Gweilo

by Martin Booth

  My father refused to move. My mother and I joined him. A crowd began to gather on the pavement expectantly awaiting what was an inescapable confrontation.

  'Move the car towards the kerb, Ken,' my mother suggested.

  'No, Joyce! Not until the police have seen it.'

  'You've got me and Martin as witnesses.'

  'No!' my father repeated bluntly. 'I want independent third-party verification. The law clearly states that the driver of any vehicle that goes up the back of another vehicle is liable. I'm not at fault here . . .'

  My mother sought to placate my father. 'No-one says you are, Ken.'

  'He's culpable,' my father said, pointing an accusatory finger at the tram driver, who took umbrage at being pointed at and let off a stream of invective in Cantonese that even I could not translate.

  'Don't you speak to me like that!' my father retorted. 'You should have kept your bloody distance . . .'

  At this, the driver decided not to keep any distance at all and closed on my father.

  'Don't you come on to me like that!' my father muttered loudly and he removed his blazer, putting it in the car.

  'Ken, I don't think this is helping matters,' my mother observed. 'Just let it go.'

  'I'm damned if I will!' my father exclaimed over his shoulder. 'I'm not in the wrong here.'

  The passengers in the tram, like schoolboys in a playground seeing a fight in the offing, started to egg the tram driver on. He commenced bouncing about on his heels like a boxer warming up.

  This, I knew as a spectator at any number of coolie arguments, did not bode well, yet there was nothing I could do to defuse the situation.

  Suddenly, the tram driver lunged at my father who blocked the blow. My mother tried to step between the combatants, safe in the knowledge that no-one would dare hit a gweipor. The tram driver dodged round her and took another swing. My father blocked it once more and managed to land a clout around his opponent's ear. The passengers on the tram and the audience on the pavement gave vent to a loud Whoa! intermingled with an undertone of Ayarhs!

  Needless to say, this enraged the driver further. He had lost face in front of at least two hundred onlookers.

  Feeling I should do something, I stepped forwards and yelled at him, 'Wei! Lei! Heui la! Diu nei lo mo!' (literally, Hey, you! Get lost! Go fuck your mother!).

  At the time, I was ignorant of the exact meaning of the phrase but knew it was pretty expressive. My knowledge of the language of the streets exercised, I then stepped forward and shook my finger at him in a school-ma'amish fashion.

  The crowd on the pavement broke out into hoots of hilarity. So did the passengers. The driver just stared at me, taken aback by this little gweilo who spoke at least a smattering of colloquial Cantonese.

  A police traffic patrol arrived.

  As the Ford was now askew across both the east- and westbound tram lines, it was quickly causing a backlog to build up in both directions. A traffic patrol had come to see what was creating gridlock half a mile down the road.

  'This bloody fool—' my father began.

  'I can see what's happened, sir,' a European police inspector interrupted him. 'Now, with your permission . . .'

  A Chinese constable drove the Ford to the kerb whilst four others directed the traffic. The westbound trams started moving again. After a few words from a Chinese police corporal, the tram driver returned to his place and the tram went on its way.

  The inspector took out a notebook and pencil then came over to my father.

  'Not very lucky, are we, sir?' He opened the notebook. 'First the tricycle . . .'

  He took down the details. The tram company paid for the damage. They also accepted liability for the next two, identical accidents. On the fourth, they sued for remuneration of income lost due to delayed services. They did not win the case. As a result, however, my father – like my mother before him – was the cause of a change in the law. It was henceforth illegal to stop a vehicle on the tram lines.

  For as long as we lived in Hong Kong, my mother had attempted to get me to swim. She was a fairly competent swimmer herself and wanted me to be likewise, ostensibly as a life skill such as playing tennis or bridge or being able to ballroom dance, but actually so as to have someone to swim with.

  At least once a week throughout my school holidays and often at a weekend during term, my mother and I would go to the beach together, sometimes in the company of friends, sometimes just the two of us. Her favourite spot when we lived at the Fourseas and on Boundary Street in Kowloon was 11 1/2 Mile Beach. It lacked any amenities whatsoever and the only shelter was three or four ruined beach houses destroyed in the war and a row of trees. However, a Dairy Farm popsicle seller was usually to be found in the vicinity.

  The beach was of sand with a freshwater stream cutting through it at one end. Transport was provided by the Navy, which ran a daily families' bus service to Kadoorie Beach, seven miles further on with beach toilets, deck-chairs, ice-cream sellers and a dai pai dong or two. Whereas the latter was frequently crowded, sap yat bun (Cantonese for 11 1/2) as my mother called the beach, rarely had two dozen people on it.

  As soon as her foot touched sand, my mother undressed. Wearing only a pair of shorts and a blouse over her swimming costume, she was stripped for action in seconds. I took longer out of a reluctance to join her. I would rather have spent my afternoon catching fish in the stream or hunting for tree frogs in the ravine down which it ran. Finally, unable to dismiss my mother's entreaties any longer, I would take off my clothes and, grudgingly be-trunked, wade out to join her.

  The sea was always warm and lapped at my stomach. The sandy bottom was firm with only a few rocks here and there to which clung barnacles, minuscule sea anemones that packed a vicious sting and urchins with long black spines as sharp as hypodermic needles. A crevice in a large submarine rock was the residency of a small octopus which could be lured out with a dead fish or a piece of meat. It never completely quit its shelter but I often managed to encourage its tentacles and head into the open.

  Yet we were not there to enjoy the wonders of marine nature. My mother would take my hands and, towing me as she walked backwards, attempt to get me to kick my legs. I watched as the water rose up her body and knew that once her bosom was submerged I was out of my depth. At this point, she would let go of one hand and tell me to move it breast-stroke fashion. I would obey but grip her other hand so tightly she could not cast me adrift. All the while, I would be breathing hard in panic and begging her not to let me go. She promised she would not and she never did. As a consequence she didn't betray a trust nor did I learn to swim. I possessed plenty of theory but precious little courage.

  After a while, she would give up and swim out to the swimming platform where she would sit absorbing the sub-tropical sun, her head tilted back, her short blond hair golden in the light and her eyes closed, day-dreaming.

  I would sit on the beach and look out at her, often wondering how life would be if it were just her and me. I think it was at those moments I came to love her rather than just rely upon her as children do their mothers. I was becoming independent and my feelings for her were altering – maturing – as a consequence.

  At five o'clock, the grunting horn of the Bedford bus would summon us from the beach and we would climb the concrete steps to the road and board it. Because the seats were wooden and slatted we did not even need to change out of our wet costumes.

  After our move to the Peak we frequented Tweed Bay, a secluded sandy beach set aside for the exclusive use of the members of the Prison Officers' Club at Stanley, of which my parents were curiously members. It lay in a tiny bay under the very walls of Hong Kong's top security jail and was reached by passing through several guarded gates. No-one had ever escaped from the place: only one prisoner had ever scaled the walls and he had broken his legs in the process. Every bather was a turnkey, his superior or their families.

  I liked Tweed Bay the least of all the beaches we visited. There were no food o
r popsicle sellers, no streams or woods to explore – and if there had been, they would have been out of bounds as I found out when I tried to climb the hill behind the beach to get a look into the prison. I had not gone fifty yards before I was apprehended by two warders. In short, Tweed Bay was boring.

  It was here I finally learnt to swim.

  One Saturday afternoon, my mother and I drove to Tweed Bay with Philip and Ray as our club guests, riding in their Jaguar. Both the Bryants were good fun and, as they had no children of their own, I became a surrogate son whenever we were together. In retrospect, I think Philip appreciated how my father regarded me with indifference and decided to fill in a few of the cracks in his non-existent paternity.

  We parked by the prison walls and walked to the beach. There were no changing facilities but, as usual, we wore our swimming costumes in lieu of underwear. In next to no time, the adults were in the sea and I was paddling in the shallows.

  Eventually, tiring of this, I sat on the beach, absent-mindedly and unsuccessfully digging for the small opaque crabs that lived in holes in the sand. After a while, Philip left the sea and walked up to me.

  'I think it's time,' he said.

  'Time for what?' I rejoined.

  'To swim. Before we go home, I'll have you frolicking like a porpoise.'

  This I very much doubted but I trusted Philip and agreed he could have a go where my mother had failed. I was not to know that she and Ray were in on it too.

  Philip and I walked out until the water was up to my chest. He then held his arms out and I lay across his hands, face down. The wavelets broke in my face, stinging my eyes.

  'Now,' Philip said, 'kick your legs like frogs do.'

  I did as he suggested.

  'Now, don't stop kicking and move your arms, fingers closed, as if you were pushing the water behind you.' Again, I complied.

  Suddenly, I sensed his hands were no longer touching my stomach. Indeed, he was at least ten feet away and treading water. I panicked, stopped kicking, tried to stand up and sank vertically. I was going to drown. I knew it. I opened my mouth to scream. At that moment, my head broke the surface, strong hands under my armpits.

  'I want to get out!' I spluttered, clinging to his neck.

  'If you want to get out,' he answered calmly, 'you'll have to swim to the beach. I'll come with you.'

  'I can't swim,' I pleaded.

  'Yes, you can,' he declared, smiling at me. 'The human body is less dense than seawater. It floats. Look at your mother and Ray.' Sure enough, they were holding hands and floating on their backs. 'Now, let's try again.'

  I wanted to trust Philip. I liked him and I knew he would never let me come to harm, but . . . He put his hands on my stomach again, held me horizontal in the water and off we went. He removed his hands and, with much splashing and gasping, I made it to the beach.

  My mother and Ray kissed me; Philip shook my hand, man to man.

  'You see,' he said when the clamour of female congratulation had died down, 'in life we can do anything within our physical power if only we have the courage. You could climb Mount Everest if you genuinely wanted to.'

  That hot Saturday in the South China Sea, I learnt more than how to swim. Philip had shown me that much more was possible if one pushed the limits a bit and, from then on, I did.

  As my mother and Ray got changed behind a towel, Philip and I did the gentlemanly thing and looked out beyond Tweed Bay into the greater Ty Tarn Bay beyond.

  'A good place to learn to swim,' he remarked offhandedly. 'Not much current, and if you knew about the place you'd never let your feet touch the bottom.'

  'Why not?' I asked, picturing giant clams or beds of sea urchins.

  'Do you know who Colonel Noma was?'

  I shook my head.

  'Well,' Philip told me, 'after the war, the Japanese in Hong Kong who had murdered a lot of our chaps – and local Chinese, too – were rounded up and tried in a court of law for what were called war crimes. That was not just killing people in the fighting, which is what happens in war, but afterwards. Killing wounded soldiers instead of treating them, unarmed prisoners, women and children. That sort of thing. Those that were found guilty were hanged in the prison behind us. There were nine of them in all. The most senior were Colonels Noma and Tamura. When they were dead their bodies were weighted with chains and dumped in the sea.'

  'What did they do?' I asked.

  'Noma was head of the gendarmerie. He killed and tortured many people.'

  'How many ?'

  'Certainly hundreds, probably thousands.'

  'Why didn't they dig graves for them ?'

  'Because the British and Chinese wanted to punish them for ever. The Japanese believe a man's soul cannot go to heaven if he is drowned or buried at sea.'

  'Where did they dump them?' I asked.

  'Here,' Philip answered, taking his pipe out of his mouth and pointing with it. 'In Ty Tarn Bay.'

  Immediately, my toes curled into the damp sand.

  'Touch bottom here and you might be standing on the bones of Colonels Noma and Tamura themselves.'

  I am sure Philip told me this to make certain I continued to swim and, over the coming months, I came to do so quite well, but never again at Tweed Bay.

  Not long after my grandmother's departure back to England, my mother's health had begun to deteriorate. She had previously contracted jaundice whilst my father was away in Japan. At the time, I was bundled off to stay with a Mr and Mrs Everett who lived at Magazine Gap and my mother was admitted to the Royal Naval Hospital at Mount Kellett. Now, a year or so later, her illness was less immediate but more insidious. She started to suffer pains in her joints, periods of weakness and migraine headaches. There seemed to be no apparent cause for this but the diagnosis was the onset of rheumatoid arthritis, the prognosis (which fortunately turned out to be erroneous) being that she would be crippled by the age of fifty and probably dead by fifty-five. As she was then thirty-four, this promised a bleak and brief future with considerable pain. It was noticed that she felt worse when our apartment was in the mist which, being the better part of fifteen hundred feet above sea level, it was quite frequently. Particularly during the hot season, the top of the Peak could become shrouded in warm mist. It was not polluted but simply water vapour that had condensed around the summits, cooled by the rising breezes and rock faces.

  I found walking to school in this mist an exhilarating experience. When the mountain was in the mist, the pace of life slowed. Birds ceased to sing so much, people moved with a measured speed. In the servants' quarters, fingers of mist inveigled themselves through the lattice stone work and laundered clothes had to be brought in to the kitchen to dry. By the Peak Tram terminus, all would be quiet, no tourists thronging the observation point, no American sailors patronizing the Peak Café. Cars crept along in low gear, their headlights dipped, the drivers peering through the windscreen to follow the line of the road. Often I would not meet another living soul. It was as if I had the Peak to myself. Sounds were suppressed, my footsteps barely audible to me. Shadows loomed up in the mist, boulders and trees with which I was more than familiar taking on alien shapes. My over-active imagination tinkered with them. It was a scary time. On rare occasions, I woke in the morning to find the apartment above the mist. The view from the windows was much as I expected it might be from a high-flying aircraft, the solid-looking billows of cloud beneath bathed in pristine sunlight.

  Due to my mother's adverse reaction to the mist, her doctors suggested we leave the Peak and move back down to the city or at least to Mid-Levels, the band of housing halfway up the mountain and usually below the cloud line. The problem was that there were no available quarters.

  Throughout the summer term, I hurried home from school every day to be with my mother. Those few friends I had were obliged to come to my home to play. She liked meeting them but there were times when our boisterousness tired her quickly and we had to leave. She and I would also go for walks, my mother strolling rather t
han striding out as she was wont. I shared my places with her – the rifle range where she dug for bullets with me, Governor's Walk where she marvelled as had I at the fact that tiny fish lived at the top of a mountain and the ruins of Mountain Lodge and Pinewood Battery.

  It was when we were sitting on the wall of one of the gun emplacements at Pinewood late one afternoon that she first broached the subject with me that had clearly been in her mind for a while.

  'Martin,' she began, 'do you like living in Hong Kong?'

  'Yes,' I answered, wondering where the conversation was going.

  'More than England?'

  'I think so,' I said. 'I can't really remember it except Nanny's house, and Granny and Grampy's house . . .'

  'You know that in less than six months we have to go back to England, don't you?'

  I had not really given this much thought.

  'Your father's tour of overseas duty ends and he's being posted to a naval stores depot at Corsham, near Bath. You'll be going to a prep school to cram for the eleven-plus examination. If you pass, you'll go to the Royal City of Bath Boys' Grammar School.'

  'And if I don't,' I said glumly, 'I suppose I'll be a dustman.'

  'Like hell you will!' she retorted. 'Whatever you choose to do, you'll succeed. Isn't that what the fortune-teller predicted? Don't listen to your father. He's a plodder. Twenty years before the typewriter and he hasn't even made Commander . . .'

  She fell silent for a while. I watched the kites soaring over Sai Ying Pun. On the slopes of Mount Davis, the most westerly high point of the island, the squatters' cooking fires were visible as sparks in the shadow of the hill.