by Denise Emery
Sunrise in Hong Kong
By
Denise Emery
Contents
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14
SUNRISE IN HONG KONG
'How dare you!' Margaret slapped him. Just once, across the face, as hard as she could. She took several deep breaths before she spoke again, and when she did her voice was low with barely controlled fury.
'I'll tell you something, Peter Benhurst. You're a bitter, twisted man. And I'll tell you something else. I think you'll live to regret this conversation and your monstrous assumptions! When that happens, I'll thank you not to come to me with your apologies, your, your—'
'Don't worry about it!'
'I won't! But if I live for ever, I will never, ever have anything further to do with you, and that's a promise . .'
Sapphire Romances from Hamlyn Paperbacks
Helen Beaumont: WHISPER TO THE WAVES
Judith Bordill: A CANDLE FOR LYDIA
Judith Bordill: THE CLOUDED MIRROR
Jill Eckersley: A LITTLE LOVING
Kathy Ellis: WHERE THE WILDERNESS ENDS
Denise Emery: SUNRISE IN HONG KONG
Denise Emery: THE SWEET BELLS OF UTRECHT
Maynah Lewis: BEFORE THE DARKNESS FALLS
Maynah Lewis: LOVE HAS TWO FACES
Jill Sanderson: NEVER FORGET ME
Gabrielle Shaw: SUNTRAP
Anna Stanton: JOURNEY'S END
Jean Stewart: ESCAPE TO HONG KONG
Alexandra Thomas: THE TAKAMAKA TREE
Alexandra Thomas: THE WEEPING DESERT
SUNRISE IN HONG KONG
ISBN 0600 20266 6
First published in Great Britain 1981
by Severn House Publishers Ltd
Hamlyn Paperbacks edition 1982
Copyright © 1980 by Denise Emery
1
As a Director of the Barwell College of Business, Charles Beeson gave the final lecture of the spring term to those students who had just completed Barwell's two-year intensive course. His remarks touched on Determination, and Ambition, and Honourable Business Ethics.
Over the noise of London traffic which intruded with the breeze through the open windows of the lecture hall, Mr Beeson wished the sixty-five hopeful faces in front of him the best of luck in their future careers. Finally, with measured dignity, he eased his lanky frame out from behind the oaken lectern, and walked slowly down the neat rows of chairs, handing out the sealed envelopes which contained the formal announcement of how well or how badly each student had done.
Margaret Hamilton, seated at the end of the last row but one at the back of the room, looked far too fragile to have absorbed four full terms of the demanding course for which Barwell's was famous.
Her dark hair was brushed into a businesslike coil at the nape of her neck, but it framed a heart-shaped face in which the features were both regular and delicate. She was sitting directly in the path of a shaft of sunlight, and burnished highlights of red-gold appeared in the curling mass. And although the bottle-green cotton shirtwaist dress she wore would have been suitable in the most formal office, it fitted her slender figure as though it had been made for her, and further emphasized her air of exquisite femininity.
Yet Margaret Hamilton seemed noticeably more relaxed about her results than many of the others in the large room, and as Mr Beeson approached her, she smiled up at him. He smiled back, handing her the envelope on which her name was written. 'Well done, Margaret,' he said with quiet approval, as he had to one or two of the others before her.
Fifteen minutes later, when Margaret emerged from the college into a cul-de-sac off the Tottenham Court Road, Ralph Nickleby was waiting for her in their estate car; when he saw her, he leaned out of the window.
'Thought you'd be ready for a snack, lass!' he shouted cheerfully.
She wrinkled her nose at him as she walked towards the car. When she'd settled herself into the seat beside him, she looked across in mock-despair. 'I haven't looked yet, Ralph, but I expect I failed every course except alphabetical filing. Never mind, you can take me out to lunch as a consolation!'
Ralph sat patiently while Margaret opened her envelope and withdrew its contents, read quickly through her examination results and passed them to him.
'Celebration, more like!' he crowed, beaming. 'What will it be for the lady? Italian, or Greek? Or maybe,' he suggested teasingly, 'you'd prefer Chinese?' He said that as though it was an afterthought.
It wasn't. It was a reference to the promise Ralph had made to her, on the raw day late in the previous January when the sombre skies and frozen ground had so accurately reflected the misery in Margaret's heart…
Margaret Hamilton's father died in a traffic accident two months after she was born. Martin Hamilton's only legacy to his daughter, apart from his name, had been a handful of fading snapshots of his youthful, smiling face, photographs which Margaret's mother had carefully preserved. When Margaret was three Dorothy Hamilton married Ralph Nickleby, and almost from the day she met him Margaret thought of Ralph as her dad. In his mid-thirties then, married for the first time, Ralph was delighted with his new status, with the lovely wife and small daughter who were his 'instant family'. He was proud of his responsibility for Margaret, too, determined to look after her in every way as though she was his own.
Ralph Nickleby's profession was the travel business. He had founded his own agency, Travel Unlimited, Limited, a shoestring operation in Fulham, the year he and Dorothy met. At first he had worked on his own to nurse the business into a solidly successful venture. But later, when he and Dorothy married, she had worked with him, doing most of the agency book-keeping from home. The business thrived, and when Ralph opened a second, larger branch in a busy side street just off Oxford Circus, it became far too much for the two of them to manage on their own.
That was when Ralph had found the thoroughly capable Phyllis Gunter, who came to work for him as manageress of the Fulham branch. 'But not for ever, Ralph,' Phyllis had admitted to him with cheerful honesty. 'Just until my Bill retires in a few years' time. After that, we're planning to see a bit of the world for ourselves. By then, of course,' she'd added, her eyes twinkling, 'you'll have young Margaret here, to help you!'
Ever since Margaret had been old enough to go with Ralph to his office on Saturday mornings, she had seen his work as both exciting and thoroughly worthwhile; long before she left primary school, she had decided she wanted to join Ralph in the agency.
Travel Unlimited had not made them rich. But the business had paid for the tall, spacious house in Notting Hill Gate where Dorothy and Ralph and Margaret were so happy together, and for a new car almost every other year. When the time came, Margaret's fees at Barwell-College of Business were found too. As Dorothy put it, 'If you're serious about joining Ralph, love, you'd best learn as much about business procedure as you can before you do it. And then if you change your mind after a few years, you'll be able to go off and make a career somewhere else if you want to.'
Margaret was happy enough to do the course, and grateful for the opportunity. But she knew she wouldn't change her mind about joining the travel agency. It was something Ralph said, often and happily, that summed up Margaret's feeling for the business: 'What better way to earn a living than by bringing pleasure to folks by sending them off on holiday? Ah, but there's an art to that,' he'd go on thoughtfully, running his hand through his thick, greying hair. 'The real secret lies in matching the needs and means of each client to what we've got to offer, even if it means ta
king less profit than we might have done. Can't go around bankrupting people just to send them off on world cruises they won't enjoy for worry.'
Margaret's first year at Barwell's passed uneventfully, though her struggles with 'Accounts Procedures in the Modern General Office' were more than enough of a challenge to convince her that her mother had been right to suggest she do the course. The first term of her second and final year included work which was even more difficult and demanding; by the end of it, shortly before Christmas, Margaret was exhausted.
Christmas was especially festive that year, deliberately so; Dorothy planned it that way, determined to give her daughter a real treat before the beginning of her final months at college. 'An old-fashioned feast,' Dorothy promised, 'with all the trimmings, and plenty of people to share it with!'
It was a treat for Margaret. She had celebrated her twenty-first birthday that autumn; even so, she still loved Christmas with a child's joy. But as an only child, and well past/the true age of childhood, Margaret had long since accepted the fact that Christmas dinner, more often than not, was a meal shared with Ralph and her mother in a restaurant.
That year, though, the house strained and bulged with people. Dorothy invited both of Ralph's married sisters and their families down from Birmingham for Christmas Day and Boxing Day. 'The more the merrier,' she proclaimed gaily as she baked and cleaned and laundered in preparation for them all.
Three days after Boxing Day, Ralph had shaken Margaret awake at five o'clock in the morning, ashen-faced in the shock of having to tell her that her mother was dead. They found out later that Dorothy Nickleby had died peacefully in her sleep of a heart attack. Thus it was that for a very long time afterwards Margaret brooded on that special Christmas, and exactly what it had cost her mother to provide it.
But Margaret's first reaction to her mother's death was stunned, dry-eyed shock, her mind so filled with the terrible absence that she couldn't bring herself to weep, not even when the first shovelful of earth followed Dorothy's simple coffin into the ground. It went on for many weeks. The college term started, but it started without Margaret Hamilton.
Finally, as delicately and tactfully as he could, Ralph intruded. 'Ah… Margaret, lass. Charles Beeson's been on to me by telephone, several times. He's wondering when—'
'Tell him never!' Margaret snapped. 'Can't you see it doesn't matter any more? Can't you simply leave me alone?'
'No! No, indeed I can't, love,' Ralph answered firmly. 'Life goes on. If your mum were here to back me up on that, she'd… I'd…' He broke down then, overcome, as tears welled into his eyes and choked his voice. Seeing it, Margaret at last began weeping too, and after that some of the tension of her first grief was eased.
Even then, though, Margaret continued in a depression that was so deep she no longer wanted to do anything at all. Some days she didn't even bother to get dressed. Instead, she stayed in her bedroom in her dressing-gown, listening over and over again to the records which had been her music-loving mother's favourites.
Finally, in desperation, Ralph tried a piece of straightforward bribery to pull Margaret out of her extended and useless mourning. 'By the way,' he said casually over dinner, one evening near the end of January. 'I, ah, don't think I mentioned it to you, but I'm planning a sort of holiday for next autumn. I — well, I wondered if you'd like to come along with me.'
Margaret looked up from her plate, her green eyes alight with genuine curiosity for the first time since her mother's death. 'What sort of holiday?'
'Actually, it's a working holiday,' he answered thankfully. 'I was thinking that if you did want to come, I could take you along as my assistant. It would be tax-deductible that way.' He thought about that for a moment, and then shook his head doubtfully. 'Probably couldn't get away with that, on second thoughts. If I were to do it, I'd have to be able to prove to the accountant that you really were my assistant. Fully qualified to take up employment with Travel Unlimited, and so on—'
'This wouldn't be a bribe, would it, Ralph? To get me to finish college, I mean?' Margaret asked drily.
'Oh, I'd not put it like that, love!' Ralph answered hastily, as though it was the furthest thing from his mind. 'Of course if you were to finish your course at Barwell's, and if you were to come into the agency next summer, then Phyllis and I between us could begin to show you the ropes, and then, well! Though, of course, once we got out there, your real job would be to enjoy yourself.'
'Where exactly is "out there"?' Margaret asked quietly, placing her fork on her plate with great care.
'Hong Kong.'
'Hong Kong, China?' she breathed, hardly daring to believe it.
'Unless they've moved it,' he answered innocently, trying to keep a straight face.
Hong Kong had been Margaret's daydream of paradise for as long as she could remember, and certainly since before she could read. She couldn't have been much older than four on the Saturday morning she first gathered a handful of the gawdy, exciting brochures from the reception area of Ralph's Fulham agency, brochures which had been placed there to tempt anyone rich enough and adventurous enough to want to go there.
Margaret had taken the leaflets home with her, and her mother had helped her to sound out the simple, singsong syllables which were the city's name. Dorothy had explained patiently that Hong Kong was an island at the southeastern tip of the Chinese mainland.
But it was the pictures, more than Dorothy's explanations, which had caught and held Margaret's imagination: Hong Kong's waterfront by night, shimmering with many-coloured lights; fishing boats at rest in the dusky waters of Aberdeen Bay, like so many huge birds; double-decker buses painted in strong, gay colours, announcing their destinations in familiar English, as well as in inscrutable Chinese characters; modern office blocks overlooking street markets piled high with exotic wares; and the whole pulsating, hectic city teeming with people, a tantalizing mixture of east and west.
Ever since, Margaret had been fascinated by that beautiful island of so many worlds, nestling in the South China Sea; she wanted to go there and see it for herself.
Ralph Nickleby knew that very well, had known it for years. 'Oh dear,' he had said, scratching his head when Margaret asked him about it on her fourteenth birthday. Someday, perhaps. But Hong Kong is a very long way away, and the fares being what they are, it gets visited most often by folks on their way out to Australia, or the far east. It's not the sort of holiday we could afford for the odd long weekend, lass.'
Even then, the return fares between London and Hong Kong had hovered extravagantly close to the five hundred pound mark, and Margaret was old enough by then to know that for most people a visit there was out of the question. Even so, she could dream.
In short, Ralph could hardly have done better than to come up with a travel convention in Hong Kong, which Margaret could attend with him, provided she finished her college course, provided she agreed to start living her life again…
Margaret was seated in her less-than-comfortable lecture chair the very next morning, neatly dressed in a tartan skirt and woollen jumper, her hair combed and a dash of lipstick brightening her sorrow-paled face. She listened to her tutor's dry remarks about profit and loss as though he was the most interesting speaker in the world.
She was at college every day after that, too, until at last it was late spring, and she had finished her course with flying colours, and her stepfather was waiting outside the college, to treat her to a celebration lunch.
That summer, Margaret divided her days between Phyllis Gunter and Ralph Nickleby. She sat behind one desk or another, picking up what Barwell's course hadn't even attempted to teach her: she began to learn the day to day, specific practicalities of the travel business at first hand.
She got into the habit of smiling at people, even when they were hot and tired and unforgivably rude; she sounded cheerful on the telephone throughout what Ralph called the 'worst air traffic control strike in the history of British tourism.'
She was patient whil
e whole families dithered endlessly over the relative merits of Bournemouth and Bognor Regis. And when Phyllis decided to take a fortnight's holiday, Margaret pitched in and did her share of invoice typing, too.
When each busy day was finally over, she was too tired to do more than go back to the house in Notting Hill Gate, which seemed so empty still without her mother, and throw together a simple meal for Ralph and herself before she climbed tiredly up to her room for an early night.
She hadn't forgotten her mother, or the way Dorothy had been taken from them so suddenly. Her grief had dulled with time and work, but it was there all the same. Ralph knew that, for he felt something very similar. And he never stopped pushing Margaret in every way he could think of, relentlessly in the direction of life.
Even at weekends, Ralph insisted she go out with the friends she'd made at college, just as she had done when her mother was alive. And although there were times when the strobe lights and loud music of a disco made Margaret feel she was about eighty-seven years old, she went — just to please Ralph.
Summer passed, and the promised trip to Hong Kong beckoned ever more brightly in Margaret's mind, like a vivid beam of light at the end of a tunnel. And then, very suddenly, it arrived: the crisp, clear September day of their departure from London, and with it Ralph's last-minute doubts about going off to the other side of the world, leaving Phyllis Gunter in sole charge of Travel Unlimited.
'Now don't you worry about me, Ralph!' Phyllis boomed over her shoulder as she drove them to Heathrow. 'If I'm going to miss anybody, it'll be Margaret.' She glanced across at Margaret in the seat beside her, gave her a quick, affectionate smile. 'She's worked for two, ever since she joined us. Anyway, it's not the peak season, so if I divide my days between Fulham and Oxford Street, which I intend to do, I can't think the business will fall into total ruin in the short space of three weeks. Furthermore,' she finished, grinning at Ralph in the rear-view mirror, 'we've been through all this before, so relax!'
