Water Lily (14 page)

Ralph was better than he expected to be but perhaps that was because Nanao was so astonishingly bad. Each time he served,
she lunged the wrong way or simply waved the paddle too high or too low to hit the ball. When she did manage to make contact
with the ball, as often as not she sent it flying backward over her shoulder. She was constantly bending down, twirling around,
looking for the ball in the wrong place. He kept serving and, occasionally, they managed a short rally. No longer mysterious
and aloof, she was now giggly and goofy, a funny uncoordinated child.

“I still asleep,” she said, picking herself up from the floor, laughing.

“Never mind!” Ralph caught her serve and rapped it over the net. “We’re just playing for fun. And it is fun.”

They returned to their table. The couple who had played before them were there and made to move but Nanao pulled over two
more chairs to join them. They spoke to Nanao, presumably in Japanese, and Ralph was bored. He stared at his hands. The couple
were drinking beer from a vending machine so Ralph bought one for himself and called over to Nanao.

“Something cold to drink? A Coca-Cola?”

She nodded and together they drank. A little later Nanao and the woman were smiling and moving off, cans of drinks in their
hands, leaving Ralph alone with the man. Ralph was a little dizzy from the game, and the beer quickly made him light-headed.

The man was talking to him. Ralph tried to listen. It was all right, really, sitting here with a drink and a man to talk to.
Not so different from being in the pub.

“I’m going home to China. I was working in Japan,” the man said. “I’m an engineer.”

“Me, too. I mean, I was there on business.”

“Did you like Japan?”

“Yes. To be honest, I didn’t see much. Meeting rooms and a couple of hotels.”

“You’ll like China better. Where are you going in China?”

“Shanghai. Beijing, perhaps. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? This is a vacation or business?”

“A vacation. Sort of. I’m meeting someone and then we’ll decide where to go.”

“Ah, you have a friend. An English friend?”

He was not sure how much he should say, not sure that this was a topic he wanted to move toward. “
A Chinese friend.
”

“That’s very good. Your friend will show you everything. Shanghai is a very beautiful city. Your friend will take you all
over.”

“I hope so.”

What would Li Hua do? Would she want to guide him through the city? It would be the romance he had deserved and missed for
so long. Walking through a foreign land, hand in hand with his lover. But it wouldn’t do to have Li Hua leading him around
the place as if she were in charge, just because she knew the place and spoke the language. Ralph must be the leader or they
must have a third person—an interpreter or guide—telling him what was what. And, if he did meet Li Hua, he couldn’t let her
get too comfortable staying in Shanghai be-cause it would not be for long. She’d have to learn that it would stop being her
territory, would not be her home, that in En-gland she would learn to live as the visitor. He would be the one on home ground.

In public places you must be assertive and ready to take the decisions. If too many choices are left to her, she may become
confused and upset. She is looking for you to be decisive and take her forward. She will respect your leadership and feel
safe and protected with you.

Ralph couldn’t see how this would work in a city he knew nothing of, where he couldn’t read even a street name. It wasn’t
a problem in Bangkok with Apple because at the beginning they had always had an interpreter. Besides, they were in a hurry
and spent only a couple of days together before he flew back to arrange the documents. His heart pumped harder.
Calm down, Ralph. You’re not there yet. Li Hua is just an option. You may not even need to meet her. Calm down. Deep breath.
Steady.

“My name is Wu.”

“I’m Ralph.”

“My wife’s name is Mei Ling.”

Ralph felt a shock of loneliness.
My wife
. “I used to be married.”

“Really?”

“I loved my wife, but she didn’t love me. She left me.” He paused. He could see that Wu was listening at the same time to
a story being told in Chinese at the next table. “As far as I know, she went back to Thailand. But she didn’t tell me and
she was gone for a long time so I had to divorce her.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m fine. Never been better.”

“You can always get married again.”

“I will. Sometimes it doesn’t seem easy. Other times it does and I can’t wait. You’re lucky to be married.”

Mei Ling arrived, alone, and spoke to Wu. They left Ralph without saying goodbye.

And, again, he must find Nanao. Drunk, excited, and warm he was sure she had gone back outside where he had first seen her.
He opened the door to the deck and looked outside, but she wasn’t there. The gap where she had been was filled by nothing
because he could see only emptiness in the dark. The sea was calm but wild in its own way just because it was the sea. How
could she like it so much? What was there to stare at? He liked to be outdoors if he was on dry land. A nice hill or mountain.
On water, he liked to be indoors. No, best of all he liked to be on his way indoors. He loved closing the door against the
wind and feeling the warmth of a carpet under his feet. Comfort, a certain kind of safety.

He realized he had drunk, but he hadn’t eaten and was beginning to feel hungry. He went to the restaurant and con-fronted
the array of food. He didn’t mind eating foreign food when in Rome and all that, but he wouldn’t mind a hamburger and fries.
So far, on his travels, he had survived well on fast food for meals and carefully washed fruit from supermarkets, to be sure
of an intake of vitamins and fiber. The ferry’s restaurant, if you could call it that (the sign above the door did), did not
appear to serve hamburgers, or fries.

Ralph walked over to the counter and peered into the metal vats of food. It seemed hygienic but you’d have to check the kitchens
to be sure. Different kinds of vegetables, some seafood, and something meaty that smelled of pork but could be any-thing.
He pointed at vegetables and rice, carried them on a tray to a table. He had never been keen on Chinese food and now knew
that he was not too good with Japanese either. But whether he married Li Hua or Nanao, that would have to change, at least
until she learned to cook properly for him.

He liked to think about the things she could learn, at his guidance. He would pay for her to do a cookery course in England,
as his catalog suggested. She might like that. And it would be a good way for her to make some English friends, especially
with nice housewives who would provide good role models. It should be a daytime course so that the other women wouldn’t have
jobs. He would arrange for her to have a student visa. This would give them plenty of time together before they needed to
make wedding preparations. He crunched a piece of baby corn and washed it down with cold water. The food was not bad, better
than he’d expected.

He returned to his cabin and took a shower. He sloughed away dead skin, feeling glad that he had paid for a deluxe cabin,
not one of the cheaper ones with as many as eight beds. Hordes of other people snoring away just meters from him. Or, even
worse, he could have paid less and had a single tatami mat in a room full of other sleeping bodies. Imagine some calloused
foot stepping on your face in the middle of the night. Or clambering over bodies and catching your own foot on a warm hairy
stomach. Privacy was not a luxury so he’d paid the top price to suffer only one cabin-mate.

He scrubbed his face to get rid of the salt, licked his chin to make sure it had gone. The boat was beginning to rock harder.
They must be some distance away from Kobe, and it was only going to get worse. He knew that if he could just throw up, he’d
feel better. But he didn’t want to let himself. He held it back. He remembered it from childhood as being painful and somehow
alarming, bringing tears. Different from when you were drunk and just glad to get it out.

He poured shampoo onto his head, rubbed it to a lather, let the soft white foam slip down his neck and back. He thought of
his new power shower at home, dripping, perhaps, in his absence. If the water was hot enough and the pressure was powerful,
he had read, it should be possible to get clean without using any kind of detergent. Then you avoided potentially carcinogenic
chemicals without sacrificing hygiene. This shower was not quite powerful enough to be sure though, so he rubbed himself from
head to toe in soap.

His mood had faded like the daylight. He was becoming nervous about the girl. How he would love to skip Shanghai and go straight
home. Travel, he now decided was exhausting, relentless. You were never allowed to stop, even when you were resting in one
place. You knew you couldn’t stay there and you were always worrying about what to eat and what was safe to eat. He imagined
the ferry was crossing the English Channel from Calais to Dover and that he’d soon see the white cliffs, and Apple was waiting
for him in the car. But Apple couldn’t even drive so what was she doing behind the wheel?

He rubbed a little of the lathered soap into his eyes to make them sting. He was nowhere near home, but he couldn’t go back
without his treasure. He thought of Nanao again. You are going to be mine, he said, because I need you, and you are going
to come home with me. My house, which is a beautiful house, is all decorated and ready for you. My house awaits you (unless
you have any diseases or infections, but you look so polished and clean).

He stepped out of the shower, reached for his glasses and silk cloth. He rubbed the lenses several times but couldn’t get
them quite right. He’d had a new pair made with non-reflective coating so that he’d come over better in interviews at the
agencies. Barry had told him that his old glasses were too shiny and over-magnified his eyes. That was all very well, but
it was impossible to get these quite as clean as his old ones. Instead of having glasses that reflected and glinted, he now
had ones that were al-ways slightly smeared.

He took his towel—soon he would not have to perform these tasks for himself—and dried the spaces between his toes, one by
one, carefully, imagining that the towel was held by her. Then he lay back and let his arms go around an imaginary shape of
her—squeezing her flesh right to her little bones, almost crushing them—until he was hugging himself tightly.

He thought of Nanao curled up in her bed. Nanao. He could imagine her in a kimono with a painted white face like a geisha.
Serene, helping him to stay calm, never demanding he be this or that, never judging him. It sounded like n-now the way he
said it but it was different from her mouth. He must hear it again tomorrow. He pulled the covers over his head and wished
the boat would rock a little harder, wished Nanao’s body were under the sheets, her limbs all tangled up with his.

She will be demure in public and will be embarrassed by public displays of affection. But in bed she knows it is an honor
for her to pleasure her man. The Asian woman never gets "headaches"!!

It would be good to be pleasured. For now he had to pleasure himself.

He shut his eyes, saw his attic, Apple’s clothes and the lights. Then the hall, softly lit for the evening.

The front or opens and Apple steps in. He grabs her, pulls her toward him, feels her warm little arms flapping as he tries
to show his love. He is throwing her across the hall, surprised and aroused by his own strength. He pulls her around by her
hair. She is trying to deny that she has been seeing another man but he knows she is lying. She laughs at him. He screws her
on the stairs, on the landing, in the bedroom, and in the attic. Each time he is a little stronger and she is weaker.

Ralph thrust into the mattress. The bed creaked and when Apple was so weak that she was as good as dead, he ejaculated, grunted,
and relaxed forward into a pool of his own liquid.

And with his tiredness came the anger that he could never prevent. Apple may not have had headaches but she gave him one.
Sulking, flinching when he held her hand. A little stone in bed. “You finish? You finish?” she would ask. Wrinkling up her
face when she thought he wasn’t looking, when he was only telling her how much he loved her. He had told her, “you are the
apple
of my eye,” and she just nodded as if that were obvious. Later she didn’t bother to nod. She learned to say
shut your face
from some daytime soap opera and used every opportunity to prove she understood it.
How’s my Apple today? Shut your face. Shall we have some breakfast darling? You fuck off shut your face
. Back then he thought her name was sweet—there were so many good jokes and puns—but now he saw that Apple was a silly name.
Her real name, the one she wrote on the forms, was long and difficult with about five syllables. Ralph couldn’t re-member
it. She would always be Apple. Apples would always be her.

But he must look to the future. Apple was gone and good riddance. She hadn’t deserved to hang around any longer. Now he had
a Japanese beauty and a China doll to choose between. He could play eeny meeny all the way from one country to the other.

As he went to sleep he always saw his house. At the moment it was all locked up, safe. It was a solid square house with four
windows on the front and a big door. It was like a face, the kind of house that children draw in pictures. It looked, Ralph
thought when he first saw it with an estate agent jangling keys at his shoulder, the way a house is supposed to look and that
was why he chose it. The other houses he saw didn’t have faces. Before he left for Asia, he fitted special window locks and
in-stalled a burglar light in the garden. He called his brother Barry and asked him to check up on the place, once a week
if possible. He didn’t ask Barry to weed the garden, but he hoped his brother would see that as part of the job. It was painful
leaving the house. It was hard for him to imagine all the different rooms, so beautifully and recently decorated, without
himself inside. And if someone burned it down, or broke in and destroyed the place, how would they find him here on the boat?
Then there was the roof. May it not be raining in England now.