41
What had her husband eaten every morning, before he went to work? Chinese pancakes? Rice porridge? Or the full western, as Don was getting now?
Today’s dressing gown was black and short, barely onto her thighs, leaving very little to his imagination. Don wanted to take her back to bed, but instead he showered while she read a paperback in the living room. She sat sideways on an armchair. Bare feet dangled over the edge, soles dirty from the floor and the lawn. The book was in Chinese. It looked like a novel.
He worked out for a while, jogging down the road, exercises in the garden, upstairs for some bag work. It was a light martial arts bag, designed to take quick kicks rather than heavy punches, and Don didn’t trust that the ceiling wouldn’t give way. But he did three rounds on that anyway, taking it easy. Some water, and then onto the weights.
Ninety solid minutes of exercise and his shoulders were screaming at him – louder than the rest of his muscles, anyway – by the time he set the barbells down after the last rep. He sat on the bench, dripping sweat onto the floor. Then he saw Julia watching him through the doorway. She walked in and ran a hand across his shoulders and the soaked t-shirt. There was a look in her eyes that Don was beginning to recognise, a half smile on her lips. He had planned to warm down with the rope, back out in the garden, but there were other ways after all. He grabbed her. She shrieked playfully as he dumped her over his sweaty shoulder and carried her into the bedroom.
Julia went shopping while Don idled around the house. He checked out a few bookshelves in the upstairs corridor. Moby Dick, a handful of Austens and Brontes, Steinbeck and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Kafka and Orwell – the books so famous that even Don had heard of most of them – and more than a few in Chinese. In a corner of the living room were fashion magazines in English and Chinese, Vogue, Cosmo, Bazaar. The entire house contained little that couldn’t be guessed or inferred, if you had just once glimpsed the people who lived there. He sat in front of the TV for a while, flicked through every channel until he reached the radio stations, turned it off.
Don returned to the bookshelves, and finally picked out Treasure Island. He took it out into the garden, smoking away and quickly turning through the pages until he heard Julia return.
Beef steaks, a chicken, a few cans, plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit, and several bottles. Grey Goose vodka, Bombay Sapphire gin, Laphroaig 10-year-old Scotch. They were the easy answers to the question, ‘What drinks should I have in my well-stocked home?’ Like everything else in the house, it was predictable and not quite convincing. For a life that was more designed than lived.
Julia plied him with plenty of gin. He knew what she was doing. He drank it for lack of anything else to do.
42
He’d been a semi-regular afternoon visitor to the Keller when he was working nights at the club, but didn’t recognise the woman behind the bar. Nor did he expect to find Jonny there at this time of the day but there he was, sat alone on a stool at the bar reading the Morning Post. Don took the seat next to him.
“Hello mate. What you doing here at this time?”
“Just a quick one before the afternoon calls.” Jonny’s work was mostly divided between daytime – housewives, usually – and early evening, to catch the few debtors who actually had something to do during daylight.
“Got time for another?”
“No, you’re alright.” Don ordered a beer. He wasn’t sure if he was glad or not that Jonny wouldn’t be staying.
“What you been up to?”
What could Don say? And why didn’t he want to tell Jonny the truth? “On a job. It’s alright, but keeps me busy.” He was glad that Jonny didn’t ask any more.
Jonny said. “Have you seen Jeannie around lately?”
“Not really. Like I said, been busy. Why?”
Jonny shook his head, “No reason.” He stood to go, draining his beer. “Well, I’ll catch up with you later. Gotta go meet Chan.” Chan was Jonny’s partner. Jonny didn’t speak any Cantonese, so Chan did the talking while Jonny stood at the back looking unstable. It was a good partnership, it usually worked.
“Yeah.” Don stood to see him off. “Take care of yourself, Jonny.”
“You too, Don,” Jonny called over his shoulder as he left. “You too.”
Don’s beer arrived. He paid and sat nursing it for a while, but he felt as anxious and out of place here as he did up at the house. What was with Jonny? Or was it just himself?
Half an hour later he left half his beer sitting on the counter and walked outside. Clouds were coming in, blocking the sun, the wind a little chillier than it had been. He wished he had brought a jacket and for a while wandered around a few stores, looking in through the windows, but he had no money in his wallet anyway. Eventually he returned to his car, drove back to the widow’s place.
She was still drinking, so he joined her.
43
She came down the stairs fully dressed. The black dress that she had worn the first day he had come here. She slipped a black crushed-velvet jacket over the top and kissed him on the cheek.
“I have to go out for a while. Will you be alright?”
“Yeah, of course. Where are you going?”
She placed a finger on his lips. “Don’t worry. I should be back for lunch.”
She turned and walked through the house, and then he heard the front door closing behind her. Don poured the last of the coffee into his cup, took it out into the garden with a cigarette. The breeze was stronger and colder than the day before, fresh. The sky was mottled grey and white, with darker clouds on the horizon. Some rain later, maybe.
Everything was quiet and still. It unnerved him. He put the TV on for some company, but it echoed artificially through the large house and made the rooms feel lonelier. He started to make some phone calls. The number for the airport, flights from Jakarta. That got him nowhere. There were more flights than he would have guessed. They could be on any of them, or they might be coming in today. He looked at the phone for the deal. It sat quietly on the bookshelf. Julia had plugged it in to charge. He hadn’t thought of that. Didn’t want the battery dying on them tomorrow. Well done Julia.
Don turned the TV back on, found a movie channel while he lit another cigarette. A romantic comedy by the look of it. He didn’t recognise any of the actors. That’s what living in Hong Kong did to you. You only heard the biggest news, saw the biggest films. Everything else passes by unnoticed until in the end you stop caring about any of it. Don had no idea what was happening in England, what was on the news, what TV shows people were watching and talking about, or what music his mates were listening to.
For a year or two he’d kept in some sort of contact, but then it became only birthdays and Christmas. He became disconnected. None of it mattered, none of it felt real or important because he wasn’t a part of that life anymore. Nor was he a part of Hong Kong. He had little more idea what was happening here than in England, except for the odd days when he picked up a Post. Finally, bit by bit, he’d lost touch completely with what was going on in the world.
The world didn’t change much anyway. That was one thing he’d realised pretty quickly. Floods and elections and tragedies and big sports matches, they come and go and come again. Like Julia had said. There were always more times like the present. The present just rolls on, and on, and on.
Except for tomorrow.
Tomorrow would change his future. Tomorrow would change everything.
Julia returned just before three. Don had just finished exercising, was walking in from the garden with his rope when she came through the door. He kissed her, he showered. He told her about the flights, she nodded. She took a couple of beers from the fridge and placed one on the coffee table in front of him, picked up the book she had been reading. Filling time. Through the window it started to rain.
Don said, “Is the money ready?” She nodded. Yes it was, don’t worry about that. He said, “I guess we just have to wait, then.” She nodded again, not
lifting her eyes from the page. Yes, nothing to do but wait. Don waited a while longer and got up to fetch another beer from the fridge.
There were more books in the other room on the ground floor. He flicked through a few heavy hardbacks on photography. One guy mostly took black and white pictures of poor people, another mostly took black and white pictures of naked people. Art.
He returned to the bookshelves in the upstairs corridor and picked out a volume at random. Pride and Prejudice.
‘It is a truth universally acknowledged…’
He sat on the floor of the corridor with his back against the wall and read a few pages before choosing another book. Franz Kafka. The Trial.
‘Someone must have been telling lies…’
That book didn’t last long. Don had never been much of a reader. One more. He chose the fattest book on the shelf. Then he wouldn’t have to feel so bad about not getting anywhere with it. Herman Melville. Moby Dick.
‘Call me Ishmael. Some years ago…’
This time, despite the archaic language and the age it took the story to actually start, Don found himself interested and was twenty pages in – admittedly, without having understood a great deal of it – when Julia surprised him. She had come up the stairs barefoot, as she always was in the house. He put the book face down on the floor, open to the page he was on, scrambled to his feet.
“Wait a minute.” She walked into the bedroom. He watched through the open doorway as she hiked up her dress, put on a suspender belt followed by a pair of stockings from the drawer. His eyes followed them up the long line of her legs. She watched him watching her, enjoying his gaze. When she had hooked them on she pulled the black dress down, wiggling her hips to get comfortable.
She pulled a small gold watch onto her wrist, adjusted her makeup in the mirror: a touch of eyeliner, mascara, bright cherry red lipstick. Finally a squirt of perfume. Dabbing her lips with a piece of tissue, smacking them together, from the wardrobe she retrieved the velvet jacket she had worn this morning and his better quality jacket which she handed to him as she came back out.
“Come with me,” she said.
44
She led him down the stairs, pausing to slip on a pair of cruel looking black patent heels and pick up a small handbag. Outside she climbed into the MG. He followed.
“Where are we going?” It was raining slightly. The sky was darker, a steady drizzle hitting the windscreen.
“You’ll see.”
She let the car drift down the steep winding road. Don watched her as she drove, studying the red lips, the line of her neck. The buttons on her jacket were gold, and stamped with a double-C. The dress was short and tight, and as she changed gear it rode up around her thighs, revealing her stocking tops. Her perfume filled the car. It was powerful, sensual. He drank it all in gratefully, again wondering how he had managed to end up with a woman like this. Julia concentrated on the wet road, silent and thoughtful.
She didn’t take the Gap road up through the valley, but instead went under the mountain, through the Aberdeen Tunnel and west along the coast until they reached Aberdeen itself. Then she turned off the main road. In front of them was an enormous gate made of white stone. At least twenty feet high, it was topped with bright blue pagoda-style roofing, and had grey and gold Chinese writing across the top and down each side.
Don didn’t need to read the characters to know where they were, a cemetery. As the MG came around a bend in the road the high wall to their left dropped away to reveal the graves: thousands upon thousands of them, covering several hillsides in tier upon tier of white and grey stone dots. The lines of them seemed endless, small and large, simple headstones or elaborate graves topped with angels and Buddhas.
Julia followed the road through the cemetery for another three or four hundred yards, stopped in front of a set of stone steps that led up one of the hillsides. She turned off the ignition, then popped open the boot of the car.
“There’s an umbrella in the trunk.”
The rain was heavier now, the clouds darker. Don ducked out into it, found a long black umbrella in the boot, opened it over Julia as the widow stepped out into the rain. She pulled her dress back down in the direction of her knees. He held the umbrella for both of them as she started up the steep hillside, her heels clattering on the stone. As they passed each tier, Don watched the lines of graves as they stretched out of sight around the hill, but Julia kept her eyes fixed firmly on the ground in front of her.
About halfway up, just as Don was wondering how far they were going to walk, she stopped, checked some numbers on the side of the steps. They turned off to the right, walking carefully in front of the graves. Don had to walk behind her, struggling to hold the umbrella over her head and not fall over the side onto the graves below them. He felt the cold rainwater start to dribble inside his collar.
A dozen or so graves in, she stopped again. A small, simple, grey marble headstone atop a flat, white stone square. There was a small step in front of the headstone for offerings and flowers but it was empty. The headstone itself had a small cross at the top, and Chinese writing fell down it in lines. Don didn’t have to ask whose grave they were stood before. He shuddered as he remembered the handsome man he had almost, but not quite, known for a few days, just a couple of weeks ago.
He looked at Julia, but her eyes were on the grave, her jaw set grimly. She didn’t seem to remember that Don was there. Don held the umbrella up, thought about what he might say. He had helped to put the guy in there. He watched the rain fall and, as they stood silently, he watched the sky grow darker. Was she waiting for something? Should he do something? Hold her hand or put an arm around her shoulder? It didn’t seem appropriate, but what is appropriate for the new lover of a widow, standing at the grave of her dead husband?
It was probably only ten minutes but seemed at least twice as long to Don. Finally, she looked at the tiny gold watch on her wrist, turned to him, smiled those cherry lips. “Come on, I made a reservation.”
She led him back the way they had come, past the cold graves and down the stone steps, until they were seated back in the car, shaking the rain off their clothes. She didn’t speak again until ten minutes later when they pulled up outside a restaurant in Repulse Bay. The restaurant was a converted villa on the edge of the town with impressive views down to the beach on the ocean side of the building, an impressive collection of cars on the other.
Once they were inside Julia came alive again. She took charge. Don followed her, admiring her back and legs where the dress left them exposed. He wasn’t the only one checking out her shape as she allowed the waiter to pull out her chair.
Suddenly she was excited and girlish in a way he hadn’t seen before. She insisted she must eat mussels, because they were lucky for her and she hadn’t eaten any for such a long time. Without a glance at the menu she ordered moules marinieres with no entrée for both of them. Julia asked for the waiter’s choice on wine, and chatted constantly. “I can’t wait to get tomorrow out of the way. I’ll be so relieved when it’s finally over.”
Don agreed, but was wary about talking too loudly. He looked around the room. For the most part the crowd consisted of middle aged and older couples in twos or fours, wearing Italian suits and designer dresses. That explained the look the waiter had given him.
The décor was overly grand for the size of the room, with gold leaf and plush reds everywhere. The staff were as pretentious as the venue. No Anglophobic waiter in the centre of Paris was ever as French as these Chinese waiters in tuxedos on Hong Kong Island. Don hated it. Julia proposed a toast.
“Tomorrow.”
Don raised his wine. “Tomorrow.”
45
Their glasses clashed, he took a small sip. Julia finished half her wine, went on talking. “What time do you think they’ll call? I hope we don’t have to wait all day. I’m so tired of waiting.” The Californian accent was coming through, as it tended to when she was relaxed or drunk. She took another gulp. She w
ould be drunk soon enough, at this rate. “Do you think it’ll be in a hotel room?”
“I suppose. Where else?”
“It could be in a public place, like a restaurant, but that would make it difficult to check the goods. I suppose we could take it into the bathroom, that would be okay, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, babe. That’d be fine. I guess we’ll just wait and see.”
She reached across the table and stroked a thumb down his cheek, smiling at him. “I’m so glad you’re here Don. I feel so much better, that you’re doing this with me.”
Before he could think of what to say the waiter interrupted with their food. He tried to watch how much he was drinking, but Julia proposed toast after toast – to the future, to their partnership, to American dollars – and topped his wine up constantly. By the time they had finished the Cherry Clafoutis they were on the third bottle, plus several large cognacs. Julia’s face and neck had turned bright red. She asked the waiter to uncork a bottle of desert wine for them, and passed over a credit card from her purse without even asking for the bill. No wonder her husband had been short of money.
Following Julia to the door, Don saw how red and blotchy the wine had turned her back. She slipped her jacket back on, staggering a little, took the bottle of wine with its cork half pulled from the waiter. She pressed her car keys into Don’s hand as she pushed him through the door. “You’d better drive. I’m hammered.” Her words were slurred. He put an arm around her to help her walk.
“I’m pretty drunk, too. We’d better call a cab.”
“No!” She shoved him toward the MG. “Take me somewhere.”
“Babe, I don’t think…”
She pushed him to the driver’s door. “Get in and drive.”
The rain had stopped by now, the wind had pushed the clouds away. Stars were starting to emerge from the south, over the water. He unlocked the car and got inside. It was a long time since he’d driven anything as powerful as this. Julia stumbled around the car, falling against the door before she managed to open it and tumble into the seat. “Now take me somewhere. I don’t want to go home yet.”
All Blood is Red Page 10
