Half the World Away

CHAPTER NINE

From:

loreleimx@gmail.com

Date:

11 March 2014 22:19

To:

joannamaddox70@hotmail.com

Subject:

Hello

Hi Mum,

Tell Nick I hope he gets something soon and that it’s way better than his old job. Yep, I’m busy. I have some school-age students, little ones that I teach in the evenings, three different families on different days. Then a graduate who wants to improve his spoken English, and I’ve just taken on a friend of his too. There’s a couple who are learning together (Saturday) and some high-school students – their parents clubbed together. It’s quite a big deal here if they can speak English: more opportunity for jobs in tourism and business. I get stopped all the time by people asking me if I can teach them.

I found some lesson plans online. It’s hard for us to learn Chinese, the way one word can have so many different meanings, depending on the tones, on how it’s pronounced. I’ll never get used to that. But English is hard for them too – all the tenses we have and they just don’t. Dawn is fine. She is working full time at an English school out near the 3rd Ring Road (more lesson plans for me!) and is looking for an apartment there. It’s still cloudy here and it would be nice to get to a beach sometime and catch some rays but she’s not sure what holiday she can take. It’s pretty restricted.

I’ve been thinking about a photo project I’d like to do – Chengdu is growing all the time, malls and skyscrapers going up, everyone studying and working and trying to get ahead, get an education, get a good job to buy the shiny things in the shops. Sound familiar? But there’s also surprises, hidden bits, weird hobbies people have on the side. One man I know races pigeons. Someone else is restoring a vintage bike. Shona makes jewellery out of waste material, like crisps packets and so on. Anyway, if I can find a few more examples I’ll give it a go. Watch this space.

Big hugs to Finn and Isaac.

Lxxx

It occurs to me that while the unemployment situation is still so precarious, especially in the north where we live and even more so for young people, then Lori is better off where she is.

Nick is withdrawing more every day. He’s always been a calm, sociable, happy character. I was attracted by his sense of equanimity as well as his looks, and the way he laughed so freely at my jokes. His attitude to Lori, too – she was twelve when she first met him.

In the past, when Nick and I had problems, we had at least been able to talk about them, argue even, but now in the wake of his redundancy he is increasingly sullen and tight-lipped.

‘How did you get on today?’ I say, and he gives an exasperated sigh and shakes his head. Like my even asking is some imposition.

Determined to force some communication, I plough on: ‘Did you get any applications in?’

‘What does it matter?’ he says. ‘I could apply for a hundred jobs and hear nothing.’ He fetches a beer from the fridge.

Has he given up? ‘I know it’s hard-’

‘Jo, spare me the platitudes, you have no idea.’

Anger spikes through me. ‘This is not just about you,’ I say. ‘It’s horrible and depressing but, whatever happens, this affects us all. The least you can do is talk to me about it.’

‘Don’t lecture me,’ he says quietly, and walks away.

Bastard.

Jaws clamped tight, I clear up the kitchen not caring about the noise I’m making even if he is going to bed. We have already agreed that if Nick can find a position with a future outside Manchester we will move, leaving my job, this house, uprooting the boys. Some people thrive on new situations, Tom for example. I am not one of them.

Stacking pots from the dishwasher on the shelves too fast, I knock over Lori’s favourite cup, which crashes to the floor and smashes. Bought one Christmas, the sort of huge mug that’s great for cocoa, its gold stars have long since faded. She left it at home when she went to Glasgow. ‘It’s bound to get broken or nicked there,’ she said.

‘Fuck!’ I blink back tears as I clean up the shards.

‘Mummy?’ Isaac is in the doorway, blinking at the light. Serves me right. ‘What’s up, chicken?’

‘I heard a noise,’ he says.

‘That was me clearing up,’ I say.

‘No, in my room.’

I can’t face this, the ritual of checking and reassurance, the debate about whether Isaac can sleep in our bed ‘just tonight’.

‘Where’s Daddy?’ I say.

‘I don’t know.’

‘See if he’s in bed. He can-’ I hear what I’m doing. ‘Never mind, just a sec.’ I put the shards of pottery in the bin.

‘What’s that?’ Isaac says.

‘Lori’s mug.’

‘Her star mug?’

‘Yes. I knocked it off.’

‘Oh.’ He glances up, no doubt checking I haven’t destroyed his Tiger mug. He gives a little shudder. His feet must be cold and I have a flashback to being that age, to the powerlessness of it, the bewilderment and sudden heady delights.

‘Come on, then.’ I scoop him up and take him back to bed.

Finn is asleep on the lower bunk.

Isaac climbs up the ladder. I adjust the night light so it’s brighter and he pulls the covers up to his chin. ‘Can I have a story?’

All I want to do is sleep. ‘One, then I’m going to bed and you go back to sleep. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

Leaning against the beds, I rattle off The Three Bears, the shortest story in my repertoire. Isaac yawns, which is a good sign.

With the boys safe in their beds, I go to mine. Nick is there, awake. He clears his throat and turns over as I get changed.

We say no more than ‘Night.’ Drifting off to sleep, I wonder if he’s becoming depressed, and if he is, what on earth I can get him to do about it.

Lori in the Ori-ent

Park life

Posted on 18 March 2014 by Lori

Back home our park is used mainly by the following people for the following activities:

a) Parents and kids at the playground

b) The above feeding the ducks

c) Tennis players, whose numbers mushroom every year around the time of Wimbledon, then fade away

d) Bowls players, Wednesday afternoons only, must have a bus pass

e) Footballers, Saturdays and Sundays on the pitches. Little ones with their parents screaming at the ref, big ones screaming at each other and the ref

f) Dog-walkers (plus dogs)

g) Lovers, walking in the rain, lazing in the sun, snogging

h) Teenagers, smoking, drinking, snogging

i) Extreme frisbee players, Saturday only, by arrangement

j) A couple of old men, who share the bench by the rose bed all day long, each with a carrier bag of lager

Today is a typical day in the park near my flat in Chengdu. There are variations of all the above here but there are also

1) Tai chi sessions

2) Ballroom dancing. Really

3) Mah-jong players

4) People doing circus skills – juggling, diabolo

5) Musicians

6) Tea-drinkers at all the teahouses

7) Calligraphers who paint the paving stones with characters using giant brushes and water

8) People selling toffee – it’s shaped like filigree cut-outs of the signs of the zodiac, I think

9) Sword dancers

10) Men hitting spinning tops – serious ones, unlike the toys we had. The tops are the size of a large mug, the whips crack

11) People sketching and painting

12) People feeding the carp (with baby bottles, I kid you not) – all the ponds are full of them

The park is heaving. It feels like a carnival or festival but this is just an ordinary day. I am stopped four times by curious people and explain in my atrocious Chinese that I’m from England. I have practised this every day since I arrived. Each time I get a look of total incomprehension. Perhaps I have said, ‘Follow that teabag,’ or ‘How pretty is your camel.’ But the word ‘Manchester’ opens doors. Eyes light up, smiles blossom. Manchester! Manchester United! The Red Devils have paved the way for travellers the world over. Well, those of us from Manchester. I nod and do a little hand cheer, as if we scored a goal. Which we have in a way. Twice people ask to have a photograph taken with me. The last woman pats my arms and chatters away, and I smile and nod and hope I haven’t accidentally agreed to anything, like teaching all her grandchildren English every evening. Or marrying one of her sons.

The park is open from six in the morning till nine at night, when lanterns and lights glow among the bamboo plants and trees. And it feels safe. Another difference from the one at home where there’s an edginess, the peace shattered by some prat on a mini motorbike churning up the field, or a group of drunk kids getting physical.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that at home we’re out in public but we keep ourselves to ourselves – all that British reserve, we stay in our own little cliques. A nod as you pass someone is the height of interaction – apart from the dog-walkers, who like to mingle with their canine friends. In China, everyone is into everyone else’s business – there doesn’t seem to be any notion of privacy. People stare and interrupt and join in and interfere all the time. A crowd forms at the drop of a hat. It’s like a big party where everyone knows everyone else, except they don’t, they just act like they do. Lxxx