China Dreams

by Sid Smith

  Then the temple, a large brick box with mock-Gothic windows and the words ‘Methodist Mission’ cut into a stone slab across the eaves. By the gate, though, a concrete wedding-cake fountain, set with mirrors and coloured tiles, squirted into the cold. It splashed his pants as he crossed the big front yard, half builder’s rubble and half tussocky grass, and rang the bell on a cheap plywood door. ‘Dad is praying for me in that place in Willesden,’ Johnny had said. ‘He wants the spirits to put me back on the straight and narrow-minded.’

  ‘Stupid, his jokes,’ thought Tom. Then the door swung back. A Chinese monk, young and happy in his orange robes.

  Tom said, ‘Hello. Hi. I’m a friend of John Tan.’

  ‘Ah.’ The monk was puzzled, though his huge smile didn’t change.

  ‘John Tan,’ said Tom. ‘He died. He’s here, I think.’

  ‘Ah! Tan Yiu, I think. English name John.’

  Tom was very shocked. He’d forgotten about the different-names thing. His friend taken by China. ‘Can I visit the ashes or the urn or whatever it is?’

  ‘Please. Yes.’ The young monk trying to be grave, thick lips squeezing his smile.

  At first the place was only damp-smelling corridors: low ceilings, whitewashed dented walls, and the monk’s happiness flooding back as he trotted in front, shaved head rocking, his legs and arms ebullient, sandals slapping the floor that changed from ragged mats to parquet to worn lino and back again. ‘Tan Yiu ahead. Special room for ashes.’

  Then a huge surprising hall, quite empty, where North London clerks had knelt, worried that their worn soles would show, starched collars chafing their boils, but now it was Eastern tat, the arched ceiling in brash colours, scattered mismatched mats, and a wall of ranked godlings, fat and gilded, with demons and beasts and all that Buddhist bollocks, the young monk flashing a big yellow gappy grin over his shoulder, so that Tom said, ‘Can you do the kung-fu stuff?’

  ‘We are not fighting monks.’

  ‘No. Not necessarily fighting, hitting. Maybe just smashing bricks and stuff.’

  ‘Not that,’ said the boy, surprised but not angry, taking another white corridor, the tattered mats and Third World bareness.

  ‘Whoa,’ said Tom. They were passing a room like all the rest – parquet-pattern lino, Gothic windows with Protestant plain glass, varnished tongue-and-groove ceiling – but here a badminton net was stretched between two poles. ‘Brilliant,’ said Tom. ‘Fantastic.’ He grabbed a racquet and made a couple of passes. ‘God, I’d love to see you killer monks at this. Running up the walls. A bit of slo-mo. Ten foot off the ground. Can you do that? Can you show me? The mid-air stuff?’

  ‘Maybe we go to Tan Yiu.’

  Another narrow corridor, the whitewash soft with damp, and the monk walked behind, watching for trouble. But Tom was silenced, because here was a little room to the side.

  It was walled with cabinets, each a foot square, so he thought of the locker room at school. But the cabinets were glossy with lacquer, red for luck. They had a fancy strip of gilt around the edge, and in the middle was a brass frame for a picture of the dead. Mostly the picture frames were empty, but half a dozen had colour photos like a passport snap. He saw Johnny’s picture and looked away.

  ‘This stuff,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s to bring peace, because he kill himself.’ A table under Johnny’s cabinet with candles and flowers.

  ‘Kill himself. So family give things – flowers, lights – and also come. They talk to ashes.’

  ‘Unhappy ghost.’

  ‘Maybe unhappy,’ said the monk.

  ‘Trouble for living people.’

  ‘Maybe give trouble.’

  ‘Maybe lost,’ said Tom. ‘Maybe gone to the ancestors, travelling through their lives, maybe the bits like his own life.’

  The monk looked judicious, his big lips squeezed shut over horse’s teeth, but perhaps he didn’t understand. ‘Maybe Tan Yiu angry,’ he said.

  Tom looked at the little picture. Johnny’s lopsided smile, anxious and jaunty, the head tipped back but hurt eyes. ‘Oh Christ. Oh God.’

  Tears at last. Why didn’t I cry before?

  The young monk stood at his elbow, his worried frown wrinkling up onto his shaved skull, and that Chinese no-smell, like a statue or Johnny. ‘His spirit soon well. Resting and peace.’

  ‘Well, no offence, but I don’t believe that stuff, you see. No. And his family. I mean, that was the whole thing – his dad. So how can they help? Maybe he just gets more upset.’

  ‘Family come every day.’

  Tom was absorbing this when he heard a squawking. But instead of the Tans, a gang of old women bustled in, square in their nylon jackets, busy little legs in neat trousers. ‘Cantonese,’ he thought. Their eager faces, heads pushed forward, chattering in whispers, eaters of everything, and Tom watching fondly through his tears. He saw May grown old, and himself beside her, old and proud.

  He turned away from Johnny, grieving for everything, the women stilled by his sorrow. The monk said gently, ‘I leave you. Don’t worry. Listen: chants.’ A cassette machine stood behind the flowers, specked with paint, and Tom wondered what music the monks had played as they whitewashed the walls. ‘This all day. Help him.’

  Alone with the women, tears on his chin, Tom faced a life-size plastic Buddha. It was fixed to the wall, floating cross-legged over a table laid with stubby candles in cups, flowers in a cheap glass vase, and a tray of offerings – peanuts, crisps, Cadbury’s chocolate buttons, a bottle of mineral water. Its long fingers cupped a plastic pearl like a cricket ball. Its bland young face stared over Tom’s head at the cabinets behind him.

  He turned back to Johnny. ‘Leave me alone, OK,’ he said, the women watching. ‘It’s not my fault and I can’t help you.’

  The photo smiled from its screwed-on brass frame. It was covered by a clear plastic bastard cover thing, which he picked at with a fingernail. He stepped back, frustrated.

  At the corners of Johnny’s cabinet were gilt metal knobs, the size of a fingertip. He twisted one. It unscrewed smoothly. But underneath was the top of a fat crossheaded stud, bare steel and businesslike, hiding the last of Johnny Tan.

  ‘Bugger.’ The ladies watched, heads craning, absorbed but unsurprised because of course white people are odd. He passed the gilt knob to the nearest woman. She bowed over it with interest – her cropped white hair, her hand strong from honourable work – showed it to the others, offered it back.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘A present.’ She watched him step into the corridor, and was staring at the knob when he came back with a fire extinguisher. He drove it into Johnny’s face.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. The blow echoed through the wall of cabinets and boomed down the corridor.

  ‘Noisy,’ he said to the women, who’d shrunk into a corner.

  Johnny’s photo slid to the floor. Tom bent to pick it up but changed his mind. Twice more he drove the red metal into the wood, the plastic cover flying in splinters.

  ‘Strong,’ he said. He looked at the wall of cabinets. ‘Yes. Good stuff.’ Johnny’s cabinet had half-moon dents, and a flake of thick lacquer had fallen off, showing the pale wood, which was still solid.

  He set the extinguisher down, suddenly tired. He dragged himself along the corridor, the women leaning around the door to watch. He came to another little room, this time a library, and stared for a while at shelves of cassette tapes, books in Chinese, and ragged old airport thrillers. He walked on, very weary, stopping again at the badminton net. He stared at what he hadn’t seen before: the two poles stood in cement in old cooking-oil drums. ‘From some takeaway, I suppose.’

  Another corridor, the whitewash soft as chalk, a noticeboard where he read about classes for English-speakers, and then a trestle table with books laid out for sale and he pocketed one. ‘Too big for the congregation, this place. Not enough people to keep it nice.’

  At last the plywood door again. He was stepping outside when the young monk grabbed his wrist: ‘Why? Why?
’

  Tom shook him off. This wasn’t, after all, a kung-fu monk.

  It was a premonition, perhaps. Tom was at Willesden Tube when a train came in from the centre. He ducked behind a pillar and then saw May.

  She liked loose clothes. A studenty big black jacket, her lean profile, hair swinging free, and a buttoned-up white shirt, though he’d seen her lovely breasts, little as kisses.

  ‘May.’ Her frightened eyes. ‘Hello, babe. It’s good to see you.’

  ‘Tom. Well. Actually I wanted to talk to you. Did you call your dad? Because a woman phoned. A couple of times, in fact. It seemed really urgent.’

  But then she was striding again, Tom hurrying behind up the station steps, saying, ‘How are you? I thought maybe you needed your favourite biker again.’

  ‘Actually I wondered if you’d left London. Back to your dad’s, perhaps. Or that area, anyway.’

  ‘Enough about my dad. Christ.’ Trotting behind as he hit that High Street again, wondering how she could be normal when the dreams were so . . .

  She turned on him. ‘What are you doing, in fact? Are you going to the temple?’

  ‘Yes. Well, maybe. Actually I’ve just been.’

  ‘Well, you can’t come with me. It’s a family thing, right?’

  ‘Right.’ Fighting the odds he said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t see the funeral. The customs and stuff.’

  A sigh, resettling her shoulder bag, then striding off, Tom lagging on his cut ankle. ‘Dad wanted the old things – funny clothes and so on – but I didn’t. So you didn’t miss much.’

  ‘Where does his soul go, in fact?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Tom. What a question. I mean, what’s the difference? You don’t believe it, any more than me.’

  Here’s what May believes: buses stop with their door right next to her – not always, but more than you’d think; she knows what track is playing before she turns the radio on, or maybe they’ve just played it, or it’s playing on some other station; she dreams about friends before they call, and if she phones she can tell if they’re at home, or just coming home, or maybe they’re actually, you know, thinking about their home; she speaks the truth and gets in trouble for it, but it’s her nature, she can’t help it and actually doesn’t want to help it, because the truth is within, not in churches or books, so you just have to follow your real nature whatever anyone thinks. And when she was a toddler in Hong Kong, they would visit her mother in the cemetery on Pok Fu Lam Road, where the buses halt at every stop, even if no one is there, because the dead might be travelling.

  They were passing the hardware shop, Tom dodging an aluminium ladder, a box of washing lines, stacked rubber buckets, dog food in sacks. ‘So who’s riding the bike now?’

  ‘We haven’t got a bike, have we. Anyway, we use the car. It’s better.’

  ‘That bike. We went everywhere. That first time, as well. Do you remember?’

  ‘People stole the food.’

  ‘Not from me. Not when I was doing it.’

  ‘No, but it’s happened. And someone set fire to a bike once. Before you started, maybe. Maybe you didn’t hear.’

  ‘It was sweet for us, though.’

  ‘A car is better. Dad’s friends have swapped as well. I mean, he needs the car anyway, so a bike’s just an overhead. And he’s told the police.’

  ‘What? That it got stolen?’

  ‘For the insurance.’

  ‘Did he mention me, do you think?’

  ‘I think so. Probably. Yes.’

  They were outside the temple and she felt safe. She looked him in the eyes and said firmly, ‘Goodbye, Tom.’

  He thought, ‘Let her go: if you let her go she’ll come back.’ But then he followed her into the yard.

  ‘I said goodbye.’

  ‘Yes. Well, I’ll call you.’

  ‘Don’t call. I mean it.’ She was angry again. ‘And what about you trying to break in? What was that about? And look at you: like a tramp.’

  He said, ‘May, I know what your dad thinks. I mean, did your dad talk to you about me? I know he doesn’t like me at the moment. Because of me and Johnny.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘But I just want to tell you that he’s wrong.’

  ‘Really? That’s not what I heard.’

  Tom put his hand to his forehead. ‘All right. But it was a kids’ thing. I was upset, that’s all.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, quite calm. ‘That makes it easier.’ She turned and walked away so that he said, ‘I keep dreaming about you.’

  She stopped and scowled at him down the cracked concrete path. ‘I know.’

  ‘Really? You felt it?’

  ‘Wei told me. I don’t like it. It’s not flattering, if that’s what you think. We’re not together any more. And never will be.’

  ‘It’s nothing bad. Not what you think. Bloody Wei. I mean I felt closer to you, through the dreams. Like I was trying to understand about you and your family and me. But then I wasn’t so sure. The dreams were too strange. So now I think maybe my dreams are getting mixed up with Johnny.’

  ‘Right. So actually you were dreaming about him.’

  ‘No. Christ. Why do you say that? No, it’s just. I don’t know. I think maybe Johnny sees something in the afterlife, and then I dream about it. Or maybe I’m dreaming already and things he sees in the afterlife get into the dreams. I can’t work it out.’

  ‘So. Dreams about my brother. Very, very funny.’

  ‘You have to save me. I need saving.’

  ‘From what, for God’s sake?’ He didn’t answer, and she said, ‘Yes, really funny. Wet dreams about a dead person.’

  ‘Don’t, May. I love you.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Don’t you ever say that. Don’t come near me, or dream about me, or dream about Johnny. Maybe he doesn’t like it either.’

  20

  Tom paced Willesden station, hobbling fast on his bad ankle, waiting for the cops or a gang of fighting monks to abseil in. He thought of May with the young monk in the room of ashes. They were staring at the dented wood. Tom screwed up his face: ‘Johnny gets cremated and I fetch the fire extinguisher.’

  On the long Tube ride he sat dumbly, wiggling his toes in the wet canvas shoes, his toenails showing through the holes, not thinking of anything except the van, parked by Waterloo station and probably covered in tickets again.

  He could beg. He could buy petrol and drive and drive until the trees met overhead, and leave all this city stuff and the dread in his belly.

  ‘No Chinks in the country.’ He pictured fat Mr Tan on tiptoes in a muddy lane, helpless in his trodden-down shoes. Although, come to think of it, Tan was an ex-peasant, knee-deep in buffalo shit. ‘Actually, I don’t know anything about the bugger.’

  Suddenly he understood May. She wasn’t something in a dream. She was a real person, angry in a street in London. This was important. She was lovable because she was real. He was humbled by this insight, and glad to be humble.

  ‘We were talking, so we can talk again.’ She had jumped on the bike on that first night, eyes like the light on an empty cab, passionate and ready. She’d said yes with her legs in the room under the eaves, the pigeons restless on the slates. When she ate she wiggled her toes, couldn’t stop although he laughed. When she turned over in bed her hand was stiff like a swimmer’s.

  He saw her as a Red Guard. She was holding the little red book of Chairman Mao, looking up, full of joy, red ribbons on her two little sticking-out pigtails. She had a blue padded suit. She held up the book at full stretch, which pulled her trousers up tight. She thought of people looking at her pulled-up trousers.

  ‘I’m going the same way as Gilly.’ Or his dad on the bath edge, big Ellie stalled in the door.

  He leaned his forehead on the Tube window, so he could watch the black tunnel walls and think about getting out of London. The shaking of the Tube was like the shaking of the van. He pictured himself driving at night, lost in the narrow streets around St Paul’s.


  ‘No,’ he said, and imagined the river. It was black and glittering, glimpsed between office blocks. He steered towards it and found the Embankment, empty in the small hours, and drove through Chelsea and Hammersmith and on upstream. As the van took corners, he leaned over in the Tube. Next to him, a man in a suit looked angry.

  He hit a dirt road, and the van skidded over loose stones and through a night-time village with boats drawn up, then climbed a bald hill and down again to the river, which was dark and wide as a lake. He gave the van off-road tyres. He made it a diesel, throaty and strong. ‘It needed driving, that’s all, to tighten stuff.’

  The stones in the road got bigger, the van roared and gripped, and he passed more boats, a house on stilts, and on the far bank was a black cliff with lights high up, which were the houses that folk call ‘sky farms’. The road climbed into forested hills, wet and cool, with mist in the headlights, the knobbly tyres throwing up mud.

  He felt free, and laughed. ‘This is a long road. It’s not a wrong road.’ The man in the suit edged away.

  The Tube took a clattering bend, and Tom felt the road curve around a wooded hill that fell to the river. It was dawn. He drove under dripping pines, rounded a last bend, and there was the village. May was waiting. She stood by her father’s house, brass discs on her blouse, a skirt of many layers, and smiled to see him. The man in the suit saw his answering smile, rapt with love.

  He got out of the van and the village was perfect – the huts on bamboo stilts among the pines, children gazing shyly from the windows. There were men in the fields, and a woman waved as she climbed the track from the river, a basket on her arm, fish tails wagging. They went to the headman, May’s father, and Tom said, ‘I’ll be your new son.’

  A hut was ready. There was a fire against the mountain chill, and May had laid sweet potatoes on banana leaves. He slept that night on boughs of odorous pine, the hut swaying on its stilts, and in the morning she came to him again and never went home.

  Swaying in the Tube, he thought, ‘It’s like the old dreams: me and May, happy together.’

  He helped the villagers, loading their fish in the van and driving up the curving track from the river. When the tank was dry he ran the engine on lamp oil, then fish oil, then on the gas from goat droppings. He put the front axle on blocks and drove a pulley, which dragged a sled up the hill and lifted the bucket in the well.