of Shanghai, just as long as he could spend some time with his granddaughter.

  As the old man smoked his cigarette, Holly capered and gambolled around the mother-and-child fountain with her favourite stray cat. A car entered the courtyard, and the old man took a protective step towards Holly, gesturing with his cigarette, although the car was nowhere near her.