The Stories of Jane Gardam

by Jane Gardam

  ‘I don’t want to see him,’ she thought, waiting for her luggage to lumber up on the roundabout. ‘I’m frightened.’ The roundabout went hypnotically, smoothly round, black and quiet like a roulette wheel. The Englishwoman with the magazines came up to her looking fuzzy and excited—little suit and brooches. ‘Forget—did you say you were army? Are you an army wife? Are you going to the married quarters?’

  ‘No I’m not.’ Suddenly angry, Veronica said, ‘I work. I do a job.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the woman eyeing her, unbelieving. ‘I thought if he wasn’t here to meet you we could share a taxi.’

  ‘I’m staying at the Peninsula.’

  ‘Oh my! I’m sorry.’ She looked hard at Veronica, not believing that a woman she had seen looking so uncertain could be staying at the Peninsula, though—Geoffrey had let his flat and was spendthrifting weeks of pay—this was true. They went through Customs together. An aggressive Chinese man-woman in police-type uniform shouted at them and glared. It was cold and the wind whined.

  ‘I hadn’t expected this,’ said Veronica.

  ‘First time out then?’ The woman perked up.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh—you’ll love it. I’ve been out five times. Lovely shopping.’

  And there was Geoffrey, a tireder looking Geoffrey, rather redder in the face and flabbier, his shirt bloused out a bit over his trousers, but his eyes bright. Looking for her.

  At once all thoughts of mistresses and lovers became ridiculous, their recognition of each other complete. Hurtling in the taxi through up-and-down rivers of lights, they held tight to each other’s hand, and all the old pleasures flowed back.

  It was the day time without him that had become so deadly boring. She felt so ashamed—the first time in the East—to be bored.

  Geoffrey got up at seven-thirty and they had breakfast in their room—a great trolley wheeled in by two waiters, like an old film. The trolley had huge silver dish-covers, omelettes, mountains of croissants, huge pots of coffee, a pyramid of butter (which Geoffrey because of the blousing out of the shirt did not eat. ‘Chinese call it cow’s grease. Puts you off. Convenient.’). And there were shiny cloth napkins the same colour as the cloth and fresh flowers in a glass.

  When he had gone to work she would dress slowly and wander about. Then she would go down in the lift with its bowing attendant and leave the room-key in the lobby. Then she would walk purposefully out of the great white and gold hall into the street and let the crowd sweep her along.

  For the first days, just to be in the marching streets was something, being swept up with the rest into a whirlpool at traffic lights, then like water, surging across. She crossed to Hong Kong Side and the crowds at the ferries nearly trampled her under. She loved this at first. It was like going out further from the shore where the bigger waves might knock you down and bear you away and nobody know.

  But after a week or so she grew used to it—used to the pace and the impersonality. It was just a richer, madder Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon. She began to notice a pair of shoes in a display window in the side of the Peninsula hotel. Two hundred pounds. The first day the price of the shoes had seemed ludicrous. After a week or so of Hong Kong it seemed just the price of shoes.

  She grew used to the legless woman who shuffled her way about the pavement under the shoes, and around the corner, among the little clutch of street stalls that appeared by magic every morning. People stepped over the woman as if she were a moving sack. Food from the stalls dropped on her as she held up her tin cup for money. ‘She has to pay for that pitch,’ said a lawyer friend of Geoffrey, ‘like the door-man at Claridges.’

  Veronica got used to the Hakkar gypsy woman with the two-year-old squatting beside her and the sharp professional gypsy wag of the head as she sent the child running after her down Nathan Road to pull at her skirt. ‘Money, money, money,’ the child said—angrily, like the Customs official. Its mouth was covered in sores. She grew used to this.

  One day she took the harbour cruise and sat in a cold greenhouse of a boat to see the city from the sea. The lunatic, concrete growths stuck up in a forest of sharp-edged temples. They looked pushed into holes in the hills, and at their feet, among the dark little tents of the squatters was the noise of more cranes, more drills, more bulldozers, tearing away, knocking down, building yet more. It seemed like no country.

  Another day she took a taxi and watched the boat families at Aberdeen from another glass greenhouse. She watched the chickens and babies and birds in cages on the decks and the screaming women in huge shields of hats all tipping and tossing over the choppy cold waves. All looked an exhibition, put on for the brought-out wives. It was not real. She was bored.

  Lunch somewhere, if she remembered, and then back to the hotel for a rest (a rest from what? She was twenty-five, healthy and a full-time painter), then maybe an invitation from one of the resident wives to go shopping. They might be Chinese or French or American or English, but the conversation was always the same. Then the noisy, boozy, sociable evening in the glaring streets with Geoffrey and friends. All in the streets at night was self-consciously wicked—the transvestite street, the blue-film and massage-shop street, the nude-photograph street. Thousands of tourists.

  And she was bored.

  It might have been Soho except for the crazy zig-zag glitter of the lights—soft yellow and pink and gold and white and green. ‘It’s the pale green ones that make it Chinese,’ said Geoffrey. ‘The rest could be anywhere—though nowhere so many. I love the pale green.’

  It was the first time he had said that he loved something here.

  ‘D’you not long for proper green?’ she said. ‘You said you did. In letters.’

  ‘Proper green?’

  ‘You said you’d started watching television just for the scenery. Watching Westerns to see the grass.’

  ‘Oh—there’s grass here if you look. Up in the New Territories grass all the way to China. You can walk for miles. We’ll go at the weekend in the car. And there’s green on the islands. It’s wonderfully beautiful. You can sunbathe on Cheung Chau. Next time you come out it will be really hot.’

  ‘I think you’re beginning to like it.’

  ‘Oh—yes. What?’ He was watching five little boys spooning what looked like baby snakes into their mouths from blue and white egg-cups. The naked light-bulbs over the stalls swung in the wind. They looked like Christmas tree fruits. They made shadows come and go across the five pale faces. Hair shone like tar.

  ‘You aren’t beginning to want to stay? I mean stay? Not go home—stay here permanently?’

  ‘God no,’ he said, ‘I’m here for quick money like everyone else. You know that. We can earn more here in six months than in ten years at home. It’s why we did it. Hell!’

  They walked back through the packed midnight. The tenement walls hung above the narrow streets like the flanks of galleons, dressed over-all, night and day, with long poles of washing. From the lamp-lit rooms behind came the soft shuffling knock of the mah-jong games, floating out over the night until it was part of the night, like cicadas in Italy.

  So now, towards the end, Geoffrey had an all-day meeting and would not be in until after eight o’clock and Veronica was to have lunch with the wife of his boss—an Englishwoman from Kent who had come out to live in Hong Kong permanently. She and the wife would then go shopping for silk and perhaps some jewellery which the wife would advise about and get a good discount. Veronica took a taxi from the Hong Kong Side ferry and it wound up the Peak, round flower beds and gardens. But cement piles were going up even among these. A shining building that looked scarcely finished was being pulled down again to make way for something more modern. A speeded-up film of the building of Hong Kong, thought Veronica, would be like the waves of the sea, rising and breaking to rise again. The gardens were certainly doomed, she thought. However much must this land be worth? The Cath
edral must be sitting on a fortune. A thousand pounds a centimetre. Ten thousand pounds a geranium.

  The taxi swung off the road into a tunnel of expensive white tiles and cork-screwed up it to a double meshed door. A servant in a long black dress answered it—hair screwed back, waxed yellow face, tight cheek-bones, greying hair and a sweet smile. She seemed uncertain though about letting Veronica in and disappeared for quite some time. Veronica stood in the windy tunnel.

  Then down in a flurry came the lady from Kent, by no means so flawlessly dressed as at the party where Veronica had met her. Her hair flopped about. The fingernails of one hand were painted and held a brush for the fingers of the other hand which were still plain. She embraced Veronica wildly with both arms. Veronica hoped the lacquer wasn’t spilling down her back.

  ‘My dear! But it’s terrible! I’d forgotten.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter at all.’

  ‘Sit down. A drink. Oh but this is awful. I’ve never done it before. That party—so noisy. I do this. I throw invitations about. But I’ve never, never forgotten. Ever. I could die.’

  ‘It’s quite all right.’ Veronica wondered why she couldn’t just stay. ‘There’s heaps I can do instead.’

  ‘Are you here for a nice long time?’

  ‘Another week.’

  ‘Look, I’ll get the diary. We’ll fix something now. Wednesday—no, I can’t do Wednesday. Say Friday and I’ll cancel my hair. Or Sunday—what about this Sunday and Geoffrey can come too?’

  ‘We were—hoping for a car this weekend. To go to the New Territories.’

  ‘Oh dear, well Monday then?’

  ‘I’ll be gone by Monday. Look—don’t worry. It’s nice to be here now. Nice to come for a drink.’

  ‘You see I have a Bridge.’

  Veronica thought for a moment of teeth. Perhaps new teeth making lunch difficult.

  ‘A Bridge—the wife of—well, it’s a Royal Command sort of thing. There are two tables—a French table and an Anglo-Chinese table. And tea. Look—do you play Bridge?’

  ‘No I’m afraid—’

  ‘Of course not. You work, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m a painter.’

  ‘Oh, a painter. Oh wonderful. I’m sure there are a lot of painters in Hong Kong. Well, I believe there’s a wife at Jardines—does Chinese heads. Makes quite a little business of— Look, why don’t I take you to the Bridge? It’d be quite an experience for you. It’s quite serious stuff you know. It might amuse—It’s real Bridge.’

  ‘No, no—’

  But the woman had decided. She was stretching for the jade green telephone and talking ten to the dozen. They ate some biscuits and drank some more gin.

  ‘You don’t want to bother with lunch, do you? The food here is the big danger. We get as greedy as the Chinese. Aren’t you loving the restaurants?’

  ‘Yes, loving them.’

  ‘I hope Geoffrey’s doing you proud? We hardly see him. I hear he’s moved to the Pen. With you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, rather fun.’

  A taxi took them to a house even higher up the Peak—servants, glass, marble floors, rare pieces of curly black ebony and small figurines of jade. The French table was already under way—tight mouths, severe hair-cuts, fast conversation. The sharp faces on the cards looked back. The Chinese/English table was more relaxed except at moments when a deep silence fell and eyes became filled with intent. Veronica sat apart on a silk sofa beside a silk screen and watched the rings shining on the confident international fingers. Outside the window birds tipped and soared on the cold wind.

  An older, Chinese woman came across to Veronica when tea was brought and sat by her. She said, in a Knightsbridge voice, ‘How are you liking Hong Kong? I believe it is your first time?

  ‘Oh very much. Yes, it is.’

  ‘You are from London?’

  ‘Yes. From Barnes.’

  ‘Ah—from Barnes.’

  A louder Chinese lady came across. She had round red spots painted on her cheeks and corkscrew curls. She spoke in a high, rather cockney sing-song.

  ‘You will be going to London soon? Then you must stay in my flat. In Ken Sing Tong.’

  ‘But I live in—’

  ‘You like Hong Kong?’

  ‘Oh, yes, very—’

  Little cakes made of chestnut puree wrapped in pale green marzipan were handed out with the tea. The puree was piped in little worms like the things the boys were eating at the street stalls. The pale green marzipan was like the green of the neon. ‘The pale green that is Chinese.’

  ‘But it isn’t,’ thought Veronica. ‘It is just pale green. I’ve seen those cakes in Fortnums, just as, come to think of it, I’ve seen that queer stuff on the street stalls. It was noodles. This place isn’t any more foreign than London. None of it.’

  The lady who had offered her a flat in Kensington took three little cakes, ate them greedily and licked her painted fingers heavy with diamonds.

  ‘Nothing Chinese here,’ thought Veronica, looking at all the ebony and jade and silk and the Chinese carpet on the floor. ‘It is the Finchley Road.’

  ‘I am hating it,’ she thought, and got up.

  ‘I must go,’ she said. The women were going back to the tables. ‘Oh dear,’ said the Boss’s wife. ‘Oh hell—I did bish it up didn’t I? Must you go?’

  ‘I must, I’m afraid. I’m meeting someone Kowloon Side.’

  It was the most inconvenient moment to leave and she knew it. The hostess was trying to get the tables back together again against a lot of fast talking by the French in corners. Servants were gliding about trying to gather unobtrusively the remains of the tea. ‘So glad you could come,’ said the hostess with a far-away calm that did not disguise her alertness to developments in more significant parts of the room. ‘We’ll meet again—won’t we?’ said the Boss’s wife. ‘We’ve all so wondered what dear Geoffrey’s wife would be like.’

  Two of the French women stopped talking then and looked at Veronica quickly.

  Looking round, Veronica thought, ‘They are all devious. Every one of them. What are they really thinking about behind all the witty talk and the picking up of the cards and the laying down of them?’ Laughter followed her out of the room and she thought that it did not sound very kind. I liked the noise of the mah-jong players better than that, she thought. Getting off the ferry Kowloon Side, it was still not five o’clock. Over three hours to go. She had not a thing to do.

  When she reached the Peninsula she found that she could not go in. She walked instead along the side of it, past the little inset shop windows and the two hundred pound shoes. She thought of the rings and the earrings and the even more beautiful shoes of the women playing cards on the Peak. As she stood a woman passed her, bouncing and busty. She was coming from a hairdresser, the hair raised up in a cushion, stiff with lacquer. She was the woman from the aeroplane, the army wife. She walked jauntily past Veronica, not recognising her. It might be Barnes, thought Veronica, or Ken Sing Tong.

  Then she found that she was walking away and away from the hotel and away and away down Nathan Road. At first she walked quite slowly, but then she began to walk fast, watching for the traffic, but beginning to walk in and out of it. She began to march at the same quick, steady pace as everyone else in the crowded street.

  And soon she found that she was caught up with the people on the pavement. She was in a marching army. Nobody looked at her, touched her, jostled her. Nobody in the street ever seemed to touch anybody else. And they made way for you without noticing you. You began to melt through the crowd like a spirit. There were no collisions. It was like radar, like bats. Up on their toes they all walked, their faces looking straight ahead, their arms to their sides. Perhaps, thought Veronica, if you live so closely, so densely together, you have to develop this isolation. Nobody noticed her, walking, walk
ing, marching, marching. And, as she turned off into a side street for no real reason and marched on she realised that she had stopped being unhappy.

  On a corner a minute old woman sold purple chrysanthemums and Veronica bought six. They seemed very cheap. The old woman with little yellow hands wrapped the stalks in yellow paper. Her hands were like fans. Ivory fans. They had no pictures on them. No faces.

  ‘I think I’m a bit mad,’ said Veronica. ‘What shall I do with these flowers?’

  The wind blew and it began to rain. The rain was cold on her face and the paper round the flowers grew sopped and useless. She let it float away into the gutter with other rubbish, and walked on.

  ‘I think I must be hungry,’ she said, ‘I ought to have eaten some of those Mr. Kipling chestnut things. I’ll find a street stall. Geoffrey said, “Never a street stall. Never in Hong Kong,” he said. “Singapore yes. Hong Kong never. Look at the pots they cook in. Slopped round with a greasy cloth. Never washed up.”’

  ‘I’ll eat at a street stall,’ she said.

  But there seemed now to be no stalls. She had walked since leaving Nathan Road down a dozen small streets and got back to a main road again—dirtier and greyer with only a faint glitter from the tram lines and overhead wires tossing with rain and wind. Traffic screamed by. The people thinned. The trams and buses were packed with those going home from work and other thousands arriving for the evening shift. She didn’t know whether to try and cross this road or not, and realised she was quite lost. Also, it seemed—but this must surely be because there was a storm coming—to be getting quite dark.

  Then she was out of the street and on a great motorway, a huge clover-leaf junction. The crowd had disappeared and there was no one about. Only traffic—mostly big square lorries—streamed by. It was an enormously wide road, two triple carriageways and a scruffy central reservation. At the far side there seemed to be grass and a large, low, sad-looking building, a sort of club house. Maybe she could get a taxi back from there?