May 8, 1953

A CHANCE to get to know the Chens better arose. Not that Claire felt she wanted to.

It had been an odd circumstance. Locket’s mother had come into the room after the lesson, looking rather harried. There was something about her that was different these days. She spent most of the time locked up in her room, it seemed, as she was now almost always home when Claire came for Locket’s lesson. And she had lost so much weight she was gaunt.

She started when she saw Claire.

“Oh, Mrs. Pendleton,” she said. “How are you?”

“Fine, thank you.” Claire started to put away her things. It was the end of the hour. Locket had scampered off as soon as Claire had leaned back from the piano.

“I say,” Mrs. Chen began. “You wouldn’t be free for dinner tonight, would you? You and your husband? I know it’s terribly short notice.”

Claire didn’t know what to say. Her mouth opened but nothing came out.

“It would be lovely to have you. Victor and I are having a dinner party, you see…”

And then Claire did see. It was a last-minute invitation. Someone had dropped out and they needed two people without other obligations.

“I’m afraid…”

“Oh, please say you’ll come,” Mrs. Chen cried. “It’s a nice group of people. Government officials as well, so I would think Mr. Pendleton would be interested.” She dangled this before Claire.

“Well…” she said. She knew Martin would want to go.

“It’s settled, then. It’s at The Golden Lotus, a Cantonese restaurant in Central at eight. We have a private room.”

“Thank you so much for the invitation,” Claire had said.

“Do you think they’ll expect us to eat caterpillars or chicken’s feet?” Martin asked at home when told about their sudden plans.

“Who knows what they do,” Claire said. “I won’t eat anything like that.” She watched Martin wet his comb and draw it through his hair.

“What shirt should I wear?” he asked.

“I don’t know why we’re going to this dinner, I really don’t,” she said, but Martin had already left the room to rummage through his shirts. She stared at her face in the mirror. She looked drawn. She powdered her nose and pinched her cheeks for color.

The dinner did not go well. It was difficult to have a conversation with people who talked on a scale Claire was unused to. And they talked about themselves so much!

They had arrived on time, so they were the first other than the Chens, who were standing in a corner having a drink.

“Oh, I’m so glad you could make it,” Melody said, coming toward them. Her gaunt body was enclosed in a fantastic outfit of green silk chiffon with bell sleeves, and she had on emerald chandelier earrings and the most enormous emerald ring Claire had ever seen. She couldn’t take her eyes off the stone.

“Melody,” Claire said, feeling the unfamiliar name on her tongue. She had thought about what she was going to call Mrs. Chen and decided on the way to the restaurant it would be appropriate for her to call Mrs. Chen by her first name since it was a social occasion. “Melody, this is my husband, Martin Pendleton. We met briefly at the beach club.”

Martin and Mr. Chen shook hands.

“I understand you’re in water,” Mr. Chen said. He took Martin over to get a drink from the bartender.

“Your dress is lovely,” Mrs. Chen said of the simple shift Claire had also worn to the Arbogasts’ party on the Peak that day ages ago, when she first met Will. “I adore white, so fresh.” She seemed sincere. Her once-pretty face reminded Claire of a bony chicken, the flesh thin but sagging.

They were perfectly pleasant-ideal hosts, entertaining and engaging, introducing them to every single person who arrived, and yet Claire felt more and more uncomfortable as the night progressed.

She was seated next to a Mr. Anson Ho, who operated textile factories in Shanghai and was setting up new ones in Hong Kong. He made it very clear that the scale was large, and that the British had nothing to do with his success.

“Chinese are very entrepreneurial,” he kept saying. “We will find a way to make money anywhere. The old government did not give enough chances to the local population. The British are very arrogant but they need to realize it is a new age now. The Chinese in Hong Kong need to govern themselves.” He had a red, bulbous nose that suggested too many nights of Cognac. He drank his wine roughly, swirling it around in large circles, gulping it down. She nodded and smiled.

Martin was seated away from her, and was talking to an attractive Brazilian woman. He had drunk a fair amount and his gestures were becoming more animated. Around the table they spoke of Red China, the Koreas, “Rhee is playing with fire,” and what was going on in Myanmar. Opposite Claire was Belle, a woman from America, a journalist, she said, and she declared the harbor in Hong Kong to be inferior to the ones in Sydney and Rio. Belle smoked theatrically and asked Claire’s opinion about the harbor matter and Claire wiped her mouth with her napkin and excused herself to go to the powder room.

There, she found Melody Chen washing her hands nervously, wringing them again and again in the water, looking at herself in the mirror. She jumped when Claire came in. The ring rested on the basin.

“That’s a beautiful stone,” Claire said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I have to take it off before I wash my hands,” Melody said, drying her hands. “Emeralds are very fragile and I’m afraid I’ll do something to it. It keeps slipping off my finger too.” She picked it up gingerly and slipped it back on. “Such a bother!”

“You’ve lost such a lot of weight,” Claire said. “Are you all right?”

“Fine, yes, fine,” Melody said, not meeting her eye. “I must take better care of myself. Victor says I run around too much.”

Claire didn’t move although she was blocking the way to the door.

“Are you having a good time?” The Chinese woman stepped around her. “Victor and I were so glad you could join us on such short notice. We’re delighted with Locket’s progress-you’ve been a real boon to her musical education.” She held the door open for a moment. “It’s a nice evening, isn’t it?” The door closed behind her.

Claire took one of the cloths carefully folded on the restroom shelf and wiped all the moisture off the basin. It looked pristine again.

When she returned to the table, people were reminiscing about the war and the aftermath.

“What I found extraordinary,” Melody was saying, “was how, after the war, Hong Kong was so friendly then, and there was so much good feeling toward all and sundry, and then when everyone starting coming across the border, that lasted awhile. But now, of course, if someone manages to come over, they’re no longer greeted with such enthusiasm. There are just too many of them, and too many sad stories. Our sympathy has a time limit. You know Betty Liu had some six relatives staying with her for a year. She finally managed to pack them off to Canada but it took some doing. She had to hire three more maids!”

“That must have made for a busy ‘Arrivals and Departures’ column,” Belle said, speaking of the much-read column in the Post that marked those leaving Hong Kong by aircraft, and those who had arrived and were staying at the Gloucester.

“It’s like the tide, the Chinese come and go from China to Hong Kong depending on what turns history takes,” said Victor. “But nothing ever changes too much.”

“Where were you?” Belle asked Melody. “Were you here when the Japanese were?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Victor saw what was coming far before it did, and he packed me off to California to stay with my college room-mate, who lives in Bel Air. I was pregnant at the time.”

“Very clever of him,” Belle said. “But he’s always been clever.”