The Piano Teacher

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.