The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim (36 page)

‘Yes. Her mother died a few years ago, when she was only three. A horrible death, I’m afraid. You know, the working conditions in some of those factories are beyond belief. The things those workers put up with so that we in the West can have our cut-price goods. Yanmei’s mother worked in the spray-paint department of one factory and she was working fifteen or sixteen hours a day, spraying things with these chemical paints all the time, full of toxic solvents. No proper precautions – no masks, or anything like that. She died of cancer. Cancer of the brain.’

‘How awful,’ I said. It was a weak enough phrase, but the best I could manage. ‘What was the factory making?’

‘Toothbrushes, I believe.’

I looked across at Lian sharply when she said this. Had I heard correctly?

‘Toothbrushes?’

‘Yes – cheap plastic toothbrushes. You look surprised. Is that so surprising?’

I was speechless, in fact.

‘Do toothbrushes have some sort of special significance for you?’

Gradually, I started to find my voice again. ‘Yes, they do. A very special significance. More than that – what you’ve just told me, the story of Yanmei’s mother … Well, I find it astonishing. Incredible.’

‘There is nothing incredible about it at all. These things are happening all the time, in the developing world and elsewhere. Unfortunately, we tend to blind ourselves to them.’

‘No, I mean that what I find incredible is its … its personal significance. The significance to me, personally.’

‘Oh, I see. But could you perhaps explain this significance?’

I took a deep breath, and shook my head. ‘It would take … I’m afraid it would take a very long time. You see, in a weird sort of way, everything that’s happened to me in the last few weeks is connected to Yanmei and her mother. But I’d have to tell you the whole story to make you understand that, and I’m sure you would find it very boring …’

‘But now you have to tell me. Look.’ She gestured over at Yanmei and Jennifer, who were happily splashing from one side of the pool to the other. ‘The girls are enjoying themselves. They won’t want to leave for at least an hour. I didn’t bring anything to read. So tell me your story. I want to hear it, however long and boring it is. What else am I going to do?’

And so I began telling her about all the things that had happened to me since I had first seen her and Yanmei sitting at the restaurant overlooking Sydney harbour on Valentine’s Day. It was difficult to know how to begin, and I think at first I was just confusing her. I started off by talking about Alan Guest and all the ideals and ambitions he’d tried to realize with his little toothbrush company, thinking that, if my recent experiences had taught me anything, they had taught me a lesson about the cruelty of the world: taught me that we still lived in an age when even the most well-meaning and innovative organization could be brought to its knees by more powerful forces. But then I thought that perhaps this wasn’t the meaning of the story at all, and that maybe what I had really learned (or started to learn) was something about myself, about my own nature and my own problems. So I was trying to flip backwards and forwards between these two ideas, and Lian was getting more and more bewildered, and at that point she told me to start again, and just tell the story from the beginning, exactly as it had happened. And when I started doing that, what I found myself telling her didn’t feel much like a proper story at all, any more, just a series of random, unconnected episodes: encounters, mainly, encounters with strange and unexpected people who had all done something, in small ways, to change the course of my life over the last few weeks. It had begun with Lian herself, of course, and Yanmei. But then there had been … Well, first there had been the man at the airline check-in desk in Sydney, who had upgraded me to Premium Economy class for no particular reason. Then there had been poor old Charlie Hayward, who had a heart attack while sitting next to me on the flight to Singapore. Then there was Poppy, with her secret recording device and her story about Donald Crowhurst. Then there was the man in the park in Watford, who had stolen my mobile phone and come back afterwards to ask me for directions. Then there was Trevor Paige, and Lindsay Ashworth, who had taken me out for a drink at the Park Inn and asked me to join their sales team. Then the dinner at Poppy’s mother’s house, where I had met Poppy’s mother and her obnoxious friend Richard and the only person who had been really friendly to me was her Uncle Clive. Then my meeting with Alan Guest himself, the day I set off from his office on the first stage of my journey to Scotland. And then Mr and Mrs Byrne, Chris’s parents, and then Miss Erith and Dr Hameed, high up in that apartment block on the edges of Lichfield, and then Caroline and Lucy, and our failed dinner together in Kendal, and then Alison Byrne and the way she had invited me to sleep with her in Edinburgh and I had run away, run away with her whisky bottles and got into my car at dawn and driven off into the Scottish mountains by myself. In fact the only person I didn’t mention once, in all of this, was Emma: because it embarrassed me now to admit that I had started talking to my SatNav, and I thought that Lian might think less of me if she knew.

As I was telling her about all these encounters, Lian lay back on the picnic rug, and put her hands behind her head, and closed her eyes. She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t ask me any questions: she didn’t interrupt me once, even though I was talking for a long time, and then when I had finished she didn’t make any comment at first, until her silence actually made me suspect that she might have fallen asleep. But no, she hadn’t fallen asleep. She was just thinking very deeply about what I had told her, and eventually she raised herself onto her elbows and looked at me and said:

‘Well, Maxwell, now it begins to make sense.’

‘Now what begins to make sense?’ I asked her.

‘Now I can see why you looked so different, last night, to the man who had come to that restaurant two months ago.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘You saw a change in me?’

‘Of course. That first time, you scared me slightly. I thought I had never seen anyone look so lonely and depressed. But last night – and today – you look … well, you look calmer, at least. You look like a man who is almost at peace with himself.’

‘Almost,’ I repeated.

‘Almost.’

‘Mum!’ Yanmei came running over, with Jennifer not far behind. ‘What time is it? It isn’t time to go yet, is it?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Jennifer’s mother will be expecting us soon. And don’t look so disappointed – unless I’m much mistaken, she said something about an Easter egg hunt …’

The girls’ faces brightened at once.

‘OK,’ said Jennifer. ‘But one more swim first!’

They ran off laughing in the direction of the pool.

‘Five minutes!’ Lian called after them.

She turned back to me, and saw that I was lost in thought once again.

‘Sorry,’ I said, snapping out of it. ‘I hadn’t even realized that it was Easter Sunday today. The festival of the Rising Sun …’

‘The rising sun?’ said Lian, puzzled.

‘Isn’t that how Easter began? It’s supposed to be a time for new dawns, fresh starts.’

Now she smiled at me, and said gently, in a tone of apology, ‘And you thought I was going to be your fresh start. Me and Yanmei. Well, I’m sorry, Maxwell, but … you’re going to have to look elsewhere.’

‘I know.’

‘In any case …’

‘Yes?’ I said. There was something tantalizing, even a little unsettling in the way she had tailed off: as if she didn’t quite dare to say what she’d been about to say.

‘In any case,’ she continued, after a moment, ‘this thing that you’re looking for – this intimacy … You wouldn’t have found it with us.’

‘Is that what you think? How can you be so sure?’

Lian picked up my plastic cup from the sand and tipped it over, shaking out the last droplets of tea. Then she screwed the cup carefully on to the top of the thermos flask. Her movements were slow and mechanical, suggesting that her thoughts – her real thoughts – were elsewhere.

‘This girl Poppy,’ she said at last. ‘She interests me. Out of all the people you met on your journey, there is something very special about her. She was the one who understood you the best, I think.’

‘Yes, but Poppy made it very clear that we could only be friends, nothing more.’

‘Of course. And yet … When she invited you for dinner at her mother’s house – did you not think that was an extraordinary gesture, on her part?’

‘Extraordinary? In what way?’

‘Well, it was generous of her. Also hopeful. And also rather … perceptive.’

‘Yes,’ I said – a little impatiently – ‘but as I explained, I didn’t get on with her mother, if that was the idea. I didn’t find her attractive.’

‘You think Poppy was trying to make a match between you and her mother?’

‘Of course. She told me as much.’

‘But there was someone else at the party that night.’

‘Someone else?’

‘Someone else.’

Who was she talking about? ‘No there wasn’t,’ I said. ‘There was a young couple – about twenty years younger than me – and then there was her uncle, Clive. That’s all.’

Lian gazed at me steadily. Another smile began to spread across her face, but she managed to suppress it when she saw my growing look of outrage.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I spoke out of turn.’

She hastily crammed the remaining picnic things into her basket, and stood up.

‘I’d better go and collect my girls.’

Still shocked into silence, I rose to my feet as well, and took her hand again, unthinkingly, when she offered it to me.

‘Goodbye, Maxwell Sim,’ she said. ‘And try not to be angry with the people who think they know you better than you know yourself. They mean well.’

She turned and began to walk away.

I hesitated for a few seconds, and then hurried after her, running to catch up: ‘Lian!’ I called.

She wheeled around. ‘Yes?’

Out of control, now – without stopping to think what I was doing – I seized her, and clasped her in my arms, and hugged her fiercely. I held on to her so tightly that she couldn’t move. Could hardly breathe, I expect. I held her like that for … I don’t know how long for. Until my own body shook, convulsively, with a single, gigantic sob, and I put my mouth against her hair and wept and whispered into it: ‘It’s hard. Really hard. I know I’ve got to face it, but it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever …’

I felt her palm against my chest, pushing me away, gently at first, then more forcefully. I eased myself away from her, and took a step back, and wiped my eyes and looked away: ashamed; shipwrecked; bereft.

‘I think you’re almost there, now, Maxwell,’ she said. ‘You’re almost there.’

She touched me on the arm, and then turned again, and walked away, back towards the pool, calling for her daughter.

I stayed on the beach until sunset.

It was interesting to watch the changing colours of the sky. I had never done that before. The greyness turned slowly to silver as the clouds began to fracture and let through some glimpses of the dying sun. Before long they were tinged by a more golden glow, then they began to break away and drift apart even further as the light itself softened and faded until the sky became gradually streaked with the palest of reds and blues. People continued to come and go on the beach. Nobody was using the swimming pool any more. The long day was finally closing.

Already I missed Lian. I hated the thought that I would never see her again. I missed my father, as well. I should really have gone back to see him – I only had a few more hours left in Australia, after all – but something was stopping me. Something was paralysing me. There was no urgency about talking to him, anyhow, now that I knew he’d be coming back to live in England. We would soon be having plenty of times together, plenty of good times.

I couldn’t sit here for ever. I would miss my plane if I didn’t leave soon. But I knew that there was something I needed to do first.

I needed to talk to someone. I needed to talk to someone really, really urgently – more urgently, even, than when I’d been drunk-driving around the Cairngorms in a raging blizzard, and my mobile phone had run out of battery.

Today, of course, my phone was fully charged.

What was stopping me, then?

I was like little Yanmei, standing poised on the edge of the swimming pool, summoning up the courage for a dive. But knowing that once it was done, once I had found that courage, there was the coolness of the water to look forward to, the long-delayed sense of release, of freedom …

Almost there, now, Max. Almost there.

What time was it in London? The time difference had gone haywire in the last couple of weeks. Britain had put its clocks forward by an hour for the summer, and Australia had just put its clocks back by an hour for the winter, or was it the other way round? Something like that, anyway. So if it was five o’clock in Sydney, it was … pretty early in the morning, in London. Too early to call someone? Difficult to say. The timing of this call was neither here nor there, in any case. Either this call was going to be welcome, or it wasn’t.

I took out my phone. I scrolled through the memory until I reached Clive’s name. Then I took a deep breath and pressed the call button.