The King of Shanghai by Ian Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

opened ever so slightly and Clark slipped through the crack. The women lining the carpet clapped, and several shouted his name. He nodded in both directions and then slipped backstage again. A moment later the curtain was drawn.
    Standing at the end of the carpet was a tall, thin, fresh-faced young woman, her hair drawn back tightly. She began to walk towards the seated women. She was wearing a frock coat, the upper part fitted, hugging her body, and the bottom flaring out into a skirt. The high collar looked as if it was inspired by the traditional cheongsam. Down the front were four orb-shaped powder-blue glass buttons; two smaller buttons of the same colour and shape were on each wrist. The coat was made of white linen, and even in the factory light it shimmered. As the model drew closer, Ava saw that the collar was trimmed in light blue.
    “That is spectacular,” May said.
    For the next thirty minutes, four young women modelled Clark’s work. There were jackets, coats, skirts, dresses, and blouses, all of them made from linen and all of them radiating colour in an array of reds, blues, purples, and pinks, by themselves or in combinations with white. Ava wasn’t a fashionista but she was her mother’s daughter; she could recognize quality, and Clark’s work was quality. Like the frock coat, the clothes hinted at their Chinese origin: collars she had seen on cheongsams, the voluminous sleeves associated with a man’s formal shenyi , jackets and skirts that combined elements of a Mao suit with the classic pien-fu style, and wide-bottomed pants that flowed as the models walked.
    After May’s initial reaction to the frock coat, no one spoke. Gillian repeatedly glanced at the other women. But the factory workers weren’t so quiet. They greeted each design with applause and shouts of encouragement. When the last model slipped behind the curtain, they knew the show was over and began to clap rhythmically. Clark emerged and stood among the four models, two on each side. He bowed, reached for the hands of the women nearest to him, and walked with them towards his sister and Ava, May, and Amanda.
    As they neared, Ava stood and began to clap herself. The others followed. Clark stopped a metre away from them and bowed again, his head almost touching his knees. When he looked up, Ava saw tears in his eyes.

( 7 )
    The four women walked back to the boardroom and sat around the table. Amanda began to speak but May cut her off. “Is Clark going to join us?” she asked Gillian.
    “Yes.”
    “Had you seen all those clothes before?”
    “Only piecemeal, never as a collection, and not on models. I hope you’ll pardon me when I say I couldn’t be prouder of my brother.”
    “And so you should be.”
    Clark arrived a few minutes later, his face flushed.
    “Bravo,” May said.
    “The clothes are wonderful,” Ava said.
    He lowered his head and Ava thought she detected tears again, but when he looked up, his eyes were dry.
    “How would you describe your style?” she asked.
    He sat down and took a deep breath. “I love the flowing lines of traditional Chinese clothing. I’ve been searching for ways to marry the attributes of something such as a cheongsam with a Western sensibility, to create a dress that a Western woman would feel comfortable wearing to a cocktail party in New York and a Chinese woman to a wedding in Hong Kong.”
    “You use the word comfortable ,” Ava said. “That’s how I think your clothes look — things that a woman of any size could wear.”
    “That is my intention. I don’t want to make clothes only for women who have a model’s figure.”
    “Everything seems to be made of linen. Is that deliberate too?”
    “I worked with silk at first — Hangzhou silk, of course — but I couldn’t get away from its Chinese history and character. I found myself designing clothes that only a Chinese woman would wear. So I switched to linen. That freed my mind, allowed me to cross