On My Way to Samarkand: Memoirs of a Travelling Writer

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  It was an interesting if rather shallow evening. I have only a vague recollection of going home in the taxi, my dear wife giving the driver his instructions. We lived in Rhonda Road but this had to be pronounced in Cantonese as ‘Lon-dak-do’ to be understood. This she did before I fell asleep and I woke only when I heard her telling the driver to turn left into our forecourt. ‘Juen yau, m’goi nei.’ By that time my head was already hammering and I was cursing colonels who drink too much and were insecure enough to want others to do the same. Unfortunately the armed forces are full of men who feel it is manly to overindulge.

  ~

  In Hong Kong Annette and I joined the Episcopalian Christchurch, Kowloon Tong, which being the only protestant church that held its services in English took care of all denominations from Quakers to C of Es. The vicar there at the time was the Reverend Norman Jones, a Liverpudlian like my mate Pete Beere, with the same sense of humour. Norman was a practical as well as a spiritual vicar.

  Norman arrived in Hong Kong with his wife Sue around about the same time we did. He began structuring his church so that the whole congregation had a voice and in most cases an active part in running it. He grabbed me immediately and asked me to run the church magazine. Others were co-opted. Some had been doing church work for years of course. Simon and Frances Lee, Chinese-Canadians, had beavered away with the previous vicar too. But many of us were new. Norman got a council going which included both Annette and I as members.

  He is a good organiser, that Rev.

  Norman and Sue had three children, Ben, Sam and Laura, who have grown to be fine adults. They all live in Sydney, Australia now. Ben is a wonderful man who is in the caring profession and Laura has married a chap who knows he’s found a treasure and will tell you so. As a young boy in Hong Kong Sam injured his legs badly in a car accident. I remember taking him to see the film about the Ninja Turtles to get him out of the house for an afternoon. Years later, after he had become a businessman in the Far East, Sam kindly sent me a very expensive ticket to the 2012 Cup Final. It was a box seat which of course included champagne and dinner. (His scouser dad told me had it been up to him I would have got my reward in Heaven.)

  Christchurch was founded and built to cater for both Chinese and gweilo Christians, but most especially for in-betweeners. Mixed-race marriages are of course fairly common in colonies and Hong Kong was no exception. Eurasians numbered heavily among our congregation. It was a church which needed to cater for all sorts of protestant groups: Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans and others. We did not have any Evangelists, because there was a remarkable woman in Hong Kong, Jackie Pullinger, who gathered in those of a more evangelical persuasion. Jackie held open-air services which lasted for hours. She was tireless and very successful in her crusade to get drug addicts off their deadly express train. Jackie Pullinger offered charismatic religion in place of heroin and cocaine. It seemed to work.

  Along with Glynis and Robin Moseley, Cath and Richard Beacher, and Janine and Bob Thomas, none of whom were churchgoers, those friends we made at Christchurch formed the backbone of our social life in Hong Kong.

  I am just as comfortable in the company of great friends like Rob Holdstock, who was a confirmed atheist, as I am with those like Andrew Hall who is deeply religious. My childhood was spent attending the church and going to schools that still had compulsory prayers and hymns during morning assembly. I therefore have engrained in my psyche, Christian stories, parables, biblical texts, customs, festivals, psalms. The Song of Solomon is a beautiful piece of writing. As is Corinthians 13 and Psalm 23. These have added to my love of literature

  These are those from Christchurch who were hospitable and who offered friendship without reserve: Kit and Maureen Haffner, Peter and Jenny Baxter, Anita and David Bray. Anita always made me smile and want to hug her. She is the most delightful woman. David was a terrific man, full of zest for life, ready for any challenges. Sadly he developed motor neurone disease which eventually took him from us.

  Frances and Simon Lee are Canadians of Chinese extraction. These two almost ran the administration for the church by themselves. Simon owned factories for manufacturing telephones. When we visited them in Canada in recent years they were the best of hosts, taking us on tours of Vancouver and surrounds and entertaining us in their amazing home.

  Trish and John Spiers.

  Being army, these two had feet in the same social camps as Annette and myself. Trish is remarkable for her enormous energy. She works tirelessly for any church within the catchment area of her house. On one occasion she managed to get a batch of the male members of the church interested in flower arranging and allocated one Sunday to each of them. (My own effort was a masterpiece of violent vegetation.) John Spiers is an army major, now ex-service, then an accountant at Osborne Barracks. A man with all the practical skills needed for orienteering, I would want him by my side if I were ever lost in the Gobi. He now works for the Light Infantry Museum in Hampshire. John has been an invaluable help to me while I have been writing my historical war novels, of which there are now ten. He has provided me with a huge amount of information on British army customs and quirks, and has researched various areas of the military for me.

  John and Trish’s home is on the outskirts of Winchester near the AD 1132 Hospital of St Cross, which is not a ‘hospital’ but a hostel for retired single clergymen. These are the Black Brothers and the Red Brothers (the colour of their gowns) who live in ‘noble poverty’ in small houses around a quadrangle with a beautiful church and an even more beautiful garden. The hostel was founded by Henri de Blois, the grandson of William the Conqueror. The institution is presided over by a Master and sits in the middle of the River Itchen’s water meadows.

  It was the water meadows that interested me and I listened as John and Trish told me that the fields were flooded in the winter using a system of sluices and channels, to a particular depth that would ensure that the grass beneath grew rich and edible for cattle before those meadows which were still exposed to the weather. The ‘drowning’ of the fields was a precise science and was carried out by an ‘engineer’ whose skills were unique.

  I took all this in, ruminated on the information, and proceeded to write a ghost story, set in the River Itchen water meadows, near the Hospital of St Cross, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and was awarded a Commendation. The story is called The Drowners and is probably one of the best of my young adult novels, a lot of which I owe to Trish and John’s enthusiasm for St Cross. It was published by Methuen, one of the Reed imprints. My editor there was Elke Lacey, who worked under Miriam Hodgson. While I was writing The Drowners, Elke died of a brain tumor. The next children’s novel I wrote, The Phantom Piper, is dedicated to her, a fine editor and a lovely young woman. Miriam then took me directly under her wing and I have to say she was warm, caring and always ready to talk and offer advice. When Miriam retired I put Methuen behind me.

  There were many others, a whole list of Chinese, Americans, Canadians, British, Australians, etc., acquaintances and friends we met every week at least who made our time in Hong Kong one of the best periods of our lives. We still see many of them, mainly at the Hong Kong reunions every year (which Annette initiated and which now flourish) and others we visit on special occasions, like the weddings of their daughters and sons, or their retirement parties. Really, any excuse.

  ~

  The Reverend Norman Jones and I began playing tennis and climbing mountains together on his days off. At first I used to beat him at tennis, but as time went on his competitive spirit (and I suspect a little help from his boss) gained him ground and he started beating me as many times as I did him. He is a great sportsman, did marathon runs, and once did the famous MacLehose trail race, a hike of some 100 kilometres across the southern hills of the New Territories, from the east coast to the west. It was a gruelling trek, usually won by the Ghurkhas. Annette and I provided a ‘coffee stop’ along the trail for the three walkers: Norman, David Bray and one other
whose name unfortunately has vanished from my mind. When they reached us it was 3 o’clock in the morning. They were already exhausted and they were only halfway to the finishing line. There were other teams resting at the same drinks stop who were in no better condition. I saw one man taking off his shoes and socks in order to massage his poor feet. He fell asleep with his hands gripping the right sock, still only halfway off his foot.

  One of my hill climbs with Norman was on a clear day in the Spring, after the chill humid Winter had been folded and stored in the cupboard for another season and before the heat of the summer had been taken out and aired ready to use. The black drongos were building their nests. Civet cats were hunting in the undergrowth for small mammals. We went up the slopes of the mountain Tai Mo Shan with a colleague of his, Jim, an ex-army man turned priest, who had joined us for the day.

  Halfway up Jim turned to Norman and said, ‘Can I have some of your water, Norm. I’ve left my canteen in the car.’

  ‘No,’ replied Norman. ‘Sorry. You should remember to bring your own water.’

  Jim stared at him with an incredulous look on his face.

  ‘That’s not very Christian. You’re supposed to be a man of God,’ he said in a heavily aggrieved tone.

  Norman calmly replied, ‘It’s my day off.’

  Jim did not appreciate the joke, even when Norm grinned and gave him the water. I did though.

  Norman’s wife, Sue, worked with the ‘boat people’ in the camps constructed to contain them. We had a number of these camps in Hong Kong, housing Vietnamese who had made the deadly journey over the South China Sea in flimsy craft that often sank and took many lives. When they got to Hong Kong they were taken in, but the colony was already heavily overcrowded and there was a policy of keeping the eye-eyes (Illegal Immigrants) in fenced camps and under guard. These people were from both North and South Vietnam and were not particularly fond of each other, and on occasion there were riots and even murders.

  I believe Sue also worked with the ‘caged men’ and with the old folks’ homes.

  The caged men were elderly, mostly Chinese, who would have been left out on the street without their cages to sleep in at night. From time to time politicians and charity workers expressed their horror at having such a system in the colony and tried to change it. I never saw the cages and have no idea of the conditions, but I do remember reports of the old men complaining bitterly when their cages were abolished. I read they felt secure in their cage at night, could sleep without hindrance, and their possessions remained safely in their keeping.

  The old folks’ homes had women as well as men of course and they had many among their number who were not Chinese, but Russian, Indian, Korean and other nationalities. People who had drifted into Hong Kong in the years when immigration was not so tight and had remained there without making their fortune. In their old age, having nothing, they needed a place where they would be cared for.

  ~

  From time to time Hong Kong gets hit by a typhoon. These usually come through the Philippines or Shanghai first, creating havoc, but when they come they often bring Hong Kong to a standstill. There are set procedures of course, for dealing with a typhoon (which means ‘big wind’ in Cantonese) and there are various stages according to the wind’s strength, culminating with taping up the windows of apartments and preparing for a massive disruption, even deaths.

  By the time we got to Hong Kong the last of the shanty towns was being pulled down and their occupants housed in brick-built flats. The junk flotillas in Aberdeen harbour and elsewhere were also being dealt with by evacuating the boat families into safer areas.

  Another vulnerable area was Kowloon Walled City.

  This giant slum near to the airport was built with flimsy materials and was a huge shanty, four storeys high, which housed fifty-thousand illegal immigrants. Kowloon city was a legacy from the time when Britain first leased Kowloon from China. The Chinese did not trust the British (naturally) and retained a single square mile in the middle of the leased land. In those days it was the walled city of the Manchus and contained Chinese agents who spied on the devious British, passing on intelligence to the Chinese government. Gradually the place became a haven for illegal immigrants who came over the border from mainland China and headed straight for the security of its walls.

  When we arrived in Hong Kong, Kowloon city was bursting at the seams. The walls were gone and in their place this monstrous square mile of slum, which was wormholed with a maze of tunnels and alleys leading to tiny misshapen rooms where families lived. There were rats running everywhere. Electric cables and water pipes – usually plastic hoses – shared the floors and ceilings with the cockroaches. There were very few lights inside and the alleys and tunnels were often pitch black. The occupants of Kowloon city were triad gangs, fish-ball makers, kerbside dentists and a variety of other things.

  What always amazed me, when I passed the place in the mornings, was the children. They came out of this giant cube of dirt and squalor wearing pure white dresses and shirts, the boys’ hair cut and combed neatly, the girls’ in plaits with ribbons, ready for their day at school. They looked immaculate. Any middle class parent in Hampshire would have been proud to send their own children alongside them.

  I once went inside the city, guided through its labyrinth of tunnels by a resident. I saw the conditions the people lived in. Some had no more than a few square feet of space for their living quarters. Indeed, those in the centre of the cube had to call out each morning to ask what the weather was like in the real world. I saw the rats, the cockroaches, and the dangerous mix of electricity and water. It was a hell-hole, that city, and people had been born there and had died there. If an adult went outside and was caught without papers, he or she would be arrested and returned to China. Their children appeared to be allowed to go to school unhindered and I’m not sure why that was the case. Kowloon city was demolished the day I left Hong Kong for the last time.

  When typhoons were around though, the corrugated iron sheets and plywood walls that held the slum together might easily be ripped apart.

  We had only been in Hong Kong a few months when Typhoon Brenda struck the colony. It was the most powerful typhoon in years. On the day that it raged at its worst a colleague of Annette’s was due to get married to her fiancée. Sue was a speech therapist who was to wed James who worked in the financial district of the island. All other weddings were cancelled, but Sue was determined to go through with hers, Typhoon Brenda or not. Sue arranged for coaches to take the guests from Kowloon Tong to a church on the island. We were on the first coach, which had a Chinese corporal driving it. I have never experience a ride like it, with screaming high winds buffeting the vehicle, trees and telephone poles crashing around us, and a myriad of objects flying through the air and hitting the sides of the coach like bullets.

  We did make the church without being blown off the road or being crushed by a pole. However by that time the rain was coming down in torrents and flooding the church floor. The high church windows were flexing and threatening to implode and shower us with stained glass. Above me Noah’s Ark was warping and bending, the banshee wind squealing through the gaps in the lead seals. Water swilled around my best shoes and soaked the turnups on my trousers.

  On the roof a thousand wet drumsticks beat a tattoo.

  And while this pandemonium continued, Sue came down the aisle looking more lovely than most brides on wedding days that have taken place in calmer and more placid conditions. She was followed by James – I can’t remember the music, I probably couldn’t hear it – and they were married within a smarter time that was usual for the ceremony.

  It was a great wedding, because no one would ever forget it. That wedding formed the basis of a short story I later wrote, which I called ‘Typhoon’ of course, parodying Joseph Conrad’s famous story. It was published recently in a collection of mine brought out by Peter Crowther of PS Publishing. The volume is entitled Tales from the Fragrant Harbour and Sue and James, if
you ever read it, it is wild fiction. Please forgive me for taking your unforgettable day and embroidering it.

  ~

  Halfway through our tour in Hong Kong we were visited by my Omni magazine editor and friend, Ellen Datlow, who was accompanied by the fiction editor of Playboy magazine, Alice Turner. These two lovely New Yorkers, who pronounce ‘coffee’ delightfully as ‘corfee’ arrived while Annette was away in England, looking at boarding schools for the army. They came by way of Japan and on arriving put away their constant companion for the previous week, Born To Shop Tokyo, and took out their companion for the coming week, Born To Shop Hong Kong.

  We had a great deal of fun while they were there, touring the jade market, Cat Street, Temple Street market, all the shops on the island and most of the shops on Kowloon-side. We went up the Peak, over the harbour on the Star Ferry, and ate at some nice restaurants. Then one day I decided it was time to show them the other side of Hong Kong.

  ‘We’re going up into the New Territories,’ I told this indefatigable pair of big spenders, ‘so that you can see some greenery.’

  Their enthusiasm was a little tepid, but I felt sure I could interest them once I got them on the road. I pushed them into the back seat of the Honda and drove through the Lion Rock Tunnel and out into the wilderness before they could start thinking about the air conditioned malls of Hong Kong island. I steered clear of Sai Kung, which indeed had a few shops worth the visit if one was bored with countryside.

  However, no sooner were we in green hills and wild fields, with copper-coloured snakes wriggling across the hot road and purple herons decorating the ponds and clouds of white egrets the skies, when they both fell fast asleep in the rear of the car. They remained in that comatose state until we reached the Chinese border, which on the Hong Kong side was lined with stalls selling trinkets and gee-gaws.