“Good-bye,” he said. He didn’t look up.

That night, after dinner, she couldn’t relax. Her insides seemed too large for her outside, a queer sensation, as if all that she was feeling couldn’t be contained inside her body. Martin was still away, so she put on her street clothes and got on the bus to town, bumping over the roads, elbow out the window, open to the warm night air. She disembarked in Wanchai, where there seemed to be the most activity. She wanted to be around people, not so alone. The wet market was still open, Chinese people buying their cabbages and fish, the pork hanging from hooks, sometimes a whole pig head, red and bloody, dripping onto the street. This was the peculiarity of Hong Kong. If she walked ten minutes toward Central, all would be civil, large, quiet buildings in the European classical style, and wide, empty streets, yet here, the frenetic activity, narrow alleys, and smoky stalls were another world. All around her, people called to one another loudly, advertising their wares, a smudge-faced child played in the street with a dirty bucket. A pregnant woman carrying vegetables under her arm jostled her and apologized, her movements heavy and clumsy. Claire stared after her, wondering what it would be like to have a child inside you, moving around. A young couple with linked arms sat down at a noodle stand and broke out loudly in laughter.

Next to her, a wizened elderly lady tugged at Claire’s arm. Dressed in the gray cotton tunic and trousers most of the local older women seemed to favor, she had a small basket of tangerines on her arm.

“You buy,” she said. She smelled like the white flower ointment the locals used to fend off everything from the common cold to cholera. One of her teeth was gray and chipped, the others antique yellow. The woman’s brown face was a spider web of deeply etched lines.

“No, thank you,” said Claire. Her voice rang out like a bell. It seemed as if her foreign voice stilled the bustle around her for a moment.

The woman grew more insistent.

“You buy! Very good. Fresh today.” The woman pulled at Claire’s arm again. Then she reached up and touched Claire’s hair like a talisman. The local Chinese did that sometimes, and while it had been frightening the first time, Claire was used to it by now.

“Good fortune,” said the old woman. “Golden.”

“Thank you,” said Claire.

“You buy! ” the woman repeated.

“I’m not looking for anything today, but thank you very much.” The hum around her resumed. Claire continued walking. The old woman followed her for a few yards, then shambled off to find more promising customers.

Why not buy a tangerine from an old lady, Claire thought suddenly. Why not? What would happen? She couldn’t think of why she had declined, as if her old English self, with its defenses and prejudices, was dissolving in the humid, fetid environment around her.

She turned around but the woman had already disappeared. She breathed deeply. The smells of the wet market entered her, intense and earthy. Around her, Hong Kong thrummed.

And then, suddenly, he was everywhere. She saw Will Truesdale waiting for the bus, at Kayamally’s, queuing up at the cinema. And though he never saw her, she always lowered her head, willing him not to notice. And then she’d peek up, to see if he had. He had a way of seeming completely contained within himself, even when he was in a crowd. He never looked around, never tapped his feet, never looked at his watch. It seemed he never saw her.

When she went for Locket’s lesson on Thursdays, she found herself looking for Will Truesdale. She heard the amahs laughing at his jokes in the kitchen, and she saw his jacket hanging in the entry foyer, but his physical presence was elusive, as if he slipped in and out, avoiding her. She lingered at the end of her lesson, but she never saw him or the car.

Then they were at the beach the next weekend. She hardly knew how it had happened. She had come home. The phone rang. She picked it up.

“I’ve a friend with one of those municipal beach huts,” he said. “Would you like to go bathing?” As if nothing had happened. As if she would know who it was by his voice.

“Bathing,” she said. “Where? ”

“On Big Wave Bay,” he said. “It’s a perk for the locals but they don’t mind if we sign up as well. It’s a lottery system and you get a cottage for the season. A group of us usually get together to do it and swap weekends. It’s quite nice.”

She shut her eyes and saw him, Will, the difficult man with his thin shoulders and gray eyes, his dark hair that fell untidily into his eyes, a man who stared at her so intently she felt quite transparent, a man who had just asked her to go bathing with him, unaccompanied. And she opened her eyes and said yes, she would join him at the beach that Sunday. Martin was away for three weeks and he had telegraphed from Shanghai to let her know he would be delayed for some time. He was taking a tour of major Chinese cities to see their water facilities, which he expected to be very primitive.

And so, it was water. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. How it rendered everything changed. She was a different woman in a different sphere. And Will! The way he plunged in, without a thought, his limp gone, dissolved into the current. He was a fish, darting here and there, swimming to the horizon, farther than she would ever go.

They were the only non-Chinese people at the beach. The water was still warm from the summer, the air just starting to crisp. The hut was a simple structure with wooden cupboards; inside were communal woven straw mats. The sand was fine and speckled with small, black withered leaves. Families picnicked around them, chattering loudly, small children scrambling messily in the sand. He wanted to go out to the floating diving docks, some two hundred yards out. When she said she couldn’t, that it was too far, he said of course she could, and so she did. Out there, they climbed onto the rocking circle and sunned themselves like seals. He lay in the sun, eyes closed, as she surreptitiously watched, his ribs jutting out, his body pocked with unnamed scars of unknown origin. He wore short cotton trousers that were heavy with water. He wasn’t the type to wear a bathing suit.

It was hot, hot. The sun hid behind clouds for brief moments and then blazed out again. There was no cover. She wished for a cold drink, a tree for shade, both of which seemed impossibly far away on the shore.

“We should have swum out with a thermos of water,” she said.

“Next time,” he said, eyes still shut.

“Tell me your story,” she said, after allowing herself a minute to digest what that meant. She was still vibrating with the strangeness of the situation-that she was out at the beach with a man, intentions unknown.

“I was born in Tasmania, of Scottish stock,” he said mockingly, as if he were starting his own autobiography. He sat up and crossed his legs-a swami.

“Why? ” she said.

“My father was a missionary and we lived everywhere,” he said. “I’ve only been to England once, and loathed it. My mother was a bit of a bohemian and she had some money from her family so we were set in that way.”

Hong Kong was full of people like Will, wandering global voyagers who had never been to Piccadilly. Claire had been just once, and there had been an old man in tattered clothes who would shout “Fornicators! ” at everyone who passed.

“And how did you learn? ”

“School, you mean? Taught at home-good basic education of the Bible and the classics.” He held up his hands so that they blocked the sky. “It’s all you need, really, isn’t it?” His voice was sarcastic. “Solid background for life.”