said. ‘Because I’m married it makes it easier. The authorities know I’ve got a son to come back for.’
Little did the authorities know the irony of this. From what I could tell, Liang’s son did not have a father who would pine for him while suffering in a foreign land.
Liang was looking out of the window as he spoke, with his back to me. And it was then that I chose to kiss him.
The kiss did change our lives. The relationship did take on a sexual dimension but was dominated more by intimacy than sex. We both seemed to have difficulty in expressing ourselves sexually – we didn’t easily fall into each other’s arms, we were embarrassed about kissing and bed was never mentioned. Whether he thought of it I don’t really know. It seemed out of reach, impossible and I’m not sure I wanted it. We substituted a physical manifestation of our closeness with looks into the eyes, standing close, touching fingers when we thought nobody would see. Of course, he always pretended it wasn’t happening. It was not tantalizingly erotic as neither of us understood eroticism and wouldn’t have known how to bring it about. I was certain this was more like love than the insipidness I had with Martin, who was, I suppose, a kind of fiancé. I was happy. I allowed myself the luxury of what I thought was illicit love. The fact that it might not have seemed like passion in other people’s eyes didn’t mean it was unexciting for me. Quite the reverse. I hummed with it. I had a permanent grin on my face, but in a country where grinning reflected embarrassment, a feeling appropriate to a tall foreigner, my secret was safe.
As the spring opened up into flowers and warmth in April, Liang and I began to be seen around together more. I used to get little gifts for him at the Friendship Store. He wasn’t allowed in so he would wait with the bikes outside and I’d go in and spend my foreigner’s money.
‘What can I get you, Liang? Just say what you want. It’s easy. I’ve got hard currency. Look!’ and I’d wave my notes at him.
I couldn’t fail to notice how his eyes lit up at the thought of goodies normally out of reach to all but party officials.
‘No, really. I don’t want anything, Alison.’
I’d go in and get him a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label and some Marlboros. He’d have to keep them at my flat. It wouldn’t have done for him to be seen with these gifts. He’d have been criticized; that is, hauled up in front of some bossy committee to explain himself. I’d started smoking Phoenixes. I kept the Marlboros for him. I even bought him – silk tie of the kind favoured by visiting Americans, but of course he couldn’t wear it. I wondered if I was overdoing it, making a bit of a fool of myself. I just wanted to please him and give him things he could have only from me.
As the chilly weather suddenly stopped I shed my army jacket and began to wear a skirt. People noticed and I thought they were making snide comments. I hoped I was beginning to look a bit less foreign. My hair had grown and I’d put it in bunches like the local girls. Actually, I didn’t dare risk the pudding-basin barber. We must have made a comic pair, I suppose, me six inches taller than him. But it didn’t matter.
At least so I thought until one day when he came along looking very agitated.
‘The Wai Ban says I mustn’t spend so much time with you.’
‘What do you mean? Do they suspect? What did they say?’
I felt panic-stricken. This could mean trouble for both of us. It could mean him losing his job or worse. It could mean me losing him.
‘They’re worried about me being influenced by you. And they’ve told Wang about you.’
For a second I couldn’t remember who Wang was. Then I remembered she was his wife.
‘What did she say?’
‘Not much.’
‘What d’you mean “not much”?’
‘Well, she has her own life. She’s never met a foreigner. She doesn’t know what to think.’
‘Isn’t she upset?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, you’re seeing another woman.’
‘She’s Chinese.’
‘But she’s still your wife.’
‘Yes. But she doesn’t see it like you do.’
‘You’re close enough to have had a child together, and you’re telling me she isn’t jealous?’
‘Anyone can have a child. It’s easy.’
He was talking about the thing most Westerners thought they wanted out of their relationships and dismissing it as if it was the easy bit. Getting someone into bed made people forgo understanding and kindness, as if sex would replace friendship or be an improvement on it. But from what I could see Liang and Wang didn’t seem to have much apart from the evidence of a fleeting sexual encounter. They appeared to have an easy-going or even apathetic tolerance of each other, and maybe some woolly notion of duty.
‘Well, what does it mean? Are they saying we’ve got to stop seeing each other?’ I couldn’t bear to think about it.
‘They want an explanation. They’re trying to be reasonable. And Wang has offered to divorce me.’ He added this last bombshell as a sort of afterthought.
I added up in seconds what it would mean if he was divorced. Would he then expect me to marry him? The thought ricocheted around in my brain. What about Martin? What about Mummy and Daddy? What about my friends? The thought of being married to a five-foot, two-inch Chinaman appalled me suddenly. He must have seen my expression of anguish and read it completely wrongly. All was confusion. Did I love him or had it suddenly stopped like a watch stops when it is overwound and the spring snaps?
‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘It would be wonderful.’
Wonderful for whom? I saw all the advantages for him and none for me. He would unload an unwanted wife and child and acquire the much coveted passport out of China – a foreign spouse. I would be married to a foreigner who would never fit in at home and who would make me a laughing stock. The thought was impossible. Could I see him at the Point to Point or the Hunt Ball, or meeting the vicar or Uncle Basil? They would all be horrified. I began to see the value of Martin. He was of my world, my sort. I had stepped into an alien place and been befriended by an alien. Liang was China and was inseparable from it. I could not blend the two worlds – the only piece of this world that I could take home was my picture of peonies and kittens.
Since I was lost for words and Liang was evidently hoping for a positive response, he said, ‘You could come with me to America. We could travel together and get out of this dump. We could be free together.’ What did he mean ‘free’? I was already free.
I looked into his eyes, then looked away to his frayed grubby collar and the tide-mark on his neck.
‘But you can’t just leave your family like that – they haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘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