Chapter 12

Zhao Qinhua went about with her mouth pushed out, washed up in the kitchen and took herself back to her room.

"Look at this family. How is anybody supposed to live in it? I could spit."

Chen Youliang was playing with his son. He looked round at her. "What are you cross about now? Didn't you get enough to eat?"

That made her crosser. She had eaten plenty. Her mood was still bad.

"I'm going to my mother's tomorrow." All that stored-up temper, and this was what came out.

Chen Youliang looked at her as though she were mad. "Will there be anything to eat at your mother's?"

She had an answer and couldn't say it. Her family wasn't well off, was it. Not everyone has a brother who can do carpentry.

"My elder brother scratches a living out of the ground, and my younger brother isn't married yet, so they're pressed. You can't blame my mum and dad."

That put him on his guard at once. "Don't you go carrying grain out of here to them again. Ma caught you last time. Or have you forgotten?"

Zhao Qinhua pressed her lips together and let it go. She had carried grain home that time, and her mother-in-law found out and went and got it back, and a small thing like that ended up known all over the village. Shameful enough.

Chen Yougong got back to his own room, felt in his pocket and remembered Auntie Li's sweets.

"Where did you get those?" Yao Shangqing looked at them in his hand.

He explained.

"Perhaps we should give them to your mother, or it won't look good if the eldest's wife finds out."

He shook his head. "No need." Then he beckoned.

"Shaoyuan. Share these out with your brothers."

Chen Shaoyuan came running and his eyes went wide. Was it New Year? Meat, and sweets, and White Rabbits at that.

"Dad, do we give some to my sister?"

Chen Yougong laughed and rubbed his head. "No. Your sister's too small, she can't have them."

Chen Shaoyuan sighed. He thought about the duck eggs he had found, which she couldn't eat either. His poor sister. None of the good things were allowed.

"When will she be big, then? Uncle's boy Chengzhuang can eat things already."

Chen Yougong thought about it. "By the time you're at school and she's walking."

Chen Shaoyuan nodded, taking it in. He shared the sweets out between his brothers, and with his own in his mouth he went and leaned over the side of his sister's bed. "Grow up fast. I'll give you all my sweets."

The carpentry in Baijia Village ran on for more than two months before Chen Yougong handed the job over. Yue Chuan collected the money and the coupons from the commune and gave the lot to Chen Yougong. It was his job, so the earnings were his, and how he shared them with the apprentices was up to him.

He kept some for himself and divided the rest between them. They had worked well, after all, and asked questions, and taken the hard parts.

Young Wang looked at the money and coupons in his hand, quite overcome. It was the first share he had ever been given.

"Thank you, Brother Chen. Thank you." He bowed, over and over.

Chen Yougong patted his shoulder. "Work hard. Things will get better."

Young Wang went to bow again, and Chen Yougong stopped him, and that was that.

He took it all home, working out as he went how to spend it. Set aside the school money for the children first, and there wasn't much left.

Yao Shangqing was outside with the baby. She was nearly three months old now.

Auntie Li was there talking and playing with her, and other people came over too. Everyone had known the third Chen son had taken in a child and it would have been awkward to call at the house, but out here they were going to have a look.

"My, isn't she lovely. She's fairer than a town child."

"She is, she is. Look at those little eyes going round. There's life in them."

"You know, her parents must be good-looking."

Zhao Wanwan was passing with food for Zhao Fangsong in the fields. She remembered this woman. Yao Shangqing died in the last life before her parents got their return to the city, and Chen Yougong never married again. He worked with the book's heroine after that and did rather well.

She had asked around about the business with the arm, and that Uncle Niu was most likely the man who set Chen Yougong up in the book. This time it had turned, and he had lost a hand instead. Things had changed already. Had the heroine come back yet? She looked over her shoulder at the baby being carried about. That would be the sister who got thrown away. Taken in by Chen Yougong, of all people. What luck.

She took the food to the edge of the field, called Zhao Fangsong over, waited for him to eat and went off with the basket.

"Chen Shaozhi, be careful. Don't get mud on your clothes or Mum has to wash them when she gets home." Chen Shaoyuan piped it at him the moment he saw.

Chen Shaozhi carried on as though he hadn't heard, grabbed another handful and grinned at his brother.

Zhao Wanwan turned at the voices. So those were the Chen children.

Chen Xiaoyu would be there, then. Sure enough, when she looked there were two girls, and the smaller one must be her. This was the heroine of the book. She would come back at seven years old, with a mother who cursed her for not being a boy and a spineless father, and a whole life of misery behind her. After she came back she would work at her schooling, and because her third uncle had helped her go to school she would help him in return. The girl who had lived once already was hard as nails. She studied, she cut her own family off, she got into university, and because she knew what was coming she went on to be somebody, with a happy family besides. Looking at that plain little face now, Zhao Wanwan thought: if I did something now, would the heroine be gone for good, and the way clear for me? It was the first time the thought had come to her.

Chen Xiaoyu felt someone on the embankment looking at her and turned round. It was Zhao Wanwan. Wasn't she her big sister's friend?

"Dayu, has Wanwan come to see you?"

Chen Dayu felt the nudge and looked up at the embankment too. They hadn't played together in a long time. She waved.

Zhao Wanwan saw her, turned and walked away.

"What's the matter with her?" Chen Dayu shook her head. She had no idea.

They played on the embankment half the day before going home.

Yao Shangqing looked at Chen Shaozhi and sighed. "What have you been at now?"

He only grinned up at her. He couldn't tell yet whether he was being praised or scolded.

"Mum, I told him not to play in the mud and he did it anyway." Chen Shaoyuan was watching his sister, and still found time to turn and report it.

New Year was almost on them. Old Mrs. Chen went to queue at the co-op shop. A year of saved coupons would all go in these few days.

Chen Yuanyuan lay with her eyes wide, looking at the people around her and then at the birds going over, and found it all new.

Chen Juanjuan leaned in to look at her too, and while Chen Shaoyuan wasn't watching she poked the little cheek and giggled to herself. This sister was good fun.

It was a good year for the Chens, with Chen Yougong taking on more work than usual.

Old Mrs. Chen gritted her teeth and asked for an extra half jin of pork, and with what the village had shared out when they killed the pig a few days before, there was enough for a proper New Year.

She got out the white flour she had been saving as well and made twenty solid white-flour dumplings. Whatever else, they had dumplings at New Year. A bit of good cheer was enough.

On the table there was glass noodle stewed with pork, and the extra two liang of pig offal from the village share-out. None of it was good meat, so Yao Shangqing stewed it all together.

The rest was a few simple stir-fried dishes, but they smelled wonderful. Old Mrs. Chen had queued early when she bought the meat and got a piece with plenty of fat on it, and cooked long in the pot it gave up a great deal of lard.

Then there was what there was every year, the buns and the pickles, and gruel made from dried sweet potato.

One plate of dumplings, quickly divided, and New Year's dinner was over.

In the spring of 1969 the county wanted a new lot of beds for the factory dormitories, and Yue Chuan put Chen Yougong's name forward. That meant going into the county every day. He had meant to rest for a while, but the luck this year was such that there was no time to rest in.

Old Mrs. Chen couldn't stop smiling either. She felt for her son, but the money and the coupons coming in were solid things.

Wang Fen was in a good mood too. Yu Lili was expecting again, and she had been to a blind fortune-teller privately, who said it would be a son this time. She walked with the wind behind her now. The gift she hadn't sent her son's in-laws at New Year, she had Zhao Fangsong take over afterwards, and she wasn't ashamed to do it.

Yu Lili didn't dare be glad too early this time. With the fourth she had wanted sour food every day, and with this one she wanted spicy, and she kept that from her mother-in-law and didn't dare say a word about it.

Zhao Wanwan saw the mood Wang Fen had been in lately. She was thinking about how Chen Xiaoyu, after she came back, made a great deal of money trading on the black market. It itched at her. She had been here a long while now and had had no chance at all. Wang Fen had nothing in her head but a grandson, and gave no thought to anything else.

"Granny, I hear if you go a bit further up the hill from our village there's a kind of straw mushroom you can find. They say it's medicine and you can eat it too. It builds you up."

Wang Fen didn't follow. "And?"

"Granny, we could go and find them, and take them to the black market to sell. Look at the last time, when I took Dad and we sold that one chicken. Wasn't that enough to buy us meat?" Zhao Wanwan was still thinking about that meat bun, and about the meat coupons from last time, which the old woman had never once brought out. At New Year the table had still been pickles and buns and cornmeal gruel.

"Are you out of your mind? The last time was bad enough, I was frightened to death. I'm telling you now, don't go turning into a bad element, or they'll arrest you and parade you through the streets." Wang Fen looked at her as though she were a prize pig.

Zhao Wanwan hadn't expected that. The Wang Fen in the book wasn't like this at all. Money mad, grandson mad, and the three sisters had had a wretched life of it.

Wang Fen picked up her bowl of stripped corn and stood up, still turning over what the girl had said. Speculating and trading was not to be done. The slogans were up on the walls every day of the year. She couldn't think how this granddaughter had got so bold. She would have the fortune-teller round tomorrow to call her soul back.