My Favourite Wife Read online

  Bill was certain that he had seen both of them at Paradise Mansions in the scrum of women who had gathered around the stalled red Mini. And, now he came to think of it, the one with the mobile phone looked familiar too. But it was not easy to tell who was touting for trade and who was just out on the town.

  ‘Are these women all prostitutes?’ Bill said.

  Shane thought about it. ‘It’s prostitution with Chinese characteristics,’ he said, looking up at Jurgen the German in the DJ box. The money was all gone but Jurgen was still standing up there with that foolish grin, as if he had made some kind of point. ‘There goes Jurgen’s profit margin for the last fiscal quarter,’ Shane said. ‘Prat.’ He nodded at the laughing girls at the bar. They were stroking the Frenchman’s head and cackling. ‘I know those two. They’re teachers. Mathematics and Chinese. They’re just making a little money on the side for their designer handbags and glad-rags. Prostitutes? That seems a little harsh, mate. That seems a little brutal. Some of them are just here to dance the night away. They’re as innocent as you and me. Well – you. The Paradise Mansions girls are saving themselves for the right man – even if he is married to someone else. That’s the theory – at Paradise Mansions they are all good little second wives – although of course they do have a lot of lonely nights. The others, they just want their small taste of the economic miracle that they’ve seen on TV, and they can’t get that on what a bloody teacher earns, which is, oh, a few peanuts above nothing.’ He thoughtfully chugged down his Tsingtao.

  ‘And the authorities just condone all this, do they?’ said Bill. He knew he sounded like a prude. He knew the tone was all wrong. He liked Shane. He wanted to understand. But the world was turned upside down. Commercial sex was not morally reprehensible out here. It was a career option, or a part-time job, or something a teacher did when she should have been marking homework.

  ‘Not at all,’ Shane said. ‘When they hear about it the authorities are shocked – shocked! Let’s see – year before last we were all in Julu Lu. Last year we were all in Maoming Nan Lu. Now we’re in – where are we now? Oh yeah – Tong Ren Lu. Next year we’ll be somewhere else. Every now and again, the authorities get tough and move us a block down the road. That’s China.’

  A skinny woman in her middle thirties danced herself between Bill and Shane, her arms above her head, a smile splitting her face. She was ten years older than most of the women in here, but in better shape. It was the one who looked like a dancer. She was a beauty, Bill could see that, but the beauty had been worn down by time and disappointment. You would not mind growing old with a woman who looked like that, just as long as you met her early enough. For he could not help believing that some man or some men long gone had had the best of her, and he thought that was a terrible thing to believe about anyone. But he could not help it. She was smiling in his face.

  ‘This one won’t dance,’ Shane told her. ‘Please don’t ask as refusal can cause offence.’

  ‘I teach,’ she said. ‘I give lessons.’ She had an improbable French accent. Teech, she said. I geeff. She actually spoke English with a French accent. How did that happen? Shane said something in Chinese and she shrugged and danced away, giving Bill a little wave. He watched her go, with a pang of regret. Shane laughed.

  ‘Forget about that one if you’re looking to get your end away,’ he said. ‘You get all sorts in here, mate. That one’s a taxi dancer who’ll boogie all night but that’s it. She dances with men for money and then goes home alone to Paradise Mansions. A taxi dancer in the twenty-first century! Strange but true. Then there are the pro-ams.’ He gestured his empty beer bottle towards the teachers. ‘Shanghai is completely unregulated. It’s not like other parts of Asia. Not like Manila. Not like Bangkok. Not like Tokyo. The women in here don’t work for the bar. They’re punters, like you and me. They work for themselves. Like the great Deng Xiaoping said, “To get rich is glorious.” But don’t think they’re promiscuous. It’s not that. They’re just practical, it’s just too hard a place to not be practical. Hard for them, that is – not hard for the likes of us. China’s not a hardship posting for you and me, mate. Don’t listen to what those whining expats tell you – mostly Poms, mate. No offence intended.’

  ‘None taken,’ Bill said, sipping his beer. Maybe he should be getting back. Maybe he should have gone straight home. His suit was going to reek of cigarette smoke.

  ‘China is an easy place to live because everything is on a clear financial basis,’ Shane said. ‘It’s only complicated if you choose to make it so.’

  Then the woman with the mobile phone was back, yanking at Bill’s sleeve, giving him a gentle shove and as he turned to her he saw that peculiarly Shanghainese gesture for the very first time -the thumb and the index finger rubbed together, followed by the open palm.

  Give me money, mister.

  He would see that gesture a thousand times before he left this city. They might have four thousand years of civilisation behind them, but they weren’t too big on please and thank you.

  In her free hand the woman was holding a photograph of a small, unsmiling boy. He was about the same age as Holly.

  Bill fumbled with his wallet and gave her a 50-RMB note. She stared at it for a moment and then turned away with a disgusted snort.

  ‘They don’t take fifties,’ Shane laughed, putting an arm around him. ‘There’s a minimum payment of one hundred, even if you’re just being nice.’

  ‘How the hell can there be a minimum payment for being nice?’ Bill said.

  ‘Because their motto is “Haven’t you got anything bigger?”’ Shane said. He slapped Bill on the back. He was happy that Bill was here. Bill had the sense that despite living on a beauty mountain, his colleague had been lonely. ‘You’ll get the hang of it,’ Shane said. ‘And then you’ll find you’re in the closest place to heaven.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Bill said bleakly. ‘Poverty is a great aphrodisiac.’ He watched the woman with the son and the mobile phone being ignored by a group of young tourists.

  ‘That’s right,’ Shane happily agreed. ‘And don’t forget – Kai Tak rules.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Bill said, suddenly irritated by Shane’s assumptions, and by all of the big Australian’s unearned intimacy. ‘I can keep my mouth shut. But I’ve got a wife and kid at home.’

  Shane frowned, genuinely perplexed. ‘But what’s that got to do with anything?’

  Bill looked at the skinny dancer. She waved at him. She was too old to be in here, he thought. But then everybody in here was the wrong age. Too young, too old. He looked away. ‘So I’m not going to be playing around,’ he said, not caring what he sounded like.

  But Shane just studied the golden glow of his Tsingtao and said nothing.

  And then Jurgen was asking them for cab fare, because he had thrown all his cash away, the stupid bastard, and Bill was looking at his watch and Shane was shouting for just one more round, just one more, come on, Bill, you’re not like the rest of those miserable Poms, and Bill agreed, he wasn’t like the rest of them, those pampered private school wankers, and then suddenly it was three o’clock in the morning and they were having one absolutely last drink, a nightcap, you have to have a fucking nightcap, mate, in a dive Shane knew where a Filippino band did songs by Pink and Avril Lavigne, and some other girl was showing Bill a picture of her daughter and Bill was pulling out his wallet to show her a picture of Holly, and giving her a 100-RMB note, and then giving her another one, and then another, and wishing her luck and telling her that she was a wonderful mother, and Shane was singing along to ‘Complicated’ in his hearty Melbourne baritone and then huddling with Bill in a cramped red leather booth somewhere else and saying, But there are just so many of them, Bill, just so many women in the world – how can you ever choose the special one, how can you ever really know? just before the two teachers turned up, bombed out of their brains and calling loudly for more mojitos all round, and they stumbled off into what was left of the night with Shane sandwiched
between them, all laughing happily, as though it was the most innocent thing in the world.

  Then Bill was all alone in the tree-lined streets of the French Concession in the soft milky light that precedes dawn in Shanghai, unable to find a cab in the city where they say you can always find a cab, and one solitary street hawker was going to work, setting up his sad little display of cigarettes on the pavement, and on the far side of the street Bill saw a small hotel with a lone taxi parked outside, the driver asleep at the wheel.

  Bill paused to let a tow truck rumble past, and on the back of it he saw there was a red Mini Cooper, and although the front half of it was smashed like a broken accordion, the guts of its ruined engine spilling out and the windscreen shattered, the front wheels just ragged strips of mangled metal and rubber, he could clearly make out the undamaged roof with its flag of the People’s Republic of China, the red and yellow glinting in the light of the new day.

  SIX

  Most days he didn’t bother with lunch.

  The only excuse for lunch was entertaining clients. Otherwise there was no real need to ever leave his desk. There was an old ayi who wheeled a trolley through the office, the Shanghai equivalent of a tea lady, and she sold sandwiches and noodles, coffee and green cha. But Bill liked to get out of the building in the middle of the day, just so he could stretch limbs that had been still for too long and breathe some air that wasn’t chilled by air conditioning, even if it was just for fifteen minutes.

  There was a coffee shop near their building and at noon he headed towards it, inhaling the weather, smelling the river, when suddenly a hand reached out and grabbed his tie.

  ‘Off to lunch?’ Becca said, pulling him into a doorway. She pressed her mouth against his face, a recklessly aimed kiss that he felt on his lips and cheek.

  ‘Lunch?’ he said, as if he had never heard of such a thing. She kissed him again, full on the mouth this time. ‘I thought I might get a sandwich.’

  ‘Oh,’ she laughed, pressing herself against him, feeling his instant response and loving it. ‘That doesn’t sound like much for a growing boy like you. Let me tell you about today’s specials.’

  She pulled him deeper into the doorway, kissing him harder, fingers in his hair. It was cool and dark. He looked around and was vaguely aware that they were in the entrance to a condemned building that was being torn down to make way for more office space. Men in white shirts and dark ties passed by with their briefcases and their coffee cups, giving them the occasional glance. Bill swung her around so that she was pinned against the wall and he had his back to the street.

  ‘You’re nuts,’ he said, and he looked at her face, so close that he could feel her breath. ‘I missed you,’ he said, and hugged her as hard as he dared.

  It had been three days since the firm’s dinner on the Bund and they hadn’t seen each other since. Too many late nights when he had arrived home after Becca and Holly had gone to bed, and too many early mornings when he had quietly let himself out of the apartment while they were still sleeping.

  ‘Do we know each other?’ Becca said, her hands on his arms, squeezing, her eyes half-closed, her mouth smiling. He pulled her close and kissed her, holding her as if he would never let her get away.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and she could feel how much he had missed her. ‘I remember you.’

  And he remembered her too.

  Shane squinted at Bill through a ferocious hangover. ‘How am I looking, mate?’

  They were in the show home on the Green Acres site in Yangdong, sitting by a fountain in the shape of a dragon’s head that wasn’t working yet. On the drive north Tiger had stopped the car three times so that Shane could stumble off into some scrubby bushes.

  ‘You look better,’ Bill said. ‘You’re getting some colour back in your face.’

  Shane exhaled. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘But the colour is green,’ Bill said.

  ‘That’s not so good,’ Shane said. ‘Bad thing about a threesome is that one of them always ends up staring out the window. Puts you right off your stroke, mate.’ He brightened slightly, his beefy face turning a lighter shade of green. ‘But the good thing about a threesome is that even if one drops out, then you’re still having sex with someone.’

  Bill had got back to the office to find that Devlin was sending a team to Yangdong. Chairman Sun had called a snap press conference and their clients at DeutscherMonde were nervous. Who knew what he might say if the Burgundy and Sprite started to flow? Bill looked up as Nancy Deng came through the front door with one of the Germans, the long-haired one in a leather jacket, Wolfgang, the one who looked like a mechanic who had won the Lottery.

  ‘Here he comes,’ Nancy said.

  Shane and Bill stood up as Chairman Sun entered the show home, flanked by a delegation from the local government and a dozen members of the media.

  At a discreet distance, Bill, Shane and Nancy Deng followed with their anxious German as Sun led the press pack through gleaming rooms, down sweeping staircases, under crystal chandeliers and round an Olympian swimming pool, talking in Shanghainese all the while. His bodyguard, Ho, that slab of a man, was never far from his side.

  At that lunch Bill had pegged the Chairman as one of those men who rise to the top by keeping their mouths shut, but clearly when he did open up, he was a man who was accustomed to being listened to, even without the presence of a translator.

  The journalists were all Chinese apart from two Shanghai-based Westerners. One of them was a razor-thin American woman in Jimmy Choos, and the other was Alice Greene. She smiled at Bill, whom she had not seen since his wedding day, and he nodded back.

  In his experience journalists were rarely good news for lawyers.

  They were going outside. Chairman Sun led the way out of the show home and Bill thought it was like stepping out of a Las Vegas hotel on to the surface of the moon.

  As far as the eye could see, the bleak landscape was mud, churned by construction work and the summer rain. The farms had long been bulldozed and the barren fields where the new houses would stand were already partitioned, ropes staking out the plots of land, parcelling out the future. There was a cop on the door of the show home, a young Public Security Bureau policewoman with a fading love bite on her neck. As they filed outside Bill saw that there was security everywhere, although it was not easy to tell where the private guards ended and the PSB state police began.

  There was something curiously martial about the site. Inside the wire that staked out the development there was a long, orderly line of snout-nosed trucks with red flags fluttering on their bonnets. Men in bright yellow hard hats swarmed between orange diggers adding to the piles of earth, their lights flashing in the mist. Everywhere there were patches of water with an oily, rainbow-coloured sheen, and on the far side of the wire, like a defeated army corralled into a POW camp, the farmers and their families stood watching.

  The lawn had yet to be laid outside the show home and the woman in Jimmy Choos began to topple backwards as her heels sank into the mud. Bill caught her and she flashed him a professional smile.

  ‘I’m from Shanghai Chic,’ she said, holding on to him for support. ‘Where are you from? Isn’t this hilarious? We’re doing a big piece.’

  On the far side of the wire, a few bored-looking security men were attempting to move the villagers on. But they didn’t want to move and began to argue with the guards. Then the dispute suddenly erupted into fury, the kind of hysterical, almost tearful scene that Bill had seen break out without warning on the streets of Shanghai. Press the wrong nerve, he thought, and all at once these people go ballistic.

  He watched as a grubby-faced boy of about twelve drew back from the wire, and picked up something from the ground. He hefted it in his hand – a broken brick, discarded by the builders – and then threw it high and hard in the direction of the palace that had appeared on their land. The brick fell short, but they all turned to look as it clattered against the show home’s cast-iron gates.

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p; Orders were barked and the villagers took off across the field with the security guards on their tail. Bill saw that Ho had disconnected himself from Chairman Sun’s side and was with them.

  ‘Hilarious,’ said the woman from Shanghai Chic. ‘Isn’t this hilarious?’

  The boy who had thrown the brick paused by a neat stack of fresh bricks and began hurling them at the chasing pack. An old man joined him, one of those wiry old Chinese men without a gram of fat on his body, and Ho and the security guards hid behind a bulldozer as the bricks rained down. Then they started throwing the bricks back.

  Bill shook his head. ‘It’s like a medieval battle,’ he said.

  ‘China is a medieval country,’ Shane said. ‘A medieval country with broadband.’ He looked across at the press delegation. ‘We should put a stop to this, mate,’ he said. ‘It’s not good in front of journalists. Even tame journalists.’

  ‘I’ll deal with it,’ Bill said. ‘You get Tiger.’ He began walking towards the press pack. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if you would care to step back inside, Chairman Sun will take questions.’

  But nobody was listening. They were watching the guards chasing the old man and the boy across the open mud flats. The old man was too slow, and when he fell the guards were immediately on him, lifting him by his arms. The boy had stopped, uncertain if he should run or fight, and then they had him too. As Ho barked instructions, the guards began hauling them back to the show home.

  ‘Hello, Bill,’ Alice smiled. ‘Going to get rich in China?’

  Bill smiled along with her. ‘That’s the plan,’ he said, watching the security guards. They were taking the old man and the boy to the PSB. That’s what they were going to do, he saw. Turn them over to the law. The cops had gone to the gates to meet them.