Air (or Have Not Have)

both smiled, overwhelmed by the speed of what had happened. Let tomorrow take care of itself. He nodded once, meaning, Swift now, hide now.

She turned and walked back into her house, turned and looked at his dark and empty doorway.

She got back in, and Joe was still asleep. You are not a bad man, she thought, you are just a bit of a fool and I do not want you the way I want Mr Ken. She left him sleeping at the table. She fell onto their disordered bed.

CHAPTER 5

In the morning, Joe had a hangover.

He would not stop moaning and holding his head. Mae was abrupt with him. She took back his plate of cold uneaten breakfast.

'You'll have a headache longer than that; you'll have a headache all your life when you find yourself the slave of Mr Haseem.'

Joe's eyes were fearful as well as pained. 'We will have to make money. We might as well buy goats and make cheese.'

Mae said, 'We should spend none of it. Then all we have to do is earn back the interest.'

'The interest!' Joe groaned, and held his head. 'We agreed no interest.'

'Then we will say that, and give him back just the hundred.'

Joe looked fearful. 'He will say it was fifty per cent. He always says that.'

'Then you had best get to work,' she told him.

Joe left, looking guilty. He left Mae alone with all the terrors of adultery.

If Joe looked guilty, what was she? The village did not forgive women who strayed. They would say Mr Ken was a widower, he had his needs. But what had Mae been thinking of? You can't be a fallen woman and a fashion expert; the husbands won't let you in the house. The best she could hope for was that they would blame Air. So who buys fashion from a crazy woman with Air in her head who chases men with knives? What was she going to do?

Well, Mae, apart from anything else, you have to make money. All your life you have done that by staying ahead of the village. You better get to that TV and find out what everyone has been watching on it.

With no more precise thought than that, she stood up and walked out into the courtyard.

And in the courtyard, Mr Ken was staggering with a wheelbarrow of mucked straw.

Oh, wonderful.

'Good morning, Mr Ken-sir!' Mae called brightly, for the village to hear. She walked more quickly to escape. To her horror, Mr Ken lowered the barrow and began to walk towards her with an expression of perplexed sincerity, even solemnity. At least this time he was fully dressed.

Mae started to walk more quickly. She wanted to avoid any chat in public places such as her house. He began to smile slightly. He walked faster.

He stood in the gateway, of all the silly places! There was still a hint of a smile in the creases of his mature face, but he said the most direct thing: 'Do you regret last night?'

'No,' she said, before realizing that she had spoken. She wanted to escape.

'Do you want to go on?'

Mae felt something akin to panic; she wanted him to stand out of the gate, to keep his voice down. He looked like both her husband and her son at once.

'Yes,' she said, quickly.

So, this was love. Ken Kuei stood before her and she could scarcely bear to look at him. She felt old and misshapen in comparison. He was her boy, her baby, she saw in him the beauty and sadness of passing generations. It was as though Mr Ken were a corridor into which she could shout and hear echoes resonate like sad voices. Into a lost past, into lost chances.

No wonder she had never had love. Mae knew now that she had avoided it. Love hurt. She had known inside that love would make her guts twist, her eyes weep. She wanted to be with Ken Kuei; it hurt that she found no light and easy words with him, it hurt that their situation was dreadful, that they would have to slip and slide, hide, do it in corners like something dirty. It hurt worse than childbirth, worse than anything.

Mr Ken said, 'I will see you when I can.' His jaw worked with something unsaid. 'I do not want to cause you trouble.'

Mae cupped her forehead between her hands. Oh, that is nice. Trouble, what trouble could there be, fucking another man than your husband? All disaster loomed there.

'I am a widower, there will be no blame on me,' he said, looking at the ground.

'We have been talking long enough, and too solemnly,' she murmured, and mimed the pleased and neighbourly smile that kept distance.

Mae raised her voice for the sake of the walls. 'It is so sad about your wife, I still feel for you,' she said. 'If there is anything you need, please ask my husband.'

Mr Ken was still smiling. 'There's no one to hear you.'

She felt silly, frightened, but she couldn't help it. She remembered the listening lights of the night before.

'It will be no trouble. Just talk to Joe.' She felt like weeping in panic.

'When. How?' he demanded.

'I will leave my house tonight,' she whispered. 'We can go out into the fields, into the reeds. Three a.m.?'

That firm, old light was in his eyes again. He kept shifting in her vision between man and boy. Now he seemed older. He nodded once: Good.

'This will end well,' he promised her.

She shook her head with misgiving, and left him.

And so she was reduced to being a young girl, addled by love instead of money. Love catches up with you if you ignore it, she thought. She wanted to be with him, now. She wanted to suckle on his nipples as though they were breasts. All these things shocked her, overturned her. She was upended like a boat.

'I am bereft,' Mae said. She said it to Old Mrs Tung.

She answered. When I was in trouble, I started a school.

Mae walked on, towards the television set.

And there were the men of the village, at this hour of the morning, watching kung fu.

There was Joe.

'I knew!' she exclaimed. 'I knew I would find you here! Shiftless, feckless man!'

Joe shifted his feet staring at them, wincing with hangover and embarrassment.

'You comic character,' she told him, more in frustration, sadness, and affection than anything else. Young Mr Doh, Old Mr Doh, Mr Ali – they all chuckled, too.

'Your wife is well again, I see, Joe,' said Young Mr Doh.

'And a good hand with knives I hear, too,' said Old Mr Doh. And they all laughed. Which meant that yes, they all knew she had chased Mr Haseem out of her house. Did Joe? He kept grinning, looking baffled.

Mae needed the men to be away. She needed the television. 'What are we to do with you small boys?' Mae said, shaking her head. 'Ah? You have families, you have fields, you have duties, what are you doing here?'

'Watching the movie?' shrugged Joe. More laughter.

'Joe, you dolt,' she said, simply, quickly. That made the men laugh again.

'Wifely humours,' Young Mr Doh said. It was a way of saying a woman was right. He leaned forward and pushed some buttons. 'Okay, I've saved the movie. What time?'

The men frowned and wobbled their heads. They murmured times, but Old Mr Doh was something of a leader. 'Eight o'clock,' he said.

With a flourish, his son moved the hands of the clock to eight.

Mae felt a stab of something icy in her chest. They can do that? Go back to a movie? The movie folded up like a picture and was dropped into a pink piggy bank. Mae thought, Mr Doh knows how to do that? And I don't? The