Gweilo (39 page)

I had never been in a sampan before and was fascinated at how it was propelled by its single stern oar, twisted on the out-stroke to give forward momentum then twisted back on the in-stroke to avoid drag. The woman driving the boat stood barefoot on what my father called the stern flat, wearing a loose jacket and baggy trousers cut of a shiny black material that seemed to be steeped in tar. Her face was wrinkled and tanned by a life at sea.

We reached the pebble beach, went ashore down a plank extended from the bow of the sampan and joined the dense throng of celebrants. Entering the temple itself was impossible.

'Can't see why you wanted to come, Joyce,' my father grumbled. 'We can't get in the damn temple. Why couldn't we come on a day . . . ?'

'For the atmosphere,' my mother replied in a weary tone.

'Atmosphere!' my father retorted. 'Smoke more like.'

As he spoke, an elderly lady pushed past him carrying a bundle of lit joss-sticks, three feet long and as thick as Churchillian cigars. My father got the full benefit of the drift of their smoke right in his nostrils. He let out a gargantuan sneeze which had the lady turn round and briefly give him a piece of her mind.

In front of the temple, to appease those who could not get in to pay their homage, a secondary shrine had been set up on the beach. The image of Tin Hau was made of tissue stretched over a bamboo frame and surrounded by red and gold paper and small brightly coloured plastic propellers that spun like miniature windmills in the sea breeze. Before the image was arrayed a number of fully grown roast pigs, cooked chickens and ducks, bowls of pink bread buns, cakes, a large pile of pink-coloured boiled eggs and joss-sticks of all sizes. In the temple, gongs clanged and a deep bell continuously rang. Several bands played against each other from opposite ends of the temple.

Many of the junks riding at anchor were of the huge, deep-sea variety, vessels from another century. Every so often, the crews let off strings of firecrackers hanging from the masts, the blue smoke and fragments of paper drifting over the sea towards land. I half closed my eyes and imagined they were war junks fighting off pirates or East Indiamen running opium up the Pearl River to Canton.

After an hour at the festival, we returned to the launch and sailed three miles across open sea to the Ninepins, a group of four uninhabited islands with a natural rock archway on one. The water was as clear as – as my father put it – chilled vodka and we could see the rocks of the sea bottom six fathoms down. Every so often a dark shadow drifted over them and was the reason no-one swam. Due to a confluence of currents, this place was notorious for its sharks.

As the adults drank, ate and talked, I lay on the deck at the bow and looked down, watching the sharks glide by and thinking all the while that an instant and terrible death moved by only twenty feet below me. I only had to roll off the deck . . .

'What're you up to?' my mother asked, kneeling on the deck beside me.

'Watching the sharks,' I replied.

At that moment, a vast shape like that of a delta-wing bomber passed beneath me.

'What's that?' I almost shouted.

Everyone looked up and some came over to stand by me. Something broke the surface a short distance off. It floated just beneath the light waves as a sodden face flannel might.

'It's a manta ray!' someone exclaimed.

The launch crew quickly raised the anchor and started the engines. The ray began to move away. We set off in slow pursuit. The creature had a wingspan of at least fifteen feet and was, someone reckoned, over twenty feet from its bizarre, horseshoe-shaped snout to the tip of its long, quite rigid tail. It was dark grey in colour with a few cream patches and did not so much swim as gracefully fly under the water, its vast wings beating like a great bird's but in slow motion. It looked the epitome of marine beauty and yet simultaneously exceptionally sinister and dangerous.

'I wouldn't like to meet him when I was swimming,' I said to no-one in particular.

A man clutching an expensive German camera and kneeling on the deck next to me replied, 'You'd have nothing to fear. All they eat is plankton.'

I considered this information. That such a huge creature could live only by consuming the microscopic creatures that made phosphorescence was, at that moment, one of the wonders of my world.

'That ray was astonishing,' my mother remarked as my father drove our car on to the vehicular ferry that evening.

'Not really,' he commented dismissively. 'I saw bigger in west Africa during the war.'

'Well, you would have had to, wouldn't you, Ken?' my mother answered. 'If I had a boil on my bum, you'd have had a bigger one during the war.'

She leant back in the passenger seat and winked at me. My father glanced in the driving mirror to see my reaction. I kept my face deadpan. Had I been caught grinning, I would have been belted for some misdemeanour, trumped up or otherwise, by bedtime.

AS
1955
ADVANCED, THE WEATHER HEATING UP AND THE DAILY
humidity rising, my parents' life became increasingly frenetic and fraught. At his office, my father was preparing to hand over to his successor. This caused him frequently to return to the Fourseas in a flaming temper.

'I don't know how they do it!' he would mutter. 'The oldest bloody civilization on earth and they can't file. I've put a chart up. What goes where. Anchor butter is not the same as anchor chains. Dear God! My life is blessed with blithering idiots.'

This tirade made, he would pour himself a pink gin and sit on the balcony, watching the traffic go by and the setting sun illuminate the hill opposite.

My mother spent much of her time packing for the voyage 'home', which she no longer considered her home – or mine. Our larger possessions – furniture and the Ford – had already been sent ahead by cargo ship. When she was not packing or visiting friends, my mother quietly wept to herself. She did this in private, but I heard her through the door between our rooms. On just one occasion, my father found her wiping her eyes.

'What's the matter, Joyce?' he enquired as he poured himself a gin and tonic, the hotel being temporarily out of Angostura bitters, much to his vexation.

'Nothing.'

He sat down in one of the armchairs, rolling the ice round in his glass.

'Must be something.'

'I got some dust in my eye.'

'Right,' he said and sipped his drink.

My mother gave him the sort of look she might have afforded a street cat that had just regurgitated the half-digested intestines of a rotten garoupa on her bed.

'What?' he asked, catching the look.

'You're an unfeeling bastard, Ken.'

My father, having no direct response to this, replied, 'I've had a hell of a day in
Tamar
, Joyce, and I didn't come home to have to take this display of petulance.'

He put his half-finished drink down and walked to the door.

'Off to the wardroom?' my mother called out to his receding back.

He slammed the door and returned at midnight.

My preparations for leaving Hong Kong consisted of stocking up on
wah mui
, packets of joss-sticks and dried melon seeds, and buying presents for my grandparents. For my father's mother, I bought a table linen set embroidered with Chinese scenes, whilst for Nanny, who had stocked up on table linen during her visit, I bought a folding octagonal waste-paper basket with little Chinese figures of playing children appliquéd to its sides. For Grampy, a seafaring man, I bought a rosewood model of a sampan which cost me three weeks' pocket money.

My mother was invited by her Chinese friends to a number of farewell banquets as the date of our departure drew nearer. My father was not always invited and, when he was, he more often than not declined.

'Silly old sod!' my mother said to me one day after he had rejected yet another invitation. 'He's not happy unless he's bloody miserable.'

I accompanied my mother to a few of these banquets, the best of which was given by the hotel room boys. We met at a restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui just as night fell. The neon shop signs were coming on, the air was warm and moths were beginning to flicker around the lights. In the trees that lined Nathan Road, birds squabbled noisily over roosting perches.

The banquet was superb and went on well past midnight, the dishes appearing with a mouth-watering regularity: sharks' fin soup, abalone, quails' eggs and hundred-year-old duck eggs (which my mother tasted for the first time and was amazed to discover I not only knew of but also liked), chickens' feet, braised duck, soft-shelled hairy crabs cooked in salt and sugar, chicken wrapped in pickled cabbage and baked in clay, various fish, pork and beef with chillies and garlic . . . We were showered with farewell gifts. They were simple things, like sets of chopsticks, chopstick rests, decorated porcelain bowls and soapstone figurines, but to my mother they were as precious as gems and she prized them for the rest of her life.

After the banquet my father, who had attended on this occasion, returned to the Fourseas in a taxi, but my mother elected to walk. It was at least two miles but this did not deter her. I walked at her side, holding her hand despite the fact that I considered myself too mature now to do such a thing. In the circumstances, it just seemed right.

The air was warm. From the windows of the tenements came the sounds of everyday Chinese life – the song of caged birds, the clack of mahjong tiles, the raucous chorus of a Cantonese opera playing on the radio. The shops were shuttered. Under the arcades sat old men in their pyjamas with the legs rolled up to the knee, reading Chinese comic books or the past day's papers, talking to each other, smoking cigarettes of Chinese tobacco, some mixed with opium.

My mother and I did not speak. In our own ways, we were letting Hong Kong impinge itself upon us.

'Will you be sad to leave?' she asked, finally breaking our silence as we turned into Waterloo Road.

'Yes,' I admitted. 'Very.'

'Would you like to come back ?'

'For a holiday? Yes!'

'No. For good.'

I thought about it. I had been happy in Hong Kong. It had been an exciting place in which to live and I was sure it had much to offer that I had yet to uncover. However, there was more to it than that. I felt I had grown up in Hong Kong. I could recall little of my life prior to the
Corfu
. It was as if my memory – my actual existence – had begun the minute my foot had touched the dock in Algiers. England was as strange a place to me now as Hong Kong had been on that June morning in 1952. In short, I felt I belonged there.

'Yes,' I said at last. 'Definitely.'

'In that case,' my mother replied, 'we'd best see what we can do about it.'

On my last night in Hong Kong, I went down Soares Avenue bidding farewell to the shopkeepers. Mr Deng, the seller of cherry bombs, gave me a ten-cent biro and ruffled my hair. Mr Tsang cut open a pomelo.

'You can buy in Ing-lan'-side?' he enquired, handing me a piece and taking one for himself.

'Lo can buy Inglan'-side,' I confirmed, biting into it and spitting the flat pips on to the pavement. This, I thought at the same moment, was a habit I would have to lose. And quick!

'
Ayarh!
' he exclaimed. 'You mus' come back Hong Kong-side!' He too stroked my head for a last fix of luck. 'You come back. I low. One day, no long time, you come see me one more time.'

Halfway down Nathan Road, my mother said suddenly, 'Ken . . . ! Stop the car!'

My father, sitting in the front passenger seat next to a young naval rating with a flat Birmingham accent and a badly sunburnt neck, ordered the driver to pull into the kerb.

'Give me the boarding passes, will you, Ken? Mine and Martin's.'

For the briefest of moments, I saw a sense of intense fear pass over my father's face. My mother had always been an expert at timing. If she really were going to leave him, and I assumed it was possible, this would be the supremely appropriate moment. And he knew it. Yet he reached into his jacket pocket, removed his wallet and handed her two pieces of folded green-tinted paper.

'How long will you be?' he asked.

'How long is a piece of string?' she replied evasively.

It was one of her stock answers and she knew it infuriated my father, whose life was filled with certainties to which there was never any string attached.

'Depends on the size of the parcel,' I said, aping my mother's usual response to further interrogation.

My father gave me a scathing look and went on, 'Well don't be long, that's all.'

We stepped out of the car and it drove away. I briefly saw my father's face through the front passenger door window. He looked crestfallen, defeated and scared. I felt strangely, guiltily jubilant.

Directly across Nathan Road was Whitfield Barracks, two sentries with cockades in their berets and Lee Enfield .303 rifles in their hands standing either side of a gateway. Through it I could see an armoured scout car of which I had an exact Dinky replica.

Without any haste, my mother and I walked down Nathan Road. Ahead of us, between the buildings, rose the Peak, hazy in the mid-afternoon sun. It was hot, the humidity high. Rickshaws passed us, carrying people, boxes and bales of cloth. Red and cream Kowloon buses sped by, washing hot air over us. My mother looked at them and I wondered if she was watching out for Her Russian Majesty.

At the southern end of the barracks, we crossed Nathan Road, entered Haiphong Road and took the second left into Hankow Road. Hing Loon Curio and Jewellery Company was open but we did not go in for a chat or a free drink. We had already said our goodbyes.

My mother, who had not spoken twenty words since we got out of the car, said, 'Well, what do you say?'

I made no answer. We both had the same thought in mind and entered the Pen. We were shown to a table and my mother ordered tea for two. She specifically requested Chinese tea. It soon arrived at our table in a bone china teapot accompanied by wafer thin sandwiches and a silver stand of dainty cakes. On a balcony above, a string quartet started up, playing tunes from recent hit musicals.

'This is living,' my mother said after a long silence. 'Really living . . .' She looked about her. 'Haven't we been the lucky ones!'

'Yes,' I said, 'we certainly have. And', I added, 'we will be again.'

My mother reached across the table and took my hand in both of hers.

'Too bloody right!' she said with characteristic defiance. 'You can bet your bottom dollar on it.'

She looked at her watch and summoned a waiter Chinese style, her palm downwards and all her fingers beckoning together.

'Mai dan, m'goi,'
she said as he drew near. Her accent was almost perfect.

The bill was presented. My mother paid it, smiling at me with the memory of our first tea here. We left through the grand front entrance as if we were minor royalty, a Chinese boy in the hotel livery holding the door open for us, another asking if we required a rickshaw or taxi. That tart – I understood the meaning of the word now – the Duchess of Windsor could not have been better treated.

Beside the Tsim Sha Tsui fire station was a short concrete slope to the hillside on the top of which stood the marine police headquarters. A tree hung over it. In its shade, as usual, was the old grasshopper man seated on a folding stool, a rattan basket of bamboo splints and leaves by his side. With them, he skilfully wove grasshoppers, arranging them around his feet or along the top of a culvert. As we approached, he held one out.

'You wan' g'asshoppah, missee? B'ing you plenty good luck. Only one dollar.'

I bought two and gave my mother one.

'You good boy for you muvver,' the old man said and, getting up, stroked my hair.

We walked on, past Sammy Shields' dental surgery and into the Kowloon Docks. Alongside the first pier was the P&O liner
Carthage
, the sister ship of the
Corfu
. Her white hull towered over us, gleaming in the sunlight. Smoke drifted from her funnel. Signal flags flew from her mast. The Blue Peter announced she was soon to sail.

The dock was crowded with baggage coolies, rickshaw pullers, cars, trucks and well-wishers. Along the hull, sampans bobbed on the waves. Junks sailed by out in the harbour and walla-wallas puttered about, tossing in the wake of a Star Ferry leaving its jetty. I glanced at the Peak across the shimmering water. Block A, Mount Austin stood out, silhouetted against the sub-tropical sky and I thought that, no matter what, I could always claim I once lived there.

Plank by plank, hand in hand, clutching our lucky grasshoppers, we slowly climbed the gangway. My mother was crying.

It was the afternoon of Monday, 2 May 1955, and I was ten.

Four years later, exactly as my mother had predicted, my father was a colonial civil servant and we were back. For good.