Читать книгу Hong Kong Belongers - Simon Barnes - Страница 10

The telephone splintered the silence. Alan ceased typing and got up from his desk, a massive metal thing rather like M’s. King had supplied it to him on indefinite loan. He passed through to the main room of his flat. The telephone stood on a smallish table by the window. Alan seized it. ‘Hello?’ he said, looking approvingly at the South China Sea. He could see the triple-decker ferry moving out towards Cheung Chau, also a small craft near the shore from which a pair of noble savages did the rounds of their fish traps.

‘Colin Webb, Business PanAsia.’

‘Oh, hello –’ was it too early in the relationship to say Colin? – ‘there.’

‘Thanks for coming in last week, Alan. Sorry not to get back to you before, but you know how it is.’

‘No worries, Colin.’

‘I was looking over your list, some smart ideas. I particularly like the eccentric businessman. I’d like you to go ahead on that one.’

Pleasure flowed through Alan. Here he was, being commissioned to write a story for the top business magazine in Hong Kong, and yet he was watching a sampan and wearing a sarong. A sarong? Well, why not? The temperature was in the eighties and air conditioning was for non-island-dwelling wimps.

He put the phone down and adjusted the sarong. He hadn’t quite got the folding right yet, it tended to slip without warning. André, who had donated the sarong to Alan – it was bright red and copiously flowered – said he had spent half a lifetime watching the sarong-clad women of various Asian nations in the eternally disappointed hope of seeing the sarong slip unexpectedly from their golden bodies. Alan wore the sarong as his island work uniform, with a khaki army surplus shirt worn unbuttoned above it.

It was time – no, it wasn’t time for a beer, don’t be stupid, it was time for another cup of coffee to celebrate the glories of the commission. Let’s see, two thousand words at sixty cents each was, well, more than a thousand anyway, well, it was $1,2.00, wasn’t it? And there was the story on the trams for Hong Kong Life. And the story about the Peak for the Hong Kong Airlines magazine Josun! And there was the regular work, the subbing and rewriting for Reg at HK Biz. And it was all going to add up to, well, er, definitely more than he would have made had he been working for the Hong Kong Times. My God, a milestone had been passed. A triumph. Surely that was worth – no, it wasn’t. It was barely eleven o’clock. He filled the kettle and put it on his two-ring stove. It leapt into life at the merest touch of a match, and so it should have done. He had purchased a new cylinder of Calor Gas the previous day. He had paid an additional five dollars so that the cylinder might be carried up the 176 steps to his door. The task was accomplished by a pair of ancient women who suspended the cylinder from beneath a bamboo pole for portage.

The kettle boiled and Alan poured boiling water onto brown powder, adding a splash from a carton of UHT milk. He must get round to making proper coffee. But anyway, a proper coffee break was in order.

He took the mug of brown liquid to the door, which stood open as usual. Outside, in his concrete garden, he had set out a few plastic chairs and a table. To one side an inflated airbed lay perishing slowly in the sun. He sat on one chair, placed his feet on another. From the village below, he heard the sound of power tools in operation. Building, always building. But even from his seated position, he could see the chessboard field below. A slight figure, in jeans rolled to her knees, was working one of the patches. Was it the beautiful schoolgirl that André had introduced as Priscilla? He would marry Priscilla and live for ever on choisum and pak-choi and beer. But he was winning, was he not?

Voices rose suddenly in the Ng estate below and beyond his flat: the Ng clan had several ancient women about the place, and a number of unexplained females of all ages – whether retainers, meddling half-retired servants or poor relations, Alan did not know. One of these, the youngest but by no means young, a woman of some character, with a certain faded beauty, he knew was called Chai. They were given to energetic quarrelling, of which the only word Alan could understand was ‘Aiyaaaah!’ This, he thought, could mean anything at all save the possibility that it was the speaker’s own fault.

Which reminded him. He finished his coffee and went inside to call Reg, grabbing just in time at his sarong. ‘Looking good, old boy. Cleared up a hell of a lot yesterday. Good of you to stay late. It will be off to the typesetters any minute now. No, no, no, I’ll lock up, don’t dream of coming in. Not even sure about tomorrow. Let’s talk after I’ve gone through the post. Call me about ten.’

‘Thanks, Reg.’

‘No, no, thank you, old boy. Never known what it’s like to be ahead of myself before.’

After a few more gratifying amiabilities, they rang off. How splendid. The way was clear for the first step in the piece on the eccentric businessman. Alan took a perfunctory wash beneath the dribbling showerhead; it’s like little boys pissing on you, Charles had said. Surely the Ng well wasn’t running dry again.

Alan dressed in cotton jeans, twenty bucks the pair in the place behind the tramstop in Wanchai, and an almost respectable shirt. Combed his hair, removed the loose hairs from the teeth without looking to see how many. Did that show how relaxed he was, or how worried? He put on a pair of black cotton kung-fu slippers bought from China Products, and left the flat. Closed the door behind him, as a security measure, but did not lock it. He did not even know where the key was. Hadn’t seen it for weeks.

He walked around the side of the house and climbed the stairs. As he walked past Cool Cool Cool!, he tapped the poster, as was now his superstitious habit. This was to remind him that never, no matter how drunk, would he again venture out into the South China Sea with André and his ghastly boat. He climbed the last flight, and knocked on the door. King’s voice called out in Cantonese bass, presumably bidding him welcome. So Alan let himself in.

King was sitting on one of the sofas; opposite him, the far side of a low glass table, a Chinese man. ‘Ah, my young friend. You know Mr Ng, of course. And Ah-Hei.’

‘Of course.’ Mr Ng, possessor of that most wonderful of Cantonese surnames, was a man he saw regularly, and nodded to. As well as the estate next door, he owned Ng’s restaurant, down in the village, where Alan ate two or three times a week with his island companions, any time they felt like aiming above the traditional bucket of shit at Ah-Chuen’s. It was a place decorated with the single-mindedness that all Chinese prefer when it comes to eating: no frivolous distractions. The principal decoration was a series of tanks containing still-swimming dinners. Mr Ng himself was another aspect of décor: he was invariably to be found, sitting on a high stool behind a desk, clacking at an abacus and calligraphing mysterious signs into a huge ledger. Business was business and food was food, and Ng’s restaurant was a temple. Ah-Hei was another aspect of décor. He had a shimmering black mane of hair, and looked like the hero of a martial arts film. This was because he was a martial arts hero: a real one. He was a genuine kung-fu adept. Charles said he had once seen Ah-Hei deal with a tableful of belligerent Chinese revellers: ‘Fastest thing on two legs I have ever seen. Looks stupid on the movies. But that bastard is real.’

Mr Ng had smartened himself up for this visit to King. He wore a clean white shirt instead of his usual dirty white singlet. Even so, his outfit probably cost even less than twenty dollars; Alan guessed that he could put his hands in the pocket of his China Products trousers and pull out enough cash to buy a Mercedes. He smiled at Alan; one large and unmissable gold tooth. ‘You like my restaurant.’

It was not a question. ‘Oh yes, very much. Nice place.’

‘You drink much beer in my restaurant.’

Nor was that. Praise, admiration, or perhaps a neutral acceptance of the differences between races. It was all profit, anyway, and boozing gweilos hardly made more noise than feasting Chinese. ‘Nice place,’ Alan said lamely.

‘Ve’y nice place.’

Alan turned to King. ‘Er, something I want to discuss with you, but it’ll keep.’

‘A moment, my friend.’ He and Mr Ng then embarked on a conversation in Cantonese with much guffawing from Mr Ng. No, he really would start to learn the language properly. Buy a book. Buy a tape. No, fall in love with a beautiful Cantonese girl. Alan examined King’s family photograph, idly speculating on the sexual potential of the pigtailed daughter. Perhaps she was now grown up, beautiful, available, ready to fall in love with him at first sight, to tumble into his bed in a wild whim of passion. King and Mr Ng shook hands, not without warmth. Then Mr Ng turned to Alan, and bestowed on him a final blessing from his golden mouth.

‘You come to my restaurant tonight, drink much beer, hahaha.’

‘Hahaha,’ agreed Alan. Ah-Hei got to his feet, still without offering a word, and walked cat-footed after his master.

‘You moving into the restaurant business, then, King?’ Alan asked, when they were alone.

‘Ng is an old friend of mine. We have done business together for many a year. His restaurant is only one of his interests. He owns the well, for example. Water is power on Tung Lung, Alan. Ng is also in property; he owns this place, among many others. He sub-lets much of the market-gardening land in the valley. He has a share in most of the fishing boats.’

‘And he owns the shrimp-paste factory outright, doesn’t he?’

‘No, that is Chuen-suk.’ Alan remembered the silver-haired Coca-Cola drinker at the waterfront café. ‘Chuen-suk and Ng are big rivals. Chuen-suk has the better well, and that means greater power. But my partner, Ng, is the more enterprising man, with more diverse interests. A big man, Alan, a big man on Tung Lung.’

‘Oh,’ Alan said. ‘I didn’t realise you were in partnership.’

‘In some aspects. In property, a little, but mainly we work together on import-export.’

Oh. ‘Actually, it was business that I wanted to talk to you, King.’

‘What else does anyone ever want to talk about in this town?’ This was brought out with a rhetorical flourish, as if it were something of a mot. Alan laughed, remembering from somewhere a line about it being almost as good being a hypocrite as a liar: the same warm feeling inside. And, allowing the smile to remain on his face, he made his proposal: suggesting that King be the subject of a ‘portrait’ in Business PanAsia. He had not expected difficulty, relying on King’s habitual readiness to oblige. But he was surprised by King’s flattered delight. Alan felt a comfortable frisson of the journalist’s endless source of power: the promise, or threat, of publication.

‘Tremendous, Alan. I’d be happy to be a “portrait”. When would you like the ordeal to commence?’

‘Right now, if by any chance you are free.’

‘For you, Alan, I am always free.’ So Alan ran downstairs to fetch a notebook, and returned to find King at the fridge liberating a pair of cans. ‘Would the roof be a suitable place for this inquisition?’

‘Admirable.’ So they climbed the island’s final flight of stairs. Table and chairs stood beneath a canopy of vine; other plants grew around in heavy glazed pots, decorated with Chinese characters or bamboo leaves. Below them the harbour, the fields to one side. Priscilla, if it were she, had gone. At sea, the twelve o’clock ferry was heading towards its berth. Alan could see the flow of people moving towards the jetty through the narrow streets, the wheeled motor-carts vying for the leading positions for loading and unloading.

‘To business, my friend. Shoot. As they say.’

‘Well, er, what is your main line of business?’

It was a question that gave deep delight. King smiled to himself for a long time, looking out across the sea, for all that there were no noble savages in sight. At last he replied, ‘Love, Alan. Love.’

Alan wrote ‘love’ in his notebook.

‘Now I can see that I have surprised you. Business is supposed to be a matter of oppositions. Enmity and hatred. But that is not how I work, my friend. I say this: there is only one sort of good business, and that is when both parties walk away as winners.’

King spoke as if listening to him speaking at length was an experience all serious people should undergo at some stage in their lives. He started, fulsomely, with his childhood in Shanghai, the Baptist school run by his father. ‘I learnt love in English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien.’

His father had died shortly after the fall of Shanghai and their enforced move to Hong Kong. ‘Of a broken heart, Alan. I was sixteen, and never went to school again. There was nothing anyone could teach me.’

By the age of twenty-four, he was a millionaire. ‘Import-export. Contacts with China, always contacts with China. Hong Kong was ever the financial pore through which the Chinese dragon breathed.’ Alan hesitated over the shorthand outline for dragon.

The enmity of his partner, who was involved in the Triads – ‘for the love of God don’t print that, Alan’ – had seen King reduced to nothing. But by the age of thirty he had built up a second fortune. ‘Like Hong Kong itself, I diversified into manufacturing. Plastics. The joy of plastics, Alan.’ He bought a house on the Peak, married a beautiful Australian woman. ‘On the wall downstairs, the two women of my life: Monica, my lovely wife; Jacinta, my lovely daughter.’ For a second Alan wondered if King had read his mind as he’d mused over the pigtailed photograph. ‘You see them pictured below with the man destined to become my business partner and, ultimately, should we be saved, my boss. My son, Byron.’

‘Nice names,’ Alan said. After all, you had to say something.

‘They are all, alas, in UK,’ King said. ‘A matter of education. God, Alan, I miss them. Every day of my life, I miss them. A temporary thing. We remain a devoted family. I love my wife, and shall I tell you something else? I still fancy my wife. Twenty years we’ve been married, and when she was last here we were like two teenagers in love. Taking baths together. A honeymoon.’

‘And the kids?’

‘Fine children, Alan. Jacinta is now nineteen, and no longer in pigtails. Beautiful, wilful, headstrong, intelligent. Byron is sixteen, though most people take him for twenty-one. A remarkable boy who makes his father very happy. But where was I, Alan, in this history lesson?’

‘Living in millionaires’ row on the Peak.’

‘I merged my business with a larger concern. Things hotted up. I was on the move constantly: Singapore, KL, Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, Taiwan. Busy beyond belief, stressed beyond belief, powerful beyond belief, rich beyond belief. And then one day, do you know what I said?’

‘Tell me.’

‘I said “fuck it”. I walked into a board meeting one morning, and told them all. I said “fuck it”.’

‘And how did they respond?’

‘They begged me to stay. Naturally. But I said “fuck it”, and I meant it from the bottom of my heart. And so what do you think I did?’

‘You moved out to Tung Lung and founded a business based on the principle of love.’

‘My friend, you are very wise. And do you know what, Alan? I prosper. I really do.’

The beauty she possessed was so perfect, so profound, that it constricted Alan’s breathing. With a vast effort of will that did him great credit, he found a voice, and asked if he might be admitted to the editor of Business PanAsia. She performed this small miracle for him, and bestowed on him the gift of a smile. Love beat him lightly about the head and neck.

Colin Webb greeted him, and then insisted on reading, while Alan watched in fidgeting silence, every one of the two thousand words he had written.

‘Virry nice, Alan. Virry, virry nice.’ You could hardly tell that he was Australian. ‘I had a feeling this piece was going to be nice. So I was planning to ask you to write something else for me.’ Soon, Alan was accepting a commission for a cover piece. Hong Kong as manufacturing base: the shift to quality. ‘Talk to a lot of people, Alan. Put a lot of work in. I want three thousand words, and I’ll pay seventy-five cents a word for this one.’

Alan, much made up by this, decided to speak to the receptionist on the way out. Hello, you’re very beautiful. You’re rather tall for a Chinese girl, aren’t you? I suppose marriage is out of the question? My God, he was a genius. ‘Hello, er, I wonder if you could tell me the best place to find a taxi around here.’

A white blouse opening in a narrow V. Hair a raven’s wing, iridescent black, falling straight and simple to her lovely shoulders. My God, this really was love. ‘Best place is in front of Fragrant Harbour Hotel. On the waterfront, you know?’

‘Won’t the hall porter be cross?’

‘You give him a dollar, he won’t be cross.’

Alan made a creditable attempt at a winning smile. ‘I’m still new here. Don’t know all the dodges.’

‘How long have you been in Hong Kong?’ The great conversational gambit of the territory.

‘Maybe six months.’

‘You like?’

‘Very good.’

And suddenly, her face was illuminated with delight – almost, Alan thought, with love.

‘Sophie, my dear, how beautiful you are looking today. Alan, what a pleasant surprise. Dean, I believe you are employing the finest journalist in Hong Kong, and I am quite certain that you have the most beautiful receptionist.’

The receptionist spoke one word. ‘André.’

André was standing by the reception desk, one hand in a pocket, with a man, severely rather than elegantly suited, who had the finicky-tough air of a Mormon proselytiser. ‘Dean, have you met Alan Fairs, the journalist? No? Alan, this is your publisher, Dean Holdsworth.’

‘Glad to know you, Alan,’ Dean said, in flawless American. ‘You’re doing the June portrait, right? Look forward to reading it.’ This was a very creditable feat of memory. He shook Alan’s hand with every appearance of warmth. ‘André, if I might have a further moment?’

‘By all means, Dean, by all means. Alan, if you care to wait, we might share a taxi.’

‘All right.’

André followed Dean into his office. Alan did not have to rack his brain for a new conversational gambit. Sophie was now ready, in fact eager, for conversation.

‘You know André?’ she asked.

‘Neighbour of mine.’

Her eyes grew a little bigger. Were they rounder than was usual for a Chinese girl? Or had he never looked quite as closely before? ‘You live on Tung Lung?’ she asked reverently.

‘Yes.’

‘Very beautiful.’

‘Yes.’ A beat later, he decided that he had missed an opportunity.

‘I like to live there one day.’

Alan could think of no rejoinder that did not indicate absolutely helpless desire. They talked a little of the ferry service, and whether or not the restaurant on the far side of the island, where Alan had eaten his Christmas lunch, was better than Ng’s. Then a door opened and jovial voices rang out in the corridor.

‘Well, André, all I can say now is have a good trip.’

‘Consider the target already met, Dean. Consider it obliterated.’

Dean continued to escort André to the door, evidently a mark of considerable favour. ‘Great, André. Just great. Send my regards to the Great Orient.’

‘I shall indeed. Sophie, thanks, as ever, for everything. Goodbye, Dean. I shall call you to touch base on arrival. I have all the documents. Goodbye.’ They shook hands, not without warmth, and Dean wished him good luck as he returned to his office.

‘Alan. Excellent. So good of you to wait. I shall buy you a drink. Not dead set on catching the six thirty, are you? Then perhaps I shall buy you two drinks.’

‘Excellent thought. Two Brewers?’

A slightly pained expression passed across André’s face. ‘I think not. The Harbourmaster’s Bar, do you know it? Rather a favourite spot of mine.’

André led the way out onto the crazy pavements of Causeway Bay. It was impossible to walk two abreast as the tall buildings simultaneously debouched their million inmates onto the streets. André led the way: the crowd seemed to part before him, only to reform itself in front of Alan. André did not check his pace for anyone, not even for the road, picking his way fastidiously through the lorries, trams, buses, taxis and private cars. A man who jay-walked through life. They passed the usual collection of street stalls, all selling clothes of remarkable newness and high quality; to each André gave an all-embracing glance that took in both merchandise and price. He was never off duty. He passed onto Lockhart Road, but to Alan’s surprise kept on, past this street of a thousand bars, ignoring the claims of a man selling fishballs from a vat of boiling oil to a small group of enthusiasts starved after two or three solid hours without food. Here Alan was able to move alongside. ‘Not in Lockhart Road, this place of yours?’

‘My dear old thing. No, it’s in the Fragrant Harbour Hotel.’

Alan at once felt his clothes, a fairly respectable outfit as recently as this morning, grow ancient and ragged about him. Jacketless in the sticky April warmth, a yellow shirt, rather too many buttons undone at the front, and the sleeves rolled past the elbows. No tie, of course, not even one in his bag. And this object, hanging from his shoulder and containing too many papers to yield to the zip, lacked the cool precision of André’s attaché case.

The Fragrant Harbour Hotel stood, as Sophie had justly pointed out, on the waterfront, a precipitous many-windowed cliff. A Sikh, bearded and turbaned, guarded the entrance in top boots and a species of guardsman’s jacket. He saluted André as they walked past him: ‘Good evening, sir.’

‘Good evening, Mr Singh, thank you so much.’

He led the way across the marbled lobby to the lifts. Alan, hit by the sudden chill of the air conditioning, rolled down his sleeves and did up a few buttons. The lift panel bore thirty-four buttons, plus a thirty-fifth labelled Harbourmaster’s Bar. This André hit, and they were fired courteously skyward while André gave a brief summary of the nature of Business PanAsia, its strengths and weaknesses, and the problems it created for itself by its refusal to countenance paid editorial. Then the doors slid open.

Thirty-five floors high, they seemed to have descended to the depths of the sea. The room was murky and green with mysterious enigmatic lights. Towards them gliding or swimming rather than walking the normal way, a woman, an angel fish, perhaps. Her face was painted with a beauty that was formal rather than erotic. Yes, there was a tank of fish, a huge tank, its denizens to be admired rather than eaten. ‘Good evening, Mr Standing.’

‘Good evening, Helen.’ She was clad in a wonderful way, a high mandarin collar on a floor-length dress of green silk. There was something odd about the garment but Alan couldn’t quite, as it were, put his finger on it. ‘And would you be so good as to take my bag? Thank you so much.’

‘Lilac will look after you, Mr Standing. Customary table?’ And she gave a sudden instruction, harsh after her honeyed English, to a woman who materialised beside her, smiling almost as beautifully as Sophie had been earlier. As Lilac stepped forward, Alan realised with a glorious start that her dress was split from floor to hip.

She led them to a table in the corner, by the floor-to-ceiling window from which they could see the harbour, Kowloon, the hills of the Nine Dragons beyond the buildings. Alan could see at least one thousand boats; a jet attempted to defy gravity jinking its way through the far buildings to touch down at Kai Tak. ‘I think in view of the occasion, I’ll have a Singapore Sling,’ André said. ‘I seriously advise you to do the same.’

Alan was quite definitely beginning to panic. Even a beer would be beyond his funds. This was hideous. He would have to run.

‘On me, my dear. On me. I’m celebrating, you see.’

‘Well. Thanks.’

André turned again to Lilac and gave the order, with a glittering exchange of smiles. He caught Alan looking, with rather provincial fascination, at the lower half of Lilac’s costume. ‘Did you know that the tailoring of a cheongsam is so complicated that they take a measurement from nipple to nipple?’

Alan was fractionally recovering his nerve. ‘I feel happier for knowing that,’ he said.

Lilac brought the drinks. She had to take extremely small steps in order not to fall over. Every stride threatened to expose the entire length of her, from sculpted ankle to journey’s end, and every dozen or so strides this actually happened, but for no more than a nanosecond: it took all Alan’s concentration to catch the moment as it flew. The drinks she brought were longish and pinkish, and tasted as if the barman had started at one end of the bar and worked his away along, pouring as he went.

‘Good,’ said André. ‘They look after one, don’t they?’

Alan looked down at the puny craft crisscrossing the harbour. ‘It’s rather like being taken to the high place by the devil and shown all the kingdoms of the world,’ he said. ‘By the way, André, what are we celebrating?’

‘Oh, I am going to do a spot of selling for Dean. Wants me to sell some advertising space to airlines, hotels and stuff for Business PanAsia, round up some specialist stuff for Cargo News and Asian Shipping. But he’s planning a Singapore special issue for the autumn, and I’m to try and get a few ads for that. The fact of the matter is that Dean is sending me to Singapore for a fortnight, and putting me up at the Great Orient, nice pub, and it’s all the most frightfully good news because I don’t expect it will take more than a week to get Dean’s stuff sorted out, and earn my commission. I’ve got some awfully good contacts there. So for the rest of the time – well, you know me, Alan. I can always find things to do.’

André started to expound on Singapore, and how it differed from Hong Kong and from KL and various other Asian cities. This became a dissertation on Southeast Asia.

Lilac brought more drinks in response to André’s languid summons. ‘Might pop over the causeway while I’m there. I know a rather nice girl in Johor Baharu. Might be time to get as far north as KL. Met some interesting people there, nothing came of it, but they said to look them up next time. But you see the principle, don’t you, Alan? Dean gives me a free flight and base, and, as it were, a guaranteed minimum for the trip. But my real profit won’t come from selling advertising space.’

‘Where then?’ Alan, feeling the ambush of the Singapore Sling, was moved to forthrightness.

‘I specialise, my dear, in omnifariousness. Chap in Denpasar once told me that. One more? And then perhaps some dinner? In the hotel? On me?’

They dined, then, in some splendour. Alan wore a tie for the occasion, for André produced a spare one from his attaché case. He retired to the gents to put it on: a Chinese ancient watched the knotting process with great concentration, as if he were to be asked questions about it afterwards. Alan joined André, who was already at the table and by now utterly magnificent.

‘Fish, yes, they do it rather well here. We are, as you note, not too far from the sea.’ He ordered sole véronique with a polished French accent and sent back the white wine as imperfectly chilled. Alan wondered rather incoherently if the ordering of the fish was to make possible the ordering of the white and its subsequent rejection.

‘Well, it’s in the blood, you see, as you can no doubt tell from the name, bloody silly name to have in Hong Kong, or anywhere else in Asia for that matter. I have to spell it exactly one hundred times per day. Girls can never say it in bed. I don’t think I have ever made love to a girl who called me by my name. I am always On-jay, or worse, On-lay.’

‘Karen calls you André. I’ve heard her.’

‘She does, bless her. It’s her chief attraction, really.’

André insisted on Armagnac with the coffee. ‘Did you ever meet Pearl? Nice girl, works in a travel agency. I rather think she was before your time. She used to come out and see me on Tung Lung now and then. There was something of a kerfuffle when Karen paid me a surprise visit.’ He started laughing a little. ‘On a clear day you can still hear the echo. Sophie’s a nice kid, isn’t she?’

‘Who? Oh, the receptionist at Business PanAsia. God yes, gorgeous.’

‘I quite agree. An ex of mine, as you may have guessed.’

‘Lucky fellow.’

André put his head to one side and regarded Alan kindly. ‘We really must get you fixed up with a nice Chinese girl. You won’t want to look at a Western woman after a bit.’ He called for the bill and settled it with a lordly flourish of the credit card. The Sikh doorman showed them into a taxi and received five dollars for doing so. André gave the driver hectoring instructions in Cantonese.

‘Oh God, is that the time?’

‘Certainly. Be calm. Allow nothing to trouble your mind. The ten thirty ferry is never less than ten minutes late.’ The taxi pulled up outside a small shop in Lockhart Road; André left the car. He returned a moment or so later carrying, inevitably, a pink carrier bag filled with beer.

‘Oh Jesus, we’ll have to spend the night in town.’

‘Not a bit of it. You worry too much. Fai-dee, fai-dee, aaa!’ This last to the driver, who fai-deed as best he could. They reached the ferry pier after a sick-making slalom along Con-naught Road. André negligently dropped a ten-dollar bill for the six-dollar ride, and strolled towards the ferry. Alan, heaving his bag to his shoulder and rescuing a sheaf of papers with a mad grab, scuttled after him. The gangplank was raised the instant they stepped on board the ferry. The time was ten forty-two.

‘See what I mean?’

‘Oh God.’

‘Have a beer.’

‘André, you are an appalling person.’ By this stage, Alan had begun to giggle foolishly. ‘I can’t begin to keep up with you. Not the beer. I mean, the chances you take.’

. ‘I take no chances, my dear. I take the trouble to learn the odds. There is a difference, you know.’ They reached their seat at the back of the ferry as the boat pulled away from the pier. They sat; opened their cans in unison.

‘Perhaps so. But I couldn’t do it.’

‘That, my dear, is why you are a journalist and I am a merchant venturer.’ They both laughed a good deal at this, but then André was suddenly and rather dramatically transfixed by seriousness. ‘Listen, Alan. Last year, I was down the tube for about thirty grand. Three companies were after me for money I no longer had – never did have, to tell the truth. I went to Bangkok, a few hours before the storm broke. Had five grand up front, in cash, from someone who wanted something I could get in Thailand. I did a deal – one deal. I was gone for a week. It was a rather sordid trip, actually, had to pay for my hotel, and thought I’d better keep my head down, so I stayed at the Malaysia – backpacker’s place, terrible old dump. Anyway, I was back in Hong Kong a week later with all debts paid and twenty grand to the good on top of that.’

‘Christ,’ Alan said respectfully. ‘A miracle.’

‘But it isn’t, you see. You tell me you’ve just written two thousand words on King.’

‘Very true. The business of love and his total faithfulness to his wife.’

‘Laid that one on you, did he? Didn’t tell you about shagging Chai, then?’

‘I thought she just came to clean up his flat.’

‘Oh, Alan. My dear Alan.’

‘Hong Kong will never return to China,’ Alan said, repeating King’s words in King’s voice. ‘You might as well expect the UK to have a female prime minister. These two things are simply impossible.’

André laughed at this impersonation. ‘But where was I? Ah yes. Well, I couldn’t write two thousand words about King or anybody else. But if you want two thousand bucks, then I’ll raise it in no time. Or lose it in no time, but it doesn’t really worry me, because I know I’ll be able to make it up some other way. It’s my experience that most people only have one talent. Yours is journalism. Mine is money.’

‘The other night you said the same thing, but that your one talent in life was sailing.’

André began to laugh again. ‘So it bloody well is. I can sail the arse off anyone.’

‘You’d be first in any capsizing race.’

‘I do regret that, Alan, I really do. But you have to get close to the wind, you know. I thought you’d like it.’

Alan winced at the memory. ‘It wasn’t the closeness to the wind I minded. It was the closeness to the water.’

‘Well again, Alan, as I say, it’s not about taking chances, it’s about knowing the odds. I don’t capsize in races, when I’m playing different percentages.’

‘Charles wouldn’t let you capsize in a race.’

‘He does take it seriously, doesn’t he? Bit of a sobersides when it comes to sailing, old Charles. But no, in a race, I like to win, and so does Charles. You can capsize at home any time you want.’

‘If there’s a moral in that, I lost it somewhere. Give me another beer.’

The ferry at last arrived at Tung Lung. Laughing, zigzagging a little, very happy with each other, they essayed the 176 steps. At one point, Alan fell up a few of them, but André hauled him to his feet.

‘Alan. Something to help you sleep?’

‘A wise precaution, André.’

No light shone from the house. They entered André’s flat, which always surprised Alan by its austerity. There was not a picture on the wall, save a single poster of a catamaran in full sail towing a water-skier. The only furniture was a set of folding tables and chairs from China Products. A ghetto blaster the size of a suitcase provided music when required, which was often. André disappeared into his bedroom, and reappeared with a plastic bag. Delving into its contents, he began to roll a joint. Pure grass, no mixing with tobacco.

‘Hey,’ said Alan. ‘It’s illegal, that stuff.’

‘What are laws?’

‘The crystallised prejudices of the masses.’

‘Karl Marx?’

‘Goldfinger, actually.’

‘I like it.’

‘Isn’t that stuff hard to get here?’

André did not reply, completing his work with great attention to the fine detail. He then lit the joint, bringing the flame to its tip three times to ensure a perfectly even burn. He drew twice before passing to Alan, and then spoke smokefully: ‘Not if you know what you are doing, my dear, like so many other things in life.’