Flying High

‘I can. Lots of people do. I’ve been applying for scholarships for months and now at last one has come through. I’m going to Ohio in July.’

‘You never said anything to me,’ I said, hurt and beginning to be angry that I had not been part of this plan.

‘I wasn’t sure until yesterday.’ He started to fidget irritatingly with a loose button on his jacket. He couldn’t bring himself to look me in the eye.

So my part in the grand plan had been to help him prepare himself for the peculiarities of the West in order to make the escape less painful.

‘Do you really want to marry me, then?’

‘Of course. It would make things much easier. As the husband of an Englishwoman, I would be able to …’

I stopped listening. I was right. He was after a passport. How had I failed to see it from the very first? Why had I thought he cared for me? An icy trickle of disappointment pierced me with startling pain. Facing reality was like discovering I hadn’t won the jackpot after all. After months of the luxury of fantasy I now had to return to mundane reality. I couldn’t let the ice sear an irreparable wound. I shut it out.

There had been a point in both our lives where he needed to turn away from China and I needed to turn away from England. We had met in the centre of a figure of eight, travelling in opposite directions. We generated a small spark, a misunderstood spark as it turned out, as we passed, and now our only route was away from each other.

‘Take your wife,’ I said. ‘I’m leaving here and going back to England.’

He looked up at me. I had intruded on a dream. He remained lost in reflection for a moment, then seemed to emerge gradually like a creature coming out of hibernation.

‘Yes.’ He said it with an air of relief.

‘I’m sorry if you misunderstood my behaviour. We Westerners are not like you Chinese. We’re a bit impulsive, you know. It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘No.’

He made his excuses and left. I didn’t have any more painting lessons and we did not communicate any more after that meeting.

Much as I wanted to weep and feel wretched, I couldn’t. The moment had passed and I had evaded that peak. I was frustrated and even guilty that I couldn’t summon up any real misery. I felt numb and blank. It wasn’t the numbness of shock. It was the numbness of a bemused vacuum.

Eventually at the end of the summer term it was time for me to leave. Martin’s trip was fixed and I was to meet him in Peking. While I was packing I discovered a pair of Liang’s gloves. He had left them behind on the day we first kissed and I’d kept them hidden in my underwear drawer. I took them out and felt a slight pang. I sniffed them and they smelt of sourness and cheap plastic. They were too small for me to wear. They were useless and ugly. I threw them in the bin.

As always I had trouble at the airport, with nobody to help with my bags, being sent in different directions by different officials, and was glad to be leaving this irritating mayhem. I wasn’t all that keen on the grand tour of China, but at least we’d be insulated from the chaos inside an air-conditioned bus.

I got on to the plane at last after much pushing and shoving, but of course someone was sitting in my seat. They never seemed to manage these things efficiently, and having got up at the crack of dawn to be chauffeured to the airport in the university limousine, I was pretty tired and irritable already. A woman with a baby had dumped her things across three seats – there were endless gaping bags of blankets, fruit, enamel cups and Heaven knows what else.

‘Excuse me,’ I said in English, hoping she’d get the message. She stared up at me. She was a tiny delicate woman, maybe from one of the Minorities. She was like a pretty doll with perfect almond eyes, peach cheeks and a long black plait, and wearing a pink silk jacket, old-fashioned among the Crimplene glitter creations worn by other girls. The baby was bundled into several layers of shawls in spite of the heat and was wearing those disgusting crotchless trousers so that his little raw bottom protruded. He laughed as she swung him on to her shoulder and kicked his tiny feet in his little red cotton shoes. I felt large and ungainly, gawky and imperfect. I shifted my bulky body into the aisle to let her pass as she gave up her seat without a murmur. She shuffled with her belongings towards the smoking section of the plane at the back.

I flopped into the saggy loose-covered seat and clipped on my belt. I was leaving. I’d said my goodbyes, had my banquets, drunk my toasts to mutual friendship and was now free to be a tourist with the rest of them. We soared into the sky, and the city, still grey in summer brightness with patches of dusty green where there were parks, receded.

I didn’t look back.

Martin would be waiting in Peking and after a lot of hanging about waiting for bags to appear, I spotted him beyond the barrier and waved. I was more glad to see him than I thought I would be. I felt a bit like a soldier coming home after an arduous campaign. I had survived. I was comforted by his familiar brown tweed jacket and looked forward to his tobacco smell.

Emerging from behind him was a man that looked exactly like Liang. He had much shorter hair and was wearing a rather baggy Western-style suit. It was Liang – I recognized the tie I had bought him at the Friendship Store. Why was he here? How could he have known I would be on this plane? I was too noticeable to hide myself. I would have to brazen it out.

‘Hello,’ I said, smiling.

‘Hello, darling,’ Martin said, leaning forward to peck my cheek. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’

I looked away from him to see what had happened to Liang. He was standing there next to Martin, the same grin on his face as when we had first met so many months before.

‘How are you, Miss Alison? It’s a pleasure to see you.’

He was like a stranger.

‘Mr Liang, my painting teacher. Mr Roberts, a friend from England.’

They greeted each other formally, Martin towering like a bear a foot over Liang and leaning slightly to reach his outstretched hand. I noticed Liang’s dirty fingernails. Then Liang’s grin changed focus and became a distant stare, his eyes seeking someone in the crowd.

‘Excuse me, I’m meeting my wife. We’re being briefed for our trip to the States.’

And Liang wandered off into the throng. A few minutes later he emerged carrying suitcases, baskets, nylon holdalls and string bags, followed by the doll in the pink silk jacket. She was exquisite: three inches shorter than Liang, carrying the beaming child.

He did not bring her over to be introduced, but as they walked away he looked smugly over his shoulder at me, as if he was carrying away the spoils of the campaign.

THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES (#ulink_c469b260-b965-5d63-a626-4732f9e82f0d)

Jude Jones

Jude Jones is a native of Hampshire and studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music. An assortment of careers followed, including opera, music-theatre, archaeology, stage-management, acting, busking, script-writing and an unsuccessful attempt at shop assisting. In the eighties, she was artistic director, actress and writer for a small-scale touring theatre company based in the East Midlands. Now equipped with two small sons, she is back in Hampshire where she started out and is completing her third unpublished novel.

THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES (#ulink_c469b260-b965-5d63-a626-4732f9e82f0d)

My mum never knows when I skive now since I met the old girl up at Hob’s Lane. Makes me laugh the things I get to do these days and mostly everyone leaves me be which is dead ace. I’d say bugger them all but I ain’t allowed to. The old girl stop me from swearing, see? Though I does when she ain’t around.

You have to go past the old mill to get to Hob’s Lane. It ain’t a proper road though. It’s a kind of track with this stream by it and you get the cars go along it every now and then but only if they’re coming up to the cottages there. It’s a ‘No Through Road’ and it don’t even go where it was supposed to go now they built the big motorway past it. No Through is right. There’s this high fence at the end and then you turns and has to go back so the folks what walk their dogs there goes mainly round by the woods now and leave the Hob to me.

The old girl told me her name once but it was funny. I mean it weren’t the kind of old-fashioned name your mum might have or your gran even. So I lets it go. I calls her Missis and she calls me Nipper and that’s OK. We don’t like fuss, me and her.

We does chatting mostly. She knows how to gab, she does. Not that she’s particular lonesome for all she lives in the water. She got her mates same as me. I know most of them. There’s Foreman, he’s a slippery old sod. Pretends he’s a fish. And Longman, he’s the big oak. Then there’s Ringman and I tell you about him in a bit. The old girl says he’s shy. I ain’t seen Littleman yet. Littleman’s whatsit – invisible.

My mum used to bawl me out when I went up the Hob but she’s quieter now because we done the change.

When I first seen the Missis I thought it was some bored old wrinkly what topped herself in the stream. I went close to look because I ain’t never seen no corpse. Then she sits up, like she was finishing off a sunbathe and I wet me knickers. ’Course she ain’t real old. Not underneath. Not like my mum.

‘What them chaps doing over there?’

‘They’re building the new motorway, Missis.’

‘A road? They’re building a bloody road near my stream?’

‘Yeah. Why you lying in the water?’

‘A bloody road! If that don’t beat all!’

‘I thought you was dead.’

‘Well, I ain’t. A bleeding road! You know how noisy them things are?’