The Bell-Boy

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  To save his balance Laki had eventually to sit right forward on her chest, trapped between wall and ceiling, hands outstretched to the windowsill, bangle gleaming.

  ‘… of course not. Never forget, the family’s everything here. You’re a cabinet minister, and you screw everyone left and right including Central Government funds and walk away with the loot to Switzerland or the Cayman Islands and secretly everyone’ll be saying, “Right on. The better for his family. Wish it could’ve been me.”’

  Now the dress was spread out around him, hiding her to the hips. Her head had vanished and with it the entire bright pool of her hair. The moonlight ran off the material in all directions as if it were a marquee pitched and waiting in a secret wood.

  ‘… liberation theology …’

  From within the marquee came the smallest sounds imaginable, mice nibbling.

  ‘… corruption …’

  He gave an involuntary sigh, elbow thudding into the wall. A dreadful silence.

  ‘Just monkeys,’ said Father McGoohan. ‘Thing is not to get paranoid oneself.’

  Altogether, he and his companion spent another hour and three-quarters in earnest conversation, their pipe smoking drifting up through the window slits and mingling with the scent of the vine. During all that time only two words were spoken in the room above, when she pulled his face to hers by the hair and said with blackcurrant breath: ‘Mister Lucky.’

  Ong Mokpin was late for his appointment and Tessa, waiting in the Golden Fortune’s Waikiki Bar, ordered a second Hawaiian punch. It arrived with a good deal of supplementary flotsam and litter: vague green slices, pineapple pulp, orange sticks, paper umbrellas. One way and another she was glad to be leaving Malomba. More and more she felt she’d been selfish. Her back was so much better it was already an effort remembering to feel grateful to hadlam Tapranne. Or, for that matter, to the Swami. It was not made easier by the knowledge that her recovery had pre-dated the psychic surgery. In any case it had been a hectic ten days and the children had borne it all heroically. She wondered if Zoe were up yet; that headache had made her look thoroughly rotten and underslept. Tessa had rubbed her temples with essence of palamandron flowers and done her soles with nasturtium oil.

  From where she sat she could see through the Waikiki Bar’s entrance to the lifts beyond. A note chimed, doors opened and Mr Mokpin stepped out hand in hand with two little Chinese girls. He was not wearing his collapsed fez today, she noticed; he was in a glossy suit and his hair looked damp and recently combed. The persona of the ethnic stallholder deep in a quarter of the Wednesday Market seemed to have been scoured off. This was a Chinese businessman approaching her with a smile of recognition and a copy of The Times of Malomba. At the entrance to the bar he said something to the little girls, who curtseyed before scampering off.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Hemony. Please forgive my lateness. I was playing with my nieces. Children, you know. One loses all sense of time.’

  ‘Pretty little things. And such charming manners.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Mr Mokpin quickly wearied of the topic of children. ‘I see you’re drinking the speciality of the house rather than masan-masan. A wise choice. The masan-masan here is terrible, not genuine at all. They try to westernise it by adding sugar and some sort of cola. A disaster, of course. Should you ever consider being my guest here for a meal, you must allow me to choose for you. They still do some genuine Hakka dishes. Although I must admit that occasionally two different cuisines can blend most happily, isn’t it so? They make an excellent kittens in aspic. I believe they drown them in brandy and mao tai so the flavour comes from inside. But of course, I was forgetting. You are surely vegetarian.’

  In his businessman’s mode he was evidently a gastronome. Tessa listened to him discussing food for another five minutes, at the end of which he must have thought he’d done his bit to make up for arriving late. ‘So the International Money Order is cleared?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Capital. Have I then your authorisation as the Swami’s agent to dispatch? I will need your signature. Also of course the money, ha-ha.’

  ‘I want to amend the order slightly,’ she said, running down her own copy with a biro. ‘Here, yes. I specified one hundred fifty-mil bottles of karesh oil. I’d like to increase that to five.’

  ‘Five hundred?’ Ong Mokpin produced a slender calculator and tilted its solar cells to the light. ‘Another five hundred dollars, Mrs Hemony. At one dollar twenty-five.’

  ‘Oh no, Mr Mokpin. You should be giving an extra discount on an even bigger bulk order.’

  He glanced at her approvingly before returning to his calculator. ‘One dollar seventeen. Best price. Four hundred and sixty-eight dollars. Freight and packaging will be proportionally more, naturally … You evidently share my confidence in karesh oil as a potential big seller.’

  ‘I’ve begun testing its properties,’ she said guardedly. ‘Enough at least to justify increasing the order.’ She caught his eyes on her.

  ‘I’m delighted.’

  He wanted to know why the order had to be bottled in such small quantities. Would it not be much cheaper to send a single twenty-five litre flagon? Less labour; lighter. She began explaining what he surely knew already, about shipping delays, about how essences deteriorated, about higher labour costs in the West. He watched her politely. She thought he was sounding her out; compounded weariness and boredom made it hard for her to listen to her own voice, harder still to lift the glass of punch and drag the liquid through a candy-striped plastic straw which bent at an elbow like a tiny concertina. Perhaps the full consequences of the Teacher’s change of strategy were only now becoming apparent. It was surely no bad thing to have made Valcognano more productive in order that healing could be more widely disseminated. By the time she left Italy things had already assumed the proportions of a busy cottage industry: the drying and bundling of herbs, the bottling of lotions, the extraction of oils, the loading of cartons into the back of a Russian jeep which took the mule path in its primitive stride. All that was sociable and agreeable.

  But this … She looked about her. A few Chinese noisily drinking Chivas Regal in one corner. An elderly American, possibly, with – and this was strange – two little girls eating ice cream who greatly resembled Mr Mokpin’s nieces. Of course she must be mistaken. She knew it was wrong, but she was afraid the Chinese really did look rather alike to her. However, what was she, Tessa Hemony, doing here at ten o’clock in the morning? She didn’t want this drink, she didn’t want this man’s company no matter how compulsive his shop. Above all she didn’t want to be talking business. What did she have to do with orders and cash?

  Worse still, was this to be her future? The Teacher knew he could rely on her, but surely he didn’t seriously intend starting her out in her forties as a buyer? Perhaps this was only the first of many such bars she would find herself in at ten in the morning. Maybe Ong Mokpin was merely number one on a long list of men in electric blue suits with calculators. Fifteen years ago – no, less, far less – she would have identified this as selling out to capitalism. By now she knew that capitalism was really only another word for making a living; but the fact of the matter was that Tessa had never actually made a living and had no intention of starting now.

  She was wrong; of course she was wrong. The Chinese at their table laughed hysterically. A plate of what looked like fish covered in pink glue had arrived for them to pick at as they drank. She was wrong because in a moment of depression she had fallen into the error of striving and grasping. Actually she was in bliss, right here, right now. This now was all there was. And quite suddenly it felt like it.

  Earlier that morning Laki had gone out as usual for laran loaves, but on returning found only Mrs Hemony at the breakfast table. Zoe’s absence alarmed him; he wondered how much her mother knew about last night’s escapade. Rapturously treed as they had been by Father McGoohan and colleague, they had not been able to change their clothes and leave the pagoda much before tw
o in the morning. They found the Nirvana’s kitchen door locked and had been forced to go in round the front, astonishing Raju. The night porter, mildly drunk, pulled himself together enough to say, ‘Good evening, miss,’ in English. Laki had winked at him with the insolence of the self-pleased and Raju added in broadest Saramu dialect: ‘Huh. Sweet fruit, sore belly … Can’t see you. You’re not here.’

  In the light of early day as he set off for the bakery, Laki began to have doubts about old Raju. They were comrades, right enough. Fellow-exiles and all that. But even comrades had their price and he was not convinced the old man was proof against Mr Muffy. He was never going to find another job at his age. Loyalty, Laki knew, had a way of flexing under the right pressure. Maybe all along he’d been the proprietor’s paid ear?

  ‘She’s got a bad headache this morning,’ the missus told him in answer to his enquiry as he unloaded redundant bread on to the table. Flakes of crust stuck to his cotton uniform. A bird fluttered expectantly to the nearest chair-back. ‘Also her stomach seems a bit upset.’ Laki, remembering the draughts of stream water, was not surprised. ‘I can’t understand it, it’s so unlike her. She was perfectly well last night and I’m sure we all ate the same things yesterday.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘Oh, Jay’s just lazy.’ She glanced around and slipped a hand over his, drawing him closer. ‘I couldn’t find you last night. I wanted to give you something but you weren’t there.’

  ‘Missus, I sorry. I not knowing. I’m to playing with friend who work in bakery.’ He poked at one of the loaves.

  ‘That’s all right, Lucky. Never mind. But if sometime today you’d like –’

  ‘Trouble, Mrs Hemony?’ broke in a voice and Laki snatched his hand away from under hers. Mr Muffy was advancing across the room through a cloud of finches.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Tessa said. ‘Why should there be trouble? I was just thanking Lucky here for bringing our lovely bread. This young man’s an investment, Mr Muffy. Hang on to him.’

  ‘Only when we do the accounts are we knowing if an investment is a profit or a loss, madam. We shall see. At this moment I need my investment to go to Banji in order for buying more paint. If you come back next month, Mrs Hemony, you’ll see a new Nirvana. We’re making betterments. Throwing out the rubbish’ – he shot his bell-boy a poisonous glance – ‘and rating up the properties. Stocktaking. Rationalising the asset. In these days of global-wide inflation we are having to let business efficiency be our ruler, isn’t it?’

  Laki was sent straight off without being allowed even to do his round with the incense brazier. He took with him a long list of requirements and only enough small change for their transportation. He had to hitch a lift to Banji, taking longer than planned because the lorry driver and he stopped to watch a dogfight in one of Malomba’s unofficial pits. He bet his return fare. There was a lot of blood and yelping for the best part of half an hour, and when the two bodies were dragged from the pit by a hindleg apiece only one was still twitching and it was not the one he had backed. Clearly the trip home would also have to be begged.

  Once in Banji he went to the factory’s trade counter and leaned heavily on it for a long, long time while indolent youths laboriously trundled the wrong drums of paint out of the recesses of a warehouse, then trundled them all the way back again. In fact it was mid-afternoon before his order had been assembled and another hour until he could arrange its carriage into Malomba. By the time he fetched up again at the hotel, dispirited and very hungry, it was almost six o’clock. Leaving the drums of paint tucked round the side he made a furtive entry through the kitchen, surprising Raju in a pre-supper snack.

  ‘Where the hell did you get to? Mufiy’s been on the phone to the factory all day. They had to stop painting. Your fur’s singeing, my boy. I tried to cover for you, of course.’

  ‘Of course, uncle. Thanks.’

  ‘All right. Oh, and that woman left this for you.’ He produced a sealed packet. ‘I hope it was worth it … They asked me to say goodbye.’

  ‘You mean they’ve already gone?’

  ‘Checked out this afternoon.’

  Punitively, Laki declined to open the envelope then and there beneath Raju’s nose. Privacy was essential. He took the back stairs two at a time and let himself into his lair. There he ripped it open and out spilled Zoe’s bracelet, a letter, and a wad of money which made him sit down. Incredulously he counted it. It seemed like five thousand. He counted it again. Suddenly it felt all wrong. Okay, he’d tried it on. Of course he had. But … He thought of the missus knocking on this very door two nights in succession. He thought of last night in the pagoda. Above all he thought of last night in the pagoda – ‘Mister Lucky!’ – and their intimate imprisonment. That was something he never would forget. As blonde as gold; long blonde hair melted into a secret puddle beneath her own dress; later, her mouth soft on his own. Slowly he picked up the letter.

  Dear, dear Lucky –

  Thank you, thank you for making our (especially my!) stay in Malomba so wonderfully memorable. You are an exceptional person and I truly know with that sunny nature of yours you’ll be as lucky as your name implies! I have the happiest and most confident feelings about your future.

  Please give our very best regards to your family, especially to your mother. I’m so sorry we couldn’t say goodbye properly, but we only knew we were going at the last minute. Just like us! But I absolutely had to say how grateful I am for all you did and particularly for looking after Jason. I’m afraid you’ve started something there – he can’t stop talking about your catapult!

  Anyway, hoping you can put the enclosed to good use, and only wishing it could be more,

  Gratefully,

  Your loving friends,

  The Hemonys

  He put the letter down for more thorough translation later and picked up the money again. There were tears in his eyes. Five thousand? It had no meaning. More, it had no bearing on what had happened. Whatever the sum it would still be incommensurable, inapt. What had happened? Hadn’t it been fun for them too? Five thousand? The bracelet blurred as he turned it in his fingers, held it to his nose. Pay-off.

  Springing up he thrust letter, money and bracelet deep into the vine. What was the time? They could surely only be returning to the capital on the overnight bus which left at six-twenty. He might just … He locked the door and took off down the stairs. As he passed Raju in Reception he heard a shout from the office behind. Ignoring it, he leaped the front steps and out into the street.

  Mr Muffy emerged and gazed at the bell-boy’s departing figure. His face held the lines of a deep rage but there was satisfaction in his eyes. ‘Right,’ he said. The porter said nothing but bowed his head. Behind him he heard his employer pick up the telephone. Raju put his chin in his cupped hands and his forefingers into his ears. He remained that way, staring at the wooden surface of the desk and listening to his own blood, for quite a while.

  The stand at the bus station was empty.

  ‘Left ten minutes ago,’ said a driver laconically.

  At these words Laki remembered there had been no address on the letter. He supposed they might have given one on checking in, although it would doubtless be as false as everybody else’s. He might at a pinch wheedle it out of Ong Mokpin. But his heart recognised there had been no oversight. He knew if he wrote there would be no reply, could be no healing of snapped ends, no finding out whether the girl had really meant him to go to Italy. Overhead the first bats were bursting from under the shelters and whirling like smoke into the violet twilight. Lamps were being lit. The beggars and vendors were settling down, collecting their sheets of plastic and banana leaves into pitches for the night. The handfuls of hard-bitten onions were a further day shrivelled, the little cakes tough and dusty. He wandered sadly among the passengers and bus crews and peanut-sellers. He was bereft, as if the last ten days amounted to a significant part of a lifetime which had been abruptly carted away.

  A bus turned into t
he station, one headlamp lit, the other lolling sightless like an eyeball on its wire. It was the daytime bus from the capital, evidently much delayed. He made a valiant attempt to be dutiful, pulling himself into the vehicle before it had stopped, elbowing his way against descending travellers.

  ‘Yes sir, yes sir, what hotel you have?’

  ‘Screw off, sonny.’ The young man and his companion were trying to hitch themselves into backpacks while being jostled and pushed. They had that crumpled, sour look of those who had endured three or four breakdowns too many that day and had become costive from countless warm bottles of Bolly and Mops. ‘Just ignore them, Steve. Don’t give them an inch. Bastards.’

  ‘Yes sir, what name hotel you have?’

  A rucksack sewn all over with badges was shoved into his face. ‘Phuket,’ it read. ‘Chiang Mai.’ ‘Puerto Galera.’ ‘Bali.’ ‘Kathmandu.’ Further back in the bus he found two very old nuns with the yellowed skin of Europeans who had spent a lifetime in the tropics.

  ‘Hotel, missus,’ Laki said without much hope. ‘Very good hotel. Golden Fortune, Seven Blessings all closed now. Many month all shut.’

  One nun looked at the other.

  ‘Burnt up. Finished,’ Laki explained.

  ‘I rather think, Agnes,’ said the first nun in faultless dialect, ‘that this boy is fibbing.’

  ‘Both hotels seemed in perfect condition three days ago,’ her companion agreed.

  He gave it up, but not before all three had exchanged a small, wan smile of complicity.

  Back at the hotel he found the front hall deserted. This was strange. The glass-paned door to Mr Muffy’s office was shut, the lights out. Presumably gone home. He went upstairs to the roof and was about to undo the padlock on his plywood door when he found it missing. The door opened at his touch. He thought immediately of the money and went in, feeling in the usual place for matches.