Читать книгу Hong Kong Belongers - Simon Barnes - Страница 8
ОглавлениеHardly drunk at all, Alan Fairs raised his glass to wish a happy Christmas to the junk that was puttering gently into the harbour. ‘Happy Christmas, junk,’ he said softly, glorying in his solitude.
The junk bore no batwing sail, but that would have been too self-righteously picturesque. It was enough that the boat was shaped like a Spanish galleon, and that it swung its high square backside away from him. It was enough that the island of Tung Lung rose up behind it: its high and pointy hills. Until today, Alan had assumed that such hills were a graphic convention, a precious affectation of the painters of Chinese scrolls. Now he could see that it was a question of pedantic accuracy.
‘I am sitting here, drinking beer in a Chinese scroll,’ he said to himself. He drank a little more, for the glory of the thought.
He had journeyed here from the island of madness, or Hong Kong. In less than an hour he had passed from the great harbour and its endless castles of glass, to this other place, this toy harbour, its jolly bouncing boats and steep little hills crammed with elven dwellings.
He had resolved to turn down all Christmas invitations in search of a proud self-sufficiency. In the event, no invitations had come, but this had ceased to cast a shadow over his day. He had lunched, beerily, alone and in perfectly Chinese splendour, at a restaurant on the far side of the island of Tung Lung. He had handled both chopsticks and the occasion with some élan, he thought. Afterwards, he had walked, somewhat dizzily, over the spine of the island, up the pointy hills and down the other side, until he had reached the island’s second village. Here, he would soon be catching a ferry home – home! – to the island of madness, and his rather hateful flat in the Mid-Levels.
But he was in no hurry to make this retreat, for here on Tung Lung he felt like a conqueror. A red and white butterfly, the size of a bat, flapped about by his feet before dipping down to where the Christmas bounty of flowers bloomed out of sight. At a table beside him two young Chinese men played cards with cries of triumph and dismay, unmoved by the exoticism of their home. One man, grey-haired – unusual in the Chinese who dye their hair an iridescent black at the first hint of time’s passage – sat in regal dignity, served Coca-Cola by the fat proprietor with understated deference. A scent of dead and dying fish was wafted towards them in little spurts, on occasional gusts of wind.
Alan turned his attention to the boats in the little harbour. The junk had moored at the small jetty on the far side, half a dozen more motor-junks were tied up together in the middle beside a cluster of portly sampans, on one of which a man in a black shirt worked with absorption. And alongside that, a strange craft, apparently two plastic canoes linked by a trampoline, the whole thing an offensive shade of yellow. Alan speculated on an unseaworthy experiment, lashed together by some eccentric, dashing Chinese youth from the village. Yet again he sipped, savouring warm air, chill beer, the little harbour, his glorious Christmas self-sufficiency: above all the sense of distance from Hong Kong. By making this brief journey to this outlying island, he felt he had achieved some kind of tenuous control. He placed his left ankle on his right knee, a very subtle form of self-celebration. It was the James Bond Position: Bond had once been photographed thus, in ‘the sort of position only an Englishman would adopt’. Alan, on a dangerous mission overseas, was in control and, unshaken, was drinking San Miguel beer.
Smirking a little at this fancy, he became aware of a steady procession taking place behind him. He turned in his chair, looking back to the café from which he had bought his beer. Between him and the tubby young giant of a proprietor, who was lounging against the wall of his establishment, a tidal flow of people moved with single-minded determination along the larger jetty. Alan inspected them with fascination: island-dwellers moving out to Hong Kong for the evening; Hong Kongers returning home after a too-brief day of exile. Many seemed young, schoolchildren, most of them clutching ferocious double-pointed spears three feet in length. Alan pondered their use without coming to any firm conclusion: perhaps Hong Kongers carried them as protection against the wild Tung Lung natives. Among these returning exiles, little motorised carts buzzed about dangerously, trolleys powered by loud Rotavator engines, guided with languid gestures by the young men who clasped the long, elegant handlebars with the pomp of Hell’s Angels. The people shoved hard, but without active malice.
A dismal hoot sounded from across the waters, and Alan turned to see the ferry approaching: dingy; white; two-storeyed. It bore on its funnel the letters HYF, for Hong Kong and Yaumatei Ferry Company. This, according to his plans, was the boat that was to take him home, returning exile himself. He watched with disfavour as the boat came to a halt by the simple means of ramming the jetty wholeheartedly. It then performed a series of infinitely fussy forward and backward movements, with snarling engine and repeated distant blasts of the whistle. It took an astonishing length of time. Then all at once the tide turned: the incoming wash of islanders returning home. Home: again the word pricked at Alan’s heart.
He watched a stream of girls, dazzling nymphs all. Stragglers pushed their way undazzled against the flow. Others, family parties in their finery, walked cheerily, noisily back onto their island. They had, Alan guessed, been spending the day holidaying, shopping, eating in Hong Kong, for in Hong Kong nothing closed, ever, not for Christmas nor for anything else. Alan raised his glass, intending to drain it in a final brave swallow, to run to the ferry, last one aboard, just as the gangplank was pulled away. But with the swallow half done, he lowered his glass. A weak defiance had seized him. Thus do our lives change for ever.
The ferry hooted once more, reproachfully, and began its effortful journey back to the island of madness. Leaving Alan on the island of Tung Lung. It was warm, and anyway he had on the back of his chair his bad jacket, an unfortunate purchase in purple tweed. And he had money, money enough for another beer, at any rate. He would watch the sun go down from this scrap of a café, from this table on the edge of the toy harbour, watch the sun go down behind his Chinese scroll.
It was then that the impossible happened. Ambling, strolling at his ease, in marked contrast to the babbling crowds that had preceded him, not so much a stroller as a flâneur, tall – an inch or two over six foot – clad in a suit of unnatural perfection but worn with a studied insouciance, a gweilo. A round-eye, a European, a foreign devil, and anyway, quite clearly an Englishman. There was a slim attaché case in his hand, a garment bag over his shoulder. By his side walked a Chinese boy, pushing a trolley on which stood two suitcases of imposing size and solidity. The gweilo – Alan already thought in the Hong Kong idiom – was smiling faintly to himself.
He turned into the café and, in a voice of unexpected harshness, shouted out a few words of Cantonese. The fat proprietor came out to meet him. The two shook hands and discoursed with some warmth. Then the gweilo turned away, laughing, throwing out some quip that made the proprietor laugh in turn. Still smiling to himself, he walked to the tables by the harbour. It was then that he noticed Alan. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, all trace of coarseness gone from his voice.
‘Hello,’ Alan said. He saw with some surprise that the newcomer was a little younger than himself; for all that, his ease of manner and his maturity of expression left Alan rather intimidated. In this moment of awkwardness, he wished very much that he had caught the ferry that was now turning away to the north.
The man stopped at the adjoining table, a move nicely calculated to avoid any accusation of unfriendliness without seeming to force friendliness upon him. It was a moment of perfect Englishness. Before sitting, he hung his garment bag from a branch of the banyan tree that shaded their tables. He did so with an air of quiet delight, as if the tree had grown in that shape especially for his convenience, and he couldn’t help feeling flattered by the attention. He then sat, unbuttoned the collar of his shirt of virginal whiteness, and unknotted his tie. This he rolled around his fingers and slipped into the pocket of his jacket.
The proprietor approached him with a glass and a dewed bottle, and received courteous thanks in Cantonese. Then, with very careful attention, the gweilo poured liquid gold into tilted glass. He placed bottle and glass on the table, not drinking, savouring their beauty.
‘Visiting the island?’ he asked.
‘Came out for lunch. Can’t bear to go home.’
‘My dear chap. Stay for ever. Beer?’
‘Thank you.’
He filled Alan’s glass with the same care with which he had filled his own. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Happy Christmas.’
‘Happy Christmas.’
They drank.
‘I’m André Standing.’ This announcement took Alan by surprise. It was simply not English, neither the name nor the bare fact of its announcement. After the business of the man’s choosing of his seat, Alan had expected to be playing by English rules. André, clearly, was English, yet not English. Alan played his own name in return; André asked: ‘On holiday?’
‘In a manner of speaking. I’ve just started work at the Hong Kong Times. We all got Christmas Day off, by a miracle, so I thought I’d spend it on Tung Lung.’
‘Get on all right with old Simpson?’ This unexpected dropping of his editor’s name was disquieting.
‘Only met him the once. Seems all right. Rather a change of pace after Fleet Street.’ Alan was seeking to impress in his turn. ‘What about yourself? What brings you out here?’
‘My dear chap. I live here, you see.’
Alan was riven through the heart with envy. ‘What do you do?’
‘Well, I’m sort of an entrepreneur, really. Bit of import/export. Do a fair bit in your line too; I’ve been known to sell advertising space for the odd magazine. Take my card.’ He pincered two fingers into his breast pocket and produced it. It was nicely engraved, a statement of class.
‘Merchant,’ Alan read.
‘That seems to cover it, on the whole.’
‘Very stylish.’
‘Well, very Hong Kong, really. Or very Asia – I’m just back this minute, actually. Been in Seoul, South Korea, you know. Just for a few days, but did some very sweet business.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Oh, the usual stuff, you know. I’m interested in the pharmaceutical trade.’
‘Oh.’ Alan drank, from nervousness. André, observing this, called out again in Cantonese; the fat proprietor returned with two new bottles. He seemed greatly exhilarated, and clapped André on the shoulder several times. The two exchanged a series of surprisingly excited remarks, all in Cantonese, and then the proprietor withdrew, beaming. André, too, seemed tremendously bucked by the exchange.
‘Good old Tung Lung,’ he said, pouring his beer.
‘It will make my flat in the Mid-Levels seem doubly poky tonight,’ Alan said.
‘Yes,’ André said. ‘I love it here. Don’t suppose I’ll ever move away. Most Europeans are just staying in Hong Kong for a while. How long have you been in Hong Kong? Standard Hong Kong question. But here on Tung Lung, I’m home. I have a nice flat, a nice boat, nice friends, a nice life. Nice Chinese girl – well, some days she’s nice enough. But all thanks to this island here. Who cares if Ng’s well runs dry and you have no water for a week? This is Tung Lung, and it simply doesn’t matter.’
‘Mm, yes, I envy you.’ Alan thought all this was rather overdoing it, sympathetic though the message was. But then André, lowering his voice in a rather stagy manner, came down to it. ‘In fact, I may be able to fix you up with a flat on Tung Lung. Do you like the sound of that?’
So that was what they had been talking about. ‘My God. I’d adore it. But –’
‘That’s settled, then.’
‘But what time does the last ferry leave Hong Kong in the evening?’
‘Oh, late enough. Ten thirty.’
A thud of despair. ‘No good. I’m a downtable sub; I don’t finish work till eleven thirty. Three times a fortnight, I do a late turn, finish at three.’
‘Oh really. I say, what a terrible bore. You’re the sort of chap who’d do well here. Resign at once, come and join us out here.’
‘Wonderful thought.’
‘No, really, you can do it: moonlight flit on the job and the flat, take up residence here, start merchant-venturing about the place. I’ve got a row of contacts in your line of work. You’d be up to your eyes in business in no time. How about it?’
‘André – I wish I could. But it’s not possible right now.’
‘Ah well. You’re still new here, aren’t you? You’re not close enough to the edge yet. But you’ll get there soon enough. I promise you that.’
Alan sat on the ferry drinking his beer. André had insisted on buying him a can for the journey. They had shaken hands warmly by the café, and then André had turned inland, attaché case in one hand, garment bag over his shoulder. Had he forgotten his suitcases? But perhaps he had arranged for someone to do the portering for him. That sounded André’s style.
Alan looked back, the faint lights of Tung Lung fading behind him. Ah well. He would take his Boxing Day dinner at the Country Club with Bill and Wally, the other two Englishmen on the subs’ desk. That is, if Wally was back from his trip to Bangkok. They had, in their way, been very decent to him. The question of the Country Club had come up on Alan’s first day at the Hong Kong Times.
‘But do you think they’ll let him in, Bill, in that shirt?’
‘I’ll have a little word with the doorman.’
The occasion was the sub-editors’ evening break. Alan accepted their invitation, flattered and a little flustered. Bill disrobed himself of his cardigan, which was baggy and leather buttoned; Wally removed his own generous maroon sweat shirt. Alan, who had not known to arm himself against the boreal chills of the Times’s air conditioning, merely stood. The wet warmth of Hong Kong greeted them as they left the building.
They led Alan not to the opulent doorway he had feared, but to a small grocery store a couple of hundred yards from the newspaper offices. Its owner, a wispy-bearded and gold-toothed ancient who looked like Lao-tzu, greeted them. Then, very spryly, he rolled a great wooden cartwheel from its resting place against the wall and unfolded from it four legs: at once it was revealed as a table. He next unfolded three stools; then, as the final touch of elegance, he placed a roll of lavatory paper on the table. He asked, in Cantonese that Alan could follow even then, if all three required San Lig, meaning San Mig, meaning San Miguel, the beer of Hong Kong. They did.
Cans served, Bill and Wally each helped himself to a sheet of lavatory paper and commenced the energetic cleaning of the can top. Alan, eyeing their every movement like a hobbledehoy at a banquet, followed them a beat behind. Satisfied, they pulled the ringpulls from their cans, tossed them lightly into the gutter and drank. ‘Thank Christ,’ Wally said. ‘Why do we live here, God fuck it?’
Wally always wore a safari suit: trousers that matched in colour an epauletted, patch-pocketed, quasi-military garment that was neither jacket nor shirt. Alan was to learn that he had three of them, and that he wore them each for two days at a time. One was salmon pink, one pistachio green, the third pale dogshit. They were safe and conservative Hong Kong clothes. Wally was a slight man with a belly that travestied pregnancy.
‘Got my flight fixed up for Christmas,’ he said. ‘A whole lovely bloody week in Bangkok. Thank Christ.’
‘What does one do in Bangkok?’
‘In Bangkok one gets fucking well fucked.’
Bill was quieter, bitterer. Wally spoke with a flamboyant, almost a romantic pessimism; in Bill, as time passed, Alan wondered if he would not sense despair.
‘Why do we live here, God fuck it?’ Wally asked again.
‘Anywhere.’
‘Soon be dead, anyway, thank Christ.’
‘Downtable sub on the Purgatory and Hell Gazette,’ Bill said. He was, Alan was to learn, a man of quite extraordinary professional competence. That afternoon, challenged by Wally, he had named the last three prime ministers of Belgium.
Alan knew sub-editing skills when he found them. He had done his time on local newspapers, subbed in Fleet Street and had contemplated seeking permanent employment within its fastness. But the combination of the end of a love affair and of his training prompted him to seek jobs abroad: Robert Simpson had offered him, sight unseen, a job on the Hong Kong Times on three months’ trial. Thus the great adventure had begun.
Wally knew his job too, though he attacked it with the same savagery he brought to conversation. He called Soviet dissidents ‘fucking troublemakers’; the Pope was always ‘Popeye’; stories about the local police gave him especial delight. ‘Listen to this: “A bullet was removed from his left kidney.” Good on yer, PC Wong. Shot the bastard while he was running away, didn’t he? “The suspect remains in critical condition.” Course he does. They took the poor fucker to Queen Elizabeth Hospital; no one gets out of that kip alive.’
Alan did not reply. Well, he told himself, Hong Kong was what you asked for; Hong Kong is what you have got.
‘Ah Christ, why do we live here, God fuck it?’ Wally asked, taking another mighty pull from his beer.
‘How long have you lived here, Wally?’
‘Twelve years, Christ help me. I must be mad. Been a Hong Kong Belonger for five years now.’
‘Belonger?’
‘After seven years you can apply for Belonger status,’ Bill said. ‘Did it myself a couple of years back. Regularises the visa situation, means you can vote in municipal elections. Not that anyone ever does. Just an administrative convenience.’
‘It’s the day they throw away the fucking key,’ Wally said.
That first expedition to the Country Club had been an initiation. Soon Alan was flinging his ringpull into the gutter without a backward glance, dining merrily and nightly on three cans of San Lig or Mig and a packet of peanuts. Remarkably good peanuts, which he would hull abstractedly, broadcasting the shattered halves into the street.
‘What were you rowing with Johnny Ram about?’ Bill had asked him on their last day at work, the night before Christmas Eve. There had been a slight, unseasonal chill in the air, and they had retained their air-conditioning-beating overgarments. Alan had bought himself a rather sporty top with a hood to wear in the office.
‘Letters page,’ Alan said. ‘Unbelievable stuff. I suggested to Johnny that we really ought to leave it out. He was of a different opinion.’
‘Opinion? Johnny? Do me a favour,’ Wally said. ‘Johnny doesn’t have opinions. Other people have opinions, other people being Simpson. Know how the letters page is run? Simpson skims the letters that come in and scribbles instructions on ’em. Then he passes them to Johnny and Johnny does what he’s told. What you were doing was asking him to walk into Simpson’s office and say, Simpson, you silly bastard, this letter is bollocks.’
‘Look at it this way,’ Bill said. ‘Can you imagine Moses going back up Mount Sinai with the tablets and saying, look, Jehovah, you silly bastard, can’t you see that this commandment about coveting your neighbour’s ox is bollocks? What was in the letter anyway?’
‘Some lunatic from one of the outlying islands. He said that the people who lived there were noble savages. I thought that was a bit stiff.’
‘So you subbed out the word “noble”?’ Wally said.
‘I said that no self-respecting newspaper would print such rubbish. I made him quite cross.’
‘Nevertheless, you made a valid point about the Hong Kong Times,’ Bill said. ‘What did you do?’
‘Par-marked it. Put “Noble Savage” in the headline, why not?’
‘The boy learns wisdom,’ said Wally.
‘I think I know the old bugger you mean,’ Bill said. ‘Always writing to the paper. One of those. Lived here since the fall of Shanghai. Dedicated man.’
‘They should send PC Wong over to his island to sort him out,’ Wally said. ‘Couple of slugs in the kidneys then over to the QE Hospital for the coup de grâce.’
Alan rose and purchased three more beers. They all tore, wiped, threw. Alan saw a sleek and graceful rat cross the street a few yards off, but knew enough not to pass comment. ‘Johnny really was rather cross,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t bear grudges, does he?’
‘I’d like to fuck Eileen Sung,’ Wally said. ‘Did you see her in the newsroom this evening? That arse of hers in those red trousers. Jesus.’
‘He won’t complain to Simpson about Simpson’s choice of staff,’ Bill said. ‘He won’t go out of his way to help you, but he won’t go out of his way to harm you. Either way it would be rocking the boat, and that is against everything that Johnny understands.’
‘Don’t rock the boat,’ Wally said. ‘They ought to print that on the front of the Hong Kong Times. Put it on the masthead, a bloody great banner supported by Simpson at one end and PC Wong on the other.’
‘I get worried every now and then,’ Alan said. ‘I’d be in serious trouble if I lost the job.’
‘Christ, you won’t lose it,’ Bill said. ‘You can sub. Besides, no one gets fired.’
‘What do you think this is?’ Wally asked. ‘A newspaper or something?’
‘Just keep your head down,’ Bill said. ‘The one thing Simpson doesn’t like is trouble. Promoted a step beyond his competence, just like Johnny Ram. Perfect way of making yes-men. What Johnny is to Simpson, Simpson is to the chairman. And the chairman is in the same situation vis-à-vis the board of Hong Kong Estates. And Hong Kong Estates owns the newspaper, as they own everything else around here. So – don’t rock the boat.’
‘I’ve had a change of heart about Eileen Sung,’ Wally said. ‘I’d like to bugger her.’
On Boxing Day Alan sat before another harbour with another bottle before him. The sun was going down and his legs were weary. This was because he had walked most of the length of Hong Kong Island. He had walked from the offices of the Hong Kong Times to Central, and there, turning right at the Great Orient Hotel, he had passed on to the Star Ferry Pier. He had then climbed a flight of steps that took him to Blake Pier. He had walked its length in order to contemplate the harbour, as a dismal ceremony of farewell, but he had found a dreadfully sordid café. So he took a seat, ordered a beer.
He had made his walk because walking keeps despair at bay. He had walked through Quarry Bay, North Point, Causeway Bay, Wanchai and Central, managing scarcely to think at all. Now, beer before him and the light beginning to fade, he inspected the boat-jams of Hong Kong harbour. Tangled together were various craft of the Star Ferry, the Jordan Road Ferry that carried motor cars, the ferries to Lantau, Cheung Chau, Lamma, Tung Lung, Po Toi. Alan watched, cut off from the world of purpose.
It was not the row about the Noble Savages letter that had got him the sack. It was the Gestapo. A few days before Christmas, Alan had subbed the report of a speech made by the chairman of the South China Bank, Sir Peter Browne, to the Rotary Club of Hong Kong. About three paragraphs from the end, the speaker had referred to the Hong Kong police and their ‘Gestapo tactics’. Pleased, Alan had seized on this, promoted it to the first paragraph, fitted the story around it, and used the word ‘Gestapo’ in a headline that had fitted to the last character. Nice, he had told himself at the time, bloody nice.
There had been a note on Alan’s desk when he returned to work on Boxing Day afternoon. Written on pink card, in fountain pen. See me. R. S. But Mr Simpson, what I did is just standard practice in Fleet Street. Mr Fairs, you do not seem to realise that we are not in Fleet Street. We are in Hong Kong. I happen to believe that a newspaper has a responsibility to the community. You clearly fail to appreciate that. It is my belief that you never will. Your professional standards, of which you make so much, are not ours.
Alan said thank Christ for that, and marched out slamming the door. No he didn’t. He sat on Blake Pier wishing he had. Instead, he had begged for a last chance, thinking of rent, debt, the distance from home. Pride had gone. Simpson asked if he would vacate the building. Now, please.
And so the great Hong Kong walk; the great Hong Kong adventure in ruins. He turned and looked bitterly at the tallest of the tall buildings on the waterfront, the one with round windows which, Wally had informed him, was known to the Chinese as the House of a Thousand Arseholes. Along the length of the pier, teenage Chinese couples embraced unrestrainedly, Blake Pier being a good deal more private than their homes.
What would he say when he got home? Didn’t work out. Couldn’t get on with the place. Journalistic standards appalling. Walked out of the job after six weeks, matter of self-respect. And they would all say in the pub after he had gone – all those who would never dare to make such a journey themselves – well, he couldn’t take it, could he, scuttling back home with his tail between his legs. Shall we give him a couple of shifts anyway? Oh, come on, hardly the type, is he?
Below, a motor-junk approached the pier, its seesawing deck loaded with large waste-paper baskets full of vegetables; choisum and pak-choi. He heard a voice chanting out some request or order – everything in Cantonese sounded like an order – concluding the sentence with a long aaa clearly audible above the grumble of the engine. Master that sound and you have mastered street Cantonese. The junk’s captain, if it were he and junks had captains, stood stocky and strong in a white singlet as the deck danced beneath him. He shouted again at a man hidden from view, perhaps on the lower level of the pier. Another merchant, no doubt. Buying cheap and selling dear: passage for choisum and pak-choi; passage too, perhaps, for more exciting cargoes, for brandy and American cigarettes, bears’ paws, tigers’ penises, pharmaceuticals. Or people. Perhaps even now a crop-haired, frightened boy crouched beneath the dancing deck, sick with both fright and motion, escaping from China to this promised land. In the morning he would make his run for freedom. The land of opportunity. The junk tucked snugly into the pier and was lost from view.
Alan ordered more beer and gave himself up to self-pity. He felt it was expected of him. But even as he did so, cursing Simpson, his luck, the woman who had left him in England, he knew that he was only going through the motions. He did not, in his dismay, permit that thought to come to the surface, but it lay beneath, awaiting its moment. Yes. Tie already rolled and in his pocket, strolling at his ease, a flâneur, through the unmalicious shoving of his fellow islanders. Stopping to buy a beer from the fat proprietor. And Alan knew that he could activate that destiny: in a single moment he could do it. The café would have a telephone, and no objection would be made to his using it, calls being free. André, I’ve been thinking over what you were saying yesterday …
Alan drank his beer and watched the light fade and the lights of the buildings and the advertisements come on one by one. At last in darkness he walked back to the Mid-Levels and took the lift to his flat on the fifteenth floor.
How early could you have a drink? This was not a question to be dismissed lightly. He had dined the previous night off a six-pack of San Mig and a packet of peanuts, and had played patience until the beer was finished. One o’clock was all right, surely? Well, twelve. The pubs opened in England on Sunday at twelve. On weekdays they opened at eleven, and this was a weekday. He did a deal with himself: a beer after he had spoken to the editor of the China Gazette. This was the competition, if such it could be called, to the Times, a newspaper that expressed the spirit of opposition by seeking to outdo its rival in fuddyduddyness. Alan bravely rang the number. The editor would be in at two.
By five past two, Alan had finished the second beer of the day. The first didn’t count and the second was necessary. He had learnt that no vacancy of any kind existed on the China Gazette. He had run the gamut of Hong Kong newspapers.
The telephone splintered the silence. It was Bill. ‘Bad luck, lad, I know, yes, Simpson’s a bad man. Look, I don’t know what your plans are, but there’s a friend of mine who produces a shitty little magazine that circulates free to businessmen. Sells editorial space, that kind of carry-on. It’s not exactly journalism, but nor is working for the Times is it? Know anything about business?’
‘No.’
‘That’s all right, nor does Reg. I know he’s looking for an assistant, by which he means someone to do the dirty jobs while he goes to the bar and to Bangkok and so on. Want his number?’
It took Alan a couple of tries to say thank you, yes please. Then, after Bill had rung off, he dialled the number without giving himself a moment to think.
‘Top-hole,’ said Reg unexpectedly. ‘Excellent. Let’s discuss it right away. Beer after work, you know the Two Brewers in Lockhart Road?’
Alan spent the afternoon playing patience, an attempt, not as effective as walking, at keeping both hope and despair at bay. Then he took a taxi to the heart of Wanchai, and walked along Lockhart Road, a narrow gully above which hung an endless procession of Damoclean neon signs: Crazy Horse, New American Restaurant, Ocean Bar, Seven Seas Bar. Alan walked, striving to give no more than a casual glance at the photographs, outside the topless bars, of glorious ping-pong ball breasts.
The Two Brewers stood between a tattoo parlour and a restaurant decorated with the wind-dried corpses of chickens. To open the door was to pass, as through the looking-glass, into the Home Counties. The sort of dingy pub you find by the railway station. There, beer and a copy of Hong Kong Business on the bar before him, in safari suit (electric blue) and behind a small paunch, Reg. Two strange white tufts of hair sprang from his head, behind his ears. They looked like powder puffs. Reg looked like a saloon-bar golfer, half a pint of cooking and a Scotch egg please, landlord. Odd to think that his favoured, apparently unashamed, leisure pursuit was not golf but whoring.
‘So you’re a friend of Bill’s, what a good sort he is, terrible shame of course but there you are, that’s Hong Kong. But he knows his job and he says you’re OK, and that’s good enough for me. Worked at the Times myself, of course, years ago, never could get on with Simpson, set up on my own and here we are.’
Reg was not a man to deal with any subject briefly, but several beers later, hands were shaken on a decision. Alan was to work for Reg five afternoons a week for two thousand dollars a month. ‘Flexible as you like, old chap, so long as we get the work done. I need a dogsbody, to tell you the truth, and some of the work will be an awful grind. But if you can put up with that, I’m more than happy to have you on board.’
Alan could. He was invited to start the following Monday. Did he need an advance?
Back on the fifteenth floor, head slightly fuzzy after his interview with Reg, Alan stood at his window with the telephone in his hand. He could see the harbour between the two buildings that rose up in front of him, the moving lights of the shipping, the still lights of Kowloon on the far side. He grasped the instrument like a weapon, Bond setting an assignment in motion. ‘Hello. This is Alan Fairs, remember we met –’
‘Alan, my dear. How perfectly splendid. Are you coming out to see us again? How is the Hong Kong Times?’
Alan did not feel it necessary to hide things from André. ‘Rather why I’m calling you. I’ve just been sacked.’
‘I knew you were the right sort for us. I have an instinct. But my dear old thing, how perfectly rotten all the same. Being sacked always depresses me for hours. But, Alan, could it really be that you are coming to join our glorious community on Tung Lung?’
‘Is the flat still free?’
‘Yours for seven hundred bucks a month.’
‘Done.’
‘Naturally you must sign some bits of paper and shake hands with your new landlord. Let me see. Tomorrow I can make the four thirty ferry home from Central. Why not catch it too?’
Home. ‘All right.’
‘And your life in Hong Kong can begin.’
It was now four thirty-five. The ferry hooted and growled restlessly, and then moved fussily away from the jetty. André had clearly missed it. Alan would have to wait to see if he arrived on the following ferry. Well, he would do so at the café beneath the banyan tree, drinking beer served to him by the fat proprietor. No hardship. Or perhaps André wouldn’t be there at all. The whole deal was about to fall through. Perhaps André was not the infinitely plausible person he seemed, but a fey, untrustworthy rogue. Alan felt a pang of fear at this thought. Future Hong Kong life was feasible only in terms of Tung Lung rent.
Then, like a miracle, André’s head appeared at Alan’s feet, rapidly rising in the stairwell. The rest of him followed: another beautiful suit, another beautiful smile of greeting.
‘I thought you’d missed it.’
‘Not me. I don’t miss ferries. But come, we must sit at the back.’
He led the way to the last bench, the only one that was open to the world. A sprightly wind whipped in off the harbour; André smiled quietly to himself as he felt it against his face. He sat, removed his tie, wound it around his hand and slipped it into his jacket pocket. Then he placed his attaché case on his knees, caused it to open with a double detonation and produced from it two cans of San Mig. Cold, naturally. They opened, drank.
‘So, my dear, how does it march?’
Alan explained a little. André listened with interest. The connection with HK Business News amused him. ‘Done some work for old Reg myself, in my time. Usual standby, selling advertising space, selling editorial space, too, if it comes to that. No false pride, old Reg. Made rather a little killing, actually, in Singapore.’
‘Really? Oh well, I’ll pass on your regards.’
‘Wouldn’t do that, my dear. Had a bit of a falling-out. The killing wasn’t actually for him, you see. But shall I tell you an important fact? In this town, the one thing you never run out of is clients.’
‘Mags, you mean?’
‘Well, I meant it more generally, actually, but it is certainly true of magazines. One mag folds, another two spring up. Same in every other business. Drives some people crazy. But we who keep light on our feet rather like it that way.’
Alan, more interested in his own affairs than in André’s summary of Hong Kong life, returned doggedly to the subject closest to his heart. ‘Do they take copy from outsiders, then?’
‘My dear, you are living in a freelance’s paradise. You’ll make a great living, have loads of fun. Get some travel under your belt, get around Asia a bit. That’s the thing. Why not start your own magazine? I’ll sell the advertising space, editorial space too. We’ll make a fortune.’
It was not until the ferry cut its speed and made its laborious approach to the Tung Lung ferry pier that André turned to the business in hand. ‘I’ve pretty well settled everything with your new landlord. We’ll go straight up and see him, if that’s all right with you. He’s got a lease all ready.’
‘Chinese guy?’ It seemed worth asking.
‘Lord, no. Well, born in Shanghai, but the son of Baptist missionaries. All English blood, but rather Chinese in some ways. Plus catholique, in fact. Name of John Kingston, lived on Tung Lung for about twenty years. Unusual chap. You’ll like him.’
Alan looked out over the surrounding land, the awaking mountains. It was as if he had received a light blow on the chest: the smallest tap, little more than the brushing of Oddjob’s finger, but a touch performed with such acute, well-nigh surgical skill that it was enough, for one half-second, to suspend the processes of life. I am to live behind this toy harbour, before this green mountain. I am to live in a Chinese scroll.
‘Ready for a climb?’ André asked. ‘You’re going to live in the highest house in the village.’
André led the way past the café and the banyan tree, and past a tiny, almost a doll’s house, branch of the South China Bank. Beside it stood a fly-thronged collection of wide, flat, woven baskets, from which arose the scent of the death of a thousand sea beasts: the ambient odour of Tung Lung. ‘Shrimp-paste factory,’ André said airily. ‘One of Chuen-suk’s money-spinners. Here’s where we start to climb.’ They turned left off the main path and concrete steps rose up before them. Though winter and the temperature barely turning past 70 degrees, Alan felt sweat burst from him. After a while, begging a halt, he asked, mouth-breathing fiercely: ‘How many more?’
‘About halfway. You’ll soon be used to it. Look on it as Nob Hill. Worth climbing 176 steps for. Catch the breeze in the summer, which is pretty good news, on the whole.’
Alan looked around him. A shower of inky blooms hung over a mesh fence; before it danced a butterfly, orange, black-veined. It looked like a stained-glass window. ‘Onwards,’ André said. ‘Onwards and upwards.’
More leg-weary than he had been since his epic walk from Quarry Bay to Central, Alan reached the top. A narrow concrete path led onward, mercifully now along the level. ‘We use Calor Gas for cooking,’ André said. He seemed unaffected by the climb. ‘For an extra five dollars they deliver it. Best deal on the island. Two old ladies do it.’ Alan didn’t actually believe this. André led him to another flight of stairs, no more than a dozen steps. Straight ahead stood a huge pair of iron gates, beautifully ornamented and painted green. They were flanked by two bulging-eyed, door-guarding lions. Through the chain-link fence on either side, Alan could see a shaded green garden, and set within it three separate, small but majestic houses. ‘Old man Ng’s place,’ André said. ‘Richest man on the island.’ He turned his back on this vista of expensive living, and gestured to another dwelling. He announced, not without pride: ‘Here we are.’
The lemon-yellow house stood head and shoulders above those around it. Two houses, in fact. Semi-detached. How odd. Two front doors, a shared front yard, a garden of concrete. ‘My place,’ André said, pointing to the left middle floor. ‘Charles lives next door to me – you’ll meet him soon enough, a great man in his way. You’re underneath me; the flat next door to you isn’t finished yet. Yours was only finished last week. King has the entire top floor; he knocked it through, done a neat conversion job. So he has the roof, and he’s made a nice little garden up there.’
Alan peered through the seven-foot-high mesh of the fence to what would soon be his home. He followed André round to the back of the building. Another door, and more stairs to climb. Halfway was a door, on which had been stuck a colour photograph of a sailing boat leaving behind it a long creamy wake. It also bore the legend ‘Cool Cool Cool!’
‘That’s me,’ André said. ‘But let’s find King.’ Up another flight of steps; there André knocked jauntily on a door. It opened. ‘Hello, King, here’s your new man. Pretty smart of me to find him, I think you’ll agree. Alan Fairs, John Kingston.’
John Kingston stepped onto the landing to meet them. He was tall, with a massive chest, and he moved with a strange deliberation, rather like a troll. It was as if his aim were to frighten, though not very severely, an audience of uncritical children. He fixed Alan with a challenging eye and said, basso profundo: ‘Welcome to the real Hong Kong.’
Alan took the proffered hand; received an expected bone-crushing. ‘Er, thank you.’
‘The people are real here. Do you feel a sense of privilege in being here? Do you feel that already?’
‘Well, I do as a matter of fact,’ Alan said, half ingratiating, half honest.
‘The people here are real.’
‘Yes.’
‘I call them noble savages.’
Alan felt momentarily at a loss. This would have been the case even without the dizzying sensation of the wheel turning full circle. He found himself babbling: ‘Great, yes, sure, I’m glad about that, because I haven’t met anybody noble in Hong Kong yet, apart from André, of course.’
Kingston received this in long, serious silence. After a while, he said: ‘Noble savages.’
André was suddenly beside him, pushing a beer into his hand. ‘Beer. Have a beer, King. I found it in your fridge.’
‘Thank you, André,’ Kingston said. ‘You are indeed a generous man.’ Kingston said this as solemnly as he had spoken of noble savages. Alan was having a little trouble with his sense of perspective. ‘Now. Alan. Come. Before anything else occurs, you must inspect your flat.’
‘All right. Though I am sure it will be perfect.’ Even a concrete shell would be perfect in such a setting. King led a beer-clutching procession back down the stairs and round the outside of the building. A gate, of metal bars, spike-topped and unlocked, guarded the way into the concrete garden. Kingston walked through, opened the door to the flat, and announced, ‘Seven hundred square feet,’ though whether in apology or boast Alan could not tell.
It was a concrete shell. It was perfect. The walls had been lightly painted with whitish paint. Four tiny rooms led off the main area. Two were bedrooms, one containing an actual bed, double, with a thin foam mattress. Alan walked around the flat. This did not take a great deal of time. A kitchen, with a Calor Gas stove on a tiled concrete shelf. A bathroom with a shower in it. ‘Water is sometimes a problem on Tung Lung, my friend,’ King said. ‘We use the Ng well here, of course. If it runs dry, we have permission to use the standpipe below the last flight of steps. That is connected to Chuen-suk’s well, and that never runs dry.’ And the concrete apron before the house, half of it shaded by the balcony above. On the far side of his fence, another tumble of the purple stuff; was it bougainvillaea? And a jumble of houses marching down the hillside before him, and beyond them the harbour of Tung Lung and beyond that the South China Sea. He turned inland, to a flat-bottomed valley floored with a chessboard of green fields. Allotments, really. Alan could just make out a man working on his little square of green, two watering cans suspended from a yoke that rested on his shoulders. He wore a pointed hat; he too lived in a Chinese scroll. Alan found that he could smell the sea.
‘I love it. If you’ll have me, I’ll take it.’
‘Yours for seven hundred dollars.’
‘Done.’
‘Then let us sign the lease. How are you off for furniture? I can sell you some electric fans, chairs and so on.’
‘Thanks. Though I’m a bit strapped for cash just now. At least, I will be once I’ve paid you a deposit.’
‘Pay me later, then. No hurry. I may be a landlord, but I am a landlord with a human face.’
‘A noble landlord,’ Alan said idiotically.
Kingston greeted this with a great hohoho, like the demon king. ‘I can see that this is going to be a very happy community,’ he announced. ‘A great future stretches before us.’
They returned to Kingston’s flat. After the bare expanse of the downstairs flat, the contrast was apparent. Kingston’s style of decoration was disconcertingly – Alan groped for a word – permanent. There was even a large photograph of a family group. This had been printed onto canvas, to make it look like a painting. It showed a pretty woman with an elaborate, slightly dated hairstyle, a pigtailed girl, a boy who looked like the illustration on the fruit gums packet. Kingston stood at the rear of the group, beaming in satisfaction.
Alan signed his lease, wrote a cheque for $1,400, deposit and first month’s rent, and received a second bone-crushing in recognition of the completion of a deal. ‘I’ll move in tomorrow or the next day,’ Alan said. ‘Just as soon as I have fixed up things with the landlord of my Mid-Levels place.’
‘What’s he got to do with it?’ André asked. ‘Does he owe you money?’
‘I think I owe him, actually.’
‘Then surely the only thing to do is to lug your stuff into a taxi and get the hell out? He’ll never trace you to Tung Lung.’
Alan could not help but think about this. Such a manoeuvre would, he reckoned, save him about $2,500. The thought went, and he was sorry to see it go. ‘André – can I be utterly frank with you? I don’t have the nerve.’
André looked for a moment deeply saddened, as if by a friend’s unwitting blasphemy. ‘My dear, it’s hardly the right way to begin your career as a freebooter.’
‘André, I was brought up to be honest – more or less, anyway. It’s a handicap. But keep faith with me; I’m sure I shall rise above it in time.’
Alan stood at the centre of a kind of refugees’ camp. Six vast striped plastic bags formed a circle around him: the contents of his flat in Mid-Levels. He had in his pocket a cheque for $1,000, returned deposit on the furniture.
The loading and unloading of the taxi had been accomplished, not without superhuman exertions. The carrying of the bags, two by two through the little gate beside the ferry turnstile, normally used for the passage of vegetables, had brought out resources Alan did not know he possessed. But the next stage, the carriage of bags to the ferry, seemed impossible. He could not even begin to think about the 176 steps.
The ferry arrived, and eventually opened its doors to admit new passengers. Alan made his first effort, and carried two bags on board. He fought his way back against the unstemmable tide of passengers to collect two more, in a state of blind frazzlement. He had just reached his encampment when he heard a voice call: ‘New neighbour!’
An impression of suit, size and extraordinary freshness of face. Alan was not quite in the mood for being bothered, but managed a flustered greeting.
‘Your gear?’ the stranger demanded.
‘Yes, I –’
‘Hold,’ he said sternly. He handed Alan a briefcase and a pink carrier bag. Then he squatted, and addressed the four bags rather formally. He inserted his arms through all the handles, straightened his back, and seized his own forearms in a grip of steel. He inhaled and exhaled through his nose, very noisily, about half a dozen times. Then he stood. Miraculously, the bags rose with him. He marched inexorably to the boat, benignly shoving passengers from his path with every step, tendons standing out from his neck like steel hawsers, breath roaring from his nose. Alan followed bearing his presumed neighbour’s briefcase, his own shoulder-bag full of valuable items, and the pink carrier bag. Condensation had formed, though not to his surprise, on its surface. With every appearance of relish, the neighbour lowered his preposterous load to the floor, back still perfectly straight.
‘Thank you,’ Alan said inadequately.
The neighbour rose with slow grace from his squat, and rotated his shoulders just once, so that the shoulder blades almost touched. Then he made a strange, rather papal gesture to the stairs that led to the top deck of the boat and a smile of rather unearthly beauty lit his face. ‘Beer!’ he said. Then he turned and absolutely sprinted up the stairs.
Alan followed more sedately, arriving on the top to find his neighbour sitting on the very back seat, both arms outstretched along its back in a crucifixion position. Alan passed him his two bags. The briefcase was placed on the floor, but from the carrier bag he produced two cans of San Miguel, passing one to Alan. Alan thanked him and reached for the ringpull. The neighbour at once placed a huge paw over Alan’s hand. ‘Wait!’ he said. ‘Not until the ferry moves.’
He sat quite silent, after this, his own unopened can in his hand and a rather solemn expression on his face. Alan watched as the stragglers came aboard. The day was chill, and most people wore jackets on top of shirts. They crowded together towards the front, enclosed section of the boat, from love of crowds, from dislike of air. There was a clatter from below as the gangplank was raised. The engine roared, and the ferry pulled away with the usual exchange of referees’ whistles. Alan’s neighbour, roused from a species of trance, smiled his beatific smile, tore the ringpull from his can, tossed it over his shoulder into the wash of the screw behind them and then positively threw the can into his face. Alan watched, fascinated, as his throat worked convulsively, like a pump. At last, he lowered the can, and smiled again.
‘Hello, new neighbour. I’m Charles Browne, the man upstairs. Browne with an E.’
Alan said his own name, and they shook hands. The clasp was gentle, unKingston-like.
‘You are going to like Tung Lung,’ Charles said.
‘Have you lived here long?’
‘Tung Lung? Or Hong Kong?’
‘Both, I suppose.’
‘Hong Kong, all my life, or twenty years. Tung Lung, ever since I went to the bad, or about two years. Here’s how!’ He raised his can once again and drank with the same primeval ferocity as before. He tossed the can, presumably now empty, over the back of the boat. He took another from his pink bag and opened it. ‘Your beer all right?’
‘Yes, great, thanks.’
‘I mean, you do drink?’
‘Of course.’
‘I mean, not a single beer and that’s it for me thanks, I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.’
‘No.’
‘In fact,’ Charles said, more or less beseechingly, ‘you drink quite a lot.’
‘Well –’
‘And get drunk and throw up and go to bed and it spins and get up next morning feeling shithouse and then have a drink to feel better.’
There was an expression of touching eagerness on Charles’s face. Alan could not bear to disappoint him. ‘Oh yes.’
‘Well then. Time for another beer, isn’t it?’
Alan made a quite heroic effort. He lifted his can, half full, and finished it in a series of frantic swallows. Tears pricked the back of his eyes and he wondered for a second if the shock of the chill and the bubbles would effect an instant purgation, even as he wiped his mouth with feigned relish. He threw his can overboard and took the new one.
‘Good man!’ Charles said, with restrained violence.
Alan opened his new can and consigned its ringpull to the deep. He took a semireluctant sip. ‘Are there many Browne-with-an-Es in Hong Kong?’ he asked. ‘I came across that name once or twice when I was working for the Hong Kong Times.’
‘Course you came across the name. My old man owns the bloody place.’
‘What bloody place?’
‘Hong Kong, of course.’
‘He can’t actually own all of it, can he? I expect you’re having me on.’
‘Well, sucks to you, because he does. More or less, anyway. My old man happens to be the chairman of the South China Bank.’
Once again, the wheel spun full circle before him. ‘Golly,’ Alan said. ‘That’s quite a grown-up job, really.’
There was a split-second pause, during which Alan thought he might have caused serious offence. Then Charles threw back his head and gave a dramatic howl of laughter. ‘Grown-up!’ he said. ‘My old man’s got a grown-up job!’ He laughed out of all proportion to the merits of Alan’s remark, rocking forward, resting his forehead on his beercan, finally emerging, wiping his eyes. ‘So that’s what’s wrong with the bastard,’ he said. ‘He’s got a grown-up job!’
‘I had a grown-up job last week,’ Alan said. ‘But I got fired.’
‘Is that why they sacked you?’ Charles asked. ‘They discovered you weren’t a grown-up?’
‘That must be it.’
‘André hasn’t got a grown-up job,’ Charles said. ‘I don’t think King has one either. He acts as if he has one, but I think he’s only pretending.’
‘What about you?’
‘Oh, me? I’ve got a grown-up job. I have a very grown-up job indeed. But shall I tell you how I handle it?’ He turned with sudden elephantine staginess to Alan, and whispered hoarsely and penetratingly: ‘I do it very, very badly.’
It was impossible to tell how serious he was, or even if he was serious at all. ‘Is that a good idea?’ Alan asked.
The response startled him, because it came as a bellow, one that turned the heads of the passengers ranged before them, all engaged till then in noisy conversations of their own. ‘Course it’s not! It’s a bloody appalling idea. They give me hell. Browne, you bastard, they tell me, you’re not shaping up. Do the job properly or we’ll sack you and then you’ll be sorry. We’d sack you today if it wasn’t for the fact that your old man owns Hong Kong.’
‘Jolly good,’ Alan said.
‘What do you mean, jolly good? Don’t talk wet, it’s bloody awful.’ Charles started laughing again. He wiped his eyes briefly, and eased up his laughter a little. ‘Now. Listen to me. I have a plan. It’s a good plan, so pay attention. The ferry stops. We get off it. We take your bags to Ah-Chuen’s. That’s the café by the harbour run by the fat bastard. We drink beer. Then we take the bags up to your flat. Then we have a beer at my place. Then we go down again and have supper, say, a bucket of shit at Ah-Chuen’s. Then, we sit about drinking beer. How does that sound in general terms?’
‘It sounds perfection itself.’
‘And we’ll roll the dice a bit, of course. You play yah-tze?’
‘No. I’m not terribly good at games, cards and so forth. Always lose at poker and stuff, never seem to have a card.’
Charles held up a hand in a stately gesture of reproach. ‘Have no fear, neighbour. Yah-tze requires no skill, no thought, no mind. It’s almost impossible to lose much money at it, because it is the longest, most boring game in the world. That’s why we love it; that’s why we play it all the time. You need never fret about life when the five dice roll across the table.’
‘Then I long to learn,’ Alan said.
Charles tossed his second can into the sea and produced a third, opening it with calm certainty. ‘Then here’s to us. Here’s to Tung Lung. Health, wealth and long life.’ With his can he caught Alan’s own a glancing blow. And drank.
