And the Bride Wore Red

Chapter Three

‘THE trouble with soaring,’ she murmured, ‘is that you fall to earth.’

‘Sometimes you do,’ he said gently. ‘But not always.’

‘Not always,’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps.’

But it was too soon. Her nerve failed her and in her mind she crossed hastily to the cautious side of the road.

‘What about your grandmother? What was her year?’

Tactfully he accepted her change of subject without demur.

‘She was a dragon too,’ he said. ‘With her courage and sense of adventure she couldn’t have been anything else—a real dragon lady. Everything she told me about this country seemed to bring me alive, until all I could think of was coming here one day.

‘We planned how we’d make the trip together, but she became very ill. I’d qualified as a doctor by then, and I knew she wasn’t going to recover, but she still talked as though it would happen soon.

‘At last we had to face the truth. On her deathbed she said, “I so much wanted to be there with you.” And I promised her that she would be.’

‘And she has been, hasn’t she?’ Olivia asked, marvelling.

‘Every step of the way,’ he confirmed. ‘Wherever I go, I remember what she told me. Her family welcomed me with open arms.’

‘Did you find them easily?’

‘Yes, because she’d stayed in touch. When I landed at Beijing Airport three years ago there were thirty people to welcome me. They recognised me at once from the pictures she’d sent them, and they all cheered.

‘It’s an enormous family. Not all of them live in Beijing, and many of those who lived further out had come in especially to see Meihui’s grandson.’

‘They weren’t put off by your being threequarters English?’

He laughed. ‘I don’t think they even see that part of me. I’m one of the Lang family. That’s all that counts.’

‘It was clever of your grandmother to name you and your father Lang,’ Olivia mused. ‘In England it’s your first name, but here the family name comes first.’

‘Yes, my uncles are Lang Hai and Lang Jing, my great uncle is Lang Tao, my cousin is Lang Dai, so I fitted in straight away.’

A sudden look of mischief crossed her face. ‘Tell me something—have your stepbrothers given you any nephews and nieces?’

He looked puzzled. ‘Three, but I don’t see…’

‘And I’ll bet they call you Uncle Lang.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘And what do the children of the Lang family call you? It can’t be Uncle Lang, because that would be nonsense to them. So I guess they must call you Uncle Mitch.’

A glazed look came into his eyes and he edged away from her with a nervous air that made her laugh.

‘Are you a witch to have such second sight?’ he demanded. ‘Should I be scared?’

‘Are you?’ she teased.

‘A bit. More than a bit, actually. How did you know that?’

‘Logical deduction, my dear Watson. Second sight doesn’t come into it.’

He could see that she was right, but it still left him with an enchanted feeling, as though she could divine what was hidden from others. A true ‘dragon lady’, he thought with delight, with magic arts to entice and dazzle a man.

‘You’re right about my grandmother,’ he said. ‘In her heart, she never really left China.’

‘How did her relatives feel about her marrying an Englishman and leaving the country?’

‘They were very supportive, because it’s in the family tradition.’

‘You all believe in marrying for love?’

‘Much more than that. Marrying in the face of great difficulties, putting love first despite all obstacles. It goes back over two-thousand years.’

‘Two thou…?’ She laughed in astonishment. ‘Are you nobility or something?’

‘No, just ordinary people. Over the centuries my family has tilled the land, sold farm produce, perhaps made just enough money to start a little shop. We’ve been carpenters, wheelwrights, blacksmiths—but never noble, I promise you.’

The arrival of the waiter made him fall silent while plates were cleared away and the next course was served. It was fried pork-belly stewed in soy and wine, and Olivia’s mouth watered at the prospect.

‘We’re also excellent cooks,’ Lang observed, speaking very significantly.

‘You mean…?’

‘This was cooked by my cousin Lang Chao, and the guy who served it is his brother, Lang Wei. Later Wei’s girlfriend, Suyin, will sing for us.’

‘Your family own this restaurant?’

‘That’s why they virtually hijacked us. I wasn’t planning to bring you here because I knew we’d be stared at—if you glance into the corner you’ll see Wei sneaking a peek and thinking we can’t see him—but they happened to spot me in the street, and after that we were lost.’

‘We seem to be providing the entertainment,’ she said, amused. ‘Wei’s enjoying a good laugh over there.’

‘I’m going to strangle him when I get home,’ Lang growled. ‘This is why I didn’t want them to see you because I knew they’d think—Well…’

‘That you’d brought one of your numerous girlfriends here?’ Olivia said.

She was teasing but the question was important.

‘I occasionally bring a lady here to dine,’ he conceded. ‘Purely in a spirit of flirtation. Anything more serious, I wouldn’t bring her here. Or at least,’ he added, grinding his teeth and glaring at the unrepentant Wei, ‘I’d try not to.’

‘No problem.’ Olivia chuckled. ‘You tell him that he’s completely wrong in what he’s thinking, that we’re just a pair of fellow professionals having a quiet meal for companionship. There’s no more to it than that.’

‘No more to it than that,’ he echoed in a comically robotic voice.

‘Then you can strangle him.’

‘That sounds like a good idea. But what do I tell him when I take you out again?’

‘Tell him to mind his own business?’ she suggested vaguely.

‘I can see you’ve never lived with a family like mine.’

‘Wait a minute, you said when you “get home”? You don’t live in the same house, do you?’

‘Sometimes. I have a room there, but also a little place of my own near the hospital where I go if I’ve done a long stint at work and need to collapse. But if I want warmth, noise and cousins driving me crazy I go to the family home, so they tend to know what I do. But next time we’ll avoid this place and have some privacy.’

‘Look—’

‘It’s all right.’ He held up a hand quickly. ‘I don’t mean to rush you. I know you haven’t decided yet. But, when you do, let me know where you want to go.’

Her eyebrows rose at this quiet assurance but his smile disarmed her, making her complicit.

‘I didn’t finish telling you about our tradition,’ he said.

‘Yes, I’m curious. How did a family that had to work so hard come to put such a high value on romantic love? Surely it made more sense for a man to marry the girl whose father owned a strip of land next to his own?’

‘Of course, and many marriages were made for such practical reasons. But the descendants of Jaio and Renshu always hoped for more.’

‘Who were they?’

‘They lived in the reign of the Emperor Qin, of whom I’m sure you’ve heard.’

She nodded. In reading about China, she’d learned about the time when it had been divided into many states. Qin Shi Huang, king of the state of Qin, had conquered the other states, unifying them into one gigantic country. Since Qin was pronounced ‘chin’ the country had come to be called China. Qin had proclaimed himself emperor, and on his death he’d been buried in a splendid mausoleum accompanied by any of his concubines who hadn’t born him a child.

‘One of those concubines was Jaio,’ Lang told her now. ‘She didn’t want to die, and she was in love with Renshu, a young soldier who also loved her. Somehow he managed to rescue her, and they fled together. Of course, they had to spend the rest of their lives on the run, and they only had about five years before they were caught and killed. But by then they’d had a son, who was rescued and spirited away by Jaio’s brother.

‘Nobody heard anything for years, but when the son was an old man he revealed the writings that Jaio and Renshu had left, in which they said that their love had been worth all the hardship. Of course, they had to be kept secret, but the family protected them and still has them to this day.

‘Because of this the Langs have always cherished a belief in love that has seen them through many hard times. Often their neighbours have thought them mad for trusting in love when there were so many more important things in life, but they have clung to their ideals. It was that trust that made Meihui leave China and follow John Mitchell to England. And she never regretted it. She missed her homeland, but she always said that being with the man she loved mattered more than anything in life.’

Hearing these words, Olivia had a strange sense of familiarity. Then she realised that this was exactly what Norah would have said.

She sipped her wine, considering what she had just been told. On the surface it was a conventional legend—charming, a tad sentimental. What made it striking was that this serious man should speak as though it had a deep meaning for him.

‘It’s a lovely story,’ she said wistfully. ‘But did it really happen that way?’

‘Why not?’ he asked, giving her a quizzical smile.

She suppressed the instinct to say, Because it’s too absurdly romantic to be real, and said, ‘I only meant that two-thousand years is a terribly long time. So many things get lost in the mists, and you could never really know if they were true or not.’

‘It’s true if we want it to be,’ he said simply. ‘And we do.’

For a moment she almost queried who ‘we’ were, and then was glad she hadn’t, because he added, ‘All of us, the whole family—my aunts, great-aunts, my uncles, cousins—we all want it to be true. And so it is—for us.’

‘That’s a delightful idea,’ she mused. ‘But perhaps not very practical.’

‘Ah, yes, I’d forgotten that you must always be practical and full of common sense,’ he teased.

‘There’s a lot to be said for it,’ she protested defensively.

‘If you’re a schoolteacher.’

‘Doesn’t a doctor need common sense, as well?’

‘Often, but not always. Sometimes common sense is a much over-rated virtue.’

‘And sometimes it can come to your rescue,’ she said wryly.

She didn’t realise that she’d spoken aloud until she saw him looking at her with a question in his eyes.

‘Has it rescued you very often?’ he asked gently.

‘Now and then. It’s nice to know I can always rely on it.’

‘That’s just what you can’t do!’ he said with sudden urgency. ‘You must never rely completely on your head, because sooner or later it will always let you down.’

‘And you think the heart doesn’t?’ she retorted with a touch of indignation. ‘We’re not all as lucky as Meihui.’

‘Or Norah.’

‘I’d hardly call her lucky.’

‘I would,’ he said at once. ‘The man she loved died, but he didn’t betray her. That makes her luckier than many women, and men too, who live for years with the shadows of failed love, bad memories, regrets. Or the others, who never dared risk love at all and have only thoughts of what might have been if only they’d had a little more courage.’

‘That sounds very fine,’ she said. ‘But the fact is that most people are unlucky in love. Is there really much to choose between taking the risk and regretting it, and deciding not to take it at all?’

‘And regretting that?’

‘And living free,’ she said defiantly. ‘Free of regrets, free of pain—’

‘Free of joy, free of the sense that life is worth living or ever has been?’ he interrupted her firmly. ‘Being free of pain can come at a heavy price.’

How had they strayed into this argument? she wondered. And why? The conversation was becoming dangerous, and she acted instinctively to get back into control.

‘I see Wei coming towards us,’ she said brightly.

If he noticed her abrupt change of subject he didn’t say so. Instead he turned sardonic eyes on his cousin, who bustled forward eagerly, his gaze darting between the two of them.

‘We’d like some fruit, please,’ Lang said firmly. ‘And then, vanish!’

Wei gave him a hurt look and departed with dignity. Lang ground his teeth.

‘Sometimes I think I should have stayed well clear of my family,’ he said.

Fruit was served, then tea, and then it was time for the entertainment. Two girls identically dressed in white-embroidered satin glided in. One, holding a small lute, seated herself, ready to play. The other stood beside her.

The lights dimmed except for the one on the performers. The first notes came from the lute and the singer began to make a soft crooning noise, full of a poignancy that was like joy and sadness combined. As Olivia listened an aching feeling came over her, as though the music had sprung all the locks by which she protected herself, leaving her open and defenceless as she had sworn never to be again.

The girl was singing in a soft voice:

‘The trees were white with blossom.

We walked together beneath the falling petals.

But that is past and you are gone.

The trees do not blossom this year.

Aaaii-eeeii!’

That was how it had been; the trees hadn’t blossomed this year and she knew they never would again. Andy had been an abject lesson in the need to stay detached. In future no man would hurt her like that because she wouldn’t let it happen.

‘The bridge still leads across the river,

Where we walked together.

But when I look down into the water,

Your face is not beside me.

Never again…’

Never again, she thought, not here or anywhere. She closed her eyes for a moment. But suddenly she opened them again, alerted by a touch on her cheek.

‘Don’t cry,’ Lang said.

‘I’m not crying,’ she insisted.

For answer he showed her his fingertips, wet with her tears.

‘Don’t weep for him,’ he said softly.

It would have been useless to utter another denial when he hadn’t believed the first.

‘I get sentimental sometimes.’ She tried to laugh it away. ‘But I’m really over him.’

In the dim light she could see Lang shake his head, smiling ruefully.

‘Perhaps you belong together after all,’ he said. Suddenly he reached into his pocket, took out his mobile phone and pushed it towards her, then he leaned close to murmur into her ear without disturbing the singer.

‘Call him. Say that your quarrel was a mistake, and you love him still. Go on. Do it now.’

The dramatic gesture astonished and intrigued her. With a gasp of edgy laughter, she pushed the phone back to him.

‘Why are you laughing?’ he demanded.

‘I was just picturing his face if he answered the phone and found himself talking to me. There was no quarrel. He left me for someone else. She had a lot of money, so he obviously did the right thing. I believe they’re very happy. She bought him a posh car for a wedding present.’

‘And that makes it the right thing?’ he enquired.

‘Of course.’

‘So if a millionaire proposed you’d accept at once?’

‘No way! He’d have to be a billionaire at least.’

‘I see.’ The words were grave but his lips were slightly quirked, as if he were asking who she thought she was fooling.

But he said nothing more. The music had ended. The singer bowed to the heartfelt applause and embarked on another song, slightly more cheerful. Lang turned his head towards the little stage, but reached back across the table to take hold of Olivia’s hand, and kept it.

She found that her nostalgic sadness had vanished, overtaken by a subtle pleasure that seemed to infuse the whole evening. Everything was a part of it, including the man sitting opposite her, looking away, giving Olivia the chance to study him unobserved.

She could appreciate him like this. His regular features were enough to make him good-looking, but they also had a mobility that was constantly intriguing. His eyes could be bland and conventional, or wickedly knowing in a way that gave him a disconcerting charm. She wondered if there was anyone he regretted from his own past. A warm-natured man in his thirties, with a deep belief in the value of romantic love, had surely not reached this point without some sadness along the road.

She began to muse on the subject, wondering if there was a way to question him without revealing too much interest. There wasn’t, of course, and an alarm bell sounded in her head. This was just the kind of atmosphere she’d learned to fear—seductive, romantic, lulling her senses and her mind in dangerous harmony.

It was time for common sense to take over. In a few minutes she would suggest that the evening should end soon, phrasing it carefully. She began to plan the words, even deciding what she would say when he protested.

Lang was beckoning to Wei, paying the bill, and ordering him to stop giggling and make himself scarce. Wei departed jauntily. Olivia took a deep breath to make her speech.

‘We’d better go,’ Lang said.

‘Pardon?’

‘We both have to work tomorrow, so I’ll get you home quickly. I’m sorry to have kept you out so late.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ she said faintly.

On the journey she wondered what was going to happen now. Lang had recognised that she wasn’t ready for a decision, while subtly implying that he was attracted to her. He was charming and funny, with a quiet, gentle strength that appealed to her, perhaps because she could sense something quirky and irreverent beneath it.

A light-hearted flirtation could be agreeable, but if he wanted more, if he planned to end the evening in her arms—or even in her apartment—what then? A gentle let-down? How did you half-reject someone you more than half-liked? Again she began to think about what she would say to him.

When they arrived, he came with her to the apartment block.

‘How far up are you?’ he asked.

‘Second floor.’

He rode up with her and came to her door.

‘Lang?’ she began uneasily.

‘Yes?’

She lost her nerve. ‘Would you care to come in for a drink?’

‘I certainly want to come in, but not for a drink. Let’s get inside and I’ll explain, although I’m sure you know what the problem is.’

Once inside he took off his jacket and helped her off with hers.

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