house’. She had added, ‘I wouldn’t mind, but they’re all rubbish.’
Eva could tell that her mother was baking today. The room was full of the sickly sweet smell of the cakes that Ruby would sell later to the crowd.
Eva had asked her not to do this. ‘You’re encouraging them to hang about,
But Ruby had bought herself a new living-room carpet with the proceeds of her tea and cake sales. She had refused to stop, saying, ‘If you don’t like it, get out of bed. They’ll soon go away when they see that you’re just a very ordinary woman.’
Eva turned her head during her neck exercises and saw a pair of magpies fly past with bits of straw clamped in their beaks. They were nesting in a hollow in the sycamore trunk. She had been watching their comings and goings with great interest for a week.
‘Two for joy,’ she thought.
She wondered if it were possible for a man and a woman to be completely happy together.
When she and Brian had, at his insistence, thrown dinner parties, the married couples had usually begun the evening with conventional good manners. But, by the time Eva was serving her home-made profiteroles, there was often one couple who were transformed into bickering pedants, questioning the veracity of their partner’s anecdotes and contradicting them in tedious detail. ‘No, it was Wednesday, not Thursday. And you were wearing your blue suit, not the grey.’ They left early with faces as set as Easter Island statues. Or stayed on and on, helping themselves to strong liquor, and falling into a drunken morass of depression.
Eva smiled to herself, and thought, ‘I’ll never again have to throw another dinner party, or attend one.’
She wondered if the magpies were happy – or was happiness only a human perception?
Who had insisted on including ‘the pursuit of happiness’ in the American constitution?
She knew that Go ogle could supply the answer within seconds of her asking, but she was in no hurry to find out. Perhaps it would come back to her, if she waited.
Alexander knocked. ‘Are you ready for a long-distance lorry driver with two families? One in Edinburgh, one in Bristol.’
Eva groaned.
Alexander said, ‘It gets worse. It’s his fiftieth birthday next week. Both wives are throwing him a big party.’
They laughed, and Eva said, ‘It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to…’
Alexander said, ‘I haven’t seen you cry yet. Do you?’
‘No, I can’t cry.’ Then Eva asked, ‘What am I doing here, Alexander?’
‘You’re giving yourself a second chance, aren’t you? You’re a good woman, Eva.’
‘But I’m not!’ insisted Eva. ‘I resent them disturbing my peace. I can feel their misery clogging up my system. I can hardly breathe. How can I be a good woman? I don’t care any more. I’m bored by the people I see. All I want to do is lie here without speaking, without hearing. Without worrying about who’s next on your list.’
Alexander said, ‘You think my job is any easier? I stand in a cold doorway freezing my balls off, talking to mentalists all day.’
‘They’re not mentalists,’ Eva protested. ‘They’re just
‘Yeah? Well, you should see the ones I turn away. ‘Alexander sat down on the bed. ‘I don’t want to be outside in the cold. I want to be here, with you.’
Eva said, ‘I think about you at night. We share a wall.’
‘I know I sleep a foot away from you.’
They both became transfixed by their own fingernails.
Alexander said, ‘So, how long are you giving the bigamist?’
‘The same as usual, ten minutes is all I can take,’ said Eva, irritably.
‘Look, if you don’t want to see him, don’t. I’ll get rid of him.’
‘I’m a charlatan. They think I’m helping them, but I’m not. Why do they believe everything they read in the newspapers?’
‘Forget newspapers. It’s the internet. You’ve no idea, have you? No idea how crazy they are. You lie up here, we provide room service, and you literally crawl under the duvet if you come across something too unpleasant, something that might upset little Eva. Well, just remember that downstairs is where the real work is done, dangerous work. I’m not a trained bodyguard. I read your mail, Eva. I keep some of the letters back. Am I doing any painting? No, I’m not. Because I’m protecting Eva from the maniacs who want to cut her up. Eva the diva.’
Eva sat up straight.
She wanted to get out of bed and put an end to the trouble she was causing. But when it came to swinging her legs round, the floor did not look solid. She felt that if she stood, she would sink through the floorboards as though they were made of jelly.
She was dizzy. ‘Give me a minute, please, then send the bigamist up.’
‘OK. And start eating again. You’re like a bag of bones.’ He went out and shut the door firmly behind him.
Eva felt as though she’d been punched in the chest.
She had sensed for some time that she had been behaving badly. She was selfish and demanding and had almost begun to believe that she was at the centre of her small universe. She would tell Alexander he should vacate his room, take his children and go back to his own house.
She wondered if she could manage without Alexander’s love and care. She had to protect herself from the awful pain of imagining her life of self-imprisonment without him.
She resumed her exercises, with a series of leg raises. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…
58
Ho’s parents, Mr and Mrs Lin, were walking along a dusty narrow pavement beside an eight-lane highway.
They were not speaking. The noise of the traffic was too loud.
Two years ago, there had been no highway. This had been a neighbourhood of one-storey houses, shops and workshops, alleys and mysterious pathways, where people made their living in full view of their neighbours. There had been no privacy. If a neighbour coughed, it was heard by many people, and festivals were celebrated communally.
They turned off and walked past a new tower block and a car dealership where shiny new vehicles were for sale. They came to a forecourt where electric scooters were arranged in lines according to colour. Mr Lin had always wanted a scooter. He ran his hand over the handlebars and seat of one in his favourite colour – aquamarine.
As they walked on, Mrs Lin said, ‘Look at the old bicycles.’
Inside a mesh fence topped with security lights were hundreds of them.
They laughed together, and Mrs Lin said, ‘Who would even think about stealing old bicycles?’
They turned a corner and were on their old street. The rubble had still not been cleared.
They passed the place where they had lived for nineteen years, where Ho had played safely in the traffic-free alleys. Only five of the original houses were still inhabited. One of them belonged to the moneylender, Mr Qu. There were rumours that Mr Qu had contacts within the Beijing Tourist Board, and that he had bribed the bulldozer driver to stop at his house. Mr Qu was afraid of the professional moneylenders who were muscling in on his trade.
Mr Lin called softly at the open door. ‘Are you there, Mr Qu? It is Mr Lin, your old neighbour.’
Mr Qu came to the door and greeted them. ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘How do you like living in the sky, with the birds?’
The Lins were proud people.
‘It is good,’ said Mrs Lin, ‘better than living on the ground, with the dogs.’
Mr Qu laughed politely.
Mr Lin had never liked the moneylender. He believed that the interest Mr Qu extracted from his customers was outrageous. But he had visited many banks and had been refused a loan at each of them. He had protested that he
