was shamed into silence. The blood rose in her cheeks. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I suppose that’s enough of that. Did you practise the scales?’
Locket pounded on the piano keys as Claire looked hard at the girl’s chubby fingers, trying not to blink so that the tears would not fall.
It begins like that. Her lilting laugh at a consular party. A spilled drink. A wet dress and a handkerchief hastily proffered. She is a sleek greyhound among the others – plump, braying women of a certain class. He doesn’t want to meet her – he is suspicious of her kind, all chiffon and champagne, nothing underneath, but she has knocked his drink over her silk shift (‘There I go again,’ she says. ‘I’m the clumsiest person in all Hong Kong’), and then commandeers him to escort her to the bathroom where she dabs at herself while peppering him with questions.
She is famous, born of a well-known couple, the mother a Portuguese beauty, the father a Shanghai millionaire with fortunes in trading and money lending.
‘Finally, someone new! We can tell right away, you know. I’ve been stuck with those old bags for ages. We’re very good at sniffing out new blood since the community is so wretchedly small and we’re all so dreadfully sick of each other. We practically wait at the docks to drag the new people off the ships. Just arrived, yes? Have you a job yet?’ she asks, having sat him on the rim of the bath while she reapplies her lipstick. ‘Is it for fun or funds?’
‘I’m at Asiatic Petrol,’ he says, wary of being cast as the amusing newcomer. ‘And it’s most certainly for funds.’ Although that’s not the truth. A mother with money.
‘How delightful!’ she says. ‘I’m so sick of meeting all these stuffy people. They don’t have the slightest knowledge or ambition.’
‘Those without expectations have been known to lack both of those qualities,’ he says.
‘Aren’t you a grumpy grump?’ she says. ‘But stupidity is much more forgivable in the poor, don’t you think?’ She pauses, as if to let him think about that. ‘Your name? And how do you know the Trotters?’
‘I’m Will Truesdale, and I play cricket with Hugh. He knows some of my family, on my mother’s side,’ he says. ‘I’m new to Hong Kong and he’s been very decent to me.’
‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘I’ve known Hugh for a decade and I’ve never ever thought of him as decent. And do you like Hong Kong?’
‘It’ll do for now,’ he says. ‘I came off the ship, decided to stay, rustled up something to do in the meantime. Seems pleasant enough here.’
‘An adventurer, how fascinating,’ she says, without the slightest bit of interest. Then she snaps her evening bag shut, takes his wrist firmly and waltzes – there is no other word, music seems to accompany her – out of the bathroom.
Conscious of being steered round the room like a pet poodle, her diversion of the moment, he excuses himself to go smoke in the garden. But peace is not to be his. She finds him out there, has him light her cigarette and leans confidentially towards him. ‘Tell me,’ she says. ‘Why do your women get so fat after marriage? If I were an Englishman I’d be quite put out when the comely young lass I proposed to exploded after a few months of marriage or after popping out a child. You know what I’m talking about?’ She blows smoke up to the dark sky.
‘Not at all,’ he says, amused despite himself.
‘I’m not as flighty as you think,’ she says. ‘I do like you so very much. I’ll ring you tomorrow, and we’ll make a plan.’ And then she is gone, wafting smoke and glamour as she trips her way into the resolutely non-smoking house of their hosts – Hugh loathes the smell.
He sees her in the next hour, flitting from group to group, chattering away. The women are dimmed by her, the men bedazzled.
The next day the phone rings in his office. He had been telling Simonds about the party.
‘She’s Eurasian, is she?’ Simonds says. ‘Watch out there. It’s not as bad as dating a Chinese, but the higher-ups don’t like it if you fraternize too much with the locals.’
‘That is an outrageous statement,’ Will says. He had liked Simonds up to that point.
‘You know how it is,’ Simonds says. ‘At Hong Kong Bank, you get asked to leave if you marry a Chinese. But this girl sounds different, she sounds rather more than a local girl. It’s not like she’s running a noodle shop.’
‘Yes, she is different,’ he says. ‘Not that it matters,’ he adds as he answers the phone. ‘I’m not marrying her.’
‘Darling, it’s Trudy Liang,’ she says. ‘Who aren’t you marrying?’
‘Nobody.’ He laughs.
‘That would have been quick work.’
‘Even for you?’
‘Wasn’t it shocking how many women there were at the party yesterday?’ she says, ignoring him. The women in the colony are supposed to have gone, evacuated to safer areas, while the war is simmering, threatening to boil over into their small corner of the world. ‘I’m essential, you know. I’m a nurse with the Auxiliary Nursing Service!’
‘None of the nurses I’ve ever had looked like you,’ he says.
‘If you were injured, you wouldn’t want me as a nurse, believe me.’ She pauses. ‘Listen, I’ll be at the races in the Wongs’ box this afternoon. Would you care to join us?’
‘The Wongs?’ he asks.
‘Yes, they’re my godparents,’ she says impatiently. ‘Are you coming or not?’
‘All right,’ he says. This is the first in a long line of acquiescences.
Will muddles his way through the club and into the upper tier where the boxes are filled with chattering people in jackets and silky dresses. He comes through the door of number twenty-eight and Trudy spies him right away, pounces on him, and introduces him to everybody. There are Chinese from Peru, Polish by way of Tokyo, a Frenchman married to Russian royalty. English is spoken.
Trudy pulls him to one side. ‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘You’re just as handsome as I remember. I think I might be in trouble. You’ve never had any issues with women, I’m sure. Or perhaps you’ve had too many.’ She pauses and takes a theatrical breath. ‘I’ll give you the lie of the land here. That’s my cousin, Dommie.’ She points out an elegant, slim Chinese man with a gold pocket watch in his hand. ‘He’s my best friend and very protective, so you’d better watch out. And avoid her,’ she says, pointing to a slight European woman with spectacles. ‘Awful. She’s just spent twenty minutes telling me the most extraordinary and yet incredibly boring story about barking deer on Lamma Island.’
‘Really?’ he says, looking at her oval face, her large golden-green eyes.
‘And
