Something to Hide

‘What?’

  ‘That he snores?’

  ‘Oh, I read it on your blog,’ I say, airily. ‘Ages ago. You wrote about how noisy the African nights are, what with the dogs, and the cicadas, and Jeremy’s snores.’

  ‘Did I?’ she says vaguely. ‘I can’t remember.’

  She says night-night again and turns away, hunched into the foetal position, her nightie pulled over her knees. She’s so tiny that I have an absurd desire to protect her.

  He comes to me in my dreams, as I knew he would. He’s in the garden where I grew up, hiding behind a bush. My mother’s calling me into the house but I’m too busy looking for Jeremy, who’s whispering, Just kidding. When I find him he’s wearing the Hawaiian shirt, the one he wore that first day, but it’s smeared with mud. I’m building a castle, he says, but it keeps collapsing. Get your dad to sort this place out, will you? He’s not kidding now, he looks testy and exhausted.

  I wake, drenched with sweat. For a moment I have no idea where I am. Somebody’s snoring.

  It’s Bev. Sunlight glows through the curtains; it’s already hot. Her face is turned away from me and she’s pulled the sheet up to her chin. Her snores are deep and hoarse, like a man’s.

  I get out of bed and peer through the curtains. We’re up on the third floor, above the wall which seals the hotel into its own perma-climate. On the other side, astonishingly, is Africa. A street market sprawls along the side of the road. Tin shacks belch smoke from cooking pots, battered buses disgorge passengers, the place is heaving with people. For a moment I think I’m dreaming. Then the shock of it hits me.

  I’m in Africa. Jeremy’s dead. And I can’t grieve because Bev is here beside me.

  Oreya, West Africa

  WHEN SOMEONE DIES you want to talk about them all the time. That’s what I’ve realized. You want to hear their name on your tongue, the sound of it in the room. You want to tell people stories about them and hear stories about them from other people. New stories, old stories, the same stories again and again, you don’t care, your greed for them is insatiable. In fact, you can’t bear to talk about anything else.

  Bev obviously feels this too. She’s always been a chatterbox. Now, in the freshness of her bereavement, she talks about Jeremy non-stop. There’s an awful lot to say. Thirty-five years’ worth. Some of it is from the far past, do you remember when we all drove to Brighton in the middle of the night? But most is about their marriage.

  I have to listen, of course, and make the right noises. But I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear about their picnic beside a waterfall in Penang, when he gave her a piggyback. I don’t want to hear about his childish enthusiasm for airline meals, or how he liked her cutting his hair, and latterly, his nose hair. I want to block my ears and scream. And I can’t talk about Jeremy because I have to guard my words or indeed tell an outright lie. Doing this, I’m betraying the Jeremy I knew so intimately. In my wariness I’m losing him; he’s becoming a stream of commonplaces.

  This makes me homesick. I want to be back in my house, where we’d been so happy and which is so full of memories. And I’m homesick for my friends in England in whom I’ve confided. In their company I would be able to speak freely; I want somebody’s arms around me so I can cry my heart out. I’ve told nobody about Jeremy’s death; I just packed my bags, in a frenzy, and got on a plane. And now I’m here, in his home town, and I’ve never felt so alone in my life.

  We’re in a taxi, driving from the small and rudimentary airport. Jeremy said Oreya was the arse-end of nowhere but he was fond of it. Swindon with mosquitoes, he called it. Stretching from the airport is a wide road lined with office buildings, Zonac amongst them. They’re glassy and modern, with sentry-boxes at the gates. It’s eerily deserted here, not a black face to be seen. I remember him talking about the Chinese and the big corporations, what they were doing in Africa, their vast exploitation. I wonder if he felt threatened when he stepped over to the other side, the side of the exploited. I remember our conversation beside the Thames, when he changed before my eyes.

  ‘I was so proud of him,’ says Bev. ‘Giving all this up.’

  Oh God, did I speak out loud? Or has she been talking all this time?

  ‘He lost his pension, the rental on our house, he lost everything. And then there were the legal fees.’ She sighs. ‘But I really think he was the happiest I’ve ever seen him. And that made me happy. He never was a company man, you know, not underneath. He liked kicking against the pricks. And honestly, Pet, some of them were pricks …’ She looks out of the window. We’re driving through a residential area where large houses, shaded by trees, loom up behind high walls. ‘He didn’t care, though. He was fired with such enthusiasm. We talked a lot about mindfulness, you know? How once you solve yourself, it enables you to give to others.’ She points to her chest. ‘It starts in here. Something was freed in Jem and he became so open, so loving. When I was giving him a massage his body felt quite different. The past was lifted off him. It’s like, he moved into my fingers.’ Her voice thickens. ‘We were on such a journey together.’

  Fucking hell, I can’t stand any more of this. How long am I supposed to be staying with Bev? I have no idea, but already it’s unbearable. This New Age bollocks is so dated. I bet he cringed when she talked like this. Bev has always been a provincial girl, and living abroad all these years hasn’t helped. She arrives at her epiphanies twenty years later than the rest of us.

  Now I’m appalled at my own disloyalty. It’s me who should learn about giving. She’s going through hell and I’m sneering at her. It’s jealousy, of course. Searing, burning, excruciating jealousy. It’s as strong as my grief. In fact, it’s mixed in with it and the combination is toxic.

  The taxi jolts along. There seems to be no centre to Oreya. The road is worse now, potholed and dusty. We pass more modest bungalows, interspersed with shacks. Patches of scrubby wasteland are littered with rubbish. There are more people around now; some of them are picking through the garbage. We pass a concrete shopping arcade – a butcher’s with a single pitiful carcass; a hairdresser’s and a stall selling tins of cooking oil.

  Beverley taps the driver on the shoulder and gives him directions in the loud voice British people use abroad, as if addressing the retarded. Jeremy speaks the language like a native, she wrote in her blog. This is Jeremy’s place; she just tagged along as his wife. I can’t imagine her living here without him; nor, I’m sure, can she. I presume she’ll come back to England as soon as this business is over, if business is the right word. I have no idea how long it will take. She muttered something about bringing home Jeremy’s body but then she burst into tears and couldn’t finish the sentence. When I woke in the middle of the night I pictured his coffin with us, on the plane. No wonder it took me three hours to get back to sleep.

  We stop beside a pink wall. A chorus of yapping greets us. Beverley pays the driver and unlocks the gate by punching in a number. Jeremy hated these security measures, she says, but there’s a lot of crime and the insurance insisted on it.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re with me,’ Bev says. ‘I couldn’t bear to come home alone.’

  So this is where he lived. I’d pictured it so vividly that it’s hard to connect my imagination to the reality. Facing me is a half-timbered bungalow, Sunningdale style, with a veranda running along the front. Wind chimes hang from the eaves, glinting in the sun. The garden is crammed with animal sculptures, leathery trees, and plants in terracotta pots; I nearly trip over a concrete tortoise. There’s something Hansel and Gretel about the place; it’s lush and secret, closed off from the dusty world outside. I presume Bev’s the gardener; it’s the horticultural equivalent of her long-ago bedroom with its teddy bears. Did Jeremy like this sort of kitsch, or just go along with his wife? I don’t know his taste, I don’t know anything. This is their life and I’m an intruder.

  Beverley hurries off to greet her dogs. They’re in a fenced-off yard at the back of the compound, where there are kennels and a strong smell of s
hit. They fling themselves against the wire netting. She’s such a softie, bless her, said Jeremy. Bev and her waifs and strays. They’re her substitute kids. Before Jeremy came into my life I, too, was thinking of getting a dog. Unconditional love, blah blah. These dogs certainly seem pleased to see Bev. They all look the same – battered, feral, dun-coloured creatures, like dingoes; they’re probably all related. The local people must think that Bev’s crazy, but then all Brits are crazy when it comes to animals.

  ‘Clarence, there you are! Have you given Trinket her pills?’

  A man has appeared, rubbing his eyes. Bev has told me about Clarence. In the old days he’d be called a houseboy. He and Bev discuss the dogs. Her voice changes when she talks about them; it’s soft and crooning. For an animal-lover, this town must be a battlefield. Jeremy told me about her arguments with the locals when she saw them beating their donkeys or selling monkeys in cages. Photos of slaughtered elephants reduced her to tears.

  When this is over, will you marry me?

  ‘You poor thing.’ Bev is looking at me. She indicates the dogs. ‘Don’t get upset, sweetie, these are the lucky ones.’

  Shanghai, China

  I’M EIGHT MONTHS’ pregnant. I shouldn’t be flying.

  This flashes through Li Jing’s mind as she boards the plane. She knows this is stupid. The pregnant woman is on the other side of the world. Jing feels so close to her, however, that she has these flashes at unexpected moments, often in public. She almost expects people to give up their seats on the bus.

  It’s like she’s living the pregnancy with Mrs Lorelei Russell. Over the past months they’ve been companions in this huge adventure. Oceans separate them and yet it’s so intimate. The early sickness; Jing has felt a certain queasiness. Later on she felt heavier, as if she were putting on weight. This unknown woman, call me Lorrie, must be waddling now. There’s proof of this for she recently emailed a photograph of herself, vastly pregnant.

  Or vastly fat? As Jing shuffles along the aisle she’s suddenly struck by a thought: what if it’s just a trick? Mrs Russell in Texas has simply taken their money and stuffed herself with a cushion. Sooner or later she’ll disappear. America is a vast country, as vast as China, and can swallow up a person, no problem. After all, people disappear in China all the time.

  It’s not reported, but now Jing has made some investigations. Her husband never talks about this but she’s been wondering why some people have vanished. A man called Zhang Jie, for instance, who used to leave phone messages of a threatening nature which suddenly stopped.

  A strange thing has been happening while their baby grows. Jing has been finding out things on the internet. She has never been particularly curious about the world but she feels a responsibility now their child is about to arrive in it. At first she was reading about America, whose citizen their child will be. America, the land of the free. Little did she realize how true this was, for it was through their websites that she discovered certain facts about her own country.

  She now sees China in a new light. No wonder her husband has moved so many of his assets abroad – the properties in London, for instance. Bad things happen to people who get on the wrong side of those in power, or who know too much about what’s going on. Her husband has close links with the ruling party and that could be dangerous if circumstances changed. He talks about pollution but that’s not the real reason he wants an escape route. Jing has no idea what the real reason is, but suspects it’s linked to his business in Africa.

  He’s in Africa now. He’ll be there for the next few weeks, until the baby is born. Their baby. Their baby girl. Then he’ll fly to Texas and bring her home.

  As she sits in the plane, Jing’s eyes fill with tears. She’s so excited she can scarcely breathe. Two businessmen sit on either side of her; she inspects the in-flight magazine so they can’t see her face. How could she be suspicious about Mrs Russell? The woman is doing a brave and generous thing. Childbirth is supposed to be the worst pain a female can suffer. And then there’s the pain of giving the baby away. Both are unimaginable to Jing. Her gratitude is profound; she wishes she could meet this woman to thank her in person; money seems an inadequate token of her appreciation.

  Well, maybe not inadequate. Lei said that Mrs Russell lives in a poor area with some bad characters hanging about – so bad, in fact, that his car was stolen. Jing presumed that only black people were poor in America but this doesn’t seem to be the case. She’s glad her daughter is getting out the moment she’s born. Like herself, she’ll join the high life.

  And all this is thanks to her husband. Her gratitude to him, too, has been growing over the months. She’s grateful that he wanted a baby as much as she did, and that he was prepared to go to such lengths to get one. She’s grateful that he doesn’t seem disappointed that it’s a girl. She’s also thankful that his lack of potency didn’t let them down.

  The word potency makes her blush. She can’t tell anyone about this, of course. In fact, few people know that they’re having a surrogate baby at all. Her husband is a secretive man, and reluctant to reveal details about their intimate life. Besides, it hasn’t happened yet and they’re both superstitious – the rice is not yet cooked.

  However, she has decided to tell her friend Danielle. That’s why she’s flying to Shanghai. Her secret is becoming burdensome; besides, she’s been alone for weeks now and longs for company. She has sent her good wishes to Mrs Russell. What she’s feeling is beyond Jing’s comprehension. It’s Lei who’s in contact with her, who has organized it all and met her. Indeed, whose baby she’s carrying.

  This gives Li Jing the strangest sensation. That her husband’s body is intimate with the body of a woman in Texas. That they’re growing something of which she herself has no part. Aside from preparing the nursery she has had nothing to do; she’s the passive onlooker to this drama, and yet she will take delivery of its result. At the moment, however, she’s irrelevant. This lack of connection is so disorientating that sometimes she can’t believe any of it is happening at all. Sometimes, just sometimes, she imagines it’s all a cruel joke.

  Lei would never do such a thing, of course. But it’s a measure of how little she knows her husband that it even crosses her mind.

  ‘Maybe he had sex with her.’ Danielle squints through the cigarette smoke. ‘Ever thought of that? A lot more fun than spatulas or whatever.’

  Jing is taken aback. No, she hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘He’s a dark horse,’ says Danielle, who has never liked Lei. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.’

  Jing isn’t offended. Nor, in fact, would she be jealous if such were the case. Just for a moment she wonders how much she loves her husband.

  Danielle crosses her legs and blows out a plume of smoke. She’s half Chinese – her father is Swiss. Like many people of mixed race, she’s very beautiful. They worked together at the Sheraton Hotel and Jing has always idolized her. Danielle’s unlike anyone she’s ever known, brazen and sophisticated. She can swear in six languages.

  ‘She’ll be a half-in-half, like you,’ says Jing.

  ‘Us mongrels have all the luck.’ Danielle preens herself. ‘Maybe the baby’ll be so cute she’ll keep her.’

  ‘No she won’t.’

  Danielle nods. ‘You’re right. Your husband will see to that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Danielle taps the side of her nose. ‘He has his methods.’

  This is typical Danielle. She likes dropping hints, it’s part of her power. What does she know, and Jing doesn’t? Danielle’s husband is the boss of a construction company and has connections in the highest places; Danielle might look like a trophy wife but she’s smart, and makes it her business to know what’s what. She also knows when to keep her mouth shut.

  Jing, however, prefers to know nothing. She’s been brought up the traditional way and, besides, she’s naturally shy. That’s why it’s gratifying to see Danielle’s reaction to her news.

  For Danielle
’s impressed, there’s no doubt about it. Her mousy friend is not so mousy after all. She’s hiring an American woman to have a baby for her; how surprising is that? Jing feels a small shift of power between them as they sit drinking lattes in Danielle’s minimalist apartment. Outside, snow is falling. It’s January and bitterly cold, but inside it’s so warm that Danielle’s long tanned legs are bare. Her toenails are painted green and she wears bejewelled sandals. Her ease stems from a life of advantage – finishing school in Switzerland, wealth, jet-set connections, ravishing looks. Her father owns a string of hotels, hence her job in reception. But that was just an amusing interlude before she found a husband.

  Jing, however, worked her way up from nothing. Though she too married a rich man, she’s moved into an alien world. She has few friends. Her husband is away half the year and sometimes she’s so lonely she could scream. She misses the camaraderie of her Sheraton life and her brief year of independence.

  But soon she’ll have a baby to fill the void.

  Back in Beijing she goes to the store and buys some items for the new arrival – bottles, nappies, milk formula. The humdrum nature of these essentials makes the baby suddenly real. She can’t sleep; she lies staring at the ceiling, her heart racing. From his emails she can tell that her husband is growing nervous too. If only she knew a fellow mother in whom she could confide. Even so, they could hardly swap notes, her situation is too bizarre. For a start, she’s not a mother. The weirdness of her position has grown stronger through these winter days, the city locked in freezing fog.

  Once or twice she has thought of faking a pregnancy. She could stuff a cushion down herself, a bigger one as the months passed.

  This is too spooky, of course. Her husband would be horrified. Once the baby is born, he says, they’ll tell people what’s happened. They’ll understand. Surrogacy is an obvious solution to the problem. He says this defiantly, trying to convince himself, but Jing suspects he’s telling the truth. From what she’s read on the internet, all sorts of unusual arrangements are being made nowadays. Couples aren’t conceiving; it’s happening throughout the developing world, where pollution levels are rising. Infertile couples buy babies, it’s not uncommon. In her own country they’re only allowed one child, even if they can conceive, but there are ways to exploit the system.