The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

22

Donald Crowhurst started to contemplate the insoluble mystery of the square root of minus one and before long found himself entering a ‘dark tunnel’ from which he was never to emerge. Most of us, thankfully, are luckier than that. Few people are able to avoid those tunnels altogether, but usually something brings us out the other side. The one I was in … well, actually it turned out to be longer and darker than I could ever have imagined. I realize now that I had been lost in it for most of my life. But the important thing is that I escaped in the end: and when I did finally step out into the sunlight, blinking and rubbing my eyes, it was to find myself at a place in Sydney called Fairlight Beach.

I arrived there at nine o’clock in the morning, having taken one of the earliest ferries from Circular Quay to Manly. From Manly Wharf to Fairlight was a walk of perhaps fifteen minutes. The skies were grey and puffy with rainclouds, but despite this there was a moist, dense heat in the air. It was certainly warm enough to go swimming. The dozens of joggers I passed on the coastal walk from the Wharf to the beach were covered in sweat. I’d imagined that I would be conspicuous, that I would have the place to myself and would cut a suspicious-looking figure sitting above the beach all alone, but no: there was a continual flow of passers-by. Not just the joggers but the dog-walkers and the sight-seers and people who were just out for a morning stroll, wandering down to the shops to buy their Sunday papers. I felt at home here: felt myself to be part of a community that was genial and relaxed and accepting.

Three hours, though, is a long time to sit by yourself on a bench overlooking the sea, waiting anxiously for someone to appear. I’d picked up a copy of the Sun-Herald on the way, but that only kept me occupied for about an hour. The only other item I’d thought to bring was a small bottle of water, and I didn’t even like to drink too much of that in case it made me want to go to the toilet. The view was spectacular: at the edge of the sandy beach there was a saltwater swimming pool built into the rock, an iridescent rectangle of blue-green water, and beyond that the sea, calm and grey this morning, stretched out towards the horizon, dotted with yachts, and then further still, far off in the distance, implied rather than glimpsed, lay the gorgeous immensity of Sydney itself. You would have thought it was impossible to get tired of this view. Perhaps on another occasion, when I wasn’t looking out so hungrily for the arrival of the Chinese woman and her daughter, I could have been happy to spend the whole day sitting on that bench looking out over the beach and the water. But today, this prospect quickly began to lose its charm.

Anyway, I don’t want to make you wait for as long as I did. They came. They came shortly after midday. The Chinese woman, her daughter, and another little girl of about the same age. A friend of the daughter’s, obviously. Blonde and Caucasian. The three of them walked right past my bench and then down on to the beach, where the Chinese woman spread out a picnic rug on the sand and the two little girls immediately undressed down to their swimming costumes and ran off towards the rocks to play. The Chinese woman – who was wearing a white T-shirt and navy-blue slacks, flared at the ankle – sat on the rug and poured herself something hot to drink from a thermos flask while looking out towards the opposite side of the bay.

So, here was my chance. The moment had come at last. But could I really do it? Could I really walk over to a complete stranger, a single woman who had come for an afternoon at the beach with her little daughter and her friend, and break in upon her world, invade her privacy, with some clumsy phrase like, ‘Excuse me – you don’t know me, but … ?’

I was just preparing to admit to myself that I couldn’t go through with it after all when there was a sudden scream of pain and distress from the direction of the swimming pool.

I looked up. It was the little Chinese girl’s friend. She had slipped and fallen. She had been standing right on the edge of the swimming pool, balancing on the stone wall, and she had lost her balance and fallen over the edge, into the sea. Instinctively, I ran to her aid. Coming from a different direction, coming from the beach where she had laid out her picnic rug on the sand, the Chinese woman was running towards her too, and we both reached the same spot at the same moment.

‘Jenny!’ she called. ‘Jenny, are you all right?’

The water here was quite shallow, and Jenny was standing upright now, in floods of tears. The drop from the wall to the sea was about four feet, too high for her to climb, so the first thing to do was to pull her back up towards us. I held out my arms.

‘Here you are,’ I said, ‘hold on to me. I’ll pull you up.’

The little blonde girl seized both of my hands and I lifted her easily back on to the edge of the pool. We could see now that her left shin and ankle were badly grazed where she had fallen against the rocky sea floor. They were bleeding profusely. She flung herself into the Chinese woman’s arms and cried there for a few moments, and then all four of us made our way around the edge of the pool and back towards the picnic rug.

‘Thank you, thank you so much,’ the Chinese woman was saying. She was even more beautiful now that I could see her close up.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ I said.

‘I think she’ll be fine. She just needs to be cleaned down and –’

‘We’re not going home, are we, Mum?’ her daughter said.

‘I don’t know, honey, that depends on what Jennifer wants. Jennifer, do you want to go back home to your mother?’

Jennifer shook her head.

When we reached the picnic rug, Jennifer lay down and we had a good look at her leg. One of the scratches was pretty deep and nasty. The Chinese woman took some Kleenex out of a box in her picnic basket, and I poured water from my water bottle on to the wound, and together we cleaned it and staunched the flow of blood. Then she rummaged through the basket again and I heard her whispering to herself, ‘No Band Aids! How could I not have brought any Band Aids!’ And I remembered passing a pharmacy on the way to the beach, so I said:

‘I’ll go and get some.’

‘No – please – really – it’s too much to ask.’

‘Not at all. There’s a shop just up the road from here. She really needs to have something to cover up those scratches. Otherwise she’s not going to be able to go in the water all day.’

‘Really, I don’t think –’

But I didn’t listen to her protests, and before she had finished making them, I had set off on my errand. I was there and back in less than ten minutes. Once I’d returned, and handed over the Band Aids, I felt that I didn’t have much else to offer by way of help. The scratches were covered over quickly enough, and the two little girls – who seemed to have polished off most of their picnic while I’d been away – had fully regained their high spirits. Now they were ready to rush off to the swimming pool again.

Before they were allowed to go, the Chinese woman stood up and pulled her daughter’s hair back into a tight ponytail, securing it with a hair-tie.

‘Now don’t get into the water until your food’s digested,’ she said. ‘And please be careful this time.’

‘We will.’

‘And what about saying thank you to the nice gentleman, for all his help?’

‘Thank you,’ they chorused dutifully.

‘Don’t mention it,’ I said. But they were already gone.

We stood there for a little while, the two of us, me and the Chinese woman, in confused silence. Neither of us knew what to say.

‘Really,’ I stumbled, in the end, ‘I’m just glad that I happened to be here. I mean, I’m sure you would have been all right by yourselves, but …’

She looked at me with a frown, and said: ‘I’m not usually very good with accents, but – yours is English, right?’

‘It is, yes.’

‘So are you just visiting? Have you been in Sydney for long?’

‘Just a week,’ I said. ‘I came to see my father. Bit of family business to sort out. Now that it’s done, I’m heading back to London. Tonight, as it happens.’

On hearing this, she held out her hand stiffly, formally. ‘Well, thank you very much for your help, Mr … er –’

‘Sim,’ I said, taking her hand and shaking it. ‘Maxwell Sim.’

‘Thank you, Mr Sim. Before you go, there was one thing I wanted to ask you – if I may.’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, I was just curious, really. I was just curious to know whether it was purely coincidence that we were eating at the same restaurant last night.’

‘Ah,’ I said. My game, it seemed, was up.

‘And also two months ago, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘Two months ago,’ I repeated. ‘Yes, that’s correct.’

‘Are you following me, then, Mr Sim? Should I be calling the police?’

I didn’t know what to say. Her eyes had quite a glint in them, now: but it was a glint of defiance, rather than alarm.

‘I did come here,’ I said carefully, ‘because I knew that I’d find you. And I wanted to find you, because I wanted to ask you a question. There’s something I need to know, that only you can tell me. That’s all.’

‘That’s all? Well then, we’d better have the question.’

‘Right. The question.’ Oh well, I might as well blurt it out. ‘Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend? Does your daughter have a father?’

The Chinese woman smiled tightly, and looked away. ‘I see,’ she said. Then, turning back towards me: ‘Yes, Mr Sim, I am married. Happily married, as I believe the saying is.’

‘Ah. Right.’ Immediately it felt as though a huge chasm of disappointment had opened up in front of me, and all I wanted to do, now, was to throw myself in. ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I think I’d better go. I’m very sorry if I … disturbed you in any way. It was extremely –’

‘Please,’ said the Chinese woman. ‘Don’t go. You haven’t disturbed me at all. In fact you’ve been more than helpful. And what you’ve done is – well, quite romantic, from one point of view. If you’ve come all the way to this beach just to see me, then the least I can do is to offer you something. A cup of tea, perhaps?’

‘That’s very kind of you, but –’

‘Please, Maxwell, sit down. May I call you Maxwell?’

‘Yes, of course.’

She sat down on the rug and motioned for me to join her: which I did, with a certain sense of embarrassment.

‘My name is Lian. My daughter’s name is Yanmei. Her schoolfriend’s name, you already know. Will you take your tea with lemon? I’m afraid I didn’t bring any milk.’

‘I’ll just have it … as it comes, actually. Whatever’s easiest.’

Lian poured black tea into two plastic cups, and handed one of them to me. I thanked her, and we drank in silence for a moment or two. Then I said, ‘If I can offer you some sort of explanation –’

‘Please do.’

‘The truth is that when I saw you and Yanmei having dinner together at that restaurant two months ago, it made a profound impression on me.’

‘Really? In what way?’

‘I’d never seen anything quite like the … intimacy that I saw between the two of you. I saw that intimacy and I felt the lack of it in my own life, and I started to hope – to fantasize, actually – that I might be able to share in it.’

Lian gave another of her tight but captivating smiles. She looked down into her teacup and said: ‘Well, those dinners we have together are very special to us. We go there on the second Saturday of every month. Once a month, you see, my husband, Peter, has to go to Dubai. The working week there starts on a Sunday morning. So he catches a flight from Sydney at ten past nine the evening before. Yanmei and I go to the airport to see him off, and then she’s always a little downcast, because she loves her father so much, and she misses him when he’s away. So, as a special treat, I take her to that restaurant. Twelve times a year, without fail, be it summer or winter. Children need patterns; they need routine. Well, so do grown-ups, actually. Going to that restaurant is one of the constants in our life.’

‘I love the way,’ I began, feeling that I had nothing to lose now, by speaking my mind as clearly as possible, ‘– I love the way that you play cards together. It’s as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist. And Yanmei is just like a miniature version of you.’ I glanced across to where she was poised on the edge of the swimming pool, summoning up the courage for a dive. ‘She sounds the same, her movements are the same, she looks just like you …’

‘Really?’ said Lian. ‘You think there’s a physical resemblance?’

‘Of course.’

‘But you know,’ she said, ‘Yanmei is not my biological daughter.’

‘She isn’t?’

‘No. Peter and I adopted her, three years ago. In fact, we don’t even have the same nationality. I come from Hong Kong, originally. Yanmei is from China – a city called Shenyang, in Liaoning province. So, perhaps the resemblance between us is only in your head. Perhaps it’s something you wanted to see.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, sipping my tea and looking across the bay. I was disturbed by this information, for some reason. Knowing that there was no blood relationship between Lian and Yanmei somehow changed my fantasy about them. ‘You have no children of your own, then?’

‘No. It was a great sadness in our lives, for a while. But now we have Yanmei, so …’

‘She was an orphan?’

‘Yes. Her mother died a few years ago, when she was only three. A horrible death, I’m afraid. You know, the working conditions in some of those factories are beyond belief. The things those workers put up with so that we in the West can have our cut-price goods. Yanmei’s mother worked in the spray-paint department of one factory and she was working fifteen or sixteen hours a day, spraying things with these chemical paints all the time, full of toxic solvents. No proper precautions – no masks, or anything like that. She died of cancer. Cancer of the brain.’

‘How awful,’ I said. It was a weak enough phrase, but the best I could manage. ‘What was the factory making?’

‘Toothbrushes, I believe.’

I looked across at Lian sharply when she said this. Had I heard correctly?

‘Toothbrushes?’

‘Yes – cheap plastic toothbrushes. You look surprised. Is that so surprising?’

I was speechless, in fact.

‘Do toothbrushes have some sort of special significance for you?’

Gradually, I started to find my voice again. ‘Yes, they do. A very special significance. More than that – what you’ve just told me, the story of Yanmei’s mother … Well, I find it astonishing. Incredible.’

‘There is nothing incredible about it at all. These things are happening all the time, in the developing world and elsewhere. Unfortunately, we tend to blind ourselves to them.’

‘No, I mean that what I find incredible is its … its personal significance. The significance to me, personally.’

‘Oh, I see. But could you perhaps explain this significance?’

I took a deep breath, and shook my head. ‘It would take … I’m afraid it would take a very long time. You see, in a weird sort of way, everything that’s happened to me in the last few weeks is connected to Yanmei and her mother. But I’d have to tell you the whole story to make you understand that, and I’m sure you would find it very boring …’

‘But now you have to tell me. Look.’ She gestured over at Yanmei and Jennifer, who were happily splashing from one side of the pool to the other. ‘The girls are enjoying themselves. They won’t want to leave for at least an hour. I didn’t bring anything to read. So tell me your story. I want to hear it, however long and boring it is. What else am I going to do?’

And so I began telling her about all the things that had happened to me since I had first seen her and Yanmei sitting at the restaurant overlooking Sydney harbour on Valentine’s Day. It was difficult to know how to begin, and I think at first I was just confusing her. I started off by talking about Alan Guest and all the ideals and ambitions he’d tried to realize with his little toothbrush company, thinking that, if my recent experiences had taught me anything, they had taught me a lesson about the cruelty of the world: taught me that we still lived in an age when even the most well-meaning and innovative organization could be brought to its knees by more powerful forces. But then I thought that perhaps this wasn’t the meaning of the story at all, and that maybe what I had really learned (or started to learn) was something about myself, about my own nature and my own problems. So I was trying to flip backwards and forwards between these two ideas, and Lian was getting more and more bewildered, and at that point she told me to start again, and just tell the story from the beginning, exactly as it had happened. And when I started doing that, what I found myself telling her didn’t feel much like a proper story at all, any more, just a series of random, unconnected episodes: encounters, mainly, encounters with strange and unexpected people who had all done something, in small ways, to change the course of my life over the last few weeks. It had begun with Lian herself, of course, and Yanmei. But then there had been … Well, first there had been the man at the airline check-in desk in Sydney, who had upgraded me to Premium Economy class for no particular reason. Then there had been poor old Charlie Hayward, who had a heart attack while sitting next to me on the flight to Singapore. Then there was Poppy, with her secret recording device and her story about Donald Crowhurst. Then there was the man in the park in Watford, who had stolen my mobile phone and come back afterwards to ask me for directions. Then there was Trevor Paige, and Lindsay Ashworth, who had taken me out for a drink at the Park Inn and asked me to join their sales team. Then the dinner at Poppy’s mother’s house, where I had met Poppy’s mother and her obnoxious friend Richard and the only person who had been really friendly to me was her Uncle Clive. Then my meeting with Alan Guest himself, the day I set off from his office on the first stage of my journey to Scotland. And then Mr and Mrs Byrne, Chris’s parents, and then Miss Erith and Dr Hameed, high up in that apartment block on the edges of Lichfield, and then Caroline and Lucy, and our failed dinner together in Kendal, and then Alison Byrne and the way she had invited me to sleep with her in Edinburgh and I had run away, run away with her whisky bottles and got into my car at dawn and driven off into the Scottish mountains by myself. In fact the only person I didn’t mention once, in all of this, was Emma: because it embarrassed me now to admit that I had started talking to my SatNav, and I thought that Lian might think less of me if she knew.

As I was telling her about all these encounters, Lian lay back on the picnic rug, and put her hands behind her head, and closed her eyes. She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t ask me any questions: she didn’t interrupt me once, even though I was talking for a long time, and then when I had finished she didn’t make any comment at first, until her silence actually made me suspect that she might have fallen asleep. But no, she hadn’t fallen asleep. She was just thinking very deeply about what I had told her, and eventually she raised herself onto her elbows and looked at me and said:

‘Well, Maxwell, now it begins to make sense.’

‘Now what begins to make sense?’ I asked her.

‘Now I can see why you looked so different, last night, to the man who had come to that restaurant two months ago.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘You saw a change in me?’

‘Of course. That first time, you scared me slightly. I thought I had never seen anyone look so lonely and depressed. But last night – and today – you look … well, you look calmer, at least. You look like a man who is almost at peace with himself.’

‘Almost,’ I repeated.

‘Almost.’

‘Mum!’ Yanmei came running over, with Jennifer not far behind. ‘What time is it? It isn’t time to go yet, is it?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Jennifer’s mother will be expecting us soon. And don’t look so disappointed – unless I’m much mistaken, she said something about an Easter egg hunt …’

The girls’ faces brightened at once.

‘OK,’ said Jennifer. ‘But one more swim first!’

They ran off laughing in the direction of the pool.

‘Five minutes!’ Lian called after them.

She turned back to me, and saw that I was lost in thought once again.

‘Sorry,’ I said, snapping out of it. ‘I hadn’t even realized that it was Easter Sunday today. The festival of the Rising Sun …’

‘The rising sun?’ said Lian, puzzled.

‘Isn’t that how Easter began? It’s supposed to be a time for new dawns, fresh starts.’

Now she smiled at me, and said gently, in a tone of apology, ‘And you thought I was going to be your fresh start. Me and Yanmei. Well, I’m sorry, Maxwell, but … you’re going to have to look elsewhere.’

‘I know.’

‘In any case …’

‘Yes?’ I said. There was something tantalizing, even a little unsettling in the way she had tailed off: as if she didn’t quite dare to say what she’d been about to say.

‘In any case,’ she continued, after a moment, ‘this thing that you’re looking for – this intimacy … You wouldn’t have found it with us.’

‘Is that what you think? How can you be so sure?’

Lian picked up my plastic cup from the sand and tipped it over, shaking out the last droplets of tea. Then she screwed the cup carefully on to the top of the thermos flask. Her movements were slow and mechanical, suggesting that her thoughts – her real thoughts – were elsewhere.

‘This girl Poppy,’ she said at last. ‘She interests me. Out of all the people you met on your journey, there is something very special about her. She was the one who understood you the best, I think.’

‘Yes, but Poppy made it very clear that we could only be friends, nothing more.’

‘Of course. And yet … When she invited you for dinner at her mother’s house – did you not think that was an extraordinary gesture, on her part?’

‘Extraordinary? In what way?’

‘Well, it was generous of her. Also hopeful. And also rather … perceptive.’

‘Yes,’ I said – a little impatiently – ‘but as I explained, I didn’t get on with her mother, if that was the idea. I didn’t find her attractive.’

‘You think Poppy was trying to make a match between you and her mother?’

‘Of course. She told me as much.’

‘But there was someone else at the party that night.’

‘Someone else?’

‘Someone else.’

Who was she talking about? ‘No there wasn’t,’ I said. ‘There was a young couple – about twenty years younger than me – and then there was her uncle, Clive. That’s all.’

Lian gazed at me steadily. Another smile began to spread across her face, but she managed to suppress it when she saw my growing look of outrage.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I spoke out of turn.’

She hastily crammed the remaining picnic things into her basket, and stood up.

‘I’d better go and collect my girls.’

Still shocked into silence, I rose to my feet as well, and took her hand again, unthinkingly, when she offered it to me.

‘Goodbye, Maxwell Sim,’ she said. ‘And try not to be angry with the people who think they know you better than you know yourself. They mean well.’

She turned and began to walk away.

I hesitated for a few seconds, and then hurried after her, running to catch up: ‘Lian!’ I called.

She wheeled around. ‘Yes?’

Out of control, now – without stopping to think what I was doing – I seized her, and clasped her in my arms, and hugged her fiercely. I held on to her so tightly that she couldn’t move. Could hardly breathe, I expect. I held her like that for … I don’t know how long for. Until my own body shook, convulsively, with a single, gigantic sob, and I put my mouth against her hair and wept and whispered into it: ‘It’s hard. Really hard. I know I’ve got to face it, but it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever …’

I felt her palm against my chest, pushing me away, gently at first, then more forcefully. I eased myself away from her, and took a step back, and wiped my eyes and looked away: ashamed; shipwrecked; bereft.

‘I think you’re almost there, now, Maxwell,’ she said. ‘You’re almost there.’

She touched me on the arm, and then turned again, and walked away, back towards the pool, calling for her daughter.

I stayed on the beach until sunset.

It was interesting to watch the changing colours of the sky. I had never done that before. The greyness turned slowly to silver as the clouds began to fracture and let through some glimpses of the dying sun. Before long they were tinged by a more golden glow, then they began to break away and drift apart even further as the light itself softened and faded until the sky became gradually streaked with the palest of reds and blues. People continued to come and go on the beach. Nobody was using the swimming pool any more. The long day was finally closing.

Already I missed Lian. I hated the thought that I would never see her again. I missed my father, as well. I should really have gone back to see him – I only had a few more hours left in Australia, after all – but something was stopping me. Something was paralysing me. There was no urgency about talking to him, anyhow, now that I knew he’d be coming back to live in England. We would soon be having plenty of times together, plenty of good times.

I couldn’t sit here for ever. I would miss my plane if I didn’t leave soon. But I knew that there was something I needed to do first.

I needed to talk to someone. I needed to talk to someone really, really urgently – more urgently, even, than when I’d been drunk-driving around the Cairngorms in a raging blizzard, and my mobile phone had run out of battery.

Today, of course, my phone was fully charged.

What was stopping me, then?

I was like little Yanmei, standing poised on the edge of the swimming pool, summoning up the courage for a dive. But knowing that once it was done, once I had found that courage, there was the coolness of the water to look forward to, the long-delayed sense of release, of freedom …

Almost there, now, Max. Almost there.

What time was it in London? The time difference had gone haywire in the last couple of weeks. Britain had put its clocks forward by an hour for the summer, and Australia had just put its clocks back by an hour for the winter, or was it the other way round? Something like that, anyway. So if it was five o’clock in Sydney, it was … pretty early in the morning, in London. Too early to call someone? Difficult to say. The timing of this call was neither here nor there, in any case. Either this call was going to be welcome, or it wasn’t.

I took out my phone. I scrolled through the memory until I reached Clive’s name. Then I took a deep breath and pressed the call button.

The phone rang for what seemed like aeons. He wasn’t going to answer. But finally he did.

‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Hello, Clive?’

‘Yes, this is Clive. Good God – is that Max, by any chance?’

‘Yes, it is. Did I wake you up?’

‘You did, actually, but never mind. Doesn’t matter a bit. It’s just lovely to hear from you.’

Now – tell me if I’m repeating myself, but … did I mention before that the first thing I find attractive in someone, nine times out of ten, is his voice?