Trudy tells their new friends that she loves Americans, their open-handed extravagance, their loud talk and braying confidence. When someone brings up the war, she pretends not to hear, ignoring them and instead going on about the qualities she feels all Americans have. They have a sense of the world being incomparably large, she says, and a sense that they are able to, not colonize, but spread through all countries, spending their money like water, without guilt or too much consciousness. She loves that. The men are tall and rangy, with long faces and quick decisions, and the women let them be, isn’t that wonderful, because they’re so busy with their own committees and plans. They invite all and sundry to their events, and they serve marvelous items like potato salads and ham and cheese sandwiches. And, unless there is a very special type of Englishman present (she tips her head toward Will), they tend to diminish the other men in the room. It’s very odd, but she’s seen it. Haven’t you noticed that? If she had it all to do over, she says to the dinner table, she would come back as an American. Barring that possibility, she’s going to marry one. Or maybe just move there, if someone objects to her marrying an American, said with eyes cast demurely down as a joke. Will thinks back to when she complained that they were tiresomely earnest and just smiles. She has free will, he says simply. He would never do anything to stop her from doing what she wanted. The Americans applaud. An enlightened man, says a woman with red lips and an orange dress.
Life is easy. At the office, he is expected in at nine-thirty, then a two-hour lunch is not uncommon, and they knock off at five for drinks. He can go out every night, play all weekend, do whatever he wants. Trudy’s friends move to London and want someone responsible to take care of their flat, so Will moves to May Road and pays the ludicrous rent of two hundred Hong Kong dollars, and this only after much wrangling to get her friends, Sudie and Frank Chen, to take anything at all. They all go out for dinner, and it’s very civil.
“You’re doing us a favor! ” they cry, as they pour more champagne.
“You really are, Will,” Trudy says. “No one in all Hong Kong would agree to do anything so nice for the Chens, you know. They’ve awful reputations around here, that’s why they’re leaving.”
“Be that as it may,” Will says, “I have to pay something.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” the Chens say, but they never do. Instead they drink four splits of champagne and end up going to the beach at midnight to hunt for crabs by candlelight.
May Road is different from Happy Valley, his old neighborhood. Filled with expatriates and housewives and their servants, it is a bourgeois suburb of England, or how he’d always imagined them to be. Children walk obediently next to their amahs, matrons climb into the backs of their chauffeured cars, it’s much more quiet than the chattering bustle of his old haunt. He misses Happy Valley, the vitality of it, the loud, rude locals, the lively shops.
But then there is Trudy. Trudy has a large place not five minutes from him. He walks the winding road to her flat every day after picking up new clothes after work.
“Isn’t this nice?” she says, lavishing him with kisses at the door. “Isn’t it delicious that you’re so close and not in that dreadful Happy Valley? I do think the only time I’d go there before I met you was when I needed plimsolls for the beach. There’s this wonderful shop there…”
And then she’s on to something else, crying out to Ah Lok that the flowers are browning, or that there’s a puddle in the foyer. At Trudy’s, there’s no talk of war, no fighting except squabbling with the servants, no real troubles. There’s only ease and her sweet, lilting laugh. He slips gratefully into her world.
June 1952
CLAIRE HAD BEEN WAKING at the same time every night. Twenty-two minutes after three. By now, she knew it without even looking at the clock. And every night, after she started awake, she would look over at the hulking shape of her husband as he slept, and she would be calmed from the shock of consciousness. His chest rose and fell evenly as his nose reverberated with a gentle snore. He always slept heavily, aided by the several beers he had every evening. She sat up, clapped twice loudly, her hands stiff, the sound like two bullets in the night. Martin shifted at the noise, then breathed freely. That trick was one of the few that her mother had imparted about married life. The clock now showed 3:23.
She tried to go back to sleep. She had done it once or twice before, fallen back asleep before her body got too awake. Breathing softly, she lay flat on her back and felt the damp linen sheet beneath and the light weight of the cotton quilt on top. It was so humid she could wear only a thin cotton nightdress to bed, and even that grew sticky after a day or two. She must buy a new fan. The old one had sputtered to a stop last week, caked with mossy mold. A fan, and also some more electric cord. And lightbulbs. She mustn’t forget lightbulbs. She breathed lightly, over the slight rumble of Martin starting up again. Should she write the things down? She would remember, she tried to tell herself. But she knew she would get up and write it down, so as not to forget, so as not to obsess about forgetting, and then she would be up, and unable to go back to sleep. It was settled. She got up softly and felt her way out of the mosquito netting, disturbing a resting mosquito that buzzed angrily in her ear before flying away. The pad was lying next to the bed on a table, and she penciled in her list.
Then, the real reason. She reached into the depths of the bureau and felt around carefully for the bag. It was a cloth bag, one she had got for free at a bazaar, and it was large and full. She pulled it out, quietly.
Going into the bathroom, she switched on the light. The tub sat full of water. There hadn’t been rain for several months now, and the government was starting to ration. Yu Ling drew the tub full every evening, between five and seven o’ clock, when the water was on, for their use during the day.
Claire set the bag down and dipped a bucket in the water and wet a washcloth to wipe her face. Then she sat on the cool tile floor and pulled her nightdress up so that she could place the bag between her legs.
She dumped the contents out.
There were more than thirty items glittering up at her. More than thirty costly necklaces, scarves, ornaments, perfume bottles. They looked almost tawdry, jumbled together in the harsh bathroom light, against the white tile, so Claire laid down a towel and separated them, so that each had a few inches of space, a cushion against the floor. There, now they looked like the expensive items they were. Here was a ring, thick, beautifully worked gold, with what looked like turquoise. She slipped it on her finger. And here was a handkerchief, so sheer she could see the pale pink of her palm underneath it. She sprayed it with perfume, a small round bottle of it, called Jazz. On the bottle there was a drawing of two women dancing in flapper dresses. She waved the scented handkerchief around. Jasmine scent. Too heavy. She groomed her hair with the tortoiseshell comb, rubbed French hand lotion around her fingers, then carefully applied lipstick to her mouth. Then she clipped on heavy gold earrings and tied a scarf around her head. She stood in front of the mirror. The woman who looked back was sophisticated and groomed, a woman who traveled the world and knew about art and books and yachts.
She wanted to be someone else. The old Claire seemed provincial, ignorant. She had been to a party at Government House, sipped champagne at the Gripps while women she knew twirled around in silky dresses. She had her nose pressed up against the glass and was watching a different world, one she hadn’t known existed. She could not name it but she felt as if she were about to be revealed, as if there were another Claire inside, waiting to come out. In these few hours in the morning, dressed in someone else’s finery, she could pretend she was part of it, that she had lived in Colombo, eaten frog’s legs in France, or ridden an elephant in Delhi with a maharaja by her side.