Read Online Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind by Anne Charnock - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anne Charnock
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it, he says to himself; it’s the incessant lack of familiarity that’s so exhausting.
Toni lies curled on her bed, and scattered around her on the bedcover are small paper and plastic bags that contain the small treasures she discovered in Shanghai’s South Bund Fabric Market. Hand-embroidered tapes, painted buttons, metallic thread.
He wonders if the fabric market will be the highlight of Toni’s visit to China. It wasn’t what he expected; he’d thought they’d find themselves in an open-air market with semipermanent stalls, rather like Shepherds Bush or Borough Market back in London. In fact, the South Bund Fabric Market turned out to be a three-storey building with escalators—a down-market shopping mall, each floor packed with small shops selling fabrics, scarves, bags, belts. The tailors’ shops displayed sample suits, dresses, skirts, shirts and winter coats on hangers. Shoppers merely pointed at the design they liked, and then they were measured. Or they took a garment for copying. For Dominic, the charm of the fabric market lay solely in seeing Toni’s excitement. But a flash of panic did occur—when she ran back through the market to find the button shop, he thought he’d lost her.
For him, the big eye-opener today was the rail system. China knows how to move people. Shanghai and Suzhou railway stations were the size of airport terminals. There were two departure lounges for every train—one for the front half and one for the back. And the platforms were as wide as airport runways. In their first-class carriage on the shiny white bullet train—he chuckles quietly as he relives the journey—the overhead TV monitors were showing Mr. Bean’s trip to the Launderette. All the passengers were laughing out loud. Occasionally, the show was interrupted, and the driver appeared on the screen with a view of the track ahead. He would turn to the camera and, wearing white cotton gloves, make a clenched-fist salute whenever the train reached maximum speed. Dominic had needed to remind himself more than once that he was in China, not Japan, because in his imagination, Japan had always offered the default vision of the future. He wonders how China will cope when all this new infrastructure needs replacing in a hundred years’ time, just as London is now struggling to replace Victorian water mains, sewers, bridges, tunnels.
Mr. Lu bought the train tickets for them in advance and, fortunately, explained how to decipher the printed information. Dominic smiles when he recollects Toni’s rebuke: Jeez, Dad, I don’t know why you’re panicking so much. It’s all in the guidebook. There’s even a photo of a rail ticket with every bit of information explained. One sight had stopped them dead: a man in iron ankle shackles being escorted by two policemen through the Shanghai terminus.
The door is wedged open to his adjoining bedroom, but instead of settling down next door with his glass of wine, he slumps in the armchair by Toni’s bed. He doesn’t dare close his eyes; he knows he’d sleep only until the small hours. He’d wake up confused, and he’s had enough of that. In those first months, he’d wake in the night and feel a surge of relief, believing he’d woken from a nightmare. Connie hadn’t died. One time, he dreamed he heard the clinking of a cup being stirred in the kitchen below, and he rushed down, believing that Connie couldn’t sleep and she’d decided to make a cup of tea—he was halfway down the stairs before the truth of the matter felled him.
No more daytime or early-evening naps.
It’s a godsend to have Toni’s company, but at the end of the day, he misses the lazy exchange of stories with Connie.
He hopes this trip to China will draw some sort of line, that China will become a new landmark in Toni’s life. In his life, too. Not that any landmark could ever dwarf Connie’s accident. But at least they’ll have something else to refer to as a time marker—in their thoughts, that
Toni lies curled on her bed, and scattered around her on the bedcover are small paper and plastic bags that contain the small treasures she discovered in Shanghai’s South Bund Fabric Market. Hand-embroidered tapes, painted buttons, metallic thread.
He wonders if the fabric market will be the highlight of Toni’s visit to China. It wasn’t what he expected; he’d thought they’d find themselves in an open-air market with semipermanent stalls, rather like Shepherds Bush or Borough Market back in London. In fact, the South Bund Fabric Market turned out to be a three-storey building with escalators—a down-market shopping mall, each floor packed with small shops selling fabrics, scarves, bags, belts. The tailors’ shops displayed sample suits, dresses, skirts, shirts and winter coats on hangers. Shoppers merely pointed at the design they liked, and then they were measured. Or they took a garment for copying. For Dominic, the charm of the fabric market lay solely in seeing Toni’s excitement. But a flash of panic did occur—when she ran back through the market to find the button shop, he thought he’d lost her.
For him, the big eye-opener today was the rail system. China knows how to move people. Shanghai and Suzhou railway stations were the size of airport terminals. There were two departure lounges for every train—one for the front half and one for the back. And the platforms were as wide as airport runways. In their first-class carriage on the shiny white bullet train—he chuckles quietly as he relives the journey—the overhead TV monitors were showing Mr. Bean’s trip to the Launderette. All the passengers were laughing out loud. Occasionally, the show was interrupted, and the driver appeared on the screen with a view of the track ahead. He would turn to the camera and, wearing white cotton gloves, make a clenched-fist salute whenever the train reached maximum speed. Dominic had needed to remind himself more than once that he was in China, not Japan, because in his imagination, Japan had always offered the default vision of the future. He wonders how China will cope when all this new infrastructure needs replacing in a hundred years’ time, just as London is now struggling to replace Victorian water mains, sewers, bridges, tunnels.
Mr. Lu bought the train tickets for them in advance and, fortunately, explained how to decipher the printed information. Dominic smiles when he recollects Toni’s rebuke: Jeez, Dad, I don’t know why you’re panicking so much. It’s all in the guidebook. There’s even a photo of a rail ticket with every bit of information explained. One sight had stopped them dead: a man in iron ankle shackles being escorted by two policemen through the Shanghai terminus.
The door is wedged open to his adjoining bedroom, but instead of settling down next door with his glass of wine, he slumps in the armchair by Toni’s bed. He doesn’t dare close his eyes; he knows he’d sleep only until the small hours. He’d wake up confused, and he’s had enough of that. In those first months, he’d wake in the night and feel a surge of relief, believing he’d woken from a nightmare. Connie hadn’t died. One time, he dreamed he heard the clinking of a cup being stirred in the kitchen below, and he rushed down, believing that Connie couldn’t sleep and she’d decided to make a cup of tea—he was halfway down the stairs before the truth of the matter felled him.
No more daytime or early-evening naps.
It’s a godsend to have Toni’s company, but at the end of the day, he misses the lazy exchange of stories with Connie.
He hopes this trip to China will draw some sort of line, that China will become a new landmark in Toni’s life. In his life, too. Not that any landmark could ever dwarf Connie’s accident. But at least they’ll have something else to refer to as a time marker—in their thoughts, that
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