‘He’s guarding his energy,’ Simone whispered. ‘We have to leave him alone.’
I could have sworn he smiled slightly without opening his eyes before I guided Simone away.
About a week later I heard shouting as I walked past the training room after dropping Simone at her Putonghua lesson in the music room.
‘She can help guard Simone!’ Leo yelled.
‘She will become a target,’ Mr Chen said.
‘The more people around who can protect Simone, the better.’ Leo saw me in the hallway and gestured for me to go in. ‘You want to learn?’
I went inside. ‘More than anything.’
I stood in front of Mr Chen and looked up at him. He held his sword in front of him, point down. It was very plain, with no decoration on either the hilt or the blade. ‘Mr Chen, I officially request time off on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings.’
‘What for?’
‘I’ve found a school of martial arts in Wan Chai that has a teacher that speaks good English. I’ll be learning tae kwon do twice a week.’
He stared at me.
Leo snorted with amusement. ‘Tae kwon do is really useful if you’re ever attacked by a bunch of wooden blocks.’
Mr Chen stiffened and glared at Leo. ‘All Arts are of value.’
Leo gestured dismissively. ‘If she goes to classes down there, she won’t learn anything. Teach her. Teach her the true Arts.’ ‘No.’
‘Why not?’ I moved closer to Mr Chen. ‘Is it because I’m a woman?’
He smiled slightly. ‘No, of course not. Some of my best students have been women.’
‘Well then, why not?’
His face softened. ‘If they know you are trained, Emma, you become a target.’ I stared at him.
‘If you are not trained, there is no honour in coming after you,’ Mr Chen said. ‘As long as you are unable to defend yourself, they won’t touch you.’
‘And the minute they know I can defend myself, they’ll come after me too?’
He nodded, and I understood. He was keeping me safe by not teaching me.
‘Simone’s safety is more important,’ I said. ‘I want to be able to help defend her. Teach me, and we’ll keep it a secret until I’m up to speed.’
Mr Chen glanced at Leo.
‘You think she’ll let you get away with not teaching her?’ Leo said. ‘Emma’s made up her mind, my Lord, she won’t back down.’
Mr Chen laughed softly and shook his head. His eyes sparkled with humour. Then he sighed. ‘Very well. If you must learn, I’ll teach you. I have to warn you though: if you don’t have the talent then it will be a waste of time.’
‘Let’s see if I have the talent then.’
‘All right, we will,’ Mr Chen said. ‘Come back in about half an hour.’
‘I can’t. Simone will be finished her Chinese lesson then and I have to mind her.’
‘I’ll take her to the playground up the hill from here,’ Leo said. ‘You stay and learn.’
‘Will you and Simone be okay? What if a demon attacks?’
Leo grinned. ‘I can take out just about anything that tries for us. And this time I’ll be fully awake.’
‘You’d better be.’ Mr Chen turned and raised his sword horizontally above his head, the point towards Leo. He held his other hand in front of him, the first two fingers pointed towards the ceiling. ‘Ready?’
‘Move out of the way now, Emma,’ Leo said, and moved into a defensive stance. ‘Ready.’
I made a quick dash for the door before my head could be sliced off.
I returned exactly half an hour later, nervous but determined.
Leo gave me a quick, kind pat on the shoulder as he passed me to go out. ‘You’ll be fine.’
Mr Chen gestured for me to enter. I stood next to him. ‘Have you done any martial arts before?’ he said. ‘No.’
‘Good. Hold out your hand.’
He took my hand and concentrated. His eyes seemed to go right through me, sharp and dark. Something ice-cold went from his hand to mine. It shot up my arm, into my head like a freezing black blade, then back down into my hand. He didn’t release my hand and I shivered.
‘Was that you?’ I whispered.
He nodded, still concentrating. Then he released my hand and the cold thing snapped off. ‘Interesting.’ ‘What?’
He shook his head, then gestured towards my jeans. ‘Those clothes are unsuitable, they’re too tight.’
My face flushed; I could feel the heat.
‘We will see if you have the talent, and if you do, Jade can find you a uniform of suitable size.’
‘Really? A wudang uniform?’ I said with delight. He looked at me piercingly. ‘How do you know it is wudang?’
I shrugged. ‘Research.’
He eyed me silently, then turned to face the mirrors. ‘Watch what I do. Then we will do it together.’
He raised both arms to shoulder height with his elbows bent and his palms face down. Then he slowly dropped them. He turned to me. ‘Try.’
I raised my arms and dropped them. Easy.
He sighed.
I choked back the laugh. ‘That bad?’
He didn’t say anything, but his eyes shone with amusement as he turned back to the mirror. He raised his hands and crossed them in front of his chest with the palms in, then moved his hands out and down.
I tried to follow his movement more closely. He had bent his elbows and relaxed his hands; I tried to do it as well. He watched me silently, then nodded.
He performed the crossed-hands move again, followed by the floating-arm move, then finished it with a kind of gentle push.
I followed, but screwed it up badly. I shook my head, flustered, and dropped my hands.
‘Don’t worry if you don’t have it right,’ he said gently. ‘If you want to move slower, or redo a move, just tell me. You are the one in control. You set the pace.’
I nodded, and relaxed. He wasn’t pushing me. ‘I thought you would just perform the moves and I would follow. That’s the way they learn in the park.’
‘The best way to learn is the one that works,’ he said. ‘Every student is different. Try again.’
We performed the moves together again, and this time I had them reasonably right.
‘Good,’ he said, warm with quiet approval.
I couldn’t stop the huge grin that spread over my face. This wasn’t just interesting, it was great fun.
He continued the moves, each time adding a slightly more complicated manoeuvre.
When we had done about five different moves in a row, he nodded and stepped back. ‘Do you think you can remember?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Try.’
I turned to face the mirrors and took a deep breath to relax. I still felt nervous about performing the moves alone. I raised my hands and threw myself into it, much too fast, and did the moves completely wrong.
He stepped forward and put his hand on my arm to stop me. ‘Wait, slower. Much too fast.’
I froze. The warmth of his body pressed all the way down my back. He stiffened. But he didn’t move away.
I looked up into the mirror. He gazed into my eyes.
His hand rotated around my arm and dropped to my hand, but didn’t let it go. He shifted slightly to look down at me, still pressed into me.
‘Slow down, Emma,’ he said softly, his dark eyes glowing. ‘We have all the time in the world.’ His other hand moved to my back and my heart leapt to my throat. I shifted closer to him.
He dropped his hands and moved away. ‘Try again. More slowly. Don’t hurry it, take your time.’
I nodded, took a deep breath and turned back to the mirrors.
I tried again, and had it.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Well done. A yin focus for you, to start off with.’
I turned back so that I could see him. ‘Is that like yin-yang?’
He nodded. ‘You have been learning. Yin is the more dark and soft, yang
is the more bright and hard. That’s two in a row now.’
‘Two in a row of what?’
‘Leo was also more suited to a yin style at the beginning as well.’
‘I can’t see Leo as soft.’
‘We are not here to discuss Leo,’ he said, closing the topic. ‘Now we will learn a set of moves, one flowing into another. In Japanese it is called a kata.’
‘You know some Japanese martial arts?’
‘I know all martial arts,’ he said. ‘I invented most of them.’
‘You are extremely scary sometimes.’
‘Good,’ he said, perfectly serious. ‘I thought you were doing some research on me.’
‘I did,’ I said, ‘but I gave up. It’s all contradictory. The only thing that everybody agrees is that you’re some sort of turtle-snake thing. Are you?’
I flushed. I hadn’t thought about what I’d said. Calling a Chinese man a ‘turtle’ to his face was incredibly insulting. Would he take it the wrong way?
He held his hands out from his sides. ‘I am what you see.’
I saw him. There was so much I wanted to say.
I grinned. ‘“Ugliest creature in creation”.’
He seemed shocked for a moment and opened his mouth to say something, then smiled. ‘Jade will find a uniform of a suitable size for you.’
I felt a thrill of excitement. I would be learning from him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘Roundhouse kick,’ Mr Chen said, watching me perform the kicks. ‘Front kick. Side. Good.’ He gestured. ‘Here, now.’
We stood side by side in front of the mirrors.
‘There are twenty-three standard punches, but we’ll do some drills first.’ He rolled his fists over the top of each other for the punches. ‘Kicking out with the knuckles at the end of the punch.’ He stopped and gestured. ‘Try.’
I rolled the punches and stopped.
‘Is there a problem?’
I shook my head, confused. ‘We just started this. But it feels like I’ve been doing it all my life.’ I performed a three-punch set. ‘It’s like I already knew how to do this.’
‘How long have I been teaching you?’
I worked it out. ‘We started when we came back from London, end of August. It’s late September now. Only about a month.’
‘That’s about usual for a student of mine,’ he said. ‘We did the tai chi for three weeks, then we started the harder stuff. So you already know it.’
He demonstrated, performing a slow punch from the
tai chi set. ‘It’s the same moves, we are just doing them faster.’
‘You’re right. It’s exactly the same moves.’ I performed the punches.
‘Slowly to start,’ he said. ‘Don’t attempt to be as fast as me.’
I shook my head. ‘Nobody’s as fast as you.’ ‘You’re quite correct. Stop.’ I froze.
He came to me and pushed my elbow down slightly. ‘Keep your elbow bent. If it’s straight then your opponent could hit the end of your arm and break it. Yin at all times; absorbing.’ He left his hand on my arm and smiled into my eyes.
‘Thanks,’ I said softly.
His other hand came up to my face, but pulled away before he touched me. ‘Punches. A hundred, rolling drill, go.’
I watched him.
He moved back, smiled, and gestured with one hand. ‘Punches, Emma.’
I sighed, took up a narrow horse stance and started punching.
Maybe it was because he still missed his wife. Maybe it was because he thought an employer-employee relationship wasn’t appropriate. Maybe he felt it was too soon.
A lot of maybes.
I sighed and continued to punch. Maybe one day he would get over the maybes and I would see something more definite. I wouldn’t push it. I respected his feelings far too much.
I walked out of the MTR station underneath Times Square in Causeway Bay, the upmarket shopping mall. Louise and April were waiting for me at the bottom of the enormous escalators that led up into the mall.
‘Where we going?’ I said.
April indicated the dirty tenements across the road. ‘Shui gow okay?’
Both Louise and I nodded.
We walked through the square at the front of the mall with its huge video screen and crossed the road. The four-storey tenements on the other side were grey with pollution and exhaust fumes. We could catch glimpses through the uncurtained windows of squalid rooms with steel bunk beds.
A noodle shop occupied the ground floor of one of the tenements. We walked past the glassed-in area at the front of the shop where the sweaty chef prepared the shui gow and won ton, dumplings in soup, and searched for a table with three spare chairs. We found one but had to share with a workman by himself, wearing a filthy singlet, and a pair of young office girls in pastel business suits.
The restaurant was tiny, with rubbish on the floor and a ceiling black with grease, but it was packed to the rafters with people eating the dumplings so it had to be good.
April pulled the green plastic chopsticks out of the metal holder in the centre of the table. ‘Shui gow or won ton?’
‘Shui gow,’ I said.
‘Won ton mien,’ Louise said.
April ordered for us. The waiter plonked three glasses of black tea onto the table, scribbled the order and ran off.
Louise and I pulled out our notebooks.
‘Desman,’ I said.
‘Portcullis,’ she said.
‘Whoa, high stakes,’ I said. ‘Vincci.’
‘Had that one,’ she said. ‘Rolls.’ ‘Whyman,’ I said, ‘a girl.’ ‘Porky.’
‘Wimpy,’ I shot back. ‘Window.’
‘Lemon,’ I said. ‘I have no idea why, and neither did she.’
‘Cynic,’ she said. ‘Pronounced “Kainic”.’
I closed my notebook. ‘You win.’
April watched us with her usual bewilderment. ‘What is that all about? You keep doing that.’
‘Geez, April, you should have worked it out by now,’ Louise said. ‘How’s everything?’
‘I’m going to Australia soon,’ April said. ‘Another week or so, I’m off.’
The noodles arrived. ‘What about Andy?’ I said.
She waved the chopsticks dismissively. ‘He went to Thailand on holiday with a friend, but he’ll be back to see me off.’
Louise stopped dead. ‘Wait a minute. Is he still spending most of his time in China?’
The dumplings arrived. April used the chopsticks in one hand and her spoon in the other to fish one out and try it. ‘Still good,’ she said.
The other people at the table stopped and watched Louise and me carefully as we ate the dumplings. When they saw that we could handle chopsticks competently they returned to their own food.
‘Still most of the time in China,’ April said. ‘Very busy at work. A lot of sales work around Guangdong.’
‘Why did he go to Thailand with his friend, and not you?’ I said.
She shrugged. ‘He just wanted to go with his friend. They went water-skiing or something.’ Louise and I shared a look. ‘Is this friend a guy or a girl?’ Louise said.
April stiffened, shocked. ‘Of course a man! Don’t be silly.’
Louise and I shared another look.
‘I talked to him about having a baby when we’re in Australia, and he thinks it’s a good idea.’ April beamed with satisfaction. ‘Very soon.’
‘You need to have your husband around to make a baby, April,’ Louise said.
‘I know that, we’ll get there.’ April looked over at me. ‘Aunty Kitty wants you to call her.’
‘Geez, that bitch really won’t drop it, will she?’ Louise said.
‘You should talk about her with more respect,’ April said. ‘She’s a very important person.’
‘I’m happy where I am, April,’ I said. ‘I enjoy working for Mr Chen.’
April’s phone rang with a noisy canto-pop tune. She pulled it out of her bag. It had a pink
furry Hello Kitty case and a special aerial with lights that flashed as it rang.
She put the phone to her ear, still holding the spoon with the other hand. ‘Wei?’
She listened for a long time, occasionally nodding and grunting. Then she said, ‘Ho ak,’ and closed the phone. She looked blankly at us.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Andy’s just back from Thailand, he’s at the airport,’ she said. ‘He’s flying straight out to Shanghai and he needs me to collect some stuff for him from the airport. I’d better go.’ She pulled out her wallet and handed me a hundred-dollar bill. ‘Pay for me?’
‘Sure,’ I said, taking the money.
She nodded to us, rose and went smartly out of the restaurant, her stilettos clicking on the grey tiles.
‘What do you think?’ Louise said.
‘Probably gay, and she’s a cover for him. The guy he went to Thailand with is his real partner.’
‘Could be; happens all the time. Or he could be straight and that trip to Thailand was a sex trip,’ Louise said. ‘He could have married her just to get an Australian passport. He’s pushing her hard to go there.’
‘You think she’s aware either way?’
‘Look at her.’ Louise pointed her chopsticks towards the door of the restaurant. ‘No idea. Quite happy to be married to this man who treats her like shit.’
She turned to me and grinned. ‘Now, there’s something up at the Peak that you want to give me. Hurry up and finish the noodles so you can take me up there.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ She leaned over the table and spoke quietly. ‘There’s something up there that I just have to see.’ ‘What?’ ‘Mr Chen.’
‘I have to clear it with Leo before I take you up.’ She stared at me. ‘I mean it.’
She waved her chopsticks over the remains of her soup. ‘Whatever. Come on, I want to see.’
I pulled out my mobile phone and called home. ‘Chen residence.’ ‘Monica, is Leo around?’ ‘Wait.’
The phone clicked. ‘Yeah?’
‘Leo, I want to bring my friend Louise up. The one we had yum cha with. Is that okay?’
‘The loud Australian?’
‘Yeah. The other one besides me.’