My Favourite Wife (36 page)

Bill felt his wife’s hand lightly touch the back of his head as she drifted away from the table.

‘Certain inequalities?’ he said to Devlin, ignoring the fashion airhead.

‘Have another drink, mate,’ Shane said, holding out a fresh bottle, attempting to fill his glass, trying to distract his friend.

Bill ignored him. ‘But the whole thing is built on inequality,’ he said. ‘By the middle of the century China will have a bigger economy
than America. And they’ll still have five hundred million people living on two dollars a day. They’re meant to be Communists, for fuck’s sake.’

‘They haven’t been Communists for a long time,’ Devlin said with irritation. ‘You know that.’

‘And anyway – whose side are you on, Bill?’ Tess laughed.

‘But you would expect at least a token nod towards equality, wouldn’t you?’ Bill said, really wanting Devlin to understand. He drained his glass. ‘Even if it was just going through the motions, a nod towards fighting injustice, or giving a damn about the poor. Like those kids from the farms in Yangdong. But they don’t want equality here. Equality wouldn’t work here.’

Devlin looked pained. Shane looked for a waiter and waved for another bottle.

‘Without the millions of poor buggers who will work for a bowl of noodles,’ Bill said, ‘and can be cheated out of even that, this place loses its attraction. China gets rich as long as most of its people stay poor.’ He looked up at Shane impatiently. ‘Where’s that drink?’

‘Oh, Bill,’ Tess laughed. ‘Bill, Bill, Bill…’

Shane refilled their glasses. Bill sipped his champagne. He was tired of champagne. Something about the enforced jollity of the drink was wearing him down. ‘Oh what, Tess?’ he said. ‘What, what, what?’

She leaned across the table, as if it was just the two of them now. ‘Without all that horrible inequality, Bill,’ she said, in not much more than a whisper, ‘you would lose everything.’

He leaned towards her with a faint smile. ‘How’s that, Tess?’

She shook her head, suddenly disgusted. ‘Spare me your tears for the great unwashed, Bill. Everything we have is built on things being exactly the way they are – everything you have right now, everything you will have when you make partner – and everything you’ve
had.’

‘What do you mean?’

The table was silent now.

He knew exactly what she meant.

‘Without the great unwashed – that big supply of desperate humanity who are anxious to work, anxious to spread their legs, anxious to clean our toilets, anxious to eat – we would not have our nice lifestyles, our second homes, our bonus,’ she said, and then she seemed to hesitate, then decide something, and plough on. ‘All of the things we currently enjoy. And
you
would have missed out on your great little adventure.’

He waited.

Daring her to spell it out.

They stared at each other for a long moment.

‘Is that the time?’ Shane said. He barked at the nearest waiter in Mandarin. Devlin laid a hand on his wife’s arm. She didn’t seem to notice.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tess,’ Bill said, but beyond the comfortably numb feeling of the booze, he felt the panic rise.

‘Can’t you see, Bill?’ Tess said. ‘Don’t cry for the great unwashed, because it’s all fake. Everything they sell.’

‘Those watches are definitely fake,’ said the South African. ‘I was going to get one for my brother in Durban but I said to him, I said, Peter, they look so cheap.’

Tess Devlin let the contempt show. ‘Fake DVDs and fake software and fake watches. Fake orgasms, no doubt. Fake love? Certainly.’ She drained her glass, banged it down empty on the table and held his stare. ‘Love with Chinese characteristics.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Bill said. ‘You haven’t got a clue. I doubt if you ever really knew one Chinese.’

‘In the Biblical sense, you mean?’ Tess said.

‘Oh, go home,’ Bill said.

‘Steady on, Holden,’ Devlin said. ‘That’s my wife you’re talking to.’

Shane was on his feet, clapping his hands. ‘Come on, mate, let’s get you home,’ he said to Bill. ‘Tiger’s waiting.’

‘Can someone call me a cab?’ said the South African stylist. ‘The Bund is crawling with beggars.’

Bill stayed where he was and Tess Devlin jabbed a finger at him across the table. ‘I warned you when you started,’ she said. ‘I warned you when you started with your little Manchu slut and you would
not
listen, Bill. I told you that it ends one of two ways – you either leave your wife or you don’t. I told you –
I fucking told you, Bill
, and you would
not
listen – it ends one of two ways and it always ends badly.’

Then she looked up and so did Bill and they saw Becca standing at the end of the table, the blood draining from her face, finally understanding everything.

Somewhere a champagne glass broke and there was laughter and Shane was shouting in Chinese.

Qing bang wo jiezhang, hao ma?’
he said, snapping his thumb and index finger together.

Time for the bill.

Tiger had seen it all before.

He drove them back to Gubei, glancing at them in the rear-view mirror, and wondered why he’d ever thought that these two would be different. But few marriages were ever improved by Shanghai.

What was different about the boss and the lady was that they said nothing. There were none of the flashes of pain and rage, no words spat out as if they tasted bad.

The boss and the lady sat in complete silence all the way home, as if the words they had to say to each other were too terrible to speak, and too terrible to be heard.

Like a normal married couple they let themselves into the apartment and they were both friendly and polite to the ayi, and she
told them that Holly hadn’t been sleeping very well, and when the ayi had gone Becca went to the second bedroom and from the master bedroom Bill could hear his wife soothing their daughter.

‘It’s all right, darling, it’s all right, darling, I’m here now, it’s all right, darling.’

Bill was sitting on the bed when Becca appeared in the doorway.

He looked up at her and he couldn’t bear it.

‘Who is she?’ Becca said, all business-like, stepping into the room and pushing the hair off her face. ‘Is she one of the whores who live here or is she one of the whores at Suzy Too?’ She smiled bitterly at the look on his face. ‘Oh yes – I know all about that place. You think the wives don’t know all about that place? So what is she? One of the whores from there or one of the whores from here?’

He muttered something and she took a step closer to the bed. ‘What?’ She had a hand cupped to her ear. ‘Can’t hear you.’

He raised his eyes. ‘I said,’ he said quietly, ‘she’s not a whore, Becca.’

She hit his face with a flurry of furious blows. ‘Stupid…stupid…stupid…’

Left right, left right, hitting his mouth his eyes his nose. He lowered his head but did not try to cover up. He felt her ring finger catch the side of his nose and bring tears to his eyes.

‘Oh fuck you and fuck her too,’ Becca said, dismissing it all. ‘You’re welcome to each other. You deserve each other. What did you tell her?’ Slipping into a mocking sing-song voice, a grotesque parody of romantic sweet nothings.
‘My wife doesn’t understand me…we haven’t got along in years…it will not always be this way, baby…trust me, baby, we can work it out…you’re the best thing that ever happened to me…’

And perhaps that’s what it was, he thought, and what it would always be. A grotesque parody of the real thing. She sat next to him on the bed and covered her face with her hands.

‘You broke my heart,’ she said, her voice choked. ‘You broke my bloody heart, Bill.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, putting one hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He said her name. He said it again, and he made her name sound like a question. ‘Please don’t stop loving me,’ he said.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, and he took his hand away. She took a deep breath, stopped crying, wiped her nose, suddenly all icy calm. ‘Don’t touch me when you’ve been touching her,’ she said. It was like a new rule for their new life. ‘And don’t kiss Holly with a mouth that’s been on that dirty Third World whore.’

‘Don’t kiss my daughter?’

Becca nodded. ‘You stay right away from her.’ She narrowed her eyes to thin slits of loathing. ‘You stay right away from my daughter, you fucking bastard.’

He stared at his hands, and weakly muttered something that she didn’t get, although it made her look up at him with eyes blazing, snot and tears on her face. ‘What?’

‘I said – she’s my daughter too.’

She bared her teeth at that. ‘Well, maybe you should have thought more about that before you started. How does it work, Bill? Do you have exclusive fucking rights? Or have you got her on a time share?’ Becca shook her head. ‘Are you going now or in the morning?’

He hung his head. ‘Never.’

‘What?’ She was up now, pacing around the master bedroom, her arms folded across her chest.

‘I’m not going.’ There was no blood in his voice. All the blood had gone. He said the words but he didn’t sound convinced. It was as if his wife had all the power now. ‘I’m never going.’

Her voice was perfectly reasonable, but a little impatient, as if she was explaining something obvious to the village idiot.

‘But, Bill – we don’t want you here.’

‘You mean
you
don’t want me here.’

‘That’s right. I don’t want you here.’

‘But I don’t want to go.’

‘Why not, Bill?’

‘Because I love you.’

‘That’s a fucking laugh.’

‘And I love my daughter.’

He thought that it was the one thing she could never deny or refute. But she did. Even that. She stood in front of him, happy to explain why he had to leave.

‘You love your daughter but you would break up her home -and break her heart – and give her a wound to carry for a lifetime for some dirty Third World whore. You don’t know, Bill. Your parents didn’t divorce. Your mother died. It’s easy when one of them dies. All you feel is sad. When someone dies, you feel sad. But when one of them goes – when one of them walks out – then you feel so worthless. You just feel so worthless, and I don’t think you ever get over it. I think a part of you always feels worthless, as if you deserved it, as if you made it happen, as if it happened because you were bad.’

‘Then let me stay. Let me stay for Holly, if not for you.’

‘But you’ve made staying impossible. Can’t you see that?’ She dissolved before him. Something seemed to crumple inside her. ‘How could you be so cruel? To us, Bill. How could you be so cruel to the two people who loved you more than – oh fuck,’ she said, and she sat on the bed, racked with grief, and he didn’t dare touch her again. She pulled herself together, wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Let me ask you a question, Bill.’

‘What is it?’ he said, and swallowed, afraid of what she would say, afraid of what was ahead.

‘Was it worth it?’ Becca said.

He knew she hated him now. He knew that he had ruined it with Becca and he knew that it was likely that his daughter’s life would be changed forever by what he had done. And he knew that
no matter how many times he talked about how much he loved them, and begged to stay, their little family could never be the same again.

‘Nothing is worth this,’ he said, and he believed it with all his heart. She looked into his face, trying to understand him, not getting him, completely mystified by the man she had married.

‘Did we mean so little, Bill? I mean you and me. Our marriage. Don’t you get it? Marriage is time. Marriage is trust. Marriage – I don’t know what it is, but I know you don’t get it from somebody you pick up in a bar. You think you’re smart. Sneaking around behind my back, keeping it hidden. You think you’re so smart.’

He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think I’m smart.’

‘But you’re stupid,’ she continued, not hearing him, her voice breaking. She breathed hard, struggling to hold herself in one piece. She had things to tell him before she came apart. ‘Oh you’re so stupid, Bill, oh you’re such a fucking cliché. Now Holly is going to grow up with one parent, she’s going to be one of those poor little kids that only has one parent because the other one was fucking around and it will scar her and it will hurt her forever and she will never get over it.’ He thought she was going to hit him again but she shook her head, sadder than he would have believed possible, and that was so much worse. ‘And it will all be your fault,’ she said, and he knew she was right. ‘And you betrayed me. I loved you and I trusted you and you chucked it all away. You treated it like it was nothing. All our time together – nothing. All the things we went through – nothing. You’ve spoilt everything that was good in my life.’

She hung her head.

‘Bec?’ he said. ‘Oh, Bec, don’t cry.’

But she cried and cried. He tried to hold her but she lifted her hands, forbidding it. ‘She’s not the love of your life, Bill. Is that what you think? She’s just your dirty little secret. And it’s not passion – you think it’s passion? It’s the opposite. All the lies, all
the planning – it takes a very cold heart to do all that. You must be a very cold-hearted bastard, Bill.’ She covered her face again, but she had stopped crying. ‘Oh fuck. Why did I choose you? Why did I choose a cold-hearted bastard like you? When I think of all the places I could have been.’

‘I’ll make it up to you, Becca, I swear.’ His voice was desperate now. ‘I’ll make it up to you.’

She frowned, shook her head. ‘But you could never make it up to me,’ she said. She stood up and walked wearily to the door. ‘I’ll sleep with Holly. I can’t stand to be around you. I loved you so much and now I can’t stand to be around you. How did you manage that, Bill?’

‘Bring Holly in here with you,’ he said. ‘I’ll go in the other room.’

But she had had enough.

‘Oh just get out of my life,’ she said quietly. Dead on her feet, as if the strongest feeling of all was exhaustion. ‘Just pack your bags and go. I’m sick of looking at you.’

He stood up, but made no move towards her. ‘I’m so sorry, Becca.’

She exhaled wearily. ‘How many times are you going to say that?’