Sea of Troubles Box Set

by Peter Tonkin

  Go shopping, she replied.

  He broke the line, satisfied, thinking of her returning to the secure environs of the Landmark, or maybe taking a stroll along Des Voeux Road. He had yet to learn that it was a mistake to judge her against other women he knew.

  At six-thirty, Robin gave up trying to get through to either Anna Leung or the Seram Queen, hung up, and sat back wondering what to do next. Her stomach growled, dropping a hint. ‘I’m going down to get something to eat,’ she announced. ‘What about you, Mr Shaw?’

  ‘I have mai at my home, Captain Mariner.’

  ‘Is there anywhere local you would recommend?’

  ‘You go your hotel. Man Wah very good. Very safe.’

  ‘That’s good advice, Mr Shaw. But I’m not in the mood for formal dining tonight. There’s too much to do and not enough time. I want to go to the night market in Upper Lascar Row later and I wondered whether there is anywhere you could recommend on the way.’

  ‘Cat Street market? You go Cat Street?’ He gave the old market its Hong Kong name with something akin to horror.

  ‘Yes. I want to buy some presents for my husband and I’ll be able to get some good stuff up there for my children too. If memory serves, they have the best ranges of electronic games and equipment at the lowest prices.’

  ‘But Cat Street! It is not proper you go to such place alone!’

  He sounded so much like a patronising, over-bearing Victorian paterfamilias that her temper flared and caused her to miscalculate. And as is often the case with face and its loss, one wrong step led onto a path from which there was no hope of returning.

  ‘If you’re so worried, Mr Shaw,’ she snapped, ‘then perhaps you had better escort me yourself!’

  He drew in his breath with the slightest of hisses. Did this gweilo bitch know what she was asking? he wondered. Well, perhaps. She was unusual for a foreign devil. She seemed almost civilised at times. But now she showed the natural arrogance of the round-eye. How dare she order a person of the Middle Kingdom in such a way? Did she not understand the depth of the impropriety in what she was suggesting? Why, even were she his mistress, he would hardly …

  Perhaps that was what she was suggesting! His mind raced. She had bought him food and shared it with him even before the gweilo lawyer. Her man was locked away from her. And it was common knowledge that all westerners thought about was sex. John Shaw had been brought up to understand that what passed in Western society (though to say that gweilos had a society was a joke of course) what passed for philosophy was the supposition that everything was based on sex. Lust for power, money, position, all the destructive forces which shaped the sad ways of these people were based on their frustrated desire to make the beast with two backs.

  The thoughts rushed through John Shaw’s head in an instant, long before Robin even registered that her anger had changed her relationship with her clerk. He even had time to imagine her naked and speculate upon the possibility that her body hair was the same dazzling colour as the curls on her head — something he had been careful not to do after the first five minutes of their acquaintance, as a sign of grudging respect.

  By the best of joss and through the good offices of several generations of deceased ancestors, it so happened that his modest flat was up on the edge of the mid-levels at the end of Conduit Road. No distance at all from Cat Street. He wondered whether it would excite her to see his collection of photographs, all of them cut from magazines, some of them even cut from Playboy, and all of them of blonde gweilo girls just like her.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she said, breaking into his thoughts and clearly taking his brief silence as a negative response. His eyes flew to the clock and registered with relief that the speculation he had just enjoyed had filled mere seconds.

  ‘No, missy,’ he said automatically — and thankfully she was still too preoccupied to notice the patronising reference, ‘No, Captain. You cannot go Cat Street alone. Of course I will come. We will buy food, perhaps, from the street vendors. Very good, very cheap, very quick.’

  Robin mellowed. ‘What an excellent idea!’ She pulled herself to her feet. ‘But I can’t go dressed like this. This is not an outfit suited to strolling around Cat Street eating with our fingers. It took too much trouble to get hold of to empty soy sauce down the front of it.’

  They locked up and walked out of the building into the bustle of the plaza outside Jardine House. Neither of them heard the telephone in the Heritage Mariner office begin to ring. Neither of them heard the answerphone click on. Neither of them heard Andrew’s voice, dripping with concern, call, ‘Robin, are you there? No, Gerry, she’s gone, I’m talking to a machine. What do you think. Is it important enough to call the Mandarin and ask them to warn her? She’s going shopping, she said. Yes, quite safe I should think. I mean … Oh!’ He realised he was still talking to the answerphone and hung up abruptly.

  *

  John Shaw waited in the reception of the Mandarin while Robin ran upstairs to change. For once Giuseppe Borelli was nowhere to be seen and the desk clerk simply glanced across at the young clerk and returned to his work without any flicker of interest. In his ill-cut but carefully tended work suit, John was not too badly out of place, but he could hardly be said to have been comfortable either. He sat on a huge sofa and lit a cigarette. A moment later he noticed the ‘No Smoking’ sign and rushed to put it out. But there were no ashtrays and so he had to give up his comfortable seat, cross to the reception desk and ask for help. ‘No,’ said the receptionist, with no obvious sympathy or interest. ‘We have no ashtrays. It is forbidden to smoke in here. You had better throw it into the gutter outside.’

  John Shaw crossed to the main door to take the receptionist’s advice and risk a heavy fine by dropping the smoking stub outside in the street. No sooner had he returned than the concierge himself appeared. ‘May I help you, sir?’ the tall Italian asked austerely in nearly flawless Cantonese.

  ‘No, thank you,’ answered the clerk defensively. ‘I am waiting for …’ He hesitated while his mind rather wildly sought a word which was utterly without double meanings or overtones. ‘I am waiting for a guest.’

  ‘Really?’ said the concierge. ‘And who might that be?’

  ‘Captain Mariner.’

  An instant’s hesitation. ‘May I enquire as to the reason?’

  ‘She is my employer … I am the clerk at Heritage Mariner across the road. She wishes me to escort her to the night market.’

  ‘Really? And may I enquire which market?’ A momentary silence. Shaw’s eyes narrowed and his lips turned down. Another inquisitive gweilo, he thought. Why should I answer? The Italian saw the expression and recognised it. ‘It may be that someone important might wish to contact her urgently. You are aware of her position? And that of her husband?’ The concierge emphasised the word ‘husband’ slightly but sufficiently.

  ‘Yes … Yes, of course. The captain wishes to visit the Cat Street market and I have offered to escort her.’

  ‘I see.’ Giuseppe turned away with icy hauteur, more impressive than any emperor.

  It was with the most lively relief that John Shaw saw his employer returning. She was dressed in tight blue jeans and a loose plum-coloured silk blouse with a light fawn raincoat draped over her shoulders. ‘Ready?’ she asked. He nodded, and they were off.

  Cat Street was a little less than a kilometre away. In East Sussex this would have been an invigorating stroll, but here the roads were steep, congested and seriously polluted. John supposed that they would take a taxi — the woman was very rich, after all. But no. She set off at a spanking pace and he followed, regretting at once his forty-a-day habit and the fact that he could not sit in the safety of a taxi and negotiate with the driver for permission to smoke. He was badly out of breath by the time they got to the end of Hollywood and swung left past the temple up on to Ladder Street. The humid heat of the evening and the acid thickness of the rush-hour fumes acted together to make his thin chest heave with almost consumptive pan
ts and he felt perspiration beginning to stain all the most intimate seams of his precious work suit.

  The gweilo bitch had better be worth all this, he thought bitterly. But the thought had no sooner entered his pounding head than she came out of her dark brown study and seemed to notice him for the first time since they had left the hotel.

  ‘Mr Shaw’ she said solicitously, ‘I do apologise. Here I am, charging ahead, leading my guide by the nose. That was so rude. I am sorry’ She moderated her pace at once and they strolled on upwards side by side. Now that she had registered his presence properly, she fell into easy conversation with him, establishing that he was a bachelor who lived alone. I would hardly be so happy to be guiding you around Cat Street, he thought, if I had a wife and children awaiting my return at home. At the thought of his home, he glanced up towards the frowning building which housed him, just one more of the grim grey clifftops high above. She continued the one-sided conversation with more solicitous questions which he answered in breathless grunts until he regained his wind and was able to communicate properly.

  By the time John Shaw was able to use consecutive words and sentences again, they were just on the point of turning into Cat Street itself. The long thoroughfare was a blaze of light in the shadows of the peaks and the tall buildings which clothed them. It was a great bustle of sound and movement, dazzling to the eye and numbing to the mind.

  Robin was swept up into the simple excitement of it at once. The buildings on either side of the road were open-fronted at ground level and glass-fronted above. For the most part they were bazaars offering a gaudy, noisy, bewildering range of wares, each shop reaching upwards, floor above floor, but spilling its goods out over the thronging pavements too, as though mere buildings could never hope to contain their breathtaking variety. But the pavements offered not just the wares from the shops. Tiny traders with one specialised range on offer jostled with stores seemingly the size of Harrods. Between the square sides of the commercial giants, garish neon signs demanded the attention of passers-by for smaller concerns of every sort from herbalists to handbag shops, from potters to pom shops, from salthsh sellers to strip clubs. In the gutters — clean, for all the jostling of the multitudes here — stood the braziers of the food vendors with a mouth-watering range on offer — roasting, toasting, frying, boiling, baking, steaming, hot or cold.

  Under John Shaw’s direction, parting with mere pennies each time, they picked their way through the food on offer, starting with savoury clouds of dim sum and proceeding from vendor to vendor, speciality to speciality, through a complete gourmet meal. As they ate, they chatted like old friends and surveyed what was on offer, but Robin did not really begin to shop until they had finished eating and wiped their sticky lips and lingers with fragrantly steaming cloths.

  Then she went in search of silk. John Shaw cheerfully followed her from emporium to emporium and tailor shop to tailor shop. Robin didn’t realise it, but her escort thought there was a fair chance that she was shopping for him.

  Robin proceeded, in blissful ignorance, her mind full of her husband and her darlings; shopping as therapy, she called it, and it was working. She knew that there was little chance of actually finding pyjamas big enough to fit Richard, but she estimated that she could have some run up within twenty-four hours or so, and for pyjamas a fitting wasn’t so important. The same was true of socks and underwear. Shirts and suits would be more of a challenge. But pyjamas and a dressing gown, and a pair of leather flip-flops, come to that, would be an easy start. She had better see about some towels and toiletries too, she thought. But then she remembered that Cat Street was not the best place to pick up expensive cologne; the bottles were unlikely to contain what the labels and packaging promised.

  An hour later, she had selected material and left precise orders with an obliging tailor. She had purchased the largest pair of leather-soled flip-flops she could find and placed them in a bright plastic bag beside a leather sponge bag full of soap, toothbrush, flannel, shaving tackle, and a bottle of aftershave which did, in fact, smell something like Messrs Roger & Gallet might have produced. It was the only one which she had been allowed to test and it was, therefore, the least likely to be a fake.

  Talking of which … She stopped and stooped. On one stall, in among a range of electrical wares and an enormous variety of tapes, audio and video, blank and pre-recorded, there was a familiar name. She picked it up and looked at it more closely. Yes. The cover looked perfect. She opened the box and took out the tape. It was wrapped in cellophane through which she could see the holographic image which was supposed to guarantee authenticity. To all intent and purposes she was holding a perfectly legal VHS tape of the new Walt Disney cartoon Sinbad. The pictures were all there, beautifully produced, the printing — ‘with the voice of Sir Anthony Hopkins as the Sultan of Deriabar’. An oscar-nominated performance, she thought inconsequentially, remembering the massive pre-publicity, and looking at it with something akin to awe. William had been going on and on about this. He would rather have gone to see Sinbad than accompanied them to Skye. And, by all accounts, it was a fantastic experience, putting even Aladdin, The Lion King and Pocahontas in the shade. But it was only just out in the cinema in London. How on earth could it be on video here already? She knew the answer to that one: it was a pirate version. She had the grace to feel a twinge of conscience as she asked the vendor, ‘Gei do chin?’

  ‘Yih-sahp man.’ The vendor held up both her hands, fingers and thumbs spread, closed them into fists and opened them again to emphasise the point.

  John Shaw took over before she could reply. ‘Yih-sahp man?’ he spat with vivid disbelief, and within seconds they were locked in a bout of bargaining which went far beyond anything she could have managed. But, truth to tell, she would not have minded being fleeced a little for the video. It would have salved her conscience slightly. She was all too well aware, as who in shipping was not, that the traffic in this sort of merchandise was a running sore in the side of legitimate business, giving illicit rewards comparable to the drugs trade and doing a great deal of damage.

  John Shaw came back to her, a little grimly. ‘She won’t go below fifteen dollars,’ he said. ‘It’s very expensive, but she says it is extremely rare. It’s the only one in town. She’s only just got it in.’

  ‘I’ll take it, thank you, Mr Shaw.’ She handed him a twenty dollar note.

  As he paid, she turned away; and her gaze was suddenly captured by an unexpectedly familiar figure. It was StJohn Syme, except that the elegant man she remembered so vividly and unpleasantly from Concorde was no longer dapper and well turned out but dressed, almost shockingly, in jeans, T-shirt and a leather jacket. He was with a young Chinese man and they were in such intimate conversation that neither of them had any idea that she was there. They were forcing their way urgently through the crowd and Robin, almost without thought, followed. It occurred to her at once that these two were lovers. But almost immediately the two men turned into one of the garish strip joints. Syme paused in the doorway to look beadily up and down the street and Robin turned back so that he would not see her and found herself face to face with John Shaw, so close that they might have been about to kiss.

  ‘What is that place?’ Robin asked. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘Which?’ he was confused by this unexpected turn of events. She was so close. She looked so excited.

  ‘That place,’ she pointed, ‘the one called Bottoms.’

  ‘I have no idea,’ he lied. By a combination of chance and proximity this was his nearest strip joint. It specialised in graphic and exotic shows. In many ways it was the most unusual strip joint in Hong Kong, and he was a frequent visitor. ‘It is probably a girlie bar,’ he added weakly.

  ‘Really?’ She seemed surprised. ‘Well, let’s go in and see.’

  ‘But …’ John Shaw was stunned. Was this some kind of come-on? One could never tell with gweib women — well, that’s what he had been told, anyway. Even so, a sense of decency he had not realise
d he possessed made him warn her, ‘This is not suitable for women such as you, Captain Mariner.’ But Robin was already hurrying towards the place.

  He followed her through a narrow doorway into a short passage which opened out into a dim reception area. Here an extremely large gentleman demanded an entry charge which more than put the pirate video of Sinbad into sharp perspective. Had she not brought the full $5,000 out with her — and spent so little, though promised so much — entry would have been difficult and the first drink out of the question. Robin’s mind was still reeling from the shock of having to pay a cool $500 to get the pair of them in when the waitress informed them that drinks were $100 a glass.

  Slowly, Robin began to take stock of their surroundings. They were in a big room, probably a cellar. It was ill-lit and full of packed tables. Between the tables moved waitresses who were all Chinese or Oriental. They all wore the same uniform of tight and minuscule shorts made of what seemed to be black leather, and earrings. The earrings were suspended, not from their earlobes but from their nipples. From what Robin could see — and she was not looking closely — the ornaments were all long and weighty. It was fortunate for most of the girls that they were young and their breasts were pert. What someone with a large chest would look like, with the weighty ornaments abetting gravity, heaven alone knew. Robin was put forcefully in mind of the generously proportioned Diana Dors’ famous observation of the sixties: that if she joined Womens’ Lib and burned her bra she would be knock-kneed within a week. The humour, weak enough, with which Robin sought to distance herself from what was going on around her was inadequate, however, and inappropriate. Although she was slow to admit the fact to herself, this was a serious situation.