The Piano Teacher

‘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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