A GOOD EVENING PARTY always gave off a glow. Drinks were refilled quickly, the food was abundant, the servants silent and efficient, and the guests all secure in the knowledge that they had been chosen to attend, that many others had been excluded and might wish to be here in their place.
The Chens’ coronation party gave off such a glow, even as Claire and Martin approached the front door.
Candles set in sand in small pots lit the driveway up to the house. Uniformed men whisked away the cars. Music tinkled in the background; the Chens had hired a string quartet, installed in the foyer, three sweaty Chinese men in dinner jackets and a tiny woman with a violin tucked under her birdlike chin. Their arms sawed back and forth, making the music seem more labor than art.
The hostess at the door, holding a glass of champagne, an apparition in a dress seemingly made out of silver.
“Hello, hello,” trilled Melody. “How lovely to see you all. Scepters for everyone.” She gestured to a bowl filled with wands. “We’re all queen today.”
“You’re so wicked!” rasped a rapier-thin blonde. “Another day, another party. I’ve seen you, what, three times already this week? At the Garden Park, at Maisie’s lunch, and at that little Italian in Causeway Bay? Who were you with, you minx? That was a very handsome man.”
“A cousin, of course.” Melody winked. “Family’s very important to me.”
“What nonsense we all talk!” said the blonde and swept on inside.
Martin and Claire stood together, waiting.
“Claire!” Melody said. “I’m so glad you could come.”
“Thank you so very much for having us,” Martin said. Claire could see he was uncomfortable and she was suddenly irritated with him for it.
“Nice to see you, Melody,” she said. “What a lovely party.”
Martin got them drinks and Claire stood in the living room she had been in so often before. It was alive, different, filled with people talking, laughing, leaning toward one another confidentially.
“I don’t know a soul,” Martin said when he returned. “Makes you wonder why they invited the piano teacher and her husband.”
“Martin!” Claire said. “You don’t need to feel that way.”
But Martin was right. The other guests at the party all knew one another and were not receptive to newcomers. Claire and Martin smiled and sipped their drinks in the corner, wholly ignored.
Martin gave up and went out to the garden to look at the flowers and the view of the harbor. Claire stood by herself for a moment and then went to inspect the photographs on the mantel that she had seen before.
Trudy was still there, in her swimsuit, laughing at the camera.
There was a group of four, talking about their last trip to London, the types with feathered hats and silk suits. Claire listened to their conversation, nursing her drink.
“But it was beastly. Service there is horrible after you’ve been in the Far East. You can’t imagine what they serve you for dinner, cold and awful, and they’re not in the least apologetic about it. The idea of service is dead in England. Grim, grim, grim. Much prefer it here where they take some pride in it.”
“And Poppy’s in London now, isn’t she? I wouldn’t be surprised if she were at Westminster Abbey now.”
“Oh, she’s horrible. I’m sure she’s tried everything to get herself in. I suppose we’ll have to hear about it when she comes back.”
Claire cleared her throat. One of the women, a buxom redhead, glanced over her shoulder, and continued talking.
From her position, Claire could see the two men facing her, and the two women with their backs to her. They were all English. She would have thought the Chens would have invited more locals.
“Is Su May coming today?” the redhead asked the other woman, a younger blonde with a bob. The men left to refresh their drinks.
“I don’t think so. I think she and Melody had a falling out.”
“Really? Do tell!”
“The usual. You know”-the blonde’s voice dropped-“Melody is just impossible these days, so forgetful and rude. I had a lunch for the Garden Club on Thursday, and she didn’t let me know if she was able to come, never showed up, and then never said anything about it! I don’t know what’s going on with her these days.”
“The OBE’s gone to her head!”
Even lower. “Isn’t it funny how the most local people are the most Anglophilic?”
“I know, darling. Look around! We could be in Mayfair!”
“But you know, it’s unusual for locals to host anything at their house. I think this is the first Chinese house I’ve been in since I’ve been here.”
“Victor is good at hedging his bets. He’s having another party tomorrow, for an entirely different crew, but not at his house, at the club, with mah-jongg afterward and everything.”
“His own kind.”
“I don’t know how Melody puts up with that man. He’s the most obvious, venal person Charles has ever dealt with, he says.”
“But, you know, I’ve wondered. They say, opium…”
The two women stopped talking as another woman passed by and said hello. They swooped and rustled and pecked at one another like birds.
“Lavinia! ”
“Maude!”
“Harriet!”
Claire slipped away.
Later, she found herself talking to Annabel, a frosted champagne-blond American from Atlanta, Georgia, who was in Hong Kong with her husband, Peter, who was with the State Department.
“What’s your story, darlin’? ” Annabel asked. Her eyes were bright with alcohol, her hair in a beehive.
“I am here with my husband, who’s with the Water Department,” Claire said.
“All these departments!” Annabel hooted. “The State! Water! Make sure it’s in the pipes!”
“Er, yes,” Claire said. She never knew how to talk to Americans, who were so informal, or what to say to their odd exclamations.
“And you, what do you do to pass the time? Do you have children?”
“No,” Claire said. “Do you?”
“I have four, all under five. I keep popping them out and Peter’s ready to strangle me. I tell him, I wasn’t the only one involved here, you know? At least here, we have all the amahs. Back home, it’s not like this.”
“Have you been long in Hong Kong?” Claire asked politely.
“Three years. Had Jack here, thank God he was a Cesarean…” The woman chattered on and on, buoyed by her own effervescence, and Claire listened, glad to have an excuse to stand quietly and not look awkward.
Martin found her later, waiting by the powder room.
“Hullo,” he said. “Ready to leave soon?”
She nodded.
“I’ll be right out.” She ducked into the bathroom and splashed water on her face. She felt as if she were waiting for something to happen.
Later, she heard the redhead and the blonde, Maude and Lavinia, discuss her.
“Who was that woman lurking around?”
“I think I heard Melody say she’s the piano teacher.”
“Really?”
“Pretty, though, don’t you think?”
“In a wan, blond sort of way, I suppose.”
The sound of a light slap. “You are such a bitch!” Laughter.
“It’s that skin, you know. Drives men wild.”
“Yes, it just goes, though. It’s wasted on the young.”
A sudden commotion near the door. A maid had fainted in the heat. The houseboy was summoned and carried her out.
“Bloody hot,” a man in a boater said.
“Always,” rejoined another. “Haven’t you heard?”
Into this senseless conversation, Will strode, unexpected. He stopped in front of them, the first people he saw.
“Did you hear?” he said, with shock on his face. His voice was not loud but everyone heard him. “Reggie Arbogast’s gone and shot himself.”
The two men gaped.
“The man who had the parties on the Peak?” Claire cried, before she could help it. In her simple mind, Claire still imagined that money might buy happiness. A few people turned to stare at her; most were still in shock.
The buzz rose audibly, immediate.
“His poor wife.”
Sotto voce. “ Regina? I wonder he didn’t shoot her instead.”
“The children?”
“All back in England. They’ll send a telegram, of course. What a tragedy.”
“When I saw him at Fanling, he seemed rather down. He went straight to the clubhouse for drinks. Rather the worse for wear by the time I’d finished up.”
But Will was there for a reason. He looked around the room for Victor and walked over to him.
“You bastard,” he said, and swung at the man. “You let him think all this time he was the one who broke.” The room quieted immediately.
Victor Chen staggered back but did not fall. He came up, holding his jaw, and tried to smile.
“Now, Will, you come here after not having shown up for days and then take a swing at me? You’ve been quite the absent driver.”
“Shut up. You are despicable.”
Around them, people were spellbound, unable to move, even though manners dictated they should leave. A few, more decorous than the others, inched toward the door.
“You are behind all of this. You brokered the damn Crown Collection back to the Chinese government under the guise of patriotism, didn’t you? You didn’t care who suffered, just that you enriched yourself and got in good with the new people. And you know what your Chinese government did with it? They probably smashed it into shards, as representative of bourgeois values!” His voice rose.
“The Chinese have the right to their own history,” Victor said stiffly. “It should never have been taken from them in the first place.”
“You are such a hypocrite,” Will continued, as if he hadn’t heard. “When you were reading history at Cambridge, you were all about jolly old England, punting and strawberries and cream, and then when it suited your purpose here, you became the model China man, currying favor with the Nationalists, the Communists, whoever would receive you. You don’t know whether you’re coming or going, old man.” He stepped closer to Victor, menacing.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Will,” Victor said, adjusting his shirt. “You least of all. You come to Hong Kong and find your little nest of cronies, and your half-breed filly, and all is right with the world. Bloody British on their moral high horse, while they poisoned half of China with opium for their own gain.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore, Victor. You are doomed.”
“You’ve always been dramatic, Will,” Victor said. “Just like Trudy. Sentimental too. Those qualities are luxuries, I assure you.”
Will stood still for a moment.
“You aren’t worth it,” he said finally. “You will never be worth anything.”
Suddenly Melody was next to Will.
“Will,” she pleaded. “We are not enemies here. We loved the same people. We all had tragedies during the war. Can’t you forgive, just a little?”
She looked at him, but he didn’t move. She shifted, then for some reason changed direction toward Claire, and appealed to her.
“Surely you must understand, Claire. Life is so complicated and we make decisions that are difficult.”
Claire, caught unguarded, was exposed. Martin was there. The whole world was there. The women who had been talking about her stared; she was reborn in their eyes-someone worth seeing.
Now she was being unveiled in front of the world as somehow connected to their hosts, and to Will, a part of this puzzle. She was unused to the attention. She remembered the moment at the Chens’ dinner party where everyone had stared at her, waiting for her witty rejoinder, a sign that she belonged with them-a response that had never come. She thought of the feeling she often had around Will-that she was someone else entirely, the other Claire who had never gotten a chance to surface, a Claire who had opinions and said things that people listened to, someone who was visible. She thought of all these things, and looked back at the sea of faces as they waited for her to answer Melody.
First, she nodded, as unobtrusively as possible. She blushed, looked down. Edwina Storch’s pale, sweaty face rose in her mind. You must rise to the occasion. Yes, but in a different way from what Edwina imagined.
Claire looked up from the floor, raised her eyes.
“Melody, we all make choices but we have to stand by them and acknowledge responsibility if we find ourselves on the wrong end.” Her voice quavered but the attention of every person in the room was on her.
She felt Martin staring at her, bewildered. She couldn’t look at him. She focused instead on what she was doing.
“I don’t know what’s going on here, but I do know that Will is telling you something important.”
She wanted to be generous, she wanted to understand. The queen, being crowned in England on this very day, surely would expect it of her. She wanted so badly to be merciful and kind, and to touch Melody gently on the shoulder and tell her it would be all right, that things would work out, that she herself would make sure of it.
Claire was thinking of all of these things, feeling the warm glow of benevolence.
But then, Melody’s face twitched.
It was quick, and then it was over, but Claire saw it nonetheless. This woman, Melody was thinking, is my daughter’s piano teacher! She is someone I hired to teach Locket how to strike some black and white keys on a musical instrument. She is simple, English, not anyone I need to ask a favor of.
And then it was gone, erased by the woman’s innate practicality. But it was too late. Claire had seen it already. The heat rose from her chest to her head. She was the one who didn’t need anything of anyone. She turned to her lover.
“Will,” she said, emboldened. “I know you don’t…”
“This doesn’t concern you, Claire,” he interrupted. He barely saw her.
But she knew him well now.
“I know,” she said. “But Melody has a point.” She knew this would inflame him further.
“Don’t be absurd. You have no idea what’s going on.”
“But…”
“Out,” he said, pointing to the door.
Part of her thrilled to Will’s command of the situation. He was owning her, finally. She heard a faint “I say” that sounded like it came from her husband. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t see Martin now, couldn’t see his bewildered, humiliated face, and have to sort out how that made her feel. So she closed her eyes and felt the dull throb of the blood coursing through her head and the weight of all those eyes on her and she opened her own, looked around at the blurry sea of faces, and then she thought about what she should do and everything seemed to be going in slow motion, as if she were under water. She blinked, and everything was still blurry. A maid cried out from the kitchen, unaware of the drama going on at the party, she heard glasses clink as they were assembled on a tray by another unsuspecting servant, a fly buzzed terribly near her ear, and she saw a redheaded woman slowly, slowly sweep her hand through her hair, all the while looking at her. All this happened as if it were in a room far away from her, enclosed in glass. In the end, she stood up a little straighter, took a deep breath, and then she did the only thing she could think of doing at that moment, that particular instant: she just walked away. It was cowardly and messy and left much to be dealt with later but her heart felt full and tender and she didn’t see that she had any choice. She walked away from the gaping women and the perplexed men, and went directly to the door and put her hand on the knob. She hesitated, she didn’t know why, and then she turned the door handle-she remembered always the cool metal in her palm-and she walked out. She didn’t look at Martin. She couldn’t. She didn’t even look at Will. She walked outside, to a new and unknown life.