by Martin Booth
Sandingham watched the boy for at least a minute. His legs where they protruded from his navy-blue shorts were tanned and, as he lay on the grass, the shorts had worked their way up tighter around his groin, so that the tidemark of whiter skin showed higher up his thighs. The material had also wedged into the crack between his buttocks, accentuating their round firmness. His head was under the hedge, but even in the shade the sun caught his blond hair and gave it a golden sheen. It was the colour hair that Chinese, passing in the street, would touch for luck. Blond hair was lucky and Sandingham wished he, too, could stroke the boy’s hair, for luck. He needed it as much as anyone.
Yet he could not bring himself to cross the concrete drive and do it. Touch it. It was not repulsion for the boy that prevented him, nor any morality such an action might contravene; quite the opposite. It was what the boy was doing: playing soldiers.
As he watched, he heard the child mouth a whee-ing noise as an imaginary shell hurtled from his finger into the dirt by the machine-gun post. Dirt flew as a pebble hit the dry soil and spurted it upward. The Grenadier’s tunic coat grew dusty. These tiny details implanted themselves upon Sandingham’s mind. When he had to, he could be exceptionally observant.
Another stone fell. It struck the scout car but did not turn it over. The boy flicked the vehicle over with his thumb, as easily as he might play a glass marble. He pursed his lips and blew his cheeks out to make a toy explosion.
In the shadow of the hotel porch, Sandingham winced. The burping bang in the boy’s mouth took on the arcing screech and cumbering thump of a three-inch mortar. He looked up. The stone ceiling that was the main verandah looked safe, but the supporting pillars could easily give way. He decided it was best to get into the open. Standing under a building in a raid was not a sensible thing to do.
He stumbled down the steps of the hotel, pushing past the bellboy in his hurry. The youth laughed at him and shouted in Cantonese, ‘Mok tau! Mok tau!’
Now Sandingham was screaming a high-pitched whistle like a rat held alive in a trap. He fled clumsily down the driveway and out into the sunlit street. Opposite, the bare earth of the steep hillside seemed to reverberate in the heat of the afternoon. He could see fountains of soil and stunted bushes funnelling upward and outward, falling as a slight rain of grit on him. He wiped it frantically away from his eyes and nose. As suddenly as it began, the attack stopped. He stood leaning on a silver metal lamp-post, sweat soaking through his short hair and running down his neck. He shook and hugged the metal to steady himself. It was almost too hot to touch but he ignored its temperature: it was something solid in an unstable universe.
Hearing voices he looked up, and saw the blond head of the English boy next to the black-haired head of the bellboy peering over the hotel wall.
‘Who is he?’ the fair boy was asking.
‘He a c’azy man,’ said the bellboy. ‘He mok tau!’ He laughed.
‘What’s his name?’
‘He name? ‘is man he cawld “Hiroshima Joe”.’
Once again the bellboy laughed, this time uproariously.
* * *
At the southern end of Nathan Road the bus slowed to go right and drove by the impressive bulk of the grey façade of the Peninsular Hotel. Pulling away from the awning over the front was a huge black American car from the bonnet of which limply hung a Stars-’n’-Stripes, suspended on a chromium-plated rod. It was topped by a small silver-coloured eagle.
Sandingham watched the car as it drove away from the entrance. He could just discern, in the rear passenger seat, an elderly man with an Havana cigar protruding from his teeth. It had been a long time since he had noticed so grand a vehicle pull out from the Pen, and he shivered at the thought of his last view of such an event. Then it had been a 1938 Ford with large headlamps on the mudguards: this, he guessed, was a Cadillac limousine.
By the low building that was the main Kowloon Post Office the bus swung into the terminus in front of the Hong Kong-Canton railway station. The standing passengers jostled for balance and Sandingham clung to a rail that ran along the ceiling. His equilibrium was not always good.
Soon he was standing on the hot pavement and looking up at the clock tower of the railway station. It was a famous landmark and had stood there a good many years. He had mixed feelings as he saw the time: three-fifteen. He could remember when it had been three-fifteen once before.
Once upon a time, he reflected, before war and revolution had split the world and sealed borders, one had been able to board a train here and step off at the Calais/Dover ferry. He had thought about that often. It had given him strength or depressed him immeasurably, depending on how he was feeling.
He took a ten-cent coin from his pocket. It was newly-minted and shone in his palm. He flicked it casually into the air, caught it just as George Raft had in pre-war movies, then walked towards the pay stile of the Star Ferry.
The ferry was the main passenger route across Hong Kong harbour. There were other ways to cross: the Yaumati ferry, for instance, the vehicular one upon which he had found the brooch, crossed from Jordan Road to Central District on the island of Hong Kong. But that was slightly more expensive and one seldom found Europeans travelling on it as ordinary passengers, for they usually stayed on the car and lorry deck with their saloons. And there were other ferries run by the same company as the vehicular, but they plied between small jetties dotted here and there around the shores of Kowloon and were also expensive in comparison with the Star Ferry. There were wallah-wallah boats which operated between a quay by the railway station and Blake Pier next to the Star Ferry jetty on Hong Kong-side, but they were very expensive and usually found patronage among rich Europeans and Chinese, or sailors who had missed the last night ferry and needed to get back either to HMS Tamar, the Royal Naval dockyard on the island, or to warships lying at anchor. And finally there were sampans, slow tiny craft oared across by a woman or a young girl, and which were seldom used except as a last resort, for they took upwards of an hour to cross the mile of water and were more expensive than any other mode of water transport.
The cost of getting across the harbour mattered to Sandingham, but it was just as important to be seen travelling with his own kind, in his own eyes if not in theirs. He felt he owed it to himself to use the Star Ferry, as a mark of dignity. What is more, he would travel on the upper ten-cent deck, not on the lower five-cent one where the poor Chinese, the coolies and the amahs and the servants sat only a couple of feet above the waterline.
The turnstile chattered as he pushed through it. Once on the ferry pier, he followed the other passengers along a planking walk that was roofed over but open on one side. A ferry had just sailed from the jetty and he had to wait a few minutes for the next one to arrive. He reached the gate at the head of the wooden slope and stood just back from it, keeping slightly apart from the gathering group of other passengers. The platform at the base of the slope shifted a foot downwards as someone unseen operated the winch. The tide was ebbing. He could hear the metal hinges of the gate stretch and squeal.
He watched the crowd that was gathering at the gate. They were a mixed bag. Several Chinese dressed in short-sleeved shirts and slacks and carrying leather briefcases were chatting together: they were bank couriers making the last harbour crossing before public banking hours ceased. Two European women, one with a young child in hand, were talking about the merits of a tailor in Hanoi Road. A Chinese girl in her early twenties stood reading a newspaper. Beside her stood two Royal Naval officers in white tropical uniform, their long white socks contrasting with their tanned knees. Their white shoes were scuffed but otherwise they looked smart and orderly; one held a document case to the side of his starched shorts. Two European businessmen stood apart watching for the ferry to come in while an elderly American tourist and his wife fiddled with their German camera, trying to insert a new film.
Looking down to avoid catching anyone’s eye, Sandingham saw the deep blue of the sea lolling to and fro between the planks o
f the pier. Sunlight striped the wavelets. He wondered how many coins might be on the sea bed thirty feet below.
The ferry was nearing the side of the jetty. There was a fierce whirling of water and foam under the pier as the boat reversed its front propellers. Puffs of sooty smoke rose from the thin funnel, to be dissipated in the humid air. Passengers on the decks had stood up and were crowding around the top and bottom gangways, causing the vessel to list gently. A khaki-uniformed sailor threw cord lines on to the narrow parapet of the jetty where they were caught by another sailor who hauled in the thick mooring ropes and secured them round a bollard. The ferry edged into the side and finally bumped against the wooden piles, making the entire structure reverberate and rock slightly. At this, the child started to prattle with excitement.
Following the crowd, Sandingham went down the slope and stepped over the gangway on to the ferry’s upper, covered deck. He sat on the open part of the deck, on one of the long, wooden-slat benches, first pushing the angled backrest over the seats. The seating was in this way reversable, so that everyone could face the direction of travel: the ferry had neither bow nor stern, being able to go in either direction without turning.
A crewman pulled the gangway up on a rope and secured it in place to act as a door. Then he peered over the side and signalled a comrade below who cast off and waved to the pilot in the lower deck steering cabin. The water surged at the end of the ferry as it glided away from the side of the pier.
Having cleared the shadow of the roof, the boat was bathed in brilliant sunlight but it was no longer hot. The movement of the ferry had caused a soft breeze to blow across the deck, which was to Sandingham’s advantage. He did not want to appear too scruffy where he was heading, and sweat had a way of making even the most scrupulous dresser look less than smart.
He regretted not owning sunglasses. He had once had a pair – good ones, with Zeiss lenses – but had long since pawned or lost or sold or exchanged them for a bowl of rice.
Now the sun scored into his eyes, as if seeking to burn his retinas. He felt giddy and sick and put his hand on the painted rail along the edge of the deck to give himself support. The feeling passed, but it worried him. He had had such giddy attacks increasingly of late.
Sandingham leaned over the rail, hoping the breeze would drive away his sense of nausea. Before him lay the business centre of Hong Kong: Central District, with its banks, merchant company and shipping line offices and its shops for the wealthy lining the waterfront of Connaught Road.
As the ferry neared the Hong Kong-side pier he could see along the low grey cliff of the quay rickshaws and cyclists amid the traffic. Lorries, their tarpaulin covers stretched tight over bamboo frames above the truck beds so that they looked like motorised prairie wagons, wove and steered between the cars and pedestrians. Towards Sheung Wan the waterfront was crowded with Chinese cargo junks, off-loading goods trans-shipped from vessels swinging at anchor or buoys in the western section of the harbour. All was bustle and maritime activity.
Lifting upwards, almost sheer from the business district, were the slopes of Victoria Peak, one and a half thousand feet high, with the residential Mid-levels crowded between its business district and the steeper parts of the mountain. In the midst of this Sandingham could clearly make out the central tower of Government House, the governor’s residence, with its flat, pagoda-like tiled roof.
Silhouetted along the skyline of The Peak, and the ridge running eastward from it, were the blocks of flats and private houses of the very rich or very fortunate, or an amalgam of the two. He could see, creeping up the mountainside, the green and cream-coloured car of the Peak Tram, the semi-alpine railway that went from Garden Road to Victoria Gap, with a few precariously perched stations en route.
At the Hong Kong-side pier the ferry repeated the performance of docking. Sandingham remained in his seat, watching a few sampans drawn up on a thin strand of pebbly mud next to the ferry. On one flimsy craft was a Chinese infant, the seat of his trousers split open to avoid the inconvenience of nappies. His mother was sitting on the flat planking at the stern, eating melon seeds, delicately splitting them open with her fingernail before eating the kernels and flicking the husks over the side. A pipe dribbled sewage into the harbour by the sampan’s prow.
At last the gangway was lowered and he disembarked, pausing only under the jetty’s colonnaded front to purchase a copy of the day’s paper from a news-vendor. He begrudged having to buy it, having hoped to find a copy on the ferry, but the seats must just have been cleaned for there was none to be had. He looked upon the purchase philosophically as an investment. At least it was cheaper than a magazine.
He crossed the road and walked up Ice House Street. At the junction with Chater Road he turned right and at the next junction of five roads he crossed again, dodging between two trams to reach the Gloucester Building: it was here that he planned to find the rent for the hotel.
The pavement of the building, which for the main part consisted of offices, led straight into the Dairy Farm restaurant. It was a large establishment, with waiter service, and its plate-glass windows were half-hung with curtains. These latter served his purpose well, for he could not be observed from the street outside.
He entered and sat at one of the tables. The place was busy. Shoppers – for the most part European women – were taking afternoon tea with their children around them. It was a scene of ordered chaos. Chinese waiters moved with speed between the tables, balancing trays laden with pots of tea, small cakes and buns, and ices or tall sundaes in glasses. One of the Chinese waiters approached him and he ordered iced lemon tea. The man did not give him a second glance: he was sufficiently well-dressed to be accepted.
The table next to him was vacated as he arrived, but it was soon re-occupied by a woman in her forties accompanied by three children, two of whom wore white school uniforms. One of the children was a morose-looking boy of about ten.
Sandingham listened to their conversation. With luck, they would fit the bill – a harrassed mother, a pain-in-the-neck child and two other offspring to offer distraction.
‘What do you want, children?’ the mother asked, in a voice tired from traipsing around in the tropical heat.
‘A coffee ice, a coffee ice!’ chanted the youngest child, fighting to be heard over his immediate superior’s demand for a peach melba, also repeated several times. Their voices jarred on Sandingham’s nerves, but he managed to suppress his longing to shout at them.
The sultry boy requested a strawberry ice, his words a near monologue.
‘You know you can’t have an ice-cream, Jeremy,’ the mother retorted. ‘It will hurt too much after the filling. Mr Bingham said you shouldn’t eat until the anaesthetic wears off and the filling sets.’
Bingham: Sandingham knew a dentist by that name. He had known him in times when there had been no supplies of pain-numbing cocaine.
He had not seen Bingham for many years, but he knew the man had a practice on Kowloon-side, near to the Star Ferry. As if in tribute to the dentist, Sandingham pressed his tongue into a space between his right lower molars. It had hurt like hell at the time, but the abcess had been prevented from spreading. The resultant blood poisoning might, in the circumstances, have killed him.
A waiter delivered Sandingham’s iced tea, for which he deliberately and immediately paid. He sipped his drink, pretended to read the newspaper and knew it was only a matter of time.
He was right. Five minutes into the tea, the morose boy stated that he felt ‘woozy’. He shifted from his seat to one next to his mother. She, in turn, shifted her handbag from her lap on to the back of her chair. It was an English-made bag of dark brown leather with long handle-straps.
Choosing his moment carefully, and watching all around him with a skilfully controlled series of glances, Sandingham lifted the bag clear of the chair back, and at once put his newspaper over it, ensuring that the straps did not show. Then he tucked handbag and newspaper under his arm and rose to leave. Safely
outside, he turned left up Pedder Street, continued across several junctions into narrower streets and soon arrived at Albany Road. From there it was only a minute or two’s walk into the Botanical Gardens.
Seated on a bench, under the shade of a traveller’s palm, he unfolded the newspaper and, careful not to be observed, snapped open the brass clasp on the handbag. He quickly rummaged inside. A used handkerchief; two lipsticks; a base metal powder compact that sprang open as he touched it, tipping fine talc over him; a packet of State Express 555 cigarettes and a stainless steel Ronson lighter, both of which he removed and pocketed; an address book; a Hong Kong driving licence and a military pass card – the woman was obviously a service wife, which accounted (in his mind) for the fact that her children were unpleasant little bastards; a diary; a batch of letters with British stamps on the envelopes; a comb and a small mirror … one by one, he removed these items of feminine clutter and tossed them into the thick leaf debris at the base of the tree where fibrous leaves had fallen and matted together. He even found a pair of sunglasses, but as they were a lady’s pair in faint blue plastic he could not wear them and reluctantly tossed them into the undergrowth, too.
Finally, in a side flap, he discovered the purse.
The woman being a service wife had had him worried. They weren’t anywhere near as wealthy as the wives of local civil servants or businessmen. But this woman must have been an officer’s spouse: in the purse was a lot of loose change – he counted over five dollars before tipping it all into his jacket. In a billfold within the purse was just over four hundred and fifty Hong Kong dollars and eighteen pounds in sterling.
