JANICE Y.K. LEE
The Piano Teacher

Copyright

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Janice Y.K. Lee 2009

Janice Y.K. Lee asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Source ISBN: 9780007286379

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2015 ISBN: 9780007380510

Version: 2015-03-23

Dedication

For my parents

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part I

May 1952

June 1941

June 1952

September 1941

September 1952

December 1941

November 1952

Part II

9 December 1941

15 December 1941

26 December 1941

4 January 1942

21 January 1942

Part III

2 May 1953

5 May 1953

7 May 1953

8 May 1953

12 May 1953

13 May 1953

20 May 1953

20 May 1953

10 April 1943

2 May 1943

27 May 1953

1943

10 May 1943

28 May 1953

2 June 1953

3 July 1953

5 July 1953

27 May 1953

April 1942

27 May 1953

5 July 1953

12 July 1953

1953

Epilogue

Behind the Scenes

Interpreting the Soul

The Last Word Lies with Judgement

Acknowledgements

Praise

About the Publisher

PART I

May 1952

It started as an accident. The small Herend rabbit had fallen into Claire’s handbag. It had been on the piano and she had been gathering up the sheet music at the end of the lesson when she knocked it off. It fell off the doily (a doily! On the Steinway!) and into her large leather bag. What had happened after that was perplexing, even to her. Locket had been staring down at the keyboard, and hadn’t noticed. And then, Claire had just … left. It wasn’t until she was downstairs and waiting for the bus that she grasped what she had done. And then it had been too late. She went home and buried the expensive porcelain figurine under her sweaters.

Claire and her husband had moved to Hong Kong nine months ago, transferred by the government, which had posted Martin in the Department of Water Services. Churchill had ended rationing and things were starting to return to normal when they had received news of the posting. She had never dreamed of leaving England before.

Martin was an engineer, overseeing the building of the Tai Lam Cheung reservoir, so that there wouldn’t need to be so much rationing when the rains ebbed, as they did every several years. It was to hold four and a half billion gallons of water when full. Claire almost couldn’t imagine such a number, but Martin said it was barely enough for the people of Hong Kong, and he was sure that by the time they had finished, they’d have to build another. ‘More work for me,’ he said cheerfully. He was analysing the topography of the hills so that they could install catch-drains for when the rain came. The English government did so much for the colonies, Claire knew. They made their lives much better, but the locals rarely appreciated it. Her mother had warned her about the Chinese before she left – an unscrupulous, conniving people, who would surely try to take advantage of her innocence and goodwill.

Coming over, she had noticed it for days, the increasing wetness in the air, even more than usual. The sea breezes were stronger and the sun’s rays more powerful when they broke through cloud. When the P&O Canton had finally pulled into Hong Kong harbour in August, she had really felt she was in the tropics, hair frizzing up in curls, face always slightly damp and oily, the constant moisture under her arms and behind her knees. When she had stepped out of her cabin, the heat had assailed her like a physical blow, until she managed to find shade and fan herself.

There had been seven stops along the month-long journey, but after a few grimy hours spent in Algiers and Port Said, Claire had decided to stay on board rather than encounter more frightening peoples and customs. She had never imagined such sights. In Algiers, she had seen a man kiss a donkey and she couldn’t discern whether the high odour was coming from one or the other, and in Egypt the markets were the very definition of unhygienic – a fishmonger gutting a fish had licked the knife clean with his tongue.

She had enquired as to whether the ship’s provisions were procured locally, at these markets, and the answer had been most unsatisfactory. An uncle had died from food poisoning in India, making her cautious. She kept to herself, and sustained herself mostly on the beef tea they dispensed in the late morning on the sun deck. The menus, which were distributed every day, were mundane: turnips, potatoes, things that could be stored in the hold, with meat and salads the first few days after port. Martin promenaded on the deck every morning for exercise, and tried to get her to join him, to no avail. She preferred to sit in a deck-chair, wearing a large-brimmed hat and wrap herself in one of the ship’s scratchy wool blankets, face shaded from the omnipresent sun.

There had been a scandal on the ship. A woman, going to meet her fiancé in Hong Kong, had spent one too many moonlit nights on the deck with another gentleman, and had disembarked in the Philippines with her new man, leaving only a letter for her intended. Liesl, the girlfriend to whom the woman had entrusted the letter, grew visibly more nervous as the date of arrival drew near. Men joked that she could take Sarah’s place, but she wasn’t having any of that. Liesl was a serious young woman, who was joining her sister and brother-in-law in Hong Kong, where she intended to educate Unfortunate Chinese Girls in Art: when she held forth about it, it was always with capital letters in Claire’s mind.

Before disembarking, Claire separated out all of her thin cotton dresses and skirts; she could tell that was all she would be wearing for a while. They had arrived to a big party on the dock, with paper streamers and shouting vendors selling fresh fruit juice and soy-milk drinks and garish flower arrangements to the people waiting. Groups of revellers had already opened champagne and were toasting the arrival of their friends and family.

‘We pop the corks as soon as we see the ship on the horizon,’ a man explained to his girl, as he escorted her away. ‘It’s a big party. We’ve been here for hours.’

Claire watched Liesl go down the gangplank, looking very nervous, and then she disappeared into the throng. Claire and Martin went down next, treading on the soft, humid wood, luggage behind them, carried by two scantily clad young Chinese boys who had materialized out of nowhere.

Martin had an old schoolfriend, John, who worked at Dodwell’s, one of the trading firms, and had promised to greet the ship. He came with two friends and offered the new arrivals freshly squeezed guava drinks. Claire pretended to sip hers as her mother had warned her about the cholera that was rampant in these parts. The men were bachelors and very pleasant. John, Nigel, Leslie. They explained they all lived together in a mess – there were many, known by their companies’ names, Dodwell’s Mess, Jardine’s Mess, et cetera, and they assured Claire and Martin that Dodwell’s threw the best parties around.

They accompanied them to the government-approved hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, where a Chinese man with a long queue, dirty white tunic and shockingly long fingernails showed them to their room. They made an arrangement to meet for tiffin the next day and the men departed, leaving Martin and Claire sitting on the bed, exhausted and staring at one another. They didn’t know each other very well. They had been married barely four months.

She had accepted Martin’s proposal to escape the dark interior of her house, her bitter mother railing against everything, getting worse, it seemed, with her advancing age, and an uninspiring job as a filing girl in an insurance company. Martin was older, in his forties, and had never had luck with women. The first time he had kissed her, she had had to stifle the urge to wipe her mouth. He was like a cow, slow and steady. And kind. She knew this. She was grateful for it.

She had not had many chances with men. Her parents stayed at home all the time, so she had as well. When she had started seeing Martin – he was the older brother of one of the girls at work – she had had dinner at restaurants, drunk a cocktail at a hotel bar, and seen other young women and men talking, laughing, with an assurance she could not fathom. They had opinions about politics; they had read books she had never heard of and seen foreign films and talked about them with such confidence. She was enthralled and not a little intimidated. And then Martin had come to her, serious: his job was taking him to the Orient, and would she come with him? She was not so attracted to him, but who was she to be choosy? she thought, hearing the voice of her mother. She let him kiss her and nodded yes.

Claire had started to draw a bath in their hotel room when another knock on the door revealed a small Chinese woman, an amah, she was called, who started to unpack their suitcases until Martin shooed her away.

And that was how they had arrived in Hong Kong, which was like nothing Claire had imagined. Apart from the usual colonial haunts – all hush and genteel, potted palms and polished wood in whitewashed buildings – it was loud and crowded and dirty and bustling. The buildings were right next to each other and often had clothing hung out to dry on bamboo poles. There were garish vertical signs hung on every one, advertising massage parlours, pubs and hair salons. Someone had told her that opium dens still existed in back alleys. There was often refuse on the street, sometimes even human filth, and there was a pungent, peppery odour that was oddly clingy, attaching itself to your very skin until you went home for a good scrub.

There were all sorts of people. The local women carried their babies in a sort of back sling. Sikhs served as uniformed security guards – you saw them dozing off on wooden stools outside the banks, turbaned heads hanging heavily above their chests, rifles held loosely between their knees. The Indians had been brought over by the British, of course. Pakistanis ran carpet stores, Portuguese were doctors and Jews ran the dairy farms and other large businesses. There were British businessmen and American bankers, White Russian aristocrats and Peruvian entrepreneurs – all peculiarly well-travelled and sophisticated – and, of course, there were the Chinese, quite different in Hong Kong from the ones in China, she was told.

To her surprise, she didn’t detest Hong Kong, as her mother had told her she would – she found the streets busy and distracting, so very different from Croydon, and filled with people and shops and goods she had never seen before. She liked to sample the local bakery goods, the pineapple buns and yellow egg tarts, and sometimes wandered outside Central, where she would quickly find herself in unfamiliar surroundings, where she might be the only non-Chinese around. The fruit stalls were heaped with not only oranges and bananas, still luxuries in post-war England, but spiky, strange-looking fruits she came to try and like: starfruit, durian, lychee. She would buy a dollar’s worth and be handed a small, waxy brown bag and she would eat the fruit slowly as she walked. There were small stalls made of crudely nailed wood and corrugated tin, which housed small speciality enterprises: this one sold chops, the stone stamps the Chinese used in place of signatures, this one made only keys, this one had a chair that was rented for half-days by a street dentist and a barber.

The locals ate on the street in tiny restaurants called daipaidong, and she had seen three workmen in dirty singlets and trousers crouched over a plate containing a whole fish, spitting out the bones at their feet. One had seen her watching them, and deliberately picked up the fish’s eyeball with his chopsticks, raised it up to her, smiling, before he ate it.

Claire hadn’t met many Chinese people before, but the ones she had seen in the big towns in England had been serving in restaurants or ironing clothes. There were many of those types in Hong Kong, of course, but what had been eye-opening was the sight of the affluent Chinese, the ones who seemed English in all but their skin colour. It had been quite something to see a Chinese step out of a Rolls-Royce, as she had one day when she was waiting on the steps of the Gloucester Hotel, or in business suits, having lunch with British men who talked to them as if they were the same. She hadn’t known that such a world existed. And then, with Locket, she was thrust into this world.

After a few months settling in, finding a flat and furnishing it, Claire had put the word out that she was looking for a job giving piano lessons, ‘as a lark’, was how she put it – something to fill the day, but the truth was, they could really use the extra money. She had played the piano most of her life and was primarily self-taught, but she didn’t think it would matter. Amelia, an acquaintance she had met at a sewing circle, said she would ask around.

She rang a few days later.

‘There’s a Chinese family, the Chens. They run everything in town. Apparently, they’re looking for a piano teacher for their daughter, and they’d prefer an Englishwoman. What do you think?’

‘A Chinese family?’ Claire said. ‘I hadn’t thought about that possibility. Aren’t there any English families looking?’

‘No,’ Amelia said. ‘Not that I’ve been able to ascertain.’

‘I just don’t know …’ Claire demurred. ‘Wouldn’t it be odd?’ She couldn’t imagine teaching a Chinese girl. ‘Does she speak English?’

‘Probably better than you or me,’ Amelia said impatiently. ‘They’re offering a very adequate fee.’ She named a large sum.

‘Well,’ Claire said slowly, ‘I suppose it couldn’t do any harm to meet them.’

Victor and Melody Chen lived in the Mid-Levels, in an enormous white two-storey house on May Road. There was a driveway with potted plants lining the sides. Inside, there was the quiet, efficient buzz of a household staffed with plentiful servants. Claire had taken a bus and when she arrived, she was perspiring after the walk from the road to the house.

The amah led her to a sitting room, where she found a fan blowing blessedly cool air. A houseboy adjusted the drapes so that she was properly shaded. Her blue linen skirt, just delivered from the tailor, was wrinkled and she had on a white voile blouse that was splotched with moisture. She hoped the Chens would allow her some time to compose herself. She shifted, feeling a drop of perspiration trickle down her thigh.

No such luck. Mrs Chen swooped through the door, a vision in cool pink, holding a tray of drinks. A small, exquisite woman, with hair cut just so, so that it swung in precise, geometric movements. Her shoulders were fragile and exposed in her sleeveless shift, her face a tiny oval.

‘Hello!’ she trilled. ‘Lovely to meet you. I’m Melody. Locket’s just on her way.’

‘Locket?’ Claire said, uncertain.

‘My daughter. She’s just back from school and getting changed into something more comfortable. Isn’t the heat dreadful?’ She set down the tray, which held long glasses of iced tea. ‘Have something cool, please.’

‘Your English is remarkably good,’ Claire said, as she took a glass.

‘Oh, is it?’ Melody said casually. ‘Four years at Wellesley will do that for you, I suppose.’

‘You were at university in America?’ Claire asked. She hadn’t known that Chinese went to university in America.

‘Loved every minute,’ she said. ‘Except for the horrible, horrible food. Americans think a grilled cheese sandwich is a meal! And, as you know, we Chinese take food very seriously.’

‘Is Locket going to be schooled in America?’

‘We haven’t decided but, really, I’d rather talk to you about your education,’ Mrs Chen said.

‘Oh.’ Claire was taken aback.

‘You know,’ she continued pleasantly, ‘where you studied music, and all that.’

Claire settled back in her seat. ‘I was a serious student for a number of years. I studied with Mrs Eloise Pollock and was about to apply for a position at the Royal Academy when my family situation changed.’

Mrs Chen sat, waiting, head tilted, with one bird-like ankle crossed over the other, her knees slanted to one side.

‘And so, I was unable to continue,’ Claire said. Was she supposed to explain it in detail to this stranger? Her father had been let go from the printing company and it had been a black couple of months before he had found a new job as an insurance salesman. His pay had been erratic at best – he was not a natural salesman – and luxuries like piano lessons were unthinkable. Mrs Pollock, a very kind woman, had offered to continue her instruction at a much-reduced fee, but her mother, sensitive and pointlessly proud, had refused to even entertain the idea.

‘And what level of studies did you achieve?’

‘I was studying for my Seventh Grade examinations.’

‘Locket is a beginning student but I want her to be taught seriously, by a serious musician,’ Mrs Chen said. ‘She should pass all her examinations with distinction.’

‘Well, I’m certainly serious about music and, as for passing with distinction, that will be up to Locket,’ Claire said. ‘I did very well in my examinations.’

Locket entered the room, or rather, she bumbled into it. Where her mother was small and fine, Locket was chubby, all rounded limbs and padded cheeks. Her glossy hair was tied in a thick ponytail.

‘Hallo,’ she said. She had a distinctly English accent.

‘Locket, this is Mrs Pendleton,’ Mrs Chen said, stroking her daughter’s cheek. ‘She’s come to see if she’ll be your piano teacher so you must be very polite.’

‘Do you like the piano, Locket?’ Claire said, too slowly, she realized, for a ten-year-old child. She had no experience with children.

‘I dunno,’ Locket said. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Locket!’ her mother cried. ‘You said you wanted to learn. That’s why we bought you the new Steinway.’

‘Locket’s a pretty name,’ Claire said. ‘How did you come about it?’

‘Dunno,’ said Locket again. She reached for a glass of iced tea and drank. A small trickle wended its way down her chin. Her mother took a napkin off the silver tray and dabbed it dry.

‘Will Mr Chen be arriving soon?’ Claire asked.

‘Oh, Victor!’ Mrs Chen laughed. ‘He’s far too busy for these household matters. He’s always working.’

‘I see,’ Claire said. She was uncertain as to what came next.

‘Would you play us something?’ Mrs Chen asked. ‘We just got the piano and it would be lovely to hear it played professionally.’

‘Of course,’ Claire said, because she didn’t know what else to say. She felt as if she were being made to perform like a common entertainer – there had been something in the woman’s tone – but she couldn’t think of a gracious way to refuse.

She played a simple étude, which Mrs Chen seemed to enjoy and Locket squirmed through.

‘I think this will be fine,’ Mrs Chen said. ‘Are you available on Thursdays?’

Claire hesitated. She didn’t know whether she was going to take the job.

‘It would have to be Thursdays because Locket has lessons the other days,’ Mrs Chen said.

‘Fine,’ said Claire. ‘I accept.’

Locket’s mother was of a Hong Kong type. Claire saw women like her lunching at Chez Henri, laughing and gossiping with each other. They were called taitais and you could spot them at the smart clothing boutiques, trying on the latest fashions or climbing into their chauffeur-driven cars. Sometimes Mrs Chen would come home and put a slim, perfumed hand on Locket’s shoulder and comment liltingly on the music. And then, Claire couldn’t help it, she really couldn’t, she would think to herself, You people drown your daughters! Her mother had told her about how the Chinese were just a little above animals and that they would drown their daughters because they preferred sons. Once, Mrs Chen had mentioned a function at the Jockey Club that she and her husband were going to. She had been dressed up in diamonds, a flowing black dress and red, red lipstick. She had not looked like an animal.

Bruce Comstock, the head of the water office, had taken Martin and Claire to the club once, with his wife, and they had drunk pink gin while watching the horse races, the stands filled with shouting gamblers.

The week before the figurine fell into Claire’s handbag, she had been leaving the lesson when Victor and Melody Chen came in. It had rung five on the ornate mahogany grandfather clock that had mother-of-pearl Chinese characters inlaid all down the front of it and she had been putting her things away when they walked into the room. They were a tiny couple and they looked like porcelain dolls, with their shiny skin and coal eyes. ‘Out the door already?’ Mr Chen said drily. He was dressed nattily in a navy-blue pinstriped suit with a burgundy handkerchief peeping out of his breast pocket just so. ‘It’s five on the dot!’ He spoke English with the faintest hint of a Chinese accent.

Claire flushed. ‘I was here early. Ten minutes before four, I believe,’ she said. She took pride in her punctuality.

‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ Mrs Chen said. ‘Victor is just teasing you. Stop it!’ She swatted her husband with her little hand.

‘The English are so serious all the time,’ he said.

‘Well,’ Claire said uncertainly. ‘Locket and I spent a productive hour together.’

Locket slipped off the piano bench and under her father’s arm. ‘Hello, Daddy,’ she said shyly. She looked younger than her ten years.

He patted her shoulder. ‘How’s my little Rachmaninoff?’ he said. Locket giggled delightedly.

Mrs Chen was clattering around in her high heels. ‘Mrs Pendleton,’ she asked, ‘would you like to join us for a drink?’ She had on a suit that looked like it came out of the fashion magazines. It was almost certainly a Paris original. The jacket was made of a golden silk and buttoned smartly up the front and there was a shimmery yellow skirt underneath that flowed and draped like gossamer.

‘Oh, no,’ she answered. ‘It’s very kind of you, but I should go home and start supper.’

‘I insist,’ Mr Chen said. ‘I must hear about my little genius.’ His voice didn’t allow for any disagreement. ‘Run along now, Locket. The adults are having a conversation.’

There was a large velvet divan in the sitting room, and several chairs, upholstered in red silk, along with two matching black lacquered tables. Claire sat down in an armchair that was far more slippery than it looked. She sank too deeply into it, then had to move forward in an ungainly manner until she was perched precariously on the edge. She steadied herself with her arms.

‘How are you finding Hong Kong?’ Mr Chen said. His wife had gone into the kitchen to ask the amah to bring them drinks.

‘Quite well,’ she said. ‘It’s certainly different from England, but it’s an adventure.’ She smiled at him. He was a well-groomed man, in his well-pressed suit and red and black silk tie. Above him, there was an oil of a Chinese man dressed in robes and a black skull cap. ‘What an interesting painting,’ she remarked.

He looked up. ‘Oh, that,’ he said. ‘That’s Melody’s grandfather, who had a large dye factory in Shanghai. He was quite famous.’

‘Dyes?’ she said. ‘How fascinating.’

‘Yes, and her father started the First Bank of Shanghai, and did very well indeed.’ He smiled. ‘Melody comes from a family of entrepreneurs. Her family was all educated in the West, England and America.’

Mrs Chen came back into the room. She had taken off her jacket to reveal a pearly blouse underneath. ‘Claire,’ she said. ‘What will you have?’

‘Just soda water for me, please.’

‘And I’ll have a sherry,’ Mr Chen said.

‘I know!’ Mrs Chen said. She left again.

‘And your husband,’ he said. ‘He’s at a bank?’

‘He’s at the Department of Water Services,’ she said. ‘Working on the new reservoir.’ She paused. ‘He’s heading it up.’

‘Oh, very good,’ Mr Chen said carelessly. ‘Water’s certainly important. And the English do a fair job of making sure it’s in the taps when we need it.’ He sat back and crossed one leg over the other. ‘I miss England,’ he said suddenly.

‘Oh, did you spend time there?’ Claire asked politely.

‘I was at Oxford – Balliol,’ he said, flapping his tie at her. Claire felt as if he had been waiting to tell her this fact. ‘And Melody went to Wellesley, so we’re a product of two different systems. I defend England, and Melody just loves the United States.’

‘Indeed,’ Claire murmured.

Mrs Chen came back into the room and sat down next to her husband. The amah appeared next and offered Claire a napkin. It had blue cornflowers on it.

‘These are lovely,’ she said, inspecting the embroidered linen.

‘They’re from Ireland,’ Mrs Chen said. ‘I just got them!’

‘I just bought some lovely Chinese tablecloths at the China Emporium,’ Claire said. ‘Beautiful lace cut work.’

‘You can’t compare them with the Irish ones, though,’ Mrs Chen said. ‘Very crude.’

Mr Chen viewed his wife with amusement. ‘Women!’ he said to Claire.

The amah brought in a tray of drinks.

Claire sipped at her drink and felt the gassy bubbles in her mouth. Mr Chen looked at her expectantly.

‘The Communists are a great threat,’ she said. This is what she had heard again and again at gatherings.

Mr Chen laughed. ‘Of course! And what will you and Melody do about them?’

‘Shut up, darling. Don’t tease,’ said his wife. She took a sip of her drink. Mr Chen was watching her. ‘What’s that you’re drinking, love?’

‘A little cocktail,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a long day.’ She sounded defensive.

There was a pause.

‘Locket is a good student,’ Claire said, ‘but she needs to practise more.’

‘It’s not her fault,’ Mrs Chen said breezily. ‘I’m not here to oversee her practice enough.’

Mr Chen laughed. ‘Oh, she’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.’

Claire nodded. Parents were all the same. When she had children, she would be sure not to indulge them. She set her drink down. ‘I should be going,’ she said. ‘It’s harder to get a seat on the bus after five.’

‘Are you sure?’ Mrs Chen said. ‘Pai was getting us some biscuits.’

‘Oh, no, thank you,’ she demurred. ‘I really should be leaving.’

‘We’ll have Truesdale drive you home,’ Mr Chen offered.

‘Oh, no,’ Claire said. ‘I couldn’t put you out.’

‘Do you know him?’ Mr Chen asked. ‘He’s English.’

‘I haven’t had the pleasure,’ Claire said.

‘Hong Kong is very small,’ Mr Chen said. ‘It’s tiresome that way.’

‘It’s no trouble at all for Truesdale,’ Mrs Chen said. ‘He’ll be going home anyway. Where do you live?’

‘Happy Valley,’ answered Claire, feeling put on the spot.

‘Oh, that’s near where he lives!’ Mrs Chen cried, delighted at the coincidence. ‘So, it’s settled.’ She called for Pai in Cantonese and told her to call the driver.

‘Chinese is such an intriguing language,’ Claire said. ‘I hope to pick some up during our time here.’

Mr Chen raised an eyebrow. ‘Cantonese,’ he said, ‘is very difficult. There are some nine different tones for one sound. It’s much more difficult than English. I picked up rudimentary English in a year, but I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to learn Cantonese or Mandarin or Shanghainese in twice that.’

‘Well,’ she said brightly, ‘one always hopes.’

Pai walked in and spoke. Mrs Chen nodded. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said, ‘but the driver seems to have left already.’

‘I’ll catch the bus,’ Claire said.

Mr Chen stood up as she picked up her bag. ‘It was very nice to meet you,’ he said.

‘And you,’ she said, and walked out, feeling their eyes on her back.

When she got home, Martin was already there. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You’re late today.’ He was in a vest and his weekend trousers, which were stained and shiny at the knees. He had a drink in his hand.

She took off her jacket and put on a pot of water to boil. ‘I was at the Chens’ house today,’ she said. ‘Locket’s parents asked me to stay for a drink.’

‘Victor Chen, is it?’ he asked, impressed. ‘He’s rather a big deal here.’

‘I gathered,’ she said. ‘He was quite something. Not at all like a Chinaman.’

‘You shouldn’t use that word, Claire,’ Martin said. ‘It’s very old-fashioned and a bit insulting.’

Claire coloured. ‘I’ve just never …’ She trailed off. ‘I’ve never seen Chinese people like the Chens.’

‘You are in Hong Kong,’ Martin said, not unkindly. ‘There are all types of Chinese.’

‘Where is the amah?’ she asked, wanting to change the subject.

Yu Ling came from the back when Claire called. ‘Can you help with dinner?’ Claire said. ‘I bought some meat at the market.’

Yu Ling looked at her impassively. She had a way of making Claire feel uncomfortable, but she couldn’t bring herself to sack her. She wondered how the other wives did it – they appeared to handle their servants with an easy aplomb that seemed unfamiliar and unattainable to Claire. Some even joked with them and treated them like family members, but she’d heard that was more the American influence. Her friend Cecilia had her amah brush her hair for her before she went to bed, while she sat at her dressing-table and put on cold cream.

Claire handed Yu Ling the meat she had bought on the way home. Then she went to lie down on the bed with a cold compress over her eyes. How had she got here, to this small flat on the other side of the world? She remembered her quiet childhood in Croydon, an only child sitting at her mother’s side while she mended clothes, listening to her talk. Her mother had been bitter at what life had given her, a hand-to-mouth existence, especially after the war, and her father drank too much, perhaps because of it. Claire had never imagined life being much more than that. But marrying Martin had changed it all.

But this was the thing: she herself had changed in Hong Kong. Something about the tropical climate had ripened her appearance, brought everything into harmony. Where the other English women looked as if they were about to wilt in the heat, she thrived, like a hothouse flower. Her hair had lightened in the tropical sun until it was veritably gold. She perspired lightly so that her skin looked dewy, not drenched. She had lost weight so that her body was compact, and her eyes sparkled, cornflower blue. Martin had remarked on it, how the heat seemed to suit her. When she was at the Gripps or at a dinner party, she saw that men looked at her longer than necessary, came over to talk to her, let their hands linger on her back. She was learning how to speak to people at parties, order in a restaurant with confidence. She felt as if she were finally becoming a woman, not the girl she had been when she had left England. She felt as if she were a woman coming into her own.

And then the next week, after Locket’s lesson, the porcelain rabbit had fallen into her handbag.

The week after, the phone rang and Locket leaped up to answer it, eager for any excuse to stop mangling the prelude she had been playing, and while she had been chattering away to a schoolmate, Claire saw a silk scarf lying on a chair. It was a beautiful, printed scarf, the kind women tied around their necks. She put it into her bag. A wonderful sense of calm came over her. And when Locket returned, with only a mumbled, ‘Sorry, Mrs Pendleton,’ Claire smiled instead of giving the little girl a piece of her mind.

When she got home, she went into the bedroom, locked the door and pulled out the scarf. It was an Hermès scarf, from Paris, and had pictures of zebras and lions in vivid oranges and browns. She practised tying it around her neck, and over her head, like an adventurous heiress on safari. She felt very glamorous.

The next month, after a conversation in which Mrs Chen told her she sent all her fine washing to Singapore because ‘the girls here don’t know how to do it properly and, of course, that means I have to have triple the amount of linens, what a bother’, Claire found herself walking out with two of those wonderful Irish napkins in her skirt pocket. She had Yu Ling handwash and iron them so that she and Martin could use them with dinner.

She pocketed three French cloisonné turtles after Locket had abruptly gone to the bathroom – as if the child couldn’t take care of nature’s business before Claire arrived! A pair of sterling silver salt and pepper shakers found their way into her bag as she was passing through the dining room, and an exquisite Murano perfume bottle left out in the sitting room, as if Melody Chen had dashed some scent on as she was breezing her way through the foyer on her way to a gala event, was discreetly tucked into Claire’s skirt pocket.

Another afternoon she was leaving when she heard Victor Chen in his study. He was talking loudly into the telephone and had left his door slightly ajar.

‘It’s the bloody British,’ he said, before lapsing into Cantonese. Then, ‘Can’t let them,’ and then something incomprehensible, which sounded very much like swearing. ‘They want to create unrest, digging up skeletons that should be left buried, and all for their own purposes. The Crown Collection didn’t belong to them in the first place. It’s all our history, our artefacts, that they just took for their own. How’d they have liked it if Chinese explorers had come to their country years ago and made off with all their treasures? It’s outrageous. Downing Street’s behind all of this, I can assure you. There’s no need for this right now.’ He was very agitated, and Claire found herself waiting outside, breath held, to see if she couldn’t hear anything more. She stood there until Pai appeared and looked at her questioningly. She pretended she had been studying the painting in the hallway, but she could feel Pai’s eyes on her as she walked towards the door. She let herself out and went home.

Two weeks later, when Claire went for her lesson, she found Pai gone and a new girl opening the door.

‘This is Su Mei,’ Locket told her when they entered the room. ‘She’s from China, from a farm. She just arrived. Do you want something to drink?’

The new girl was small and dark, and would have been pretty if it hadn’t been for a large black birthmark on her right cheek. She never looked up from the floor.

‘Her family didn’t want her because the mark on her face would make her hard to marry off. It’s supposedly very bad luck.’

‘Did your mother tell you that?’ Claire asked.

‘Yes,’ Locket said. She hesitated. ‘Well, I heard her say it on the telephone, and she said she got her very cheap because of it. Su Mei doesn’t know anything! She tried to go to the bathroom in the bushes outside and Ah Wing beat her and told her she was like an animal. She’s never used a tap before or had running water!’

‘I’d like a bitter lemon, please,’ Claire said, wanting to change the subject.

Locket spoke to the girl quickly. She left the room silently.

‘Pai was stealing from us,’ Locket said, eyes wide with the scandal. ‘So Mummy had to let her go. Pai cried and cried, and then she beat the floor with her fists. Mummy said she was hysterical and slapped her face to stop her crying. They had to get Mr Wong to carry Pai out. He put her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and she was hitting his back with her fists.’

‘Oh!’ Claire said, before she could stifle the cry.

Locket looked at her curiously. ‘Mummy says all servants steal.’

‘Does she now?’ Claire said. ‘How terrible. But you know, Locket, I’m not sure that’s true.’ She remembered the way Pai had looked at her when she came upon her in the hallway and her chest felt tight.

‘Where did she go?’ she asked Locket.

‘No idea,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Good riddance I say.’

Claire looked at the placid face of the girl, unruffled by conscience.

‘There must be shelters or places for people like her.’ Claire’s voice quivered. ‘She’s not on the street, is she? Does she have family in Hong Kong?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

‘How can you not know? She lived with you!’

‘She was a maid, Mrs Pendleton.’ Locket looked at her curiously. ‘Do you know anything about your servants?’

Claire 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.

June 1941

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 he,’ she says, pointing to an owlish Englishman, ‘is a bore. Some sort of art historian, keeps talking about the Crown Collection, which is apparently something most colonies have. They either acquire it locally or have pieces shipped from England for the public buildings – important paintings and statues and things like that. Hong Kong’s is very impressive, apparently, and he’s very worried about what will happen once war comes.’ She makes a face. ‘Also a bigot.’

She searches the room for others and her eyes narrow. ‘There’s my other cousin – or cousin by marriage.’ She points out a stocky Chinese man in a double-breasted suit. ‘Victor Chen. He thinks he’s very important indeed. But I just find him tedious. He’s married to my cousin, Melody, who used to be nice until she met him.’ She pauses. ‘Now she’s …’ Her voice trails off.

‘Well, here you are,’ she says, ‘and what a gossip I’m being,’ and drags him to the front where she has claimed the two best seats. They watch the races. She wins a thousand dollars and shrieks with pleasure. She insists on giving it all away, to the waiters, to the lavatory attendant, to a little girl they pass on the way out. ‘Really,’ she says disapprovingly, ‘this is no place for children, don’t you think?’ Later she tells him she practically grew up at the track.

Her real name is Prudence. Trudy came later, when it was apparent that her given name was wholly unsuitable for the little sprite who terrorized her amahs and charmed all the waiters into bringing her forbidden fizzy drinks and sugar lumps.

‘You can call me Prudence, though,’ she says. Her long arms are draped round his shoulders and her jasmine scent is overwhelming him.

‘I think I won’t,’ he says.

‘I’m terribly strong,’ she whispers. ‘I hope I don’t destroy you.’

He laughs. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he says. But, later, he wonders.

They spend most weekends at her father’s large house in Shek-O, where wizened servants bring them buckets of ice and lemonade, which they mix with Plymouth gin, and plates of salty shrimp crackers. Trudy lies in the sun with an enormous floppy hat saying she thinks tans are vulgar, no matter what that Coco Chanel says. ‘But I do so enjoy the feel of the sun on me,’ she says, reaching for a kiss.

The Liangs’ house is spread out on a promontory where it overlooks a placid sea. They keep chickens for fresh eggs – far away, of course, because of the odour – and a slightly fraying but still belligerent peacock roams the grounds, asserting himself to any intruders, except the gardener’s Great Dane, with whom it has a mutual treaty. Trudy’s father is never there; mostly he is in Macau where he is said to have the largest house on the Praia Grande and a Chinese mistress. Why he doesn’t marry her, nobody knows. Trudy’s mother disappeared when she was eight – a famous case that is still unsolved. The last anyone saw of her, she was stepping into a car outside the Gloucester Hotel. This is what he likes most about Trudy. With so many questions in her life, she never asks about his.

Trudy has a body like a child’s – all slim hips and tiny feet. She is flat as a board, her breasts not even buds. Her arms are as slender as her wrists, her hair a sleek, smoky brown, her eyes wide and Western, with the lid-fold. She wears form-fitting sheaths, sometimes the qipao, slim tunics, narrow trousers, always flat silk slippers. She wears gold or brown lipstick, wears her hair shoulder-length, straight, and has black, kohl-lined eyes. She looks nothing like any of the other women at events – with their blowsy, flowing, floral skirts, carefully permanent-waved hair, red lipstick. She hates compliments – when people tell her she’s beautiful, she says instantly, ‘But I have a moustache!’ And she does, a faint golden one you can see only in the sun. She is always in the papers although, she explains, that’s more because of her father than because she is beautiful. ‘Hong Kong is very practical in that way,’ she says. ‘Wealth can make a woman beautiful.’ She is often the only Chinese at a party, although she says she’s not really Chinese – she’s not really anything, she says. She’s everything, invited everywhere. Cercle Sportif Français, the American Country Club, the Deutsche Garten Club, she is welcome, an honorary member of everything.

Her best friend is her second cousin Dommie, Dominick Wong, the man from the races. They meet every Sunday night for dinner at the Gripps, and gossip over what transpired at the parties over the weekend. They grew up together. Her father and his mother are cousins. Will is starting to see that everyone in Hong Kong is related in one way or another – everyone who matters, that is. Victor Chen, Trudy’s other cousin, is always in the papers for his business dealings, or he and his wife, Melody, are smiling out from photographs in the society pages.

Dominick is a fine-chiselled boy-man, a bit effeminate, with a long string of lissome, dissatisfied girlfriends. Will is never invited to Trudy’s dinners with Dommie. ‘Don’t be cross. You wouldn’t have fun,’ she says, trailing a cool finger over his cheek. ‘We chatter away in Shanghainese and it would be so tedious to have to explain everything to you. And Dommie’s just about a girl anyway.’

‘I don’t want to go,’ he says, trying to keep his dignity.

‘Of course you don’t, darling.’ She laughs. She pulls him close. ‘I’ll tell you a secret.’

‘What?’ Her jasmine smell brings to mind the waxy yellow flower, her skin as smooth, as impermeable.

‘Dommie was born with eleven fingers. Six on the left hand. His family had it removed when he was a baby, but it keeps growing back! Isn’t that the most extraordinary thing? I tell him it’s the devil inside. You can keep pruning it, but it’ll always come back,’ she whispers. ‘Don’t tell a soul. You’re the first person I’ve ever told! And Dominick would have my head if he knew! He’s quite ashamed of it!’

Hong Kong is a village. At the RAF ball, Dr Richards was found in the linen room at the Gloucester with a chambermaid; at the Sewells’ dinner party, Blanca Morehouse had too much to drink and started to take off her blouse – you know about her past, don’t you? Trudy, his very opinionated and biased guide to society, finds the English stuffy, the Americans tiresomely earnest, the French boring and self-satisfied, the Japanese horrible. He wonders aloud how she can stand him. ‘Well, you’re a bit of a mongrel,’ she says. ‘You don’t belong anywhere, just like me.’

He had arrived in Hong Kong with just a letter of introduction to an old family friend, and has found himself defined, before he has done anything to define himself, by a chance meeting with a woman who asks nothing of him except to be with her.

People talk about Trudy all the time – she is always scandalizing someone or other. They talk about her in front of him, to him, as if daring him to say something. He never gives anything away. She came down from Shanghai, where she spent her early twenties in Noël Coward’s old suite at the Cathay, and threw lavish parties on the roof terrace. She is rumoured to have fled an affair there, an affair with a top gangster who became obsessed with her; she is rumoured to have spent far too much time in the casinos, rumoured to have friends who are singsong girls, rumoured to have sold herself for a night, rumoured to be an opium addict. She is a lesbian. She is a radical. She assures him that almost none of these rumours are true. She says Shanghai is the place to be, that Hong Kong is dreadfully suburban. She speaks fluent Shanghainese, Cantonese, Mandarin, English, conversational French and a smattering of Portuguese.

In Shanghai, she says, the day starts at four in the afternoon with tea, then drinks at the Cathay or someone’s party, then dinner of hairy crab and rice wine if you’re inclined to the local, then more drinks and dancing, and you go and go, the night is so long, until it’s time for breakfast – eggs and fried tomatoes at the Del Monte. Then you sleep until three, have noodles in broth for the hangover, and get dressed for another round. Such fun. She’ll go back one of these days, she says, as soon as her father will let her.

The Biddles hire a cabana at the Lido in Repulse Bay and invite them for a day at the beach. There, they all smoke like mad and drink gimlets while Angeline complains about her life. Angeline Biddle is an old friend of Trudy’s, a small and physically unappealing Chinese woman whom she’s known since they were at primary school together. She married a very clever British businessman, whom she rules with an iron fist, and has a son away at school. They live in grand style on the Peak, where Angeline’s presence causes some discomfort as Chinese are supposed to have permission to live there, except for one family, so rich they are exempt from the rules. There is a feeling, Trudy explains to Will later, that Angeline has somehow pulled a fast one on the British who live there, and she is resented for it, although Trudy admits that Angeline is hardly the most likeable of people to begin with. In the sun, Trudy takes off her top and sunbathes, her small breasts glowing pale in contrast to the rest of her.

‘I thought you said a tan was vulgar,’ he says.

‘Shut up,’ she says.

He hears her talking to Angeline: ‘I’m just wild about him,’ she says. ‘He’s the most stern, solid person I’ve ever met.’ He supposes she is talking about him. People are not as scandalized as one might think. Simonds admits he was wrong about her.

The Englishwomen in the colony are disappointed: another bachelor taken off the market. Whispered, ‘She did swoop down and grab him before anyone even knew he was in town.’

For him, there have been others, of course – the missionary’s daughter in New Delhi, always ill and wan, though beautiful; the clever, hopeful spinster on the boat over from Penang – the women who say they’re looking for adventure but who are really looking for husbands. He’s managed to avoid the inconvenience of love for quite some time, but it seems to have found him in this unlikely place.

Women don’t like Trudy. ‘Isn’t that always the case, darling?’ she says, when, indiscreetly, he asks her about it. ‘And aren’t you a strange one for bringing it up?’ She chucks him under the chin and continues making a jug of gin and lemonade. ‘No one likes me,’ she says. ‘Chinese don’t because I don’t act Chinese enough, Europeans don’t because I don’t look at all European, and my father doesn’t like me because I’m not very filial. Do you like me?’

He assures her he does.

‘I wonder,’ she says. ‘I can tell why people like you. Besides the fact that you’re a handsome bachelor with mysterious prospects, of course. They read into you everything they want you to be. They read into me all that they don’t like.’ She dips her finger into the mix and brings it out to taste. Her face puckers. ‘Perfect,’ she says. She likes it sour.

Little secrets begin to spill out of Trudy. A temple fortune-teller told her the mole on her forehead signifies death to a future husband. She’s been engaged before, but it ended mysteriously. She tells him these secrets, then refuses to elaborate, saying he’ll leave her. She seems serious.

Trudy has two amahs. They have ‘tied their hair up together’, she explains. Two women decide not to marry and put a notice in the newspaper, like vows, declaring they will live together for ever. Ah Lok and Mei Sing are old now, almost sixty, but they live together in a small room with twin beds (‘So get that out of your mind right now,’ Trudy says lazily, ‘although we Chinese are very blasé about that sort of thing and who cares, really?’), a happy couple, except that they are both women. ‘It’s the best thing,’ Trudy says. ‘Lots of women know they’ll never get married so this is just as good. So civilized, don’t you think? All you need is a companion. That sex thing gets in the way after a while. A sisterhood thing. I’m thinking about doing it myself.’ She pays them each twenty-five cents a week and they will do anything for her. Once, he came into the living room to find Mei Sing massaging lotion on to Trudy’s hands while she was asleep on the sofa.

He never grows used to them. They completely ignore him, always talking to Trudy about him when he’s there. They tell her he has a big nose, that he smells funny, that his hands and feet are grotesque. He is beginning to understand a little of what they say, but their disapproving intonation needs no translation. Ah Lok cooks – salty, oily dishes he finds unhealthy and unappealing. Trudy eats them with relish – it’s the food she grew up with. She claims Mei Sing cleans, but he finds dust everywhere. The old woman also collects rubbish – used beer bottles, empty cold-cream jars, discarded toothbrushes – and stores it underneath her bed in anticipation of some apocalyptic event. All three women are messy. Trudy has the utter disregard for her surroundings that belongs to those who have been waited on since birth. She never cleans up, never lifts a finger, but neither do the amahs. They have picked up her habits – a peculiar symbiosis. Trudy defends them with the ferocity of a child defending her parents. ‘They’re old,’ she says. ‘Leave them alone. I can’t bear people who poke at their servants.’

She pokes at them, though. She argues with them when the flower man comes and Ah Lok wants to give him fifty cents and Trudy says to give him what he asks. The flower man is called Fa Wong, king of flowers, and he comes round the neighbourhood once a week, giant woven baskets slung from his brown, wiry shoulders, filled with masses of flowers. He calls, ‘Fa yuen, fa yuen,’ in a low monotonous pitch, and people wave him up to their flats. He and the amahs love to spar and they go at it for ages, until Trudy comes to break it up and give the man his money. Then Ah Lok gets angry and scolds her for giving in too easily. The old lady and the lovely young woman, their arms filled with flowers, go into the kitchen, where the blooms will be distributed into vases and scattered around the house. He watches them from his chair, his book spread over his lap, his eyes hooded as if in sleep – he watches her.

He is almost never alone, these days, always with her. It is something different for him. He used to like solitude, but now he craves her presence all the time. He’s gone without this drug for so long, he’s forgotten how compelling it is. When he is at the office, pecking away at the typewriter, he thinks of her laughing, drinking tea, smoking, the rings puffing up in front of her face. ‘Why do you work?’ she asks. ‘It’s so dreary.’

Discipline, he thinks. Don’t fall down that rabbit hole. But it’s useless. She’s always there, ringing him on the phone, ready with plans for the evening. When he looks at her, he feels weak and happy. Is that so bad?

They are eating brunch at the Repulse Bay, and reading the Sunday paper when Trudy looks up.

‘Why do they let these awful companies have advertisements?’ she asks. ‘Listen to this one – “Why suffer from agonizing piles?” Is there a need for that? Can’t they be a little bit more oblique?’ She shakes the newspaper at him. ‘There’s an illustration of a man suffering from piles! Is that really necessary?’

‘My heart,’ he says, ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ A displaced Russian in a dinner jacket plays the piano behind him.

‘Oh,’ she says, as if an afterthought. ‘My father wants to meet you. He wants to meet the man I’ve been spending so much time with.’ She is nonchalant, too much so. ‘Are you free tonight?’

‘Of course,’ he says.

They go for dinner at the Gloucester, where Trudy tells him the story of her parents’ meeting while they’re waiting at the bar. She is drinking brandy, unusual for her, which makes him think she might be more nervous than she is letting on. She swirls it, takes a delicate whiff, sips.

‘My mother was a great Portuguese beauty – her family had been in Macau for ages. They met there. My father was not as successful then, although he came from a well-to-do family. He had just started up a business selling widgets or something. He’s very clever, my father. Don’t know why I turned out to be such a dim bulb.’ Her face lights up. ‘Here he is!’ She leaps off the stool and rushes over to give her father a kiss. Will had expected a big, confident man with the aura of power. Instead, Mr Liang is small and diffident, with an ill-cut suit and an air of sweetness. He seems to be overwhelmed by the vitality of his daughter. He lets Trudy wash over him, like a force of nature, much as everyone else in Hong Kong does, Will thinks. The head waiter seats them with much hovering and solicitous hand-waving, which neither Trudy nor her father seems to notice. They speak to each other in Cantonese, which makes her seem like a different person entirely.

Their food is brought to them, as if preordained. ‘Should we order?’ he ventures, and their faces are astonished.

‘You only eat certain dishes here,’ they say.

Trudy calls for champagne. ‘This is a momentous occasion,’ she declares. ‘My father’s not met many of my beaux. You’re over the first hurdle.’

Wan Kee Liang does not ask Will about his life or his work. Instead, they exchange pleasantries, talk about the horse races and the war. When Trudy excuses herself to go to the powder room, her father motions for Will to come closer.

‘You are not a rich man,’ he says.

‘Not like you, but I do all right.’ How odd to assume.

‘Trudy is very spoiled girl, and want many things.’ The man’s face betrays nothing.

‘Yes,’ Will says.

‘Not good for woman to pay for anything.’

Trudy’s father hands him an envelope. ‘Here is money for you to take Trudy out. Will cover expenses for a long time. Not good for Trudy to be paying all time.’

Will is taken aback. ‘I can’t take that,’ he says. ‘I’ve never let Trudy pay for a meal.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ the man waves his hand. ‘Good for your relationship.’

Will refuses and puts the envelope on the table, where it sits until they see Trudy approaching. Trudy’s father puts it back in his suit jacket. ‘Not meant to be insult,’ he says. ‘I want best for Trudy. So best for her means best for you. This means little to me, but might make difference for you two.’

‘I appreciate the thought,’ Will says. ‘But I can’t.’ He lets it go at that.

The next week, Will receives letters in the post from restaurants and clubs around town informing him that his accounts have been opened and are ready for use. One has scribbled a note in the margin, ‘Just come in. You won’t even need to sign. We look forward to seeing you.’ The tone: apologetic to a good customer, but deferring to the wishes of their best.

He is a little irritated, but not so much, more bemused than anything. He puts the letters in a drawer. He supposes, to Wan Kee Liang, that everyone looks like a pauper, hoping for handouts. The Chinese are wise, he thinks. Or maybe it’s just Trudy’s family.

Trudy loves the Parisian Grill, is great friends with the owner, a Greek married to a local Portuguese who sees no irony in the fact that he serves the froggiest of foods. She refuses absolutely to go to a Chinese restaurant with Will, will only go when with Chinese people who, she says, are the only ones who appreciate the food the way it should be.

The Greek who runs the Parisian Grill, his name is now Henri, changed from God knows what, loves Trudy, views her as a daughter, and his wife, Elsbieta, treats her like a sister. She goes there for first drinks almost every night, often ends evenings there as well. Henri and Elsbieta are polite to him, but with a certain reserve. He thinks they have seen too many of Trudy’s beaux. He wants to protest that he is the one in danger, protest over the red vinyl banquettes, the smoky white candles burned down to smudgy lumps, but he never does.

They meet everyone at the Parisian Grill. It is the sort of place one goes to when one is new in town or old, or bored. Hong Kong is small, and eventually, everyone ends up there. One night, they have drinks at the bar with a group of visiting Americans and are invited to dinner with them.

Trudy tells their new friends that she loves Americans, their open-handed extravagance, their loud talk and braying confidence. When someone brings up the war, she pretends not to hear, instead going on about the qualities she feels all Americans have. They have a sense of the world being incomparably large, she says and that they are able to … not colonize, but spread through all countries, spending their money like water, without guilt or too much self-consciousness. She loves that. The men are tall and rangy, with long faces and quick decisions, and the women leave them be, isn’t that wonderful?, because they’re so busy with their own committees and plans. They invite all and sundry to their events, and they serve marvellous items like potato salads and ham and cheese sandwiches. And, unless there is a very special type of Englishman present (she tips her head towards Will), they tend to diminish the other men in the room. It’s very odd, but she’s seen it. Haven’t you noticed that? If she had it all to do over again, she says to the dinner-table, she would come back as an American. Lacking that possibility, she’ll marry one. Or maybe just move there, if someone objects to her marrying an American – said with eyes cast down demurely as a joke.

Will thinks back to when she complained that Americans were tiresomely earnest, and just smiles. She has free will, he says simply. He would never do anything to stop her from doing what she wants. The Americans applaud. An enlightened man, says a woman with red lips and an orange dress.

Life is easy. At the office, he is expected in at nine thirty, then a two-hour lunch is not uncommon, and they knock off at five for drinks. He can go out every night, play all weekend, do whatever he wants. Trudy’s friends move to London and want someone responsible to take care of their flat, so Will moves to May Road and pays the ludicrous rent of two hundred Hong Kong dollars, and this only after much wrangling to persuade Sudie and Frank Chen to take anything at all. They all go out for dinner, and it’s very civilized.

‘You’re doing us a favour!’ they cry, as they pour more champagne.

‘You really are, Will,’ Trudy says. ‘No one in all Hong Kong would agree to do anything so nice for the Chens, you know. They’ve awful reputations around here – that’s why they’re leaving.’

‘Be that as it may,’ Will says. ‘I have to pay something.’

‘We’ll talk about it later,’ the Chens say, but they never do. Instead they drink four splits of champagne and end up going to the beach at midnight to hunt for crabs by candlelight.

May Road is different from Happy Valley, his old neighbourhood. Filled with expatriates and their servants, it is a bourgeois suburb of England, or how he’d always imagined one to be. Children walk obediently next to their amahs, matrons climb into the backs of their chauffeured cars; it’s much quieter than the chattering bustle of his old haunt. He misses Happy Valley, the vitality of it, the loud, rude locals, the lively shops.

But then there is Trudy. Trudy has a large place not five minutes from him. He walks the winding road to her flat every day, having picked up fresh clothes after work.

‘Isn’t this nice?’ she says, lavishing him with kisses at the door. ‘Isn’t it delicious that you’re so close and not in that dreadful Happy Valley? I do think the only time I’d go there before I met you was when I needed plimsolls for the beach. There’s this wonderful shop …’

And then she’s on to something else, crying out to Ah Lok that the flowers are browning, or that there’s a puddle in the foyer. At Trudy’s, there’s no talk of war, no fighting except squabbling with the servants, no real troubles. There’s only ease and her sweet, lilting laugh. He slips gratefully into her world.

June 1952

Claire had been waking at the same time every night. Twenty-two minutes after three. By now, she knew it without even looking at the clock. And every night, after she started awake, she would look over at the hulking shape of her husband as he slept, and she would be calmed from the shock of consciousness. His chest rose and fell evenly as his nose reverberated with a gentle snore. He always slept heavily, aided by the several beers he drank every evening.

She sat up, clapped loudly twice, her hands stiff, the sound like two bullets in the night. Martin shifted at the noise, then breathed freely. That trick was one of the few that her mother had imparted about married life. The clock now showed three twenty-three.

She tried to go back to sleep. She had done it once or twice before, fallen back asleep before her body got too awake. Breathing softly, she lay flat on her back and felt the damp linen sheet beneath and the light weight of the cotton quilt on top. It was so humid she could only wear a thin nightdress to bed, and even that grew sticky after a day or two. She must buy a new fan. The old one had sputtered to a standstill last week, caked with mossy mould. A fan, and also some more electric cord. And lightbulbs. She mustn’t forget lightbulbs. She breathed lightly, over the slight rumble of Martin starting up again. Should she write the things down? She would remember, she tried to tell herself. But she knew she would get up and write them down, so as not to forget, so as not to obsess about forgetting, and then she would be up and unable to go back to sleep. It was settled. She got up softly and felt her way out of the mosquito netting, disturbing a resting mosquito that buzzed angrily in her ear before flying away. The pad was lying on a table next to the bed, and she pencilled her list.

Then, the real reason. She reached into the depths of the bureau and felt around carefully for the bag. It was a cloth bag, one she had got for free at a bazaar, and it was large and full. She pulled it out quietly.

Going into the bathroom, she switched on the light. The bath was full of water. There hadn’t been rain for several months now, and the government was starting to ration. Yu Ling filled the bath every evening, between five and seven o’clock when the water was on, for their use during the day.

Claire set the bag down, dipped a bucket into the water and wet a cloth to wipe her face. Then she sat on the cool tiled floor and pulled up her nightdress so that she could place the bag between her legs.

She tumbled out the contents.

There were more than thirty items glittering up at her. More than thirty costly necklaces, scarves, ornaments, perfume bottles. They looked almost tawdry, jumbled together in the harsh bathroom light, against the white tiles, so Claire laid down a towel and separated them, so that each had a few inches of space, a cushion against the floor. There. Now they looked like the expensive items they were. Here was a ring, thick, beautifully worked gold, with what was probably turquoise. She slipped it on to her finger. And here was a handkerchief, so sheer she could see the pale pink of her palm underneath it. She sprayed it with perfume, a small round bottle of it, called Jazz. On the bottle, there was a drawing of two women dancing in flapper dresses. She waved the scented handkerchief around. Jasmine. Too heavy. She did her hair with the tortoiseshell comb, rubbed French hand lotion into her fingers, then carefully applied lipstick. Then she clipped on heavy gold earrings and tied a scarf round her head.

She stood in front of the mirror. The woman who looked back was sophisticated and groomed, a woman who travelled the world and knew about art and books and yachts.

She wanted to be someone else. The old Claire seemed provincial, ignorant. She had been to a party at Government House, sipped champagne at the Gripps while women she knew twirled around in silky dresses. She had her nose pressed up against the glass and was watching a different world. She could not name it but she felt as if she was about to be revealed, as if there was another Claire inside, waiting to come out. In these few hours in the morning, dressed in someone else’s finery, she could pretend she was part of it, that she had lived in Colombo, eaten frog’s legs in France or ridden an elephant in Delhi with a maharajah by her side.

At seven, after she had brewed herself a cup of tea and eaten some buttered toast, she made her way to the bedroom. She stood over her sleeping husband.

‘Wake up,’ she said quietly.

He stirred, then rolled over to face her.

‘Cuckoo,’ she said, a little louder.

‘Happy birthday, darling,’ he said sleepily. He propped himself up on one elbow to offer a kiss. His breath was sour but not unpleasant.

Claire was twenty-eight today.

It was Saturday, and the beginning of summer. Not too hot yet, the mornings had a breeze and a little bit of cool before the sun warmed the afternoons and the hats and fans had to come out. Martin worked a half-day on Saturday but then there was a party at the Arbogasts’, on the Peak. Reginald Arbogast was a very successful businessman and made a point of inviting every English person in the colony to his gatherings, which were famous for his unstinting hand and lavish foods.

‘I’ll meet you at the funicular at one,’ Martin told her.

At one o’clock, Claire was at the tram station waiting. She had on a new dress the tailor had delivered just the day before, a white poplin based on a Paris original. She had found a Mr Hao, an inexpensive man in Causeway Bay, who would come and measure her at home and charge eight Hong Kong dollars a dress. It had turned out quite well. She had sprayed on a bit of Jazz, although she found it strong; she dabbed it on, then rubbed water on it to dilute the smell.

At ten past one, Martin came through the station doors, and gave her a kiss. ‘You look nice,’ he said. ‘New dress?’

‘Mm-hmm,’ she said.

They took the tram up the mountain, a steep ride that seemed almost vertical at times. They held on to the rail, leaned forward and looked outside, where they could see into people’s homes in the Mid-Levels, with curtains pushed to one side, and newspapers and dirty glasses strewn on tables.

‘I would think,’ Claire said, ‘that if I knew people would be looking in my house all day from the tram, I’d make a point of leaving it tidy, wouldn’t you?’

At the top, they found that the Arbogasts had hired rickshaws to take their guests to the house from the station. Claire climbed into one. ‘I always feel for the men,’ she said quietly to Martin. ‘Isn’t this why we have mules or horses? It’s one of these queer Hong Kong customs, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a fact that human labour here often costs less,’ Martin said.

Claire stifled her irritation. Martin was always so literal.

The man lifted up the harness with a grunt. They started to roll along and Claire settled into the uncomfortable seat. Around them, the green was overwhelming, tropical trees bursting with leaves that dripped when scratched, bougainvillaea and other flowering bushes springing from the hillsides. Sometimes, she got the feeling that Hong Kong was too alive. It seemed unable to restrain itself. There were insects crawling everywhere, wild dogs on the hills, mosquitoes breeding furiously. They had made roads in the hillsides and buildings sprouted out of the ground, but nature strained at her boundaries – there were always sweaty, shirtless men chopping away at the greenery that seemed to grow overnight. It wasn’t India, she supposed, but it certainly wasn’t England. The man in front of her strained and sweated. His shirt was thin and grey.

‘The Arbogasts apparently had this place undergo a massive cleaning after the war,’ Martin said. ‘Smythson was telling me about it, how it had been gutted by the Japanese and all that was left was walls, and not many of those. It used to belong to the Bayer representative out here, Thorpe, and he never came back after he was repatriated after the war. He sold it for a song. He’d had enough.’

‘The way people lived out here before the war,’ Claire said. ‘It was very gracious.’

‘Arbogast lost his hand during the war as well. He has a hook now. They say he’s quite sensitive about it so try not to look at it.’

‘Of course,’ Claire said.

When they walked in, the party was in full swing. Doors opened on to a large receiving room, which led into a drawing room with french doors that looked over a lawn with a wide, stunning view of the harbour. A violinist sawed away at his instrument while a pianist accompanied him. The house was decorated in the way the English did their houses in the Orient, with Persian carpets and the occasional wooden Chinese table topped with Burmese silver bowls and other exotic curiosities. Women in light cotton dresses swayed towards each other while men in safari suits or blazers stood with hands in pockets. Swiftly moving servants balanced trays of Pimm’s and champagne.

‘Why does he do this?’ Claire asked Martin. ‘Invite the world, I mean.’

‘He’s done well for himself here, and he didn’t have much before, and wants to do something good for the community. What I’ve heard, anyway.’

‘Hello, hello,’ said Mrs Arbogast from the hall where she was greeting guests – a thin, elegant woman with a sharp face. Sparkly earrings jangled from her ears.

‘Lovely of you to have us,’ said Martin. ‘A real honour.’

‘Don’t know you, but perhaps we shall have the pleasure later.’ She turned aside, looking for the next guest. They had been dismissed.

‘Drink?’ Martin said.

‘Please,’ said Claire.

She saw an acquaintance, Amelia, and walked over. Too late, she saw that Mrs Pinter was in the circle, partially hidden by a potted plant. They all tried to avoid Mrs Pinter. Claire had been cornered by her before, and had spent an excruciating thirty minutes listening to the old woman talk about ant colonies. She wanted to be kind to older people but she had her limits. Mrs Pinter was now obsessed with starting up an Esperanto society, and would reel unwitting newcomers into her ever more complicated and idiotic plans. She was convinced that a universal language would have saved them all from the war.

‘I’ve been thinking about getting a butler,’ Mrs Pinter was saying. ‘One of those Chinese fellows would do all right with a bit of training.’

‘Are you going to teach him Esperanto?’ Amelia asked, teasing.

‘We have to teach everyone but the Communists,’ Mrs Pinter said placidly.

‘Isn’t the refugee problem alarming?’ Marjorie Winter said, ignoring all of them. She was fanning herself with a napkin. She was a fat, kindly woman, with very small sausage-like curls around her face.

‘They’re coming in by the thousands, I hear,’ Claire said.

‘I’m starting a new league,’ said Marjorie. ‘To help them. Those poor Chinese streaming across the border like herded animals, running away from that dreadful government. They live in the most frightful conditions. You must volunteer! I’ve rented space for an office and everything.’

‘You remember in 1950,’ Amelia said, ‘when some of the locals were practically running hotels, taking care of all their family and friends who had fled? And these were the well-off ones, who were able to book passage. It was quite something.’

‘Why are they leaving China?’ Claire said. ‘Where do they expect to go from here?’

‘Well, that’s the thing, dear,’ Marjorie said. ‘They don’t have anywhere to go. Imagine that. That’s why my league is so important.’

Amelia sat down. ‘The Chinese come down during war, they go back up, then come down again. It’s dizzying. They are these giant waves of displacement. And their different dialects. I do think Mandarin is the ugliest, with its wer and its er and those strange noises.’ She fanned herself. ‘It’s far too hot to talk about a league,’ she said. ‘Your energy always astounds me, Marjorie.’

‘Amelia,’ Marjorie said unsympathetically, ‘you’re always hot.’

Indeed Amelia was always hot, or cold, or vaguely out of sorts. She was not physically suited to life outside of England, which was ironic since she had not lived there for some three decades. She needed her creature comforts and suffered mightily, and not silently, without them. They had been in Hong Kong since before the war. Her husband, Angus, had brought her from India, which she had loathed, to Hong Kong in 1938 when he had become under-secretary at the Department of Finance. She was opinionated, railing against what she saw as the unbearable English ladies who wanted to become Chinese, who wore their hair in chignons with ivory chopsticks, too-tight cheongsams to every event and employed local tutors so they could speak to the servants in their atrocious Cantonese. She did not understand such women and constantly warned Claire against becoming one of such a breed.

Amelia had taken Claire under her wing, introducing her to people, inviting her to lunch, but Claire was often uncomfortable in her company, listening to her sharp observations and often biting innuendo. Still, she clung to her as someone who could help her navigate this strange new world. She knew her mother would approve of someone like Amelia, even be impressed that Claire knew such people.

Outside, the thwack of a tennis ball punctuated the low buzz and tinkle of conversation and cocktails. Claire’s group migrated towards a large tent pitched next to the courtyard.

‘People come and play tennis?’ Claire asked.

‘Yes – in this weather, can you believe it?’

‘I can’t believe they have a tennis court,’ said Claire with wonder.

‘And I can’t believe what you can’t believe,’ Amelia said archly.

Claire blushed. ‘I’ve just never –’

‘I know, darling,’ Amelia said. ‘Just a village girl.’ She winked to take the sting out of her comment.

‘You know what Penelope Davies did the other day?’ Marjorie interrupted. ‘She went to the temple at Wong Tai Sin with an interpreter, and had her fortune told. She said it was remarkable how much the old woman knew!’

‘What fun,’ Amelia said. ‘I’ll take Wing and try it out too. Claire, we should go!’

‘Sounds fun,’ Claire said.

‘Did you hear about the child in Malaya who had hiccups for three months?’ Marjorie was asking Martin, who had joined them with drinks in hand. ‘The Briggs child. His father’s the head of the Electricity over there. His mother almost went mad. They tried a witch doctor but no results. They didn’t know whether to take him back to England or just trust in fate.’

‘Can you imagine having hiccups for more than an hour?’ Claire said. ‘I’d go mad! That poor child.’

Martin knelt down to play with a small boy who had wandered over. ‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

‘Martin wants children,’ Claire said, sotto voce, to Amelia. Despite herself, she often found herself confiding to Amelia. She had no one else to talk to.

‘All men do, darling,’ Amelia said. ‘You have to negotiate the number before you start popping them out or else they’ll want to keep going. I got Angus down to two before we started.’

‘Oh,’ Claire said, startled. ‘That seems so … unromantic.’

‘What do you think married life is?’ Amelia said. She cocked an eyebrow at Claire. Claire blushed, and excused herself to go to the powder room.

When she returned, Amelia had drifted away and was talking to a tall man Claire had never seen before. She waved her over. He was a man of around forty with a crude cane that looked as if it had been whittled by a child. He had sharp, handsome features and a shock of black hair, run through with strands of grey, ungroomed.

‘Have you met Will Truesdale?’ Amelia said.

‘I haven’t,’ she said, as she put out her hand.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said. His hand was dry and cool, almost as if it were made of paper.

‘He’s been in Hong Kong for ages,’ Amelia said. ‘An old-timer, like us.’

‘Quite the experts, we are,’ he said. He suddenly looked alert. ‘I like your scent,’ he said. ‘Jasmine, is it?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Newly arrived?’

‘Yes, just a month.’

‘Like it?’

‘I never imagined living in the Orient, but here I am.’

‘Oh, Claire, you should have had more imagination,’ Amelia said, gesturing to a waiter for another drink.

Claire coloured again. Amelia was in rare form today.

‘I’m delighted to meet someone who’s not so jaded,’ Will said. ‘All you women are so worldly it quite tires me out.’

Amelia had turned away to take her drink and hadn’t heard him. There was a pause, but Claire didn’t mind it.

‘It’s Claire’s birthday,’ Amelia told Will, turning back. She smiled, brittle, red lipstick stained her front tooth. ‘She’s just a baby.’

‘How nice,’ he said. ‘We need more babies around these parts.’

He suddenly reached out his hand and slowly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. A possessive gesture, as if he had known her for a long time. ‘Sorry,’ he said. Amelia had not seen; she had been scanning the crowd.

‘Sorry for what?’ Amelia asked, turning back, distracted.

‘Nothing,’ they both said. Claire looked down at the floor. They were joined in their collusive denial; it suddenly seemed overwhelmingly intimate.

‘What?’ Amelia said impatiently. ‘I can’t hear a damn thing above this din.’

‘I’m twenty-eight today,’ Claire said, not knowing why.

‘I’m forty-three.’ He nodded. ‘Very old.’

Claire couldn’t tell if he was joking.

‘I remember the celebration we had for you at Stanley,’ Amelia said. ‘What a fête.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘You’re still with Melody and Victor?’ Amelia enquired of him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It suits me for now.’

‘I’m sure it suits Victor just fine to have an Englishman chauffeuring him around,’ she replied slyly.

‘It seems to work for everyone involved,’ Will said, not taking the bait.

Amelia leaned towards him confidentially. ‘I hear there’s been chatter about the Crown Collection and its disappearance during the war. Angus says it’s starting to come to the boil. People have noticed. Have you heard anything?’

‘I have,’ he said.

‘They want to ferret out the collaborators.’

‘A bit late, don’t you think?’

After a pause, when it became apparent that nothing more was forthcoming from Will, she spoke again: ‘I hope the Chens are treating you well?’

‘I can’t complain,’ he said.

‘A bit odd, though, isn’t it? You working over there?’

‘Amelia,’ he said. ‘You’re boring Claire.’

‘Oh, no,’ Claire protested. ‘I’m just …’

‘Well, you’re boring me,’ he said. ‘And life is too short to be bored. Claire, have you been to the different corners of our fair colony? Which is your favourite?’

‘Well, I have been exploring a little. Sheung Wan is lovely – I do like the markets – and I’ve been over to Kowloon, Tsim Sha Tsui on the Star Ferry, of course, and seen all the shops there. It’s very lively, isn’t it?’

‘See, Amelia?’ Will said. ‘An Englishwoman who ventures outside of Central and the Peak. You would do well to learn from this newcomer.’

Amelia rolled her eyes. ‘She’ll grow tired of it soon enough. I’ve seen so many of these bright-eyed new arrivals, and they all end up having tea with me at the Helena May and complaining about their amahs.’

‘Well, don’t let Amelia’s rosy attitude affect you too much, Claire,’ Will said. ‘At any rate, it was a pleasure to meet you. Best of luck in Hong Kong.’ He nodded to them politely and left. She felt the heat of his body as he passed her.

Claire felt bereft. He had assumed they would not meet again. ‘Odd man?’ she said. It was more of a statement.

‘You’ve no idea, dear,’ Amelia said.

Claire peeked after him. He had floated over to the side of the tennis court, although he had some sort of limp, and was watching Peter Wickham and his son hit the ball at each other.

‘He’s also very serious now,’ Amelia said. ‘Can’t have a proper conversation with him. He was quite sociable before the war, you know, you saw him at all the parties, had the most glamorous girl in town, quite high up at Asiatic Petrol, but he never really recovered after the victory. He’s a chauffeur, now.’ Her voice dropped. ‘For the Chens, actually, do you know who they are?’

‘Amelia!’ Claire said. ‘I give their daughter piano lessons! You helped me arrange it!’

‘Oh dear. The memory goes first, they say. You’ve never run into him there?’

‘Never,’ Claire said. ‘Although the Chens once suggested he might give me a lift home.’

‘Poor Melody,’ said Amelia. ‘She’s very fragile.’ The word said delicately.

‘Indeed,’ Claire said, remembering the way Melody had sipped her drink, quickly, urgently.

‘The thing with Will is …’ Amelia hesitated. ‘I’m quite certain he doesn’t need to work at all.’

‘How do you mean?’ Claire asked.

‘I just know certain things,’ Amelia said mysteriously.

Claire didn’t ask. She wouldn’t give Amelia the satisfaction.

September 1941

Trudy is dressing for dinner while he watches from the bed. She has finished her mysterious bathing ritual, with its oils and unguents, and now she smells marvellous, like a valley in spring. She is sitting at her dressing-table in a long peach satin robe, wrapped silkily round her waist, applying fragrant creams to her face.

‘Do you like this one?’ She gets up and holds a long black dress in front of her.

‘It’s fine.’ He can’t concentrate on the clothes when her face is so vibrant.

‘Or this one?’ A knee-length dress the colour of orange sherbet.

‘Fine.’

She pouts. Her skin gleams. ‘You’re so unhelpful.’

She tells him Manley Haverford is having a party, an end-of-summer party at his country house this weekend and that she wants to go. Manley is an old bigot who used to have a radio talk show before he married a rich but ugly Portuguese woman who conveniently died two years later whereupon he retired to live the life of a country squire in Saikung.

‘Desperately,’ she says. ‘I want to go desperately.’

‘You loathe Manley,’ he says. ‘You told me so last week.’

‘I know,’ she says. ‘But his parties are fun and he’s very generous with the drinks. Let’s go and talk about how awful he is right in front of him. Can we go? Can we? Can we?’ She wears him down. They will go.

So on Friday, late afternoon, he plays truant from work and they spend the twilight hours bathing in the ocean by Manley’s house. To get there, they drive narrow, winding roads carved out of the green mountain, blue water on their right, verdant hillside on their left. His house is through a dilapidated wooden gate and at the end of a long driveway, beside the sea, with a porch that juts out, and rough stone steps leading down to the beach. He’s had coolers filled with ice and drinks and sandwiches brought down to the sandy inlet. The still-hot sun and the water make them ravenous and they eat and eat and eat and curse their host for not bringing enough.

‘Me?’ he asks. ‘I assumed I had invited civilized people, who ate three meals a day.’

Victor and Melody Chen, Trudy’s cousins, wander down from the house, where they had been resting.

‘What are we doing now?’ Melody asks. Will likes her, thinks she’s nice, when she’s not with her husband.

A woman they have never met before, newly arrived from Singapore, suggests they play Charades. They all moan but acquiesce.

Trudy is one team’s leader, the Singapore woman the other. The groups huddle together, write words on scraps of damp paper. They put them into the empty sandwich basket.

Trudy goes first. She looks at her paper, dimples. ‘Easy peasy,’ she says encouragingly to her group. She makes the film sign, one hand rotating an imaginary camera lever.

‘Film!’ shouts an American.

She puts up four fingers, then suddenly ducks her head, puts her arms in front of her and whooshes through the air.

‘Gone With the Wind,’ Will says. Trudy curtsies.

‘Unfair,’ says someone from the other team. ‘Pet’s advantage.’

Trudy comes over and plants a kiss on his forehead. ‘Clever boy,’ she says, and sinks down next to him.

Singapore gets up.

‘She’s your nemesis,’ Will tells Trudy.

‘Don’t worry,’ Trudy says. ‘She’s idiotic.’

The afternoon passes pleasantly, with them shouting insults and drinking and generally being stupid. Some people talk about the government and how it’s organizing different Volunteer Corps.

‘It’s not volunteering,’ Will says. ‘It’s mandatory. It’s the Compulsory Service Act, for heaven’s sake. Why don’t they just call a spade a spade? Dowbiggin is being ridiculous about it.’

‘Don’t be such a grump,’ Trudy says. ‘Do your duty.’

‘I guess so,’ he says. ‘Must fight the good fight, I suppose.’ He thinks the organization is being handled in an absurd fashion.

‘Is there one for cricketers?’ someone asks, as if to prove his point.

‘Why not?’ somebody else says. ‘You can make up one however you want.’

‘I hardly think that’s true,’ Manley says. ‘But I’m joining one that’s training out here at weekends, on the Club grounds. Policemen, although I’d think they’d be rather busy if there was an attack.’

‘Aren’t you too old, Manley?’ Trudy asks. ‘Old and decrepit?’

‘That’s the wonderful thing, Trudy,’ he says, with a forced smile. ‘You can’t fire a Volunteer. And at any rate the one here at the Club is convenient.’

‘I’m sending Melody to America,’ Victor Chen says suddenly. ‘I don’t want her to be in any danger.’

Melody smiles uneasily, but says nothing.

‘The government is preparing,’ says Jamie Biggs. ‘They’re storing food in warehouses in Tin Hau and securing British property.’

‘Like the Crown Collection?’ Victor asks. ‘What are they going to do about that? It’s part of the British heritage.’

‘I’m sure all the arrangements have been made,’ says Biggs.

‘The food will go bad before anyone gets it,’ says another man.

‘Cynic,’ says Trudy.

She stands up gracefully and goes towards the ocean. All this talk of war bores her. She thinks it will never happen. They watch her, rapt, as she plunges into the sea and comes up sleek and dripping – her slim body a vertical rebuke to the flatness of the horizon between the sky and sea. She walks up to Will and shakes her wet hair at him. Drops of water fall and sparkle. Then someone asks where the tennis rackets are. The spell is broken.

Over dinner, Trudy declares that she is going to be in charge of uniforms for the Volunteers. ‘And Will can be the model,’ she says, ‘because he’s a perfect male specimen.’

Colin Thorpe, who heads up the American office of a large pharmaceutical company, looks doubtful. ‘Rather small and ugly, isn’t he?’ he says, although this is more a description of himself than of Will.

‘Will!’ Trudy cries. ‘You’ve been insulted! Defend your honour!’

‘I’ve better things to defend,’ he says. And the table falls silent. He is always saying the wrong thing, puncturing the gaiety. ‘Er, sorry,’ he says. But they are already on to the next thing.

Trudy is describing the tailor who is going to make the uniforms. ‘He’s been our family tailor for ages and he can whip out a copy of a Paris dress in two days, one if you beg!’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ she says easily. ‘He’s the Tailor. But I know where the shop is, or my driver does, and we’re the best of friends. Do you fellows prefer orange or a very bright pink as colours?’

They decide on olive green (‘So boring,’ the women sigh) with orange stripes (a concession), and Trudy asks who is to measure the men.

They suggest her.

She accepts (‘Isn’t there something about dressing left?’ she asks innocently), then says that Will can measure in her stead. Trudy’s frivolity, Will has noticed, has boundaries.

Sophie Biggs is trying to interest everyone in moonlight picnics. ‘They’re ever so much fun,’ she says. ‘We take a steamboat out, with row boats, and when we reach the islands we row everyone ashore with the provisions and a guitar or an accordion or something.’ Sophie is a large girl and Will wonders if she is a secret eater because she eats tiny portions when she is out. Now, she is poking her spoon in the vichyssoise.

Trudy sighs. ‘It sounds like so much labour,’ she says. ‘Wouldn’t it just be easier to have a picnic at Repulse Bay?’

Sophie looks at her reproachfully. ‘But it’s not the same,’ she says. ‘It’s the journey.’

Sophie’s husband claims to be in shipping, but Will thinks he’s in Intelligence. When he tells Trudy this, she cries, ‘That big lout? He couldn’t detect his way out of a paper bag!’ But Jamie Biggs is always listening, never talking, and he has a watchful air about him. If he’s that obvious, Will supposes he’s not very good. After Charles Pottinger left last year, someone had told Will that he was Intelligence. He hadn’t been able to believe it. Charles was a big, florid man who drank a lot and seemed the very soul of indiscretion.

Edwina Storch, a large Englishwoman who is the headmistress of the good school in town, has brought her constant companion, Mary Winkle, and they sit at the end of the table, eating quietly, talking to no one but each other. Will has seen them before. They are always around, but never say much.

Over dessert – trifle – Jamie says that all Japanese residents have been sent secret letters about what to do in case of an invasion, and that the Japanese barber chap in the Gloucester Hotel has been spying. The government is about to issue another edict that all wives and children are to be sent away without exception, but only the white British, those of pure European extraction, get passage on the ships. ‘Doesn’t affect me.’ Trudy shrugs, although she holds a British passport. Will knows that if she wanted, she could get on to a boat – her father always knows someone. ‘What would I do in Australia?’ she asks. ‘I don’t like anybody there. Besides, it’s only for pure English – have you ever heard of anything so offensive?’

She changes the subject. ‘What would happen,’ she asks, ‘if two guns were pointed at each other and then the triggers were pulled at the same time? Do you think the two people would get hurt or would the bullets destroy each other?’

There is a lively discussion about this that Trudy is soon bored with. ‘For heaven’s sake!’ she cries. ‘Isn’t there something else we can talk about?’ The group, chastised, turns to yet other subjects. Trudy is a social dictator and not at all benevolent. She tells someone recently arrived from the Congo that she can’t imagine why anyone would go to a Godforsaken place like that when there are perfectly pleasant destinations, like London and Rome. The traveller actually looks chagrined. She tells Sophie Biggs’s husband that he doesn’t appreciate his wife, and then she tells Manley she loathes trifle. Yet, no one takes offence; everyone agrees with her. She is the most amiable rude person ever. People bask in her attention.

At the end of dinner, after coffee and liqueurs, Manley’s houseboy brings in a big bowl of nuts and raisins. Manley pours brandy over it with a flourish and Trudy lights a match and tosses it in. The bowl is ablaze instantly, all blue and white flame. They try to pick out the treats without burning their fingers, a game they call Snapdragon.

Going to the bathroom later, Will glimpses Trudy and Victor talking heatedly in Cantonese in the drawing room. He hesitates, then continues on. When he returns, they are gone and Trudy is already back at the table, telling a bawdy joke.

After, they go to bed. Manley has given them a room next to his and they make love quietly. With Trudy, it is always as if she is drowning – she clutches at him and burrows her face into his shoulder with an intensity she would make fun of if she saw it. Sometimes the shape of her fingers is etched into his skin for hours afterwards. Later, Will wakes up to find Trudy whimpering, her face lumpy and alarming; he sees that her face is wet with tears.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asks.

‘Nothing.’ A reflex.

‘Did Victor upset you?’ he asks.

‘No, no, he wants to … My father …’ She goes back to sleep. When he throws the blanket over her, her shoulders are as cold and limp as water. In the morning, she remembers nothing, and mocks him for his concern.

In the following weeks, the war encroaches – wives and children, the ones who had ignored the previous evacuation, leave on ships bound for Australia, Singapore. Trudy is obliged to make an appearance at the hospitals to prove she is a nurse. She undergoes training, declares herself hopeless, and switches to supplies instead. She finds the stockpiling of goods too amusing. ‘If I had to eat the food they’re storing, I’d shoot myself,’ she says. ‘It’s all bully beef and awful things like that.’

The colony is filled with suddenly lonely men without wives; they gather at the Gripps, the Parisian Grill, clamour to be invited to dinner parties at the homes of those few whose wives remain. They form a club, the Bachelors’ Club (‘Why do the British so love to form clubs and societies?’ Trudy asks. ‘No, wait, don’t say, it’s too grim.’) and petition the governor to bring back the women. Others, more intrepid, turn up suddenly with adopted Chinese ‘daughters’ or ‘wards’, dine with them and drink champagne, then disappear into the night. Will finds it amusing, Trudy less so. ‘Wait until I get my hands on them,’ she cries, while Will teases her about which Chinese hostess would soon get her claws into him.

‘You’re like a leper, darling,’ she counters. ‘You British men are going out of fashion. I might have to find myself a Japanese or German beau now.’

Later Will remembers this time so clearly, how it was all so funny and the war was so far away, yet talked about every day, how no one really thought about what might really happen.

September 1952

Claire was waiting for the bus after Locket’s piano lesson when Will Truesdale drove up in the car. ‘Would you like a lift?’ he asked. ‘I’ve just finished for the day.’

‘Thank you, but I couldn’t put you out,’ she said.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘The Chens don’t mind if I take the car home for the night. Most employers want their cars left at home and the chauffeur to take public transport home, so it’s no bother.’

Claire hesitated, then got into the car. It smelled of cigarettes and polished leather. ‘It’s very kind of you.’

‘Did you have a good time at the Arbogasts’ the other day?’ he asked.

‘It was a very nice party,’ she said. She had learned not to be effusive, that it marked her as unsophisticated.

‘Reggie’s a good sort,’ he said. ‘It was nice to meet you there, too. There are too many of those women who add to the din but not to anything else. You shouldn’t lose that quality of seeing everything new for what it is. All the women here …’

He drove well, she thought, steady on the steering-wheel, his movements calm and unhurried.

‘You’re not wearing the perfume you had on the other day,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, wary. ‘That’s for special occasions.’

‘I was surprised that you had it on. Not many English wear it. It’s more the fashionable Chinese women. They like its heaviness. English women like something lighter, more flowery.’

‘Oh, I wasn’t aware.’ Claire’s hand went unconsciously to her neck, where she usually dabbed it on.

‘But it’s lovely that you wear it,’ he said.

‘You seem to know a lot about women’s scents.’

‘I don’t.’ He glanced over at her, his eyes dark. ‘I used to know someone who wore it.’

They rode in silence until they arrived at her building.

‘You teach the girl,’ he said, as she was reaching for the door, his voice suddenly urgent.

‘Yes, Locket.’ She said, taken aback.

‘Is she a good student?’ he asked. ‘Diligent?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ she said. ‘Her parents don’t give her much of a reason to do anything so she doesn’t. Very typical at that age. Still, she’s a nice enough girl.’

He nodded, his face unreadable in the dark interior of the car.

‘Well, thank you for the lift,’ she said. ‘I’m most grateful.’

He raised a hand, then drove off into the gathering dusk.

And then a bun. A bun with sweetened chestnut paste. That was how they met again. She had been walking up Elgin Street to where there was a bus stop, when it started to pour. The rain – huge, startling plops – fell heavily and she was soaked through in a matter of seconds. Looking up at the sky, she saw it had turned a threatening grey. She ducked into a Chinese bakery to wait out the storm. Inside, she ordered tea and a chestnut bun, and as she turned to sit at a small, circular tables, she spotted Will Truesdale, deliberately eating a red bean pastry, staring at her.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Caught in the rain, too?’

‘Would you like a seat?’

She sat down. In the damp, he smelled of cigarettes and tea. A newspaper was spread in front of him, the crossword half finished. A fan blew at the pages so they ruffled upwards.

‘It’s coming down cats and dogs. And so sudden!’

‘So, how are you?’ he asked.

‘Fine, thank you very much. I’ve just come from the Liggets’, where I borrowed some patterns. Do you know Jasper and Helen? He’s in the police.’

‘Ligget the bigot?’ He wrinkled his forehead.

She laughed, uncomfortable. His hand thrummed the table, though his body was relaxed. ‘Is that what you call him?’ she asked.

‘Why not?’

He did the crossword as she ate her bun and sipped her tea. She was aware of her mouth chewing, swallowing. She sat up straight in her chair.

He hummed a tune, looked up. ‘Hong Kong suits you,’ he said.

She coloured, started to say something about being impertinent but her words came out muddled.

‘Don’t be coy,’ he said. ‘I think …’ he started, as if he were telling her life story. ‘I imagine you’ve always been pretty but you’ve never owned it, never used it to your advantage. You didn’t know what to do about it and your mother never helped you. Perhaps she was jealous, perhaps she, too, was pretty in her youth but is bitter that beauty is so transient.’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘I’ve known girls like you for years. You come over from England and don’t know what to do with yourselves. You could be different. You should take the opportunity to become something else.’

She stared at him, then pushed the bun wrapper around on the table. It was slightly damp and stuck to the surface. She was aware of his gaze on her face.

‘So,’ he said. ‘You must be very uncomfortable. My home is just up the way if you want to change into some dry things.’

‘I wouldn’t want to …’

‘Do you want my jacket?’

He was looking at her so intently that she felt undressed. Was there anything more intimate than being truly seen? She looked away. ‘No, I …’

‘No bother at all,’ he said quickly. ‘Come along,’ and she did, pulled helplessly by his suggestion.

They climbed the steps, now damp and glistening, the heat already beginning to evaporate the moisture. Her clothes clung to her, her blouse sodden and uncomfortable against her shoulder-blades. In the quiet after the rain, she could hear his breathing, slow and regular. He used his cane with expertise, hoisting himself up the stairs, whistling slightly under his breath.

‘In good weather, there’s a man who sells crickets made of grass stalks here.’ He gestured to a street corner. ‘I’ve bought dozens. They’re the most amazing things, but they crumble when they dry up, crumble into nothing.’

‘Sounds lovely,’ Claire said. ‘I’d like to see them.’

They went into his building, and walked up some grungy, industrial stairs. He stopped in front of a door. ‘I never lock my door,’ he said suddenly.

‘I suppose it’s safe enough in these parts,’ she said.

Inside, his flat was sparsely furnished. She could see only a sofa, a chair, and a table on bare floor. When they stepped in, he took off his soaking shoes. ‘The boss says I can’t wear shoes in the house.’

Just then, a small, wiry woman of around forty came in. She was wearing the amah uniform of a black tunic over trousers.

‘This is the boss, Ah Yik,’ he said. ‘Ah Yik, this is Mrs Pendleton.’

‘So wet,’ the little woman cried. ‘Big rain.’

‘Yes,’ Will said. ‘Big, big rain.’ Then he spoke to her rapidly in Cantonese.

‘Tea for Missee?’ Ah Yik said.

‘Yes, thank you,’ he said.

The amah went into the kitchen.

They looked at each other, uncomfortable in their wet and rapidly cooling clothes.

‘You are proficient in the local language,’ she said, more as a statement than a question.

‘I’ve been here more than a decade,’ he said. ‘It would be a real embarrassment if I couldn’t meet them halfway by now, don’t you think?’ He took a tea towel off a hook and rubbed his head. ‘I imagine you’d like to dry off,’ he said.

‘Yes, please.’

She sat down as he left the room. There was something strange about the room, which she couldn’t place until she realized there was absolutely nothing decorative in the entire place. There were no paintings, no vases, no bric-a-brac. It was austere to the point of monkishness.

Will came back with a towel and a simple pink cotton dress. ‘Is this appropriate?’ he asked. ‘I’ve a few other things.’

‘I don’t need to change,’ she said. ‘I’ll just dry off and be on my way.’

‘Oh, I think you should change,’ he said. ‘You’ll be uncomfortable otherwise.’

‘No, it’s quite all right.’

He started to leave the room.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Where should I …’

‘Oh, anywhere,’ he said. ‘Anywhere you won’t scandalize the boss, that is.’

‘Of course.’ She took the dress from him. ‘It looks about the right size.’

‘And there’s a phone out here if you want to ring your husband and let him know where you are,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Martin’s in Shanghai, actually.’ And she went into the bathroom.

It was small but clean, with a frosted-glass window high above the lavatory. It was the wavy, pebbled kind, with chicken wire running through it. Next to that, a small fan was set into the wall with a string attached. It was humid, with the rain splattering outside, and the musty feel of a bathroom that hadn’t got quite aired out enough after baths. Next to the bath, there was a low wooden stool with a steel basin on top. Claire leaned forward into the mirror. Her hair was messy, the fine blonde strands awry, and her face was flushed, still, with the exertion of climbing up the hill. She looked surprisingly alive, her lips red and plump, her skin glowing with the moisture. She undressed, dropping her soaked blouse to the floor, which sloped to a drain in the middle. She towelled herself and pulled the dress over her hips. It was snug, but manageable. Why did Will have a dress lying around? It was very good quality, with perfectly finished seams and careful needlework. She went out to where he was sipping from a Thermos of tea.

‘Fits you well,’ 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 a bit of a Bohemian and she had some money from her family so we were set in that way.’

Hong Kong was full of people like Will, wandering global voyagers who had never been to Piccadilly Circus. Claire had been just once, and there had been an old man in tattered clothes who would shout, ‘Fornicators!’ at everyone who passed.

‘And how did you learn?’ she asked.

‘School, you mean? Taught at home – good basic education of the Bible and the classics.’ He held up his hands so that they blocked the sky. ‘It’s all you need, really, isn’t it?’ His voice was sarcastic. ‘Solid background for life.’

‘So how did you come to be a chauffeur?’

‘A couple I knew before the war, I used to live in their flat while they were abroad. They came back after, and found me this job with their cousins. I didn’t know what else to do. No interest in going back to an office. And I’ve very few skills,’ he said. ‘But I do know Hong Kong like the back of my hand.’

‘And how did you end up in Hong Kong?’

‘My parents were in Africa, and then in India. When they retired to England, I stayed on as an assistant manager at a tea plantation, then got tired of that after three years and was on a ship to a variety of places and ended up in Hong Kong. Just picked it out of a hat, really. I came here, like everyone else, not knowing anything, and sort of took it from there.’ He stopped. ‘Of course, that’s the story I tell all the ladies.’

She couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not. ‘Oh?’

They were still lying on the too-sunny floating dock, waves rocking them, sky an ethereal blue above.

‘How was India?’ Claire asked.

‘Very complicated.’

‘And Partition?’

‘After I left, of course. They needed us out. But undoubtedly a mess in the interior. Trains carrying tens of thousands of corpses back and forth. Humans capable of doing the worst to each other.’

Claire winced. ‘Why?’ She had never heard anyone talk about historic events in such a personal way.

‘Who knows?’

‘And life there before all that?’

‘Rather incredible. We’d carved out quite a world for ourselves, you know. Society’s rather limited, of course. Women – our women – were in short supply.’

‘You never married?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I never did.’

There was silence.

‘Is the inquisition over?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t decided,’ she said.

He hadn’t asked a single question about her life. They lay silently and let the sun beat down on them.

They went to eat, hot, salty chicken drumsticks from the Chinese vendor, who sold them bottles of juice as well. There were little stalls clustered around the small village where you could buy a woven mat to lay on the sand, a bathing-suit, a cold drink. Will watched her eat. A mangy dog ambled through the tables and chairs.

‘I can’t eat much,’ he said. ‘I’m all messed up inside from the war. I was a big chap before, if you can believe it.’

Her stomach leapt inside of her as he moved closer.

He took her hand, guided it to his mouth and took a small bite. His grip was firm and sandy. ‘It comes up again, sometimes,’ he said. ‘Like bile.’ He chewed slowly, grimaced.

After they ate, they walked back to the car. He leaned over to open the door for her. His limp was apparent. Human again. She turned to him, back against the door, and he pushed her shoulder back and kissed her, a fluid movement that seemed inevitable. She was encircled in his arms, his hands on the car. A physical kiss, one she felt intensely, his lips hard on hers – she felt as if she was drowning.

She told herself: This is Hong Kong. I am a woman, displaced. A woman a world away from who I am supposed to be.

He stood back and looked at her. He traced her profile with his finger. ‘Should we go?’ he asked.

‘Do you like me?’ she asked, on the car ride back, her hair full and thick from the sea salt. She didn’t know where they were going.

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ he said.

‘Be good to me,’ she said. It was a warning. She wanted to save herself.

‘Of course,’ he said, but there was no conviction in his voice.

After a few moments, he asked, ‘Do you think you’ll be teaching the girl for long?’

‘I haven’t any idea. She shows no enthusiasm but her parents seem keen that she learns to play.’

‘You like her, though?’

‘Well enough. I have no affinity with children.’ She said this automatically; it was something her mother had always told her.

‘You’re too young. You’re a child yourself,’ he said.

‘You like children?’

‘Some children,’ he said.

A few weeks later, she asked, ‘Why me?’

‘Why anyone?’ he answered. ‘Why is anyone with anyone?’

Desire, proximity, habit, chance. All these went through her mind, but she didn’t say a word.

Then, the cruelty: ‘I don’t like to love,’ he said. ‘You should be forewarned. I don’t believe in it. And you shouldn’t either.’

She stared at him, the sting sharp, but she didn’t change her expression. She knelt down, retrieved her clothes and went into the bathroom to dress. Claire often didn’t speak when she was with Will: she never knew what to say. She didn’t want to give too much of herself when he gave so little, but when they were lying together in bed, she felt awful, sharing such intimacy with someone who seemed not to care. And then going home to Martin. With him, the private was mundane, a chore, some heavy breathing and shoving, not at all pleasurable or romantic. With Will, it was something else entirely: fraught and unexpected and excruciating. And like a drug. She had never known it could be like that. She closed her eyes and tried not to think of what her mother would say if she knew.

He would drive her home on Thursdays after the lesson. The amahs had started to talk, she knew it, from the way they would look at her and smirk. She ignored them, except when she asked them for tea. She had resorted to taking one sip, and then asking for more sugar or milk. It was petty, she knew, but the only way to redress the indignity of their sideways glances.

Today Will opened the car door with a flourish. ‘Where to, madam?’

‘Oh, shut up,’ she said, climbing in. ‘Let’s go to your place.’

‘Let’s go out, do something,’ he said. ‘What about dinner on the water? There’s a sampan restaurant I go to sometimes. They row you out, cook you a fish.’

‘I have to have dinner at home,’ she said. ‘Martin’s home tonight so I haven’t much time.’

‘Or let’s go up to the Peak and look at the stars.’

‘Were you even listening to me?’ she said, exasperated. ‘I don’t know that I even have time to go to your flat today.’

‘Whatever you want, darling,’ he said. ‘I’ll just drive you home, then, and you can cook Martin a delicious meal.’

‘Stop the car,’ she said.

He drove up on to the side of the road and turned off the engine. ‘As directed,’ he said.

She was suddenly furious. ‘You – you always do whatever I ask, and then it seems like you’re doing what you want to do.’

He looked at her with amusement. ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,’ he said.

‘Oh, but you have,’ she said. ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about, but you’re pretending … Oh, never mind.’ She raised her hands in surrender. ‘Just take me home,’ she said. ‘You’ve ruined it.’

There had been times when Claire felt she could become a different person. She sensed it in herself, when someone made a comment at dinner, and she thought of the perfect, acerbic reply, or even something racy, and she felt her mouth opening, her lungs taking in air so she could push out the words, but they never came. She swallowed the thought, and the person she could have become sank down again, weighted by the Claire who was already too evident in the world. She sensed it when she held a glass at a cocktail party and suddenly felt the urge to crush it in her hand. She never did. That hidden person ballooned and deflated so often, the elasticity of possibility slackened over time.

But then came Will. She could say to him all the things she thought, as long as it didn’t have anything to do with them, and he didn’t find any of it surprising. He didn’t have an idea of what she should be like. She was a new person – one who could have an affair, one who could be ribald, or sarcastic, or clever, and he was never surprised. She was out of context with him. She was a new person. Sometimes she felt she was in love with the new person she could be, that this affair was an affair with a new Claire, and that Will was just the catalyst.

December 1941

The holidays are coming. Despite the rumblings of war, Hong Kong decks itself out with Christmas lights and decorations. Lane Crawford, store of a million gifts, advertises its genuine English crystal as the perfect present, costume parties are planned, the Drama Club puts on Tea for Three. The air is crisp, the moisture sucked out by the cool, and people walk briskly on the streets. The Wongs, a famous merchant family, are having a grand Diamond Jubilee Party at the Gripps to celebrate their sixtieth anniversary.

‘The new governor’s coming, that Young fellow,’ Trudy says. ‘And the governor of Macau, who’s a great friend of Father’s. I’ve three new dresses arriving today! A yellow silk chiffon to die for! And a grey crêpe-de-Chine, so elegant. Do you mind if I go with Dommie instead of you? You hate these things anyway, don’t you?’

Will shrugs. ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

Her eyes narrow. ‘Nothing ever bothers you, does it?’ she says. ‘I used to like that but now I’m not so sure. Well, anyway, my father gave me something today. Something very special.’ She motions him into her bedroom. ‘He said he was going to give it to my mother for their tenth anniversary, but then, you know …’ Her voice trails off. Trudy has always been unsentimental about her mother’s disappearance, but today her voice catches.

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