Kiss Me, Hadley: A Novel

by Nick Macfie

  I took the ferry home to Lamma, wondering if Rinky Dink was a blacklisted American screenwriter from the 1940s. I showered, slapped on some Eau Savage, changed into something slightly more formal and fresh (a dark grey jacket over a grey tee-shirt), waited for the sun to set and went to the assigned pick-up point. Instead of turning right back towards the pier and the pub where I had earlier seen the guy with the pencil moustache, I turned left, past the vegetarian restaurant, past a little Chinese temple and ancient banyan trees and a red-and-white furnace. I turned off the main path and stumbled over some rubble, as Zeb had instructed. I walked down a little-travelled track towards the sea and down a plank to where two fishing junks were moored at a concrete quay. I sat at the end of a low, wooden bench and waited.

  Then the shout came.

  “Wei. Dim a? Lei jo matye a?”

  A tall, gangly fisherman appeared in front of me on a drifting, silent junk, the evening sun making his face a silhouette, with the blue hills of Cheung Chau Island and the much bigger Lantau Island behind. What are you doing, the heroin addict was asking. All part of the plan pre-rehearsed with the mellow Zeb. All very undercover.

  I took a deep breath. Still I look to find a reason to believe, I sang to myself, suspecting that Elvis Costello had stolen that crack in his voice from Tim Hardin. I squinted into the Cantonese man’s face and remembered yet another fatuous password.

  “Fly, Barbie, fly.”

  “Ah?”

  “Fly, Barbie, fly.”

  “Okay.”

  The man signalled briefly towards an old Hakka woman at the rear of the boat and the engine roared to life, a big cloud of black smoke billowing behind. He jumped effortlessly on to the quay and was out of sight within seconds.

  “Seuhng la!” the old woman, wearing a broad, black-fringed hat, shouted, ordering me to jump aboard. “Chaw la!” Sit down, she was saying. I climbed on to the swaying vessel and looked back at the quay as the junk pulled away.

  “Oh my god,” I said to no one.

  Sitting on a stone step, outside a tiny electrical pumping station, was the old red-nosed stone-throwing Chinese man with spiky grey hair. He was wearing a green Mao suit.

  He pointed his fingers at his eyes. And then at me.

  “What the fuck?” I turned to the old woman: “Can you please turn the boat back?”

  “Kui gong matye a?” she asked a bare-chested old man sitting in the stern. “Cheeseen gweilo.” What’s the crazy gweilo talking about?

  “Now, Please. Can you turn the boat back?” I was hitting my thighs like a four-year-old wanting a pee. I tried it in halting Cantonese. “Lei fahn hui mahtau, dak m dak a?”

  “Yaumo gaaauchaw a?” Literally, have you stirred wrongly? And loosely translated as “You’ve got to be fucking kidding”.

  The boat kept to its course and the old man on the shore leisurely stood up, dusted down his olive green trousers and ambled off in the direction of the ferry.

  What was the old wino doing in Hong Kong? What was the connection? The gambling, of course. Zeb was up to his ears in debt, and now I was on my way to the same casino. But what was the connection to Camden Town? The Silver Star, of course. It was all getting a bit unmellow.

  The junk headed into the sunset and towards waters west of the former leper colony island of Hei Ling Chau. It circled a brown, rusting tanker, listing to port, and approached it from the Lantau side, out of sight of anyone on the hundreds of moored ships and tankers and passing police boats and Macau jetfoils that leave long streaks of foaming water in their wake. I don’t know much about maritime matters, but it didn’t take a genius to tell you that the “Xanadu” was a death trap. The junk pulled alongside some wet, rotting steps, but the safety rail was dry. At the top, I was greeted by three Asian beauties wearing cheongsams.

  “Ah, you have come aboard,” one said. “What is your pleasure tonight?” She had clear white skin, with upward slanting eyes and was wearing an exotically deep purple lipstick.

  “Actually, it’s my first time here.”

  “Ah, it’s your first time here?”

  “Yes.”

  “We are so happy to have you aboard, especially since this is your first time and you’ve never been here before.”

  “Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here. You must tell me what pleasures you have. At a glance, I can see you are a pleasure.”

  The conversation could have flowed better and made just a little bit of sense, but things were going pretty well overall, I thought.

  “Ah, you are most welcome. I think you will find that we have all a man’s heart can desire.” The other two girls were somehow managing to pay attention and smile brightly, holding their hands primly together in front of them. They were all Korean. “For instance, sir, can I tempt you with the deck quoits?”

  “The deck quoits?”

  “Yes sir, the deck quoits.”

  “It sounds such fun.”

  “Oh, but it is,” the second girl said with a flutter of her eyebrows. Things were looking up. “It is deck quoits with a difference.”

  Here we go. “What kind of difference?”

  “The difference, sir, is that when you win a point, you lose your serve. When you lose a point, it is your serve.”

  “Ah.” Do people serve in deck quoits? “Doesn’t that completely alter the dynamic of the game?”

  “We find the Olympic spirit abounds on the ‘Xanadu’ in most cases.”

  “That’s good.”

  “The players don’t lose points deliberately to gain a serve.”

  “I didn’t know anyone served in deck quoits. Are we talking about the same game?”

  “We are also quite strict about what is out of bounds and what isn’t. And points are deducted dispassionately for time wasting.”

  “Dispassionately? Well, let’s not waste any time. What other pleasures do you have? What’s your name, by the way?”

  “I am Muriel.”

  “So what else is there to do, Muriel?”

  “We have palaces of pleasure, sir.”

  “You can call me Percy.”

  “Percy, sir?”

  “Percy, that’s right.”

  “Well, Percy, sir, - excuse me, for it is a really adventurous name - we have four decks all split up into bars with varying degrees of exotic entertainment. We have Turkish baths, spas, we have masseurs from many countries - Thailand, China, the Philippines, Vanuatu, Sierra Leone, Finland, Sweden, Canada…”

  “Canada?”

  “Yes, Canada. Mongolia, New Zealand, the Democratic People’s Republic of…”

  “From all around the world in fact. What else do you have?”

  “We have adult cinema. Currently we are showing fourteen Chuck Norris movies back to back. We have private rooms for private entertainment, sir. We have chess, Quiz Night and Trivial Pursuits. We have football.”

  “Football?”

  “We have games transmitted from the key football-playing countries for gambling purposes - England, Italy, Spain, Malaysia, the unsuspected Singapore. Then there are the casinos.”

  At last.

  “Tell me about the casinos. What kind of gambling do you have?”

  “We have all sorts of games, sir, in separate small rooms. Fan Tan, Fish Prawn Crab, Pigeon Crane Tit, Laugh Cry Puke.”

  “Get away with you, you naughty girl.”

  “Percy, sir? Sir Percy?”

  “Laugh Cry Puke?”

  “It’s Laugh Cry Puke with a difference.”

  “Do you have any games I might recognise? Baccarat? Poker?”

  “Down these stairs we have blackjack, roulette and dice.”

  I clapped and rubbed my hands. “Now you’re talking.”

  And while she was talking, I happened to glance over the railings down to a lower deck. Through the gaps between white-painted bars and poles and bulwarks, I caught the sight of a man standing unnaturally upright, wearing a dark suit and a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella. He looked
like he was in a trance, and sure enough, someone, a girl in a cheongsam, took him by the arm and led him into a room. Bizarre.

  The three beauties ushered me down a flight of wide stairs, one each side and one in front, pointing one hand in front, fingers and palm in a straight vertical plane like Chinese traffic cops, and telling me to mind my step. The stairs turned back on themselves one hundred and eighty degrees and there in front of me were the tables, with one more chance for the girls to tell me to mind my step on to a raised platform which I later learnt cancelled most of the rocking of a ship at anchor near a busy sea lane. Spotlights and chandeliers picked out the gold writing on the fresh green baize. The walls were done out in plush dark green over lines of red velvet sofas surrounding just four roulette, two blackjack and one dice table. Except the dice table was more like a boat than a table. People leant into it rather than on it. The room had the feel and smell of a Wanchai dive, with incense sticks burning at a small altar behind the bar, and was not much bigger. The girls draped over the sofas looked just as bored as their Wanchai counterparts, though there were more East Europeans here, playing with their dead, platinum-blond hair. The tables looked well cared for and the brass on the wheels and on the six-inch high table-top rails guarding the wheels gleamed. I gave it nine out of ten for sleaze.

  A girl with a pony-tail and straight back was dealing blackjack to a couple of crooks. I sat down at her table as she dealt the cards to the sour-faced punters to my right who each tapped the baize and said “hit me”.

  When I didn’t tap the baize, the girl with the oval face and perfectly placed beauty spot looked up at me and barely disguised a gasp.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Hit me, please.”

  Scout dealt the cards, biting her gorgeous lower lip. She was happy to see me. That was lovely. And my heart was going boom-di-di-boom-di-di-boom. Blackjack, I decided, was a many-splendoured thing. But don’t give the game away and get her into trouble. I studied the face. It was not fair that one person had to be responsible for so much beauty. How could she get through a day without a million men coming on to her? Young men with fire in their eyes, old men with dodgy hearts and hair in their ears. All wanting to kiss those lips. Concentrate, Hadley. Think about the game. I remembered the style book. Blackjack, it said, was a more sensible game to play than roulette because the “house edge”, the chance of the casino winning, was lower. But then, blackjack didn’t have the excitement of the clatter of the ball as it jumped across wood and brass before settling, the magical picture bets and the brightly coloured chips skimming across the table. I lost my first bet at Scout’s table, calling for a third card to a ten and a five. It was a queen.

  “I think I’ll try the roulette.”

  “Good luck, sir.”

  Scout’s eyes were glistening. It was a wonderful feeling. It was a wonderful life. I played roulette for a while, winning a few dollars and keeping an eye on Scout’s table. She would take a break every twenty-five minutes and return every twenty-five minutes, just like the old days at the Silver Star. I waited until she returned to an empty table, picked up my chips and rejoined her.

  “Welcome back, sir,” she said. “Care to play?”

  “Sure.”

  The pit boss and chef were only a few feet away but had their eyes on a busy table where a well-oiled Englishman was touching up the bums of two of the house girls and saying “tarquin” to each of them again and again. That’s what it sounded like, anyway.

  “How are you, Scout?”

  “Good, thank you sir.” Then in a whisper. “Blue Nose. What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come looking for work. What time do you finish? When can I see you?”

  “Not till four in the morning. I can’t talk. I live on Lamma, do you know it?”

  “I live on Lamma.”

  “At the pier, then. Sunday at five. Please go now, Perse.”

  Blue Nose. Perse. I collected up my names. “Just tell me quickly. Are they treating you okay? Is this place as dodgy as it looks?”

  “Sunday.”

  “Okay, I’ll go now. How’s Eve?”

  “Sublimely biblical.”

  “Good. You are absolutely beautiful.”

  “Go now.”

  I walked around a large, central, oval pillar where a brass plaque announced the name of the ship and its place and date of launch. Liverpool, 1936. Just twenty-four years after the launch of the Titanic. A dealer was practising pushing out seven stacks with his left hand at an empty, roped-off roulette table. This one needed the little finger to dig deep into the baize to keep the circular pattern - one stack surrounded by six - stable.

  I must point out that the roulette played both here and at the Silver Star was American roulette. French roulette is slow and dull and only played in poncy casinos in Nice and in James Bond stories. “French roulette is dealt by two seated croupiers who usually place most of the players’ bets, clear the table by using a rateau and announce everything in French,” the Silver Star guide to picture bets said. “There was demand for a faster, more exciting game - American roulette - so called because the Americans originated (sic) it.” The differences included a smaller table. “This takes up less space,” the guide said. No shit. There was no rateau and the ball was spun every few minutes instead of once a decade.

  “That one’s always harder when the baize is new,” I said of the seven stacks.

  “Tell me about it. You’re in the business then?”

  I nodded. “What’s it like here?”

  “Not really allowed to talk, but the money’s good.”

  “You know where I can apply?”

  “You deal roulette?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “They’re short on dice. Which club?”

  “Silver Star.”

  “Archer Street, right? Where Charlie Chester’s used to be?”

  “Before my time, but yes.”

  “You’re a long way from home.”

  “Doesn’t get much more exciting than this. Who runs the place?”

  The dealer looked me up and down, with a twitchy glance to his left and right. “You see the big guy by the doorway? Looks like a Serb bouncer? He is a Serb bouncer. Go and tell him you’re looking for a job. He won’t say anything, but if you’re lucky, he’ll let you through that far door where the bosses hang out.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Good luck. I love the Conservative Party.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I said good luck.”

  “No, the bit about the Conservative Party.”

  “What about the Conservative Party?”

  “What? You just said you loved the Conservative Party. Why did you say that?”

  “I don’t remember saying any such thing.”

  We stared at one another for a while, but I didn’t push it. A strange thing to say nevertheless.

  The initiation process two days later was easy. I dealt for three of the pit bosses who placed awkward, big bets and I managed to get them right. They tried to stitch me up, and I stuck to procedure, calling for the pit boss at the right time. They had me working on a left-handed table and one of the Cantonese bosses praised me for my “adherence to the style book”.

  “It’s nice,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Classy. I like that.”

  The man had his hands folded on the table and I could see a tattoo peeking under a cuff. Was that a penis? Oh lord, it was. It was a smiley-faced penis in blue ink with red drops coming out the end! Yuck!

  The pit bosses told me my pay - almost double what I was earning at Shrubs but with zero perks.

  “We don’t have England health pension benefit stock option shit,” another Chinese man in a suit said. “If you break leg falling, you fuck off. Okay?”

  “If I can get up,” I said.

  “What you say?”

  “Only joking. I mean, of course.”

&nbs
p; “You fall, you fucked. No law suits, no courts, you got it?”

  “I understand.”

  “And no questions. You don’t go ask about ‘Xanadu’. You don’t make the customers.”

  “Sure.”

  “If you make, we find out. And if we find out…”

  He meant don’t make “out with” the customers. “Believe me, I understand,” I said. “I am very grateful for this opportunity.”

  “You work, you play and you keep fucking mouth shut. Then all happy.” I was silent. “Any questions?”

  I made the motion of zipping my lips.

  “Fucker face, you have questions about employment terms? You ask.”

  “Ah, sorry. Well, I suppose I have to ask what would happen if I met some punter I knew from London. Or some friend. And he started talking to me?”

  “What in London?”

  “What would have happened in London?” I suddenly missed the Silver Star hugely. “I would have told them quietly that I was not allowed to fraternise and would catch up with them at another time.”

  “That works. That’s good. Except for the catching up. They don’t fucking exist, okay? They big bastards. Does that clear everything?”

  “Sure.”

  “One last thing. Girls. Hands off.”

  “You mean…”

  “I mean girls. Don’t tell me. And that means girl dealers. Especially dealers. Hands off. You got it?”

  A door with rounded corners opened behind this esteemed panel of interviewers and a small, busy Chinese man in rimless spectacles and a suit came through, picked a folder off the desk in front of me and returned the way he came. As the door closed, I caught a fast-thinning rectangular view of the back of a head of a man with cropped platinum hair. He was sitting in a cream armchair and smoking a cigarette out of a long holder which he was waving in circles.

  “I got it,” I said.

  “And one more last thing. The fun on the boat. You dealers restricted to B3 okay?”

  The man was shouting now. There wasn’t any need. There was nothing wrong with my hearing.

  “B3?”

  “You restricted to B3, okay? The deck near the sea. You don’t go fucking on other decks. You understand?”

  “I understand. What’s on B3?”