The Piano Teacher (10 page)

It was hot, hot. The sun hid behind clouds for brief moments and 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 out at the beach with a man, intentions unknown.

“I was born in Tasmania, of Scottish stock,” he said mockingly, as if he were starting his own autobiography. He sat up and crossed his legs—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. 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? ”

“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 living 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 back 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 could not tell if he was joking or not.

“Oh?”

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

“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’ve carved out quite a world for ourselves, you know, still. 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 a Chinese vendor who sold them bottles of soy milk 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 leaped inside of her as he moved closer.

He took her hand and 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, made a grimace.

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 pressing hard on hers—she felt like 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 up 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 on the idea of her learning to play.”

“You like her, though? ”

“Well enough. I have no affinity for children.” She said this automatically, 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 cruel.

“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 and retrieved her clothes and went into the bathroom to dress. Claire often didn’t speak around Will, never knowing 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 this intimacy with someone who didn’t really seem 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 for when she asked them for a cup of tea. She had resorted to taking one sip, and then asking for more sugar, or more milk, so they’d have to go back and fix her cup. It was petty, she knew, but the only way to redress the indignity of their sideways glances.

Today, Will opened the 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.”

“Are 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 go fix Martin a delicious meal.”

“Stop the car,” she said.

He drove up onto the side of the road and turned off the car.

“As directed,” he said.

“Why do you,” she said, suddenly furious. “You, you always do
whatever
I say to do, and then . . . it never seems like you’re doing anything but what you want to do.”

He looked at her with amusement.

“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,” he said.

“You
do
,” 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 that 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 something even racy, and she felt her mouth opening, her lungs taking in air so that she could then push out the words, but they never came out. She swallowed her thought, and the person she could have become sank down again, weighted by the Claire that 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 had ballooned up and deflated so often, the elasticity of her possibility diminished 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 that she was more in love with that new person she could be, that this affair was an affair with a new Claire, and that Will was just the enabler.

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 gray 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 does ever bother you, does it?” she says. “I used to like that but now I’m not so sure. Well, anyways, my father gave me something today. Something very special.”

She motions him into her bedroom.

“He says he was going to give it to my mother for their tenth anniversary, but then, you k now . . .” Her voice trails off. Trudy has always been quite unsentimental about her mother’s disappearance, but today, there’s something caught in her voice.

“Darling Trudy,” he says, and pulls her near.

“No, I’m going to show you something,” she says. “No time for hanky-panky.” She opens a drawer and pulls out a small black velvet box.

“Will you marry me?” she says jokingly as she opens the box and thrusts it toward him.

Inside is an enormous emerald. Will almost can’t see the ring behind it. It glows and glows.

“Smokes,” he says. “That’s quite a stone.”

“I love emeralds, although I should love jade, being Chinese,” Trudy says. “Emeralds are so beautiful and so very fragile. Jade is so, hard. If I knocked this against a table—you know how clumsy I am—it might break. They’re not durable like diamonds.” She plucks the ring out of the box and then suddenly throws it up in the air. Will’s heart leaps inside him like a small bird, and he wildly grabs for the jewel, catching it on its way down. He stares at the green gem in his hand, blood coursing wildly. It nestles in his palm like a cold insect.

“I knew you’d catch it,” Trudy says dispassionately. “That’s the best thing about you. You’re . . . not dependable, exactly, but good in a fix, I suppose.”

Will hands the ring back to Trudy, angry, and watches as she slips it on her slim finger.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she says. “It’s the nicest thing I own.”

He walks out of the room.

 

On Saturday, there is another party, the Tin Hat Ball, to raise 160,000 pounds so that the people of Hong Kong can present a bomber squadron to England. Trudy begs him to go with her as, at the last one, the only dashing men were Americans and that “wasn’t right.” “You are fickle,” he says, but she ignores him.

In the ballroom of the Peninsula, Trudy is much in demand, as usual. She is claimed three times in a row by a Canadian major. Will is at the Long Bar having a drink, talking idly to Angeline Biddle, when Trudy comes up behind him and interlocks her fingers in front of his eyes.

“Did you miss me?” she says.

“You were gone?” he asks. He knows how to talk to her.

“What are you drinking? ” Trudy asks Angeline.

“Ox’s Blood,” she says. “It’s champagne mixed with sparkling burgundy and maybe some brandy.”

“Sounds dreadful,” Trudy says, seizing Will’s whiskey instead. She sips at it. “Don’t the Canadians have the funniest names for their teams?”

“Regiments, Trudy,” he corrects.

“What are they, the Royal Guns or something? ” says Angeline.

“No, they’re the Royal Rifles and the Winnipeg Grenadiers. They’ve just come from Newfoundland to help protect us. They love Hong Kong.”

“I’ll bet they do,” he says. “I’m sure it seems like heaven.”

She pouts.

“You’re not going to be all dull and jealous, are you?” She adjusts the straps of her dress, distracted. “Anyway, I’m spoken for the next few dances. Angeline, you’ll take care of my Will, won’t you? ”