New Welsh Short Stories (9 page)

She paid for my flight and hotel to prove her seriousness, she said, though I needed no reassurance. I turned on my out
-
of
-
office. On the plane, I practised conversational Mandarin, sitting in a row by myself. Learning a language is one of the most effective ways to keep the brain healthy. Passengers frowned at me from the toilet queue. I tried to shape the words in my mouth. ‘Wo
-
ah she
-
e wan.'
I like
. I learned about the four intonations that widen each word's possible meaning – rising, falling, neutral and falling
-
rising.

I landed in Pudong airport, the roof of which was shaped like a wave. This is an important shape for scientists. In astrophysics, a wave is just that – a signal travelling through time – the reaches of the universe saying hello. My name was at arrivals: PROF DAVID MILLEN, written on cardboard. The driver shook my hand and took my bag. He had gorgeous soft skin under his eyes. I practised my Mandarin
thank you
. Falling then neutral. He said nothing, put my bag in the boot.

It was an expensive hotel. The lobby was tall, tiled and golden, with dragons on pedestals, opal carvings in glass cases, framed maps on the walls. In one corner there was a grand piano similar to the one Elizabeth owned. The hotel also had a view onto the Huangpu river and I was glad because that meant she was not far away. At reception, they told me the minibar and wifi had all been covered. I was to relax. In my room, I checked my email and found a message:
So sorry! Work emergency! I cannot see you till tomorrow. I will make it up, my angel. XXX
Perhaps that should have worried me, but I considered it good fortune that I would have chance to sleep and be my best for our first meeting.

From my bedroom window, I watched the cityscape, the tops of lit skyscrapers steaming like the scalps of rugby players under floodlights. From my office on campus, I had often watched the university team practise. The world was as small or large as the reach of my imagination. As my eyes adjusted to the view, I noticed coal ships heading downriver, a line of them, prow to tail, empty and unlit, sliding towards the coast. It pleased me to think of Elizabeth's job at the shipping corporation. The world would not stop turning for love between two strangers. Then, at 10 pm sharp, all the skyscrapers' show lights blinked off.

I woke late and opened my laptop. No messages. I sent Elizabeth an image of the view from my bedroom window and said:
The boats pass on their way to you? I send my love downriver.

I went to the hotel buffet for lunch. They had everything: broths, dumplings, eel, snake, duck's tongue. How quaint the row of
Western food seemed: roast potato, chicken breasts, sliced cheese. After lunch, I went for a walk and the air was so close I had the urge to loosen my tie though I was not wearing one. Back at the hotel, I had a message. Elizabeth was accompanying her boss on important business, she said, and would not be back till late. She apologised sincerely and attached a picture of her in her underwear.

I settled in then, to work. I was happy to stay in the hotel. I wanted to save my exploration of this new city for when I could hold the hand of my tour guide. Half my suitcase was weighed down with a draft of a PhD thesis. My student was a small, intense woman with veins visible through the thin skin on her forehead. For the most part she did excellent work, though I felt she was being led astray by the glamorous allure of dark matter.

At 1 am, I got a call from reception saying Elizabeth was at the desk and would like to come to my room. I was in bed. I was not ready.
After a day of buffets, I had grown a little soft. I straightened the duvet, put on a shirt and trousers, turned on a bedside lamp and opened the curtains to the crowd of sleeping skyscrapers.

When I answered the door, she was backlit by the light of the corridor, her black hair glowing at the edges.

‘You're here,' I said.

‘For you.'

That was the last English she spoke. I took her into my arms. She was so small or I was so large. We kissed and her breath tasted of cigarettes. We kissed and she took off my glasses. I have never touched skin so soft. ‘Wo
-
ah she
-
e wan.' Afterwards, she lay beside me as the air conditioner hummed us to sleep. I was so happy. In the morning she was gone.

I'd known, of course, that the woman I'd just spent the night with was not Elizabeth. Even without my glasses, even in low light, they did not share the same body, the same face. They had different teeth.

I received an email. Elizabeth said it had been the best night of her life and what sadness to disappear. Work had called her away for urgent administrating. She would be out of town for a fortnight. I should catch the next flight home, she said, and – if I would allow it – she would visit me in England. She attached a picture of herself in the changing room of a department store.

I gave naiveté to myself as a gift. I let myself be happy and booked a flight home. For my last day in Shanghai, I drank local beer in hotels and hostels overlooking the river. In the street below, there were shops for Swiss watches, Italian couture, American sportswear. When I was drunk enough, I walked back to the hotel, admiring the androgynous models on the posters that lined the street. That was when I saw her or what I thought was her, advertising denim on a spinning billboard high above a junction. I sat on a bench across the road to watch her turn her back on me, over and over.
Westerners are famous for not being able to tell apart the faces of those from other cultures. I was drunk. I was being primitive, unreconstructed, I thought, for not seeing the obvious differences between this face and Elizabeth's.

I became angry. I stood up and started walking at the pace of international business. The pavements were still busy with men and women in suits jousting for taxis until I turned down a side road where the streetlights stopped. I passed a four
-
by
-
four, struggling to make a many
-
pointed turn. I felt my shirt stick to my back. I walked down a badly paved lane lined with squat red
-
brick homes. In the half
-
light from an open back door, four men huddled round a fold
-
out table, playing
xiangqi
.
Washing lines and vines hung between buildings. I felt I was moving back in time. I was moving into my own fantasy. It was so dark I could barely see my feet. The lane was, I realised, a cul
-
de
-
sac and at the end of it a small doorway glowed like an open fridge.

I stepped through, I don't know why. It was a kitchen. A man was chopping unnameable vegetables. He stopped singing as I came in then said something that felt aggressive but some languages just sound angry and that may have been my prejudice. I took a step closer. He raised the knife. He sounded angry but perhaps that was all interpretation. I had been warned that westerners often mistook the falling tone for irritation. I wanted to be saved from my own assumptions. I took another step.

The public's biggest fear about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was that we would open a tear in the universe or create a black hole that would swallow the planet. To avoid hysteria, we were careful to make reassurances. High
-
energy physics is not as risky as it sounds. In truth, of course, the public's biggest fears were exactly the same as our most hopeful dreams.

Back at my hotel, I was still alive, watching a slow moth circle my body as though waiting for a runway. I had a lump on my head from where the chef had pushed me out through the low door. There were six hours until my flight.

On my laptop, I looked up the advertising campaign and found the name of the model I'd seen. I found her microblog, her photos. This took just a couple of minutes. I saw her piano. There she was in underwear. There she was in the changing room of a department store. She had eighty
-
thousand fans. She lived in Singapore.

All that I knew was that I knew nothing. The internet had brought me here so I let it guide me home. With one finger I slowly typed the search terms. China. Love. Scam. Before I pressed return, I reminded myself that there was nothing inauthentic about the night I spent with a woman when we could not pronounce each other's names. Then, at the website's suggestion, I checked my luggage for lumps.

Within five minutes, I was sitting on my bed with two bricks of someone else's cocaine. They had been wrapped in foil then sealed in plastic like lunchbox sandwiches. I weighed up my options and, after some thought, went downstairs and out of the hotel. I felt watched as I entered the minimart. The streets were never not busy. In the shop, I bought a tall beer and a roll of masking tape.

Back in my room, I stuck the packages to the underside of the desk. Then I drank the beer and, standing at the window, watched the moon rack up a line on the river. I had never been a hedonist myself. Had never felt my mind needed expanding or narrowing, either way.

At the airport, once I was through security, I sat on a stool at the internet cafe. I emailed Elizabeth to tell her I loved her. I explained I had found her gifts while packing my bag. So kind of her, I said, but I could not accept it. I told her where she would find them.

On the plane, I watched no films, learned no Mandarin, read no PhDs. I had ten hours to weigh up whether an international drug cartel's pride is so easily bruised that they would kill a professor to avenge the expense of a week in a mid
-
range hotel. I imagined Elizabeth's representatives using an underqualified translator to call their colleagues in the UK from a payphone with an echo on the line and I rigorously worked through all the possible miscommunications.

At Heathrow, baggage reclaim coughed up hard cases wrapped in clingfilm. My wheelie bag emerged through the rubber strips with what felt to me like showmanship.

I walked through automatic doors with nothing to declare and into the smell of international perfume. The pinyin names of Chinese businessman were being held up on wipe
-
clean cards. Out on the forecourt, I waited to be killed, to be shot in the stomach.

Nothing came. No warmth in the gut. No sudden numbness.

A man approached and asked to take my bag. I thanked him. He had dark smudges beneath his eyes. In his car, there were photos of children taped to the sun visor.

Back at home, I waited for the phone or doorbell to ring, listened for leaves crunching in the back garden. When I got up in the night to pee, I expected to find someone sitting quietly in the darkness at my kitchen table. In the morning, I thought I would receive a strange package but there was nothing. I had no home security. I often left the door unlocked. If only these people realised. They could have walked right in.

CROCODILE HEARTS

Kate Hamer

Into what should have been a perfect English garden day came the hiss of crocodiles floating over the fence.

Charlotte knelt on the grass and held Fay close, feeling the beating of the small steady heart against her own knocking one. Oh, on a day like this that should have been so rosy and content – for hours they'd been quiet, then a horrible flurry of movement and hissing from next door. Her daughter smiled up into Charlotte's face, oblivious.

When Mike came back for lunch Charlotte tackled him about it again.

He was tired of the subject. ‘I've looked into it. He has a legit licence and everything. There's nothing we can do. In fact he's asked me over to have a proper look, to put our minds at rest.'

‘Oh, has he now?' Charlotte folded her arms across her chest and stuck her chin out at him. ‘Isn't that like us agreeing to it all? Like we're saying it's just fine. With children right next door.'

Mike looked puzzled and harassed. She wasn't like this. Charlotte was normally so sweet and biddable. She dressed herself in pleasing sweetie colours, edible
-
looking clothes: striped cottons, blouses patterned with cherries, and she collected Cath Kidson. She was an indulgent mother, a good cook, a loving wife. But the crocs coming seemed to have affected her badly.

‘Can I come?' Sam had been quietly eavesdropping, sipping orange juice at the dining table through the open arch that led off from the kitchen.

The breath froze in Charlotte's throat. ‘No,' she almost shouted. ‘Absolutely not.'

Mike was eying her thoughtfully.
‘I don't see why…'

‘No. I forbid it. Totally.'

Sam was creeping in on his thin legs, the orange juice still in his hands, his big brown eyes wide open in excitement and fear – fear that what was so close hung on the fragile wire of his mother's permission. ‘Oh, Mum, please.' His voice was desperate, almost tearful. ‘Oh please, please let me go. I want to see them more than anything –
anything
in the world.'

‘No way.' Charlotte rattled spoons. ‘It's not going to happen.'

Twenty
-
four in all, moved in after weeks of hammering and sawing from next door when Charlotte and Mike assumed their neighbour was building nothing more than a complicated set of sheds.