The Secret Mother (23 page)

Our dorms were also in tact and we were told to return to sleep amidst the soot as if nothing ever happened. Other workers joined us from different departments and took the beds of girls who were missing. A younger, less experienced Bei
mei
slept above me in Ren’s bed. I could barely understand her northern accent.

When the girl was out, I climbed onto her bed and butted my leg against the wall as Ren used to. I still expected to see her hobbling towards the breakfast pipe or perching on our bunk. Some nights I heard her calling out for Du. Once, I saw her standing by the shutters, holding her notebook and learning to read.

My sadness for Ren was only surpassed by my longing for Manager He. He was rumoured to be alive, recuperating in hospital, but I couldn’t be sure. I stopped eating. Food seemed irrelevant. The conveyor belts no longer operated. With so much machinery and equipment wasted, we worked at making the place clean and safe. I found comfort in this and used every last scrap of energy in the clear-up operation. Without Manager He, it was my duty to keep things going.

Fei Fei never showed for work in the weeks that followed and we heard she was amongst the hundreds convalescing in the recovery quarters. Fatty did her best to comfort me. We played cards; she taught me Rummy and Quick Fix, a game from her village, which involved slight of hand. I wasn’t very good, I couldn’t concentrate for long. Sometimes we talked about Hunan, about our families – who felt like ghosts. Fatty told me she had worked hard and stuck to the rules because she had planned to bring her sister-in-law to Nanchang. We agreed it was better than housework. We laughed and cried, sorry for all that we’d lost.

We never really talked about the fire, or our injuries, except once I thanked her for bringing me my figurines. She could not have known our dorm was untouched by the fire and had hurried to salvage what she could. She said it was nothing. She said the real saving work was done by the ambulance men and doctors. The events were already so vague and muddled, but I knew it was his face, his gentle eyes – Yifan had saved my life.

Once, when the wick of the candle was burnt almost to nothing, I confessed to Fatty that Manager He was my first love.

“I don’t know how long I can keep going without him. I have to believe he’s coming back.”

“I’m sure he’ll be alright,” she said, “try and stay strong. He will come back, you’ll see.”

Secretly, I worried what he might look like and whether the fire had disfigured his beautiful features and soft hands. I shivered inside at the thought of him touching me with hands like stumps. Immediately, I felt guilty.

Fatty sighed, unsure how to comfort me. I didn’t know either and hoped sleep might blot out the pain.

Personnel were less harsh with us for a while. They didn’t fine us for talking as we worked and we were allowed to keep the radio on all the time. Chen and Ting never showed up again, which distressed me. I was desperate to have Manager He get rid of Xiaofan. I couldn’t even bear to look her in the eye.

Manager He would be incurably frustrated, away from his work, away from his great plans and from Schnelleck. Would he still make a deal? If there was even the remotest chance, Manager He would find a way.

It was half past two on Thursday afternoon when personnel sent a message that Manager He was alive. My fighter had survived again! All thoughts of what he might look like, his injuries, flew out of my mind. Dizzying joy soaked through my body. I wanted to say, “Ha! You failed!” to Xiaofan. He would be returning to the factory.

That evening, in the dorm, I unfolded my crumpled suit with a renewed sense of purpose. I had a second chance at happiness. Fatty said I looked as powerful as one of the top dogs in personnel, wearing shoulder pads like that.

“Good enough to be his wife?” I asked.

There was no answer in the darkness.

Our reunion in his bureau was just like old times. He poured me a glass of baijiu and offered me candy. His face was unblemished, apart from a small cut on his forehead which I discovered whilst stroking his hair. He was a little stiff, having fallen in his hurry to escape the factory, but I was very gentle with him. The subject of his leaving me, of not making sure I was safely out, was never mentioned. What point was there in upsetting each other?

I told him over and over how much I missed him as I planted little kisses over his face and neck. I waited patiently for him to undress, and slid off my overalls to make it easier. For the first time ever, Manager He was concerned to give me what I wanted. He nuzzled at my ear and stroked me with tenderness.

“Tell me how,” he murmured. “Here?”

He spent a long time holding my feet, rubbing his face against them, he put my toes inside his mouth and his tongue darted like a fish. It reminded me of wading barefoot in a warm river. The bureau was nicely lit; the spirit lamp gave off a steady glow.

He kissed between my legs. It was a feeling of becoming taller, the dragon waking. I tugged Manager’s hair for him to stop, before it was too late, but he kept going. I put my hand in my mouth and bit hard. He watched me.

We made love on his bureau floor. I bathed in his weight, so solid, so real – so alive! My hand fell across his shoulder blade.

Afterwards, in a doze, Manager He murmured “performance quotas.”

“What did you just say?” I asked, aggrieved that he should mention work so soon.

“It will please him, my star … my amazing star.”

“What will?”

But he rolled over to sleep and I put it down to him talking gibberish – something which often happened after his climax.

By the time he woke up, I was already seated at the desk, flicking through some recent paperwork relating to productivity, though not really concentrating on the numbers. I was still swooning over the idea of marrying Manager He. I pictured us living in one of those brand new apartments on the outskirts of the city, driving to work in our 4x4.

“Mai Ling,” he said dreamily. “Come here, I want to talk.”

I knelt beside him.

“It’s about Schnelleck.”

“I guess he isn’t coming any more?”

“Yes, of course he is. He doesn’t know anything about the fire, only that I’ve been in hospital. He believes that’s why I postponed his visit. I have no intention of letting him know the truth.”

“Surely he can’t visit a burnt out factory?”

Manager He frowned and his top lip curled in a way I had never seen before. “You mean you don’t believe we can do it? You’ve lost faith in me?”

“No, no, that’s not true. I just don’t know how. I thought you would have made a contingency plan, that’s all.”

“I didn’t waste a minute in hospital. I have it all worked out. You and I will meet him in town.”

“Won’t he want to visit the factory?” I asked. “No foreigner comes all the way to China to meet up and sip tea, even Chinese tea.”

“There isn’t time to explain it all now.”

He was right; it was already five o’clock in the morning. I had stayed longer than on any other occasion.

“I need you to promise you’ll go along with the plan and not question my judgement. Do you understand?”

Manager He’s pupils were deep, endless. I wondered if he was capable of sound judgement after the fire. How could he possibly win Schnelleck over? And how could our factory – blackened and destroyed – be impressive?

“I’m not sure,” I whispered.

He lit a cigarette and stared at the portrait of Deng Xiaoping that now curled away from the wall. The smell of tobacco sickened me so soon after the fire.

“How can I achieve the four modernisations without labourers?” I heard him say, as though he was making a direct plea to the president.

I hadn’t noticed before, but Manager He’s shoulders sloped terribly. He also had a little hump beneath his neck on account of the long hours he spent stooped over his desk. I felt suddenly repulsed. I had given myself away too easily.

“I will leave you in peace, Manager. You must be very weary, after such a long day at work and so soon after being in hospital.”

“So now you’re deserting me?” he snapped.

I didn’t like his bullish tone.

“What’s got into you, 2204, are you too proud to even answer a straightforward question? Has being a star gone to your head?”

“No,” my voice was sulky, childish. “We should talk more tomorrow.”

“There isn’t time tomorrow, don’t you understand?” he spun around, extinguishing his cigarette on the tin of candies and clutched my face between his hands. I need you more than ever, Mai Ling. Things have gone badly wrong for us … But I’m not going to give up. I’m still holding onto my dream for this factory – which is more than can be said for the other managers. They’re already talking about shutting this place down and moving onto a different city. It’s as if no-one believes in anything anymore. That’s why I need you.” He smothered my face with kisses.

I felt a sudden rush of pity.

“What must I do?”

“Trust in me.”

The sensible part of my brain said it was stupid to trust a flawed plan. Mother always said, “Dishes without salt are tasteless, words without reason are powerless.” But since when did I ever listen to reason? Running away was not playing by the rules. If I had been a good, obedient daughter I would be living in the coffin shop with Li Quifang and his mother, knitting jumpers for our baby and funeral gowns for the dead. Didn’t Father also say, “A craftsman is thirty percent free and seventy percent beholden to his employer”?

“Alright, I’ll do as you say,” I acquiesced.

“And will you trust me completely?”

“With my life.”

Manager He breathed a visible sigh of relief. I thought he was going to wrap his arms around me and hug me tenderly, like a lover should. Instead, he reached over and pushed his desk drawer shut.

I reached for him. “Hold me, I’ve missed you.”

He held me so tight, I could barely move. If I hadn’t loved him I would have found it unbearable, I would have wanted to push him away and run. But I did love him and so I stayed there until he let go and when he did, when his arms dropped to his side, I felt weightless, like a kite caught in a pocket of air. I remembered Ren, so high above the world and free, riding on that ferris wheel, the way I would always remember her.

Nancy expected to see a yellow haze of pollution as the plane nudged its way through the cumulus. But that had been sixteen years ago. The Beijing air now was crystalline, and the tops of buildings sparkled against a stratospheric-blue dawn.

They took a high-speed train from the airport into the city. Iain and Ricki were in their own world, taking pictures. Jen was quiet. Already her daughters looked more at home in China than they did in white, suburban Altrincham. Nancy worried that a stranger would not guess they belonged to her. That old familiar dread of losing them clutched at her stomach. She fanned herself with a copy of
The Times.

She’d read about China’s olympian attempts to clean up the air: banning half of the city’s three million cars from the roads on any given day, closing down factories, relocating entire industries. There were to be 50,000 bikes available to rent. Their efforts had not been in vain, thought Nancy, as she breathed in humid, unpolluted air.

Their room was on the twenty-first floor; worth every penny of the measly pay-off money Nancy had been given for her redundancy. They took a stroll before dark. Billboards were awash with the Olympic slogan;
One world, one dream,
translated into English, French, Spanish and even Greek. Chinese flags hung proudly from almost every store on the torch relay-route. A small sign of the unrest over Tibet were a few students wearing
Anti-Riot & Explore the Truth
T-shirts. Otherwise, the atmosphere was one of exuberant, well-controlled patriotism. Still, Nancy held tightly to her handbag which contained almost £500 contingency funds in RMB.

They bought burgers from McDonald’s and ate in a square near the Olympic Village. Barely a minute had passed, when a volunteer asked if Iain needed assistance. Her English was so slick it verged on robotic.

“No thank you, we’ve just stopped for a bite to eat.”

She pointed to an undefined distance. “A bite to eat, very well, sir, enjoy your meal over there, please.”

It wasn’t worth arguing the case for liberty. “Come on girls, let’s find somewhere else,” Nancy said.

They joined the crowds taking photos around the perimeter of the Bird’s Nest. The stadium was a jaw-dropping feat of engineering, an iconic building, created with the same indomitable optimism as those who built The Great Wall. Nancy imagined the thousands of construction workers who’d toiled for five years to assemble its vast steel structure. Imagined, too, the local women, older than her, made homeless in order that China might appear ready to welcome the world.

Nancy scanned the passing faces. May was the street vendor selling Olympic headbands, the young Chinese woman pushing a stroller, the suited woman rushing home as she talked business on her mobile phone. There was no turning back from her country, her street, her sky, her face. They had come to find out about May and she was everywhere. But had May ever been to Beijing? Or walked its streets? What did she know of China’s Olympic fervour, their campaign to win the most gold medals and the single-minded way they went about bringing honour to their nation? May said she was part of a new generation of Chinese that could afford foreign travel and wanted to see beyond her national borders. That’s what brought her to England. She also said she was from a small village in Hunan and had won a scholarship to study engineering in Nanchang – truth or lie? Maybe Beijing was her birthplace? Maybe her family had lived in this very district before it was bulldozed to make way for the 10 million tourists and athletes and global media?

There was only one person who would know. She smoothed the piece of paper on which she’d written the name of his hospital.

The next day, Nancy scrutinised her daughters for signs of ‘emotional trauma’, as the social worker called it. She guessed Ricki might retreat into herself or wander off alone, but in fact her daughter appeared relaxed, happy even, to be away from Manchester.