Crimson China

by Betsy Tobin

  As a child, Angie had been afraid of the dark – terrified of an unnamed beast that lay in wait for her beneath her bed. By the age of eight, she woke nightly in tears. Unable to cope, her mother took her to the doctor and demanded sleeping pills. When he refused, her mother found a private clinic, but this time she went alone. The unsuspecting doctor nodded sympathetically when she spoke of her prolonged battle with insomnia, and wrote her a six-month prescription. Each night, Angie’s mother carefully chopped a pill in half and ground it to a powder, mixing it with chocolate syrup. The pills did not stop Angie’s nightmares. But she slept through the night, waking each morning exhausted by the demons that held her fast.

  By adolescence, she’d grown out of such fears. But it wasn’t long before a new beast appeared. This time it did not lurk beneath her bed, but crawled right inside her. Eventually she discovered that alcohol subdued it. Drink became her safeguard, and her reward for getting through another day. Angie had never been afraid of death; it was life she found terrifying. When she dragged Wen from the bay that night – frozen, half-drowned, terrified – it was the fear that she recognised, the fear that she was drawn to.

  •

  Several weeks after Wen’s arrival, her brother Ray telephones her at work. She has not heard from him in six months, and at once his voice drags her back in time.

  “It’s me,” he says. “I’ve got the papers through. Can we meet?”

  She feels the familiar tightness in her gut.

  “Angie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What about tomorrow night? I’ll come to you,” he offers.

  “No,” she says quickly.

  “When?”

  “Give me a few weeks.”

  There is a long pause on the line. She knows that he does not wish to press her.

  “We can finish this, Angie. Draw a line beneath it.”

  He speaks of their mother, and of her terrible, vengeful death. A death that implicated them both somehow, though she is not sure how or why they came to be the guilty ones.

  “I know.”

  “So name a day.”

  “I can’t, Ray. Not right now.”

  He sighs. Again there is a silence. When he speaks his tone is tentative, conciliatory.

  “Are you okay?”

  They both know he is breaking the rules. Their relationship is based on circumspection, on the understanding that they will not delve too deeply in each other’s lives. Ray does not question her drinking, while she ignores his tawdry affairs and unorthodox business dealings. This has been true ever since their youth, ever since they first held secrets from each other.

  “I’m fine,” she replies.

  “Okay. Let me know when.”

  “I will.”

  She puts down the phone. She is not ready yet. Not ready to mix the past with the present, nor to expose Wen to the wider world. She is certainly not ready to introduce him to the remnants of her family.

  October 2004

  Before her afternoon class, Lili knocks on the door of Fay’s office. Fay calls out for her to enter, then motions for her to sit. The older woman lights a cigarette and leans back in her chair, her knees bulging inside her black tights, while Lili explains her purpose.

  “Housing is a big problem in London,” says Fay, exhaling. “The biggest, in fact. But the further out you go, the cheaper it gets.”

  “Oh,” says Lili. She wonders how far out Fay means. Beyond Heathrow? Or maybe south, as far as the coast?

  “We don’t have room here to put up teachers, if that’s what you’re thinking,” says Fay flatly.

  “No. Of course not.” Lili colours.

  “I thought you were staying with Jin,” Fay adds.

  Lili hesitates. “I don’t want to trouble her any longer,” she replies. Fay takes a deep drag on the cigarette, eyeing her.

  “What you need,” she says exhaling, “is a boyfriend.”

  Lili frowns. “Why?”

  “To move in with,” explains Fay, waving the cigarette in the air. “You’re young. And pretty. Shouldn’t be too difficult.” She leans forward with a knowing smile. “English men love Chinese girls,” she says confidingly. “As long as you know how to play the part.”

  Lili looks at her, uncertain of her meaning. Fay shrugs.

  “We can all play the part if we need to,” Fay says matter-of-factly. “It’s called survival.”

  •

  After her meeting with Fay, Lili resigns herself to the possibility of sleeping at Jin’s flat that evening. It could take her days to find her own room. So she might as well make the best of things in the meantime. She takes the bus from Sheep Pen to Notting Mountain, as it is the day of her after-school class with May and the others. Today, she resolves, she will try to make the class as fun as possible, and make sure to learn their names properly. She stops at a shop and buys two packets of chocolate biscuits, just in case. All the time Fay’s last words are ringing in her head. She has never thought much about survival in the past. Now she thinks of little else.

  After two wrong turns in the corridors, it takes her several minutes to find the classroom. When she finally arrives, May and the other children are already waiting for her. There are two new children, a boy and a girl, who are seated in the front row, while the others lurk restlessly in the chairs behind.

  “Hello,” says Lili. “I am sorry to be late,” she adds.

  “Were you lost?” asks one of the blonde girls with a raised eyebrow.

  “The school is very big,” says Lili apologetically. Actually it is not so big, just a baffling series of twisting corridors and stairways, but she feels she must say something to explain. The two blonde girls exchange a quick smirking glance, then turn back to her.

  “So what are we doing today?” says one of them. Lili takes a deep breath. Surviving, she thinks.

  “Please, could you tell me your names?”

  Ten minutes later, she is none the wiser. Their names are hopelessly confusing. One of the girls has a name she has never heard before, but which sounds a little like the word imagine. When she tries to repeat it, the entire class bursts into giggles. The new boy is called Jacob, a word she finds almost impossible to pronounce. Even more alarmingly, the fat boy is called Thaddeus, while the blonde girls are called Freya and Olivia. She makes each of them write their names down on a sheet of paper, then keeps it in front of her, but the letters seem to dance about on the page, mocking her with their difficulty. Of the six names on the list, only May’s is comprehensible. She finds the fact of this depressing.

  Still, they manage to get through the rest of the hour without incident, and the chocolate biscuits ease the last ten minutes. After class, Lili walks them in a line to the school’s front door, where she dispenses with them quickly enough. All except May, who is left waiting with her once again. May looks at her a little sheepishly.

  “He promised to be on time today,” she says.

  “It’s okay. Did you like the class?” May shrugs.

  “I’d like it better if the others weren’t there.”

  “Oh.” Lili frowns.

  “I’d learn faster too,” adds May. “If it was just you and me.”

  Just then Adrian comes rushing up along the pavement.

  “Sorry,” he calls out. “Very sorry. I meant to be on time today.”

  He comes to an abrupt halt on the steps, and lets out a sigh.

  “You’re late.” says May.

  “I apologise,” he says pointedly.

  “Anyway, did you ask her?”

  “Why should I ask her? It was your idea,” May says grumpily. Adrian smiles and colours a little, turning to Lili.

  “We were wondering if you would like to come to dinner,” he says. “At our house.”

  “You were wondering,” mumbles May.

  “Tonight?” asks Lili.

  “Unless you’re busy, of course,” adds Adrian hastily. “Then we could make it next week. Or the week after. We just though
t it would be nice. To get to know you better.” He shrugs.

  “You thought it would be nice,” says May quietly, stubbing at the step with her shoe.

  “We both thought it would be nice,” says Adrian, shooting May a glance.

  “Yes,” says Lili. “I am free. Thank you.”

  May raises her eyes and looks intently at her, as if she is trying to divine whether Lili is telling the truth.

  “Excellent,” says Adrian.

  He explains that they live twenty minutes’ walk from the school, in a small industrial building that used to house a printing shop. On the way he chats with Lili, explaining that he is an architect, and that the house is a little unusual by London standards. When they arrive, she see that it is tucked away in the corner of a small garden square, the entrance almost hidden. Lili steps inside a long narrow corridor with a low ceiling and a series of square skylights, with rooms leading off to the left. May disappears into the first one, which has a sliding wooden door. Lili catches a glimpse of a bed on stilts with a small wooden slide running to the floor, and a vast array of soft toys piled up underneath, before May pulls the sliding door closed, shutting off her view.

  Adrian leads her down the hallway to the kitchen, which is large and airy and modern, with a square glass table and four chairs in the centre.

  “We converted the building ourselves ten years ago,” he explains. “My wife and I. It used to be a printworks.”

  “What happened to her?” Lili asks.

  “She died of breast cancer. It was very fast. Less than four months after we got the diagnosis.” He breaks off and shrugs.

  “I’m sorry,” says Lili.

  “It seems a long time ago now. My wife was fortunate enough to have three years with May. We adopted her from the mainland when she was six months old.”

  “Six months,” murmurs Lili. “So young.”

  “Yes. We were lucky. It can take years to get a Chinese baby, but in our case it all moved very quickly. Like clockwork.” Adrian smiles.

  Lili does not quite understand. Like clocks?

  “Where did she come from?”

  “Shanxi Province. An orphanage there.”

  “You went there?”

  “Yes. Well. Very briefly. We collected her from there and then flew to Guangzhou to apply for her passport. It took about two weeks altogether.”

  “So fast,” murmurs Lili. Two weeks to travel to a strange country, find a child and make her your own.

  “Sian and I had hoped to take her back when she was older,” he continues. “To visit the orphanage. But…” He stops and shrugs. “May doesn’t really remember her now. But Sian adored May. She had so much more mothering to do. I think that was the hardest thing for her: that she was given a chance to be a second mother to this child, and that somehow she was failing her by dying.”

  Adrian stops short then, just as May comes into the room. May looks from Adrian to Lili. The last word hangs heavily in the air, threatening to swallow them all.

  “You’re talking about me, aren’t you?” says May.

  “I was just telling Lili how lucky you are: you had two mothers who loved you, not one.”

  May stares at him for a moment. “What’s for dinner?” she asks.

  “Pasta,” he replies.

  May frowns. “Don’t you think she wants Chinese food?” May nods her head at Lili.

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her?” says Adrian.

  May turns to her.

  “I like pasta,” says Lili quickly. “Italian food is very popular in China now.”

  May studies her. “Do you know how to use chopsticks?”

  “Of course,” Lili smiles.

  “I just learned. But I’m not very good.”

  “Maybe I can help you,” says Lili.

  “See?” says Adrian to May. “I told you.”

  An hour later, they are drinking red wine and eating spaghetti with chopsticks. Lili shows them how to eat noodles in the Chinese manner, placing one end of the noodle in her mouth and sucking up the rest, which brings peals of giggles from May.

  “I get told off when I slurp!” she cries.

  “Not any more,” says Adrian. “At least not when you’re at home,” he adds.

  “So people do not eat noodles like this here?” Asks Lili.

  “No!” shouts May. “It’s mega-rude to slurp!”

  “Mega?” Lili asks, uncomprehending.

  “She means very,” explains Adrian. “Well, it’s quite rude, at any rate.”

  “Everything is different here,” says Lili. “Many things seem the same, but they are not.”

  “You’re not different,” says May. “Not different from me.”

  Lili smiles, and exchanges a quick glance with Adrian, who raises an eyebrow.

  “Thank you,” she says to May.

  “Where do you live?” asks May.

  “I stay with a friend in Hounslow,” says Lili. “But I am looking for a room to live in.”

  May opens her eyes wide and looks at Adrian, who sets down his chopsticks and frowns at her slightly. May begins to hop up and down in her chair.

  “May,” he says doubtfully.

  “We have a room!” she cries.

  “I don’t think she would be interested,” murmurs Adrian.

  Lili looks at him enquiringly.

  “It’s very small,” he adds.

  “We used to have an au pair,” says May. “From Poland. She was horrible!”

  Adrian shrugs. “She was pretty dreadful,” he concedes.

  “She never washed her hair! It was really greasy! And there were white things in it!”

  “May! Too much information,” he admonishes with a frown. He looks at Lili.

  “It didn’t work out,” he explains. I” thought it would be good for May, but –”

  “She was useless,” interrupts May. “All she ever did was watch TV on the sofa and eat crisps.”

  “Not one of my better decisions,” admits Adrian with a sigh.

  “It must be difficult,” says Lili. “Being just one parent.”

  Adrian glances quickly at May, who has suddenly grown quiet.

  “We manage,” says Adrian with a smile. “Don’t we, May?”

  May nods earnestly, her eyebrows knit together. At once Lili regrets her comment.

  “Do you want to see the room?” asks May suddenly.

  Lili looks from the child to her father uncertainly. Adrian hesitates, his expression guarded.

  “Well,” he says slowly. “May would certainly learn more Chinese if you lived here.”

  “Come on!” May jumps up and grabs Lili’s hand, pulling her down the hallway.

  The room is up a tiny flight of stairs halfway down the corridor. May scrambles up the stairs ahead of Lili and dashes into a small room at the top, dancing about expectantly. Lili pauses in the doorway. The room is indeed small, perhaps ten feet by eight feet, with a sloping ceiling fitted with a levered window. A single wooden bed with a pale blue duvet sits in the corner, opposite a small chest of drawers. Beside the bed is a cast iron bedside table with a reading lamp, and on the floor is a brightly coloured circular rug. May’s eyes follow Lili’s around the room.

  “Do you like the rug?” she asks. “We bought it at Ikea. I chose it!”

  “The rug is very nice,” says Lili. Indeed, she thinks, the room is perfect. Much nicer than anything she could afford, she is certain. Adrian appears on the stairs behind her and she turns to him expectantly.

  “Well?” he asks. “What do you think?”

  “The room is wonderful,” says Lili.

  “Well, I don’t know about wonderful. But we did try to make it look cosy, didn’t we, May?”

  “Does that mean you’ll stay?” asks May, hopping about excitedly and grabbing Lili’s hand. Lili pauses. She would love to live in this room. She turns back to Adrian, her eyes hopeful.

  “I’m sure we could work something out,” he says quietly.

&nb
sp; “Thank you,” she says.

  They agree that Lili will live for free in the room in exchange for tutoring May in the evenings and collecting her from school on the two days she is not teaching.

  “I can’t really afford to pay you,” Adrian says to Lili, refilling her wine glass. “Money is a little tight right now.”

  “No,” insists Lili. “To live in this room is enough. Much better than any room I could find.”

  “How long are you planning to stay in London?” asks Adrian.

  Until I find Wen, she thinks.

  “I do not know,” she says evasively.

  “But you aren’t planning to go back any time soon?” he asks cautiously. “It’s just that, for May’s sake, too much change can be difficult.”

  “No,” says Lili quickly. “Not soon. I will stay for one year. At least.”

  Adrian relaxes visibly.

  “Okay,” he says, raising his wine glass in a sort of toast. “One year it is.”

  March 2004

  How long will you stay in Britain? asks the man on the CD. I will stay for three months, replies the woman.

  When he first arrived in England, Wen had no notion of how long he would remain. Two years, three years, five? His future did not stretch beyond a brief horizon. But now, the life he left behind in China seems impossibly distant, as if he is peering at it through the wrong end of a telescope. As if it is someone else’s altogether. He has no idea whether he will find his way back to that life again.

  It is very cold outside today, says the woman. Wen repeats her words mechanically. He has spent most of the day listening to Easy English For Beginners. In Unit One the man and woman discuss a variety of topics: school, housing, weather, transport. Wen struggles to follow their dialogue – not least, because nothing in his experience relates to it. The woman on the CD is a student from Italy: she flew to London from Rome and took a train to Brighton, where she lives in a dormitory with others and attends morning classes at a language school. In the afternoons, she and her friends go to the beach or visit nearby places of interest.