My Favourite Wife (16 page)

‘We shall drink tea now,’ JinJin informed him, and they sat opposite each other at a wooden table in a narrow room.

JinJin took off her Lakers baseball cap. Cups were placed before them. A tiny pot. Three small glass jars with leaves and assorted plant life were filled with boiling water. He wondered how much of this was genuine historic ritual and how much of it was for the tourists. But then the thought left him because he was enjoying himself, and he liked having some company, and he was happy to make it to the Huxinting teahouse at last.

A couple of funky young Japanese men with blond hair sat at the next table. Bill and JinJin smiled at each other, then looked away. He didn’t know what to say. He felt there were huge areas of her life that he couldn’t approach. She saw him staring at the long queue outside a shop on the other side of the lake.

‘Nan Xiang,’ JinJin said. ‘Very famous dumplings. Do you want?’

‘Sounds good,’ he said, and he realised that he was free, and had
nowhere to go and nothing to do and no one to meet. Then JinJin was looking up at someone standing beside him.

‘Bill?’ Tess Devlin was touching his shoulder. ‘How are you getting on without them?’

Then he was stuttering a reply with his face flushing hot –
no blushing for fifteen years and then twice in the space of minutes
, he thought,
good going, Bill –
feeling as if he had been caught out. JinJin sipped her tea, and set down her cup. The water was still boiling hot.

He noticed a Taiwanese client and his wife gawking up at the pictures on the wall, and Devlin smiling as he stepped around his wife to introduce himself and shake hands with JinJin Li. He does it so well, Bill thought, with a flash of admiration. He sees the situation and just takes control. JinJin shook hands with Bill’s boss as if it was a custom as alien to her as rubbing noses.

Then Tess Devlin turned her beady all-seeing eyes on JinJin and Bill’s heart sank as they all joined them at the table.

The Taiwanese stared blankly at Bill, even though they had been introduced at the office, and then smirked as he ran his eyes over JinJin Li. Bill tried to remember what this hideous little man was in town for. Something to do with a joint-venture dispute with a Chinese telecom operator. His small, bespectacled wife, along for the shopping, began unloading strange painted figurines on to the table. They were ornamental torture scenes depicting old men having their heads shaved, and women in glasses having their arms bent behind their backs, their tormentors angry figures in green, holding up their little red books as though they were the truth and the light.

‘Look what Mr and Mrs Wang found in Dongtai Lu market,’ chuckled Tess. ‘Isn’t that hilarious? Souvenirs of the Cultural Revolution. Why on earth do they make things like that?’

‘Because they know some mad tourist will buy it,’ Devlin said, smiling sweetly at the Taiwanese client’s wife.

Tess was thoughtful. ‘Oh, yes, money, of course,’ she said. ‘There’s always that.’

Orders were placed for more tea. Bill thought that the logical thing would be to ask JinJin to do it, but Tess Devlin chose to instruct the waitress herself, slowly and loudly, in broken English.

‘And where are you from, dear?’ Tess said, staring at JinJin’s features as if examining important forensic evidence. ‘You don’t look typical Shanghainese.’

‘My mother is from Changchun,’ JinJin said. Bill had never heard of Changchun. She must have sensed it. She turned to him. ‘Big city in the Dongbei – the north-east. Near the border with Korea.’ She turned back to Mrs Devlin. ‘My father is from Guilin. Down south. But I grew up in Changchun.’

Tess looked delighted. ‘So you’re – what do they say? A
Dongbei
ho

JinJin smiled and nodded.
‘Dongbei ho –
north-east tiger…’

The Taiwanese gasped and jumped up having scalded his tongue with boiling tea. His wife looked around, sighing with boredom until she saw a picture on the wall of a famous Buddhist Hollywood star sipping tea in the Huxinting. She got up to examine it, bumping the table with her behind, and making her torture sculptures rattle precariously.

‘I thought so,’ Tess continued. ‘Your face – not really typically Chinese, even, let alone Shanghainese.’ She narrowed her eyes, making her judgement. ‘Hmmm – got a touch of the Manchu about you.’

JinJin frowned, and Bill was reminded of the first time he had met her, when he had tried to tell her that she would never remove the ignition key while she had it in drive.

‘Changchun,’ her husband was saying. ‘They’ve had it tough up there. Did all right during the planned economy. Bit of an industrial powerhouse. Coal. Cars. Heavy machinery. Missed out on the big payday, though. What is it up there?’ This to Bill, as if he would know. ‘About fifty per cent unemployment?’

Both Devlin and his wife seemed to have a genuine academic interest in JinJin. Bill wasn’t certain if he should be offended or not.

‘There are many people no job,’ JinJin confirmed, rising from the table. Her English seemed to crack under stress. It became a pared down, spartan language, largely pruned of personal pronouns and the archaic idioms that he found so enchanting. He saw that it wasn’t the mass unemployment in her hometown that concerned her. ‘I’m
not
Manchu,’ she informed Mrs Devlin.

The two women stared at each other.

‘Of course you’re not, dear,’ said Tess. ‘Silly of me to think so.’

‘Need rest room now,’ JinJin said, her way barred by the Taiwanese, who was still standing up, dabbing his scalded mouth. JinJin squeezed past him. He twinkled, leered, licked his burning lips. JinJin left without looking at Bill.

‘What a lovely girl,’ Tess said. ‘Where on earth did you find her?’

‘She’s a neighbour,’ Bill said. ‘Just a neighbour.’

Hugh Devlin looked disturbed. ‘Places like Changchun – breaks your heart when you think about it.’ He carefully sipped his Jasmine tea. ‘China’s rust belt, Bill, that’s what it is. Reminds us that it’s not just rural peasants that have been left behind, it’s entire cities, entire
regions.’
He stared thoughtfully at his tea. ‘Changchun is a city of twenty million people, and they are bloody desperate up there. We have to acknowledge that, and do something about it.’ He rose from the table. ‘Excuse us. I must give them the grand tour before they head to the airport.’

He took the Taiwanese off to see the view from the top of the teahouse, and Bill was left alone with Tess Devlin. She smiled and sighed into the silence.

‘Bill, Bill, Bill,’ she laughed.

He forced himself to meet her eye. ‘What?’

‘Oh, do be careful there, Bill.’

He shook his head and laughed. ‘I told you, she’s a neighbour.’

‘Really? I could have sworn you were about to start holding hands. I said to Devlin – good God, Bill’s about to start holding hands with that Chinese girl…what’s her name? You do know her name, Bill? You didn’t introduce us and I didn’t like to ask. We’ve been through all this with Shane, of course. Many times.’

He took a breath. ‘Her name is JinJin Li.’

Tess Devlin looked hugely amused. He couldn’t tell if it was genuine or not. ‘And do you know how many JinJin Lis there are in the PRC? About, oh, one hundred million of them.’

‘Really?’ She was getting on his nerves. ‘Who counted?’

Tess nodded. A serious woman now. ‘I don’t have to tell you to think about your wife and child, because I know you’ll do that. But think about yourself. I’m very lucky with Hugh, I know – he’s not into the bamboo. Never has been. One of the few good men out here that doesn’t like Asian girls. Don’t know why.’ She nodded, as if it was all a mystery. ‘Some of them are lovely when they’re young.’

Bill warmed his palms on his teacup. It wasn’t so hot now. He took a gulp. ‘They probably say the same thing about us, Tess -
Oh, those big-nose pinkies, they’re lovely when they’re little.’

‘No doubt,’ she said briskly. ‘But what I never understand is how a man can get serious about a girl like that. Ask yourself – do you really want to be with a little old Chinese lady? What would you talk about? All I’m trying to do is give you some sound advice.’

‘Thanks so much, Tess.’

‘For your sake. For Becca’s sake. For the sake of the firm – do be careful there.’

Bill sighed. ‘I had the lecture when I arrived. How does it go?
Hard as nails, these Chinese girls. Gold diggers, the lot of them. They don’t see a man – they see a cash-point machine
. But I wonder, Tess – what do we see when we look at them?’

She laughed and poured him some more tea.

‘Oh dear – you sound quite keen,’ she said, and he felt his face
burning. He was really going to have to stop doing that. ‘A mistress is a great idea in theory, Bill.’

‘She’s not my bloody –’ He stopped, shook his head. ‘I don’t want a mistress, Tess,’ he said, and he truly meant it. The idea sickened him. It didn’t fit with his idea of himself, or what he wanted from his marriage. He loved his wife, he missed his wife, and he didn’t want to be like one of those men who drove their cars into the courtyard of Paradise Mansions. He wanted to be a better man than that. He didn’t want to believe that he was just like everybody else.

‘Good,’ said Tess Devlin, as if they had come to some agreement. She lowered her voice a notch. ‘Because you don’t fall for a girl like that, Bill – you just fuck her. That’s
what she’s for
. And if you really get stuck on her – and I can see how you might, she’s such a hot little Manchu slut – then you set her up in a nice little flat and then make your excuses and look for the exit sign.’ She laughed. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

‘No, I’m fresh off the banana boat, Tess.’ He found he was fiddling with a yellow baseball cap advertising the LA Lakers. ‘I don’t know a thing.’

Her husband was coming back with the Taiwanese. It took them a while to negotiate the tight wooden stairs.

‘Just don’t get carried away, that’s all I’m saying,’ Tess concluded, lightening the tone. ‘These Chinese girls, Bill – they’re just so
practical
. They are so practical that, if you let them, they will break your heart.’

Her husband was grinning with pleasure. ‘Any more of that tea?’ he said.

Bill stared out at the queue for Nan Xiang’s dumplings and was just in time to see JinJin step off the far side of the zigzag bridge, designed so that no evil spirits could ever get across.

Awards, Bill thought. Lawyers love awards.

Best new this. Most promising that. Most valuable the other. Any excuse to get pissed and pat ourselves on the back.

He was in a ballroom with hundreds of lawyers in dinner jackets, the dresses of the women splashes of colour in a sea of black tie, sitting at the firm’s table between Nancy Deng and Tess Devlin.

Most of the firm’s table consisted of identically dressed men. On the other side of Tess Devlin was Shane. Then came Devlin. Then Mad Mitch. And finally the two Germans, Wolfgang and Jurgen, with Rosalita laughing between them.

Too many men at this table, Bill thought, missing Becca, feeling her absence. He realised that for years these events had been made bearable because, no matter how long they dragged on, he could always look up and see her face, or share a silent private joke.

But the night crawled by in a blur of bad food, harassed waiters and too much drink, the glasses topped up quickly yet sloppily, a strange combination of the servile and the slapdash. A succession of men in tuxedos, and occasionally a woman in an evening dress, went on stage to collect a glass sculpture of a bird from a willowy Chinese woman with a professional smile that never wavered and a man in a dinner jacket who had something to do with one of the sponsors.

Then came the last award of the night, Foreign Lawyer of the
Year, and when Shane’s name was announced Bill was suddenly on his feet, cheering and clapping louder than anyone. ‘Sit down,’ someone shouted from behind him. A disappointed nominee, Bill thought, sitting down. But he got up again, clapping harder and laughing as Shane weaved his way to the stage with an embarrassed grin.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ the big Australian said, squinting at his award. ‘I shall always treasure this, er, glass pigeon.’ Laughter. ‘You know, the public think that lawyers are a heartless, mercenary bunch,’ he said, only slightly slurring his words. ‘But of course we all know that’s not true.’

Whoops of knowing, derisive laughter. Shane straightened himself up.

‘I am reminded of the beautiful young woman who made an appointment to see a lawyer,’ he continued, with inebriated gravitas. ‘She said, “Please take my case. Unfortunately I have no money. However, I will give you the best blow-job in the world.”’

More laughter, but now mixed with disapproving catcalls and the odd cry of ‘Shame.’ It was a conservative crowd. Bill looked at them. At the tables of rival firms, heads were being shaken, smiles fading. Shane had gone too far. These people didn’t want blow-jobs with their after-dinner mints.

But Shane leaned on the podium, and it wobbled dangerously. ‘The best blow-job in the world,’ he repeated, with an edge of defiance, as if every word were true. He paused for effect, glaring at the crowd. ‘And the lawyer said, “What’s in it for me?”’

He had won them back. And as they all clapped and cheered, even the rival firms who had feigned offence, it seemed to Bill that this was the very essence of his friend. Teetering on the edge of disaster, and then somehow stumbling to glory.

Shane came back to the table amid much backslapping and congratulations and Devlin sent the waiter off for champagne.

Bill looked at his watch. Knocking on for midnight. Back in
London, Becca would have picked up Holly from nursery by now. If there was no ballet and no swimming lessons, then they would be home and he would be able to talk to both of them. He pulled his phone from his dinner jacket but saw there was no signal.

The night was breaking up. As the others got up to network and stretch their limbs, Bill was the only one who remained at the firm’s table, the debris of empty wine bottles and coffee cups before him. A waiter appeared with a bucket bristling with champagne bottles and placed it on the abandoned table. Shane and Devlin looked over at Bill as he headed for the exit.