Chapter 30

Old Mrs. Chen had stopped grieving over the duck that had gone. It would come back anyway. Let Zhao Qinhua feed it for her.

Chen Shao'er was outside with his brother and sister playing shuttlecock. The feathers came from their own hens and the base was one Chen Yougong had made.

Yuanyuan was too small to play, so she could only stand and watch Chen Shao'er, and it was agony. She kept putting a little foot out to try.

Before long Chen Juanjuan came along, towing Zhao Qingqing and her sister.

Zhao Wanwan came too, today.

The Zhaos were nearly all out in the fields. Zhao Qingqing had cleaned the chicken and duck pens at home, swept the floor, fed everything, and only then dared come out.

Yuanyuan saw Chen Juanjuan arrive and hurried over to pull at her. She wanted to play as well, and her second brother was mean and wouldn't let her.

"Catch. Catch." The more she said it the more worked up she got, and she wanted to get hold of it.

Chen Juanjuan was young, and she didn't understand what Yuanyuan meant at all, and she was impatient to play herself.

"Be good, Yuanyuan, stand over there and watch us." A token bit of soothing, and Yuanyuan was moved aside.

Yuanyuan stood where she was put with her lip stuck out, then sat down under a little stone block and picked at her hands. All right, then. Watching was watching. She accepted her short legs.

Zhao Wanwan stood to one side and watched all this.

The rest of them played like mad things.

"Isn't your sister playing?" Chen Juanjuan leaned over to Zhao Qingqing's ear and whispered it.

Zhao Qingqing looked back at Zhao Wanwan and didn't know what to feel. Her sister had changed, she thought. They hadn't talked properly in a long time, and she didn't know why she had come today either.

"No. She isn't playing." Zhao Qingqing said whatever came out.

Somebody kicked it badly and the shuttlecock came down right in front of Yuanyuan, very nearly on her head.

Chen Shao'er had been laughing and enjoying himself, and when he saw where it had landed he ran over. Don't let it have hit her, or his mum would hear about it and say he was no good.

"Are you all right? It didn't hit you?"

Yuanyuan shook her head, and her small hand closed on the shuttlecock. She had it at last.

Seeing she was unhurt, Chen Shao'er was easy again.

Zhao Wanwan had been watching them and paying no attention at all to Chen Yuanyuan. Chen Yougong's children all did well in that book, every one of them at the top of his own field, and all of them good to the heroine, that is to Chen Xiaoyu, a great support to her. Seeing Chen Shao'er this good to the sister he had been landed with sat badly with her. Why was somebody who should have been killed off as cannon fodder still alive? Still, she wanted the help of the three Chen brothers. That was what the heroine got.

She walked over to Chen Yuanyuan with a smile, meaning to show herself to advantage in front of Chen Shao'er.

"Do you want to play? Shall I play with you?"

Yuanyuan looked up at her. She hadn't felt it a moment ago, and now that feeling of ill will came very strongly. The woman was smiling, and it was wrong.

Chen Shao'er was young and a handful, and Yao Shangqing had brought him up well.

"No need. I'll play with her."

Zhao Wanwan hadn't expected to be turned down by Chen Shao'er first. Though it figured. The three Chen brothers in the book were courteous and gentle on the surface and guarded underneath, and didn't trust people easily.

"It's no trouble. I'll look after her."

Chen Yuanyuan stuck her lip out. She did not want to play with her.

"No. No play."

Zhao Wanwan hadn't expected the sister she'd been landed with to be this unobliging.

Zhao Qingqing thought it very strange too. What was the matter with her sister? She seemed to have turned back into herself. A long time ago she had been like this with her and her little sister.

Yuanyuan had the shuttlecock in her hand. She gave it a good pull and out came all the feathers, and she held them up.

"Look. All. All gone." With a little helplessness in her face.

Chen Shao'er looked at the bald shuttlecock. "Right. Nobody's playing." And he gave Zhao Wanwan a pointed look as he said it.

Chen Juanjuan came over and looked at the ruined thing with real grief.

"Oh. What are we going to play now?" And her small face fell.

Zhao Wanwan looked at Chen Yuanyuan and wondered for a moment whether this piece of cannon fodder had been reborn, or had come across the way she had. How else was she still alive, and how else did she manage to be unobliging every single time, and to look as though she disliked her?

Yuanyuan stood up with her eyes wide, looking as fierce as a small child can. "No. No play."

Chen Shao'er took her hand and led her into the yard, soothing her as they went. "When Dad's home we'll put a new one together."

Yuanyuan nodded and nodded.

Zhao Qingqing watched Chen Yuanyuan go and was anxious about it. "Juanjuan, your sister's cross, isn't she? Is she all right?"

Chen Juanjuan scratched her head, puzzled. She would be all right, surely.

"My third uncle loves her. She'll be all right. He'll make a new one, and then we can all play."

Chen Shaozhi had been playing by himself to one side. He looked up to find his brother and sister both gone, got up off the ground, brushed the dirt off and went too.

Zhao Wanwan stood there alone, thinking whatever she was thinking.

Old Mrs. Chen saw them come back and assumed they had finished playing, and asked nothing.

"Shao'er, come and mind the fire for me." She shouted it at him.

Chen Shao'er said oh. "Granny, are you cooking now?"

"Don't argue, come and work." Old Mrs. Chen's hands never stopped. She looked at the white flour in front of her. That was all the house had left, with the award from her third son, and she set her teeth and put in more of it, and got out the cracklings left over from last time. Vegetable buns, and some cakes baked round the pan.

Chen Shao'er came into the kitchen like a gust of wind.

"Granny, you haven't got anything ready. I can't light a fire yet." He rubbed his nose.

Old Mrs. Chen didn't answer that and asked something else. "Where's Yuanyuan? In the room?"

He shook his head. "I got her some grass. She's feeding the rabbits. My little brother's with her."

"Put water in the pot and bring it up. I want to boil the noodles." She had the dough made.

Chen Shao'er set about it.

When the others came home at midday the buns were steamed, and Yuanyuan had eaten half of one.

Old Mrs. Chen and Yuanyuan had eaten early. She watched Yuanyuan feed the rabbits in the yard and kept an eye on the duck in the pen, swapped only this morning, and wondered whether it would lay.

Yuanyuan looked at the rabbits getting bigger in the cage. The cage had been changed once already, and the bigger the rabbits got the smaller it looked.

"Gran. Gran. Small. Small." Yuanyuan pulled at her hand.

Old Mrs. Chen worked it out and went to look at the cage.

"All right. Don't fret. Granny will have your dad make a bigger one. How's that?" She rubbed Yuanyuan's head fondly as she said it.

Chen Shaoyuan came over with his bowl and felt a shiver down his back. His granny always talked to Yuanyuan in that voice, and sometimes it was frightening.

Yao Shangqing came home at midday to find vegetable buns made again, and was rather startled.

Chen Yougong found a moment to tell her about going over that evening.

"I wanted to surprise you, so I didn't say. Ma's got this ready for us, and we can't take anything that stands out."

Yao Shangqing looked down with her lips pressed together, and her eyes went red. "Ma doesn't mind any more? I thought..."

He put his arms round her and patted her back.

"You know what sort of woman my mother is. She's taken it to heart properly."

Yao Shangqing covered her mouth and nodded.

Outside, old Mrs. Chen was so delighted she laughed out loud. She had barely finished talking to Yuanyuan when the duck laid, and great big eggs they were, three or four of them.

"Good girl, that's the way. They're all laying in our house now. Oh, this is a happy day." Old Mrs. Chen gathered duck eggs in the pen, thoroughly excited.

The hen beside her sidled over to the duck that had just laid. "Friend. Feeling better now, are you?"

The duck flapped her wings. "I am, friend. Over there she fed me so much I couldn't hold out."

The hen flapped too. "It's the ones who got swapped over there I pity. They're suffering."

"Ah well. It's fate. You get used to it." The duck quacked twice, feeling thoroughly relieved.

The chickens and ducks in the yard next door heard their friends talking and set up a racket.

Old Mrs. Chen had no idea what was going on. She gathered eggs and was delighted.

Yuanyuan saw her granny go off to work and set off on her short legs to find her dad, about that big cage.

"Dad. Dad." She was calling before she was in the room.

It made Chen Yougong jump, and he let go of Yao Shangqing.

Yao Shangqing was rather embarrassed too.

He coughed twice. "What does Yuanyuan want her dad for?"

Yuanyuan thought her dad was behaving oddly, and didn't ask. "Rabbit. Big. Cage."

"Oh, a big cage, is it? When I'm home from work today I'll make you one." He took her hand and led her out as he said it.

Old Mrs. Chen had just put the hen and duck eggs away in the kitchen, and came out to find her third son in the yard.

"Here. Tonight, take some more eggs for your wife's parents, for them to boil. Her mother fainted, so her health can't be good."

Chen Yougong looked at the birds in their own pen. "Have we got eggs in the house?" He had never worried about what the household spent, since he handed over what he earned, but the eldest brother's family had taken their share at the split, and it hadn't been enough to start with.

"We have. Don't you worry. Our birds are busy."

Over in the pen the hens and ducks beat their wings in agreement. "Hard-working and capable, that's us."

He nodded. Either way suited him.

Yuanyuan knew her dad had agreed about the new cage and stopped hanging on him, and hearing the birds flapping and calling, off she went into the pen again.

"Eggs. Eggs." Yuanyuan pointed at them and called out.

The chickens and ducks next door heard that, and what instinct had held in check up to now they could hold no longer, and down came the eggs.

The birds on this side went very quiet. Now they were for it.

"Friend. Mind your personal safety." One kindly duck gave the warning and shut up.

The birds next door were appalled, looking at the eggs they had laid, and set their brains to work at speed.

As it happened there was a hole near the corner of the wall, and one hen and one duck began rolling their eggs along with their feet, quickly and steadily, and got them through the hole.

Once they were through, they could breathe again. Surely that wasn't an offence now. They hoped that when this one went back up to heaven she would remember what they had given, and that in their next life they might be people.

Yuanyuan watched two eggs come rolling in through the hole and thought it strange, and couldn't make anything of it.

"Gran. Gran. Eggs. Eggs."

Old Mrs. Chen heard her granddaughter and left her son where he was and hurried over. She had only just collected them. How were there more?

"My word, so there are." Old Mrs. Chen's eyes creased into lines. She went in and brought the hen's egg and the duck's egg out.

"See that? Don't you worry. The birds in this house work hard." She held up the two eggs and said it to Chen Yougong, in excellent spirits.

He rubbed his head and thought what hard-working children he had, to keep the birds this well.

By two in the afternoon the house was emptier again, with work and school.

Old Mrs. Chen found a black cloth bag and put ten hen's eggs and ten duck eggs into it. The weather was hot and they couldn't be kept long, and she mustn't send too many, in case somebody noticed.

Yuanyuan leaned on the edge of the table and watched her pack them.

Old Mrs. Chen saw that the house was empty. Chen Shao'er and Chen Shaozhi had gone out to run wild.

"These are for Yuanyuan's grandpa and grandma. You haven't met them, have you."

Yuanyuan didn't know what a grandpa and grandma were, and she certainly hadn't met them. She tipped her head. "Mm. Not. Met them."

Old Mrs. Chen tied the black cloth bag at the top. She had only ever seen them from a distance herself.

"They're your mum's mum and dad. Things are hard for them now, so we send eggs over for them to eat, or they go hungry and that's a miserable thing."

Yuanyuan couldn't follow it, and worked hard at it anyway, and her head got rather muddled.

"Mm. Hungry. Miserable." Her small face went serious at the word hungry. "Then. Pack more."

Old Mrs. Chen snorted with laughter. "It's packed already. Once we take it over they won't be hungry."

Yuanyuan said oh and nodded.

Old Mrs. Chen talked to her a while longer, and then her head started nodding and she was fighting to stay awake.

Old Mrs. Chen carried her to the bed and sat beside her, stitching layered soles and fanning her and watching for mosquitoes.

"Anybody home?" Li Guilan found the gate open and no sound inside, so she called out.

Old Mrs. Chen heard her old friend and was in the main-room doorway with the fan still in her hand. "Come in if you're coming. What are you shouting for?"

Li Guilan only came in once she had seen her.

"How am I to know whether you're in? And if something went missing it would be blamed on me, wouldn't it."

Old Mrs. Chen gave her a look.

"That'll do. As if I didn't trust you."

Li Guilan came in and saw Chen Yuanyuan on the bed, with her old friend working and fanning her at the same time.

"Asleep, is she?"

Old Mrs. Chen nodded. "What brings you here? No work this afternoon?"

Li Guilan waved a hand, rather pleased with herself. "My son's back from town and he wouldn't hear of me going, said it was too hot. So I didn't. I came out for a walk, didn't see you about, thought you'd be in, and here I am." Then she saw the vegetable buns on the table in the main room.

"Steamed at midday? What have you made all those for?"

Old Mrs. Chen kept nothing from her old friend. Li Guilan knew everything about her household, and she knew all about Li Guilan's relations, and with nothing else to do they went through the gossip.

"They're for the third son's wife's parents."

For a moment Li Guilan didn't follow, and then she did, and covered her mouth in astonishment.

"Her parents are out?"

Old Mrs. Chen shook her head, picked up the fan and gave Yuanyuan a wave of it, and dropped her voice. "No, we're sending it over quietly. Her mother fainted the other day, I hear. Poor souls."

That made sense of it. "Who'd say otherwise. I hear she was a capitalist's daughter, and went abroad, and what a life she had, and look at her life now."

Old Mrs. Chen agreed. "Who'd say otherwise. And it was my daughter-in-law's eldest brother who reported them. Imagine being reported by your own son, who could stand it. And the second son cut them off."

Li Guilan pressed her lips together and agreed with her friend at once. "You'll have to be careful going over, though. It would be bad if anyone saw."

Old Mrs. Chen didn't mention that somebody was helping them. The man was doing them a kindness, and it wouldn't do to say.

"Don't worry. My third son knows all about it."

That said, and seeing her old friend in a good mood, Li Guilan took out of her pocket a little pouch she had embroidered. It worried her. Her daughter wouldn't come to the Chen house whatever she said, so she would have to go another way about it.

"This little pouch. Let Yuanyuan wear it a while, and then I'll take it back and put it on my daughter. Do you think that would work?"

Old Mrs. Chen took the pouch and looked at it, well made. Her old friend's hands were as good as they ever were.

"All right. Whether it works I couldn't tell you."

Li Guilan was so pleased at the yes that she could hardly contain herself. She thought it certainly would.

"It'll work, for sure. And haven't you noticed, you haven't said a word about your leg or your back all year, and you haven't boiled up those herbs the way you used to."

That pulled old Mrs. Chen up short, and it was true. She hadn't boiled them for two years, and it genuinely didn't hurt much, and she had forgotten all about it.

"Well, there you are. That's what comes of having a good granddaughter."

Li Guilan looked at her friend being pleased with herself and was sick with envy. Sour, very sour.

The two of them talked a while and broke it up before work finished.

Yuanyuan slept two hours and woke.

Chen Yougong and the others came off work, and Chen Shaoyuan and the rest came home from school.

Next door, Zhao Qinhua could have died of temper. She had been out to the pen every little while all day, and there was no hen's egg and no duck egg either. She put her head over to look at the pen next door, where they were busy enough, and she even saw an egg lying there. All she could do now was wait for her own chicks to grow. The ones she had brought over were ingrates, eating and laying nothing.

The Chen house had its mind on other things entirely.

This time they waited until it was fully dark before Chen Yougong and Yao Shangqing set out with the things.

Zhou Jiefang was waiting in the same place.

"You're here. You haven't brought much, have you?" He asked again, to be sure.

Chen Yougong opened the bag and let him look.

Only then was Zhou Jiefang easy.

Nobody had time for talk, and they set off.

Chen Yougong held Yao Shangqing's hand tightly.

At the place it was as before. Zhou Jiefang kept watch outside and let the two of them go in.

When Yao Zhizhao and Zhou Xingyue looked up and saw who it was, neither of them could believe it.

Yao Shangqing burst into tears and went down on her knees. She hadn't been able to look after her parents, and the guilt of it was in her.