Crimson China

by Betsy Tobin

  “There you are,” she says when she sees him. “I thought perhaps you’d forgotten. I’ve got them repotted. Come round the side, will you?”

  She turns and disappears around the side of the house and he follows her down a stony path until they reach an old greenhouse covered in cobwebs. Some of the glass is missing or broken and the inside is a mass of pots and containers with plants in varying stages of growth. He sees a large open bag of potting soil on the floor and a row of freshly planted plastic pots, each containing a single plant.

  “Have you brought something to carry them in?” she asks.

  He hesitates, and she gives a wave. “No matter, I’ve got some old carrier bags here somewhere.”

  She fumbles around in the corner of the greenhouse and eventually produces two white plastic bags. She takes the pots and sets them in the bags carefully, before handing them to him.

  “There you are,” she says with satisfaction. “Six in all. Mind, don’t plant them too closely. Roses need plenty of space. And this variety loves the sun, so make sure it’s not overlooked. There is a rose for every type of garden. With a bit of luck and trial and error, you’ll find one that’s suited to yours.”

  She pauses then and scrutinises him.

  “You do have a garden?”

  “Yes,” he says, nodding.

  “Good, I was worried for a moment you might wish to sell them. You wouldn’t, would you?”

  “I buy the roses?” he asks tentatively.

  “Heavens no, I don’t want your money. The roses are a gift,” she says pointedly. “From me to you.”

  “Thank you,” he says, for a moment overcome by her kindness.

  He follows her back down the gravel path and across the lawn. As she shuffles through the grass ahead of him, she suddenly stumbles on a patch of weed, pitching sideways. He rushes forward to catch her elbow, steadying her.

  “Oh my, thank you!” she says with a breathless laugh. “I used to have a boy who cut the grass, but he disappeared. I’m afraid it’s got rather shaggy.”

  “You want I cut grass?” he offers.

  She turns to him. “Would you?” She asks, eyes widening.

  “Yes.”

  “That would be marvellous. I would pay you, of course,” she adds hastily.

  “No,” he says quickly. “No pay. This pay,” he says, lifting the two carrier bags with a smile.

  She raises a bemused eyebrow.

  “You’ll work for flowers?”

  He nods. After all, he thinks, flowers are what he wants right now; flowers are what he needs. Though after months of hard labour for terrible wages, the irony of this is not lost on him. She smiles.

  “How lovely.”

  That night he tells Angie of his encounter with the old woman, and shows her the six rose pots, which for the moment he has set out on the wrought-iron table. Angie looks at him askance.

  “She just gave them to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Wen shrugs. The old woman is no doubt lonely, but something prevents him from saying this to Angie. Certainly, she seems isolated, in a way that few people in his country ever are. In China, people live atop one another: if you do not live with other family members, then most likely you are surrounded by those in your work unit or housing block. The state plays far too big a role in organising and supervising daily life for individuals to lead such solitary lives. But Angie, too, is a loner. Wen knows that now, even if he didn’t at first, and the fact of his presence hasn’t altered this. He wonders if Britain is filled with such people, and whether they choose solitude, or whether it is thrust upon them. Perhaps it is a stage his own country may one day reach, though it is difficult to conceive of.

  •

  The following afternoon, he returns to mow the old woman’s lawn, which takes him almost three hours, as he must pause every few minutes to empty the clippings into an enormous heap of compost at the rear of the house. When he is finished, she insists on serving him tea and biscuits in the garden, on an old slatted table that wobbles precariously when she sets the tray upon it. She pours milk in his tea without asking, then pauses over the sugar, to which he shakes his head quickly. He can stomach milk in his tea, but not sugar.

  When he eventually rises to take his leave, she gives him a large bag full of compost she has prepared earlier.

  “For the roses,” she explains. “They need feeding.”

  Then she removes a carefully folded twenty-pound note from her apron and stuffs it into the breast pocket of his shirt with her long mottled fingers. Embarrassed, he tries to return the note, but she flaps her hands at him in a no-nonsense motion.

  “If you do not take the money, then I shall feel guilty asking you to return,” she says pointedly. “And the hedges need trimming almost as badly as the grass.”

  She gives a vague wave towards the hedge. Wen smiles. Without even trying, he has found himself back in employment.

  •

  That night when he returns home, Angie is sitting at the kitchen table with a heavy-set man he doesn’t recognise. It’s the first time he has seen anyone else enter her home, and at once he is disconcerted.

  The man is in his early forties and wears jeans and a plaid shirt. His face is pale and slightly puffy, as if it has been injected with air, and his thick brown hair has turned grey at the edges. A creased black leather jacket is slung over the chair behind him. As Wen comes through the front door, laden with the bag of compost, they both turn to him, faces unexpecting. Wen has the sudden sense that he is stepping into another universe.

  “Wen, this is Ray,” says Angie.

  Wen nods a little uncertainly at the heavy-set man. “Hello.”

  Ray tilts his head to one side and raises five fingers in a fleeting wave. Wen’s mind flies to the black tracksuit Angie gave him that first night. He’d never asked who owned it. Ray raises an eyebrow at Angie.

  “You’re a dark horse,” he says, ignoring Wen’s presence.

  “Shut up, Ray.” Angie’s tone is so casual that Wen thinks he has misheard.

  He carries the compost past them out to the garden, where he sets it down beside the table. When he comes back inside, Ray is pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. He puts one in his mouth and takes out some matches, pausing just before he strikes one. He looks up, eyes darting quickly to them both.

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Would it matter?” says Angie.

  “It’s your house,” Ray counters.

  They stare at each other for a moment, then he strikes the match and lights the cigarette. Angie waits until he exhales, then holds out her hand. Ray passes the cigarette to her and she inhales deeply, blowing the smoke up into the air. At once the tiny kitchen fills with the smell of nicotine, and the sensation of it almost causes Wen to faint.

  He has not smoked since the accident, and now images from his former life come wafting back to him. At the end of each day’s cockling, their fingers stiff with cold, he and Lin permitted themselves the luxury of a hand-rolled cigarette out on the sands. Lin would gaze across the endless expanse of sea, wondering what was happening on the far side of the world, whether his son would be doing homework, or outside in the street playing football with his friends, whether his wife would be making dumplings, or gossiping with her sister on the phone.

  Angie takes another long drag then passes the cigarette back to Ray. “Ray’s my brother,” she says to Wen, exhaling out of the side of her mouth. “Just in case you were wondering,” she adds.

  Once again Wen nods. He did not know she had a brother, had never pictured her with any family at all. Though of course she must have family. Wen waits, uncertain whether he should sit down with them or remove himself to the garden, where the roses are waiting to be planted.

  “Nice job with the garden,” says Ray, indicating the outside with a nod.

  “Thank you,” says Wen. For an instant he wonders wh
ether Ray is making fun of him.

  “Actually, Ray was just leaving,” announces Angie, rising to her feet.

  “I suppose I was.”

  Ray pushes the large white envelope across to her side of the table, then stands up, shrugging on his leather jacket. He turns to Wen.

  “See you again maybe,” he remarks, a note of challenge in his voice.

  “Yes,” Wen replies.

  Angie follows Ray to the front door. Ray leaves without another word, but not before he and Angie exchange a knowing glance. Wen recognises the look of intense familiarity that passes between them: only lovers or siblings exchange such glances. His mind flies at once to Lili. Where is she now?

  Angie closes the door and leans back against it with a sigh.

  “I need a drink.” She crosses over to the sink and takes out the whisky from beneath the counter, pouring herself a large tumbler.

  “You did not tell me you have brother.”

  “No,” she says taking a swallow. “I did not.”

  “Why?”

  “We aren’t exactly close.”

  Close. He knows the word, but her meaning eludes him.

  “Ray’s a bit of a bastard,” she says then.

  Wen understands this word only too well, having been called it several times by angry fishermen. He nods towards the envelope on the table.

  “What is this?”

  Angie raises an eyebrow. “That is my mother. Or what’s left of her.”

  Wen waits. Angie is being deliberately difficult, he feels, though he does not understand why.

  “The papers she left behind when she died,” says Angie with a sigh. “They’ve been tied up for more than a year. But it’s finished now. Her life is well and truly over.”

  Wen frowns. It is only the second time she has spoken of her mother, and the bitterness with which she speaks makes him uneasy.

  “My mother left me this house when she died,” explains Angie, casting a glance around the room. “And everything in it. It’s like living in her tomb. I should have sold it straight away. But there were legal problems, and I couldn’t. And now it’s like… she’s taken me prisoner.” Angie pauses to refill her glass.

  “Ray got the money. And I got the house. He bought some property, and now he’s a landlord in Liverpool. If you can call it that. Those houses you lived in when you were cockling? They could’ve been Ray’s. They probably were Ray’s.” She snorts and takes another drink.

  “That would be something, wouldn’t it? Me, you and Ray. With my mother the one thing that ties us all together.” Angie pauses and looks straight at him. “She was out there that night. The night I found you. My mother was out there on the sands.”

  Wen shifts uneasily.

  “But what I don’t understand is: why she gave me you.”

  Angie’s eyes cloud over. She sways slightly. The whisky has affected her quickly tonight. She must have been drinking earlier.

  “You should have died,” Angie continues. “But you didn’t. And now I have my mother to thank.”

  She drains the glass and thumps it down on the table.

  Wen turns and walks out the door to the garden, leaving her behind him. He does not like her tone, even if her words are not entirely comprehensible to him. It is as if the sudden presence of her family has thrown up a wall between them. He grabs a shovel and the carrier bags of pots and makes his way down the garden to the spot that he has already chosen in his mind: a south-facing bed where the roses will have plenty of sun and space. He lays the pots on the grass behind him and begins to dig intently, throwing each shovelful of earth off to one side. Within a few minutes he has dug a hole deep enough for a mature tree, let alone a rose.

  “Hey.”

  He turns and sees Angie behind him in the grass.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  He nods, bending to pick up one of the pots. He gently pulls the plug of dirt from the pot and places it in the hole, scooping earth in from the sides and pressing it down too hard with his hands. Once it is planted, Wen steps back to look at it: the spindly stalk appears forlorn by itself against the wall, fragile and fleeting, as if someone had plucked it from its rightful home and placed it there with no rhyme or reason. He thinks of the old woman’s garden, of its beautifully tended beds and their fragrant abundance. He cannot imagine her roses flourishing here against this wall. Perhaps he was wrong to move them.

  November 2004

  May sits at the dining table colouring a picture, while Lili chops onions for a pasta sauce she is making.

  “What do you think?” says May, chewing on the end of the marker. She points to the picture of a vase filled with flowers.

  “It is very nice. Purple is my favourite colour.”

  “It’s for my mother. Tomorrow is her birthday,” remarks May casually.

  She picks up a green marker and begins to draw some leaves on the flowers. Lili stops cutting. May’s head is bent over the table concentrating on the picture. Lili sees now that she has folded the sheet of paper in half to make a card.

  “My English mother,” adds May, almost as an afterthought. “The one who died.”

  It takes Lili a moment to find her voice.

  “Oh,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. We used to bake a cake or something, but last year we just went out for dinner. Adrian didn’t want to stay at home.” May often calls Adrian by name when he is not around, a habit that Lili finds disconcerting.

  “I see. What will you do tomorrow?”

  “Dunno. We haven’t talked about it yet. Hey! Maybe we can all go out!”

  “I do not think so,” says Lili uncertainly.

  “Why not? You live here now. You’re like part of the family.”

  Lili does not know how to reply. She turns back to the onions instead, and scoops them into a frying pan, adding oil. A few moments later they hear the front door open. May jumps up, grabbing the card, and rushes down the hallway.

  “Daddy, look what I did for Mummy!” she shouts.

  Lili pauses cooking, trying to make out Adrian’s response. A moment later she hears them approach.

  “Hello,” says Adrian. She sees with relief that he is in a good mood this evening.

  “Daddy, can we go out for dinner tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” says Adrian.

  “Can Lili come?”

  Adrian looks over at Lili.

  “Does Lili want to come?”

  Lili feels her heart stop.

  “Of course she does!” Says May.

  “Well all right then,” says Adrian. He turns and walks out of the kitchen.

  The following evening Adrian suggests they go for Chinese food, so Lili takes them to Wen’s hotpot restaurant, promising May there will not be a duck in sight. She has not been back since the day she spoke to the owner, though she has desperately wanted to return. She would not dare go alone, however, and reckons that Adrian and May will provide the perfect buffer. Perhaps she will not even be recognised by the owner. But even as she steps inside the front door, Lili realises she has erred. Everything is just as she remembered: the row of dark red booths along the far wall, the cloying smell of oil in the air, the mottled brown linoleum floor. As she enters she sees the hostess she spoke to that day, wearing the same tight-fitting black dress, though today her long black hair has been swept back in a chignon. The hostess looks up as they enter and Lili sees the flash of recognition in her eyes, coupled with surprise. She picks up a stack of menus and walks over to them.

  “Good evening,” she says carefully, her eyes flicking briefly to Lili’s.

  “Could we have a table for three?” says Adrian.

  “A booth!” Says May, clutching Adrian’s sleeve.

  “Yes, of course,” says the hostess. She leads them across the room to the far wall and shows them to a booth. Adrian and May slide in on one side, but before Lili can take her seat, the hostess turns to her and speaks in Mandarin, lowering her voice.


  “We didn’t expect to see you again,” she says nervously.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Some men came. The other day. They were asking about your brother.”

  Lili freezes. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. They were rough types. From Fujien. They wanted to know if he’d been back here. Or if we’d seen him.”

  Lili stares in surprise at the woman.

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  “I told them he was dead, of course! They asked me how I knew. So I said we’d spoken to you.” The hostess steals a glance towards the kitchen. “He was your brother, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “They didn’t seem to know about you,” she says uneasily. “They asked me if I knew where you worked, but I told them I had no idea.” The hostess pauses, awaiting her response.

  “Thank you,” murmurs Lili.

  “Your brother. Is he dead or isn’t he?” asks the hostess.

  Lili’s eyes drift to Adrian and May. May is playing with a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks, trying to pick up the corner of her napkin, but Adrian is watching them, the menu open in front of him. She looks back at the hostess and nods, a lump rising in her throat. “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t know what they were on about!” The hostess tosses her head angrily. “They kept asking questions, so in the end I told them to look up his old girlfriend at the language school in Shepherd’s Bush.” She pauses and lowers her voice. “Was your brother in some kind of trouble?”

  Lili hesitates, thinking of Jin. “I don’t know,” she says. The words come out in English, though she hadn’t meant them to. The hostess shakes her head slightly. Just then, the owner steps into the dining room from the kitchen, calling her. He does not seem to recognise Lili at first, but then his eyes alight on her and he frowns. He gestures to the hostess and she scurries off to him. Lili slides into the booth opposite Adrian.

  “Is everything okay?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “What was all that about?”

  “Nothing. I know this woman a little.”

  Adrian stares at her expectantly. Lili feels as if he is looking straight into her past.