The Piano Teacher. Литагент HarperCollins USD
he said neutrally.
‘Yes, thank you very much.’
All of a sudden, Claire couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t bear this man with his odd pauses and his slightly mocking tone.
‘Something to eat, perhaps?’ he said. ‘Ah Yik makes a very good bowl of fried rice.’
‘I think I’d better leave,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ he said, taken aback. She took satisfaction from his surprise, as if she had won something. ‘Of course, if you’d rather.’
She got up and left, putting her shoes on at the door while Will stayed in the living room. When she turned to say goodbye, she saw he was reading a book. This infuriated her. ‘Well, goodbye, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll have my amah return the dress. Thank you for your hospitality.’
‘Goodbye,’ he said. He didn’t look up.
That night, after dinner, she couldn’t relax. Her insides seemed too large for her outside, a queer sensation, as if all that she was feeling couldn’t be contained inside her body. As Martin was still away she put on her street clothes and got on the bus to town, bumping over the roads, elbow out of the window, open to the warm night air. She disembarked in Wanchai, where there seemed to be the most activity. She wanted to be among people, not alone. The wet market was still open, Chinese people buying their cabbages and fish, pork hanging from hooks, sometimes a whole pig’s head, red and bloody, dripping on to the street. This was the peculiarity of Hong Kong.
If she walked ten minutes towards Central, all would be civilized, large, quiet buildings in the European classical style, and wide, empty streets, yet here the frenetic activity, narrow alleys and smoky stalls were another world. All around her, people called to each other loudly, advertising their wares, a smudge-faced child playing in the street with a dirty bucket. A pregnant woman carrying vegetables under her arm jostled her and apologized, her movements heavy and clumsy. Claire stared after her, wondering how it felt to have a child inside you, moving around. A young couple, arms linked, sat down at a noodle stand and broke out loudly in laughter.
Next to her, a wizened elderly lady tugged at Claire’s arm. Dressed in the grey cotton tunic and trousers that most of the local older women seemed to favour, she had a small basket of tangerines on her arm.
‘You buy,’ she said. She smelled like the white flower ointment the locals used to fend off everything from the common cold to cholera. One of her teeth was grey and chipped, the others antique yellow. The woman’s brown face was a spider web of deeply etched lines.
‘No, thank you,’ said Claire. Her voice rang out like a bell. It seemed that its sound stilled the bustle around her for a moment.
The woman grew more insistent.
‘You buy! Very good. Fresh today.’ She pulled at Claire’s arm again. Then she reached up and touched Claire’s hair like a talisman. The local Chinese did that sometimes, and while it had been frightening the first time, Claire was used to it now.
‘Good fortune,’ said the old woman. ‘Golden.’
‘Thank you,’ said Claire.
‘You buy!’ the woman repeated.
‘I’m not looking for anything today, but thank you very much.’ The hum around her resumed. Claire continued walking. The old woman followed her for a few yards, then shambled off to find more promising customers.
Why not buy a tangerine from an old lady? Claire thought suddenly. Why not? What would happen? She couldn’t think why she had declined, as if her old English self, with its defences and prejudices, was dissolving in the foetid environment around her.
She turned, but the woman had already disappeared. She breathed deeply. The smells of the wet market entered her, intense and earthy. Around her, Hong Kong thrummed.
And then, suddenly, he was everywhere. She saw Will Truesdale waiting for the bus, at Kayamally’s, queuing outside the cinema. And though he never saw her, she always lowered her head, willing him not to notice. And then she’d glance up, to see if he had. He had a way of seeming completely contained within himself, even when he was in a crowd. He never looked around, never tapped his feet, never looked at his watch. It seemed he never saw her.
When she went for Locket’s lesson on Thursdays, she found herself looking for Will Truesdale. She heard the amahs laughing at his jokes in the kitchen, and she saw his jacket hanging in the hall, but his physical presence was elusive, as if he slipped in and out, avoiding her. She lingered at the end of her lesson, but she never saw him or the car.
Then they were at the beach the next weekend. She hardly knew how it had happened. She had come home. The phone rang. She picked it up.
‘I’ve a friend with one of those municipal beach huts,’ he said. ‘Would you like to go bathing?’ As if nothing had happened. As if she would know who it was by his voice.
‘Bathing,’ she said. ‘Where?’
‘On Big Wave Bay,’ he said. ‘It’s a perk for the locals but they don’t mind if we sign up as well. It’s a lottery system and you get a cottage for the season. A group of us usually get together to do it and swap weekends. It’s quite nice.’
She shut her eyes and saw him: Will, the difficult man, with his thin shoulders and grey eyes, his dark hair that fell untidily into his eyes, a man who stared at her so intently she felt quite transparent, a man who had just asked her to go bathing with him, unaccompanied. And she opened her eyes and said, yes, she would join him at the beach that Sunday.
Martin was away for three weeks and he had telegraphed from Shanghai to let her know he would be delayed for some time. He was on a tour of major Chinese cities to inspect their water facilities, which he expected to be very primitive.
And so, it was water. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. How it rendered everything changed. She was a different woman in a different sphere. And Will! The way he plunged in, without a thought, his limp gone, dissolved into the current. He was a fish, darting here and there, swimming out into the horizon, further than she would ever go.
They were the only Europeans at the beach. The water was still warm from the summer, the air just starting to crisp. The hut was a simple structure with wooden cupboards and woven straw mats. The sand was fine, speckled with black, and small, withered leaves. Families picnicked around them, chattering loudly, small children scrambling messily about. He wanted to go out to the floating diving docks, some two hundred yards out. When she said she couldn’t, that it was too far, he said of course she could, and so she did. Out there, they climbed on to the rocking circle and sunned themselves like seals. He lay in the sun, eyes closed, as she watched surreptitiously, his ribs jutting out, his body pocked with unnamed scars of unknown origin. He wore short cotton trousers that were heavy with water. He wasn’t the type to wear a bathing suit.
It was hot, hot. The sun hid behind clouds for brief moments, then blazed out again. There was no cover. She wished for a cold drink, a tree for shade, both of which seemed impossibly far away on the shore.
‘We should have swum out with a Thermos of water,’ she said.
‘Next time,’ he said, eyes still shut.
‘Tell me your story,’ she said, after allowing herself a minute to digest what that meant. She was still vibrating with the strangeness of the situation – that she was at the beach with a man, intentions unknown.
‘I was born in Tasmania, of Scottish stock,’ he said mockingly, as if he were starting an autobiography. He sat up and crossed his legs as if he were a swami.
‘Why?’ she said.
‘My father was a missionary and we lived everywhere,’ he said. ‘I’ve only been to England once, and loathed it. My mother was