Fragrant Harbour by John Lanchester Page B

goods (like big, cheap folding suitcases, ultra-cheap towels and T-shirts), swapping photos, but all, mostly, talking, all the time. In Hong Kong you get used, withoutreally noticing it, to the fact that everyone is always speaking Cantonese, which tends to sound like a constant argument, whereas in Statue Square on a Sunday you are suddenly in a space where everyone is speaking the exotic twittery sound of Tagalog. Michael didn’t say much, but he had his silent, taking- it-in look.
    Then we went up to the Peak Tram to have dinner in the Peak Café, a thirties sort of upmarket shack with views out over the back of the island towards the South China Sea. It’s a nice spot and a great trip up in the groovy green tramcar with its permanently cross Chinese driver, climbing a thousand feet in a few minutes, at angles which, at one point in particular, make you feel as if you’re going straight up in the air. Michael behaved as if I’d taken him to Madame Tussaud’s or some other strictly- for-tourists clip joint.
    ‘I should have brought my camera,’ he said, which for half a second I thought was a comment about how spectacular the view was – and then realised was a sneer. I said:
    ‘I suppose a picture-postcard view like this is unworthy of a serious artist like yourself.’
    That just came out. I hadn’t planned to say it. Back in England I probably wouldn’t have – I would have bared my teeth and smiled, while inwardly biting my lip and making a mental note to be unimpressed next time Michael tried to show me something. He looked startled.
    ‘Where did that come from?’ he said. It was halfway through the first course before we were back on speaking terms.
    That set the pattern for the whole of his visit. On our walking-and -eating trip to Lamma Island, our trip to see the new Ricky Lam film, a day spent on the beach at Shek-O, a day out on somebody ’s boat with cronies from the magazine, a day spent taking the tram from Kennedy Town to North Point and then walking back via clothes and camera shops and a dim sum joint, a day travelling around the New Territories by public transport; not to mention most the time we spent hanging around the flat when not actually having sex, which remained fine: at all these times and in all these places it was the same. Irritation jumped off me like static. I also could not help noticing the possible signs of another influence in his life. Michael was wearing slightly moreexpensive clothes, not to mention Calvin Klein underpants; and once, at dinner chez Berkowitz, when the conversation turned to Hong Kong’s tax system, he did something unprecedented – he spontaneously offered a political opinion. The next day we made a disastrous expedition to the People’s Republic, in the form of an overnight trip to Shenzen, where we got lost and, unable to make anyone understand our request for directions, wandered around in the beginnings of panic until we were rescued by a landmark we had seen on the way out of the hotel – a winking neon sign for Versace jeans. We slept on opposite sides of the bed.
    We were, I suppose, bound to have a big fight. I held out until the second week, congratulating myself on not having bitten Michael’s head off by then; instead I mixed physical demands with occasional impatience, carping and whingeing – so attractive , don’t you find? I could, however, feel a major eruption coming on. So it was a good joke that the person who did finally snap was Michael; an especially good joke since for all practical purposes he never had a temper to lose.
    What happened was I woke up at 4 o’clock in the morning with a cranium-splitting toothache. Well, I say I ‘woke up’, but it was more as if I was woken – as if the toothache built up a sufficient head of steam, decided it had become adequately painful, and then jolted my shoulder saying, wake up, time for your pain. It was at the back of my mouth on the left side, next to where my wisdom teeth would