‘Well, she has her own life. She’s never met a foreigner. She doesn’t know what to think.’
‘Isn’t she upset?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, you’re seeing another woman.’
‘She’s Chinese.’
‘But she’s still your wife.’
‘Yes. But she doesn’t see it like you do.’
‘You’re close enough to have had a child together, and you’re telling me she isn’t jealous?’
‘Anyone can have a child. It’s easy.’
He was talking about the thing most Westerners thought they wanted out of their relationships and dismissing it as if it was the easy bit. Getting someone into bed made people forgo understanding and kindness, as if sex would replace friendship or be an improvement on it. But from what I could see Liang and Wang didn’t seem to have much apart from the evidence of a fleeting sexual encounter. They appeared to have an easy-going or even apathetic tolerance of each other, and maybe some woolly notion of duty.
‘Well, what does it mean? Are they saying we’ve got to stop seeing each other?’ I couldn’t bear to think about it.
‘They want an explanation. They’re trying to be reasonable. And Wang has offered to divorce me.’ He added this last bombshell as a sort of afterthought.
I added up in seconds what it would mean if he was divorced. Would he then expect me to marry him? The thought ricocheted around in my brain. What about Martin? What about Mummy and Daddy? What about my friends? The thought of being married to a five-foot, two-inch Chinaman appalled me suddenly. He must have seen my expression of anguish and read it completely wrongly. All was confusion. Did I love him or had it suddenly stopped like a watch stops when it is overwound and the spring snaps?
‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘It would be wonderful.’
Wonderful for whom? I saw all the advantages for him and none for me. He would unload an unwanted wife and child and acquire the much coveted passport out of China – a foreign spouse. I would be married to a foreigner who would never fit in at home and who would make me a laughing stock. The thought was impossible. Could I see him at the Point to Point or the Hunt Ball, or meeting the vicar or Uncle Basil? They would all be horrified. I began to see the value of Martin. He was of my world, my sort. I had stepped into an alien place and been befriended by an alien. Liang was China and was inseparable from it. I could not blend the two worlds – the only piece of this world that I could take home was my picture of peonies and kittens.
Since I was lost for words and Liang was evidently hoping for a positive response, he said, ‘You could come with me to America. We could travel together and get out of this dump. We could be free together.’ What did he mean ‘free’? I was already free.
I looked into his eyes, then looked away to his frayed grubby collar and the tide-mark on his neck.
‘But you can’t just leave your family like that – they haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘I can. Lots of people do. I’ve been applying for scholarships for months and now at last one has come through. I’m going to Ohio in July.’
‘You never said anything to me,’ I said, hurt and beginning to be angry that I had not been part of this plan.
‘I wasn’t sure until yesterday.’ He started to fidget irritatingly with a loose button on his jacket. He couldn’t bring himself to look me in the eye.
So my part in the grand plan had been to help him prepare himself for the peculiarities of the West in order to make the escape less painful.
‘Do you really want to marry me, then?’
‘Of course. It would make things much easier. As the husband of an Englishwoman, I would be able to …’
I stopped listening. I was right. He was after a passport. How had I failed to see it from the very first? Why had I thought he cared for me? An icy trickle of disappointment pierced me with startling pain. Facing reality was like discovering I hadn’t won the jackpot after all. After months of the luxury of fantasy I now had to return to mundane reality. I couldn’t let the ice sear an irreparable wound. I shut it out.
There had been a point in both our lives where he needed to turn away from China and I needed to turn away from England. We had met in the centre of a figure of eight, travelling in opposite directions. We generated a small spark, a misunderstood spark as it turned out, as we passed, and now our only route was away from each other.
‘Take your wife,’ I said. ‘I’m leaving here and going back to England.’
He looked up at me. I had intruded on a dream. He remained lost in reflection for a moment, then seemed to emerge gradually like a creature coming out of hibernation.
‘Yes.’ He said it with an air of relief.
‘I’m sorry if you misunderstood my behaviour. We Westerners are not like you Chinese. We’re a bit impulsive, you know. It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘No.’
He made his excuses and left. I didn’t have any more painting lessons and we did not communicate any more after that meeting.
Much as I wanted to weep and feel wretched, I couldn’t. The moment had passed and I had evaded that peak. I was frustrated and even guilty that I couldn’t summon up any real misery. I felt numb and blank. It wasn’t the numbness of shock. It was the numbness of a bemused vacuum.
Eventually at the end of the summer term it was time for me to leave. Martin’s trip was fixed and I was to meet him in Peking. While I was packing I discovered a pair of Liang’s gloves. He had left them behind on the day we first kissed and I’d kept them hidden in my underwear drawer. I took them out and felt a slight pang. I sniffed them and they smelt of sourness and cheap plastic. They were too small for me to wear. They were useless and ugly. I threw them in the bin.
As always I had trouble at the airport, with nobody to help with my bags, being sent in different directions by different officials, and was glad to be leaving this irritating mayhem. I wasn’t all that keen on the grand tour of China, but at least we’d be insulated from the chaos inside an air-conditioned bus.
I got on to the plane at last after much pushing and shoving, but of course someone was sitting in my seat. They never seemed to manage these things efficiently, and having got up at the crack of dawn to be chauffeured to the airport in the university limousine, I was pretty tired and irritable already. A woman with a baby had dumped her things across three seats – there were endless gaping bags of blankets, fruit, enamel cups and Heaven knows what else.
‘Excuse me,’ I said in English, hoping she’d get the message. She stared up at me. She was a tiny delicate woman, maybe from one of the Minorities. She was like a pretty doll with perfect almond eyes, peach cheeks and a long black plait, and wearing a pink silk jacket, old-fashioned among the Crimplene glitter creations worn by other girls. The baby was bundled into several layers of shawls in spite of the heat and was wearing those disgusting crotchless trousers so that his little raw bottom protruded. He laughed as she swung him on to her shoulder and
