We Two Alone by Jack Wang

Author:Jack Wang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2020-07-07T19:54:10+00:00

* * *

The dining room was downstairs, on the lower ground floor, an open space with two sliding glass doors and a large picture window, all of which looked out onto the garden. On my way in, I passed the cook finishing off in the kitchen, a woman of indeterminate middle age who greeted me warmly. The dining room table was long; I sat across from Fiona while her parents sat at either end. After raising our glasses, we started on the Sunday roast, and I wasn’t sure whether to speak or only speak when spoken to.

“This is lovely,” I finally ventured. “And you have a lovely home.”

“Do you know where the name ‘Belsize’ comes from?” Mr. Turner asked. “From the phrase bel assis. French for ‘beautifully situated.’ ”

“It is,” I said.

“This neighbourhood is nearly a thousand years old. Ethelred the Unready granted the manor of Hampstead in 986 —”

“Dad.”

“— part of which later became the manor of Belsize. Richard Steele had a cottage on Haverstock Hill. Queen Victoria came out here for country drives.”

I was compelled to say, “I grew up on Gerrard Street, in the building where John Dryden once lived,” then heard how strange that sounded. But Mr. Turner just smiled.

“And how did you come to live on Gerrard Street?”

“Here we go,” Fiona said.

I flashed her a look to say it was fine. “My father moved to Chinatown when he came to London in the early sixties.” Dad had been a rice farmer in the New Territories, I explained, squeezed out by the so-called “vegetable revolution,” and the only work he could find was in catering.

“I thought your parents lived in Stoke.”

“They do now. My mother worked in catering too, but they didn’t like working for others, so they scrimped and saved and started their own takeaway. But it wasn’t easy. They weren’t just competing against other Chinese but Indians, Italians, and Cypriots. Plus Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and M&S, which started making Chinese ready meals —”

“You have something in common with Mum,” Fiona said happily. “She doesn’t like Tesco, either.”

Mrs. Turner cleared her throat and stiffened, now that the spotlight was on her. “I’m part of a preservation society here in Belsize Park.”

“And they don’t want Tesco moving in,” Fiona said. “It wouldn’t be . . . consistent with the character of the neighbourhood.”

“It wouldn’t be,” her father said. “Next thing you know the streets will be full of lorries and car parks and we’ll go the way of American cities.”

Fiona smiled, as if she had goaded them. “Sorry, Peter. I interrupted you.”

“Where was I? Yes, too much competition, so my parents moved farther and farther from Gerrard Street. When I was nine, we moved to Birmingham, but even Brum was too crowded, so we moved to Stoke. If you’ve ever wondered why Chinese run takeaways in every lonely corner of the world . . .”

“So your parents met in London,” Mrs. Turner said, taking a different interest.

“Actually, no. After a year, Dad went back to Hong Kong and married Mum.

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