Brother Fish (121 page)

We had another anxious wait to see when Lily No Gin No. 2 would turn up. The Chings had promised to keep their end of the bargain, and Eddie Ching knew the terms: no daughter, no deal. But suddenly I was troubled by another concern: if Lily No Gin No. 2 was dead, or they didn't know where to find her, or she'd been sold into prostitution years ago, what was there to stop them from substituting any mixed-blood female in her forties down on her luck? I imagined that Hong Kong would have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of such women – after all, Caucasian expatriates had been coming and going in Hong Kong for a very long time.

How would the Countess be able to identify her daughter? Her baby had been kidnapped moments after birth, which presented a perfect opportunity to substitute an imposter. She wouldn't need to know anything about her mother – there'd be no hearsay, no shared history to question her on past events, nothing at all. There wasn't a single question Nicole could ask her to verify the fact that the woman the Triads produced was genuinely her daughter. All an imposter would need was a thorough briefing from Eddie Ching about her childhood – any cock'n'bull story would do. How the hell would we know the difference? The Triads were the masters of deceit, and now Eddie Ching would think all his Chinese New Years had come at once.

I mentioned my new-found fears to Wendy when we got back to our suite, and she turned pale. ‘Thank you, Jacko – there goes my good night's sleep!' she cried. ‘Have you spoken to Jimmy about your concerns?'

‘How could I? We all left together.' But then I added, ‘I'm not sure I want to. In many ways, finding Nicole's daughter is a substitute for finding his mother. He can't ever hope to know who his mum is – there are no possible leads he can follow. She left him on the doorstep of an orphanage. That's like placing a piece of garbage in the rubbish bin rather than throwing it onto the footpath, because it's the right thing to do.'

‘That's not fair, Jacko. His mother may have been desperate at the time – you don't know the circumstances.'

‘Of course, but that's the problem – neither does Jimmy. He doesn't know if she was an alcoholic, or a junkie and just didn't care, or, as you say, if she was a good woman in a desperate situation doing the best she could. He can invent anything he likes, but he doesn't
know
, and he knows he never will. Even knowing the worst is better than not knowing at all.'

‘So what are you saying? Finding Nicole's daughter is going to help Jimmy?'

‘Didn't you hear him on the Cessna flying back from Bermagui, and when we were persuading the Countess to try to find her daughter? I thought I knew every aspect of Jimmy, but I've come to realise that a kid who's never been loved never gets over it. The hurt never goes away. Finding the Countess's daughter is like trying to stop the hurt that's been mounting inside him since he was knee high to a grasshopper. It's not just Nicole he's concerned about – it's also her daughter. Think about it – Jimmy is in exactly the same position as Lily No Gin No. 2. Like him she has no history, no past. I know this probably sounds weird, but by helping to give her back her past he'll somehow share in it.'

‘So what are we going to do, Jacko?' Wendy had become distressed and I was sorry I'd brought up the subject.

‘Nothing. What
can
we do? Hope it all works out – what else?'

‘Oh, Jacko, don't let it be awful. After all she's been through, don't let it turn out badly for her!'

Two days went by and we were all in the foyer waiting for Nicole to come down from her suite so that we could leave for Lantau Island to visit Po Lin, the place where she'd met with Wang Po. We were all excited about seeing the biggest Buddha in Asia, the one erected in his memory and to which the Countess had made a considerable contribution. She was seldom late – punctuality was a part of her character. But it was now twenty minutes beyond the time we'd agreed to depart. Wendy was about to go back upstairs to see what might have happened to delay her, when the lift doors nearest to us opened and she appeared. We all stood, ready to leave, but she signalled with her hand that we should sit down. She smiled nervously as she approached.

‘She called, half an hour ago, and will be here in about an hour,' she announced. We all jumped up and surrounded her, offering our enthusiastic support. ‘I have to be carrying a single rose.' She looked around, trying to locate the florist shop at one end of the foyer.

‘I'll get it,' I said. ‘What colour?'

‘Oh dear, she didn't say. Any rose will do, I imagine.'

‘Wendy, what colour?' I asked.

‘White,' she said without hesitation. Of course, the florist had roses of every other colour but white. I later learned that white is the Chinese colour for death and finding a white rose outside of a funeral parlour in Hong Kong is just about impossible. I settled for a yellow rose, the colour of friendship.

Of course there were two immediate questions we were desperate to ask Nicole. Firstly, had the phone call been in Cantonese or English? Secondly, was Lily No Gin No. 2 of mixed blood or Caucasian? Of course, we couldn't ask the second question.

‘She speaks perfect English, though with a slight lilt that probably comes from speaking Cantonese,' Nicole replied, answering the first question. Then, with downcast eyes, she voiced our unspoken one. ‘I didn't ask her the question you've probably all got in your minds.' She looked up again to face us. ‘I decided a long time ago that it really doesn't matter. She is my child, regardless of who her father is.' She paused, then added, ‘We didn't speak for long. She sounded very nervous, and I confess I wasn't really in control myself, so she said she'd be over in an hour and a half and we could talk then. I'm afraid the trip to Lantau Island will have to wait, unless, of course, you'd like to go on your own?'

‘Countess, we ain't goin' nowhere,' Jimmy said, and then pointed to a group of lounge chairs close by. ‘If you want, we can sit over there.'

‘Actually, I'd very much appreciate it if you were all with me when I meet her. I must say I feel rather nervous, even tentative.' The moment she said this I knew she, too, was worried about the possibility the woman would be an imposter.

Wendy ordered tea and scones, and the next hour seemed to last forever. We were all trying, in my case unsuccessfully, not to look at the hotel entrance while we made small talk. Then Wendy said, ‘For goodness sake, we're all talking polite rubbish. Let's just sit and watch the entrance.' We laughed, because she was right, of course, and suddenly we were chatting like we normally would, so that we were unaware of the approach of the woman who suddenly stood in front of us. As it turned out, she'd entered through one of the hotel's side doors.

‘Miss Lenoir-Jourdan?' she asked politely.

We all broke into wide smiles and Jimmy brought his great big hands together and clapped, so that people at nearby tables turned to see what the fuss was about. Thank God for strong Russian genes. Except for her dark hair, which she would have inherited from Sir Victor, the woman standing in front of the Countess was a younger version of herself – the same brilliant blue eyes, an identically shaped nose, just a trifle too long to be called petite, high cheekbones, firm chin and wide brow. She also wore her hair in a bob, not all that different in the way it was cut from Nicole's, who'd been to the hotel hairdresser the previous day. They were unmistakably mother and daughter, and both realised it at almost precisely the same moment and simultaneously burst into tears.

Jimmy and I leapt to our feet but Jimmy got to Lily No Gin No. 2 first and led her gently to his seat next to Nicole. Wendy, too, had risen quickly from her chair and was on her knees beside the weeping Countess with her arm around her, though not offering much comfort as she was weeping herself. Jimmy stood behind Lily No Gin No. 2's chair, not touching her but with his big hands resting on either side of her slim shoulders. He was grinning like an idiot, but then I realised that he was also crying, great tears running silently down his smiling face. I was pretty choked up myself but, as usual, was stuck for the right words. ‘What, no embrace?' I asked awkwardly, reaching in three little words a new height in the art of the inappropriate comment.

Both women, perhaps initially too overcome or shy to fall into each other's arms, now rose and embraced, and a torrent of further tears followed. For once in my life I'd got it right. I tried to imagine what it must be like to know absolutely nothing about your mother. Lily later explained that she had never been told a single thing about Nicole. As a small child she'd asked Ah Yuk, the
amah
given the responsibility of raising her, where she'd come from. She was told the highly improbable story that shortly after the Japanese attack on Shanghai in 1932 she'd been found newborn and naked in a horse stall at the Kiangwan racecourse.

It was at Kiangwan racecourse that the main Chinese defences had been dug in, and it had borne the brunt of the Japanese artillery attack in 1932. Most of the young soldiers defending it had been killed, and in the process the Japanese guns had demolished the racecourse and the stables behind it, killing all the horses but for one pure-white mare in the only stall miraculously left standing. Trapped in the stable and surrounded by artillery fire, the mare had been driven crazy with fright and the interior surfaces of the stable had run red, the mare's whiteness turned crimson from her own blood. Lily was told that people who came to bury the dead said that the horse's great heart could be seen exposed where its flesh had been ripped from its chest in its desperate attempts to break out. Yet the newborn child found naked at the crazed animal's feet was unharmed. The mewling infant and the terrified horse had been the only survivors among the tens of thousands of Chinese killed when every house in the village surrounding the racecourse was razed to the ground. Big Boss Yu was the owner of the mare and so, according to the story, he'd taken the matter of the ‘horse child' to a famous soothsayer, who concluded the infant had sprung from the mare's exposed heart. The soothsayer told him that the horse's child was not a
gwai mui
, but was white-skinned with the round eyes of a horse because the mare had been pure white in colour. He'd also told Big Boss Yu that the horse's child was a gift from the Gods and would bring him great good fortune. And so Big Boss Yu had taken the white-skinned, round-eyed infant into his esteemed household.

When things had settled down a bit in the hotel foyer, Jimmy proposed lunch on the balcony. It was here that Lily suddenly said, ‘Oh dear, I was so excited I quite forgot to show you my proof.'

Jimmy laughed. ‘Ain't no better proof dan your lovely face, Lily. Der ain't no mistakin' your mama is sittin' der beside you.'

Lily No Gin No. 2 dipped into her handbag. ‘I was given this by Yu Ya-ching when I won my scholarship to university. “It belonged to your mother,” was all he said.' From her handbag she produced a single pearl earring.

‘Oh my goodness!' Nicole exclaimed and seemed quite overcome, her hands clutched to her breast. When she recovered sufficiently she said, ‘You shall have the other one with my love, my darling child.'

Over lunch Lily told us the story of the white mare and how she'd acquired her Chinese name, then laughingly added, ‘I wonder if you'd mind very much calling me Whisky?' We all paused and waited for an explanation – it was, after all, a very peculiar nickname. ‘At school, with a surname like “No Gin” and the Chinese name
Baht Mar
, which means “white horse”, the name of a famous brand of scotch, it was almost inevitable that I became Whisky No Gin.' Apart from the Countess, we all laughed at this simple explanation.

‘Oh, you poor darling,' she exclaimed. ‘Children do so hate that sort of thing.'

‘Well, yes, of course I was teased a great deal at school. But as I grew older I became accustomed to it, and now, well, it's my name, and I'm simply known to my patients as Dr Whisky.'

‘That a good name!' Jimmy exclaimed. ‘Dr Whisky? It got
panache
.' I could see Jimmy was greatly taken with Whisky No Gin.

It was the first time that ‘Whisky No Gin', or plain ‘Whisky', or even ‘Dr Whisky', as she would variously become known to us, mentioned that she was a doctor of medicine. Over lunch she told us briefly about her life. Of course, it has taken a long time and many trips to Hong Kong to get the whole story, particularly of her childhood. I hope to encourage her to write it down, as it is a remarkable story of survival and determination that deserves to be told. But at our first lunch together, for our benefit she briefly outlined the forty-two years of her life.

She had spent her first five years in the compound of Big Boss Yu, whom she seldom saw and who, as far as she could recall, never spoke to her. In 1937, with the certain invasion of the Japanese, they left for Taiwan and then, after the war, did not return to Shanghai but went instead to Hong Kong. Whisky attended school in Taipei, where Big Boss Yu insisted she learn English. She must have been a bright child because at the age of thirteen, when they'd arrived in Hong Kong, she sat for a scholarship to a private girls' school attended by both expatriate children and the wealthy Chinese. The gain of face Big Boss Yu had received from this success, along with Wang Po's injunction to give her all the privileges of a male child, had overcome his predisposition not to educate her beyond primary school. She eventually became head prefect and the captain of the school lacrosse and hockey teams, and when she sat for her ‘O' levels won a scholarship to the University of Hong Kong to study medicine.