by Martin Booth
'These are first cousins to the crab,' the officer went on. 'Much nicer and without the stringy bits and chips of shell.' He picked one up and deftly stripped off its carapace with his thumbnail, dipping it in a ramekin of mayonnaise and holding it out to me. I bit it in half and another addiction was given its first rush. He then showed me how to shell one, rinsed his fingers in a bowl of warm water with a segment of lime floating in it and turned his attention back towards my parents.
At the end of the meal, which was punctuated by steam locomotives periodically hauling trains along a railway track not thirty feet from the Nissen hut, the officer shook my hand.
'A word of advice, my lad,' he said. 'So long as you are in Hong Kong, whenever someone offers you something to eat, accept it. That's being polite. If you don't find it to your fancy, don't have any more. But', he looked me straight in the eye, 'always try it. No matter what. Besides,' he went on, 'Hong Kong is the best place in the world to eat. Promise?'
My mother listened to this counsel with an ill-suppressed look of maternal anxiety but she did not protest: assuming the officer to be superior to my father, she was perhaps afraid to speak out for fear of disregarding naval protocol. I never knew the officer's name, nor ever saw him again, but I was never to break my promise.
As dusk fell, the street below my balcony at the Grand Hotel underwent a remarkable transformation. Drab hoardings and shop signs erupted in numerous shades of neon colour. Peering over the balcony was like looking down on a fairground: even the lights of the circus or the seaside funfair in Southsea could not compare. There, the lighting had been provided by ordinary light bulbs. These were fashioned out of thin neon tubes shaped into Chinese characters, English letters, watches, diamonds, suit jackets, cameras and even animals. Just down the road was a restaurant bearing a red and yellow dragon ten feet high. The illuminated words were strange, too: Rolex, Chan, Leica, Fung, Choi, Tuk . . .
That evening, my parents were invited to a welcoming cocktail party and I was left in the care of the hotel child-minding service, which consisted of a middle-aged Chinese woman with her black oiled hair severely scraped into a tight bun. I was introduced to her by my mother.
'This is Ah Choo,' she said.
I collapsed into paroxysms of laughter which were promptly silenced by a stern maternal grimace.
'Ah Choo is the hotel baby amah,' my mother went on.
'What's an amah?' I enquired to defuse the situation, ignoring the deprecatory implication that I was a baby.
'A female servant,' my mother replied, 'and you'll do exactly as she tells you. Exactly!' She turned to the amah standing in the door. 'Ah Choo, this is my son, Martin.'
'Huwwo, Mahtung,' the amah replied, then, looking at my mother, said, 'You can go, missee, I look-see Mahtung. He good boy for me.'
'Behave yourself,' my father said pointedly as my parents bade me goodnight. 'If I hear from Ah Choo that you've been monkeying about. . .' He left the rest unsaid. I caught a brief vision of a leather slipper.
The first thing Ah Choo attempted to do after my parents had departed was undress me. I had not been undressed before by anyone in my life save my mother and grandmothers and I wasn't going to let this diminutive, alien stranger called Sneeze be the first.
As soon as she unfastened one button and turned to the next, I did the first up again. Finally, unable to undo more than three shirt buttons at a time, she gave up, informing me, 'You bafu w'eddy.' Going out of the room, she left me to disrobe and wash myself.
I gave her a few minutes, wet the bar of foul-scented hotel soap, pulled the bath plug and glanced outside the bathroom. I had expected to find her in my bedroom. She was not there. The door to the corridor was open. Leaving the room, I headed nimbly along it and down the stairs, into the lobby and out on to the street. I knew this excursion came under the 'monkeying about' heading yet I could not resist it. The street called to me as a gold nugget must beckon to a prospector. Until then, my life had been bounded by my parents' small suburban garden, a nearby playing field, an ancient tractor and, more recently, a ship's rail. Now, it was colourfully lit, boundless, unknown, exciting and throbbing with adventurous potential.
No-one paid me any attention. The hotel doorman completely ignored me. Reasoning that I would not get lost if, at every corner, I turned left and would therefore end up where I started, I turned left.
Buzzing with the frisson of an explorer stepping into unmapped territory, I made off down the street. The first shop I stopped at was a jeweller's. In the brightly illuminated window, gold bracelets, necklaces and chains glistened enticingly. Strings of pearls glowed with a matt marbled lustre. A black velvet-lined tray of diamonds sparkled like eyes in a jungle night. Inside the shop stood a sailor, his arm round the waist of a young Chinese woman wearing a very tight dress that shimmered under the shop lights. The sides of the garment were slit from the bottom hem to the top of her thigh. When she moved, almost her entire leg was visible. I had never seen anything like it – the dress or the female limb.
The sailor's uniform was very different from a British naval rating's. It was all white with thin blue edging and insignia, topped off with a pill-box-shaped hat that made me think of Popeye. His sleeves were rolled up tightly to his armpits showing the tattoo of an anchor, a palm tree and the words San Diego. As my grandfather had several faded tattoos, these did not surprise me. What did take me aback was that, as I watched him, he slid his hand in one of the slits in the dress and squeezed the young woman's buttocks. She made no sign of complaint and I wondered if this was how one greeted all Chinese women.
I was still contemplating the social manners of the Orient when the shop door opened and the pair came out, the young woman admiring a gold bangle on her wrist.
'Hey, kid!' the sailor addressed me. 'How yah doin'?'
Not quite understanding him, I answered defensively, 'I'm not doing anything, sir.'
'Why you out late time?' the young woman asked. She stroked my hair. Her fingernails were long and painted vermilion. So were her toenails, visible through the ends of her high-heeled sandals.
'Where d'yah live, kid?' asked the sailor. I pointed down the street. 'Well, y' come along now, y' hear? Ain't right for yah to be out so late.'
They took a hand each and walked me back to the Grand Hotel, passing me into the custody of the desk clerk who was given an earful of invective by the young woman. A brief but heated argument ensued at the end of which the hotel doorman arrived. An uncharacteristically burly Chinese, the sailor took a swing at him. It did not meet its intended target. More invective followed before the sailor, holding the young woman's hand, grinned at me and said, 'Stay lucky, kid!' and with that they were gone.
Back in my room, Ah Choo had run another bath. I closed the door, undressed, washed and put on my pyjamas. I had just pulled up the bottoms and was tying a bow in the cord when Ah Choo came in without so much as a brief knock, bending down to gather up my clothing. I seized the moment to test my rudimentary understanding of local etiquette and squeezed one of her buttocks. It was soft and pliable like a semi-deflated balloon.
She stood bolt upright as if a lightning shaft had run along her spine.
Turning sharply to face me, she exclaimed, 'You v'wy lautee boy, Mahtung!' Yet, behind her castigation and indignation there lingered a smile.
She put me to bed, switched on a pedestal fan, lowered the slatted blinds and left. I slid out of bed and went on to the balcony. The rickshaw coolies were sharing a saucepan of rice on top of which was a complete boiled fish – head, fins and all. I watched as they dissected it with their chopsticks, spitting the bones on to the street. Opposite my balcony was a tenement building which housed a workshop over a tailor's establishment. Under the blaze of strip lights, a dozen men deftly cut and sewed suits. Next door, four Chinese men shuffled what looked to me to be cream-coloured dominoes. They rattled loudly on the metal table top as they were mixed up, sounding with a report as they were slammed down. From a window high
er than mine, a small boy was peering out through metal bars. I waved to him but he did not respond: instead, he disappeared and I heard him calling out. A shirt on a hanger hung from the bars of another window. In yet another was a dark blue glazed pot holding a single, red lily. The illuminated windows reminded me of an advent calendar except that this was secular and alive.
I climbed into bed. My cotton pyjamas were sticking to me with the heat so I removed them and fell asleep to the staccato rattle of the game tiles, the passing traffic, the occasional raised voice or laugh from the rickshaw coolies and the drone of the fan.
The next morning, I woke with a nagging headache. So did my parents.
Sitting at breakfast in the hotel dining room, my mother remarked, 'I only had two G 'n' Ts last night. I hope we're not all coming down with something.'
'You didn't sleep well, Joyce,' my father observed. 'Tossing and turning.'
'Well,' she answered, 'what with the whine of the fan, the clatter of that infernal mahjong game opposite and the stench of the rickshaw coolies' pipes, is it any wonder? I really don't think, Ken,' she went on, 'we can go on staying here.'
I was not a little dismayed at this turn of events. I wanted to explore more of the streets. Furthermore, Ah Choo had not ratted on me. I wondered why until it dawned on me that to do so would have been to bring her job into jeopardy.
'I like it here,' I chipped in. Then, hoping to justify my statement, added, 'I like the smell of the coolies' pipes.'
For a long moment, my parents looked at each other.
'That does it!' my father agreed. 'We move as soon as we can. Another week here and we'll all be ruddy opium addicts.'
3
SEI HOI JAU DIM
THE NEXT SEVEN DAYS WERE FILLED WITH ACTIVITY. MY father prepared to join his ship at the Sasebo naval base in Japan. I was enrolled in Kowloon Junior School, and kitted out with several pairs of khaki shorts and white short-sleeved shirts, on to the pockets of which were attached a chocolate-brown and yellow school badge, held in place by press studs. My mother frantically wrote letters to inform her many correspondents of our change of address.
During this time, we stayed with a colleague of my father's in a spacious bungalow at Mount Nicholson halfway up a mountain on Hong Kong Island, which I was told was known as Hong Kong-side, the peninsula upon which we were to live being referred to as Kowloon-side. Indeed, many places were suffixed with -side: I'm going shopping was I go shop-side, beach-side (swimming), office-side (work), school-side (school) and so on.
A car collected us from the Grand Hotel and drove us over the harbour by way of a vehicular ferry. En route, we saw the Corfu departing on its return journey to Southampton.
'Just think,' my mother said, 'in a month that'll be back in England.'
I could not tell if she was wistfully yearning for England's shores or horrified at the thought of returning to austere, drab British towns filled with dowdy-looking people, strikes, grey skies and snow.
The air was much cooler at the bungalow. The only sounds were birdsong and, in the evenings, the metallic click of the geckoes encircling the ceiling lights to pick off mosquitoes, gnats and small moths. The proliferation of mosquitoes demanded we sleep under mosquito nets: the bungalow was above the Wong Nei Chong valley, an infamously malarial area in the early days of the colony. One could pick up the high-pitched whine of these minuscule insect fighter bombers approaching only to hear it abruptly halt when they hit the netting. This would then agitate as a gecko ran down the muslin to consume the insect, returning to the top of the net to await the next one. My mother wondered aloud that if evolution moved any faster, geckoes would soon learn to weave webs as spiders did.
The lantana bushes on the edge of the lawn were in full multicoloured blossom and frequently visited by black-and-emerald-green butterflies the size of sparrows. The verdant undergrowth of the hillsides coming right down to the edge of the bungalow garden and a border of azaleas and bougainvillaea bushes did more than encourage merely insects into the house. On our third morning, the houseboy entered my bedroom and woke me with a gentle shake.
'Young master,' he addressed me in hushed tones, 'you come. Slowly, slowly. No makee noise.'
With that, he took me by the hand and headed for the french windows to my bedroom. Cautiously, he led me out on to the veranda where everyone else in the house – servants and residents – were gathered in a silent group.
'No talkee,' he whispered. 'No makee quick.'
To lend weight to his instructions, the man who lived in the bungalow with his wife and a son six years my senior, muttered, 'Don't make a sound or move a muscle, old boy.'
In the sitting room, the gardener and another Chinese man seemed to be rearranging the furniture. Suddenly, one of them darted behind a rattan settee and scrabbled about unseen on the parquet flooring. When he stood up, all the Chinese muttered Ayarh! in unison.
In his hand, held by its neck between a long thumb nail and index finger, was a cobra over four feet long, its hood expanding and contracting against the man's palm. He carried it out on to the lawn and killed it by cracking it once, like a whip. The tenant of the bungalow gave the gardener and his companion a purple dollar bill each before the former walked off with the reptile's carcass.
'That'll make a nice purse,' my mother remarked.
'I doubt they'll take the snake to a tanner,' came the answer. 'They'll cook it. The Chinese'll eat anything that can move under its own locomotion.'
Remembering my promise, I decided to assiduously avoid the gardener until after the next main meal.
Five days after arriving in Hong Kong, we booked into two adjacent rooms with a connecting door on the third floor of the Fourseas Hotel at 75 Waterloo Road, Kowloon.
Built on one of the main thoroughfares running down the Kowloon peninsula, it was a modern, E-shaped three-storeyed block with a flat, tiled roof, modest gardens and a short, sloping, crescent-shaped driveway leading to a covered entrance. Beneath the front lawn and giving directly on to the pavement was the hotel garage. My parents' room had a balcony: mine did not. On either side of the hotel were low-rise apartment buildings whilst opposite, across the wide road, was the steep bare dome of a hillside rising about a hundred feet from the street. It contained a deep fissure I was sure, in my romantic imagination, was an old volcanic vent just waiting to erupt.
'This is definitely a leg-up,' my mother declared as, for the third time in a week, she unpacked our cases.
'How long will we be staying here?' I asked, having grown used to a peripatetic existence.
'At least until Christmas,' she replied. 'Now,' she continued, 'if you ever get lost, this hotel is called sei hoi jau dim in Cantonese. It means four seas hotel. You say that to a taxi driver and he'll bring you home safe and sound and the receptionist will pay him. Repeat it.'
These were my first words in Cantonese and I was not slow in realizing that as many Chinese did not speak English, if I wanted to explore as I had on my first night, I would need a command of their language. In next to no time, I possessed a substantial vocabulary ranging from a polite Net wui mui gong ying mun? (Do you speak English?) to such commonly used colloquialisms as Diu nei lo mo which, I discovered, implied anything from You don't say! to Well, I never did! to Bugger me! to Don't bullshit me, you sonofabitch! And worse. Much worse . . .
Early the following Monday, my father reported to Kai Tak airport to depart for Japan. My mother was very anxious, not because my father was in effect heading for a theatre of war – Korea – but because he was flying out of Hong Kong. According to my father, who was never loath to dramatize if it boosted his ego, the wind direction was crucial to a successful landing or take-off. If at all possible, he declared, aircraft took off towards the south-east, the runway aiming for the sea. However, rarely, aircraft had to take off facing inland. This meant that as soon as it was clear of the ground the aircraft had to veer sharp left to avoid crashing into the Kowloon hills. These rose to nearly 1,900 feet
at a distance from the end of the runway of not much more than two miles. Pilots regarded it as one of the most dangerous and demanding airports in the world.
Standing at the steps of an RAF twin-engined MacDonald Douglas 'Dakota' DC3, my parents atypically hugged each other for several minutes. My father then bent down, gave me a cursory embrace and shook my hand.
'While I'm away,' he ordered, 'look after your mother. You're the man of the family now.'
It was a pure Hollywood moment, my father handsome enough to have been played by James Stewart, his wife petite and blond enough for the part to have gone to Doris Day. I suppose I would have been played by Mickey Rooney: it would have been my luck.
'Yes,' I replied noncommittally but, as usual with my father, I had been instructed to do something without any guidance as to how to do it. Was I, for example, to see my mother across the road, ensure she washed behind her ears, went punctually to bed and so on? I was about to enquire but my father was already at the aircraft door and stooping to step aboard. A moment of fear swept through me. I had been given a serious task, yet how could I, in my ignorance, hope to do it efficiently? There was, I saw, only one outcome – a slippering for failure. Even before the DC3 took off, I was already dreading my father's return.
The engines started with billows of black smoke and the plane moved away. My mother crossed her fingers. The gesture failed. The Dakota turned right and taxied to the very south-eastern extremity of the runway. It was to be a take-off into the mountains.
At this point, my mother noticed a main road crossed the runway at about three-quarters of its length, the traffic controlled by a set of lights. This added hazard unsettled her further. I saw her watching avidly to ensure the traffic lights were working and the drivers obeying them.
The Dakota rumbled forwards. As it passed by us, its tail wheel lifted off the runway, the plane taking to the air at the road crossing. Its ascent seemed excruciatingly slow. For a moment, I was quite certain it was heading straight for the mountains and followed its progress with terror mingled with fascination.
