The Piano Teacher (8 page)

“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, florid 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.

CLAIRE WAS WAITING for the bus after Locket’s piano lesson when Will Truesdale drove up in the car.

“Would you like a lift?” he asked. “I’m just off work.”

“Thank you, but I couldn’t put you out,” she said.

“Not at all,” he said. “The Chens don’t mind if I take the car home for the night. Most employers want their cars left at home and the chauffeur to take public transport home, so it’s very convenient for me.”

Claire hesitated, then got into the car. It smelled of cigarettes and polished leather.

“It’s very kind of you.”

“Did you have a good time at the Arbogasts’ the other day?” he asked.

“It was a very nice party,” she said. She had learned not to be so effusive, that it marked her as unsophisticated.

“Reggie’s a good sort,” he said. “It was nice to meet you there too. There are too many of those women who add to the din without adding anything else. You shouldn’t lose that quality, that quality of seeing everything new, for what it is. All the women here . . .” he trailed off.

He drove well, she thought, steady on the steering wheel, his movements calm and unhurried.

“You’re not wearing the perfume you had on the other day,” he said.

“No,” she said, wary. “That’s for special occasions.”

“I was surprised that you had it on. Not many English people wear it. It’s more the fashionable Chinese women. They like its heaviness. Englishwomen like something lighter, more flowery.”

“Oh, I wasn’t aware.” Claire’s hand went unconsciously to her neck, where she usually dabbed it on.

“But it’s lovely that you wear it,” he said.

“You seem to know a lot about women’s scents.”

“I don’t.” He glanced over at her, his eyes dark. “I used to know someone who wore it.”

They rode in silence until they arrived at her building.

“You teach the girl,” he said as she was reaching for the door, his voice suddenly urgent.

“Yes, Locket,” she said, taken aback.

“Is she a good student? ” he asked. “Diligent? ”

“It’s hard to say,” she said. “Her parents don’t give her much of a reason to do anything so she doesn’t. Very typical at that age. Still, she’s a nice enough girl.”

He nodded, his face unreadable in the dark interior of the car.

“Well, thank you very much for the ride,” she said.

He nodded and drove off into the gathering dusk.

 

And then, a bun. A bun with sweetened chestnut paste. That was how they met again. She had been walking up Potter Street to where there was a bus stand, when it started to pour. The rain, big, startling plops of water, fell heavily and she was soaked through in a matter of seconds. Looking up at the sky, she saw it had turned a threatening gray. She ducked into a Chinese bakery to wait out the storm. Inside, she ordered a tea and a chestnut bun and, turning to sit at one of the small circular tables, spotted Will Truesdale, deliberately eating a red bean pastry, staring at her.