I stand on the steps of the Mandarin Hotel adjusting to the humidity and the sweet smell of harbour-side decay, change my mind about the cab and swing left in the direction of the office, already exhausted. This is predictable, although I don’t really believe in jet lag. Down a side alley, beneath the spattered shade of a disintegrating candy-striped awning, a man sits motionless under a stained cape while a barber’s scissors hack furiously along the flat plane of his skull. A tiny bundle of slippered old woman spits noisily on the ground beside them as she rustles in the rips of a plastic bag. Above their heads, air-con units clutter the alley walls like giant bird boxes, exhaling into the breathless stink. And beyond, the neon chaos of steep shadowed shopping streets ascends sharply into a sudden glimpse of the vast Peak that overwhelms the city.
I walk very slowly to keep the sweat below crisis levels. Turn and rise into the covered footbridge that crosses Connaught Road. A light breeze sticks hair to my lipstick and I emerge just as the sun hits the varnished brown of the granite on Exchange Square One. Each of the forty storeys is marked by tinfoil strips of wraparound glass that reflect the portholed windows of the opposite building, angled precisely into the adjoining space like a giant meccano board. I swear that each time I visit, the gap between the office blocks gets smaller as the whole island sneaks ever closer to its future parent: China.
Steiner’s fledgling office is alive and ticking, a little community of expatriate profit. A couple of FX guys are haggling with the phones, the basket boys are in position like toy soldiers with their virgin shirts and matching haircuts. I slip into an empty chair and they break away briefly from the magnetism of their screens to flash their orthodentistry at me for a welcoming nanosecond. Sitting opposite these guys is like watching a wildlife programme about mammals you didn’t know existed. My borrowed desk space on the little trading floor has a miniature phone board but no Reuters so I wander over to the mini-kitchen and make coffee, looking out at the harbour view towards the Ocean Centre and the New Territories.
I wonder about Pie Man and Rex and if he is off his food and if Al will remember to video Twin Peaks for me.
‘I’m sorry, did I wake you?’
‘No, no,’ Pie Man stifles a yawn.
‘Are you still in bed?’ There is a scuffle as he rustles the receiver from one space to another.
‘No. I must have dropped off last night.’ I picture him slumped in front of the TV underneath a sea of sweet wrappers.
‘I was just thinking about Rex.’
‘He’s good, he’s right here beside me.’
‘I was wondering if he was eating all right.’
‘He’s been gobbling it all up. Actually I gave him a treat.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Just a little treat.’
‘What?’
‘A Kit Kat.’
‘You gave him a Kit Kat? Are you fucking crazy? Chocolate is poisonous to dogs.’ There is a sound of interference or maybe static. Then silence and a sucking sound as if he is working his lips.
‘I, eh, didn’t know.’
‘Jesus. Is he all right?’
‘He’s asleep. D’you, eh, want me to wake him up?’
‘No.’ Though really I do want to speak to Rex but not with Pie Man listening in.
‘I’m sorry, Geri. I had no idea—’
‘I know you didn’t. I should have said.’
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. And, hey, don’t think I don’t appreciate it, what you are doing.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘So what else is he up to?’
‘He ate my cereal that I left on a chair.’
‘You have to put food on tables. I mean, Rex knows tables, but sometimes chairs—’
‘OK.’
‘So did you let him off the lead?’
‘Yes. He – did his thing – you know, on the footpath. A woman who saw gave me a filthy look. But I just couldn’t do the bag.’
It’s all turning into dog hell. ‘Well, I’ll be back tomorrow morning.’
‘Actually, Geri, having Rex here has made me think about getting a puppy,’ he says.
‘Well, I wouldn’t rush into it.’
‘You think it’s a bad idea?’
‘No, I just – it’s a lot of responsibility. And dog walkers are expensive. And then if you were going away for the weekend or something—’
‘I don’t go away much. Ever really.’
‘And dogs get lonely.’
‘So why do you have Rex then?’
‘Because I already have him. Because—’
‘Because you had St—’ and he stops himself.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Go on say it. Say it.’
‘I was going to say that you had Rex because you had Stephen.’
‘He wasn’t our fucking love child, you know.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry for what exactly?’
‘That you. That he – I don’t know, I mean I just don’t know how any man could ever do that. To you.’
I stare out at the harbour, hear his breathing testing the silence.
‘Yeah, well, I’ve got to go so—’
‘But how is your trip going?’
‘I won’t know for a while yet.’
‘Are you having a good time?’
‘I don’t really want to be here.’
‘Where do you want to be?’
‘You mean, if I had a choice.’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, I dunno. Right where you are. With Rex I mean.’ Obviously I don’t mean with Pie Man.
‘I’m sure he’s looking forward to seeing you.’
‘Well, give him a kiss from me.’
‘You want me to kiss the dog,’ he says uncertainly.
‘No, no, it’s just something I say.’
‘I’ve never kissed a dog before.’
‘Jesus, Pie Man, you don’t have to. Just pat him from me.’
‘Maybe I could kiss his fur. If it’s really important.’
‘Just leave the fucking dog, OK?’
Silence.
‘I’m sorry – I—’
‘When are you coming back?’ he cuts me short.
‘My flight gets in around 5.30 a.m. tomorrow. I have to go to the office so I was going to get Lisa to come round to collect him if—’
‘I’m taking the day off tomorrow. So she doesn’t need to if that helps.’
‘Oh, right. How come?’
‘I though it would be nicer for Rex.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘It’s OK, it’s fun and I’m due a day off anyway. So you could pick him up from here.’
‘Thanks, well, thanks a million, Pie Man.’
‘Colin.’
‘What?’
‘My name is Colin.’
‘I know.’ Although the truth is I’d completely forgotten.
A sunlit plane rises soundlessly over the water from Kaitek and I start counting the take-offs through the grey-blue window haze: looks like one every three minutes, that’s 320 between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., adding on for night flights and tweaking down to smooth out, let’s say a round 400 every twenty-four hours.
Out across the harbour a white spinnaker bends past the flank of a rust-stained tanker. Behind this wall of slow motion, a Lego chimney spits a steady stream of horizontal smoke and the gappy rise of toy-town apartment blocks comes to an abrupt end on the mainland hillside, waiting for the next excited rush of investment from quick-footed local entrepreneurs betting on the avalanche of money that will surely descend upon the New Territories in 1997. Six nerve-wracking years of tension and bargain-hunting to go, while western pundits warble on about the risk of the Chinese government going all Commie and jack-booting it down the streets of Hong Kong to kickstart the market economy.
The very first time I came to Hong Kong five years ago and stood down there at the water’s edg
e, I was struck by the thought that only the British could do something so crazily grandiose as transform a huge rock in the South China Sea into a magnificent power base. I stood transfixed by the Peak in a gaping neck-arch and years of myopic schoolbook history unravelled – a continuous loop of embittered bleating about Cromwell and disembowelling and famine, the coffin ships, the martyrs, the faces of The Six Men, the agony and the ecstasy of dying for your country – all collapsed into the astonishing revelation that The Enemy had, in fact, Bigger Fish to Fry. That all the time we were crawling in and out of hedge schools and mustering futile insurrections, the British Empire was gripped by the tentacles of a dizzying ambition that explained the stunning irrelevance of Ireland. Even after Home Rule and a bellyful of potatoes and Rural Electrification, the story of Ireland was still all about the same thing: a Self as defined by the Other, an island clinging onto the victim psychology of an identity crisis, trailing a stone-age language through the jostling visa queue of emigrants, licking our own sores as we clutched our one-way tickets in a stampede for the next plane out of there.
Dad, what do you remember about World War II? I asked, tracing a pencil around my schoolbook photo: June 1944: Allies land on Normandy beaches.
He looked down at his plate, shuffled a cooling mash of carrots to the side. I remember there were no bananas.
So when Mrs Collins slapped the chalk dust off her skirt and told us to write an essay entitled ‘Analyse the reasons and background to Ireland’s neutrality during WW2’, I added a paragraph at the end:
During the Second World War, Ireland remained sheltered from the earth-shattering events that were unfolding across Europe. The government’s insistence on neutrality was based on the belief that ‘England’s difficulty was Ireland’s opportunity’, and large numbers of Irish people ended up inadvertently supporting the Nazi cause simply because they were opposing Ireland’s most bitter enemy: Great Britain. The effect of this was to minimise the significance of the Second World War in Irish folk memory so that the country was left untouched by a tragedy that cost the rest of the world 50 million lives.
I resisted the temptation to mention the bananas.
Mrs Collins kept me back after class to tell me that I had completely misunderstood the neutrality issue. She said it was beyond the pale to even suggest that Irish people supported the Nazis and when I reminded her that we were the only country apart from Japan to send a sympathy message to the German government when Hitler died she told me that was irrelevant. She also told me not to use emotive words like ‘earth-shattering’ in history essays.
‘Geri.’ Tom Castigliano kisses me on both cheeks and I recognise his scent; I could do a blindfold test on all these guys who air kiss me. The Ivy Leaguers are always the cleanest, they know how to scrub everything away.
I follow him into his glass cube where the TV shows James Baker who has pitched up in Cairo to deliver a grim warning that time is running out. If Saddam Hussein is going to withdraw from Kuwait he will probably wait until he is on the brink before he moves. He looks up, making sure he’s got the camera’s attention. Our worry is that he will miscalculate when the brink is.
Tom frown-nods at the screen like he knows this already, as if he has actually written Baker’s speech. This is a business school behaviour essential – the ability to be completely unsurprised by news demonstrates that you have conducted a comprehensive scenario analysis and discounted all possible outcomes. And just so there will be no misunderstanding, let me be absolutely clear. We pass the brink at midnight on January sixteen.
‘Well, let’s hope the translator gets the time right,’ I say. ‘You know, just in case Saddam is out clubbing.’
Tom switches off the sound, slings his leg over the desk and says, ‘I hear Goldman’s are sending—’
‘Someone out here to cover Felix. Yeah, the whole fucking world is sending people out here.’
‘So when are you going to join us?’
I shrug, run a finger along his desk, the wood warm and chocolatey.
‘Hey, Geri, take it from me,’ he spreads his arms wide. ‘Asia is where it’s all happening. This is the dawn of a new era. There’s a deal pipeline like you wouldn’t believe waiting in the wings. We’ve got a great chance to open up the Asian debt markets – all these Honkie companies are killing themselves to get some cheap dollars to bankroll expansion plans in China.’
‘New World Order,’ I say, looking at the rows of the Revolutionary Guard marching across the screen beneath a huge statue of Saddam.
‘What does Felix say?’
‘Oh, he wants me out here. He’s keen.’
‘Customer’s always right.’ He pats the desk. ‘And the Grope?’
‘We haven’t talked about it. Yet. All this came up first.’ I turn for the door and Tom walks me out to the corridor.
‘So you’re all set?’
‘Yeah, all set for the simple answer to the simple question.’
‘What’s your gut?’
‘Best not to have a gut. Felix will smell it and rip it out.’
An exhausted sigh escapes me in the elevator, startling a motionless suit. I wipe my hands carefully on powdered tissues and prepare a dry-palmed entrance into client space. The doors slide open onto the thirty-first floor and the entrance to Felix’s office faces me like a vault. Felix told me these double doors were inherited from a previous occupant who dealt in gems – dull brushed steel engraved with intricate swirls and scrolls and no visible locks: a sealed tomb or the entrance to a treasure trove.
‘Miss-Morroy-how-nice-to-see-you-please-take-a-seat,’ Anna-Li murmurs a quiet welcome from behind her lacquered desk and indicates the armchair lying like a pool of quicksand from which you may never emerge. Designed by a local furniture maker, Felix told me on my first visit five years ago as he watched my flailing attempt to extricate myself from its embrace. Reminds me of a Venus flytrap.
I stand facing the window, the marble flank side of the adjoining building and a slightly different angle on the harbour view. There are no rubber plants, no glossy brochures advertising Felix’s funds or his investment approach, no artwork, no ashtrays, no concession to the visitor. Anna-Li makes a note in the silk-bound appointments book on her desk and glances up beneath her long black lashes. But the fixed smile does not disguise the killer bitch that lies beneath her poreless skin, she is the Rottweiler gatekeeper who would rip my throat out on Felix’s command: the past five years would count for nothing if he decided to pull the plug; Anna-Li would be impervious to my begging calls and let me dangle with a dead line buzzing in my ear.
She closes the book and rests both hands on the cover, her face unreadable, and I recast her in a Bruce Lee movie, wearing one of those tight silk dresses slit high on the thigh: she bends down to offer me a martini tray then straightens up and snap-kicks me right in the face.
‘Geraldine.’ Felix has perfected the Asian art of soundless arrival. ‘How very pleasant to see you so soon again.’ He bows, and I follow his lead down the corridor but my heart sinks when he steers me past the boardroom and stops before a door padded in grey leather. The first time Felix invited me into his inner sanctum it was like being propelled into someone’s bedroom at the end of a bad date. A long windowless gallery cast in gloom with pinprick spotlights carefully trained to illuminate Felix’s macabre collectibles. It has the dry airlessness of a mausoleum, a refrigerated chamber from which you might never emerge. On the right-hand side and shrouded in darkness is the closed door that opens into Felix’s private office with its burst of light and a vista stretching far out into China. Tucked away in the left-hand corner is his prize catch: a glass-domed podium with an old letter displayed inside, the nicotine-yellow paper cracked along the top edge, neat dense lines of tiny-lettered black ink handwriting cover the page. That, he explained, is reason in decay. Descartes’ desperate attempt to accommodate an article of faith into his principles. He tapped a bony finger on the glass. He had a rather amusing exchange of letter
s with a Jesuit on the subject of transubstantiation – a correspondence that resulted in the unfortunate Père Mesland being banished to a Canadian mission where he died in ignominy.
‘I would like to show you my latest acquisition,’ Felix gestures behind him, ‘but that can wait till after our discussion.’ He pulls out a chair at the oval table in the centre of the room and I sit down opposite as indicated, place my hands flat on the lacquered surface, trying to keep my eyes averted from the walled collection that I know so well.
One hundred and twenty four identically framed black and white photographs, each with a tiny inscription. Ladysmith – Mafeking – Elandslaagte – Colenso – Kimberley. Are you familiar with the Boer War, Geraldine? Felix asked the first time he took me into this room and my prepared murmur of polite appreciation dissolved when a closer inspection of row upon row of riderless horses revealed tethered heads bowed in exhausted defeat, the sharp jut of bones through their malnourished hide: a storyboard of animal holocaust. The centrepiece is a heap of marooned skeletons protruding from the bleak Transvaal plain. A wonderful tale of incompetence, Felix nodded in slow approval as we stood at this shrine to animal agony. In 1899 General Roberts doubled the number of British horses to half a million. Unfortunately he omitted to provide sufficient fodder and two-thirds of them died of starvation.
He settles opposite me with his back to the collection and places both hands on the table top, mirroring the way I’m sitting.
‘I thought perhaps you had a one-way ticket, Geraldine. That you had come to give me the good news I have been expecting?’
‘Not exactly. There wasn’t really time to discuss the relocation – as soon as I got back they asked me to come out and see you again.’
On the Floor Page 14
