Janice Lee: The Piano Teacher

Another afternoon, she was leaving when she heard Victor Chen in his study. He was talking loudly into the telephone and had left his door slightly ajar.

“It’s the bloody British,” he said, before lapsing into Cantonese. Then, “can’t let them,” and then some more incomprehensible language that sounded very much like swearing. “They want to create unrest, digging up skeletons that should be left in the closet, and all for their own purposes. The Crown Collection didn’t belong to them in the first place. It’s all our history, our artifacts, that they just took for their own. How’d they like it if Chinese explorers came to their country years ago and made off with all their treasures? It’s outrageous. Downing Street ’s behind all of this, I can assure you. There’s no need for this right now.” He was very agitated and Claire found herself waiting outside, breath held, to see if she couldn’t hear anything more. She stood there until Pai came along and looked at her questioningly. She pretended she had been looking at the brush painting in the hallway, but she could feel Pai’s eyes on her as she walked toward the door. She let herself out and went home.

Two weeks later, when Claire went for her lesson, she found Pai gone and a new girl opening the door.

“This is Su Mei,” Locket told her when they entered the room. “She’s from China, from a farm. She just arrived. Do you want something to drink? ”

The new girl was small and dark and would have been pretty if it hadn’t been for a large black birthmark on her right cheek. She never looked up from the floor.

“Her family didn’t want her because the mark on her face would make her hard to marry off. It’s supposedly very bad luck.”

“Did your mother tell you that? ” Claire asked.

“Yes,” Locket said. She hesitated. “Well, I heard her say it on the telephone, and she said she got her very cheap because of it. Su Mei doesn’t know anything! She tried to go to the bathroom in the bushes outside and Ah Wing beat her and told her she was like an animal. She’s never used a faucet before or had running water! ”

“I’d like a bitter lemon, please, if you have it,” Claire said, wanting to change the subject.

Locket spoke to the girl quickly. She left the room silently.

“Pai was stealing from us,” Locket said, eyes wide with the scandal. “So Mummy had to let her go. Pai cried and cried, and then she beat the floor with her fists. Mummy said she was hysterical and she slapped her in the face to stop her crying. They had to get Mr. Wong to carry Pai out. He put her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and she was hitting his back with her fists.”

“Oh! ” Claire said before she could stifle the cry.

Locket looked at her curiously.

“Mummy says all servants steal.”

“Does she, now?” Claire asked. “How terrible. But you know, Locket, I’m not sure that’s true.” She remembered the way Pai had looked at her when she came upon her in the hallway and her chest felt tight.

“Where did she go, do you know? ” she asked Locket.

“No idea,” the girl said cheerfully. “Good riddance, I say.”

Claire looked at the placid face of the girl, unruffled by conscience.

“There must be shelters or places for people like her.” Claire’s voice quivered. “She’s not on the street, is she? Does she have family in Hong Kong? ”

“Haven’t a clue.”

“How can you not know? She lived with you! ”

“She was a maid, Mrs. Pendleton.” Locket looked at her curiously. “Do you know anything about your servants? ”

Claire was shamed into silence. The blood rose in her cheeks.

“Well,” she said. “I suppose that’s enough of that. Did you practice the scales? ”

Locket pounded on the piano keys as Claire looked hard at the girl’s chubby fingers, trying not to blink so that the tears would not fall.

IT BEGINS like that. Her lilting laugh at a consular party. A spilled drink. A wet dress and a handkerchief hastily proffered. She is a sleek greyhound among the others-plump, braying women of a certain class. He doesn’t want to meet her-he is suspicious of her kind, all chiffon and champagne, nothing underneath, but she has knocked his glass down her silk shift (“There I go again,” she says. “I’m the clumsiest person in all Hong Kong ”) and then commandeers him to escort her to the bathroom where she daubs at herself while peppering him with questions.

She is famous, born of a well-known couple, the mother a Portuguese beauty, the father a Shanghai millionaire with fortunes in trading and money lending.

“Finally, someone new! We can tell right away, you know. I’ve been stuck with those old bags for ages. We’re very good at sniffing out new blood since the community is so wretchedly small and we’re all so dreadfully sick of each other. We practically wait at the docks to drag the new people off the ships. Just arrived, yes? Have a job yet?” she asks, having sat him on the edge of the tub while she reapplies her lipstick. “Is it for fun or funds? ”

“I’m at Asiatic Petrol,” he says, wary of being cast as the amusing newcomer. “And it’s most certainly for funds.” Although that’s not the truth. A mother with money.

“How delightful! ” she says. “I’m so sick of meeting all these stuffy people. They don’t have the slightest knowledge or ambition.”

“Those without expectations have been known to lack both of those qualities,” he says.

“Aren’t you a grumpy grump?” she says. “But stupidity is much more forgivable in the poor, don’t you think?” She pauses, as if to let him think about that. “Your name? And how do you know the Trotters?”

“I’m Will Truesdale, and I play cricket with Hugh. He knows some of my family, through my mother’s side,” he says. “I’m new to Hong Kong and he’s been very decent to me.”

“Hmmm,” she says. “I’ve known Hugh for a decade and I’ve never ever thought of him as decent. And do you like Hong Kong? ”

“It’ll do for now,” he says. “I came off the ship, decided to stay, rustled up something to do in the meantime. Seems pleasant enough here.”

“An adventurer, how fascinating,” she says, without the slightest bit of interest. Then she finishes up her ablutions, snaps her evening bag shut, and, firmly taking him by the wrist, waltzes-there is no other verb; music seems to accompany her-out of the powder room.

Conscious of being steered around the room like a pet poodle, her momentary diversion, he excuses himself to go smoke in the garden. But peace is not to be his. She finds him out there, has him light her cigarette, and leans confidentially toward him.

“Tell me,” she says. “Why do your women get so fat after marriage? If I were an Englishman I’d be quite put out when the comely young lass I proposed to exploded after a few months of marriage or after popping out a child. You know what I’m talking about?” She blows smoke up to the dark sky.

“Not at all,” he says, amused despite himself.

“I’m not as flighty as you think,” she says. “I do like you so very much. I’ll ring you tomorrow, and we’ll make a plan.” And then she is gone, wafting smoke and glamour as she trips her way into the resolutely nonsmoking house of their hosts-Hugh loathes the smell. He sees her in the next hour, flitting from group to group, chattering away. The women are dimmed by her, the men bedazzled.

The phone rings at his office the next day. He had been telling Simonds about the party.

“She’s Eurasian, is she? ” Simonds says. “Watch out there. It’s not as bad as dating a Chinese, but the higher-ups don’t like it if you fraternize too much with the locals.”