Kiss Me, Hadley: A Novel

by Nick Macfie

  The old man translated the order to the old woman, taking a while to explain the “it” part.

  “I am known in these parts, and back in old London town, as Terry Tinsel.”

  “Terry Tinsel?”

  “Terry Tinsel. There you go. And my god you’re as pretty as a picture. I like to do things at Christmas. It’s the best time for taking care of business. Hence the Tinsel bit. You can just call me Terry.”

  “Okay, Terry. Well I am Scout and this is… ”

  “‘Ello, Scout, my lovely.”

  “Hello. And this is…”

  “This is Hadley, alias Percival,” Terry said interrupting, mimicking the “H” sound of a right toff. “Both poof names, truth be told.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. I was becoming light headed from the opium fumes. Or was it heavy headed? I was beginning to feel slightly off kilter.

  “First things first, you prick,” he said. “You want to know why I am here. I promise I’ll tell you, but if you don’t mind, I would like to show you something I’m very proud of, as it happens. May I?”

  Terry pulled out a scrolled document from his jacket side pocket and rolled it out on the table, using a bottle of sesame seed oil at the top and a steel-and-glass box of chopsticks at the bottom to keep it in place. I noticed a purple tattoo just above Terry’s watchstrap of a single flower. It looked like a bauhinia, the symbol of Hong Kong.

  “What is it?” Scout asked

  “Yeah, what is it?” I said. The diagram looked like a scabbard for a Samurai sword. I felt squiffy. Off my squiff. I imagined some horrible revenge against Japanese tourists visiting the tea house. Mr Tinsel would show them to their seats, opening his right arm politely as he had just done, and then… and then… Where was this idea coming from? I was as happy as could be with the promise of a double Old Airds House Thistle coming at any moment. But the smell from that opium pipe was getting stronger.

  “Well, it’s a little plan,” Terry said. “One that I am thinking of running by reputable venture capitalists. I want to keep busy and productive. I’ve always been an ideas man. Know what I mean?”

  “We’re all ears.” This was a shout from me. I imagined the Old Airds House Thistle being poured into a cold, cut-crystal glass. The excitement was almost too much to bear. I lit a cigarette.

  “The drinks are on their way, old chum,” Terry said. “Hold your horses. My plan is this: I want to suggest the idea to an airport construction company, preferably in the greater China region, of building an important runway, at a key air services hub, on a seriously steep hill.”

  “Old Airds House Thistle!” I could not keep it in. “Here comes the lovely lady with the drinks!”

  The small, bent woman in black had returned. I clapped my hands once and picked up a heavy, lead-glass tumbler full to the brim.

  “Well, what do you think?” Terry asked.

  “A runway on a hill?” Scout asked. “I don’t understand. Wouldn’t it make it very difficult to take off?”

  “May God bless you and all who sail in you,” I said before knocking half of it back in one. “Waah. Here’s to hilly airports.”

  “Oi, my young lovely.” Terry was talking to Scout and ignoring me. “You don’t follow my drift. I mean you put your plane at the top of the hill, and you let it freewheel down the hill until it’s really moving, and then you give it a little bit of an upwards hill, an incline, to get the thing in the air. Like a ski slope. I want to save the planet, you see. If you get the fucking thing rolling down the hill under its own steam, there would be no need for all that thrust. Not straight away, anyway. My original plan was to have a curved runway, with a slight centrifugal pull. Some squiffy old passenger like Percy Hadley here would turn to the squiffy passenger next to him and say: ‘My word.’”

  “My word, that’s a good scotch,” I exclaimed, banging my glass down on the table. “Can I have another?”

  “Of course you can, old son. But getting back to the curved runway idea, I talked the idea over with a few like-minded colleagues and realised it was total crap.”

  “Is that’s why there’s a bend in the runway,” I asked, looking again at the diagram. “Like a Samurai sword?”

  “Please try to keep up,” Terry said. “You can forget about the bend in the runway. Just imagine at this end it’s at the top of a hill, and this end it’s at the bottom, with a little loop here to give it an upward boost.”

  “I think I see it,” Scout said.

  I tried my best to see it, but couldn’t. I could only imagine lots of people throwing up just when the plane was supposed to be getting its upward lift. Either that, or the whole fuselage crumpling up like an accordion.

  “How do you land?” I asked.

  “Ah, good question. The loop, at the bottom, flattens out. The plane comes in really fast, lands on a flat runway and then goes up the hill pretty sharpish and comes to rest at the top. It’s a lovely plan.”

  Nutters to the left of me, nutters to the right.

  “Have you ever done LSD?” I asked Terry.

  “Me? No.”

  “Neither have I, but I am getting feelings that this is the sort of conversation we would be having. If we had, I mean. Curved, hilly airports and all that. Surreal. Are you a postulant?”

  “What?”

  “It just crossed my mind. All this weird crap. The smell of that stuff down the corridor. Naah, never mind the Shangri-La bollocks. Here comes that nice old lady with yet another drink.” I grabbed it out of her hand. “Cheers. A postulance on all your houses.” I knocked it back in one.

  “I’m here for a reason, old son,” Terry said. “And look on the bright side: you’ve both stopped talking nonsense since you met me. Did you think of that?”

  “Hey, easy with the ‘I am here for a reason, old son’ addendum.” Addendum? What was the matter with me? “I am not as green as… as… as I am cabbage-looking.” Scout turned to me and frowned. “I am afraid I have no idea what I am saying again. It’s that smoke. It’s doing things with my head. I don’t usually supplicate.”

  “Hadley?”

  “There I go again.”

  “Maybe you always talk bollocks,” Terry said. “Beats me. Perhaps it’s the mountain air. Either that or the half bottle of scotch.”

  “Fuck the Tories. Bollocks.”

  “Anyway, to answer your question. I am here to help,” Terry said. “I have done many bad things in my time. I have been involved in all sorts of uncharitable situations. There comes a time in life when you have to ask yourself: have I made a difference? And in my case, the answer is yes. I have made a difference to many people’s lives. But not in a nice way, you know what I mean? Now I want to make a nice difference. It’s all completely normal and adult. It’s all about redressing the balance.”

  “That’s wonderful” Scout said. Oh boy. She was falling for the bastard. He’s a bastard nearly three times her age who’s fucked over people’s lives, so she’s falling for him. It was only natural.

  “You don’t half go on,” I said.

  “That is why I am here.” Terry rolled up his map and I saw the purple flower on his wrist. “That is why I dumped the snakes in that bar. I have a colourful background and many old friends in Hong Kong who will help me. I can speak for all of them when I say that they are very violent men.”

  “How does dumping snakes in a bar help redress the balance?” Scout asked.

  “You’ll find out. A good league hence.”

  “A good league hence?” I said. “You mean right against the forest fence? Do you have a tattoo of a penis on your ankle?”

  Terry stared a while. “Do you know your Christmas carols?” he asked. “There is no mention of the nativity in ‘Good King Wenceslas’, did you know that? Funny old carol without a mention of Jesus.”

  “No mention of penis tattoos either.”

  “I dare say. Look, here comes the lady with a third, fourth or fifth drink. Full to the brim, it seems.”

&nbs
p; Full to the brim, it seems. I was getting the spins badly. I heard Scout ask what Terry was doing on Lamma and the old man grinned and said something about a Buddhist retreat giving windsurfing lessons and having a house on the hill overlooking the ferry pier.

  “No windsurfing lessons on Lamma as far as I know,” I said. “Too much garbage in the water. Too many condoms.”

  “What makes you think I’m here for windsurfing lessons? I didn’t mention windsurfing.”

  “Dunno, I’m sure. I’m getting the spins. Can you help my friend Scout?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “We had better be going,” Scout said.

  “We had better be going,” I repeated. Boy, I was pissed. I didn’t remember getting an answer about the stones.

  “You can see a lot of me if you want,” Terry said directly to Scout. “I like to sit on the bench on the pier and watch the boats. And if I look up, I can see the copper glass doors to my house. If you ever have time, come and sit with me. Tell me what you think of the runway idea, for instance.”

  I tried to pay for the drinks, but Terry picked up the tab and Scout and I headed down to Route TWSK. I held Scout’s shoulder for support and found my head clearing as we reached road level. It was cold on top of the mountain. My phone beeped. It was a message from Baxter.

  “Thanks great, great efforts on casino story, but desk tight in runup to Christmas and needs you. Grateful office Weds 10 if can. Call if can’t.”

  “He wants me back in the office. Fuck me, I’m pissed.”

  “What are you going to do about Zeb?”

  I breathed in deeply and looked Scout in the eyes. I was stoic and resolved.

  “Fuck me, I’m pissed.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TRUE TO HIS WORD, Terry seemed to spend an awful lot of time on the bench at the Lamma ferry pier, either staring out to sea, speaking on his cell phone or talking to shifty, rake-thin fishermen covered in tattoos. I’d see him marching down the main street, as if on urgent business, a newspaper under his arm. Once I saw him on his bench talking to a group of schoolchildren and pointing out to sea as if explaining the lay of the land opposite. On several occasions, I saw him take the path leading up the hill above the ferry pier where he said he had a house with the copper-coloured glass doors overlooking the sea.

  The evening before going back to the office to help out at Baxter’s request, I returned from town to see Terry, alone, rolling a cigarette, a six-pack of San Miguel beer at his side. He had assumed the lotus position.

  “Watcha, Hadley,” he said. “You won’t believe what just happened.”

  “Nothing would surprise me, Mr Tinsel.”

  “No, straight up. This guy gets off the boat, a ponce like you, wearing red shorts and a white linen jacket. Calls himself Bob-a-Job. Do you know him?”

  “I know who you mean.”

  “Is he all right in the head?”

  “Why?”

  “He started having a go at me, didn’t he? He sat down here and started going on about some fucking mushroom farm in his flat.”

  “Mushrooms?”

  “Boxes and boxes of them, he says. And then some bastard stole them, he says. Box after box of fucking mushrooms. He asked me if I had seen anybody get on the boat with seventy-five boxes of mushrooms. I said no.”

  “You didn’t see anything?”

  “Of course I didn’t fucking see anything. It’s not something you’d miss, right? I mean seventy-five boxes. And then he starts getting all uppity with me saying ‘where have all the mushrooms gone?’”

  “I wouldn’t take it too seriously. This is someone, after all, who introduces himself as Bob-a-Job.”

  “He got all irritated and said he was in danger of being forced out of edible fungal products trade altogether.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “But the characters you see coming off that boat. I tell you. This English woman, she comes off and comes up to me and offers me a flower! What a liberty! She wanted me to follow her to some religious retreat on an adjacent island. A religious retreat on an adjacent island? I says. Get away. You’ve got to be fucking kidding. I’ve got work to do. I’ve got a grand plan. You want a beer?”

  Terry handed over a San Mig.

  “What’s the plan, then?”

  “It’s something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest. Know what I mean? Have you ever wondered what I do for a living? Adjacent plan, my arse.”

  I recalled an image I had of him in London, jamming chopsticks into my ears.

  “You’re a gangster,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, not too loud, sonny Jim. They’ll hear you on that fucking adjacent island.” Terry pulled up his left jacket sleeve to reveal the tattoo of the purple bauhinia. “But I reckon you may have hit the nail on the head. You are wondering what this tattoo symbolises? My back and front are covered in tattoos.”

  “Goodness.”

  Terry smiled. “I am a member of a gang, but with allegiances and loyalties you wouldn’t believe and wouldn’t understand. It’s all about trust.”

  “Triad and trusted.”

  “Triad and trusted. You just make that up? Hadley, you have no idea how much you give away about yourself. So scared and defensive.”

  “At least I don’t run prostitution rackets.”

  “Hold on, old pal. Aren’t you a regular at the Wanchai bars? Aren’t you a big hit with the girls? What am I saying? I know you are.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I will leave you to think about it, mate. You’re in denial, that’s what you are. The unbelievable sadness of selling sex among the smiling, pretty girls you care for so much.”

  “Last I heard, going to girlie bars and running girlie bars were two different things.”

  “Yeah, right. One of them is out of choice.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what it means, you prick. There are allegiances you don’t understand. Don’t make me have to repeat myself. You have a choice going to a bar. You’re feeling thirsty. You want a drink. Hmmm, where shall I go for a drink, you ask yourself. I know, I’ll go to a fucking girlie bar. Maybe some people don’t get a choice running a bar. Anyway, never mind that now. I wanted to have this chat to tell you…”

  “At least I don’t jam chopsticks into people’s ears for a living.”

  “Now that’s just silly. What I want to tell you is…”

  “I’m not peddling drugs to children in schoolyards. I’m not fixing football matches. I’m not …”

  “…What I want to tell you is that I am Scout’s father.”

  Terry was looking at me with strangely raised eyebrows. My first reaction was to think of that thing going on with the hi-hat in ‘Nights on Broadway’, soon to be displaced by that thing going on in my dream between Princess Diana and the Pet Shop Boys. Then came a vision of Scout throwing up over an escarpment, a word I don’t often use, her T-shirt riding up gently and naturally and beautifully above her right hip. The brain, as I have already said, is an extraordinarily fickle organ.

  “Can you say that again please?”

  “It’s simple. I am Scout’s father.”

  “How can that be?”

  “I’m sure I don’t have to draw you a picture.”

  “She’s half-Chinese.”

  “Yes, I know that. There is some Korean blood going back two generations. Going further back, undoubtedly Mongolian. Genghis Khan was a right fucker.”

  “But she doesn’t know it?”

  “About me? No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that is the way her mother and I wanted it. I have some doubts now. I have done things I don’t want her to know about. As for her mother, she’s now a fat old bag who eats fish and chips for breakfast.”

  “But what about her father? I mean, if you’re the father, what about the man she thinks is her father.”

  “He’s dead.”

  �
��I know. But what happened to him?”

  “He died, last I heard.”

  “You killed him?”

  “Don’t be silly. He had a condition. He had a heart attack.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because it will explain what happens next. I haven’t been a good man. I doubt Scout would relish the news.”

  “How can you prove this?”

  “I don’t have to prove anything. But her mother knows.”

  “How do you know that I won’t tell Scout?”

  “Do me a favour. You’re a bit dopy sometimes, but you’re not cruel.”

  Terry went on to tell me about the Pirates in Stanley. The bar, like all others in Hong Kong that made good money in those days, paid for protection. Terry, a young, dashing gangster covered in tattoos, had collected the money and more besides. I summoned up a picture of Scout in my mind, trying to suppress a grin behind the blackjack table. All that beauty, all that olive skin, those classically high cheek bones. The tiny smooth mole that was so perfectly placed it looked fake. East meets West with a gushing opening up of the gene pool, a rush of fresh, unhindered, un-inbred DNA spanning deserts, oceans, Mongolian steppe and protection rackets.

  “She’s beautiful,” I said.

  “Yes she is. So was her mother, until she became a fat tub of lard. The fate of many in England. Gloom, boredom, lack of adventure and crap food.”

  “What do you want me to do with this information? My God, Terry.” I had only just remembered. “You have no idea what trouble she’s in. The casino paid off all her debts and she has no way of paying them back.”

  “I know all that. Her mum ate fish and chips for breakfast and I drank green tea and watched her. We weren’t a perfect match. I must tell you, my body is covered in tattoos.”

  I am about to tell him his daughter may have to sleep with the punters and he tells me his body is covered in tattoos. Again.

  “And?”

  “All of them represent warlords and Chinese gods. But this one…” He pulled back his sleeve to show the bauhinia again. “… this one represents Scout’s mother. When she was hot.”

  Terry was looking at me in the eye. Way over the top, but he wasn’t taking the piss.