She tensed suddenly as Lang’s voice reached them from outside.
‘We’re here,’ she called back, showing Olivia out into the courtyard where he was waiting.
‘Grandfather wants to bring out the family photographs,’ he said. ‘He’s got hundreds of them, all ready to show Olivia.’
‘And I’m longing to see them,’ she said.
The largest room in the north house had been laid out in preparation, with a table in the centre covered in photographs. To Olivia’s amazement the pictures stretched back sixty years to when Meihui had been a beautiful young girl. She must have been about sixteen in the first one, sitting in the curve of Tao’s arm. His face as he looked down on his little sister bore an expression of great pride, and Olivia thought she could still see it there now as he regarded her picture. He was almost in tears over the little sister who had meant the world to him, and who he’d last seen when she was eighteen, departing for ever with the man she loved.
‘And that’s him?’ Olivia asked as an Englishman appeared in the pictures.
‘That’s John Mitchell, my grandfather,’ Lang agreed.
He seemed about twenty-three, not particularly handsome but with a broad, hearty face and a smile that beamed with good nature. Meihui’s eyes, as she gazed at him, were alight with joy.
Then there were photographs that she had sent from England: herself and John Mitchell, proudly holding their new-born son, Lang’s father. Then the child growing up, standing between his parents, until his father vanished because death had taken him far too soon. After that it was just Meihui and her son, until he married, and soon his own son appeared, a toddler in his father’s arms.
‘Let’s leave them,’ Lang groaned.
‘But you were a delightful child!’ Olivia protested.
He gave a grimace of pure masculine embarrassment, and she hastily controlled her mirth.
It was true that he seemed to have been a pleasant youngster, but even then his face held a sense of resolution beyond his years, already heralding the man he would become.
There were some pictures with his parents, then with his mother after his father’s death, but mostly they showed the young Lang with Meihui. Then he appeared with his new family after his mother’s remarriage. Looking at them, Olivia understood what he’d meant about not having been at ease. His stepfather looked as though he had much good nature, but no subtlety, and his offspring were the same. Standing in their midst, the young Lang smiled with the courteous determination of a misfit.
He grew older, graduated from school and passed his medical exams. One picture especially caught Olivia’s attention-it showed him sitting down while Meihui stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders, her face beaming with pride. At that moment she had been the happiest woman in the world. Instead of looking at the camera, Lang was glancing up, connecting with her.
‘No wonder your family recognised you at the airport,’ she murmured, drawing him slightly aside. ‘Thanks to Meihui, they’d been with you every step of the way while you were growing up.’
‘Yes, they said much the same. It made me feel very much at home.’
He spoke just loud enough for Biyu to hear, making her glance up and smile. He smiled back, yet strangely Olivia sensed a hint of tension in him, the last thing she’d expected. Now she thought about it, she felt there was a watchfulness about him tonight that wasn’t usually there.
She wondered if she was the cause of his concern, lest she make a bad impression, but his manner towards her was full of pride. What was troubling him, then? she wondered.
As they left the room, Biyu announced, ‘Now I’m going to show you our special place, devoted to Jaio and Renshu. I know Lang has told you about them.’
‘Yes, it must be wonderful having such a great family tradition, going back so far.’
‘It is. We have mementoes of them which normally we keep locked away for safety, but in your honour we have brought them out.’ She gave a teasing smile. ‘Lang tells us that you may need a little convincing.’
‘Oh, did he? Just wait until I see him.’
‘You mean, it isn’t true?’ Biyu asked.
‘Of course-Well, I think it’s a lovely story.’
‘But perhaps a little unreal?’ Biyu sighed. ‘The world is so prosaic these days. People no longer believe in a love so great that it conquers everything. But few families have been as fortunate as we. We keep our mementoes because they are our treasures, not in the worldly way, but treasures of the heart. Come, let me show you our temple.’
Crossing the courtyard, she entered the south house that would soon belong to Wei and his bride.
‘This is where we keep our temple,’ she said, opening the door to a room at the back. ‘Wei and his wife-to-be have promised to respect it.’
It was a small room. In the centre was a table on which some papers were laid out, and a piece of jade.
‘These are our mementoes of them,’ Wei said.
‘Those papers,’ Olivia said. ‘They are actually the ones that-?’
‘The very ones that were discovered after their deaths.’
‘Two-thousand years ago,’ Olivia murmured.
She tried to keep a touch of scepticism out of her voice. She liked Biyu, and didn’t wish to seem impolite, but surely nothing could be certain at such a distance of time?
‘Yes, two-thousand years,’ Biyu said. ‘We’ve had collectors offering us a lot of money for them, saying that they are valuable historical relics. They cannot understand why we will not sell. They say the money would make us rich.’
‘But these are beyond price,’ Olivia said.
Biyu nodded, pleased at her understanding.
‘Their value is not in money,’ she agreed.
‘What do the papers say?’ Olivia asked. ‘Normally I can read Chinese but these are so faded.’
‘They say “We have shared the love that was our destiny. Whether long or short, our life together has been triumphant. They say that love is the shield that protects us from harm, and we know it to be true. Nothing matters but that”.’
‘Nothing matters but that,’ Olivia murmured.
How would it feel to know a love so all-embracing that it extinguished everything else in the world? She tried to remember her feelings for Andy, and realised that she couldn’t recall his face. Now there was another face on the edge of her consciousness waiting to be allowed in, but only when she was ready.
A man with the gift of endless patience could be comforting, fascinating, perhaps even alarming. She hadn’t yet decided.
‘I will never forget the day we showed these to Lang,’ her hostess said. ‘He had heard of them from Meihui, but the reality was very powerful to him. He held them in his hands and kept saying, “It is really true”.’
‘I love the way you all feel so close to Lang,’ Olivia said. ‘You don’t treat him differently at all.’
‘But should we? Oh, you mean because he’s a little bit English?’
‘Three-quarters English,’ Olivia said, laughing.
Biyu shrugged as if to say ‘what is three quarters?’.
‘That is just on the surface,’ she said. ‘In here-’ she tapped her heart ‘-he is one of us.’
Lang came in at that moment and Olivia wondered if he’d heard these last words. If he had they must surely have pleased him, but it was hard to tell.
‘There’s a little more,’ he said, indicating a side table where there were two wooden boxes and two large photographs which Olivia recognised as Meihui and John Mitchell.
‘The boxes are their ashes,’ Biyu confided, looking at Lang. ‘He brought them.’
‘Meihui kept John’s ashes,’ Lang said. ‘And when she died I promised her that I would bring them both here.’
‘We had a special ceremony in which we welcomed them both home and said that we would always keep them together,’ Biyu said. ‘And we laid them in this temple, so that Renshu and Jaio could always watch over them.’
She spoke with such simple fervour that Olivia’s heart was touched. It didn’t matter, she realised, whether every detail of the legend was exactly true. The family had taken it as their faith, and perhaps a trust in the enduring power of love was the best faith anyone could choose.
Silently, Biyu drew her attention to a hanging on the wall. It was a large sheet of parchment, and on it were
