Литагент HarperCollins - Flying High

We started meeting on Sundays. Usually he’d come in the afternoon. I didn’t ask what he did in the morning. I was vaguely aware he might have family commitments but kept the idea at the very back of my mind. When the weather was still cold in March I lay one Sunday morning beneath my quilt, comfortable, with the sounds of the campus outside. I’d been reading one of Martin’s letters and thinking of home. He wanted me to meet him at the end of the term and have a holiday. He would come out on a package tour and I could join him in Peking. Somehow I didn’t feel elated enough about the prospect of seeing him. I wouldn’t say my heart sank exactly, but it almost did. While I was trying to sift through my thoughts on the subject, there was a tap at the door and I knew it was Liang, very early.

‘Hang on – I’ll put my dressing-gown on.’

I rushed eagerly to open the door and there he was, clutching a small parcel in pink wrapping paper tied with a piece of string.

‘This is a little gift for you.’

‘Can I open it?’

‘Go on.’ His eyes were wide with anticipation. More than ever he seemed childlike. I recalled the runners and had to look away.

It was a set of silk hand-embroidered handkerchiefs, totally impractical but pretty in a fussy Chinese sort of way. It was the sort of gift a man gives to a woman.

‘But it isn’t my birthday, Liang.’ This was silly. Birthdays didn’t mean much here.

‘No, I thought you’d like them. My cousin works at the embroidery factory,’ he said by way of justification. Suddenly I felt a rush of sentiment, of joy and of something I had never felt in the presence of Martin. I wanted to fling my arms round him and dance.

I can’t think how I restrained myself, but I felt as if I was saving it for a later I knew would come. I increasingly enjoyed the thought of it. We went out on our cycle ride, him pedalling protectively on the traffic side of the cycle lane, telling me when to stop, when to turn, giving disapproving glances when other cyclists jostled me. He was still somewhat astonished that I could ride a bike as he was certain all Westerners drove around in large cars.

We sat together in a tea house in those low bamboo chairs. An ancient man in a grubby apron poured water from a steaming black kettle as we clattered the lids of our tea dishes. I looked at Liang and wanted urgently to know more about him. He was deliberately uncommunicative about his personal life, as if his life in my presence was the only life he had.

‘Liang, why don’t you bring your wife along?’ I ventured, uncertain of his response. I couldn’t even remember her name.

‘She’s busy,’ he said evasively, looking at the violinist squeakily performing at the far end of the tea house.

‘But you never talk about her.’ Then I dared to ask, ‘Don’t you get on?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well, aren’t you and your wife good friends?’

‘She’s my wife,’ he said as if this explained everything.

‘And your baby? Isn’t it wonderful being a father?’

‘Yes, I’m proud of him.’

‘But Liang, when do you spend time with him? You’re always with me!’ As I said this I realized it was true. I hadn’t been aware until I said it that he was spending time with me that he probably should have been spending with his family.

‘I see him once a week.’

It was then that I discovered that Liang and his wife didn’t actually live in the same place and that Liang was effectively a bachelor, married in name only. Shocked but overjoyed, I sensed a tremor of anticipation. Hadn’t it always been him and me, never a triangle?

‘She’s with her mother. She can’t live with me. There isn’t room with the baby. I only have one room. Anyway she prefers it.’

Liang’s life must have been bleak until I turned up. I provided him with an excuse to go out and enjoy himself. Wasn’t it his duty to see that the foreigner was kept content? It concerned me for a moment that maybe our friendship wasn’t what I thought it was after all – then I remembered the little silk hankies. No, he wasn’t pretending. The desire to kiss him welled up again, and I wanted to tell him how sweet he was and how much he meant to me and how he had freed me. I couldn’t in the tea house, so I left it until he came the following week.

It was a Tuesday evening. He was going to call in and see me before a meeting. Although I was on the other side of town he never seemed to object to the long ride. He would call in for a chat and a cup of tea. The note he had sent said he had some news.

His jacket made him look small as he stood at the door.

‘Come in. A man came round the campus with some tinned lychees today. I got you some.’

He enthused about my discovery, but urgently wanted to tell me his own news.

‘I may get a chance to go abroad,’ he said, phrasing it carefully, not allowing himself too much certainty. Going abroad was like going to Heaven. Everyone wanted it and feared it and thought they’d never be good enough.

‘You could come to England,’ I said without thinking. Then it immediately struck me that this was not a good idea. It was a potentially dangerous displacement for us both.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Because I’m married it makes it easier. The authorities know I’ve got a son to come back for.’

Little did the authorities know the irony of this. From what I could tell, Liang’s son did not have a father who would pine for him while suffering in a foreign land.

Liang was looking out of the window as he spoke, with his back to me. And it was then that I chose to kiss him.

The kiss did change our lives. The relationship did take on a sexual dimension but was dominated more by intimacy than sex. We both seemed to have difficulty in expressing ourselves sexually – we didn’t easily fall into each other’s arms, we were embarrassed about kissing and bed was never mentioned. Whether he thought of it I don’t really know. It seemed out of reach, impossible and I’m not sure I wanted it. We substituted a physical manifestation of our closeness with looks into the eyes, standing close, touching fingers when we thought nobody would see. Of course, he always pretended it wasn’t happening. It was not tantalizingly erotic as neither of us understood eroticism and wouldn’t have known how to bring it about. I was certain this was more like love than the insipidness I had with Martin, who was, I suppose, a kind of fiancé. I was happy. I allowed myself the luxury of what I thought was illicit love. The fact that it might not have seemed like passion in other people’s eyes didn’t mean it was unexciting for me. Quite the reverse. I hummed with it. I had a permanent grin on my face, but in a country where grinning reflected embarrassment, a feeling appropriate to a tall foreigner, my secret was safe.

As the spring opened up into flowers and warmth in April, Liang and I began to be seen around together more. I used to get little gifts for him at the Friendship Store. He wasn’t allowed in so he would wait with the bikes outside and I’d go in and spend my foreigner’s money.

‘What can I get you, Liang? Just say what you want. It’s easy. I’ve got hard currency. Look!’ and I’d wave my notes at him.

I couldn’t fail to notice how his eyes lit up at the thought of goodies normally out of reach to all but party officials.

‘No, really. I don’t want anything, Alison.’

I’d go in and get him a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label and some Marlboros. He’d have to keep them at my flat. It wouldn’t have done for him to be seen with these gifts. He’d have been criticized; that is, hauled up in front of some bossy committee to explain himself. I’d started smoking Phoenixes. I kept the Marlboros for him. I even bought him – silk tie of the kind favoured by visiting Americans, but of course he couldn’t wear it. I wondered if I was overdoing it, making a bit of a fool of myself. I just wanted to please him and give him things he could have only from me.