Gweilo Read online

  Ah Choy was one of a group known as saw hei amahs: saw hei meant combed and referred to the way they kept their hair in taut buns. Originally from Kwangtung province, they were members of a sorority of single Chinese women who had sworn to each other strictly to maintain a vow of celibacy. Traditionally, they were silk factory workers from the Three Districts of the Pearl River delta but, in the thirties, they had been displaced by the advancing Japanese forces during the Sino-Japanese War, most fleeing for British Hong Kong, where they became servants, particularly to Western families.

  During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, many saw hei amahs remained in the colony, at very great risk to themselves. It was not unknown for them to smuggle food into their former employers in prisoner-of-war camps, sometimes tossing it over the wire by night. Others fled into China, crossed north of the Japanese lines and somehow eked out an existence. When Japan capitulated in 1945, they returned to Hong Kong, sought out their former employers and took up where they had left off.

  It was not long before Ah Choy started to assign herself other duties than washing and sewing. She insisted on seeing me over the road to school, even though Ching had long since given up the task as I was now considered traffic-wise. At the end of the day, or if I returned home at lunchtime, she would waylay me halfway to school in order to carry my Hong Kong basket for me. I found this agonizingly embarrassing. Should I not feel well, she would come into my room and curl up on the floor by my bed. If I woke in the night, she would too, to fetch me a glass of milk from the Kelvinator or call my mother. Many years later, my mother told me how Ah Choy had once walked in on her and my father as they were making love in the middle of the night. Not fazed in the least, she walked straight to the bed, shook my mother's shoulder and said, 'Come quick, missee. Young master . . .' She then did a passable imitation of vomiting and rushed back to my room.

  I came to love Ah Choy and even permitted her to undress and wash me. She was kind, tolerant and loyal. Yet, in three months, she was gone, employed by someone with an apartment and servants' quarters. We could hardly blame her.

  There followed a succession of interviews, culminating in the appointment of Ah Fong. She was the antithesis of Ah Choy. A young, smiling woman, she wore her hair in a perm and lacked the devotion to service of her celibate compatriots. She could be brusque and determined to brook no nonsense from me. I consequently led her a merry chase, especially at her evening call of 'Barfu, Martung!'

  It was a matter of principle.

  Beneath the main hotel staircase was a snug hideaway in which Halfie and the luggage porter huddled whilst waiting for their services to be called upon. In this little den was a telephone, a shoeshine box, a shelf of telephone directories, three stools and an electric ring on which they boiled tea for themselves and the office staff.

  Returning from school one September afternoon not long after the beginning of the new academic year, I walked up the hotel drive to see Halfie twirling something round his head on the end of a six-foot length of cotton. When he stopped swinging it round, it flew of its own volition.

  'I wan' one,' I said.

  Halfie tantalizingly hid the object in his pocket and, pointing to the lobby clock, answered, 'You wan', you get. Light-time, I show you.'

  At six thirty that evening, I met him and the porter in their den and followed them out into Waterloo Road. We stood under one of the neon street lights and waited. Twilight fell. We were joined by several more people. Beneath the other street lights, small groups of three or four were gathering. I was about to ask what we were waiting for when the street lights came on. In a few minutes, once they had reached full brilliance, something hard hit me on the head. Before I could react, Halfie ran his fingers through my hair and showed me a beetle nestling in his palm.

  The insect was the size and shape of a large plum stone, its glossy carapace smooth and a dark green which was almost black. A bright yellow stripe lined the edges. Its underside was deep yellow, its two hindmost legs at least as long as its body and jointed in the mid-point.

  'What is it?' I enquired.

  'Wartar bee-chew,' Halfie answered.

  Suddenly, more began to fall around us. They were attracted to the street light, flew into the bulb, knocked themselves senseless and fell to the pavement. Halfie and the porter collected the dazed water beetles and put them in a saucepan. As soon as they gained consciousness, they took to the wing inside it, banging against the lid and sides. In thirty minutes, we must have collected a hundred.

  'What do we do now?' I asked.

  'Tomowwow,' Halfie answered.

  The following morning, as I left for school, Halfie presented me with my beetle-on-a-line. He had tied a length of cotton to the insect's two hind legs and showed me how to swing it round.

  'No too fas',' he warned. 'You do too fas', leg b'okun.'

  I gently swung the beetle round my head. It took to the wing and flew above me like a miniaturized motor-powered kite. All the way to school, I was accompanied by its whirring flight as it kept ahead of me. It was a wonder to behold. Inevitably, however, it was confiscated and given its liberty the moment I entered the school premises. My liberty that lunchtime was sequestered and I was given a hundred lines to write on the topic of cruelty to animals.

  As soon as I reached the Fourseas that afternoon, I went straight to the niche under the stairs. Halfie and the porter were hunched over a pan on the electric ring.

  'Bee-chew gone,' I said, miming its supposed escape. I was loathe to lose face by admitting what had actually happened.

  'Lo ploblum,' said Halfie. 'Can get wung more light-time.'

  He opened the lid on the pan. Inside, the remainder of the water beetles were gently simmering. 'You wan?'

  This was, I considered, the severest test of my promise to the naval officer so far. Halfie removed a beetle from the pan with a spoon, blew on it to cool it then split the carapace open with his thumbnail, flicking the wing casing, wings and legs into a rice bowl already containing other beetle parts.

  'You eat . . .' Halfie made a kissing-cum-sucking noise '. . . lo go down.' He pointed to his throat then mimed spitting the bits into the bowl.

  I put the beetle in my mouth and chewed it thoroughly, swallowing the mushy liquid of its innards mixed with my own saliva. It tasted slightly muddy, yet the overriding flavour was like the smell of stagnant freshwater ponds mixed with smoked fish. I spat the bits out, ate another just to show willing, accepted a toothpick holder and a bowl of jasmine tea, the contents of which were more than welcome. Every tooth in my head had a bit of bee-chew wedged against it. Expecting to be violently sick at any moment, I went to my room and sat on the bed to await the advent of regurgitated beetle and tea but it never came so, half an hour later, I went down to the hotel bar and ordered a cold Coke. In the cubby-hole, all the beetles had been consumed.

  4

  THREE LIVES ON THE EDGE

  IN THE FOURSEAS, WITH ITS PREDOMINANTLY NOMADIC population, only the staff, the whores, one other expatriate woman and her son, a European man who lived in a single room at the back of the hotel and my mother and I were more or less permanent over the winter of 1952.

  My father came back from Japan on the Fort Charlotte for Christmas, bearing gifts. I received a battery-powered wooden motor boat and a superb model of a Chinese junk with hand-sewn sails and windlasses that worked. The hotel did its best to become seasonally cheerful, with decorations in all the public rooms, gifts of bottles of VSOP brandy in each occupied room (including mine) and Christmas dinner of an American turkey and Australian roast potatoes, brussels sprouts and carrots. The Christmas pudding was brought in fiercely burning but was inedible: it turned out the cook had set it alight with paraffin instead of brandy. One kindly old Chinese, who did not speak English and was the night watchman and odd-job man, went around wishing everyone a 'Happee Kiss-Mee'.

  My father's return was not the happy occasion it should have been. After delivering his largesse, for which he demand
ed expressions of deep gratitude, he soon slipped into his old short-tempered ways which he had presumably had to keep in check whilst he was on board ship. He was enough of a sailor to know that one pain in the arse in a wardroom was enough to unsettle an entire ship's crew.

  The day before the ship sailed back to Japan, we were invited aboard the Fort Charlotte for lunch. I was shown my father's cabin, the wood- and brass-work polished, his clothes neat in the drawers, his bunk immaculately made. Lunch was taken in the wardroom with the Chief Engineer and the Captain, both of whom wore uniforms with gold braid. The meal was beef curry and rice to which were added 'bits' consisting of crisp-fried onion, croutons, diced cucumber and pineapple, grated coconut, currants, chopped tomatoes, mango chutney, hot lime pickle, poppadoms, chipattis and flaky Bombay duck which, I was surprised to discover, was not duck at all but dried fish. When it was over, we were given a tour of the ship which did not impress me. I had seen bridges and engine rooms before.

  Leaving the wheelhouse, my father muttered, 'Show some interest. The Old Man doesn't have to show you round.'

  I had an answer to that but wisely kept it to myself.

  Returning to Kowloon across the harbour on a naval launch, my father set upon me.

  'You are a rude little ingrate,' he said irately.

  'What now, Ken?' my mother wanted to know.

  'Martin,' my father answered. 'Taken all over the bloody show. Might just as well've left him behind.'

  'Well, Ken,' my mother replied, 'he did see it all on the Corfu. Let's face it, unless you're a marine engineer, one ship's boiler looks very much like the next.'

  'Neither the Corfu nor the Fort Charlotte have boilers,' my father retorted irritably. 'Not in the accepted sense. They're diesel driven. That's what I mean. The two of you. Blind as bats to life's opportunities. As inquisitive as a building brick. Curious as a dead cat.'

  For the remainder of the day, my father sulked. That evening, I asked my mother – foolishly in my father's hearing – why the other men on the ship wore gold braid but my father did not.

  'Go to your room!' he shouted at me. 'Put your pyjamas on.'

  'I was only being curious,' I defended myself.

  'Get out!'

  I went.

  Ten minutes later, he entered my room. I was bent over a chair and hit twice across the buttocks with the flat of my mother's silver hairbrush.

  'That's for your bloody insolence,' my father said spitefully as I wiped my tears away and rubbed my running nose against my pyjama sleeve.

  I had hit a raw nerve.

  One afternoon early in January, my mother took me to Tsim Sha Tsui. She was going to Hing Loon to collect a ruby and gold pendant she had ordered and I was to have a new pair of shoes. It was a cold day, the wind had an edge to it and I wore a thick pullover.

  As usual, we boarded the number 7 bus across the road from the Fourseas and set off. As it slowed for the last stop before turning left down Nathan Road, a face surrounded by rats' tails of dishevelled, filthy grey hair appeared at the window next to me.

  I instantly recognized it. It was that of an old European woman who lived in a cockloft – a sort of semi-permanent shanty – on the flat roof of a tenement block in Liberty Avenue. I had often seen her wandering the back streets of Mong Kok, scavenging from restaurants, buying (or stealing) fruit from stalls and eating at the cheapest dai pat dongs where she swore volubly in fluent Cantonese at the coolies beside whom she sat. Most shop and stallholders kept an eye open for her, shooing her away with a broom or stick as if she were an alley-cat or pi-dog. I saw one or two Buddhists who were honour-bound to give alms to the poor taking pity on her but almost everybody else was hostile.

  She ran along the side of the bus as it slowed, banging her hands on the panelling. I broke into a sweat. This old woman knew me, in a manner of speaking. Whenever she saw me in the street, she would run towards me, an animated pile of old rags that stank of urine, sweat, rice wine, tobacco, opium and garlic. And, on occasion, shit. I avoided her and fled but, with an alacrity one would not credit her with, she would stagger after me, shouting, 'Alexei! Alexei!'

  The bus stopped, she boarded it and headed straight for me and my mother. On the way down the aisle, the conductor accosted her for her fare. She snarled at him, muttered incomprehensibly and elbowed him into an empty seat.

  As the bus set off, the woman stood next to my mother, swaying to the motion of the bus and alcohol.

  'Gif me one thousan' dollaire!' she demanded, holding out a filthy hand.

  My mother looked over my head and out the window.

  'Ignore her, dear,' she instructed me, sotto voce.

  I was only too glad to obey. Any second now the old crone was going to recognize me.

  'Gif me fife hundred dollaire,' she insisted, holding her hand out close to my mother's chin. Her nails were split, the skin of her hand ingrained with dirt. Her face was made up but badly, the lipstick smeared around her mouth, rouge heavy on her cheeks, the remainder pancaked with powder in which was etched a map of sweat, the contours highlighted by grime. Over her shoulder hung an expensive leather bag in good condition, almost certainly a recently filched acquisition. On her feet were a pair of common Chinese felt slippers.

  My mother ignored her.

  The bus stopped.

  'Gif me two hundred dollaire!' the old woman insisted, her voice growing louder.

  'Would you mind going away?' my mother said through gritted teeth. We were becoming the object of much curiosity from the Chinese passengers and she was getting embarrassed.

  'Gif me one hundred dollaire!' the crone insisted, her voice louder still and even more insistent.

  My mother opened her handbag on her lap, unclipped her purse and removed some dollar bills. The old woman snatched at them and, as she did so, dropped something wrapped in pink lavatory tissue into the handbag. At the next bus stop, she got off and swiftly disappeared, pushing her way through the pedestrians, moving with the gait of a practised drunk. We carried on to Tsim Sha Tsui and went into Tkachenko's. When it came time to settle the bill, my mother opened her purse. In with the coins was the tissue paper. She took it out, felt it, unwrapped it, studied the contents for several minutes, replaced it in her purse and paid the bill.

  When we entered his emporium, Mr Chan was sitting behind his counter reading the newspaper. He stood up, welcomed my mother, poured us each a Coke and produced the ruby pendant set in rose gold my mother had commissioned from him. He tutted disapprovingly at it. Rose gold had a high copper content. The Chinese preferred 24 carat, 99.99 fine gold which was brassy and looked almost fake.

  As he put the pendant and matching chain into a small brocade bag, my mother took the pink tissue out of her purse and placed it on the counter.

  'What is this, Mr Chan?' she asked, adding, 'It's probably paste.'

  He unwrapped the tissue and tipped a colourless stone on to the counter, rolling it about on the glass top with his finger. He then picked it up with a pair of tweezers, held it against a bare light bulb in a desk lamp and placed it in a velvet-lined tray.

  'Is a good quality diamung,' he said. 'Little bit damage, no too much. Can recut, make maybe t'ree, four nice stone. For ring maybe for you?'

  'How big is it?' my mother wanted to know.

  'Maybe two-half carat,' Mr Chan replied.

  For a moment, my mother was silent before asking, 'How much is it worth?'

  'Is damage,' Mr Chan repeated, 'but maybe fife t'ousan'd dollar.'

  My mother stared at him. At the current exchange rate, the sum approximated to £312.

  For the next fortnight, my mother caught the same bus at the same time every day in the hope of coming across the woman again and either returning the stone to her or giving her the fife hundred dollaire she had demanded. It was the highest sum to which my mother could go. She never saw the woman again. The diamond was duly re-cut and my mother had the resulting three stones set in a ring as Mr Chan had suggested.

&nb
sp; I, of course, could have told my mother exactly where to find the old woman, but I did not for fear that, had she discovered some of the more insalubrious haunts I frequented, my freedom to roam would have been severely curtailed.

  The Chinese in the streets called the old crone the Queen of Kowloon. Bit by bit, I came to know her story, or what it was perceived to be. The truth would be somewhere near it.

  She was a White Russian, the wife of a high-ranking army officer who was also possibly of minor nobility. When the Bolshevik Uprising occurred, he was killed and she headed east with the White Russian diaspora. After some time, she reached Shanghai, settling there and making her living as a courtesan and piano teacher. She became the mistress of a Chinese gangster or warlord - the story varied on this point and may have been a romantic fictional episode – and lived very comfortably for a while. Then war intervened again and she moved on, drifting ashore in Hong Kong in the mid-thirties. In those days, she lived comfortably if frugally in a tenement apartment where, once again, she gave piano lessons. However, it was not long before she took to the bottle and pipe which were the start of her decline into beggary.

  Her looks now gone, she no longer had any steady source of income. Or had she?

  From time to time, she appeared at pawn shops in Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei with pieces of jewellery, valuable gems and the occasional gold coin, most of them of tsarist origin. Her tenement was burgled several times and thoroughly turned over, as once was she, but the thieves found nothing despite knocking down internal walls. Clearly, her stash was hidden elsewhere, so the thieves began to tail her but she was as sly as a leopard. Years of living on the edge had honed her senses to feline acuity. All that anyone could deduce was that, at irregular intervals, she disappeared for hours at a time into the foothills behind Kowloon.