The Harbour

by Francesca Brill

  ‘You have to thank Stevie. She wrote about you and spoke to people. It’s because of her you’re out.’ Lily pulled Chen towards Stevie. He held out his hand.

  ‘Thank you. We appreciate your support.’ His tone didn’t say thank you, his tone said I don’t need you or anyone else. She shook his hand.

  ‘I did nothing. Really.’

  ‘Well, thank you for nothing then.’ A small smile.

  ‘All I can do is write about what’s happening. That’s all.’

  The gate opened again. Sergeant Ken Ramsay hesitated before taking a tentative step towards the huddle of figures. Frankly, he was nervous of Stevie at the best of times. He cleared his throat and they turned towards him. His eyes were still adjusting to the glare of the light.

  ‘Look, Miss Steiber, sorry to bother you but there’s a couple of things –’ He came to a stop, at a loss as to how to explain.

  ‘Yes?’ She always seemed awfully nice but Ken wasn’t equipped to interpret her smile and he felt quite out of his depth already. He literally got on to his back foot.

  ‘No. It doesn’t matter. No hurry or anything. Another time maybe.’

  Lily, one arm still around her brother, smiled her pretty, languid smile at Ken. He blushed instantly.

  ‘It’s all right, Sergeant, now’s as good a time as any.’ Stevie turned to Lily. ‘Why don’t you make a start. If a bus comes, take it and I’ll see you back there.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, Lily, I’m sure. It may surprise you but I can still catch a bus on my own, you know, and you need time with your brother.’

  ‘All right. Thanks.’ She lowered her voice. ‘And it’s Lie-Ling.’

  ‘Yes, sorry.’

  Lily, her arm still on her brother’s shoulder, walked away. Ken’s gaze followed her. His appreciation of her neat backside was interrupted by Stevie.

  ‘You’ve been sent to warn me off.’

  Wrong-footed again, Ken stammered. ‘Yes. How did you know?’ The surprise in his voice almost made her laugh.

  ‘I’ve been expecting a quiet word in my ear. I knew this would happen. Ever since we decided to keep the baby. Well, you’ve done the nasty job and you can go back and write a little report saying that Miss Steiber was pleasant but non-cooperative. Her exact words were that she would appreciate it if the British government would stay out of her private business and that she has no intention of causing Major Field any public embarrassment.’ She picked up her handbag, dusty with gravel. ‘There, it wasn’t so bad after all, was it?’

  Ken coughed. ‘I’m sorry but that’s not what – I needed a word about something else, actually.’

  Stevie was taken by surprise. ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘You’re a known contact of a certain Wu Jishang.’

  Stevie frowned, she was much less secure on this territory. ‘Of course I am, that’s no secret, you know.’

  Ken dropped his voice to a professionally discreet whisper. ‘The thing is, we know he came to Hong Kong to raise money and buy arms for the Communists.’ He hesitated. ‘Look, I’m to advise you to be more careful. You know how hysterical the entire Colony is at the moment. Nobody really buys our reassurances and anyway the population is much more afraid of the commies than they are of the Japs.’ Another pause. ‘Just be careful, that’s all.’

  Stevie was struggling – she knew that Jishang had interests and sympathies, of course, despite the fact that their work was all about maintaining an objective voice in the swirling vortex of aggressive political factions – but she had no inkling that he was perceived to be an actual supplier to the Red Army. If that was true, well, she was having difficulty deciding what it would mean. She herself had a natural leaning towards the liberating Chinese and a natural antipathy to the entrenched Nationalists who had turned their backs on the vicious Japanese agression. The Japanese, the Napoleons of the Far East. Jealous for centuries of China, their huge neighbour and cousin who seemed to have everything: culture, language, riches, historical precedence. They had set their sights on conquering her and having seized her relatively by surprise, they had taken advantage of the heavy-lidded assumption of the Chinese that nothing could overwhelm them, let alone the tiny, troublesome island of Japan. Arrogant China may have been, but nothing could validate the degree of cruelty that Japan was visiting on her. Stevie had seen the crippled, the mutilated, the broken victims of their warmongering. Somebody had to fight back and frankly she didn’t care who it was. Jishang an active Communist? It seemed unlikely but she knew better than to second-guess him.

  Smiling blandly, she gave nothing away. ‘I see. Thank you for the warning.’

  Ken, hugely relieved that his duty was done, nodded. He turned to leave.

  ‘Does Harry know?’ Her voice was quiet and she seemed suddenly vulnerable. Ken nodded again.

  ‘I see.’ A pause. ‘Is he in terrible trouble – because of this?’ She gestured to the swell in her dark red dress.

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t worry, everyone knows we couldn’t do without him.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Her hand rested for a moment on his sleeve, then she turned and set off, incongruous in her pregnancy, away from the unhappy military man and his unhappy military duty.

  She inhaled the salty air and dug her fingers into the warm sand. From where she lay the leaves of the palm trees looked like propellors and she smiled at the surreal thought of them taking off into the unusually cloudless sky.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  She turned her head and squinted up at Harry’s silhouette. He had taken his shirt off, his trousers hung dangerously low on his hips and were rolled up almost as far as his knees. He looked like one of those henpecked men on the saucy seaside postcards that they sold in the stationers’ shop to homesick Brits.

  ‘Why are Englishmen so keen to see themselves as fools?’

  ‘I don’t know that we are.’ He sat down next to her and without thinking, his hand came to rest on her belly. He called over to Takeda, who sat on a fold-up canvas chair under the trees a little distance away. ‘What do you think? Englishmen – are we fools?’

  ‘Not all of you.’

  Harry’s laugh warmed her as much as the sun but still Stevie was not entirely at ease in Takeda’s company. She was immensely proprietorial of Harry and their increasingly rare days together. He was working harder than ever and she told herself it was the intrusion of another person, no matter who, that she resented. In general, Stevie was relishing their peculiar isolation, being in the city but somehow not of it. Their social exile was not a painful thing but she was loath to admit that occasionally it was hard work being an outcast. When Harry had proposed that they invite Takeda on their outing to the beach she could hardly say no. Takeda had no family in Hong Kong and Harry had made it clear that their friendship was more than just professional. There was nothing in particular about him she disliked. He had been extremely kind to her despite the circumstances and was, in fact, one of the very few people that she and Harry could safely socialise with.

  ‘At least you English can laugh at yourselves. I think that disqualifies you from being genuine fools.’ Stevie’s words were delivered lighty but there was sting in them and the two men were both adept enough to feel it.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Takeda, from his seat in the shade. ‘We Japanese take ourselves far too seriously. It’s a flaw.’

  ‘Maybe you merit being taken seriously,’ said Harry.

  ‘At all times? I don’t think so.’ Takeda snorted with laughter. ‘You made a good job of puncturing the self-importance of old Morioka-san.’

  ‘Maybe. But it didn’t do me any favours in the long run.’ Harry turned to Stevie to explain. ‘He was our riding instructor. He got a little more than he reckoned on when he wanted me to change my seat.’

  ‘The horse took a chunk out of his hair.’

  ‘It was nothing to do with me, old chap.’

  Stevie particularly hated it when the two of t
hem reminisced about their time in Japan before the war. She felt excluded and simply could not relate to Harry’s admiration for Takeda’s compatriots.

  She pulled herself up to sit. It really was too hot to lie out for long but oh, the glory of the sand and the sea. Here on the beach she felt very far from the anxieties of the city and this was a rare and welcome respite.

  Takeda was still laughing, puffing out his cheeks in glee. ‘I blame the horse – must have been European. It clearly had no sense of communal duty. Far too individualistic.’

  ‘Yes.’ Harry’s hand lifted from her belly and brushed through his hair. Grains of sand fell in a small storm. ‘A Japanese horse would have felt too much shame to disrespect a senior officer in such a way.’

  Stevie yawned. ‘Pass me the water, would you?’

  Harry delved into the canvas rucksack they had brought with them and pulled out the thermos flask. He shook it. ‘Ice has all melted.’ He nodded his head in the direction of the small restaurant further up the beach. ‘Shall we?’

  Stevie held out her hand and he helped her on to her feet. Takeda stood too and folded his little chair. Soon the three of them, an unlikely trio, were making their way along the edge of the sand. The rangy Englishman, a rucksack over one shoulder and his sandals slung over the other, reining in his long strides so as to walk shoulder to shoulder with the large-bellied, short-haired woman, also barefoot. Trailing behind them the overheated, round Japanese man struggling to keep hold of his folded chair. Stevie imagined them as a comic sight, one of those postcards again, but she held back from commenting on it. She was too content just watching Harry’s and her feet making tracks in the damp dark rim of sand.

  Chen turned his intelligent gaze to the perfectly rendered hem of the jacket he was holding.

  ‘It’s amazing how they do this. Look, perfect. And the light in here is terrible.’

  Harry leaned towards the tweed and nodded. ‘Marvellous, yes.’ He looked up at Chen. ‘Isn’t this rather a bourgeois concern?’

  Chen laughed, showing his small, tidy teeth. ‘You could say that politics and vanity are different sides of the same thing.’

  ‘That may very well be so but don’t let that great leader of yours hear you.’

  ‘Mao is not as hardline as you might think.’ Chen folded the scratchy tweed over his arm and lowered his voice. ‘But I won’t tell him if you don’t.’

  Harry held up both of his hands as reassurance as he said, ‘That jacket will keep you warm in the mountains. If, that is, you were ever planning to be in the mountains.’

  Chen threw him a glance and spoke deliberately. ‘Yes, you’re right. I like to be prepared for any eventuality and a walk in the mountains is possible.’

  Harry, stooping slightly in the low-ceilinged tailor’s shop, patted Chen on the back as he turned to go. ‘Jolly good. I hope you have a good trip.’ He stepped out into the bright light of the day, leaving Chen to settle up with the sharp-eared and -eyed tailor.

  When, a few minutes later, Chen left the small shop carrying his brown paper wrapped parcel under his arm he was not alone. Harry stayed at a discreet distance behind him, unseen, all the way.

  In truth Chen’s release from prison had not only been due to Stevie’s efforts. As usual where Harry was concerned there was more to it than met the eye and it served him much better for Chen to be active than for him to languish behind bars. Their rendezvous in the tailor’s shop was just one of what had become regular meetings. However, Harry thought it might be more revealing to keep a more surreptitious eye on him as well.

  Outside a lushly perfumed barber’s shop, Chen met up with Ping Wei, a brush-haired, smiling boy. The two young men chatted easily; teasing, pushing and shoving each other all the way through Central. On the edge of town they parted ways and Harry, lurking incongruously in the doorway of a lingerie shop, made a snap decision to follow Ping Wei instead of Chen. Almost immediately he regretted it as the boy loped along mile after mile, deeper and deeper into the countryside. Harry flagged slightly when he realised that this was not going to be a short stroll. In fact, it was further than he had ever been into the almost unpopulated hinterland. They walked beyond the village of Tai Long, where Hakka fishermen honed their traditional and ancient skills. The sight of Harry, five minutes behind the oblivious Ping Wei, caused a momentary pause from the quick-fingered unravelling of the nets, but his nodded greeting reassured them and the fishermen turned back to their labours.

  The steep footpath wound along miles of spectacular coastline, mountains on one side and erratic inlets and bays on the other. The surf was far below, a rolling carpet that would defeat any but the most skilled of sailors. It could not have been further in atmosphere from the urban, modern city port of Hong Kong Central.

  It was the devil of a job to remain unnoticed once they were away from the village and Harry was sure that if he had been following Chen he would have been spotted before they had even left the town of Sai Kung. As it was, drenched to the skin with sweat and desperate for some water, Harry paused on the narrow track and watched carefree Ping Wei whistling as he threaded his way sure-footed down to the narrow beach. The boy turned a couple of handstands on the sand as he made his way to a fisherman’s hut nestling under an overhang of rocks on the remote beach.

  Harry heard the welcome sound of a small waterfall and found a trickle of cool water crossing the path. He stooped down to it and cupped his hands. After taking a long drink he splashed his face and neck and could feel his skin alive with the sting of it. He calculated that they were on the Eastern edge of the rugged Sai Kung peninsula and carefully took the time to store the details of the fragile timber lean-to under the overhanging cliff before wending his way back to civilisation.

  Two months later it was spring and the weather was cool and clear. Stevie, lying in bed, waiting for Harry to finish work, could not get comfortable. She lay first on one side and then on the other but it was no good. She turned on to her back and listened to the muted sounds from the street. The occasional car growling, the clatter of wooden rickshaw wheels on tarmac, the soft footfall of drunks in the sultry night. She thought about Jishang. She had heard very little from him since the day they had said goodbye at the airport. For six months they had been communicating by cable on urgent magazine matters and sending corrected proofs back and forth in the post but their intimacy had leaked away without her even noticing. He asked no questions and she asked none in return. Her life in Shanghai had become so distant it felt as if it belonged to somebody else.

  With relief she heard the key turn in the door and Harry’s voice call through the apartment.

  ‘I know you’re not asleep.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong. I am.’

  ‘Excellent. You won’t want any of this ice cream, then.’

  He appeared in the doorway holding aloft a cardboard box from their favourite Italian ice-cream maker.

  A little later the lights of the city spread out below them in the night as Stevie and Harry lay close, naked and on their backs on her balcony. His hand rested on her swollen belly. They spoke quietly, intimately. Almost murmuring.

  ‘When the alarm sounds you’ll need to get as fast as you can to Yang’s boat.’

  ‘Yang?’

  ‘Yes. The very same. Let’s just say he has uses other than purveying narcotic drugs and leave it at that.’

  He glanced at her. She wrinkled her brow, gently teasing.

  ‘I’m not sure I’ll remember which one it is, it’s been so long since I was there.’

  Harry shifted his weight on to his elbow so he could see the neon light in her dark eyes. ‘This is important, Stevie. It’s all arranged. He’ll be waiting. When you get to Macau, Yang will pass you on to somebody who’ll see you out into Free China. You’re to wait there for any messages. But no more than a week. If you don’t hear anything somebody will help you move on.’

  ‘Why so serious?’

  ‘Look, the Japanese haven’t exactly gone aw
ay like they were supposed to. The embargo is infuriating them much more than anyone anticipated. Frankly, they’re seeing it as a provocation. Everything points to them taking the gloves off.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Bloody politicians. If they had any idea of what we’re up against.’ The image of a photograph that he’d seen that afternoon came to him in all its horror. The child, maybe six years old, sitting on the dirt ground, holding his mother’s loose hand and staring at her insides, which were coiled around her, pulled out through the split where she had been cut open from throat to groin. The Japanese soldier, bloody bayonet in one hand, nonchalantly lighting a cigarette.

  Stevie mistook his urgency for anger but in fact it was fear. ‘We’ve underestimated them for too long. First we dismissed them as our little copycat allies and now we dismiss them as weak. Well, I know better, Stevie, and I don’t see a way out. Plumed hats and marching bands won’t save us now. Do you understand?’

  ‘What does your friend Mr Takeda have to say?’

  Harry would not normally have risen to her teasing. She had no understanding of his relationship with Takeda and indeed, why should she. He himself was far from clear about it. He found it so difficult to unweave his complex feelings that he seldom chose to delve into them. When he did think about it, it was only ever in brief snapshots, well framed and glowing: a narrow street lit up by the colourful kimonos of the women like so many hummingbirds, a quiet courtyard covered in layers of pale-pink blossom as if there were snowdrifts in the sunshine, a steaming bowl of clear broth in a small overheated dining room, Takeda’s young smile splitting his flushed face as he accepted victory in the boxing ring. But there was a kind of heat that rose in him when he thought too hard about it. The memory of his time in Japan was relegated to the furthest unswept corner of his mind. He had a sense of it lurking and murky. But at the same time he held it close and could hardly bear any shadow being brought to bear on the happiness of his youthful Japanese adventure.