Crimson China

by Betsy Tobin

  “We do not stay the night,” she says nervously. “My friend is tired.”

  The policeman cranes his neck forward to look at Wen in the back seat.

  “I can see that. Is he the one that’s driving?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has he been drinking?”

  “Drinking?” repeats Lili.

  “Yes, miss. Alcohol. Has he had any alcohol tonight?”

  “No. No alcohol. Only water. And Coca-Cola,” she adds, wondering whether it is a crime to drink Coca-Cola while driving.

  The policeman eyes her, weighing up her words.

  “This is a rest area?” she asks.

  “Yes, it’s a rest area. But it’s not for sleeping.”

  “Oh,” she replies. “Of course. I will tell him.”

  “Thank you.”

  She watches as he returns to his car. Johnny is stirring now, awakened by their voices. He sits up and looks at her, bleary-eyed.

  “Who was that?”

  “Police,” she says.

  He looks askance.

  “Why?”

  “He says you’re not allowed to sleep here.”

  Johnny shakes his head, swearing under his breath, and climbs over into the front seat.

  He starts the car and backs out of the parking space.

  “Do you want to stop for coffee?” Lili asks.

  “I’m fine,” he replies, lurching into forward. “I just want to get home.”

  They reach London just after ten o’clock, and she is relieved when he does not offer to take her to her flat, dropping her instead at Hounslow Station. After she steps out of the car, she bends down to say goodbye through the open window. She wants desperately to thank him, to convey to him how much it meant to her to see the place where Wen died, but she knows that gratitude is not what Johnny needs right now. His hands are gripped tightly on the steering wheel, and his eyes linger slightly to one side of her.

  “I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I didn’t mean to deceive you.”

  Johnny’s hands flex open and closed on the wheel. After a moment he nods. Lili turns to go.

  “Hey Hebei,” he calls out.

  She turns back to the car and bends down again. This time he meets her gaze.

  “Let me know when you stop looking.”

  February 2004

  Early the next morning, Wen wakes beside her sleeping form. She breathes deeply, her body turned away from him, the bedcovers flung back almost to her waist. Her dark brown hair is fanned out across the pillow like a tangled halo, and her bare shoulder looks stark and vulnerable in the grey light of dawn. With care he eases his body back from hers. But he dares not rise, as he does not wish to wake her. Right now what he needs is time.

  Last night her actions took him completely by surprise. Until then, he had found her behaviour unpredictable and bewildering: her manner had seemed flint-like at times, almost brittle. But after a few drinks, the shell of her exterior fell away; she relaxed, became light-hearted, though he still found her changeable. Yesterday morning, when he came out of the shower, she’d stopped short and stared at him for an instant, before carrying on with what she had been doing. Oddly, it was the first time he had felt male in her presence. Their relationship had been defined by culture and circumstance: they were not man and woman, but Chinese and English, desperate and despairing.

  But with hindsight, perhaps a part of him had anticipated their pairing. He knows enough of women, knows the changes that occur when they’ve made up their minds. Even without the aid of whisky, she had altered in the past few days. Shifted in her bearing, in her treatment of him somehow. He’d felt it happen gradually, like the slow movement of a weather vane. One moment pointing one direction: the next, swinging silently towards his own.

  The alcohol terrifies him. He has never known anyone drink the way she does. Quietly. Privately. And with steely determination. As if she is locked in a nightly battle with the bottle. His stepfather liked to drink, could down bowl after bowl of bai jiu until his eyes watered and his lips shone. But his bouts of drinking were infrequent: like most people, he could not afford to indulge with any regularity. Alcohol, like everything else in their lives, was a luxury. Used to mark an occasion. It was not a way of survival. He wonders how she came to be this way. And whether many English people are the same. At once he dismisses this thought. He may be alien to this culture, but he can still recognise someone who is quietly perishing within their own life.

  He turns back to survey her body. Was making love to her different from the other women he has known? They came together like a warm rush of tides: almost melting into one another. He was deliberately gentle at first, alarmed by her fragility, afraid that she might somehow break apart in his arms. But her urgency soon overcame him, for she seemed hungry for physical contact, starving even. Within moments, she had moved to bring him inside her, and they had remained locked together, coupled like animals, for what seemed like hours. He struggled not to come too soon; to give her what it was that she needed. Even afterwards, she kept him inside her, until his body had signalled exhaustion and withdrawn into itself. By then she had fallen deeply into sleep.

  He runs his eyes along the broad arch of her back. Her skin is the palest of whites. It seems almost translucent, like the inner membrane of an eggshell. His own skin seems tarnished by comparison. He has never been particularly drawn to the physical features of Western women. But there is something pure about her skin that fascinates him. She is heavier than he is, her figure more abundant than his own. Her breasts are generous, her hips wide and curving, the globes of her bottom large and rounded like heavy melons. When he first took her in his arms, her flesh was warm and thick and yielding, nothing like the angular tautness of the women he has known. Chinese women were built like songbirds in comparison: slender-boned, with relatively little fat or muscle to pad them out. A trait he had always liked in the past. But now he wonders why.

  She smelled completely different too. That had taken him by surprise. Maybe it was the drink. Or what she ate. But it was entirely unfamiliar. He had buried his face in the hollows of her neck, underneath her arms, between her breasts, everywhere he could in an effort to capture the scent of her, to somehow make it his own. Inevitably, her mouth tasted of whisky, but his mind struggled to reach past that, knowing that if he didn’t, he would not find his way into her essence. He needed desperately to know this woman, to make sense of what was happening. For him, last night had not been about sex – in spite of the fact that he had not slept with a woman in many months. He had grown accustomed to celibacy since leaving London and Jin, had almost revelled in it. But last night, though his body was desperate for release, his mind was all the while engaged in feeding her, understanding what it was that she required.

  She rolls over and sighs in her sleep, one arm flung over her head across the pillow, her hand curling towards him. He shifts closer, studies her fingers. With a start, he realises that her fingernails resemble those of his sister: broad and relatively flat, with a tiny sliver of pale moon across the top. He has always thought that women’s fingernails were like snowflakes: infinite in their varieties. He wonders how he could have missed hers earlier. His own nails are blunted and badly torn from cockling; they have only just begun to repair themselves. But he realises that, given the chance to grow, they would eventually look like hers. This strikes him as significant – the first point of physical convergence between them – perhaps the only one.

  She stirs, breathes in deeply, exhales and opens her eyes. For the briefest instant she does not seem to know him. Then her face seems to cloud with turbulence, though whether it is anger or fear, or something else altogether, he cannot tell. Instinctively, he reaches out a hand and gently places his palm upon her cheek, as if to siphon away her feelings. He moves to take her in his arms, pulls her to his chest and cradles her as tightly as he can. They remain wound together for a long time, perhaps an hour or more, until she has drifted once again into sleep. H
e too falls off the edge of consciousness, lulled by the warmth of her body next to his, and when he does he dreams that they are entwined like seaweed, floating together in a vast warm sea.

  When she next wakes she is newly calm, as if he has stilled something within her. They do not speak, but once again she moves her hands across his body, and urgently manoeuvres him inside her. This time he lets himself go, takes his pleasure without thinking, and it is over quickly, both of them slick with sweat and desire. When they have finished, she perches on one elbow over him.

  “Come,” she says.

  She takes him by the hand and pulls him through the kitchen to the bathroom, where she leans down and runs the tap, while he relieves himself in the loo.

  They bathe together, something he has never done before, and he marvels at the fact of it. He sits behind her, her ample body pressed back against him, and he soaps her ivory flesh until he feels himself grow hard again. He positions her on top of him and comes into her from beneath, and she settles herself astride him comfortably, her breath coming in audible gasps. Afterwards, he buries his face in the wetness of her hair and the furrows of her neck, and realises that the scent of her is no longer strange to him. She turns her face to him.

  “Hey,” she says, in a voice thickened by desire. “What are you doing in my bath?”

  Later she cooks him breakfast in her dressing gown, the first meal she has prepared for him since the morning after the accident. He tries to talk to her, to converse as normal people would, but each time his English fails him. He resolves to learn her language before he does anything else, for without language here he is nothing. When they have finished eating, she disappears into the bedroom and comes out a moment later wearing jeans and a sweater, clothes different from the ones she has worn before. She comes over to him with a smile.

  “It’s Saturday,” she explains. “I don’t have to work.”

  Nearly a week has flown by since the accident. A lifetime ago. Since coming to England, he has worked steadily regardless of the day. They did not have days off, only occasional times when work was not available for some reason, and when this happened everyone grew anxious and irritable. They did whatever they could to fill the time, rolling back the mattresses in their accommodation and playing cards or sometimes mah jong, if a set was available. When they were working they would lose track of time altogether, had no sense of days or dates for weeks on end. They had no weekends, no holidays. The only day that mattered to anyone was pay day.

  Ironically, the accident had happened on the biggest holiday of the Chinese calendar: the eve of Spring Festival, the start of the lunar New Year. When they set off from Liverpool that afternoon, the mood had been decidedly glum. At home their families would be gathering around tables for festive meals, boiled sweets hidden inside dumplings, the start of fifteen days of celebration. Originally, there had been talk among them of a small party after they finished work, but these plans were quickly shelved when they’d been told they would be leaving later than usual, owing to disputes with local fisherman, who had set fire to their catch the day before. We’ll go out late tomorrow, the gangmaster had told them. At dusk. After the locals have gone home. We don’t want any more trouble.

  During the long drive from Liverpool, the atmosphere in the van was unusually tense, everyone anticipating the angry shouts and reddened faces of the men who had attacked them the day before. They all realised what lay ahead: they would be expected to cockle under cover of darkness, with only the headlights from the vans to help them see. Cockling was difficult at the best of times, but doubly so at night, and in foul weather. When they’d first reached the fishing beds, the conditions hadn’t been so bad, but the weather had quickly deteriorated, and soon the wind was whipping around them in savage gusts. Wen had lowered his head against the cold and worked steadily, trying hard not to dwell on the fact that halfway across the world his people would be celebrating.

  He still remembers the moment of utter panic, of sheer terror, when they realised the tides had risen higher and more swiftly than usual – had in fact surrounded them, closing them off from shore.

  His mind flies to Lin. Where is he now? At home his wife and children will sprinkle ash across their threshold to catch his footprints, searching for a sign that he is with them, for after seven days the soul of the deceased must find its way home. But if Lin is truly dead he is a shui gui now: a water ghost, doomed to remain at the scene of his death until his spirit is released by someone else, a new victim. Wen looks down at his hands: scratched and scarred, they are the hands of a survivor. He is here and he is alive, but is he whole? Perhaps a part of him, like Lin, remains trapped beneath the waters of Morecambe Bay.

  “Wen?” Angie is staring at him, her expression creased with concern. He raises his head, takes a deep breath. She takes a step forward and places a hand upon his arm.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think we should go out.” She nods her head towards the outside.

  He frowns. He has not left the house since she brought him here. He has no shoes, no coat, no money, no passport. He looks down at his clothes: he is still wearing the black tracksuit she gave him the first night. She follows his gaze.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll fix you up.” She goes back into the bedroom and returns a minute later carrying a pair of rubber flipflops, some white socks and a large green anorak.

  “Here. This will do for now.”

  He takes the things from her, but does not put them on, for he is not certain he is ready to face the outside world. But he does not know how to express this to her, to explain why he is reluctant to return to living.

  “Okay?” she asks.

  “Okay,” he answers tentatively.

  The drive takes nearly an hour, much of it on a vast highway. The day is cold and sunny, and as he looks out the windscreen, he begins to relax a little. He feels as if he is seeing England for the first time, through eyes that are somehow different. When they finally arrive, he sees that she has brought him to an enormous shopping complex just beside the motorway. The car park is crowded and she circles a few times before she finds a spot. She switches off the engine and turns to him, reading his uncertainties at once.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “We’re miles from home. Here,” she adds. “Put this on.”

  She hands him a bright red woolly hat. He pulls it on his head, then looks in the mirror. The hat looks ridiculous, and they both burst into laughter. But she is right; he is unlikely to be recognised wearing it.

  They go to a large department store where she buys him jeans, shirts, underclothes and trainers. He blanches at the prices when he sees them, but she tells him not to worry. In all she spends nearly two hundred pounds. Twenty bags of cockles’ worth. Or more than a week’s wages at the restaurant. He cannot help but make these calculations in his head: the numbers follow him everywhere. She pays with a credit card, as if this amount of money is nothing to her, and he realises that this is another enormous difference between them. No matter what his circumstances, he does not think he will ever be able to treat money with such casual indifference.

  Afterwards, they go for lunch in a restaurant. He orders a hamburger, the only food on the menu he has heard of, but when it comes he is dismayed. The meat is grey and flavourless; the bread it sits upon stale. A thin slice of pale pink tomato and a withered leaf of green lettuce sit sadly to one side, next to a pile of chips that look like fat fingers. His appetite vanishes; he finds that he can only nibble at the food. She has ordered something in a bowl with red beans and bits of meat in thick tomato sauce, which she eats only half of in the end. He is relieved when she eventually suggests they go. Once out of the restaurant, he starts to head towards the car park but she catches his arm.

  “Wait. There’s one more thing.” She pulls him along the row of storefronts until they find a shop that sells books. Inside he trails along behind her through the aisles until she pauses in front of one section. S
he runs her fingers along the shelf and finally pulls out a fat plastic wrapped box, which she places in his hands.

  “Here. You’ll be wanting this.”

  He looks down. The cover says Easy English for Beginners. The box contains a book and a stack of eight CDs. Is such a thing possible? he wonders. To learn a language from a box? He thinks of his English teacher at school: Wang Laoshi, a short prim woman with thick glasses and hair pulled so tightly in a bun that you could see her scalp. Teacher Wang would rap sharply on her desk with a ruler whenever she was irritated or impatient. English, she had said, was like a giant crane that would lift China out of poverty. His marks were consistently low, while his sister came top of the class. After each exam, Teacher Wang would frown at him with exasperation. “How is it that the same seed produces such a different flower?” she would ask.

  “Okay,” he tells Angie. She hears the hesitation in his voice.

  “Please. You must try.”

  “Yes.” He struggles to erase the doubt from his voice. He wants to reassure her, to let her know that he will do his best. But most of all, he wants to reassure himself.

  It is almost dark by the time they reach her house, and he feels an enormous sense of relief as he passes through the front hall into the sitting room that has become his home. He watches as she puts the clothes they have bought him in the bedroom. His eyes drift to the corner of the sitting room, where the bedding he has slept on this past week sits in a carefully folded pile. She comes out of the bedroom and her eyes follow his to the bedding. She stops short, the colour draining from her face.

  “I didn’t mean…” She pauses, her voice unsteady, and motions with one hand towards the bedroom. She takes a deep breath and calms herself.

  “You can do what you like,” she murmurs. She walks into the kitchen and reaches down under the sink for the whisky, then pulls a glass down from the shelf and fills it. He follows her into the kitchen, sees her hands tremble as she lifts the glass, and wonders again what beast has taken hold of her, and why. She takes a large drink, nearly half the glass, then turns to him, her expression vaguely defiant. They stand staring at each other for a long moment.