Crimson China (17 page)

He goes to work at once, taking out the tools and testing them one by one. The shears are so rusty they will not close, but he cleans and oils them, then sharpens the blade by grinding it in circular motions against a flat paving stone. Soon the shears are sharp enough to cut again, and he starts at the back of the garden and works his way round, trimming back the trees and shrubs to some semblance of their original shape. After a brief time, he strips off his jumper, working only in a t-shirt and jeans, his face covered in sweat. He works solidly for the next few hours, his arms and back burning from the effort, the way they used to after a day hunched over the sands with a tamping board. The more tired he becomes, the more satisfied he feels, for it is a relief to labour once again.

The plants are different from those at home, but he has an instinctive feel for what is uninvited, can recognise those whose sole purpose is to impede and strangle the progress of others. These he rips out ruthlessly and systematically, making sure he gets the ends of the roots. By the time darkness begins to fall, he has worked his way through much of the garden, amassing an enormous pile of debris out of sight in a corner at the back, against the wall. He does not stop until his hands erupt in blisters from the wooden handles of the shears. Only then does he make a cup of tea and settle himself on the threshold of the back door to
survey his efforts, his t-shirt now muddy and damp.

His stepmother used to say that a garden could not thrive without affection. Though she had only a tiny plot of land by the river, the care she lavished on it was extraordinary. The vegetables were laid out in neat rows with no space in between, as she considered even an inch of unplanted soil to be wasteful. She had enclosed the plot with walls of woven matting on three sides, leaving one end open towards the river, believing that the proximity and sight of running water was vital to the garden’s
chi
. On summer evenings, after the weeding was done, she would light incense and sit for hours in the darkness watching the waters flowing past, listening to the tinkle of a tiny metal chime suspended in one corner. It was important always to hear the wind, she had told him. She taught him how to crush dried bones and eggshells between two rocks, and spread them carefully over the soil, as well as how to distinguish between those insects which were pests and those which were beneficial, and therefore to be spared. Her own father had been a farmer, and he wondered sometimes whether she missed life in the countryside, having married a factory worker and settled on the outskirts of a small city. But if so, she never said.

He does not hear Angie enter through the front door, so absorbed is he in the gathering dusk of his thoughts. When he does realise, she is standing just behind him in the open doorway, her eyes trained on the garden.

He jumps to his feet and turns to her expectantly. She stands frozen, staring out at the garden. Then she retreats inside without a word. Wen follows her into the kitchen and watches silently while she removes a tumbler from the cupboard, reaches for the bottle of whisky under the sink and pours herself a generous glass. She raises the glass to her lips and drinks, then lowers it to the counter.

“Angie?”

She turns to him, and he sees her chest rise and fall. She
opens her mouth to speak, then decides against it and takes another drink of whisky.

“What is problem?”

“The garden,” she says finally. She breaks off, motioning towards the outside. “You didn’t tell me.”

“It is gift. From me.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Wen,” she replies with a sigh. “Especially not that.” She nods towards the garden. She turns back to the counter and refills her glass, and at once he understands that it is not the fact of the giving, but the nature of the gift that has upset her.

“Why not garden?” he asks, taking a step forward.

Angie does not look at him, but instead focuses her eyes on the tumbler of amber liquid in her hand, turning the glass round and round in circles, watching the swirl of it.

“This house belonged to my mother. The garden was hers,” she explains, almost swallowing the last word.

Wen waits for her to say more. They sit in silence in the darkness of the kitchen for what seems like an eternity.

“My mother was good with plants,” she says finally. “She could grow just about anything. But she was rubbish with people.”

“I am sorry.”

Angie takes a deep breath and exhales, as if trying to purge herself of the past.

“My mother had her garden. And my father, by all accounts – because I never met him – my father had his whisky.” She pauses and picks up the bottle, frowning at it.

“So I guess I take after him. Or maybe there’s a little bit of both of them in me.”

Wen has not recognised all of her words, but the tenor of her voice is enough to make him understand. It is the first time she has spoken of her family, and now he realises why. He steps forward
and reaches for the glass. She releases it to him, and he sets it down on the counter, pulling her into his arms. She buries her face in his shoulder and inhales deeply.

“You smell like mud.”

Her voice, muffled against his shirt, is already thick with alcohol. He pulls back and looks down at her, marvelling at her ability to confound him.

“What is mud?”

Later, after they have gone to bed, he strokes her hair in the darkness.

“I do not make garden,” he says quietly.

“No,” she protests, arching around to look at him. “Please. Make the garden. Make it anyway you like. It’s your garden now.”

She turns away and pulls him in close behind her, so that his body is wrapped entirely around hers. Wen buries his face in her hair. He feels her body start to unwind, feels the shiver of her muscles as they release, and within a minute hears her breathing settle into whisky-induced sleep.

Roses, he decides. That is what he will plant. English roses for an English garden.

Lili doesn’t see Jin for several days and wonders whether she is avoiding her. The weather has turned cold, and when she steps outside Adrian’s house each morning, she can smell the crisp onset of winter. Overnight the trees that line the street have lost their leaves, and the afternoons are no longer punctuated by warm bursts of sun. Instead, a thick layer of pale grey cloud seems to have descended over London, and Lili wonders whether this will be the colour of the English winter. On impulse, and in defiance of what she knows would be Jin’s scorn at the price, she buys an expensive black wool coat at a shop in Oxford Street. She desperately wants to look as if she belongs, and the belted red jacket she purchased from a department store in Tangshan just before she left now seems woefully out of place: it is the wrong cloth, the wrong cut, the wrong colour. She can see that now, even though she had thought it was the height of fashion at the time.

When she collects May from school wearing her new coat, May stops and surveys her approvingly. “Nice coat,” she says. “Better than your old one,” she adds, slipping her hand into Lili’s. Lili feels a small flush of pride, as if she has passed some sort of test, even though May is only a child. At home she carefully folds the red coat and stows it in the bottom of her wardrobe; she knows she will never wear it, even after she returns to China. It
strikes her that the coat marks a tiny shift in her persona: how many others have there been since coming to this country, and what will they add up to?

Over the next few weeks, Adrian works later in the evenings, several times phoning home and asking if she will put May to bed. It is as if Lili’s presence has suddenly freed him from the burden of fatherhood. Lili doesn’t mind; she is happy to be of use, though she finds herself wondering about his life outside the house. May seems pleased to have her there and Lili relishes being part of a family again, even if the family is not her own. She and May quickly settle into a pattern: homework, Chinese study, dinner, a few reruns of
Friends
and then bed. Sometimes they draw or play board games after dinner.

One night, May enlists Lili’s help in making a Halloween costume for a fancy dress disco at school. May is busy cutting cat shapes out of black paper, while Lili sews a costume out of an old sheet May has persuaded Adrian to donate.

“What’s the word for ‘ghost’ in Chinese?” May asks.

“
Gui zi
,” says Lili. May repeats the word out loud a few times, careful to copy Lili’s tone.

“I can’t decide whether I want to be a ghost or a devil,” she adds. “How do you say devil?”

“That is also
gui
. But this time we say
mo gui
. Like a ghost with evil power.”

May looks at her askance. “But devils and ghosts aren’t the same.”

“No. But in Chinese, we use the same word. In fact, we used to call foreigners
gui zi
. A long time ago.”

“Why?”

“Because when Western people first came to China, to us their skins look very pale. We think they are dead spirits who have come back to life. So we called them
yang gui zi
, which means ‘ghosts from across the ocean’ or actually, ‘foreign devil’.” Lili
grins mischievously at May.

“So if I went to China, would I be a
yang gui zi
?”

“No, not you. You would be a
hua qiao
. An overseas Chinese.”

“Would Daddy be a
yang gui zi
?”

“Yes. But people do not use this word so often now. It is not so… polite.”

At once Lili regrets her frankness: the word stems from a dark corner of China’s history and dishonours those it describes. But such things are beyond May’s comprehension.

“So what do they call foreigners now?”

“They call them
wai guo ren
. That is like: outsiders. Because to us, that’s what they are.”

“Do you feel like an outsider here?”

“Sometimes. But not with you.” Lili smiles reassuringly at May.

“We all feel like an outsider sometimes,” says May with a shrug. “Do you have Halloween in China?”

“No. But in summer we have Ghost Festival, when we honour the spirits of the dead.”

“Do you get sweets?”

“Not really. But we leave food for the ghosts.”

May frowns. “Why?”

“Well, during that time, we say ghosts are free to wander the earth. And perhaps they are hungry.”

May stops cutting. “You mean for
real
? People believe ghosts wander around and eat stuff?” She raises a sceptical eyebrow.

Lili shrugs. “Not everyone believes this.”

“Do
you
?” May pinpoints her with her gaze.

Lili feels her pulse quicken.

“I believe that sometimes, the spirits of dead people are here with us,” she says carefully.

“You mean like now?” May looks around the kitchen. “
Here
?”

“Maybe not now. But sometimes. I believe they are here to help us, to look after us.”
Or perhaps we are here to look after them
, she thinks.

“So you’re not afraid of ghosts?”

Lili’s mind flies to Wen and his easy smile. How could she ever be afraid of Wen?

“No,” she answers, her voice suddenly disappearing.

“What would you do if you saw one?”

Lili hesitates. If Wen came to her, she would ask him why he left. “I don’t know,” she says finally.

“I’m not afraid of ghosts either,” says May, returning to her colouring.

Lili goes back to sewing. As children, she and Wen had been encouraged by their stepparents to make offerings to the memory of their real parents, killed in the earthquake. But in spite of the framed wedding photograph her stepmother kept on an altar table in a corner of their sitting room – a photo of a young couple with nervous smiles and unreadable dark eyes – Lili found it difficult to believe that they had ever been real. It was only recently, in the wake of Wen’s death, that she had begun to respect such traditions, setting up a small shrine to him in her bedroom and burning joss sticks in his memory.

One evening in August, when Tangshan was stifling with heat and humidity, she had walked to a park not far from where she lived. It was the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, the day when the dead return to the earth. The park was beside a narrow river that had once been polluted, but in recent years the area had been rehabilitated by the authorities. Lili was not alone in her desire to mark the Ghost Festival. The park was full of people that evening. Some had come to escape the heat, but many, like her, had come to honour the spirits of the dead. She walked to the bank of the river and lit a candle, pushing it across the water in a tiny boat she had fashioned from newspaper. The act had seemed futile
at the time: the water was low, and the night so still, that her boat had drifted only a few feet from shore. Soon it became mired in the shallows along with several others, forming a forlorn flotilla. Lili looked around at the crowds along the bank: elderly widows accompanied by filial sons, young couples, middle-aged sons and daughters, all making offerings to long-dead husbands, parents, siblings. But nowhere in the stagnant waters could she discern even a trace of Wen’s presence.

He isn’t here, she had thought with dismay. Perhaps if I had travelled to the ocean. But she could not afford the time for such a journey, nor the fare, when she was desperately saving for her trip to England. That night, she turned her back on the river and walked slowly home through the sweltering heat of the city. When she had almost reached her flat, she stopped to eat a bowl of noodle soup at a small canteen. The restaurant was crowded and she found a table to herself in a back corner. She became conscious of a raucous group of young people on the far side of the room. She would not have paid them much notice, had the persistent laughter of one of the young women not drawn her attention. The woman had her back to the wall so Lili could see her flushed face and animated expressions clearly. She wore a tight white tank top and a bright red chiffon scarf knotted at her throat, and her shoulder-length hair fell in permed rings about her face. She was pretty, in a coquettish sort of way, the kind of girl who had stalked Wen when they were young. Her lively comments were directed towards the man sitting opposite her, whom Lili could not see, though he was slimly built and wore a black t-shirt.

The young man remained mostly silent, she noticed, until something the young woman said caught his fancy and he laughed. Lili froze, for his laughter somehow recalled Wen’s. As she stared at his back, she became suddenly, irrationally convinced that he
was
Wen. She sat rigidly for the next few minutes, willing him to turn around, until eventually her stares caught the attention of the
young woman, who glared at her angrily. Lili felt herself flush. She looked down at the remains of her noodles, her heart racing. She sat indecisively for a moment longer, then gathered up her things and threaded her way through the tables towards the doorway, conscious that the young woman was still eyeing her.

It was only after she had stepped outside the restaurant that she allowed herself a glance backwards through the window at the young man sitting opposite. It was not Wen, of course; and at once she was flooded with relief. She stood watching them, feeling Wen’s ghost presence ebb away from her in the darkness. But as she turned away she was overcome by a creeping sense of shame. Why had she not been disappointed rather than relieved?

Lili and May lose track of time, and when Adrian returns from work he is clearly dismayed. “Still up?” he says pointedly to May when he walks into the kitchen.

“I wanted to finish my costume. Besides,” May counters a little defiantly, “Lili said it was okay.”

Adrian shoots a quick glance at Lili, but says nothing. Lili feels her face colour. May drapes the sheet over her head and waves her arms.

“See? I’m a ghost!”

Adrian picks up a stack of post on the counter and flicks through it distractedly.

“Very scary. Now off to bed,” he says tersely.

“Lili taught me a new word,” says May, hopping around him in the ghost costume. “
Yang gui zi
. It means ‘foreign devil’ and you’re one.”

May waits for Adrian to respond. He glances at the last envelope and sighs, tossing it back onto the counter, before turning to her.

“What?”

“
Yang gui zi
. You’re a foreign devil. But I’m not.”

Adrian looks at her, his lips pressed tightly together, then turns away.

“Bedtime, May,” he says in a voice so clipped that May dances out of the room and down the hall without another word of protest. Adrian opens the refrigerator and looks inside.

“I’m sorry,” says Lili nervously. “We did not notice time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Adrian replies, pulling out a bottle of beer. “Is there any food left over?” Lili motions towards a wok on the stove.

“Yes. We save some for you.” Adrian goes over to the pan and lifts the lid.

“What is it?”

“It is pork mixed with vegetables and rice.”

“Did May eat this? She usually hates courgette.”

“Yes. May likes it very much.”

Adrian shrugs and dishes the remaining food onto a plate, then sits down at the table. Lili starts to retreat, then pauses in the doorway.

“I am sorry to teach her this word. I explain to her the Chinese belief about ghosts.”

Adrian looks up at her uncomprehendingly. Lili realises that Chinese beliefs are the last thing on his mind.

“Sorry?”

“It doesn’t matter. You are very tired.”

“I’m under quite a lot of pressure at work at the moment,” says Adrian.

“Oh. I am sorry. If I can help, please… just ask me.”

“You’re already doing enough. May seems happier than she’s been in ages.” Adrian takes a long pull of beer.

“I am glad. I like May very much.”

“Well, she adores
you
. She isn’t the kind of child who shows
affection very easily, but trust me, she’s much happier now, much more… settled.”

Adrian rises then and fills a glass of water at the sink. Lili wonders what he thinks of her. It shouldn’t matter, but suddenly it does. She would like to hear him say that her presence has brought harmony to this house, not just for May, but for him as well. But though she spends a few more minutes clearing up, he says nothing more. When he has finished eating, Adrian pushes his plate to one side and picks up the newspaper, scanning the headlines. Lili watches him: his sleeves are rolled up part way and his arms are covered in fine blond hair and freckles. His hands are long and thin, and there are ink stains on his fingers. Adrian looks up after a moment with a questioning glance, aware suddenly that she is watching him. Lili flushes and turns to go.

“Lili?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think you could watch May on Saturday night? It’s just… I’ve got dinner plans.”

“Of course.”

“Thanks. Sorry to be out so much lately.”

“It is no trouble.”

Adrian looks back down at the newspaper, and Lili hesitates.

“Good night,” she says.

“Good night,” replies Adrian without looking up.