The Piano Teacher (35 page)

“Er, yes,” Claire said. She never knew how to talk to Americans, who were so informal, or what to say to their odd exclamations.

“And you, what do you do to pass the time? Do you have children?”

“No,” Claire said. “Do you?”

“I have four, all under five. I keep popping them out and Peter’s ready to strangle me. I tell him, I wasn’t the only one involved here, you know? At least here, we have all the amahs. Back home, it’s not like this.”

“Have you been long in Hong Kong?” Claire asked politely.

“Three years. Had Jack here, thank God he was a Cesarean . . .” The woman chattered on and on, buoyed by her own effervescence, and Claire listened, glad to have an excuse to stand quietly and not look awkward.

Martin found her later, waiting by the powder room.

“Hullo,” he said. “Ready to leave soon?”

She nodded.

“I’ll be right out.” She ducked into the bathroom and splashed water on her face. She felt as if she were waiting for something to happen.

 

Later, she heard the redhead and the blonde, Maude and Lavinia, discuss her.

“Who was that woman lurking around?”

“I think I heard Melody say she’s the piano teacher.”

“Really?”

“Pretty, though, don’t you think?”

“In a wan, blond sort of way, I suppose.”

The sound of a light slap. “You are such a bitch!” Laughter.

“It’s that skin, you know. Drives men wild.”

“Yes, it just goes, though. It’s wasted on the young.”

 

A sudden commotion near the door. A maid had fainted in the heat. The houseboy was summoned and carried her out.

“Bloody hot,” a man in a boater said.

“Always,” rejoined another. “Haven’t you heard?”

Into this senseless conversation, Will strode, unexpected. He stopped in front of them, the first people he saw.

“Did you hear?” he said, with shock on his face. His voice was not loud but everyone heard him. “Reggie Arbogast’s gone and shot himself.”

The two men gaped.

“The man who had the parties on the Peak?” Claire cried, before she could help it. In her simple mind, Claire still imagined that money might buy happiness. A few people turned to stare at her; most were still in shock.

The buzz rose audibly, immediate.

“His poor wife.”

Sotto voce. “Regina? I wonder he didn’t shoot her instead.”

“The children?”

“All back in England. They’ll send a telegram, of course. What a tragedy.”

“When I saw him at Fanling, he seemed rather down. He went straight to the clubhouse for drinks. Rather the worse for wear by the time I’d finished up.”

But Will was there for a reason. He looked around the room for Victor and walked over to him.

“You bastard,” he said, and swung at the man. “You let him think all this time he was the one who broke.” The room quieted immediately.

Victor Chen staggered back but did not fall. He came up, holding his jaw, and tried to smile.

“Now, Will, you come here after not having shown up for days and then take a swing at me? You’ve been quite the absent driver.”

“Shut up. You are despicable.”

Around them, people were spellbound, unable to move, even though manners dictated they should leave. A few, more decorous than the others, inched toward the door.

“You are behind all of this. You brokered the damn Crown Collection back to the Chinese government under the guise of patriotism, didn’t you? You didn’t care who suffered, just that you enriched yourself and got in good with the new people. And you know what your Chinese government did with it? They probably smashed it into shards, as representative of bourgeois values!” His voice rose.

“The Chinese have the right to their own history,” Victor said stiffly. “It should never have been taken from them in the first place.”

“You are such a hypocrite,” Will continued, as if he hadn’t heard. “When you were reading history at Cambridge, you were all about jolly old England, punting and strawberries and cream, and then when it suited your purpose here, you became the model China man, currying favor with the Nationalists, the Communists, whoever would receive you. You don’t know whether you’re coming or going, old man.” He stepped closer to Victor, menacing.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Will,” Victor said, adjusting his shirt. “You least of all. You come to Hong Kong and find your little nest of cronies, and your half-breed filly, and all is right with the world. Bloody British on their moral high horse, while they poisoned half of China with opium for their own gain.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore, Victor. You are doomed.”

“You’ve always been dramatic, Will,” Victor said. “Just like Trudy. Sentimental too. Those qualities are luxuries, I assure you.”

Will stood still for a moment.

“You aren’t worth it,” he said finally. “You will never be worth anything.”

Suddenly Melody was next to Will.

“Will,” she pleaded. “We are not enemies here. We loved the same people. We all had tragedies during the war. Can’t you forgive, just a little?”

She looked at him, but he didn’t move. She shifted, then for some reason changed direction toward Claire, and appealed to her.

“Surely you must understand, Claire. Life is so complicated and we make decisions that are difficult.”

Claire, caught unguarded, was exposed. Martin was there. The whole world was there. The women who had been talking about her stared; she was reborn in their eyes—someone worth seeing.

Now she was being unveiled in front of the world as somehow connected to their hosts, and to Will, a part of this puzzle. She was unused to the attention. She remembered the moment at the Chens’ dinner party where everyone had stared at her, waiting for her witty rejoinder, a sign that she belonged with them—a response that had never come. She thought of the feeling she often had around Will—that she was someone else entirely, the other Claire who had never gotten a chance to surface, a Claire who had opinions and said things that people listened to, someone who was visible. She thought of all these things, and looked back at the sea of faces as they waited for her to answer Melody.

First, she nodded, as unobtrusively as possible. She blushed, looked down. Edwina Storch’s pale, sweaty face rose in her mind.
You must rise to the occasion.
Yes, but in a different way from what Edwina imagined.

Claire looked up from the floor, raised her eyes.

“Melody, we all make choices but we have to stand by them and acknowledge responsibility if we find ourselves on the wrong end.” Her voice quavered but the attention of every person in the room was on her.

She felt Martin staring at her, bewildered. She couldn’t look at him. She focused instead on what she was doing.

“I don’t know what’s going on here, but I do know that Will is telling you something important.”

She wanted to be generous, she wanted to understand. The queen, being crowned in England on this very day, surely would expect it of her. She wanted so badly to be merciful and kind, and to touch Melody gently on the shoulder and tell her it would be all right, that things would work out, that she herself would make sure of it.

Claire was thinking of all of these things, feeling the warm glow of benevolence.

But then, Melody’s face twitched.

It was quick, and then it was over, but Claire saw it nonetheless. This woman, Melody was thinking, is my daughter’s piano teacher! She is someone I hired to teach Locket how to strike some black and white keys on a musical instrument. She is simple, English, not anyone I need to ask a favor of.

And then it was gone, erased by the woman’s innate practicality. But it was too late. Claire had seen it already. The heat rose from her chest to her head. She was the one who didn’t need anything of anyone. She turned to her lover.

“Will,” she said, emboldened. “I know you don’t . . .”

“This doesn’t concern you, Claire,” he interrupted. He barely saw her.

But she knew him well now.

“I know,” she said. “But Melody has a point.” She knew this would inflame him further.

“Don’t be absurd. You have no idea what’s going on.”

“But . . .”

“Out,” he said, pointing to the door.

Part of her thrilled to Will’s command of the situation. He was owning her, finally. She heard a faint “I say” that sounded like it came from her husband. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t see Martin now, couldn’t see his bewildered, humiliated face, and have to sort out how that made her feel. So she closed her eyes and felt the dull throb of the blood coursing through her head and the weight of all those eyes on her and she opened her own, looked around at the blurry sea of faces, and then she thought about what she should do and everything seemed to be going in slow motion, as if she were under water. She blinked, and everything was still blurry. A maid cried out from the kitchen, unaware of the drama going on at the party, she heard glasses clink as they were assembled on a tray by another unsuspecting servant, a fly buzzed terribly near her ear, and she saw a redheaded woman slowly, slowly sweep her hand through her hair, all the while looking at her. All this happened as if it were in a room far away from her, enclosed in glass. In the end, she stood up a little straighter, took a deep breath, and then she did the only thing she could think of doing at that moment, that particular instant: she just walked away. It was cowardly and messy and left much to be dealt with later but her heart felt full and tender and she didn’t see that she had any choice. She walked away from the gaping women and the perplexed men, and went directly to the door and put her hand on the knob. She hesitated, she didn’t know why, and then she turned the door handle—she remembered always the cool metal in her palm—and she walked out. She didn’t look at Martin. She couldn’t. She didn’t even look at Will. She walked outside, to a new and unknown life.

LATER, SHE HEARD what had happened. Women who had never acknowledged her presence called her or stopped her in town, ostensibly to ask her how she was doing or tell her what had happened after she left, but really to find out her connection to the situation.

“They said he went out on the tennis court and put the gun in his mouth. Very messy. And you know, he only had the one hand. The hook, of course. Quite tricky. The amah found him. Had to be hospitalized herself with the shock. The servants always want to be a part of it, don’t they?”

“Poor Regina,” said Claire. She remembered the party she had been to, the one where she had met Will, with the Pimm’s and the boy and his father hitting the ball back and forth in their tennis whites. She tried to imagine Reggie Arbogast sprawled out on the grass, blood running out of his mouth. “Does anyone know why? Other than what was said . . .”

“He’d not been himself,” they would say. “Blamed himself for letting the collection disappear. And couldn’t stand to see all the fuss around the coronation, and all the patriotism. Made him feel awful. And I think he felt he was in some way responsible for the death of Trudy Liang.” A pause. “And did you
know
Trudy? Or Dominick?”

“No,” she would say. “They were gone before I even arrived. I just found out who they were recently.”

“Dominick was just terrible. He went through women like they were used handkerchiefs, although they say he liked both sides, if you know what I mean . . .”

Claire would wait patiently.

“And the Chens? They were just livid about how Will came in and ruined their party. I can’t believe you just left, darling, it was so dramatic! Melody was in hysterics, Victor tried to be cool, and Will, well, he controlled himself and left not long after you, leaving all of us gaping like fools. I’ve never seen anything like it. What a scandal! Were you close?”

“I don’t know much about that,” Claire would say. “You see, I was teaching Locket but didn’t have much contact with the Chens so I didn’t know them very well. They’d always been very kind to me.”

“Oh . . .” A sigh, down the telephone line, disappointed. “Well, they are really something.” A pause. “And are you . . . all right?”

“As well as can be expected,” she would say, or something of the sort.

“And . . .” And only a few of them could bring themselves to say it. “And Martin?”

And she would not answer, and the deepening silence would embarrass them into hurriedly filling it with small talk and fervent wishes to see her soon, to have tea, or to go for a walk.

They rang off shortly afterward and never called again. She wondered at their transparency.

 

The government wrapped up its investigation into the disappearance of the Crown Collection. Reggie Arbogast was posthumously honored with a commendation from the queen for his services to the English empire. Regina Arbogast sold the big house on the Peak to a Shanghainese merchant looking to relocate to Hong Kong and set sail for England. Victor Chen was not officially mentioned.

FROM A DISTANCE she saw him approaching, a spindly figure with a cane. Hard to imagine this man was the enigma who had ignited such desire in her a mere two weeks ago.

But then he came close, his pale, narrow face, his untidy hair, and he spoke, and she felt his pull all over again.

“Claire,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Sit down.” Almost avuncular. She felt rebuffed. He always set the tone of their meetings.

They sat on a bench looking over the harbor. They were on the Peak, where they had arranged to meet, thinking they would not run into anyone they knew, for different reasons than before, and they had been right. They were alone in the twilight hour. The warm wind blew, not unpleasantly.

“I came here with Trudy sometimes,” he said. “That is the same iron rail that was here when I was here with her. I touched it then and I can touch it now, but the circumstances are so different. I’m so different. Do you ever think about that?”