My Favourite Wife

‘You know who’s going to get rich here?’ Alice said. ‘The Chinese. A few of them, anyway. Chairman Sun, for example. And some of his pals. You comfortable with that, Bill?’

He looked at her and said nothing. She was still holding her notepad in her hands. She may have been at his wedding, and she may have been his wife’s best friend when they were growing up, but she still looked like trouble. He began walking towards the gates. Alice followed him.

‘You’re an intelligent man,’ she said. ‘And I’m just curious to know what you think is happening here. Off the record.’

‘And what do you think is happening?’ he said, not breaking his stride. ‘On the record.’

Alice shrugged. ‘Looks like a standard land-grab to me. The new rich get their mansions. The local politicians get their cut. And the farmers get shafted.’

He stopped and stared at her. ‘You think these people are going to be robbed?’ he said, genuinely outraged. ‘Is that what you think is going to happen? I’ve seen the details of their compensation package.’

She laughed at him.

‘Just think about it,’ Alice said. They had all arrived at the gates at the same time. Ho and the guards were handing over the old man and the boy to the PSB. The old man looked resigned to his fate but the child looked terrified. ‘Until the mid-nineties all the land in China was owned by the People,’ Alice said. ‘And then suddenly it wasn’t. One day you woke up and the land your family had farmed for generations was owned by someone you had never met. And he wanted you out.’

‘These people are going to receive generous compensation packages,’ Bill said, watching one of the security guards shove the old man. That wasn’t right. They shouldn’t do that.

‘Don’t buy that, Bill. We both know that the money goes to the local government. Your friend Chairman Sun – is he going to see the farmers right, Bill?’

He ignored her. The security guards were conferring with the PSB cops as they gripped the arms of the old man and the boy. They were working out what to do with them. Bill hesitated, unsure if he should stick his nose in here.

‘Every foreigner who works in China has to learn the ostrich trick,’ Alice said. ‘You know what the ostrich trick is, Bill? It’s when you ignore what’s going on right in front of you.’

Ho suddenly got tired of all the chit-chat and punched the boy full in the face. The child went flying backwards and Bill watched him sprawl in the mud. For a moment Bill could not believe what he had seen. Then he was on Ho, pushing the larger man as hard as he could and not budging him, screaming in his face, telling him to leave the boy alone, let the police deal with it.

Bill helped the boy to his feet, trembling with shock and rage, and discovered that he had to keep holding him because the punch had knocked him senseless. There was blood on the boy’s lips and chin from a broken nose. Bill searched in his pockets for something to wipe it with and found nothing. Two of the PSB officers took the boy’s arms and eased him from Bill’s grip.

‘This is intolerable,’ Bill said, even though he knew they didn’t understand a word. His voice was shaking with emotion. ‘My company will not be a party to this, do you hear me?’

The PSB led the boy and the old man away. Ho chuckled and gestured at Bill with real amusement. The guards gawped at him with their infinite blankness. Bill looked up and saw Alice Greene offering him a Kleenex.

For the blood on his hands.

On the road back to Shanghai, Tiger had to swerve to miss a blue Ferrari coming in the opposite direction on the wrong side of the road. As Tiger wrestled the limo across pockmarked gravel, Bill caught a glimpse of a boy and girl laughing behind their sunglasses.

‘Look at that,’ Shane said, placing a grateful hand on Tiger’s shoulder as the Ferrari weaved off in a cloud of dust. ‘There’s about fifty million of them driving around who were on bicycles last year.’

Tiger revved the engine, trying to ease the car out of a pothole. A family of peasant farmers, their skin black from the sun, sullenly watched them.

‘Very low,’ Tiger said. ‘Very low people.’

Nancy looked up. ‘I am from Yangdong,’ she said in English, but Tiger was fiddling with his climate control, and gave no sign that he had heard her.

Bill looked at Nancy and tried to remember her file. She had gone to two of the top colleges in the country – Tsinghua University Law School, then the University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. To get that kind of education, to become a lawyer after growing up in this dreary landscape – it told him that Alice Greene was wrong, and that Chinese ingenuity and hard work and intelligence would ultimately triumph over Chinese cruelty and corruption and stupidity.

That’s what it told him.

But he didn’t quite believe it.

Back at the firm, Devlin came into his office. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked Bill.

‘I’m fine,’ Bill said.

‘I heard what happened. The boy and the old man.’ He shook his head. ‘Ugly business.’

‘Yes.’

‘But we can’t get squeamish here,’ Devlin said. Bill looked up at him and Devlin touched his arm. ‘I mean it. It’s better now than it’s ever been. You know that, don’t you? And it will get better. Change will come. Because of people like us.’

They stared out at the view. There were red lights on the peaks of the skyscrapers, and they seemed to wink in secret fraternity at the red lights of the discreet CCTV cameras in Bill’s office.

‘Do you know what I liked about you?’ Devlin said. ‘When we first met.’

‘My wife,’ Bill said, and Devlin laughed. ‘That’s what everyone likes best about me.’

‘What I liked about you was that you’re a lawyer, not a technician,’ Devlin said. ‘Lawyers solve problems. Lawyers can reason. Technicians – their mummy and daddy wanted them to be lawyers, so that’s what they do for forty years. Technicians know a snapshot of the law, from when they qualified. But they don’t feel it in their bones. They’re not real lawyers. They’re technicians. But you’re a lawyer. You see the law as social lubricant and not as a club. But you’re coming from a land where the law is used to protect rights, and you are living in a place where essentially the people have no rights. We’ve done nothing wrong here, you know that, don’t you?’

‘But those villagers,’ Bill said. ‘That boy…’

‘His family will be taken care of,’ Devlin insisted. ‘Look, Bill, you have to choose what you see here. You know what the China price is?’

‘Sure.’

The China price was the key to everything, even more important than the numbers. When foreign manufacturers had looked at every price offered by their suppliers, they demanded the China price – which was always the lowest price of all.

‘It means you can move any kind of operation to China, and get it all done cheaper.’

Devlin shook his head.

‘The real China price,’ Devlin said. ‘The real China price is the compromises we have to make to work here. Forget all that stuff about ancient civilisations. Forget all that propaganda about four thousand years of history. This country is still growing up. And some diseases it’s best to get when you are young.’

They stood together at the window and watched the sun set quickly. In the gathering darkness it suddenly seemed as if all of Pudong lit up at once, and the two men stared silently at the lights shining before them like the conqueror’s reward.

He was ready for home.

The trip to Yangdong had left him with dirt on his shoes and stains on his suit and the urgent need to crawl into bed next to Becca and just hold her for a while. Or perhaps she could come to his bed and then they would not have to worry about waking Holly and they could do more than just cuddle.

But Jurgen and Wolfgang were in Shane’s office when Bill was leaving, clearly agitated, expressing some concern in streams of German to each other, and broken English to their lawyer. Shane came out of his office and took Bill to one side.

‘They’re getting their lederhosen in a twist,’ Shane sighed. ‘Worried about what the hacks might write after today. Let’s buy them a couple of drinks and calm their nerves, mate. Tell them we’re all going to live happily ever after.’

‘I’ve really got to get home,’ Bill said. ‘I don’t see my wife. I don’t see my kid.’

‘One drink,’ Shane said. ‘They’re your Germans too, mate.’

‘All right,’ Bill said. ‘But just the one.’

There was an Irish bar on Tongren Lu called BB’s – Bejeebers-Bejaybers – run by a large Swede with absolutely no Irish blood whatsoever.