Exciting Times(38)

Since I’d started visiting when Julian left, Miles seemed to be dropping in more snippets of their family life. It felt unfair that this was happening only now that my top priority was not finding out more about Julian.

We listened to one of Nina Simone’s 1976 Montreux recordings, ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free’. Miles said it had been a Sixties civil rights anthem in the US. Nina sang: I wish I could say all the things I can say when I’m relaxed.

It was no good trying to finish writing his book at the moment, Miles said. Instead, he was trying to devote more attention to his undergrads. There’d been a lot of students in the Umbrella protests a few years ago, and that kind of thing was needed more and more.

‘So you want to brainwash your class?’ I said.

‘Yes. While I still can.’

‘My eight-year-olds are mad into conspiracy theories. Do you want a go with them?’

Nina sang: Jonathan Livingston Seagull ain’t got nothing on me.

I looked at my watch and counted fifteen minutes without thinking about Edith, a personal record. Obviously, though, this set me off again. Miles had asked what I’d been up to, and I hadn’t known what to say because I’d been spending all my time with Edith. I didn’t mind Miles knowing, but if I told him about Edith then Julian might find out. If he found out about Edith, maybe Edith would find out about him. Then she’d want to know why I’d been lying. ‘I lie to everyone about everything’ would probably not satisfy her as an answer.





29

In mid-June, Edith said we’d get boring – ‘as people’, she said, a qualification I later analysed stringently – if we just had sex all the time. I said I disagreed, but that we could go on dates if it made her happy. ‘It does,’ Edith said. I was still so unused to her candour that it threw me into admitting I liked dating, too. ‘A lot of people do,’ she said. I said I pitied anyone who didn’t.

We got street food and bet on horses at Happy Valley. She took me for bubble tea on a long hilly street packed with convenience stores, and made fun of how long I took choosing, and then of my choice. (‘If you hadn’t rushed me, I might have chosen better.’ ‘Anyone who picks “Matcha Love Potion”, in any allotted time period, is a threat to public safety.’) We tried – and failed, but, importantly, tried – to get me over my fear of heights on the Hong Kong Observation Wheel, and the Lantau Island cable car up over the mountains. On both I screamed and grabbed Edith’s hand, realised it was a coupley thing to do, and wondered if other people did coupley things and then questioned their own sincerity. But even if everyone else did the same things Edith and I did on dates, I decided it was still special for us.

One day we went to Man Mo Temple to make a wish. Incense smoked from ceiling coils. We stood at the urn, round and gold like a chalice, and I asked Edith what I wanted. ‘You tell me,’ she said. I laughed and kissed her cheek.

The last week of June, Edith asked when Julian would return.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He’s vague.’

We’d just been shopping. Julian had told me I could get more throws after I said I liked the one in my room. I’d bought four with Edith, two in herringbone and two in windowpane, and was arranging them in the sitting room. Edith hadn’t said much about my choices, causing me to suspect that she hated them, and that Julian would, too, when he got back. It was unfair that they both had better taste than me.

I added: ‘Do you think the throws are boring?’

‘Vague how?’ Edith said. ‘The throws are fine.’

It was all on stolen time and I’d pay later. I knew that. My temple wish had been for Julian to come back and for it all to be fine. But I couldn’t imagine it with any precision. I’d close my eyes and see him greet her, and that was as far as I could get.

Whenever Edith was busy, I went out and walked my circuits of convenience stores and shopping malls, or I stayed in bed doing nothing. I wasn’t lonely. My job was non-stop human contact, so I appreciated the time alone. But I couldn’t quite relax.

That night I messaged Julian: i miss you. This was a strange thing to do.

*

I wanted to improve my handwriting so I could set a better example for my students. I found a French cursive font online, then wrote out sentences containing every letter of the alphabet: the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs, amazingly few discotheques provide jukeboxes. This seemed like a punishment, though I wasn’t sure what for. After exhausting my supply of pangrams, I copied out Shakespeare sonnets.

While we were watching a movie in bed, Edith saw one of my transcriptions in a notebook on my bedside table. She said I had lovely handwriting. I felt bad for accepting the compliment, like the letters on the page weren’t really mine.

That week my ten-year-olds did ‘if’ and ‘whether’. I’d known that in French you needed to use similar words when you turned a question into a noun clause, but Dubliners didn’t always bother. We often said, ‘I don’t know will he come back,’ which was bad English. You were meant to say: I don’t know whether he’ll come back, or: I don’t know if he will.

I underlined the conjunctions in the example sentences, then set the kids to work. A few finished early and chatted in Cantonese. I pretended not to notice.