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May 1952

It started as an accident. The small Herend rabbit had fallen into Claire’s purse. It had been on the piano and she had been gathering up the sheet music at the end of the lesson when she knocked it off. It fell off the doily (a doily! on the Steinway!) and into her large leather bag. What had happened after that was perplexing, even to her. Locket had been staring down at the keyboard and hadn’t noticed. And then, Claire had just . . . left. It wasn’t until she was downstairs and waiting for the bus that she grasped what she had done. And then it had been too late. She went home and buried the expensive porcelain figurine under her sweaters.

Claire and her husband had moved to Hong Kong nine months ago, transferred by the government, which had posted Martin at the Department of Water Services. Churchill had ended rationing and things were starting to return to normal when they had received news of the posting. She had never dreamed of leaving England before.

Martin was an engineer, overseeing the building of the Tai Lam Cheung reservoir, so that there wouldn’t need to be so much rationing when the rains ebbed, as they did every several years. It was to hold four and a half billion gallons of water when full. Claire almost couldn’t imagine such a number, but Martin said it was barely enough for the people of Hong Kong, and he was sure that by the time they were finished, they’d have to build another. “More work for me,” he said cheerfully. He was analyzing the topography of the hills so that they could install catchwaters for when the rain came. The English government did so much for the colonies, Claire knew.

They made the locals’ lives much better but they rarely appreciated it. Her mother had warned her about the Chinese before she left --- an unscrupulous, conniving people who would surely try to take advantage of her innocence and goodwill.

Coming over, she had noticed it for days, the increasing wetness in the air, even more than usual. The sea breezes were stronger and the sunrays more powerful when they broke through cloud. When the P&O Canton finally pulled into Hong Kong harbor in August, she really felt she was in the tropics, hair frizzing up in curls, face always slightly damp and oily, the constant moisture under her arms and knees. When she stepped from her cabin outside, the heat assailed her like a physical blow, until she managed to find shade and fan herself.

There had been seven stops along the  month-long journey, but after a few grimy hours spent in Algiers and Port Said, Claire had decided to stay onboard rather than encounter more frightening peoples and customs. She had never imagined such sights. In Algiers, she had seen a man kiss a donkey and she couldn’t discern whether the high odor was coming from one or the other, and in Egypt, the markets were the very definition of unhygienic --- a fishmonger gutting a fish had licked the knife clean with his tongue. She had inquired as to whether the ship’s provisions were procured locally, at these markets, and the answer had been most unsatisfactory. An uncle had died from food poisoning in India, making her cautious. She kept to herself and sustained herself mostly on the beef tea they dispensed in the late morning on the sun deck. The menus that were distributed every day were mundane: turnips, potatoes, things that could be stored in the hold, with meat and salads the first few days after port. Martin promenaded on the deck every morning for exercise and tried to get her to join him, to no avail. She preferred to sit in a deck chair with a large brimmed hat and wrap herself in one of the scratchy wool ship blankets, face shaded from the omnipresent sun.

There had been a scandal on the ship. A woman, going to meet her fiancé in Hong Kong, had spent one too many moonlit nights on the deck with another gentleman and had disembarked in the Philippines with her new man, leaving only a letter for her intended. Liesel, the girlfriend to whom the woman had entrusted the letter, grew visibly more nervous as the date of arrival drew near. Men joked that she could take Sarah’s place, but she wasn’t having any of that. Liesel was a serious young woman who was joining her sister and  brother-in-law in Hong Kong, where she intended to educate Unfortunate Chinese Girls in Art: when she held forth on it, it was always with capital letters in Claire’s mind.

Before disembarking, Claire separated out all of her thin cotton dresses and skirts; she could tell that was all she would be wearing for a while. They had arrived to a big party on the dock, with paper streamers and loud, shouting vendors selling fresh fruit juice and soy milk drinks and garish flower arrangements to the people waiting. Groups of revelers had already broken out the champagne and were toasting the arrival of their friends and family.

“We pop them as soon as we see the boat on the horizon,” a man explained to his girl as he escorted her off the boat. “It’s a big party. We’ve been here for hours.” Claire watched Liesel go down the gangplank, looking very nervous, and then she disappeared into the throng. Claire and Martin went down next, treading on the soft, humid wood, luggage behind them carried by two scantily clad young Chinese boys who had materialized out of nowhere.

Martin had an old school friend, John, who worked at Dodwell’s, one of the trading firms, who had promised to greet the ship. He came with two friends and offered the new arrivals  freshly squeezed guava drinks. Claire pretended to sip at hers, as her mother had warned her about the cholera that was rampant in these parts. The men were bachelors and very pleasant. John, Nigel, Leslie. They explained that they all lived together in a mess --- there were many, known by their companies, Dodwell’s Mess, Jardine’s Mess, et cetera, and they assured Claire and Martin that Dodwell’s threw the best parties around.

They accompanied them to the  government-approved hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, where a Chinese man with a long queue, dirty white tunic, and shockingly long fingernails showed them to their room. They made an arrangement to meet for tiffin the next day and the men departed, leaving Martin and Claire sitting on the bed, exhausted and staring at one another. They didn’t know each other that well. They had been married barely four months.

She had accepted Martin’s proposal to escape the dark interior of her house, her bitter mother railing against everything, getting worse, it seemed, with her advancing age, and an uninspiring job as a filing girl at an insurance company. Martin was older, in his forties, and had never had luck with women. The first time he kissed her, she had to stifle the urge to wipe her mouth. He was like a cow, slow and steady. And kind. She knew this. She was grateful for it.

She had not had many chances with men. Her parents stayed home all the time, and so she had as well. When she had started seeing Martin --- he was the older brother of one of the girls at work --- she had eaten dinner at restaurants, drunk a cocktail at a hotel bar, and seen other young women and men talking, laughing with an assurance she could not fathom. They had opinions about politics; they had read books she had never heard of and seen foreign films and talked about them with such confidence. She was enthralled and not a little intimidated. And then Martin had come to her, serious, his job was taking him to the Orient, and would she come with him? She was not so attracted to him, but who was she to be picky, she thought, hearing the voice of her mother. She let him kiss her and nodded yes.

Claire had started to draw a bath in their hotel room when another knock on the door revealed a small Chinese woman, an amah, she was called, who started to unpack their suitcases until Martin shooed her off.

And that was how they arrived in Hong Kong, which was like nothing Claire had imagined. Apart from the usual colonial haunts --- all hush and genteel potted palms and polished wood in whitewashed buildings --- it was loud and crowded and dirty and bustling. The buildings were right next to one another and often had clothing hung out to dry on bamboo poles. There were garish vertical signs hung on every one, and they advertised massage parlors and pubs and hair salons. Someone had told her that opium dens still existed in  back-alley buildings. There was often refuse on the street, sometimes even human refuse, and there was a pungent, peppery odor in town that was oddly clingy, attaching itself to your very skin until you went home for a good scrub. There were all sorts of people. The local women carried their babies in a sort of back sling. Sikhs served as uniformed security guards --- you saw them dozing off on wooden stools outside the banks, turbaned heads hanging heavily off their chests, rifles held loosely between their knees. The Indians had been brought over by the British, of course. Pakistanis ran carpet stores, Portuguese were doctors, and Jews ran the dairy farms and other large businesses. There were English businessmen and American bankers, White Russian aristocrats, and Peruvian entrepreneurs --- all peculiarly well traveled and sophisticated --- and, of course, there were the Chinese, quite different in Hong Kong from the ones in China, she was told.

To her surprise, she didn’t detest Hong Kong, as her mother had told her she would --- she found the streets busy and distracting, so very different from Croydon, and filled with people and shops and goods she had never seen before. She liked to sample the local bakery goods, the pineapple buns and yellow egg tarts, and sometimes wandered outside Central, where she would quickly find herself in unfamiliar surroundings, where she might be the only non-Chinese around. The fruit stalls were heaped with not only oranges and bananas, still luxuries in postwar England, but spiky, strange-looking fruits she came to try and like: star fruit, durian, lychee. She would buy a dollar’s worth and be handed a small, waxy brown bag and she would eat the fruit slowly as she walked. There were small stalls made of crudely nailed wood and corrugated tin, which housed specialty shops: this one sold chops, the stone stamps the Chinese used in place of signatures; this one made only keys; this one had a chair that was rented for  half-days by a street dentist and a barber. The locals ate on the street in tiny little restaurants called daipaidong, and she had seen three worker men in dirty singlets and trousers crouched over a plate containing a whole fish, spitting out the bones at their feet. One had seen her watching them, and deliberately picked up the fish’s eyeball with his chopsticks and raised it up to her, smiling, before he ate it.

Claire hadn’t met many Chinese people before, but the ones she had seen in the big towns in England were serving you in restaurants or ironing clothes. There were many of those types in Hong Kong, of course, but what had been  eye-opening was the sight of the affluent Chinese, the ones who seemed English in all but their skin color. It had been quite something to see a Chinese step out of a  Rolls-Royce, as she had one day when she was waiting on the steps of the Gloucester Hotel, or in business suits, eating lunch with other Englishmen who talked to them as if they were the same. She hadn’t known that such worlds existed. And then with Locket, she was thrust into their world.

After a few months settling in, finding a flat and setting it up, Claire had put the word out that she was looking for a job teaching the piano, somewhat as a lark, she put it --- something to fill the day --- but the truth was, they could really use the extra money. She had played the piano most of her life and was primarily  self-taught. Amelia, an acquaintance she had met at a sewing circle, said she would ask around.

She rang a few days later.

“There’s a Chinese family, the Chens. They run everything in town. Apparently, they’re looking for a piano teacher for their daughter, and they’d prefer an Englishwoman. What do you think?”

“A Chinese family?” Claire said. “I hadn’t thought about that possibility. Aren’t there any English families looking?”

“No,” Amelia said. “Not that I’ve been able to ascertain.”

“I just don’t know . . .” Claire demurred. “Wouldn’t it be odd?” She couldn’t imagine teaching a Chinese girl. “Does she speak English?”

“Probably better than you or me,” Amelia said impatiently. “They’re offering very adequate compensation.” She named a large sum.

“Well,” Claire said slowly, “I suppose it couldn’t do any harm to meet them.”

Victor and Melody Chen lived in the  Mid- Levels, in an enormous white  two-story house on May Road. There was a driveway, with potted plants lining the sides. Inside, there was the quiet, effi cient buzz of a household staffed with plentiful servants. Claire had taken a bus, and when she arrived, she was perspiring after the walk from the road to the house. The amah had led her to a sitting room, where she found a fan blowing blessedly cool air. A houseboy adjusted the drapes so that she was properly shaded. Her blue linen skirt, just delivered from the tailor, was wrinkled, and she had on a white voile blouse that was splotched with moisture. She hoped the Chens would allow her some time to compose herself. She shifted, feeling a drop of perspiration trickle down her thigh.

No such luck. Mrs. Chen swooped through the door, a vision in cool pink, holding a tray of drinks. A small, exquisite woman, with hair cut just so, so that it swung in precise, geometric movements. Her shoulders were fragile and exposed in her sleeveless shift, her face a tiny oval.

“Hello!” Mrs. Chen trilled. “Lovely to meet you. I’m Melody. Locket’s just on her way.”

“Locket?” Claire said, uncertain.

“My daughter. She’s just back from school and getting changed into something more comfortable. Isn’t the heat dreadful?” She set down the tray, which held long glasses of iced tea. “Have something cool, please.”

“Your English is remarkably good,” Claire said as she took a glass.

“Oh, is it?” Melody said casually. “Four years at Wellesley will do that for you, I suppose.”

“You were at university in America?” Claire asked. She hadn’t known that Chinese went to university in America.

“Loved every minute,” she said. “Except for the horrible, horrible food. Americans think a grilled cheese sandwich is a meal! And as you know, we Chinese take food very seriously.”

“Is Locket going to be schooled in America?”

“We haven’t decided, but really, I’d rather talk to you about your schooling,” Mrs. Chen said.

“Oh.” Claire was taken aback.

“You know,” she continued pleasantly. “Where you studied music, and all that.”

Claire settled back in her seat.

“I was a serious student for a number of years. I studied with Mrs. Eloise Pollock and was about to apply for a position at the Royal Conservatory when my family situation changed.”

Mrs. Chen sat, waiting, head tilted, with one birdlike ankle crossed over the other, her knees slanted to one side.

“And so, I was unable to continue,” Claire said. Was she supposed to explain it in detail to this stranger? Her father had been let go from the printing company and it had been a black couple of months before he found a new job as an insurance salesman. His pay had been erratic at best --- he was not a natural salesman --- and luxuries like piano lessons were unthinkable. Mrs. Pollock, a very kind woman, had offered to continue her instruction at a  much-reduced fee, but her mother, sensitive and pointlessly proud, had refused to even entertain the idea.

“And what level of studies did you achieve?”

“I was studying for my seventh grade examinations.”

“Locket is a beginning student but I want her to be taught seriously, by a serious musician,” Mrs. Chen said. “She should pass all her examinations with distinction.”

“Well, I’m certainly serious about music, and as for passing with distinction, that will be up to Locket,” Claire said. “I did very well on my examinations.”

Locket entered the room, or rather, she bumbled into it. Where her mother was small and fine, Locket was chubby, all rounded limbs and padded cheeks. She was wider than her mother already, and had glossy hair tied in a thick ponytail.

“Hallo,” she said. She had a very distinct English accent.

“Locket, this is Mrs. Pendleton,” Melody said, stroking her daughter’s cheek. “She’s come to see if she’ll be your piano teacher so you must be very polite.”

“Do you like the piano, Locket?” Claire said, too slowly, she realized, for a  ten-year-old child. She had no experience with children.

“I dunno,” Locket said. “I suppose so.”

“Locket!” her mother cried. “You said you wanted to learn. That’s why we bought you the new Steinway.”

“Locket’s a pretty name,” Claire said. “How did you come about it?”

“Dunno,” said Locket. She reached for a glass of iced tea and drank. A small trickle wended its way down her chin. Her mother took a napkin off the silver tray and dabbed at her daughter’s chin.

“Will Mr. Chen be arriving soon?” Claire asked.

“Oh, Victor!” Melody laughed. “He’s far too busy for these household matters. He’s always working.”

“I see,” Claire said. She was uncertain as to what came next.

“Would you play us something?” Melody asked. “We just got the piano and it would be lovely to hear it played professionally.”

“Of course,” Claire said, because she didn’t know what else to say. She felt as if she were being made to perform like a common entertainer --- something in Melody’s tone --- but she couldn’t think of a gracious way to demur.

She played a simple étude, which Melody seemed to enjoy and Locket squirmed through.

“I think this will be fine,” Mrs. Chen said. “Are you available on Thursdays?”

Claire hesitated. She didn’t know whether she was going to take the job.

“It would have to be Thursdays because Locket has lessons the other days,” Mrs. Chen said.

“Fine,” said Claire. “I accept.”

Locket’s mother was of a Hong Kong type. Claire saw women like her lunching at the Chez Henri, laughing and gossiping with one another. They were called taitais and you could spot them at the smart-clothing boutiques, trying on the latest fashions or climbing into their  chauffeur-driven cars. Sometimes Mrs. Chen would come home and put a slim, perfumed hand on Locket’s shoulder and comment liltingly on the music. And then, Claire couldn’t help it, she really couldn’t, she would think to herself, You people drown your daughters! Her mother had told her that, about how the Chinese were just a little above animals and that they would drown their daughters because they preferred sons. Once, Mrs. Chen had mentioned a function at the Jockey Club that she and her husband were going to. She had been all dressed up in diamonds, a black fl owing dress, and red, red lipstick. She had not looked like an animal. Bruce Comstock, the head of the Water office, had taken Martin and Claire to the club once, with his wife, and they drank pink gin while watching the horse races, and the stands had been filled with shouting gamblers.

The week before the figurine fell into Claire’s purse, she had been leaving the lesson when Victor and Melody Chen came in. It had rung five on the ornate mahogany grandfather clock that had mother-of- pearl Chinese characters inlaid all down the front of it and she had been putting her things away when they walked into the room. They were a tiny couple and they looked like porcelain dolls, with their shiny skin and coal eyes.

“Out the door already?” Mr. Chen said drily. He was dressed nattily in a navy blue pin-striped suit with a burgundy pocket square peeping out just so. “It’s five on the dot!” He spoke English with the faintest hint of a Chinese accent.

Claire flushed.

“I was here early. Ten minutes before four, I believe,” she said. She took pride in her punctuality.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Mrs. Chen said. “Victor is just teasing you. Stop it!” She swatted her husband with her little hand.

“You English are so serious all the time,” he said.

“Well,” Claire said uncertainly. “Locket and I had a productive hour together.” Locket slipped off the piano bench and under her father’s arm.

“Hello, Daddy,” she said shyly. She looked younger than her ten years. He patted her shoulder.

“How’s my little Rachmaninoff?” he said. Locket giggled delightedly.

Mrs. Chen was clattering around in her high heels.

“Mrs. Pendleton,” she asked, “would you like to join us for a drink?” She had on a suit that looked like it came out of the fashion magazines. It was almost certainly a Paris original. The jacket was made of a golden silk and buttoned smartly up the front, and there was a shimmery yellow skirt underneath that flowed and draped like gossamer.

“Oh, no,” she answered. “It’s very kind of you, but I should go home and start supper.”

“I insist,” Mr. Chen said. “I must hear about my little genius.” His voice didn’t allow for any disagreement. “Run along now, Locket. The adults are having a conversation.”

There was a large velvet divan in the living room, and several chairs, upholstered in red silk, along with two matching black lacquered tables. Claire sat down in an armchair that was far more slippery than it looked. She sank too deeply into it, then had to move forward in an ungainly manner until she was perched precariously on the edge. She steadied herself with her arms.

“How are you finding Hong Kong?” Mr. Chen said. Melody had gone into the kitchen to ask the amah to bring them drinks.

“Quite well,” she said. “It’s certainly different, but it’s an adventure.” She smiled at him. He was a  well-groomed man, in his  well-pressed suit and red and black silk tie. Above him, there was an oil of a Chinese man dressed in Chinese robes and a black skullcap. “What an interesting painting,” she remarked.

He looked up.

“Oh, that,” he said. “That’s Melody’s grandfather, who had a large dye factory in Shanghai. He was quite famous.”

“Dyes?” she said. “How fascinating.”

“Yes, and her father started the First Bank of Shanghai, and did very well indeed.” He smiled. “Melody comes from a family of entrepreneurs. Her family was all educated in the West --- England and America.”

Mrs. Chen came back into the room. She had taken off her jacket to reveal a pearly blouse underneath.

“Claire,” she said. “What will you have?”

“Just soda water for me, please,” she said.

“And I’ll have a sherry,” Mr. Chen said.

“I know!” Mrs. Chen said. She left again.

“And your husband,” he said. “He’s at a bank?”

“He’s at the Department of Water Services,” she said. “Working on the new reservoir.” She paused. “He’s heading it up.”

“Oh, very good,” Mr. Chen said carelessly. “Water’s certainly important. And the English do a fair job making sure it’s in the taps when we need it.” He sat back and crossed one leg over the other. “I miss England,” he said suddenly.

“Oh, did you spend time there?” Claire inquired politely.

“I was at Balliol,” he said, flapping his tie, now obviously a college tie, at her. Claire felt as if he had been waiting to tell her this fact. “And Melody went to Wellesley, so we’re a product of two different systems. I defend England, and Melody just loves the United States.”

“Indeed,” Claire murmured. Mrs. Chen came back into the room and sat down next to her husband. The amah came in next and offered Claire a napkin. It had blue cornflowers on it.

“These are lovely,” she said, inspecting the embroidered linen.

“They’re from Ireland!” Mrs. Chen said. “I just got them!”

“I just bought some lovely Chinese tablecloths at the China Emporium,” Claire said. “Beautiful lace cutwork.”

“You can’t compare them with the Irish ones, though,” Mrs. Chen said. “Very crude.”

Mr. Chen viewed his wife with amusement.

“Women!” he said to Claire. Another amah brought in a tray of drinks.

Claire sipped at her drink and felt the gassy bubbles in her mouth. Victor Chen looked at her expectantly.

“The Communists are a great threat,” she said. This is what she had heard again and again at gatherings.

Mr. Chen laughed.

“Of course! And what will you and Melody do about them?”

“Shut up, darling. Don’t tease,” said his wife. She took a sip of her drink. Victor watched her.

“What’s that you’re drinking, love?”

“A little cocktail,” she said. “I’ve had a long day.” She sounded defensive.

There was a pause.

“Locket is a good student,” Claire said, “but she needs to practice more.”

“It’s not her fault,” Mrs. Chen said breezily. “I’m not here to oversee her practice enough.”

Mr. Chen laughed. “Oh, she’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.”

Claire nodded. Parents were all the same. When she had children, she would be sure not to indulge them. She set her drink down.

“I should be going,” she said. “It’s harder to get a seat on the bus after five.”

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Chen said. “Pai was getting us some biscuits.”

“Oh, no,” she demurred. “I really should be leaving.”

“We’ll have Truesdale drive you home,” Mr. Chen offered.

“Oh, no,” Claire said. “I couldn’t put you out.”

“Do you know him?” Mr. Chen asked. “He’s English.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure,” Claire said.

“Hong Kong is very small,” Mr. Chen said. “It’s tiresome that way.”

“It’s no trouble at all for Truesdale,” Mrs. Chen said. “He’ll be going home anyway. Where do you live?”

“Happy Valley,” answered Claire, feeling put on the spot.

“Oh, that’s near where he lives!” Mrs. Chen cried, delighted at the coincidence. “So, it’s settled.” She called for Pai in Cantonese and told her to call the driver.

“Chinese is such an intriguing language,” Claire said. “I hope to pick some up during our time here.”

Mr. Chen raised an eyebrow.

“Cantonese,” he said, “is very difficult. There are some nine different tones for one sound. It’s much more difficult than English. I picked up rudimentary English in a year, but I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to learn Cantonese or Mandarin or Shanghainese in twice that.”

“Well,” she said brightly, “one always hopes.”

Pai walked in and spoke. Mrs. Chen nodded.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she said, “but the driver seems to have left already.”

“I’ll be fine taking the bus,” Claire said. Mr. Chen stood up as she picked up her things.

“It was very nice to meet you,” he said.

“And you,” she said, and walked out, feeling their eyes on her back.

At home, Martin had arrived already.

“Hullo,” he said. “You’re late today.” He was in an undershirt and his weekend trousers, which were stained and shiny at the knees. He had a drink in his hand.

She took off her jacket and put on a pot of water to boil.

“I was at the Chens’ house today,” she said. “Her parents asked me to stay for a drink.”

“Victor Chen, is it?” he asked, impressed. “He’s rather a big deal here.”

“I gathered,” she said. “He was quite something. Not at all like a Chinaman.”

“You shouldn’t use that word, Claire,” Martin said. “It’s very  old-fashioned and a bit insulting.”

Claire colored.

“I’ve just never . . .” She trailed off. “I’ve never seen Chinese people like this.”

“You are in Hong Kong,” Martin said, not unkindly. “There are all types of Chinese.”

“Where is the amah?” she asked, wanting to change the subject.

Yu Ling came from the back when Claire called.

“Can you help with dinner?” Claire said. “I bought some meat at the market.”

Yu Ling looked at her impassively. She had a way of making Claire feel uncomfortable, but she couldn’t bring herself to sack her. She wondered how the other wives did it --- they appeared to handle the help with an easy aplomb that seemed unfamiliar and unattainable to Claire. Some even joked with them and treated them like family members, but she’d heard that was more the American infl uence. Her friend Cecilia had her amah brush her hair for her before she went to bed, while she sat at her dressing table and put on cold cream. Claire handed Yu Ling the meat she had bought on the way home.

Amah put to work, she went and lay down on the bed with a cold compress over her eyes. How had she gotten here, to this small flat on the other side of the world? She remembered her quiet childhood in Croydon, an only child sitting at her mother’s side while she mended clothes, listening to her talk. Her mother had been bitter at what life had handed her, a hand-to-mouth existence, especially after the war, and her father drank too much, maybe because of it. Claire had never imagined life being much more than that. But marrying Martin had thrown everything up in the air and changed it all.

But this was the thing: she, herself, had changed in Hong Kong. Something about the tropical clime had ripened her appearance, brought everything into harmony. Where the other Englishwomen looked as if they were about to wilt in the heat, she thrived, like a hothouse flower. Her hair had lightened in the tropical sun until it was veritably gold. She perspired lightly so that her skin looked dewy, not drenched. She lost weight so that her body hung together compactly and her eyes sparkled, cornflower blue. Martin had remarked on it, how the heat seemed to suit her. When she was at the Gripps or at a dinner party, she saw that men looked at her longer than necessary, came over to talk to her, let their hands linger on her back. She was learning how to speak to people at parties, order in a restaurant with confidence. She felt as if she were finally becoming a woman, not the girl she had been when she had left England. She felt as if she were a woman coming into her own.

And then the next week, after Locket’s lesson, the porcelain rabbit had fallen into her purse.

The week after, the phone rang and Locket leaped up to answer it, eager for any excuse to stop mangling the prelude she had been playing, and while she had been chattering away to a schoolmate, Claire saw a silk scarf lying on a chair. It was a beautiful, printed scarf, the kind women tied around their necks. She put it in her bag. A wonderful sense of calm came over her. And when Locket came back into the room with only a mumbled “Sorry, Mrs. Pendleton,” Claire smiled instead of giving the little girl a piece of her mind. When she got home, she went into the bedroom, locked the door, and pulled out the scarf. It was an Hermès scarf, from Paris, and had pictures of zebras and lions in vivid oranges and browns. She practiced tying it around her neck, and over her head, like an adventurous heiress on safari. She felt very glamorous.

The next month, after a conversation where Mrs. Chen told her she sent all her fine washing to Singapore, because “the girls here don’t know how to do it properly, and, of course, that means I have to have triple the amount of linens, what a bother,” Claire found herself walking out with two of those wonderful Irish napkins in her skirt pocket. She had Yu Ling hand wash and iron them so that she and Martin could use them with dinner. She pocketed three French cloisonné turtles while Locket had abruptly gone to the bathroom --- as if the child couldn’t take care of nature’s business before Claire arrived! A pair of sterling salt and pepper shakers found their way into her purse as she was passing through the dining room, and an exquisite Murano perfume bottle left out in the living room, as if Melody Chen had dashed some scent on as she was breezing her way through the foyer on her way to a gala event, was palmed and discreetly tucked into Claire’s skirt pocket.

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 fl oor.

“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.

June 1941

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.”

“That is an outrageous statement,” Will says. He had liked Simonds up to that point.

“You know how it is,” Simonds says. “At Hong Kong Bank, you get asked to leave if you marry a Chinese. But this girl sounds differ­ent, she sounds rather more than a local girl. It’s not like she’s run­ning a noodle shop.”

“Yes, she is different,” he says. “Not that it matters,” he adds as he answers the phone. “I’m not marrying her.”

“Darling, it’s Trudy Liang,” she says. “Who aren’t you marrying?”

“Nobody.” He laughs.

“That would have been quick work.”

“Even for you?”

“Wasn’t it shocking how many women there were at the party yesterday?” she says, ignoring him. The women in the colony are supposed to be gone, evacuated to safer areas, while the war is sim­mering, threatening to boil over into their small corner of the world. “I’m essential, you know. I’m a nurse with the Auxiliary Nursing Service!”

The only way women had been allowed to stay was to sign up as an essential occupation.

“None of the nurses I’ve ever had looked like you,” he says.

“If you were injured, you wouldn’t want me as a nurse, believe me.” She pauses. “Listen, I’ll be at the races at the Wongs’ box this afternoon. Do you care to join us?”

“The Wongs?” he asks.

“Yes, they’re my godparents,” she says impatiently. “Are you com­ing or not?”

“All right,” he says. This is the first in a long line of acquies­cences.

...

Will muddles his way through the club and into the upper tier, where the boxes are filled with chattering people in jackets and silky dresses. He comes through the door of number 28 and Trudy spies him right away, pounces on him, and introduces him to everybody. There are Chinese from Peru, Polish by way of Tokyo, a Frenchman married to Russian royalty. English is spoken.

Trudy pulls him to one side.

“Oh, dear,” she says. “You’re just as handsome as I remember. I think I might be in trouble. You’ve never had any issues with women, I’m sure. Or perhaps you’ve had too many.”

She pauses and takes a theatrical breath. “I’ll give you the lay of the land here. That’s my cousin, Dommie.”

She points out an elegant, slim Chinese man with a gold pocket watch in his hand. “He’s my best friend and very pro­tective, so you better watch out. And avoid her, by any means,” she says, pointing to a slight European woman with spectacles. “Awful. She’s just spent twenty minutes telling me the most extraordinary and yet incredibly boring story about barking deer on Lamma Island.”

“Really?” he says, looking at her oval face, her large golden-green eyes.

“And he,” she says, pointing to an owlish Englishman, “is a bore. Some sort of art historian, keeps talking about the Crown Collec­tion, which is apparently something most colonies have. They either acquire it locally or have pieces shipped from England for the pub­lic buildings --- important paintings and statues and things like that. Hong Kong’s is very impressive, apparently, and he’s very worried about what will happen once the war breaks loose.” She makes a face. “Also a bigot.”

She searches the room for others and her eyes narrow.

“There’s my other cousin, or cousin by marriage.” She points out a stocky Chinese man in a double-breasted suit. “Victor Chen. He thinks he’s very important indeed. But I just find him tedious. He’s married to my cousin, Melody, who used to be nice until she met him.” She pauses. “Now she’s . . .” Her voice trails off.

“Well, here you are,” she says, “and what a gossip I’m being,” and drags him to the front where she has claimed the two best seats.

They watch the races. She wins a thousand dollars and shrieks with pleasure. She insists on giving it all away, to the waiters, to the bath­room attendants, to a little girl they pass on the way out.

“Really,” she says disapprovingly, “this is no place for children, don’t you think?” Later she tells him she practically grew up at the track.

Her real name is Prudence. “Trudy” came later, when it became apparent that her given name was wholly unsuitable for the little sprite who terrorized her amahs and charmed all the waiters into bringing her forbidden fizzy drinks and sugar cubes.

“You can call me Prudence, though,” she says. Her long arms are draped around his shoulders and her jasmine scent is overwhelming him.

“I think I won’t,” he says.

“I’m terribly strong,” she whispers. “I hope I don’t destroy you.”

He laughs.

“Don’t worry about that,” he says. But later, he wonders.

They spend most weekends at her father’s large house in Shek O, where wizened servants bring them buckets of ice and lemonade, which they mix with Plymouth gin, and plates of salty shrimp crack­ers. Trudy lies in the sun wearing an enormous floppy hat, saying she thinks tans are vulgar, no matter what that Coco Chanel says.

“But I do so enjoy the feel of the sun on me,” she says, reaching for a kiss.

The Liangs’ house is spread out on a promontory where it over­looks a placid sea. They keep chickens for fresh eggs --- the hen house far away, of course, because of the odor --- and a slightly fraying but still belligerent peacock roams the ground, asserting himself to any intruders, except the groundskeeper’s Great Dane, with whom it has a mutual treaty. Trudy’s father is never there; mostly he is in Macau, where he is said to have the largest house on the Praia Grande and a Chinese mistress. Why he doesn’t marry her, nobody knows. Tru­dy’s mother disappeared when she was eight --- a famous case that is still unsolved. The last anyone had seen of her she had been spot­ted stepping into a car outside the Gloucester Hotel. This is what he likes most about Trudy. Having so many questions in her life, she never asks questions about his.

Trudy has a body like a child --- all slim hips and tiny feet. She is as flat as a board, her breasts not even buds. Her arms are as slender as her wrists, her hair a sleek-smoky brown, her eyes wide and West­ern, with the lid-fold. She wears form-fitting sheaths, sometimes the qipao, slim tunics, narrow pants, always flat silk slippers. She wears gold or brown lipstick, wears her hair shoulder-length, straight, and has black, kohl-lined eyes. She looks nothing like any of the other women at events --- with their blowsy, flowing floral skirts, carefully permanent-waved hair, red lipstick.

She hates compliments --- when people tell her she’s beautiful, she says instantly, “But I have a mus­tache!” And she does, a faint golden one you can see only in the sun. She is always in the papers, although, she explains, it’s more because of her father than that she is beautiful.

“Hong Kong is very practical that way,” she says. “Wealth can make a woman beautiful.”

She is often the only Chinese at a party, although she says she’s not really Chinese --- she’s not really anything, she says. She’s everything, invited everywhere. Cercle Sportif Français, the American Coun­try Club, the Deutscher Garten Club, she is welcome, an honorary member to everything.

Her best friend is her second cousin, Dommie, Dominick Wong, the man from the races. They meet every Sunday night for dinner at the Gripps and gossip over what has transpired at the parties over the weekend. They grew up together. Her father and his mother are cousins. Will is starting to see that everyone in Hong Kong is related in one way or another, everyone who matters, that is. Victor Chen, Trudy’s other cousin, is always in the papers for his business deal­ings, or he and his wife, Melody, are smiling out from photographs in the society pages.

Dominick is a fine-chiseled boy-man, a bit effeminate, with a long string of lissome, dissatisfied girlfriends. Will is never invited to Trudy’s dinners with Dommie.

“Don’t be cross. You wouldn’t have fun,” she says, trailing a cool finger over his cheek. “We chatter away in Shanghainese and it would be so tedious to have to explain everything to you. And Dommie’s just about a girl anyways.”

“I don’t want to go,” he says, trying to keep his dignity.

“Of course you don’t, darling,” she laughs. She pulls him close. “I’ll tell you a secret.”

“What?” Her jasmine smell brings to mind that waxy yellow flower, her skin as smooth, as impermeable.

“Dommie was born with eleven fingers. Six on the left hand. His family had it removed when he was a baby, but it keeps grow­ing back! Isn’t that the most extraordinary thing? I tell him it’s the devil inside. You can keep pruning it, but it’ll always come back.” She whispers. “Don’t tell a soul. You’re the first person I’ve ever told! And Dominick would have my head if he knew! He’s quite ashamed of it!”

Hong Kong is a small village. At the RAF ball, Dr. Richards was found in the linen room of the Gloucester with a chambermaid; at the Sewells’ dinner party, Blanca Morehouse had too much to drink and started to take off her blouse --- you know about her past, don’t you? Trudy, his very opinionated and biased guide to society, finds the English stuffy, the Americans tiresomely earnest, the French boring and self-satisfied, the Japanese quirky. He wonders aloud how she can stand him.

“Well, you’re a bit of a mongrel,” she says. “You don’t belong anywhere, just like me.”

He had arrived in Hong Kong with just a letter of introduction to an old family friend, and has found himself defined, before he did anything to define himself, by a chance meeting with a woman who asks nothing of him except to be with her.

People talk about Trudy all the time --- she is always scandalizing someone or other. They talk about her in front of him, to him, as if daring him to say something. He never gives them anything about her. She came down from Shanghai, where she spent her early twenties in Noel Coward’s old suite at the Cathay, and threw lav­ish parties on the roof terrace. She is rumored to have fled an affair there, an affair with a top gangster who became obsessed with her, rumored to have spent far too much time in the casinos, rumored to have friends who are singsong girls, rumored to have sold herself for a night to amuse herself, rumored to be an opium addict. She is a Lesbian. She is a Radical. She assures him that almost none of these rumors is true. She says Shanghai is the place to be, that Hong Kong is dreadfully suburban. She speaks fluent Shanghainese, Can­tonese, Mandarin, English, conversational French, and a smattering of Portuguese. In Shanghai, she says, the day starts at four in the afternoon with tea, then drinks at the Cathay or someone’s party, then dinner of hairy crab and rice wine if you’re inclined to the local, then more drinks and dancing, and you go and go, the night is so long, until it’s time for breakfast --- eggs and fried tomatoes at the Del Monte. Then you sleep until three, have noodles in broth for the hangover, and get dressed for another go around. So fun. She’s going to go back one of these days, she says, as soon as her father will let her.

The Biddles hire a cabana at the Lido in Repulse Bay and invite them for a day at the beach. There, they all smoke like mad and drink gimlets while Angeline complains about her life. Angeline Biddle is an old friend of Trudy’s, a small and physically unappealing Chi­nese woman whom she’s known since they were at primary school together. She married a very clever British businessman whom she rules with an iron fist, and they have a son away at school. They live in grand style on the Peak, where Angeline’s presence causes some discomfort as Chinese are supposed to have permission to live there, except for one family who is so unfathomably rich they are exempt from the rules. There is a feeling, Trudy explains to Will later, that Angeline has somehow got one over on the British who live there, and she is resented for it, although Trudy admits that Angeline is hardly the most likable of people to begin with. In the sun, Trudy takes off her top and sunbathes, her small breasts glowing pale in contrast to the rest of her.

“I thought you thought tans were vulgar,” he says.

“Shut up,” she says.

He hears her talking to Angeline.

“I’m just wild about him,” she says. “He’s the most stern, solid person I’ve ever met.”

He supposes she is talking about him. People are not as scandalized as one might think. Simonds admits he was wrong about her. Although the En­glishwomen in the colony are disappointed. Another bachelor taken off the market.

Whispered: “she did swoop down and grab him be­fore anyone even knew he was in town.”

For him, there have been others, of course --- the missionary’s daughter in town in New Delhi, always ill and wan, though beauti­ful; the clever, hopeful spinster on the boat over from Penang --- the women who say they’re looking for adventure but who are really looking for husbands. He’s managed to avoid the inconvenience of love for quite some time, but it seems to have found him in this unlikely place.

Women don’t like Trudy.

“Isn’t that always the case, darling?” she says when he, indiscreetly, asks her about it. “And aren’t you a strange one for bringing it up?”

She chucks him under the chin and continues making a pitcher of gin and lemonade.

“No one likes me,” she says. “Chinese don’t because I don’t act Chinese enough, Europeans don’t because I don’t look at all European, and my father doesn’t like me because I’m not very filial. Do you like me?”

He assures her he does.

“I wonder,” she says. “I can tell why people like you. Besides the fact that you’re a handsome bachelor with mysterious prospects, of course. They read into you everything they want you to be. They read into me all that they don’t like.”

She dips her finger in the mix and brings it out to taste. Her face puckers. “Perfect,” she says. She likes them sour.

Little secrets begin to spill out of Trudy. A temple fortune-teller told her the mole on her forehead signifies death to a future hus­band. She’s been engaged before, but it ended mysteriously. She tells him these secrets then refuses to elaborate, saying he’ll leave her. She seems serious.

Trudy has two amahs. They have “tied their hair up together,” she explains. Two women decide not to marry and let a space in the newspaper, like vows, declaring they will live together forever. Ah Lok and Mei Sing are old now, almost sixty, but they live in a small room together with twin beds (“so get that out of your mind right now,” Trudy says lazily, “although Chinese are very blasé about that sort of thing and who cares, really”) and are a happy couple, except­ing that they are both women.

“It’s the best thing,” Trudy says. “Lots of women know they’ll never get married so this is just as good. So civilized, don’t you think? All you need is a companion. That sex thing gets in the way after a while. A sisterhood thing. I’m thinking about doing it myself.”

She pays them each twenty-five cents a week and they will do anything for her. Once, he came into the living room to find Mei Sing massaging lotion onto Trudy’s hands while she was asleep on the sofa.

He never grows used to them. They completely ignore him, always talking to Trudy about him, in front of him. They tell her he has a big nose, that he smells funny, that his hands and feet are grotesque. He is beginning to understand a little of what they say, but their disapproving intonation needs no translation. Ah Lok cooks --- salty, oily dishes he finds unappealing. Trudy eats them with relish --- it’s the food she grew up with. She claims Mei Sing cleans, but he finds dust balls everywhere. The old woman also collects rub­bish --- used beer bottles, empty jars of cold cream, discarded tooth­brushes --- and stores it underneath her bed in anticipation of some apocalyptic event. All three of the women are messy. Trudy has the utter disregard for her surroundings that belongs to those who have been waited on since birth. She never cleans up, never lifts a finger, but neither do the amahs. They have picked up her habits --- a peculiar symbiosis. Trudy defends them with the ferocity of a child defending her parents.

“They’re old,” she says. “Leave them alone. I can’t bear people who poke at their servants.”

She pokes at them though. She argues with them when the flower man comes and Ah Lok wants to give him fifty cents and Trudy says to give him what he wants. The flower man is called Fa Wong, king of flowers, and he comes around to the neighborhood once a week, giant woven baskets slung around his brown, wiry shoulders filled with masses of flowers. He calls out, “fa yuen, fa yuen,” a low, monotonous pitch for his wares, and people wave him up to their flats from the window. He and the amahs love to spar and they go at it for ages, shouting and gesticulating, until Trudy comes to break it up and give the man his money. Then Ah Lok gets angry and scolds Trudy for giving in too easily, and the old lady and the lovely young woman, their arms filled with flowers, go into the kitchen, where the blooms will be distributed into vases and scattered around the house. He watches them from his chair, his book spread out over his lap, his eyes hooded as if in sleep --- he watches her.

He is almost never alone these days, always with her. It is something different for him. He used to like solitude, aloneness, but now he craves her presence all the time. He’s gone without this drug for so long, he’s forgotten how compelling it is. When he is at the office, pecking away at the typewriter, he thinks of her laughing, drinking tea, smoking, the rings puffing up in front of her face.

“Why do you work?” she asks. “It’s so dreary.”

Discipline, he thinks, don’t fall down that rabbit hole. But it’s use­less. She’s always there, ringing him on the phone, ready with plans for the evening. When he looks at her, he feels weak and happy. Is that so bad?

They are eating brunch at the Repulse Bay and reading the Sunday paper when Trudy looks up.

“Why do they let these awful companies have advertisements?” she asks. “Listen to this one --- ‘Why suffer from agonizing piles?’ Is there a need for that? Can’t they be a bit more oblique?” She shakes the newspaper at him. “There’s an illustration of a man suffering from piles! Is that really necessary?”

“My heart,” he says. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” A displaced Russian in a dinner jacket plays the piano behind him.

“Oh,” she says, as if it’s an afterthought. “My father wants to meet you. He wants to meet the man I’ve been spending so much time with.” She is nonchalant, too much so. “Are you free tonight?”

“Of course,” he says.

They go for dinner at the Gloucester, where Trudy tells him the story of her parents’ meeting while they’re waiting at the bar. She is drink­ing brandy, unusual for her, which makes him think she might be more nervous than she is letting on. She swirls it around the snifter, takes a delicate whiff, sips.

“My mother was a great Portuguese beauty --- her family had been in Macau for ages. They met there. My father was not as suc­cessful then, although he came from a well- to-do family. He had just started up a business selling widgets or something. He’s very clever, my father. Don’t know why I turned out to be such a dim bulb.”

Her face lights up.

“Here he is!” She leaps off the stool and rushes over to give her father a kiss. Will had expected a big, confident man with the aura of power. Instead, Mr. Liang is small and diffident, with an ill-cut suit and a sweet air. He seems to be overwhelmed by the vitality of his daughter. He lets Trudy wash over him, like a force of nature, much like everyone else in Hong Kong, Will thinks. The maître d’ seats them with much hovering and solicitous hand wav­ing, which neither Trudy nor her father seems to notice. They speak to each other in Cantonese, which makes Trudy seem like a differ­ent person entirely.

They do not order. Their food is brought to them, as if preor­dained.

“Should we order?” he ventures and their faces are astonished.

“You only eat certain dishes here,” they say.

Trudy calls for champagne.

“This is a momentous occasion,” she declares. “My father’s not met many of my beaus. You’ve passed the first gauntlet.”

Wan Kee Liang does not ask Will about his life or his work. Instead, they exchange pleasantries, talk about the horse races and the war. When Trudy excuses herself to go to the powder room, her father motions for Will to come closer.

“You are not a rich man,” he says.

“Not like you, but I do all right.” How odd to assume.

“Trudy very spoiled girl, and wants many things.” The man’s face betrays nothing.

“Yes,” Will says.

“Not good for woman to pay for anything.”

Trudy’s father hands him an envelope.

“Here is money for you to take Trudy out. Will cover expenses for a long time. Not good for Trudy to be paying all the time.”

Will is utterly bemused.

“I can’t take that,” he says. “I’m not going to take your money. I’ve never let Trudy pay for a meal.”

“Doesn’t matter.” The man waves his hand. “Good for your relationship.”

Will refuses and puts the envelope on the table, where it sits until they see Trudy approaching. Trudy’s father puts it back in his suit jacket.

“Not meant to be insult,” he says. “I want best for Trudy. So best for her means best for you. This means little to me, but might make difference for you two.”

“I appreciate the thought,” Will says. “But I can’t.” He lets it go at that.

The next week, Will receives letters in the post from restaurants and clubs around town informing him that his accounts have been opened and are ready for use.

One has a note scribbled in the mar­gin, “Just come in, you won’t even need to sign. We look forward to seeing you.” The tone: apologetic to a good customer, but deferring to the wishes of their best.

He is a little irritated, but not so much, more bemused than any­thing. He puts the letters in a drawer. He supposes that to Wan Kee Liang everyone looks like a pauper, looking for handouts. The Chi­nese are wise, he thinks. Or maybe it’s just Trudy’s family.

Trudy loves the Parisian Grill, is great friends with the owner, a Greek married to a local Portuguese who sees no irony in the fact that he serves the froggiest of foods. She refuses absolutely to go to a Chinese restaurant with Will, will only go with Chinese people, who she says are the only ones who appreciate the food the way it should be.

The Greek who runs the Parisian Grill, his name is now Henri, changed from God knows what, loves Trudy, views her as a daugh­ter, and his wife, Elsbieta, treats Trudy like a sister. She goes there for first drinks almost every night, often ends evenings there as well. Henri and Elsbieta are polite to him, but with a certain reserve. He thinks they have seen too many of Trudy’s beaus. He wants to protest that he is the one in danger, protest over the red vinyl ban­quettes, the smoky white candles burned down to smudgy lumps, but he never does.

They meet everyone at the Parisian Grill. It is the sort of place one goes to when one is new in town, or old, or bored. Hong Kong is small, and eventually everyone ends up there. One night, they have drinks at the bar with a group of visiting Americans and then are invited to dinner with them.

Trudy tells their new friends that she loves Americans, their open­handed extravagance, their loud talk and braying confi dence. When someone brings up the war, she pretends not to hear, ignoring them and instead going on about the qualities she feels all Americans have. They have a sense of the world being incomparably large, she says, and a sense that they are able to, not colonize, but spread through all countries, spending their money like water, without guilt or too much consciousness. She loves that. The men are tall and rangy, with long faces and quick decisions, and the women let them be, isn’t that wonderful, because they’re so busy with their own com­mittees and plans. They invite all and sundry to their events, and they serve marvelous items like potato salads and ham and cheese sandwiches. And, unless there is a very special type of Englishman present (she tips her head toward Will), they tend to diminish the other men in the room. It’s very odd, but she’s seen it. Haven’t you noticed that? If she had it all to do over, she says to the dinner table, she would come back as an American. Barring that possibility, she’s going to marry one. Or maybe just move there, if someone objects to her marrying an American, said with eyes cast demurely down as a joke. Will thinks back to when she complained that they were tire­somely earnest and just smiles. She has free will, he says simply. He would never do anything to stop her from doing what she wanted. The Americans applaud. An enlightened man, says a woman with red lips and an orange dress.

...

Life is easy. At the office, he is expected in at nine-thirty, then a two-hour lunch is not uncommon, and they knock off at five for drinks. He can go out every night, play all weekend, do whatever he wants. Trudy’s friends move to London and want someone responsible to take care of their flat, so Will moves to May Road and pays the ludi­crous rent of two hundred Hong Kong dollars, and this only after much wrangling to get her friends, Sudie and Frank Chen, to take anything at all. They all go out for dinner, and it’s very civil.

“You’re doing us a favor!” they cry, as they pour more cham­pagne.

“You really are, Will,” Trudy says. “No one in all Hong Kong would agree to do anything so nice for the Chens, you know. They’ve awful reputations around here, that’s why they’re leaving.”

“Be that as it may,” Will says, “I have to pay something.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” the Chens say, but they never do. Instead they drink four splits of champagne and end up going to the beach at midnight to hunt for crabs by candlelight.

May Road is different from Happy Valley, his old neighborhood. Filled with expatriates and housewives and their servants, it is a bourgeois suburb of England, or how he’d always imagined them to be. Children walk obediently next to their amahs, matrons climb into the backs of their chauffeured cars, it’s much more quiet than the chattering bustle of his old haunt. He misses Happy Valley, the vitality of it, the loud, rude locals, the lively shops.

But then there is Trudy. Trudy has a large place not fi ve minutes from him. He walks the winding road to her flat every day after picking up new clothes after work.

“Isn’t this nice?” she says, lavishing him with kisses at the door. “Isn’t it delicious that you’re so close and not in that dreadful Happy Valley? I do think the only time I’d go there before I met you was when I needed plimsolls for the beach. There’s this wonderful shop there . . .”

And then she’s on to something else, crying out to Ah Lok that the flowers are browning, or that there’s a puddle in the foyer. At Trudy’s, there’s no talk of war, no fighting except squabbling with the servants, no real troubles. There’s only ease and her sweet, lilt­ing laugh. He slips gratefully into her world.

June 1952

Claire had been waking at the same time every night. Twenty-two minutes after three. By now, she knew it without even looking at the clock. And every night, after she started awake, she would look over at the hulking shape of her husband as he slept, and she would be calmed from the shock of consciousness. His chest rose and fell evenly as his nose reverberated with a gentle snore. He always slept heavily, aided by the several beers he had every eve­ning. She sat up, clapped twice loudly, her hands stiff, the sound like two bullets in the night. Martin shifted at the noise, then breathed freely. That trick was one of the few that her mother had imparted about married life. The clock now showed 3:23.

She tried to go back to sleep. She had done it once or twice before, fallen back asleep before her body got too awake. Breathing softly, she lay flat on her back and felt the damp linen sheet beneath and the light weight of the cotton quilt on top. It was so humid she could wear only a thin cotton nightdress to bed, and even that grew sticky after a day or two. She must buy a new fan. The old one had sputtered to a stop last week, caked with mossy mold. A fan, and also some more electric cord. And lightbulbs. She mustn’t forget lightbulbs. She breathed lightly, over the slight rumble of Martin starting up again. Should she write the things down? She would remember, she tried to tell herself. But she knew she would get up and write it down, so as not to forget, so as not to obsess about forgetting, and then she would be up, and unable to go back to sleep. It was settled. She got up softly and felt her way out of the mosquito netting, disturbing a rest­ing mosquito that buzzed angrily in her ear before flying away. The pad was lying next to the bed on a table, and she penciled in her list.

Then, the real reason. She reached into the depths of the bureau and felt around carefully for the bag. It was a cloth bag, one she had got for free at a bazaar, and it was large and full. She pulled it out, quietly.

Going into the bathroom, she switched on the light. The tub sat full of water. There hadn’t been rain for several months now, and the government was starting to ration. Yu Ling drew the tub full every evening, between five and seven o’ clock, when the water was on, for their use during the day.

Claire set the bag down and dipped a bucket in the water and wet a washcloth to wipe her face. Then she sat on the cool tile fl oor and pulled her nightdress up so that she could place the bag between her legs.

She dumped the contents out.

There were more than thirty items glittering up at her. More than thirty costly necklaces, scarves, ornaments, perfume bottles. They looked almost tawdry, jumbled together in the harsh bath­room light, against the white tile, so Claire laid down a towel and separated them, so that each had a few inches of space, a cushion against the floor. There, now they looked like the expensive items they were. Here was a ring, thick, beautifully worked gold, with what looked like turquoise. She slipped it on her finger. And here was a handkerchief, so sheer she could see the pale pink of her palm underneath it. She sprayed it with perfume, a small round bottle of it, called Jazz. On the bottle there was a drawing of two women dancing in flapper dresses. She waved the scented handkerchief around. Jasmine scent. Too heavy. She groomed her hair with the tortoiseshell comb, rubbed French hand lotion around her fingers, then carefully applied lipstick to her mouth. Then she clipped on heavy gold earrings and tied a scarf around her head. She stood in front of the mirror. The woman who looked back was sophisticated and groomed, a woman who traveled the world and knew about art and books and yachts.

...

She wanted to be someone else. The old Claire seemed provincial, ignorant. She had been to a party at Government House, sipped champagne at the Gripps while women she knew twirled around in silky dresses. She had her nose pressed up against the glass and was watching a different world, one she hadn’t known existed. She could not name it but she felt as if she were about to be revealed, as if there were another Claire inside, waiting to come out. In these few hours in the morning, dressed in someone else’s finery, she could pretend she was part of it, that she had lived in Colombo, eaten frog’s legs in France, or ridden an elephant in Delhi with a maharaja by her side.

At seven in the morning, after she had brewed herself a cup of tea and eaten some buttered toast, she made her way to the bedroom. She stood over her sleeping husband.

“Wake up,” she said quietly.

He stirred, then rolled over to face her.

“Cuckoo,” she said a little louder.

“Happy birthday, darling,” he said sleepily. He propped him­self up on one elbow to offer a kiss. His breath was sour but not unpleasant.

Claire was twenty-eight today.

It was Saturday, and the beginning of summer. Not too hot yet, the mornings had a breeze and a little bit of cool before the sun warmed up the afternoons and the hats and fans had to come out. Martin worked half-days on Saturdays but then there was a party at the Arbogasts’, on the Peak. Reginald Arbogast was a very successful businessman and made a point of inviting every English person in the colony to his par­ties, which were famous for his unstinting hand and lavish foods.

“I’ll meet you at the funicular at one,” Martin told her.

At one, Claire was at the tram station waiting. She had on a new dress the tailor had delivered just the day before, a white poplin based on a Paris original. She had found a Mr. Hao, an inexpensive man in Causeway Bay who would come and measure her at home and charge eight Hong Kong dollars a dress. It had turned out quite well. She had sprayed on a bit of Jazz although she still found it strong. She dabbed it on, then rubbed water on it to dilute the smell. At ten past one, Martin came through the station doors, and gave her a kiss.

“You look nice,” he said. “New dress?”

“ Mm- hmm,” she said.

They took the tram up the mountain, a steep ride that seemed almost vertical at times. They held on to the rail, leaned forward, and looked outside, where they could see into people’s homes in the Mid-Levels, with curtains pushed to one side, and newspapers and dirty glasses strewn on tables.

“I would think,” Claire said, “if I knew that people would be looking in my house all day from the tram, I’d make a point of leav­ing it tidy, wouldn’t you?”

At the top, they found that the Arbogasts had hired rickshaws to take their guests to the house from the station. Claire climbed in.

“I always feel for the men,” she said quietly to Martin. “Isn’t this why we have mules or horses? It’s one of these queer Hong Kong customs, isn’t it?”

“It’s a fact that human labor here often costs less,” Martin said. Claire stifled her irritation. Martin was always so literal.

The man lifted up the harness with a grunt. They started to roll along and Claire settled into the uncomfortable seat. Around them the green was overwhelming, tropical trees bursting with leaves that dripped when scratched, bougainvillea and every other type of flowering bush springing forth from the hillsides. Sometimes she got the feeling that Hong Kong was too alive. It seemed unable to restrain itself. There were insects crawling everywhere, wild dogs on the hills, mosquitoes breeding furiously. They had made roads in the hillsides and buildings sprouted out of the ground, but nature strained at her boundaries --- there were always sweaty, shirtless worker men chopping away at the greenery that seemed to grow overnight. It wasn’t India, she supposed, but it certainly wasn’t En­gland. The man in front of her strained and sweated. His shirt was thin and gray.

“The Arbogasts apparently had this place undergo a massive cleaning after the war,” Martin said. “Smythson was telling me about it, how it had been gutted by the Japanese and all that was left was walls, and not much of those at that. It used to belong to the Bayer representative out here, Thorpe, and he never came back after he was repatriated after the war. He sold it for a song. He’d had enough.”

“The way people lived out here before the war,” Claire said. “It was very gracious.”

“Arbogast lost his hand during the war as well. He has a hook now. They say he’s quite sensitive about it so try not to look at it.”

“Of course,” Claire said.

When they walked in, the party was in full swing. Doors opened onto a large receiving room which led into a large drawing room with windowed doors open onto a lawn with a wide, stunning view of the harbor far below. A violinist sawed away at his instrument while a pianist accompanied him. The house was decorated in the way the English did their houses in the Orient, with Persian carpets and the occasional wooden Chinese table topped with Burmese silver bowls and other exotic curiosities. Women in light cotton dresses swayed toward one another while men in safari suits or blaz­ers stood with their hands in their pockets. Swiftly moving servants balanced trays of Pimm’s and champagne.

“Why does he do this?” Claire asked Martin. “Invite the world, I mean.”

“He’s done well for himself here, and he didn’t have much before, and wants to do something good for the community. What I’ve heard, anyway.”

“Hello hello,” said Mrs. Arbogast from the foyer, where she was greeting guests --- a thin, elegant woman with a sharp face. Sparkly earrings jangled from her ears.

“Lovely of you to have us,” said Martin. “A real honor.”

“Don’t know you, but perhaps we shall have the pleasure later.” She turned aside and looked for the next guest. They had been dismissed.

“Drink?” Martin said.

“Please,” said Claire.

She saw an acquaintance, Amelia, and walked over. Too late, she saw that Mrs. Pinter was in the circle, partially hidden by a potted plant. They all tried to avoid Mrs. Pinter. Claire had been cornered by her before and had spent an excruciating thirty minutes listening to the old woman talk about ant colonies. She wanted to be kind to older people but she had her limits. Mrs. Pinter was now obsessed with starting up an Esperanto society and would reel unwitting newcomers into her ever more complicated and idiotic plans. She was convinced that a universal language would have saved them all from the war.

“I’ve been thinking about getting a butler,” Mrs. Pinter was say­ing. “One of those Chinese fellows would do all right with a bit of training.”

“Are you going to teach him Esperanto?” Amelia asked, teasing.

“We have to teach everyone but the Communists,” Mrs. Pinter said placidly.

“Isn’t the refugee problem alarming?” Marjorie Winter said, ignoring all of them. She was fanning herself with a napkin. She was a fat, kind woman, with very small sausage-like curls around her face.

“They’re coming in by the thousands, I hear,” Claire said.

“I’m starting a new league,” said Marjorie. “To help the refugees. Those poor Chinese streaming across the border like herded ani­mals, running away from that dreadful government. They live in the most frightful conditions. You must volunteer! I’ve let space for an office and everything.”

“You remember in 1950,” Amelia said, “some of the locals practi­cally ran hotels, taking care of all their family and friends who had fl ed. And these were the well-off ones, who were able to book pas­sage. It was quite something.”

“Why are they leaving?” Claire said. “Where do they expect to go from here?”

“Well, that’s the thing, dear,” Marjorie said. “They don’t have any­where to go, imagine that. That’s why my league is so important.”

Amelia sat down.

“The Chinese come down during war, they go back up, then come down again. It’s dizzying. They are just these giant waves of displacement. And their different dialects. I do think Mandarin is the ugliest, with its wer and its er and those strange noises.”

She fanned herself. “It’s far too hot to talk about a league,” she said. “Your energy always astounds me, Marjorie.”

“Amelia,” Marjorie said unsympathetically. “You’re always hot.”

Amelia was always hot, or cold, or vaguely out of sorts. She was not physically suited to life outside of England, which was ironic since she had not lived there for some three decades. She needed her creature comforts and suffered mightily, and not silently, without them. They had been in Hong Kong since before the war. Her hus­band, Angus, had brought her from India, which she had loathed, over to Hong Kong in 1938 when he had become undersecretary to the Department of Finance. She was opinionated, railing against what she saw as the unbearable English ladies who wanted to become Chinese, who wore their hair in chignons with ivory chop­sticks and wore too- tight cheongsams to every event and employed local tutors so they could speak to the help in their atrocious Can­tonese. She did not understand such women and constantly warned Claire against becoming one of such a breed.

Amelia had taken Claire under her wing, introducing her to people, inviting her to lunch, but Claire was often uncomfortable around her and her sharp observations and often biting innuendo. Still, she clung to her as someone who could help her navigate the strange new world she found herself in. She knew her mother would approve of someone like Amelia, even be impressed that Claire knew such people.

Outside, the thwack of a tennis ball punctuated the low buzz and tinkle of conversation and cocktails. Claire’s group migrated toward a large tent pitched next to the courtyard.

“People come and play tennis?” Claire asked.

“Yes, in this weather, can you believe it?”

“I can’t believe they have a tennis court,” said Claire with wonder.

“And I can’t believe what you can’t believe,” Amelia said archly.

Claire blushed. “I’ve just never . . .”

“I know, darling,” Amelia said. “Just a village girl.” She winked to take the sting out of her comment.

“You know what Penelope Davies did the other day?” Marjorie interrupted. “She went to the temple at Wong Tai Sin with an inter­preter, and got her fortune told. She said it was just remarkable how much this old woman knew!”

“What fun,” Amelia said. “I’ll bring Wing and try it out too. Claire, we should go!”

“Sounds fun,” Claire said.

“Did you hear about the child in Malaya who had the hiccups for three months?” Marjorie was asking Martin, who had joined them with drinks in hand. “The Briggs’ child. His father’s the head of the electric over there. His mother almost went mad. They tried a witch doctor but no results. They didn’t know whether to bring him back to England or just trust in fate.”

“Can you imagine having the hiccups for more than an hour?” Claire said. “I’d go mad! That poor child.”

Martin knelt down to play with a small boy who had wandered over.

“Hallo,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Martin wants children,” Claire said, sotto voce, to Amelia. She often found herself confiding in Amelia despite herself. She had no one else to talk to.

“All men do, darling,” Amelia said. “You have to negotiate the number before you start popping them out or else the men will want to keep going. I got Angus down to two before we started.”

“Oh,” Claire said, startled. “That seems so . . . unromantic.”

“What do you think married life is?” Amelia said. She cocked an eyebrow at Claire. Claire blushed and excused herself to go to the powder room.

When she returned, Amelia had drifted away and was talking to a tall man Claire had never seen before. She waved her over. He was a man of around forty with a crude cane that looked as if it had been whittled by a child out of pine. He had sharp, handsome features and a shock of black hair, run through with strands of gray, ungroomed.

“Have you met Will Truesdale?” Amelia said.

“I haven’t,” she said, as she put out her hand.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said. His hand was dry and cool, almost as if it were made of paper.

“He’s been in Hong Kong for ages,” Amelia said. “An old- timer, like us.”

“Quite the experts, we are,” he said.

He suddenly looked alert.

“I like your scent,” he said. “Jasmine, is it?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Newly arrived?”

“Yes, just a month.”

“Like it?”

“I never imagined living in the Orient but here I am.”

“Oh, Claire, you should have had more imagination,” Amelia said, gesturing to a waiter for another drink.

Claire colored again. Amelia was in rare form today.

“I’m delighted to meet someone who’s not so jaded,” Will said. “All you women are so worldly it quite tires me out.”

Amelia had turned away to get her drink and hadn’t heard him. There was a pause, but Claire didn’t mind it.

“It’s Claire’s birthday,” Amelia told Will, turning back around. She smiled, brittle; red lipstick stained her front tooth. “She’s just a baby.”

“How nice,” he said. “We need more babies around these parts.”

He suddenly reached out his hand and slowly tucked a strand of hair behind Claire’s ear. A possessive gesture, as if he had known her for a long time.

“Excuse me,” he said. Amelia had not seen; she had been scan­ning the crowd.

“Excuse you for what?” Amelia asked, turning back, distracted.

“Nothing,” they both said. Claire looked down at the floor. They were joined in their collusive denial; it suddenly seemed overwhelm­ingly intimate.

“What?” Amelia said impatiently. “I can’t hear a damn thing above this din.”

“I’m twenty-eight today,” Claire said, not knowing why.

“I’m forty-three.” He nodded. “Very old.”

Claire couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“I remember the celebration we had for you at Stanley,” Amelia said. “What a fete.”

“Wasn’t it, though?”

“You’re still with Melody and Victor?” Amelia inquired of Will.

“Yes,” he said. “It suits me for now.”

“I’m sure it suits Victor just fine to have an Englishman chauf­feuring him around,” she replied slyly.

“It seems to work for everyone involved,” Will said, not taking the bait.

Amelia leaned toward him confidentially. “I hear there’s been chatter about the Crown Collection and its disappearance during the war. Angus says it’s starting to come to a boil. People have noticed.

Have you heard anything?”

“I have,” he said.

“They want to ferret out the collaborators.”

“A bit late, don’t you think?”

After a pause, when it became apparent that nothing more was forthcoming from Will, she spoke again. “I hope the Chens are treating you well?”

“I cannot complain,” he said.

“A bit odd, isn’t it? You working over there.”

“Amelia,” he said. “You’re boring Claire.”

“Oh, no,” Claire protested. “I’m just . . .”

“Well, you’re boring me,” he said. “And life is too short to be bored. Claire, have you been to the different corners of our fair colony? Which is your favorite?”

“Well, I have been exploring a bit. Sheung Wan is lovely --- I do like the markets --- and I’ve been over to Kowloon, Tsim Sha Tsui on the Star Ferry of course, and seen all the shops there. It’s very lively, isn’t it?”

“See, Amelia,” Will said. “An Englishwoman who ventures out­side of Central and the Peak. You would do well to learn from this newcomer.”

Amelia rolled her eyes. “She’ll grow tired of it soon enough. I’ve seen so many of these bright-eyed new arrivals, and they all end up having tea with me at the Helena May and complaining about their amahs.”

“Well, don’t let Amelia’s rosy attitude affect you too much, Claire,” Will said. “At any rate, it was a pleasure to meet you. Best of luck in Hong Kong.” He nodded to them politely and left. She felt the heat of his body as he passed by.

Claire felt bereft. He had assumed they would not meet again.

“Odd man?” she said. It was more of a statement.

“You’ve no idea, dear,” Amelia said.

Claire peeked after him. He had floated over to the side of the tennis court, although he had some sort of limp, and was watching Peter Wickham and his son hit the ball at each other.

“He’s also very serious now,” Amelia said. “Can’t have a proper conversation with him. He was quite social before the war, you know, you saw him at all the parties, had the most glamorous girl in town, quite high up at Asiatic Petrol, but he never really recovered after the war. He’s a chauffeur now.”

Her voice dropped. “For the Chens, actually. Do you know who they are?”

“Amelia!” Claire said. “I teach piano to their daughter! You helped me arrange it!”

“Oh, dear. The memory goes first, they say. You’ve never run into him there?”

“Never,” Claire said. “Although the Chens suggested he might give me a lift one time.”

“Poor Melody,” said Amelia. “She’s very fragile.” The word said delicately.

“Indeed,” Claire said, remembering the way Melody sipped her drink, quickly, urgently.

“The thing with Will is” --- Amelia hesitated --- “I’m quite certain he doesn’t need to work at all.”

“How do you mean?” Claire asked.

“I just know certain things,” Amelia said mysteriously.

Claire didn’t ask. She wouldn’t give Amelia the satisfaction.

Trudy is dressing for dinner while he watches from the bed. She has finished with her mysterious bathing ritual with its oils and unguents and now she smells marvelous, like a valley in spring. She is sitting at her dressing table in a long peach satin robe, wrapped silkily around her waist, applying fragrant creams to her face.

“Do you like this one?” She gets up and holds a long black dress in front of her.

“It’s fine.” He can’t concentrate on the clothes when her face is so vibrant above it.

“Or this one?” A knee-length dress the color of orange sherbet.

“Fine.” She pouts. Her skin gleams.

“You’re so unhelpful.”

She tells him Manley Haverford is having a party, an end-of summer party, at his country house this weekend and that she wants to go. Manley is an old bigot who used to have a radio talk show before he married a rich but ugly Portuguese woman who conveniently died two years later, whereupon he retired to live the life of a country squire in Sai Kung.

“Desperately,” she says. “I want to go desperately.”

“You loathe Manley,” he says. “You told me so last week.”

“I know,” she says. “But his parties are fun and he’s very generous with the drinks.

Let’s go and talk about how awful he is right in front of him. Can we go, can we? Can we? Can we?” She wears him down. They will go.

So Friday, late afternoon, he plays hooky from work and they spend the twilight hours bathing in the ocean by Manley’s house. To get there, they drive narrow, winding roads carved right out of the green mountain, blue water on their right, verdant hillside on their left. His house is through a dilapidated wooden gate and at the end of a long driveway, and right by the sea, with a porch that juts out, and rough stone steps leading down to the beach. He’s had coolers filled with ice and drinks and sandwiches brought down to the sandy inlet. The still-hot sun and water make them ravenous and they eat and eat and eat and curse their host for not bringing enough.

“Me?” Manley asks. “I assumed I had invited civilized people, who ate three meals a day.”

Victor and Melody Chen, Trudy’s cousins, wander down from the house, where they had been resting.

“What are we doing now?” Melody asks. Will likes her, thinks she’s nice, when she’s not around her husband.

A woman they have never met before, newly arrived from Singapore, suggests they play charades. They all moan but acquiesce.

Trudy is one team’s leader, the Singapore woman the other. The groups huddle together, write words on scraps of damp paper. They put them all in the empty sandwich basket.

Trudy goes first. She looks at her paper, dimples.

“Easy peasy,” she says encouragingly to her group. She makes the film sign, one hand rotating an imaginary camera lever.

“Film!” shouts an American.

She puts up four fingers, then suddenly ducks her head, puts her arms in front of her, and whooshes through the air.

“Gone with the Wind,” Will says. Trudy curtsies.

“Unfair,” says someone from the other team. “Pet’s advantage.”

Trudy comes over and plants a kiss on his forehead.

“Clever boy,” she says, and sinks down next to him.

Singapore gets up.

“She’s your nemesis,” Will tells Trudy.

“Don’t worry,” Trudy says. “She’s idiotic.”

The afternoon passes pleasantly, with them shouting insults and drinking and generally being stupid. Some people talk about the government and how it’s organizing different Volunteer Corps.

“It’s not volunteering,” Will says. “It’s mandatory. It’s the Compulsory Service Act, for heaven’s sake. They’re quite opposite. Why don’t they just call a spade a spade? Dowbiggin is being ridiculous about it.”

“Don’t be such a grump,” Trudy says. “Do your duty.”

“I guess so,” he says. “Must fight the good fight, I suppose.” He thinks the organization is being handled in an absurd fashion.

“Is there one for cricketers?” someone asks, as if to prove his point.

“Why not?” somebody else says. “You can make up one however you want.”

“I hardly think that’s true,” Manley says. “But I’m joining one that’s training out here on the weekends, on the club grounds. Policemen, I think, although I’d think they’d be rather busy if there was an attack.”

“Aren’t you too old, Manley?” Trudy asks. “Old and decrepit?”

“That’s the wonderful thing, Trudy,” he says, with a forced smile. “You can’t fire a Volunteer. And at any rate, the one here at the club is convenient.”

“I’m sending Melody to America,” Victor Chen says suddenly. “I don’t want her to be in any danger.”

Melody smiles uneasily, doesn’t say anything.

“The government is preparing,” says Jamie Biggs. “They are storing food in warehouses in Tin Hau and securing British property.”

“Like the Crown Collection?” Victor asks. “What are they going to do about that? That’s part of English heritage.”

“I’m sure all the arrangements have been made already,” says Biggs.

“The food will go bad before anyone gets it,” says another man.

“Cynic,” says Trudy.

She lifts up gracefully and goes toward the ocean. All this talk of war bores her. She thinks it will never happen. They all watch her, rapt, as she plunges into the sea and comes up sleek and dripping --- her slim body a vertical rebuke to the flatness of the horizon between the sky and sea. She walks up and shakes her wet hair at Will. Drops of water fall and sparkle. Then someone asks where the tennis rackets are. The spell is broken.

Over dinner, Trudy declares that she is going to be in charge of uniforms for the Volunteers.

“And Will will be the fit model,” she says. “Because he’s a perfect male specimen.”

John Thorpe, who heads up the American office of a large pharmaceutical company, looks doubtful.

“Rather small and ugly, isn’t he?” he says, although this is more a description of himself and not at all of Will.

“Will!” Trudy cries. “You’ve been insulted! Defend your honor!”

“I’ve better things to defend,” he says. And the table falls silent. He is always saying the wrong thing, popping the gaiety. “Er, sorry,” he says. But they are already on to the next thing.

Trudy is describing the tailor who is going to make the uniforms.

“He’s been our family tailor for ages and he can whip out a copy of a Paris dress in two days, one if you beg!”

“What’s his name?”

“Haven’t the slightest,” she says easily. “He’s The Tailor. But I know where the shop is, or my driver does, rather, and we’re the best of friends. Do you fellows prefer orange or a very bright pink as colors?”

They decide on olive green with orange stripes (“So boring,” the women sigh and orange is given as a concession) and Trudy asks who is to measure the men.

They volunteer her.

She accepts (“Isn’t there something about dressing left?” she asks innocently), then says Will will measure in her stead. Trudy’s frivolity, Will has noticed, has boundaries.

Sophie Biggs is trying to get everyone interested in moonlight picnics.

“They’re ever so much fun,” she says. “We take a steamboat out, with rowboats, and when we reach the islands we row everyone ashore with the provisions and a guitar or an accordion or something.”

Sophie is a large girl and Will wonders if she is a secret eater because she eats tiny portions when she is out. Right now, she is poking her spoon around the vichyssoise.

Trudy sighs.

“It sounds like so much labor,” she says. “Wouldn’t it just be easier to have a picnic at Repulse Bay?”

Sophie looks at her reproachfully. “But it’s not the same,” she says. “It’s the journey.”

Sophie’s husband claims to be in shipping, but Will thinks he’s in Intelligence.

When he tells Trudy this later she cries, “That big lout? He couldn’t detect his way out of a paper bag!”

But Jamie Biggs is always listening, never talking, and he has a watchful air about him. If he’s that obvious, Will supposes he’s not very good. After Milton Pottinger left last year, someone had told Will that he was Intelligence. He hadn’t been able to believe it. Milton was a big, fl orid man who drank a lot and seemed the very soul of indiscretion.

Edwina Storch, a large Englishwoman who is the headmistress of the good school in town, has brought her constant companion, Mary Winkle, and they sit at the end of the table, eating quietly, talking to no one but each other. Will has seen them before. They are always around, but never say much.

Over dessert --- trifle --- Jamie says that all Japanese residents have been sent secret letters about what to do in case of an invasion, and that the Japanese barber chap in the Gloucester Hotel has been spying. The government is about to issue another edict that all wives and children are to be sent away without exception, but only the white British, those of pure European extraction, get passage on the ships.

“Doesn’t affect me,” Trudy says, shrugging, although she holds a British passport. Will knows that if she wanted, she could get on the boat --- her father always knows someone.

“What would I do in Australia?” she asks. “I don’t like anybody there. Besides, it’s only for pure English --- have you ever heard of anything so offensive?”

She changes the subject.

“What would happen,” she asks, “if two guns were pointed at each other and then the triggers were pulled at the same time. Do you think the two people would get hurt or would the bullets destroy each other?”

There is a lively discussion about this that Trudy becomes bored with very quickly.

“For heaven’s sake!” she cries. “Isn’t there something else we can talk about?”

The group, chastised, turns to yet other subjects. Trudy is a social dictator and not at all benevolent. She tells someone recently arrived from the Congo that she can’t imagine why anyone would go to godforsaken places like that when there are perfectly pleasant destinations like London and Rome. The traveler actually looks chagrined. She tells Sophie Biggs’s husband that he doesn’t appreciate his wife, and then she tells Manley she loathes trifle. Yet, no one takes offense; everyone agrees with her. She is the most amiable rude person ever. People bask in her attention.

At the end of dinner, after coffee and liqueur, Manley’s houseboy brings in a big bowl of nuts and raisins. Manley pours brandy over it with a flourish and Trudy lights a match and tosses it in. The bowl is ablaze instantly, all blue and white flame. They try to pick out the treats without burning their fingers, a game they call Snapdragon.

Going to the restroom later, Will glimpses Trudy and Victor talking heatedly in Cantonese in the drawing room. He hesitates, then continues on. When he returns, they are gone and Trudy is already back at the table, telling a bawdy joke.

After, they go to bed. Manley has given them a room next to his and they make love quietly. With Trudy, it is always as if she is drowning --- she clutches at him and burrows her face into his shoulder with an intensity she would make fun of if she saw it. Sometimes, the shape of her fingers is etched into his skin for hours afterward. Later, Will wakes up to find Trudy whimpering, her face lumpy and alarming; he sees that her face is wet with tears.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing.” A reflex.

“Victor upset you?” he asks.

“No, no, he wants to . . .” She is blurry with sleep. “My father . . .” She goes back to sleep. When he throws the blanket over her, her shoulders are as cold and limp as water. In the morning, she remembers nothing, and mocks him for his concern.

In the following weeks, the war encroaches --- wives and children, the ones who had ignored the previous evacuation, leave on ships bound for Australia, Singapore. Trudy is obliged to make an appearance at the hospitals to prove she is a nurse. She undergoes training, declares herself hopeless, and switches to supplies instead. She finds the stockpiling of goods too funny.

“If I had to eat the food they’re storing, I’d shoot myself,” she says. “It’s all veggie tins and bully beef and awful things like that.”

The colony is filled with suddenly lonesome men without wives who gather at the Gripps, the Parisian Grill, clamor to be invited to dinner parties at the homes of those few whose wives remain. They form a club, the Bachelors’ Club (“Why do the British so love to form clubs and societies?” Trudy asks. “No, wait, don’t say, it’s too grim”) and petition the governor to have their wives returned. Others, more intrepid, turn up suddenly with adopted Chinese “daughters” or “wards,” and they dine with them and drink champagne and get silly and flirtatious and then disappear into the night. Will finds it amusing, Trudy less so.

“Wait until I get my hands on them,” she cries while Will amuses himself with teasing her about which Chinese hostess would soon get her claws into him.

“You’re like a leper, darling,” she counters. “You British men are going out of fashion. I might have to find myself a Japanese or German beau now.”

Will remembers this time well, how it was all so funny, how the war was so far away, yet talked about every day, how no one really thought about what might really happen.

Excerpted from THE PIANO TEACHER © Copyright 2011 by Janice Y.K. Lee. Reprinted with permission by Penguin. All rights reserved.

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