Exciting Times(12)

9

Banking slowed down just before Christmas. I suspected Julian told me that with disapproval. His MD had darkly intimated he’d be pleased with his bonus, which meant top tier or none at all. ‘Hengeveld’s a sadistic American cunt,’ Julian said, ‘so quite possibly the latter.’ He made no financial plans that relied on the money, then found himself perplexed what to do with it. I said that must be hard for him.

‘What’s “American” doing in that sentence, by the way?’ I said.

Julian took off his suit jacket and placed first it and then himself on the couch, like: pray, elaborate.

I said: ‘You seem more resentful when your superiors are American.’

Julian explained there was an important difference. When an American MD wanted something on their desk tomorrow morning, they said they wanted it on their desk tomorrow morning. When a British one did, they said it wasn’t urgent; tomorrow morning would do.

That evening I made us try cooking, phrasing it that way – I am making us try cooking – so Julian would see it as a cultural activity, like ceramics classes. He chopped the vegetables and remarked that he’d do it professionally if it paid better than banking. I asked if there was anything he wouldn’t do for more money, and he said no, probably not.

‘I should mention,’ he said, ‘that I’ll have to see my father.’

‘That’s fairly common,’ I said. ‘At Christmas.’

‘It’s just that if I have to spend Christmas with Miles and you want to spend Christmas with me, that means both of us will need to go.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘I’d love to meet him.’

‘He’ll like you. He hates “neo-liberalism”, though I’ve never heard him define it.’

I laid out the cutlery and wineglasses. After dinner, he read one of his Victorian doorstoppers and encouraged himself to quit smoking by finishing off a Chinese cigarette pack he termed ‘particularly vile’. I looked at things on my phone and balanced my mental energy between a) speculating as to whether his father’s politics suggested there was a degree of daddy issues bound up in his attraction to me, and b) concealing this normal and healthy thought process from Julian. That was what we did. We were the sum of the routines we’d built around each other.

*

Joan told me to teach the kids about Christmas in Ireland. Hearing my description, I began to doubt it was something my family actually did. I said people went to the tree shop and bought a tree, and felt it was probably all lies.

The children weren’t curious. Joan was always saying to throw in my value-added, to tell them things a local teacher couldn’t. But none of the differences mattered. Sometimes it snows at Christmas, I said, but more often it doesn’t. People jump in the sea. It’s very cold. But it’s getting warmer, as it is everywhere, and probably within our lifetimes the oceans will rise and drown us.

In each class that week, the centre of attention was whoever was going away furthest away for the break – Mary Yeung to Bangkok, Hsu Chung Sun to Sydney, Emmeline Fan to New York. Some were visiting family. Others were obeying the ever-robust principle that one could not expect rich people to stay anywhere too long.

As we closed shop that evening, Joan ranted about a mother from Beijing who’d wanted the leaflets about the classes available in simplified Chinese as well as traditional. She chewed fish balls from a bamboo skewer between sentences. Seeing a chance to bond, I told Joan there’d been similar debates over Irish-language orthography. She put down her bowl and asked which we used now. I said we’d simplified, and Joan resumed gnawing. She held many grievances against mainland China. The ones concerning Hong Kong’s political autonomy were compelling, and the ones about tourists less so.

On the last day before term break, she told me to call my mother on Christmas Day.

‘I will,’ I said.

‘It’s important.’

‘You’re right, Joan.’

‘Mothers are important.’

‘They are.’





10

Miles and the waiter chatted in Cantonese. Every now and then, Miles pointed at one of us and Julian refreshed the email on his phone.

It was Christmas Eve. We’d met in the lift lobby on Percival Street. There were thirty floors and at least as many restaurants in the tower. The place we went to had dark wood panelling, paper screens, and round mahogany tables. Miles’s conversation with the waiter had started with coordinating to find vegetarian options for me, though I suspected they’d moved off that topic.

‘He’d never spend that long talking to locals,’ said Julian after the waiter left. ‘He’s showing he’s got a way with gweilos.’

‘Or perhaps he was being friendly,’ Miles said. He was sixty-three, Julian had said. Like his son, he favoured shirts. Unlike Julian’s, they were pinstriped and needed ironing.

On the train over, Julian had told me not to mention our relationship. ‘Just don’t say anything,’ he said. ‘It won’t be the only proboscidean in the room.’ I’d said: ‘Why don’t you tell him? And then that’s one less elephant, if “proboscidean” is some pretentious Latin joke.’ Julian said: ‘I don’t want him knowing. And actually, “proboscidean” is a pretentious taxonomy joke.’ I’d said: ‘But you said he already knows.’ And Julian had replied: ‘Right. I’m okay if he knows. I just don’t want him knowing.’