Half the World Away

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

As we’re coming in to land, I peer out. It’s as though everything has been smothered in grey, dusty gauze.

Through Immigration and Baggage Reclaim, we exit and find the car that has been booked to take us to the hotel. The air is warm and humid. People throng the pavements, pulling luggage, talking loudly. Tom lights a cigarette as the driver heaves our cases into the boot, signalling to us to get in. Tom holds up his fag and the driver nods. Tom sits in front and the driver lights his own cigarette. In the back I open the window. There are no seatbelts. Policemen are monitoring the taxi rank, chivvying the drivers, shouting and waving to passengers in the queue to use both lines of cars. There is an air of urgency about it, as though it is imperative to disperse people as quickly as possible.

We speed through miles of high-rise developments along the expressway into town. Trees – palms, ginkgo and feathery ailanthus – line the roadsides. Taxis, coloured bright green, swerve in and out of the lanes, around scooters and bicycles and large SUVs in black or white. I taste dust, brassy, in my mouth. Everything looks strange, foreign.

It’s a relief to reach the hotel lobby. The air-conditioning is on. The foyer is spacious, with glinting marble floors and red leather couches and huge Chinese porcelain vases, elaborately decorated. The walls are lined with gold brocade wallpaper.

We are greeted in English by the Chinese receptionist. Behind the desk a wall fresco in 3-D shows tiled pagoda roofs and stands of bamboo. At each end of the desk there are plinths with bonsai trees arranged among miniature landscapes made of pinnacles of limestone rock.

‘Welcome to Chengdu,’ the receptionist says. She pronounces it Chungdu. She is Chinese and wears a badge that reads Melanie; her English name. I remember Lori’s blog, how her Chinese friends all had English names.

‘May I take your names?’ Melanie says.

‘Maddox,’ Tom says.

‘And if I could take a copy of a credit card, please.’

Tom gives her his Visa card. He’s paid for the rooms – we used some of Nick’s redundancy money to cover my flights. I close my eyes. My legs feel wobbly, my head light. It’s a quarter to seven in the morning back home, a quarter to two in the afternoon here. She’s telling us about breakfast in the restaurants.

Melanie hands Tom a room key. ‘Room 608. On the sixth floor,’ she says.

‘Two rooms,’ I say.

‘Excuse me?’

‘We booked two rooms.’

Tom is grinning. As though there is something amusing about the situation.

Melanie checks on the computer, then asks us to wait a minute and goes through to the offices behind.

‘We should get out and walk around,’ Tom says. ‘Daylight and exercise, for the jet-lag.’

We are meeting Peter Dunne from the consulate here at the hotel tomorrow and he will take us to the police officer in charge of the search for Lori.

Melanie comes back again, with an older man who wears the same uniform of black jacket, peach silk shirt and cream trousers. ‘Mr and Mrs Maddox, I’m sorry for any confusion. You wish to book two separate rooms?’

‘We did book two separate rooms,’ I say.

‘Very well.’ He smiles and speaks to Melanie in Chinese, then leaves her to it.

‘Please,’ she says, ‘the card key?’

We wait another few minutes while she cancels, then re-enters our details and Tom’s credit card number, and sorts out two rooms for us.

‘Very sorry for the mix-up,’ she says. ‘You are on the seventh floor, rooms 704 and 715. Enjoy your stay. Lifts are over there.’ She gestures to her right.

Outside the lift a TV screen plays an advert for some sort of liquor. Inside, the walls are burnished mirrors and there is another smaller screen above the door – the advert changes to coverage of some film awards, I can’t tell what. I recognize some of the stars but the commentary is in Chinese.

We find our rooms, mine on the main corridor, Tom’s round the corner.

‘Meet up in an hour?’ Tom says. ‘Get some air.’

‘OK.’

‘And don’t fall asleep,’ he warns. ‘Worst thing you can do.’

I yawn. ‘I know.’

Apart from the fact that the signs in the room are in English and Chinese, and for the water cooler in a corner, I could be in any hotel on any continent on the planet. The same packaged toiletries in the bathroom, fluffy white towels, the cupboard with iron and trouser press, the easy chair and the king-size bed with far too many pillows.

The windows look out over the back of the hotel to high buildings opposite, their details muted in the mist. Between us is a derelict site, a few long huts, their roofs full of holes. And nearby there are three enormous piles, one of bricks, one of timber, the third of tangled metal. Along the nearest edge of the plot are rows of scooters. Perhaps they’re for hire. Chain-link fencing rings the area.

I slide open the double glazing and noise fills the room – the roar of traffic, the shriek and blare of car horns, the clank and rumble of a bulldozer and a truck at work in the lot below. I can hear music, too, and snatches of birdsong, cries, whistles and squeaks in the midst of the thundering sound.

The bed looks so tempting, but instead I unpack my suitcase and have a shower. The body-wash smells of jasmine. I put on light clothes, three-quarter length linen pants and a loose blouse. Find my sunglasses. I text Nick. Arrived OK. Hot and sticky. Then I delete the last bit, it seems irrelevant. Add xxx.

Studying the map I printed off from Google, I can see that to the east and south of the hotel, in a couple of blocks, there’s a park by the river.

When Tom raps on my door, twenty minutes after the ‘hour’ is up, I suggest it to him.

Outside the heat is fierce, despite the cloud. There’s a chemical, metallic taste in the air and my tongue feels gritty. I haven’t put sun cream on and wonder whether to go back but can’t make a decision, so stop trying.

The streets are busy, the pavements crowded, the roads congested. There’s an energy in the rush. I imagine New York must be like this, with the bustle and the constant blast of horns. It’s a bit like London, too, except in London there’s a melting pot of people. Here everyone is Chinese. As Lori wrote: it’s like another planet, not just another country. And I am the alien.

Eyes appraise us, sliding over us, then back, double-takes as we pass. Not one but two of us. Tom’s height, his hair, attracting interest, the dirty blond, the length of it. All the men have short-cropped hair. The women have contemporary cuts, sometimes long, flowing locks; I see quite a few with coloured hair, burgundy or auburn, but the only blonde woman I see wears Goth make-up and stands out.

From behind they might never guess that Lori is not Chinese: she’s slim and short and dark-haired.

Underfoot there is a mishmash of patterned concrete, block paving, textured tiles, slabs and bricks, much of it cracked and uneven. There are sections with raised dots or lines that are less comfortable to walk on. I think these must be for people with visual problems, like at home.

At the junction, the road we meet is six lanes wide, three in each direction, with a smaller cycle lane by the pavement. There are traffic lights and a crowd gathers, waiting to cross. The lights opposite begin to count down 10, 9, 8… People edge and jostle. Then the lights change to green for us and we begin to walk, but there’s a blur of movement, loud toots to my left. A stream of cars and scooters and bicycles are riding at us. Tom grabs my arm and pulls me with him. ‘They can turn right on red,’ he says. We almost collide with a scooter that jinks past us.

As we reach the other side, traffic from the opposite direction is turning right and we have to wait for a gap and run, dodging the scooters and bikes that plait in and out of pedestrians.

On the corner there is a wide plaza and a shopping mall. Outside there’s a giant screen playing something. I’m too busy concentrating on not getting run over to look at it for long. Everywhere skyscrapers thrust up, as tall as the ones behind the hotel. We continue threading our way through the crowd until we reach the next block and take a turn to the left.

Along this street there are places to eat, a spicy smell in the air, like star anise, and I catch a faint whiff of sewage as we walk. The small shops have apartments above, clothes hanging on balconies. In some places there are plastic stools and tables out on the pavement and people eating. I see noodles on one table and at another I spot a bowl of rice. Does Lori come here, eat here? Spiciness is a bit of a euphemism. We’re talking chilli at industrial concentrations.

We stop at a pedestrian crossing, black and white stripes. A boy, about Isaac’s age, stares at us. ‘Hello,’ he says.

‘Hello,’ I reply. His mother smiles and pats his hand.

‘Hello, hello,’ he repeats, his face alight with glee.

‘Hello,’ I say. Tom echoes me and sketches a bow. The woman laughs and the boy skips on the spot. Then a gap opens in the traffic and we cross, among the scooters that glide silently around us. They must be electric.

The trees along the edge of the pavement hang low and we have to stoop to go past the branches. A woman, her face wrinkled like a walnut, sells insoles for shoes, cigarette lighters and hairbands. There is a man on a motorized tricycle, the back piled high with greens.

My body is still travelling, a tremoring in my innards, in the marrow of my bones, droning in my ears. The ground ripples as I walk.

Another crossing, and then we reach the river. There’s a promenade with a stone balustrade. Trees provide a canopy of shade – willows I know from home but the others I cannot name.

Construction cranes straddle the skyline and below, far below, the birds that gave them their name glide across the river, dive for fish. The Jinjiang river is a milky green and cuts between pale stone walls. The white cranes gather along the edges, fly up and perch on the parapet, paddle in the weeds. They are smaller, prettier than the herons at home, and each has a few white feathers sprouting from the back of its head, like a scraggly ponytail. Tom says they’re storks, then looks them up on his phone and tells me they’re little egrets.

My neck aches and I’ve a dull, thudding pain in my temples. My eyes feel glassy.

A pagoda frames the entrance to the park, richly carved and coloured. At ground level there is a deep wooden cross-bar that we have to step over and another at the far side. Flower displays greet us. Paths split off among bamboo groves. We follow one round and every so often smaller paths lead to different sections; we glimpse teahouses and a waterfall, an area of sculptures made of bamboo.

It’s still busy in the park but the cacophony of the traffic is muted and the shade from the trees makes the atmosphere more pleasant. In an open area, a calligrapher draws characters in water on the ground with a brush as tall as he is. A ring of children around him try their hand. The characters are ephemeral, drying in minutes. Gone like the breath of a breeze in the trees.

I think of Lori’s post: Call me Bird’s Net Jasmine.

The bamboo groves have been landscaped with rocks and ground-cover plants and small labels identify each variety. The largest plants have canes as thick as lampposts. ‘Graffiti,’ Tom says, pointing out where past visitors have scratched their names on them. I spy a sign that admonishes, ‘No Scribbling’. At the edge of the path a woman has a stall and is drawing with spun sugar. The filigree signs of the zodiac that Lori mentioned. The boys worked ours out back in January when the school had a Chinese New Year celebration. The fact that Lori was in China and that 2014 was the year of the horse, Lori’s sign, made it all the more exciting for them. Finn was delighted to be under the sign of the dog (the same as me). Isaac was born in the year of the rat and Nick the monkey.

People gawk at us and a couple say, ‘Hello, where are you from?’

‘England,’ Tom says.

‘Ah! First time in China?’

‘Yes.’

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.

‘Our daughter,’ I say, ‘she is here.’

‘University?’

‘Teaching English.’

We haven’t got the leaflets yet or I would show them. Missing – please, have you seen her? Edward at Missing Overseas has arranged for them to be printed here in English and Chinese and delivered to our hotel. I can imagine how these expressions of welcome, the interest in us, would curdle in the light of them.

I need to pee. Luckily there are plenty of public loos, unlike at home. But here the stink is overpowering. The toilets are the squat type, in cubicles. Do I face forwards or backwards? I can’t tell. Lori never blogged about toilet etiquette. I balance on the white-tiled footplates undo my drawstring and crouch, pulling my trousers away from my ankles, gagging at the smell of old piss. There’s no toilet paper. I read about this but forgot to bring tissues or hand wipes out with me. I wriggle my clothes back up and press the foot pedal for the flush. There is a cold tap near the entrance – I rinse my hands and flap them dry.

In the next clearing there’s a teahouse, a large wooden pagoda with seating in front, plastic chairs and square tables. Most are occupied. People are playing mah-jong or cards, eating snacks. Large vacuum flasks are on or beside the tables – perhaps they hold tea or hot water. The noise is dense, percussive, the chatter, and the clatter of tiles. A waiter walks among the patrons clicking metal tongs together.

‘We’d better ring the consulate when we get back,’ Tom says, ‘tell the guy we’ve arrived.’

‘I wish we’d insisted on meeting this afternoon,’ I say, ‘to get things moving.’ But we had been persuaded that it would be wiser to wait until the day after our long journey.

We take a small path that leads onto a humpback bridge where there is a gazebo above a fish pond.

‘Stop a minute?’ I say.

I lean on the bamboo bench there, burnished smooth with wear, and peer down. The water is dark, reflecting the delicate tracery of leaves in the canes high above. Large koi, deep orange, some golden, weave and turn. Umbrella plants and ferns, the sort of things we’d keep as houseplants, ring the shore.

‘How do you feel?’ Tom says.

‘Wiped out – like I’m still on the plane.’

He grunts agreement, gets out a cigarette. I drink some water.

Fatigue ripples through me and my legs soften. ‘Head back?’ I say.

As we follow the path round the outside of the park to the gate, music starts to play though some PA system in the trees, a flute, I think, cool notes that tremble and dip, then climb.

The calligrapher is there still with his brush, the characters on the ground ghosts beneath our feet.