Exciting Times(62)

‘That’s Brits,’ Mam said.

She’d told me before about her year working in a London restaurant. She was nineteen. The Troubles were in the papers and the Brits asked whether she was from ‘their bit’ or the ‘other bit’, or else ‘éire’. (I felt Brits loved two things more than life itself: showing they knew foreign words, and avoiding having to say ‘Republic’.) Camden was where London put the Irish then, Mam said. I said London put us everywhere now. Had to, on account of numbers.

‘Mam,’ I said, ‘have you ever been afraid to say sorry?’

She said yes. If you weren’t afraid then you probably weren’t sorry.

‘Then how do you say it?’ I said.

Mam said: ‘You don’t have to say everything. Just say as much as you’re sure of.’

I didn’t ask what to say if you weren’t sure of anything.

*

I found it easier picturing myself with Edith now she was gone. We could live anywhere we wanted. No matter what our apartment was like, she’d find a way to make it nice. She would get animated about things, and tell me she loved me, and tell me she felt scared sometimes. I would start thinking along those lines, then realise that much of this wasn’t an imagined future. It was things we had shared in the recent past. I’d broken up with someone who told me how they felt, and I’d gone back to someone who either did not tell me, or felt nothing.





47

There was a problem, Julian said, with the division of labour at the Starbucks on Caine Road. Of the quartet on duty, there would normally be two taking orders, a third making the drinks, and the fourth alternating between that task and running to the stockroom. But they’d chosen Sunday morning to induct a trainee barista, causing a double-edged dearth of labour. They only had three competent employees, and one of them was spending half their time on their own tasks and the other half mentoring the tyro.

It was the last week of November. It felt like he’d been back much longer than three months, and I wondered if time ever made sense in Hong Kong.

We slowly advanced up the queue. I said it was hilarious that the sign on the counter invited ‘New Partners’ to apply, but that I worried my amusement reflected a belief that minimum-wage jobs didn’t warrant grandiose titles.

‘You never switch off, do you?’ Julian said.

‘You’re the one analysing their manpower shortage.’

‘It says a lot about us, what we think is worth delving into. I suppose it’s like how Irish has all those different words for seaweed.’

I didn’t think the analogy made sense but was glad he’d remembered about the seaweed. He didn’t normally retain much of what I told him about Irish.

Once we’d sat down, Julian told me his bank was moving him to Frankfurt.

I dropped my wallet. The coins clanged against the floor. ‘Leave it,’ I said, but he’d already picked them up. I took them and clutched them to cool my hands down, but the metal went lukewarm in my grip.

It was my turn to speak. I knew I should find a germane question. I said: ‘When are you leaving?’

‘Mid-December,’ said Julian. ‘So three weeks from now.’

I started stacking the Hong Kong dollars into piles of fifty. That probably wasn’t five euro anymore. Currencies fluctuated. European politics played a role, of course.

‘That’s short notice,’ I said.

‘They told me two months ago.’

He stirred his coffee in punctilious circles, as though producing the whirlpool to a requested circumference.

I said: ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I thought, with Miles – they told me last September. I thought I’d decline it if – there was no point in telling anyone until I’d made up my mind.’

I’d had more of my drink than Julian had of his, which meant it was again my job to make conversation.

‘Are they giving you a raise?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

This news was consoling. At least he wasn’t abandoning me for the same money in a colder and less interesting country. I counted my stacks: 300 Hong Kong dollars in all. It was perhaps four hours’ rent.

‘I wanted to tell you in a neutral space,’ he said.

I wanted to tell him not to worry because the news wasn’t important to me, but I couldn’t find a natural way of putting it.

‘Will you miss me?’ I said.

I hoped my voice conveyed that I knew it made no sense to be sad simply because someone I’d just resumed having sex with was moving away.

‘I need a cigarette,’ said Julian. ‘Could we come back to it later?’

‘I’m ready,’ I said.

‘You’re quite important to me.’

‘ “Quite”?’

‘We’ve discussed this.’

‘Oh, the “quite” thing.’

‘Yes. But if you prefer, you’re “very” important to me.’ (I could have done without the air-quotes.) ‘You should visit.’

That was the closest he’d get to telling me he didn’t want me to come with him.

‘You’d be too busy to see me,’ I said. ‘Especially if it’s an important position.’