Janice Lee - The Piano Teacher

“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.”