Crimson China

by Betsy Tobin

  “As you can see, she knows how to wind me up,” he says.

  Lili frowns, uncertain of his meaning.

  “I’m sorry,” says Adrian. “She knows how to make me angry. To manipulate me.”

  “Oh. Yes. I understand. All children do this,” she says, slightly embarrassed.

  Adrian nods. “Suppose so,” he says. “Anyway, I’m sure you’re tired. Thanks for looking after May. I’ll put her to bed.”

  Lili nods and heads for the stairs leading to her room. The house feels suddenly smaller with the three of them. She can hear May in the bathroom brushing her teeth, then a scuffle at the bottom of the stairs, followed by a whispered command.

  “Good night,” calls May from down below.

  “Good night,” says Lili.

  March 2004

  Wen sits on a bench outside Morecambe train station. He feels conspicuous in the red hat, but dares not remove it. The hat has become part of him whenever he ventures out of Angie’s house: without it he feels vulnerable. He is here to meet Jin’s train from London. For the past fortnight he has exchanged a series of brief emails with her, and in the end she agreed to buy a cheap day return to Morecambe. He walked the four miles from Angie’s house to the station, arriving half an hour early, only to learn that Jin’s train was delayed by twenty minutes, so now he must wait. There are few people about at this time of day but still he feels uneasy. Sooner or later, he worries, someone is bound to recognise him.

  It has been nearly six weeks since the accident, and the story of the drowned cocklers has all but disappeared from the news. But yesterday Angie showed him an article saying the local government was planning to post more warnings along the coastline to alert people to the dangers of rising tides. The new signs would be in English, of course – incomprehensible to the Chinese migrants who came here to eke out a living on the sands, not to mention those from other countries. There had also been talk of new laws, according to Angie, and greater regulation of the cockling industry. But he cannot see how this will benefit his people. Regulations will not affect the army of illegal workers that bolster the production of food in England, he thinks. Regulations will simply drive people like him further underground: force them into even more desperate working conditions with even more dismal wages.

  When he first left London, he had taken a job picking apples in Norfolk. He stayed for five weeks, through most of the autumn season, being driven from farm to farm each day at dawn and working a twelve-hour shift until early evening. Like cockling, the work was piecemeal: four pounds per basket of apples picked. But it was impossible to fill a basket in an hour, no matter how quickly he worked. During that period, he had shared a grimy caravan with six others, sleeping on a sagging sofa in the tiny sitting room. He was making no more money than he had in London, but the weather had been fair, and he was happy to be working out of doors after a summer spent washing greasy pots in a badly ventilated Hammersmith kitchen where he rarely saw the light of day. He was relieved too, to be finally free of Jin’s hostile embrace. Jin and he were like fire and water: they could not help each other, only hinder.

  Life with Angie is completely different. For a start, he and she are not adversaries. If he is water, then Angie must be earth, he decides, for water feeds earth, enabling it to flourish. Since that first instance a few weeks ago, when he came home late to find Angie stricken with fear, their relationship has moved on. With difficulty, he explained how he had lost his way on the journey home that night, had become confused by the plethora of streets, disoriented by row upon row of dwellings which all looked the same. Angie had placed a finger on his lips to silence him, then rummaged in a cupboard, eventually pulling out an enormous folded map which she laid across the kitchen table. The map was unlike any he had ever seen before: it was incredibly detailed, showing every building, every street, every bend in the road. On it he could even locate where the others had perished that night – and the terrible snaking river that had severed them from shore as the tide rose. While he was studying the map, Angie placed a set of spare house keys on the table next to him, then took forty pounds of cash out of her purse and laid it next to the keys. He stared at the money, a lump rising in his throat. Four bags of cockles’ worth, he had thought. Or a life.

  “You’re not a prisoner,” she had said. “You’re free to go. And to return. If you wish.”

  He frowned, staring down at the banknotes.

  “Your money,” he said. “I cannot.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  Why indeed? he had thought. He had no trouble partaking of her warmth and of her flesh. But it was the lure of money that had brought his countrymen to England in the first place, and the promise of it that had killed them. And the threat of unpaid money hung over him still.

  “Take it,” she said finally. “It’s only paper.”

  Reluctantly, he put the notes in his pocket. But in the days that followed he could not bring himself to spend them. The notes were there now, nestled tight against his thigh.

  The sky had been pale blue when he set out this morning, but within a short time it has transformed into a thick paste of grey. When he first came to England, he had been amazed at the changeability of the weather. Even on a perfect day, he could never be sure that it would not rain, as if the weather were teasing him with its ability to reinvent itself. It was enough to drive a man mad, one of his fellow cockle pickers had complained one bitter January day. Zhou had come to England more than three years before. He had recently paid off his debts to the snakeheads, and had finally begun earning for himself. Every cockle he picked was another brick in the house he would one day build with his earnings, he’d told Wen. He had a wife and a young daughter: he was indeed fortunate in that respect. But he hated life in England. He missed his daughter terribly, and longed to taste his wife’s soup again. Most of all he missed the change of seasons, for as far as he could tell England had no seasons. One could freeze in summer or sweat in winter – it was all the same. The weather and the food, Zhou had said, shaking his head and sucking in his teeth. These two things would surely kill him if he were forced to stay here for ever.

  Wen glances at the clock inside the tiny station. The train is due in the next few minutes. He rises and makes his way out to the platform. A few other people have arrived to meet the train, so he chooses a spot a short distance away and leans back against the wall, keeping his face down. When the train appears, his stomach tightens, as if he is about to step off the edge of a cliff. The train pulls to a stop several metres away, and after a minute, a string of passengers alight. Jin is one of the last off the carriage and he watches as she steps hesitantly onto the platform. She turns and looks around her. She does not see him, until he picks himself up off the wall and walks toward her. But when she does she freezes, her face suddenly unreadable. She stands silently as the crowd disperses around her, waiting for him to reach her. He pauses just in front of her.

  “So,” she says, looking up at him.

  “It’s me,” he answers.

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  “Thank you for coming.”

  She hesitates, eyeing him.

  “I had to be certain.” She reaches up a hand to his face, then thinks better of it. “Take off the hat.”

  Wen glances around, then removes the red hat.

  Jin frowns. “Your hair is longer.”

  He puts the hat back on and takes her elbow.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait.” She reaches inside her coat to pull out a small sealed brown envelope, which she hands to him. “This is for you.”

  He takes the envelope; can tell from the feel of it what it contains.

  “It’s yours,” she adds. “I thought you might need it.”

  He shoves the money deep into the pocket of his coat.

  “Where shall we go?” he asks.

  She looks into his eyes. “To the sea.”

  Out on the street, they walk along the pavement side by s
ide.

  “I had an email from your sister,” Jin says.

  “Lili? When?”

  “Last week. She wants to come over.”

  Wen stops dead, turning to her. “Here? To England?”

  Jin nods.

  “To teach Mandarin in London. She wants me to get her work at the institute.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as her visa comes through. Six months maybe. Autumn perhaps.”

  Wen stares at her, trying to make sense of this new information. His sister, here, in England. Would she be safe from the snakeheads? But it would be Old Fu back in China, not Little Dog, who would be looking for the schoolteacher Mei Ling. Perhaps it would not occur to either of them to look here.

  “Why?” he asks finally. Jin shrugs.

  “Money, I suppose. I don’t know. Why does anyone come here?”

  He shakes his head slowly.

  “I no longer remember.”

  “You’ve changed,” says Jin.

  “I died,” he replies evenly.

  After a few minutes’ walk, they reach the promenade that fronts the sea. Jin crosses the road and looks down towards the stone jetty that pushes out into the bay. Wen looks around self-consciously, but there are few people about this time of year.

  “Is this where they dig for fish?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Where?”

  “Further north. And out to sea.” He gestures towards the open water.

  “Out there?”

  He nods.

  “But not now,” she says.

  “Only at low tide. And at certain times of year. It is terrible work,” he adds quietly.

  “You could have come back to London.”

  But I didn’t, he thinks. And now that time is past.

  “Did you know them? The ones who died?”

  “Yes. Not well, as I hadn’t been here that long and people come and go.” His voice nearly breaks on this last word.

  “You don’t need to speak of it,” Jin says quietly.

  “It is impossible to put into words. What happened that night.”

  “Then do not try,” she says.

  “I should have died with them.”

  It feels good to say it out loud, this terrible thought that has been stalking him all these weeks. He could not bring himself to say it to Angie. Why, he wonders fleetingly, does he have the courage to say it to Jin?

  Jin stops and turns to him, shaking her head emphatically. “It wasn’t your fate.”

  “What did I do to deserve life? The others had families, children. That night on the sands, when we realised we were in danger: it was like we suddenly beat with one heart; we were like one giant living organism, with all our hopes and fears and disappointment. Life here was nothing like they imagined it to be. This country made fools of them. It robbed them of their dignity, then took away the only thing they had left.”

  Wen’s chest is heaving with emotion. Jin eyes him silently.

  “Not everyone who comes here has this experience,” she says finally.

  “No,” says Wen. “A few get lucky. Now I know that the life they were looking for here is real. I’ve seen this life. I’ve even grown accustomed to it. But it will never exist for them,” he adds grimly.

  A shadow flickers across Jin’s face, but she says nothing. Wen can see her mind at work, his allusion to his present circumstances turning uneasily in her brain. He refused to answer her emails asking where he was living and with whom. Though somehow she has guessed that it is a woman, and that she is not Chinese. If this bothers Jin, her pride clearly prevents her from saying so.

  They walk to the end of the jetty, where a small café sits to one side. Jin peers through the door. It is past two and only a few people are seated inside.

  “Are you hungry?” asks Wen.

  “I’m starving,” says Jin, pushing open the door. Wen stiffens. He would not have entered a café right here on the jetty. But Jin is already inside, so he follows. Once seated, she scans the English menu quickly, while he glances around nervously at the other patrons.

  “Take off your hat,” she says without looking up from the menu. “It’s rude in England to wear a hat inside.”

  Wen reluctantly removes the hat. Jin lays down the menu.

  “Let’s have fish and chips,” she suggests.

  He nods, admiring her confidence. He has lived in Britain all these months but has never eaten fish and chips. When the waitress arrives a moment later, he lets Jin do the talking for them both. Jin orders the food, then asks for two glasses of water, while Wen regards her intently. Her command of English is good, but this is not the only thing that sets her apart from other Chinese he has known here.

  When the fish and chips arrive, he watches as Jin pours salt and vinegar onto her plate. The batter is heavy, almost like pastry, though when he cuts into it with a knife the fish seems fresh enough. He would have preferred it steamed with ginger and spring onion, but suspects such methods of cooking are too subtle for English tastes. The chips are golden brown and stumpy; dipped in vinegar they taste okay. He eats the entire plate, mostly out of habit, but at the end of the meal he feels greasy and uncomfortably full.

  Jin has eaten all of her fish but only half of her chips. She pushes the plate to one side and lights a cigarette, offering him one from the pack. When he shakes his head she raises an eyebrow in surprise, a thin spiral of smoke curling up from the side of her mouth. He has not smoked since the accident, something else about him that has changed. Though Angie drinks, he has never seen her with a cigarette, and he wouldn’t dare presume to smoke in her home.

  The waitress clears their plates and places the bill face down between them. He insists on paying for them both, reminding her of the cash in his pocket. As he carefully pulls a twenty-pound note from the envelope, he tries not to think of what the money represents – or which gruelling job he did to earn it. When the waitress has taken the money, he leans forward intently.

  “I need you to do me a favour,” he says cautiously.

  Jin raises an eyebrow. Wen looks around the room a little self-consciously.

  “They can’t understand you,” she says with a snort of impatience.

  “I need to get a new passport. On the black market.”

  “What happened to yours?”

  “Gone,” says Wen with a dismissive wave. “Along with the rest of my stuff. Besides, it would be no good to me now. It isn’t really a new passport I need – it’s a new identity.”

  Jin frowns. She takes a deep pull from the cigarette and blows a careful smoke ring into the air between them.

  “So you’re going to give it all up,” she says, looking around the café. “Your name? Your family? Your history?”

  Wen falters. He had not thought of it in this way. But she is right. He will have to give it all up. All except for Lili. He has not yet decided what to do about Lili.

  “For the most part, yes,” he admits. Jin tilts her head to one side and stares at him for a long moment, then reaches forward and taps ash into a dish.

  “What about me? What were you planning to do about me?”

  Once again Wen is silenced by her bluntness. He thought that Jin understood that he could not be with her; he thought that she was reconciled to this. Perhaps she wishes to punish him by making it explicit.

  “I will always be indebted to you,” he says quietly.

  Jin’s nostrils narrow slightly. She nods at the envelope.

  “The passport will cost you most of what’s in that envelope.”

  He pulls it out and throws it back to her. It lands with a thump on the table, and Jin stares at it a moment, before picking it up. She thumbs through the cash and pulls out a small stack of twenty-pound notes and hands them back to him, then puts the rest of the cash in her bag.

  “I’ll start with this. If I need more, I’ll let you know.”

  When they leave the café, the wind has begun to blow. Jin steers them towards a st
one column with a statue of a seabird on top. “Here,” she orders. “Stand right here.” She positions him carefully by the statue, then pulls a small digital camera from her pocket.

  “What are you doing?” he asks suspiciously.

  Jin doesn’t answer. An older couple are just walking towards the café and Jin hurries up to them.

  “Excuse me,” she says in English. “Could you take a photograph?”

  The woman smiles and takes the camera from Jin’s hand, while Jin crosses over to Wen and links her arm in his. Wen stands frozen, taken aback. He does not want his photo taken here – indeed, he is appalled by the idea, but he is silenced by Jin’s boldness.

  “Okay?” the woman calls from behind the viewfinder.

  “Yes,” says Jin.

  Wen glances sideways in time to see Jin smile for the camera. He hears a ringing in his ears as the woman takes the shot. This picture will be my undoing, he thinks. When she is finished, the woman walks towards them, the camera extended in her hand. Jin thanks her, and when the couple are out of earshot, Wen turns to her in disbelief.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because I wanted proof.”

  “For whom?”

  “For me,” she says. “In case I wake up tomorrow and decide that you were nothing but a ghost.” She turns on her heel and walks back to land.

  October 2004

  On Saturday, Lili offers to take May out for the afternoon so that Adrian can finish some work. They hop on a 94 bus to Piccadilly Circus, then walk up Shaftesbury Avenue and into Chinatown. May clutches Lili’s hand tightly as they walk along the crowded pedestrian streets festooned with coloured lanterns. They wander in and out of several shops on Gerrard Street, then buy some rice noodles in a Chinese grocery. At one point, they pass an elderly Chinese woman in a light grey trouser suit who nods at them approvingly. Lili realises with a start that the picture they form is that of mother and child, and she has the sudden sense that she is masquerading. Almost without realising, she drops May’s hand, but a moment later she feels May’s small fingers seeking out her own.