The Piano Teacher

May 20, 1953

WHEN CLAIRE WENT to the Chens’ the next Thursday, she noted a driver sleeping on a bench in the garden, newspaper over his head, the maids chattering gaily as they washed the windows, and breathed a sigh of relief that Victor Chen was apparently not at home.

“Missee all right? Fall down!” the maid who had answered the door asked.

“Yes, thank you very much.” She noticed for the first time how this servant had a generous face, with bright, wide eyes and a pleasant mouth. “It’s very kind of you to ask.”

The woman smiled uncertainly and led her to the piano room, where Locket was waiting.

“I heard you had an accident last week, Mrs. Pendleton. Are you all right?” Locket was leaning over a tray of biscuits, crumbling one into her mouth. “Would you like some lemonade?”

“That’s very kind of you, Locket. I am feeling much better, thank you.” The little girl was finally learning some manners, she thought.

“Mummy said you must be expecting!” Locket giggled. “And Daddy laughed and laughed.”

Claire’s back stiffened.

“Locket, have you practiced?” she said, with frost in her voice.

Locket looked up, startled at the sudden change.

“I had a rehearsal on Monday for The Mikado…” she started.

“Never mind,” Claire said. “Let’s just begin.”

After the lesson, Melody Chen came by the room and asked Claire to stay for a cup of tea to talk about Locket’s progress. She walked Claire to the living room and excused herself to go see about the maids.

The Chens had a mantel full of photographs, in silver frames. Very English, Claire had thought when she first saw them, except the photographs were filled with Orientals. She got up to look at them more closely. Mostly Victor and Melody, with various family members and older people, a few of Locket by herself, and then a woman, in a swimsuit at the beach, holding a cigarette and sticking her tongue out at the camera. It looked like a picture out of a fashion magazine, and as Claire peered closer she got a shock as she realized it was the same woman in the photograph with Will and Melody at his house. She was Eurasian, whippet-thin, very glamorous, with a flowered bathing cap. Her face stuck out, angular and attractive.

“That’s my cousin Trudy,” said Melody, coming up from behind with a small glass of water.

“She’s very beautiful,” said Claire, careful not to sound too eager.

“Not beautiful,” Melody said immediately. “Not beautiful. She was half-Portuguese, so Eurasian, you know, and the Europeans always found her attractive. But Chinese don’t like half-breeds, really.” Claire noted the casual slur, was surprised by it. Melody was usually so refined.

“But everyone, absolutely everyone, noticed her. She was very famous in Hong Kong during her day. Some might say infamous. She brought her terrier to a dinner party once as her companion. Had him in a bow tie. She sat him at a seat and everything, until he urinated on it. Livy Wong was livid!”

“Well, she looks like she knows how to have a good time.”

“Yes, I always think that if she were still around, she’d be the first woman in the colony to wear a bikini, and she’d wear it to a picnic at the governor’s house or something wildly inappropriate like that. She was that type of girl. Scandalous, but she got away with it usually. Fearless.”

“Is she not?” Claire asked delicately. “Around anymore, I mean.”

Melody looked away, sipped at her glass, made a grimace.

“No, not anymore. She was a casualty of war, I guess you would say.”

“It’s difficult to believe,” Claire said, looking at the photograph. “She looks like she was full of life.”

“Almost to bursting,” Melody said. “Her father was my father’s cousin, so she was my second cousin.”

“Were you close?”

“Oh, in a way,” Melody said. “I think she probably found me quite boring. We were very different. And we had a lot of cousins running around Hong Kong. We’re a big family. She was close to another cousin of ours-Dominick-but he died during the war too. I would say they were like best friends. They were quite well-known, the two of them. The Terrible Two.”

“And…” Claire didn’t know where to begin. But it didn’t matter. Melody Chen was in the mood to talk.

“And she gave me this beautiful emerald ring, one that I always wear on special occasions because it’s so spectacular.” She stretched out her hand as if she had it on.

“I saw it, at the dinner party you had. It’s really something. That was very generous of her.”

“I like to have something to remember her by,” said Melody. “Isn’t that what family’s all about?” The servants came in with a silver salver of drinks.

“Tea?”

“Yes, please, with lots of milk.”

Melody made her a cup, but didn’t have any herself. She sipped at her small glass.

“Victor treats me like some fragile flower,” she said suddenly. “But I’m not as weak as he thinks I am. You know, he shipped me off to California. I kept asking him questions. I think I was irritating to him.”

“I’m sure you were no such thing,” said Claire.

“And I came back, and everything had changed,” she said faintly.

The afternoon stretched on, with Melody Chen talking in circles, seeming as if she had all the time in the world to chat with her daughter’s piano teacher. She had not mentioned Locket or her progress, even once.

“Have you ever thought back about someone who died?” Melody asked. “How it was when they were alive. Sometimes, when I think about Trudy and Dominick, I feel like I saw a black spot hanging over their heads, as if they were marked and I just couldn’t fully see it at the time. I feel like they were doomed from the beginning, that they had this specter hanging over them.” Melody stopped, and her eyes became glossy, wet.

“I still can’t believe Trudy’s dead. Her father married a Portuguese woman, and she was so peculiar. Do you know she disappeared when Trudy was a child? They put it out that it was an abduction but my mother always thought she got tired of the whole thing and just got on a boat for America.

“Her father was related to my family. Who knew he would have such a head for business? I think he did better than anyone, actually.”

“Is he still alive?” Claire asked.

“Of course not,” Melody said. “He died along with all the other wretched detritus of the war, those who were not on the right side of things, who refused to play along.”

Claire nodded.

“So you do have someone close who died?” Melody asked again. “I know it’s a silly question after the war, but still, some haven’t been touched. Some were lucky.”

“Yes,” said Claire. “Not anybody close though.” An uncle, met once, a picture of him at her eighth birthday party. Various acquaintances during the war. The closest had been a girl from primary school, who had gone on holiday to Wales and drowned. The school had given everyone the day off, and when the students came back, many had black ribbons tied around their arms. Claire had not known to do that, and she had felt excluded, as if everyone had known something she had not been privy to.

“Do you know Reggie and Regina Arbogast?” asked Melody, switching subjects again.

“I’ve been to their house but I wouldn’t say I know them,” said Claire. She was just trying to keep up with the odd, meandering conversation.

“They’re having a coronation party. They’re having two actually. The first is a bit smaller, more intimate, and they’re listening to the coronation on the radio. Then they’re having the reels flown in from England, and they’re going to have a television-watching party for a larger group. I think that one is more of a cocktail party. It should be fun. Do you have plans for the coronation?”

“Not as of yet,” Claire said.

“I’m putting something together so you and Will must come,” Melody said suddenly.

“You mean Martin,” said Claire, taken aback.

“Of course,” Melody said smoothly. “So sorry.”

“Of course,” repeated Claire.

Melody seemed to be waiting for something else. The afternoon light had dissipated and Claire could no longer see the motes of dust floating on the rays of sunlight that had streamed through the window.

“I think it’s late,” she said. It had been the oddest, most disjointed afternoon she had ever experienced. “I should be going.”

At that moment, Will came through the door.

“You!” Melody called to him in a wavering voice. “You’re stirring everything up!” Her tone was light, but for the first time, Claire understood, the knowledge blooming in her head like a rapidly spreading ink stain: The Chens were afraid of Will. They had taken him on to keep him close, had paid him money for a job he didn’t do, because they had no choice. She saw her lover through a new lens. He was the benevolent one. He was the dispenser of their destiny.

“I need to see Victor,” he said, without acknowledging Claire.

“He’s not here,” Melody said.

“Is he expected back soon?”

“Don’t patronize me, Will,” Melody said abruptly. “We’ve known each other long enough.”

“You have nothing to do with this, Mrs. Chen.”

“Oh, stop the charade, Will,” Melody cried. “The Mrs. and the Mr. and the Sir, and the ‘Where would you like to go today?’ Were you laughing at us the entire time? And what you’ve done. And poor, poor Trudy.”

Claire grasped that Melody was quite drunk, and that she had been drinking a kind of spirit, not what Claire had assumed was water.

“Don’t mention her, Melody. You have no right to ever say her name again.”

“And you! You have one?” The Chinese woman’s voice grew shrill. “As if you have any right at all. The woman you pretended to love!”

Will grew white with anger.

“Melody,” he said. “That is utter rubbish.” He controlled himself with difficulty. “This is not for you to do. You stay out of it.”

“Will,” Melody said. “This is all spinning out of control. Victor is furious. You have to stop what you’re doing. I’m telling you as someone who was once your friend. You have to stop it.”

“It’s too late, Melody,” Will said. “There’s nothing I can do now.”

While they spoke, Claire let herself out, quietly, and stood in the corner of the driveway, heart pounding, waiting.

When Will walked out, he looked angry, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“Who is Trudy?” she asked, stepping forward.

He started.

“Not now,” he said. “Not now, Claire. Come with me. Let’s go for a bathe.”