Golden Boy Read online

  When he had drained his bottle Ah Lam, with characteristic Chinese disregard, tossed it into the trees. I heard it smash on a rock. This done, he slithered down the boulder, crossed the path, squatted down and started to clear away the leaf litter with his hands.

  ‘You come see,’ he said.

  I joined him. A few steps from the path, he had uncovered six dull white stones. Each was about the size of a small watermelon and decorated by a similar series of thin, jagged cracks. They were in a line about three feet apart.

  ‘You know dis one?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I answered. The stones were a puzzle to me, all the more so for their being in a line.

  Ah Lam patted the top of his pate. His hair was cut short, not much longer than a well-used toothbrush.

  ‘Japanese sol-jer head,’ he declared matter-of-factly. ‘Six piece. We kill him here. Hide behind rock, jump on him. Very quick! No noise.’

  My toes curled involuntarily as I looked down on the tops of the soldiers’ skulls. It seemed incredible to me that there were dead people at my feet, buried in the earth with no coffin, no headstone, no epitaph. Then it occurred to me. Why could I see the tops of their heads? Dead people lay down in their graves.

  ‘Did you bury them?’ I asked.

  Ah Lam nodded, grinning. ‘Mus’ do or Japanese come fin’, take away, maybe kill pe’pul in Sai Kung for punish.’

  ‘But why are they … ?’ I mimed upright as opposed to supine.

  Ah Lam’s grin extended further as he replied, ‘Japanese man no like die up.’ He stood to attention to emphasize the point. ‘If no lie down no can go to heaven.’

  My father did not like having to return to the hotel. In part, I sympathized with him. He could no longer live as he had done in an apartment, with servants, entertaining in style, enjoying as prestigious an address as one could get in Hong Kong without living in a house on the mountain.

  There was another reason for his dislike of the hotel. My mother was back in close contact with her Chinese friends amongst the staff. In my father’s eyes, it was beneath her to befriend what were in effect her servants.

  ‘In my opinion, Joyce,’ he said frostily one evening as he waited for her to dress to go out to dinner, ‘you’re going native.’

  I could hear the conversation through the adjoining door which was ajar.

  ‘Letting the side down,’ my mother replied.

  ‘Precisely!’

  ‘Don’t be such a bloody fool, Ken!’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘In that case,’ my mother said, ‘you can lump it.’

  At this juncture, I knocked and went into their room.

  ‘I’ve gone native,’ I announced proudly.

  My father stared at me for a moment then addressed my mother again. ‘And that!’ He pointed at me. ‘Your son’s more Chinese than a coolie. He’ll have a bloody pole and a rattan hat next. Is this what you want?’

  ‘Yes!’ my mother replied emphatically. ‘It is just what I want. I want a child who knows the world, knows the value of people whatever their race or rank and can appreciate what he sees.’ She picked up her evening bag: it was black with silver beads sewn on to it. ‘What I don’t want is a boring, narrow-minded bigot with a drink problem.’ She smiled amiably. ‘Shall we go?’

  Bit by bit, my parents grew even further apart. My mother maintained her gradually increasing coterie of Chinese friends, seldom inviting my father into this circle but, whenever she could, including me in her excursions. I particularly loved going with her to festival celebrations.

  Some, such as the Moon Festival, involved little more than a slap-up meal taken al fresco with the moon high in the sky and the children carrying multi-coloured lanterns shaped like rabbits, birds, butterflies, dragons and fish. If clouds threatened to obscure the moon, everyone made a loud noise by banging saucepans together or letting off a short string of firecrackers to drive the clouds away. The only aspect of the festival I just could not abide was the moon cakes, one of the very few Chinese foods I found it impossible to swallow. They came in a variety of sizes and looked vaguely like English pork pies. The dough was made of flour, syrup or honey, rice wine and eggs. After some hours, it was rolled out and a filling made of lotus seed paste and whole duck egg yolks, care being taken not to break them. Once filled and shaped in a ball, they were pressed in wooden moulds, glazed and baked. The Chinese adored them but most gweilos found them inedible. The glutinous contents had the unpleasant habit of sticking to the roof of the mouth.

  Other festivals, like Ch’ing Ming (or the Hungry Ghosts’ Festival) in the spring, were a more exclusive matter and it was a sign of the regard in which my mother was held by her Chinese friends that, after only three years in Hong Kong, we were invited to attend this most personal of ceremonies.

  On the morning of the appointed day in early April, we rendezvoused with a noisily joyful gaggle of thirty Chinese in a hundred-yard-long queue at the railway station in Tsim Sha Tsui. Everyone was weighed down by a parcel, wicker basket or string bag. After twenty minutes, we were herded aboard a train which set off immediately.

  The train trundled through Kowloon and entered a tunnel in the hills. When it emerged in the Sha Tin valley, it was as if I were riding a time machine. At one end of the tunnel was a mid-twentieth-century city, on the other a timeless landscape of tiny villages, paddyfields, salt pans and fishing junks. If a British man-o’-war had sailed into the cove, cannons blazing, it could have still been the Opium War.

  Following the coast to Tai Po, the train then headed north to Fanling, where we disembarked. Once we were all gathered together, the party headed into the low hills to the south. It was a long walk, first up a disintegrating concrete road then along a path through brush and scattered trees. Finally, we arrived at our destination: three graves and a row of a dozen or so golden pagodas. The women – including my mother – swept the semi-circular platforms before the graves. A man with a tin of red paint touched up the characters on the grave doors. This done, joss-sticks were produced and burnt with everyone, including my mother and me, kow-towing to the ancestors.

  After this, food was produced, including, incredibly, a whole suckling pig. Bowls of hot rice ladled from a thermos were placed before the entrance to each grave with a piece of the pig, some steamed vegetables and a little bowl of rice wine. The label on the bottle read Sam Sheh Jau – Three Snake Wine. Pickled in the bottle was a small nondescript snake. On the top of the graves, thick wads of Hell’s Banknotes were weighted down with a stone. Next to them was placed a car made out of tissue paper stretched over a split bamboo frame. This was set alight, the ashes blowing away on the breeze and adhering to the crackling on the pig.

  ‘The money is to pay the ancestors’ bills in heaven,’ my mother whispered in explanation.

  ‘And the car?’

  ‘They haven’t got one in heaven, so …’

  Two of the men approached with armfuls of human bones. Behind them, one of the golden pagodas was open. The bones were placed on the ground where several women dusted them down and set about buffing them up with light tan Cherry Blossom shoe polish. I watched utterly mesmerized, wondering what it would be like to dig up my grandfather and give him a shine.

  While the contents of all the nearby ossuaries were cleaned, a picnic was laid out. The human bones were then arranged around the picnic cloth. Every skeleton was set a place. I found myself sitting between my mother and a skull carefully balanced on a heap of its associated bones, the lower jaw dropped as if the ancestor who owned the bones was having a damned good laugh at the rest of us.

  ‘What happens to their food?’ I asked my mother, not letting my eye off my neighbour’s rice bowl. I think I half expected to see it gradually disappear, consumed by the ghost of the skeleton.

  ‘The ancestors in heaven soak up the essence of the food, then it’s thrown away,’ my mother informed me.

  ‘Including the pig?’ I enquired, my mouth watering at the thoug
ht of it.

  ‘No,’ my mother answered. ‘Only the food in the bowls. We eat the rest.’

  No-one spoke to the bones and, when the picnic was eaten, we indeed threw the ancestors’ food into the bushes for the ants and birds. With the bones returned to their golden pagodas, we set off for the railway station. As we descended the hills, I saw other families scattered across the slopes of the hills doing as we had done.

  Arriving home, we found my father sitting on the balcony of my parents’ room reading a month-old copy of an English newspaper and puffing on his pipe. He had temporarily grown a full beard, partly, I suspected, because naval officers were permitted to do so. Indeed, he had unnecessarily asked Mr Borrie’s permission.

  ‘So, feel you’ve done your bit for someone else’s forebears?’ he asked acerbically.

  There was, however, one festival my father was actually prepared to attend, despite the fact that it contained much that he abhorred – joss-stick smoke, firecrackers, dense jostling crowds and (to him) inedible delicacies. This was the birthday of Tin Hau and my father tolerated it because it entailed a boat trip.

  The primary festival of the sea-going folk of Hong Kong, it was held not only at all the Tin Hau temples around Hong Kong but also at the ancient temple in Tai Miu Wan, named – literally – Joss House Bay by early European settlers who referred to temples as joss houses.

  The journey to Tai Miu Wan was explained to me by my father, who insisted I sat at a table in the hotel lounge with him as he pored over our impending nautical experience with military precision, plotting it with dividers and a navigational ruler on a naval chart. He might have been preparing an invasion.

  ‘It’ll take us about ninety minutes to get there from HMS Tamar,’ he began. ‘Our party will be taking one of the larger, faster launches. At first, we head towards the eastern harbour, then – pay attention – go on to a bearing east-south-east through Lei Yue Mun and into …’ he jabbed the point of the dividers into the map ‘ … the Tat Hong Channel. We change to a northeasterly bearing here …’ he moved the dividers ‘ … once clear of the island of Tit Cham Chau.’

  I looked at the map and said, ‘It’s not very far.’

  ‘Dangerous waters,’ my father replied. ‘Rocky shores, rip tides.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  He spun the dividers round in his fingers and said, ‘Seven-and-a-half nautical miles, give or take.’

  ‘Don’t you have to be very accurate?’

  My father did not reply and rolled up the map.

  The naval launch had been decked out in signal flags and pennants including a huge scarlet triangular Chinese one at the bow with a black serrated edge and black characters in the centre.

  We cast off and joined a veritable flotilla of vast fishing junks, motorized sampans, walla-wallas and pleasure craft, all extravagantly decked out in the same fashion. By the time the launch reached its destination, it was reduced to barely moving, jostling with the other craft. A hundred yards off shore, the bos’n dropped anchor and prepared to lower a dinghy. It had not been readied on its derricks before two sampans arrived alongside, a vociferous argument ensuing between the Chinese naval launch crew and the women in the sampans. It seemed no-one was allowed to organize their own landing arrangements, the sampans being the only permitted ‘ship-to-shore’ craft. They had fixed a monopoly so, in the name of colonial expediency and not wanting to arouse the anger of the Triads on the beach, we all clambered into the sampans and were oared ashore.

  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 w
est 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.

  11

  ‘HOMEWARD’ BOUND

  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.