Golden Boy Page 17

  ‘What building stood there?’ I asked my mother as we passed it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but you’ll find ruins here and there on the Peak, of buildings destroyed by the Japanese in the war.’

  The Peak School was about twenty minutes’ walk away on Plunkett’s Road, but to get there meant descending the very steep hill to the café. My mother, wearing a smart cotton print dress and high-heeled shoes, attempted the descent, stopped after a few yards, removed her shoes and continued barefoot. We arrived at the school hot and harried. The headmistress showed us into her office, a few formalities were undergone, I was taken to a classroom and obliged to stand in front of my future classmates, declare my name and then sit down at a desk next to another gweilo with pre-pubescent acne and breath that smelt as if he had breakfasted on hundred-year-old eggs. It did not bode well.

  The pupils were predominantly British with a few Chinese, Americans and others of European extraction. Many of them seemed particularly distant and snooty. I preferred to keep myself to myself, get on with my work, read in break times and head for the door at the first chime of the bell. I ate my lunch on my own, rebuffed most approaches of friendship and worried my form teacher. As a consequence, when the school play was being cast, I was auditioned under duress and given a lead part, perhaps to bring me out of my shell. The play was Toad of Toad Hall. I was Mole.

  The part was not too demanding. I learnt my lines with ease and only regretted being involved because it meant staying behind after school each day for over a month, rehearsing.

  Only one memorable facet of my thespian adventure remains – the costume.

  Each parent was asked to provide their child’s outfit. My mother, not being adept with a needle and thread, asked Ah Shun if she could make it, but she admitted it was beyond her, too. My mother summoned her tailor.

  Mr Chuk was a soft-spoken, elderly Chinese gentleman who came on occasion to the apartment to measure my mother. When this was done, the two of them would sit and drink bowls of jasmine tea whilst she went through his pattern books and material samples. He could make a midnight blue silk cocktail dress in five days, a lady’s two-piece suit in seven. A mole costume was another matter.

  I was taken into my parents’ bedroom, stripped to my underpants and measured. My mother – no artist, she – then poured the tea and produced her drawing of a mole. The tailor studied it and shrugged.

  ‘I no look-see dis an’m’l,’ he said. ‘Maybe dis no an’m’l China-side.’

  ‘Maybe they’ve eaten them all,’ my mother said to me as an aside.

  She tried sketching it again. The result looked like a tailless, earless, eyeless rat with copious whiskers and exaggeratedly large front feet.

  ‘He no can look-see?’ the tailor enquired, noticing the sketch had no eyes.

  ‘He no can look-see,’ my mother confirmed. ‘Live underground.’

  ‘Loh siu liff unner groun’. Can see plentee good,’ the tailor responded.

  ‘This is not loh siu,’ my mother said, exasperation creeping into her voice. ‘It is not a rat. It is a mole.’

  The tailor cupped his ear. ‘He no can … ?’

  ‘Yes,’ my mother declared firmly. ‘Can hear very good.’ She was getting fed up with discussing the physical disabilities of a mole. ‘You can make?’

  ‘Can do,’ came the optimistic reply.

  It was deemed I did not require a fitting and so, two days before opening night, the tailor arrived at the apartment carrying a bundle containing a dark chocolate-brown, one-piece cross between a parachutist’s jump-suit and a Glaswegian shipbuilder’s boiler suit. I tried it on. It was as loose-fitting as a maternity smock and just as shapeless. My mother stifled a laugh, which was not a good sign.

  The tailor had sewn whiskers (made of thin bamboo strips taken from a broom) on the top of the head. My face peered out through the mouth which was lined by white cloth teeth, serrated like a dragon’s. What was more, the tailor had clearly taken pity on the mole’s disabilities and given it two shiny glass eyes and a pair of cat-like ears. My mother paid the bill. On opening night, Rat (grey hairy costume, tail, beady eyes, bowler hat, waistcoat), Toad (grey-green painted mottled rubber attire made from a frogman’s wet suit, a pair of cut-down plus fours and a deerstalker), Badger (tweed jacket and cut-down tartan golfing trousers with a realistic black-and-white papier mâché head) appeared on stage alongside a mutant creature of indeterminate species and origin which, not wearing any human clothing, was, presumably, naked. At curtain call, I received resounding applause and was asked to step forward for an extra bow. It was not, I was certain, due to my acting abilities.

  Once a month, a cylindrical package arrived for me by sea mail. It was rolled up tightly, wrapped in brown paper and had twine tied round it and running through the middle. It had been mailed by my grandfather. When the string was cut, the rolled-up contents opened out to show the previous month’s issues of the Eagle, Dandy and Beano. Tucked somewhere in them would always be a ten-shilling postal order. Unrolling the comics, I envisaged Grampy walking to the newsagent’s once a week, an aroma of tobacco following him down the street like an invisible shadow, buying the comics, keeping them safe in the cupboard under the stairs that smelt of ale and stale bread, then once a month making his way to the Post Office. This was, to me, the height of love and I promptly wrote back by blue air mail lettergram to thank him and give him my news.

  I held no information back from him, telling him of all my escapades, even into Kowloon Walled City, in the sure and certain knowledge he would not report them to my grandmother and, through her, to my father. She could not be trusted with a pod full of peas. Not once did he betray my confidence and he always replied, although my questions were not always answered. He did not tell me what jig-a-jig meant so I assumed he did not know.

  My grandfather was not alone in sending parcels. The comics were certainly unobtainable in Hong Kong, but almost everything else was: in England, food, clothing, petrol and much more were in short supply and had been since the war. Some items were still on ration. An elderly maiden aunt called Olive assumed, despite many letters to the contrary, that we not only lived under rationing but also in pretty primitive conditions. Every two months for our first year in Hong Kong, a ‘care’ parcel arrived from her containing cotton handkerchiefs, soap, aspirin, adhesive and crêpe bandages, safety pins, Dettol, Reckitts’ Blue laundry starch, thick woollen socks for my father, a lipstick for my mother and a Dinky toy car for me. She fell short of sending toilet rolls, presumably assuming we had plants with leaves large and soft enough for the job. (We had.) Eventually, my mother made up a parcel for Olive containing intricately embroidered napkin sets, silk handkerchiefs, brocade cushion covers, a cotton blouse, a tourist book of the sights of Hong Kong, a hand-painted lacquer dragon, a set of chopsticks (with instructions for use), a packet of jasmine tea (also with instructions) and a small jar of Tiger Balm ointment, the ubiquitous Chinese cure-all containing tiny quantities of opium and morphine which could fix, my mother claimed, anything from a wart to an unwanted pregnancy. Parcels from Olive ceased forthwith.

  All expatriates referred to the country of their origin as ‘home’. Even the old China Hands, those who had lived ‘in-country’ since the 1920s, did so. At first, my mother followed suit. However, by the winter of 1953, her outlook had subtly changed. She started to write to her mother that she wanted to remain in Hong Kong after my father’s three-year-long tour of duty ended. In addition to learning Cantonese, she attended classes in Chinese history and culture, sought employment first on the local English-language radio station and then as a secondary school teacher of English and geography in a Chinese school, both without success. Her problem was that she lacked a formal higher education, yet she more than made up for it in intelligence and intellectual curiosity.

  Of the old China Hands, I was to come to know two.

  The first was a friend of my mother’s, an English woman called Peggy who had marr
ied a Dutchman in the 1930s. When war broke out in 1939, her husband may have returned to Holland to fight for his homeland but he may have also stayed in Hong Kong and been killed when the Japanese invaded in 1941. Certainly, Peggy was rounded up and thrown into the civilian camp, the pre-war high-security prison at Stanley. I think they had no children: whenever I met her, she spoiled me rotten. As every colonial housewife did, she employed servants. In her case, she had a traditional saw hei amah.

  This amah was one of those who had risked her life over and over again smuggling food and Chinese herbal medicines into the camp for her missee. Indubitably, her clandestine activities saved Peggy’s life and probably those of several of her fellow prisoners-of-war. After the Japanese surrender, Peggy remained in Hong Kong and the amah returned to work for her but now they had a different relationship. Both of approximately the same age, they were no longer missee and amah but two spinsters living together and looking out for each other. Peggy obtained employment with the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank and, in time, rose through its ranks to a position of authority and responsibility. The amah kept home for both of them in a small flat on Robinson Road which they shared with at least two dozen rescued stray cats that Peggy loved with almost religious intensity. She and the amah were to die in their late seventies within days of each other.

  The other China Hand, whom I came to both like and loathe, was Sammy Shields. As a man, I adored him, but he was also my dentist.

  His surgery was in Star House, a two-storey building facing the Kowloon Star Ferry pier across the bus terminal. In actual fact, Sammy was not a qualified dentist. Before the war, he had been a dental technician, making and fitting dentures or braces. When he, too, was incarcerated in Stanley, it was found that he was the only person in the camp with any real dental know-how, so he became the camp dentist by default. After the war, with a large number of patients on his books – most of them ex-civilian prisoners-of-war – he set up in practice, his reputation growing, as it were, by word of mouth.

  I visited his surgery with mixed feelings. The whine of his belt-driven drill could be heard in his tiny waiting room and was sure to send shivers of apprehension up the spine of the bravest man. His dentist’s chair, the cantilevered arm of his drill and every other metal fitting were covered in cream enamel, chipped in places. It looked as if he had bought it second-hand, which was probably the case. It was certainly of pre-war vintage.

  Sammy had a special technique with small boys such as myself, whose mothers he refused to allow into his chamber of tortures. Whenever my mother left the room, I felt suddenly terrified, but Sammy would soon put me at my ease …

  ‘Right now, open wide. Ah! Let’s see … a bit of plaque here … we’ll chip that off in a tick … Good … wash out … Open wide again … a filling needed here, I’m afraid … just a little prick for the cocaine …’ (‘Aarrhh! Ah hurhs!’) ‘All done … wait for it to put your jaw to sleep … Did I ever tell you about my time as a guest of his Imperial Japanese Majesty?’

  From then on, the sound of his drill and the abrupt jab of pain as he hit the nerve were mere momentary interruptions in a narrative of roasting rats on shovels over a fire of dried cow dung collected on Stanley beach, of boiling barnacles and steaming giant snails which had to be purged first in case they had been feeding on poisonous plants, of face-slappings and rifle buttings, of outbreaks of diphtheria, of men dying of disease or being shot on the beach, of removing fellow prisoners’ molars without any anaesthetics, of the Americans’ bombing of two prison buildings, killing the occupants.

  ‘Bloody fools, Americans,’ Sammy would appendix this story. ‘What I’d give for one of those pilots sitting where you are now …’

  I heard these stories every six months. They never lost their potency and never failed to take the edge off what I was undergoing. It was, I thought, nothing compared to what he must have endured for four years.

  A fortnight before my ninth birthday, Wong asked me, ‘What you likee you burfday cake, young master?’ ‘A cake,’ I replied, puzzled by the enquiry, ‘with nine candles.’

  ‘What shape you likee?’

  My consternation multiplied. As far as I was concerned, cakes were round and that was an end to it.

  ‘Maybe you likee house?’ he suggested, seeing my bewilderment. ‘Likee tempul? Wong can do tempul good for you.’

  Without really thinking about it, I answered, ‘I’d like a battleship.’

  Several days later, I went to the kitchen to find my way barred. The swing door had had a wooden wedge jammed under it.

  ‘You lo can come kitchen-side now,’ Wong declared with an authority I had not previously seen in him. ‘You wantee somef’ing, makee bell.’

  ‘I only want a Coke,’ I said, conscious of my parents’ orders that I did not ring the servants’ bell for petty demands.

  He took one out of the fridge, opened it and handed it to me through a crack in the door, adding, ‘Two week, you lo go kitchen-side. You go, Wong v’wy ang‘wee.’

  I complained to my mother. Her reply was that I was to obey Wong.

  On my birthday, which fell on the second day of the new academic year, I arrived home in eager anticipation as it had been decided that I should not receive my presents until teatime. I burst into the apartment to be confronted by my mother.

  ‘Tea first, prezzies second,’ she announced.

  I should have guessed something was up. Most unusually, my father was home two hours before normal. I was led into the dining room where Wong had laid out tea – sandwiches, bread and butter, scones, the teapot … Yet the moment I saw the table all thought of gifts and food evaporated.

  In the centre of the table was a two-and-a-half-foot-long model of a Royal Navy destroyer, exact in every detail. It was painted battleship grey with its identification letter and numbers on the hull. At the bow hung the Union Jack, at the stern the White Ensign. On the bridge were the Aldiss lamp and searchlights, the wheel and a brass compass and engine room telegraph. On deck, the guns pointed fore and aft, the anchor chain lay on the deck and there were rope loops on the Carley floats and lifeboats. Even the rigging existed, thin lines of what I assumed to be fuse wire running from deck to mast.

  Models such as this were only to be found in maritime museums. I was speechless. Wong stood by my side.

  ‘Dis you cake, young master. Happy burfday for you.’ In the background, Ah Shun smiled, bemused by the whole affair.

  ‘Cake?’ I replied.

  ‘You say you wantee warship cake. Wong do for you.’

  I just hugged him.

  The cake had taken Wong a fortnight. He had worked every spare moment he could afford, often late into the night. The hull and superstructure were a rich fruit cake chock-full of glace cherries and sultanas and covered in hard royal icing, the lifeboats made of marzipan and icing, the main armament and gun turrets of solid icing. Most astonishing of all was the rigging, made of spun sugar. To keep the cake as it was assembled, it had been hidden in the windowless dry room off my parents’ bedroom where clothes and shoes were kept to avoid them going mouldy in the humid tropical air. Despite this precaution, they still quickly grew a hazy fur of fungus, and the cake would have grown a microscopic lawn in hours, but Wong knew a trick. A small charcoal burner was kept alight in the room which absorbed any humidity that got in.

  I did not want to cut into it. Neither did my mother. At the end of the table was a smaller ordinary cake with candles on it. We ate that instead but, the following day, we started on the destroyer. I forget what presents I received.

  The destroyer was not Wong’s only artistic culinary masterpiece. He could carve chrysanthemum blooms out of raw carrots and decorative leaves out of cucumbers. Mashed potato was always served in small volcano shapes with the tops slightly browned under the grill. Crown roast New Zealand lamb arrived on the table with the rib ends culminating in parsnip, not paper, decorations. For cocktail parties, Wong prepared what was known as small chow, but which my father pref
erred to refer to as finger fodder, possibly a naval term. Mushrooms stuffed with anchovies, cheese and soy sauce sticks, thinly sliced fresh pineapple and shrimps on toast with home-made mayonnaise and a scattering of sesame seeds – his repertoire and penchant for experimentation seemed inexhaustible.

  At drinks parties, Wong being occupied in the kitchen, my father delegated me to help him wait on the guests. My responsibilities were to see that no-one’s glass was empty and to serve the trays of small chow.

  At first, I regarded this as an onerous chore but I came to look forward to it. My father taught me how to mix drinks, I was able to consume Wong’s delicacies on the sly and I became privy to the world of adult conversation which, on occasion, I found fascinating. It was by such eavesdropping that I learnt the true story of HMS Amethyst, attacked by Chinese forces on the Yangtze River in 1949 and the Rape of Nanking by the Japanese in the winter of 1937. Such parties also had their lighter side. On Christmas Eve morning, 1953, I went into my parents’ bathroom to get a new tube of toothpaste only to discover a Royal Navy Commander, resplendent in mess uniform with gold braid and medals, asleep on his back in the bath, gently snoring, his arms crossed over his chest with a tiger lily thrust between his fingers. I tip-toed out and never saw him again.

  That same winter, my father returned home in the early hours from a mess night with the Royal Air Force at Kai Tak airport. He was well oiled and humming tunelessly. This was most unusual, for my father was typically morose and self-pitying when the worse for booze. His dinner suit was caked in congealed blood.

  I stood by as my mother, simultaneously concerned and furious, stripped my father to his vest and Y-fronts, sat him in the bath and washed him down. He had a nasty gash on the inside of his arm but it was insufficient to account for the quantity of blood all over him, even matted in his hair. When he was clean, my mother pulled the plug, sent him into the spare room, covered him with a sheet and went back to her own bed. I withdrew to mine.