Under the Hawthorn Tree (11 page)

Her mother did worry, indeed, she was constantly fretting while Jingqiu was out working, worried that she would get hurt. Were that to happen, when she didn't have any worker's insurance, that would be the end of it. ‘A few pence here or there' are inconsequential, your life is not.' But she knew that ‘a few pence here or there' were not inconsequential; without money you were without rice. You were hungry. Her family wasn't just short of ‘a few pence'; they were short of a lot of pence. Her mother frequently borrowed money from other teachers, and as soon as she got her wages it would all go to paying back debts, only for the borrowing to start again the next day. The family would often give away their meat and egg rations as they didn't have the money to buy them anyway. Furthermore, her brother's earnings were never enough. All sent down youths had to ask for money, their status being so low that their work points weren't even enough to cover their rice ration.

These last few years Jingqiu had been lucky enough to work every summer to help her family. She would comfort her mother, ‘I've been doing this for so long, it'll all be fine. Lots of people do it. Have you ever heard of anyone getting injured? Accidents can happen at home too.' As Old Third had adopted such a motherly tone, she repeated this line of argument to him.

He wouldn't let her finish, interrupting her. ‘You shouldn't do that kind of work, truly. It's dangerous. If you get injured, or exhausted, it'll affect you for the rest of your life. If you need money I've got some, we work outdoors, so our pay is pretty good, and we get subsidies. I've got savings, so you can borrow that first, and then I can give you thirty to fifty yuan a month. That should be enough, right?'

She didn't like him like this, all high and mighty with his high wages. He was looking down on her, treating her like a charity case. She replied proudly, ‘Your money is your business, I don't want it.'

‘You can borrow it, if that's what you'd prefer. You can pay me back once you start working.'

‘Who says I'll be able to get a job.' She adopted an ironic tone; ‘Your father's not that powerful a cadre, I doubt he'd be able to fix me up with an outdoor job. I'm prepared. Once I get sent down I won't be coming back, and my mother won't need to borrow for my rice ration. But when that time comes what money will I have to repay you?'

‘If you don't have it, you don't need to repay. I'm not using it. Don't be so stubborn, you're wearing yourself out over a few pence. You could end up bedridden for the rest of your life the way you're going, and wouldn't that be worse?'

‘A few pence'? He does look down on me, making me sound like someone who loves money as much as life itself. ‘That's right, I'm a slave to money,' she retorted. ‘But I'd rather get injured or exhaust myself doing temporary work than take yours.'

Old Third looked like he had been stabbed in the chest. ‘You – I—' he mumbled, unable to formulate a response, looking at her with pitiable eyes. He reminded her of a dog she used to look after that had been taken away by the dog catchers, his mouth tied, his eyes staring up at her, knowing that this was the end, begging for his life.

Yumin returned after a couple of days and the house settled again. Fen's boyfriend ‘the face' didn't come round any more and that evening Old Third's unit was having a meeting so he didn't have time to visit. Instead, Yumin brought a colleague, Mrs Ye, who wanted to ask Jingqiu how to knit the front of a pair of men's woollen longjohns.

Jingqiu was able to help, but Mrs Ye was not only asking how to knit the opening, but also about its appropriate size so as to be comfortable for her husband when he relieved himself. Jingqiu had learnt the pattern from someone else, but had never stopped to think about what it was for. When Mrs Ye said ‘relieve himself' Jingqiu blushed. ‘Just let me knit it,' she said, sweeping up the needles and starting to knit.

Mrs Ye chatted to Yumin while she waited for Jingqiu to finish. ‘Qiu yatou is very capable, and pretty. No wonder your mother-in-law is so keen to have her for Old Second. Qiu yatou, why don't you marry him? That way we can come over whenever we have problems with our knitting, and we'll all learn properly.'

‘Don't say that, Jingqiu's very shy,' Yumin replied, but then continued, ‘Jingqiu is from the city, she eats government supplied grain, how could she possibly think of us from out here in the sticks. Someone like Qiu yatou wants to marry another city person, isn't that right, Jingqiu?'

Jingqiu turned even redder. ‘I'm still young, I haven't given it any thought.'

‘You want to marry a city boy?' Mrs Ye asked her. ‘Better find one from the geological unit. That way she gets to marry a city boy and we still get help with our knitting, win-win.' Mrs Ye thought this over a bit more and said to Yumin, ‘That Sun boy's not too bad, he can play the accordion, he'd suit Qiu well. He's often coming round here, he must have her in his sights.'

Yumin chuckled. ‘You're sharp. He was avoiding us because I mentioned our Fen to him, but now he can't stay away. He's here nearly every day.'

Jingqiu listened, tense and silent.

‘Isn't your mother nervous as hell? Here she's found such a good girl, and she's being poached by an outsider.'

‘No, Jingqiu is without a doubt part of our family. Anyway, that Sun boy has a fiancée waiting at home.'

Jingqiu heard a buzzing sound and felt that she was about to topple over. But rather than faint, she began to imagine herself flying up over her body, and as if watching herself teeter on the edge of a stage and yet somehow delighted by her own misfortune, she thought, Jingqiu, you're always saying one should be optimistic in all situations. Well, now's the time to test your resolution.

Yumin and Mrs Ye continued chattering and laughing, but Jingqiu's mind was fixed on one sentence: ‘That Sun boy has a fiancée waiting at home.' She was unconscious of the movements of her hands, oblivious to every word of the conversation, and when Mrs Ye came over to look at Jingqiu's work, she discovered that the girl had made the flap for the front opening nearly a foot long.

Mrs Ye burst into laughter. ‘This will certainly do for my husband. They're like a pair of toddler's open-crotch trousers!'

Jingqiu wanted to unravel it at once.

‘It doesn't need to be unravelled, just use a needle and thread to sew up the surplus,' Yumin said.

‘You're right, it would be a shame to unravel such a lot of knitting,' Mrs Ye conceded.

Once Mrs Ye left, Jingqiu rushed to her room. She climbed into bed, dragged the quilt over her head, and pretended to sleep. She shivered under the thick quilt, from fear, from cold, or from some other feeling she didn't know, and cursed Old Third furiously. ‘Cheating liar! If you've got a fiancée, why did you act like this? Is that how someone with a fiancée behaves?'

Pained, she realised cursing him was of no use. There were liars and cheats everywhere in this world, and cursing them didn't kill them off, or even hurt them. You could only blame yourself, blame your own bad eyesight for not spotting one when he was in front of you.

The scenes from their walk on the mountain road flashed through her mind, one by one, like a film. She couldn't make them stop. A whole string of them flashed by, her head was spinning, she didn't know what to think, say, or do. The memories went round and round like a stack of photos, each one capturing its own moment. The image that appeared and reappeared was when Old Third had startled her, telling her there was a ghost that looked like him under the tree, and before she had known what was happening he had grabbed her, kissed her, and tried to press his tongue in her mouth.

Knowing now that he was engaged, it was as if the photos had aged, their clarity faded. Whenever she was with Old Third she felt lighter, as though her proud judgement, her restraint, were falling away. He was a strong wind that blew her feet from the ground when they walked together.

She thought of the day she had left West Village, when they walked together over the mountain and he had told her stories. He had used the story of Romeo and Juliet as an example to defend a man who had dumped his fiancée, but now she knew he had been talking about himself. The next evening he also admitted, inadvertently, to having held someone else's hand. She was eaten up with regret. Why didn't I understand? Had she understood, she would have lost her temper with him when he came to hug her, she would have stood her ground and shown him how much she hated him doing that. The worst of it was, not only had she not lost her temper, she had admitted to liking holding his hand. She couldn't understand why she had done such a stupid thing.

So she let him hold her, kiss her, and all along he had a fiancée. Hadn't she been cheated? Jingqiu's mother had always said one slip leads to a road of hardship, but at first she had misunderstood even this simple sentence, thinking her mother had said ‘one's lip leads down a road of hardship', and even after the real meaning became clear to her, that one small error could lead to untold misfortune, she still hadn't really understood the meaning of this word, ‘slip'. In her opinion, letting a boy know you loved him was a ‘slip', because he could boast about it to his friends and destroy your reputation. Jingqiu knew of many such stories, and not just stories, but real girls who had been treated this way. She was always careful not to make that kind of mistake, and the best method, she thought, was to not fall in love – that way you couldn't possibly lose your footing.

She was no longer trembling so forcefully. She decided not to bother with him any more. She should act as if none of it had ever happened. He had a fiancée, so probably he wouldn't tell anyone about it, and she could erase the episode entirely from her life. She thought of a phrase that went: ‘If no one knows it's not a scandal.' She hoped that this at least was true.

The only problem that remained was what to do with the bag of sugar. Her mother really did need it, and she would have no opportunity to buy it once back in Yichang, so she would keep it. But she would pay him back, and quickly. She could first borrow money from her association and pay them back once they were home. She climbed out of bed, determined to go immediately to borrow money from one of the teachers, Mr Lee, but at that moment Yumin came in and began at once to talk.

‘My mother-in-law has wanted me to speak to you about Lin for a while now, but I haven't mentioned it to you because I didn't think it possible. You're from the city, and a senior high school student. Lin is a country boy, who hasn't even graduated from junior middle school, he couldn't hope for a match like you.'

‘It's not that I look down on him, it's just—'

‘Later, I heard about your family's situation, and I thought maybe I should have a talk with you, speak to you about your experiences. It might be of use.' Yumin let out a long breath, and continued. ‘When I look at you it's like seeing myself at that age. I was also a city girl, but my parents were labelled rightists and lost their government positions. Unemployed, they survived on odd jobs. Later, the city was cleaned up and people like my parents were driven out to the countryside. My whole family came to this poor mountain area.'

‘You've also had a rough ride,' Jingqiu sympathised. ‘I always thought you seemed different from the people around here.'

‘I've become one of them, haven't I?' Yumin said. ‘You'll also be sent down to the countryside, you just don't know where. But here we're close to the town, and not too far from Yichang. Actually this area is considered prosperous. You've lived here a few months, and as I'm sure you can see for yourself, Auntie's family is a good one. If you were to marry Lin the whole family would treat you like a goddess.'

‘You must have felt frustrated since coming to the countryside,' Jingqiu said, trying to change the direction of the conversation.

‘It's fate, no matter how hard you try you can't overcome it.' Yumin sighed. ‘But I still consider myself lucky, I married Sen. His father is a lower-level official, and he got Sen a state-allocated job and me a teaching position. Although I don't get state rations, teaching is much better than labouring. When you come back to West Village, as long as Lin's father still has his post, he'll definitely get you a job as a teacher.'

Jingqiu had never before thought of marriage as a way of altering her future; she was going to be sent down and she would never come back, and that was that. Her family was poor, and she did want to change that, but she refused to rely on marriage as a means of improving her situation. She'd rather rob a bank. For her, everything – school, finding work, joining the Youth League and so on – was out of her control. Only her private feelings were her domain, the only area of her life she could govern through her own free will. It was a question of motivation; she could marry out of gratitude, to repay their kindness, and she could save someone out of sympathy, but she couldn't override her emotions in exchange for money or position.

‘I know you won't take Lin because you like Old Third.'

‘Who says I like Old Third?' Jingqiu said, ‘You said you “mentioned” Fen to him. What exactly did you mean?'

‘Oh, before, when Old Third and the unit first arrived here, the unit's buildings weren't finished, so they had to stay with families in the village. Old Third lived with us. Fen loves singing and Old Third plays the accordion, so she let him accompany her, and after spending time with him she started to like him. She was too embarrassed to say anything herself so she asked me to talk to him. He responded that he had a fiancée back at home.'

‘Maybe he was just saying that as an excuse?'

‘No, he showed me a photo of them together. She's beautiful, and the daughter of a cadre. They're a very good match.' As she spoke she walked across to the table. ‘The photo is tucked under the windowsill, I'll show you.' Yumin searched the windowsill for a while. ‘Huh? I can't find it. Where's it gone?' Jingqiu thought that Old Third had probably taken it so that she wouldn't see it. Further proof of his treachery. Sly, furtive, shameful! ‘After that, he didn't come back. Auntie is still very good to him, and despite her failure, she still likes him, and invites him over if there's anything nice to eat. Fen eventually found someone else, and it was all forgotten.'