Gweilo Read online

  'I can't watch,' my mother declared and she studied her shoes. Her hands shook.

  At what seemed the last minute, the DC3 banked so sharply to the left I could see both wings as if I were looking down on top of it. It flew along the face of the hills, climbing slowly, levelled out and began its gradual ascent until it disappeared in the haze of the day, the sound of its engines suddenly dying.

  'What's happened?' my mother asked, almost in tears and still not daring to look.

  'Nothing,' I said, exercising my licence as head of the family for the first time. 'It's flown so far away we can't see or hear it.'

  A Royal Navy saloon car took us back to the Fourseas Hotel.

  'When does Daddy come back?' I enquired.

  'In about twelve weeks,' my mother replied. 'On his ship,' she added with evident relief.

  'What happens if I don't look after you very well?' I said anxiously.

  'Don't you worry,' my mother answered, sensing my concern and putting her arm around me. 'You'll do just fine.'

  A telegram arrived that evening from my father. Opening it, my mother visibly relaxed. It had been an uneventful flight. She poured herself a gin and tonic.

  The Thursday after my father's departure, I started school.

  Kowloon Junior, as it was known, bore as much resemblance to my previous school as a cat did to a caterpillar.

  Since beginning my education at the age of five, I had attended a small dame school in Brentwood, Essex. Owned and operated by a kindly, elderly spinster called Miss Hutt, Rose Valley School provided a very sound basic schooling from the huge, dark front room of a mid-Victorian terraced house. A noxious lavatory, the floorboards irredeemably stained by years of small boys with a poor aim, was in the basement and the rear garden had been flattened, surrounded by a picket fence and covered with cinders to make a playground of sorts. Beyond the fence were vegetable allotments in which the citizens of Brentwood attempted to supplement their rations. Every lunchtime, the pupils – there were about a dozen of us aged from five to twelve – were marched in single file to Brentwood High Street where we were fed in a café with oil-cloth-covered tables. The monotony of the menu never varied – scrag end of beef or mutton stew with boiled potatoes, mashed swedes and cabbage, helped down with a glass of milk. Dessert was invariably a bowl of semi-liquid, lumpy custard. Sometimes this was supplemented by an apple or, on one occasion, a banana the skin of which was turning black.

  By contrast, my new school was a long, two-storeyed building with veranda corridors, bright, airy classrooms with ceiling fans and individual desks: at Rose Valley, we had hunched round two old dining tables. Everyone wore a uniform which somehow gave the place an added appeal. Outside, the playground was beaten earth with patches of grass surrounded by a six-foot chain-link fence on the other side of which was a steep drop to the dusty football field of another school. In one place, the fence stopped at a vertical earth bank into which the boys had cut mountain roadways for Dinky cars.

  The school was less than a mile from the Fourseas and so I walked there most days, my mother at first seeing me across Waterloo Road. If it was raining, I was sent in a scarlet-painted rickshaw with a green pram-like hood and two huge spoked wheels with solid rubber tyres.

  Riding in a rickshaw was a strange sensation. The coolie lowered the shafts to the ground, one stepped between them on to a footboard in front of a padded seat covered in a loose white cloth and sat down. At this stage, the whole contraption was sloping forwards and downwards. I had to hold on to the sides to stop sliding off– the cloth didn't help. The coolie then picked up the shafts, his elbows bent at right angles. This meant the rickshaw suddenly tipped backwards and the passenger fell to the rear of the seat.

  The coolie set off at a walk, building to a steady trot. His bent arms acted like leaf-springs on a vehicle, reducing the shock of the road bumps for his body.

  The coolies were usually bare to the waist, except in winter, and one could see their muscles flexing across their shoulders, the tendons tightening and relaxing under their skin. Most of them were sallow, with sunken chests, gaunt faces and drawn skin on their necks: and when they sweated, they exuded a faint, strangely sweet body odour. They all looked old enough to be Confucian sages, but they were almost all certainly no older than their late twenties. A rickshaw coolie's lifespan seldom reached thirty-five. It was not long before I realized virtually every one of them was an opium addict.

  They wore small, domed rattan hats with numbers painted in scarlet on them: it was from these I learnt to count and read numbers in Cantonese – yat, yee, sam, sei, ng, lok – and the coolies were called by their number. Of the half dozen who lingered near the hotel, I always chose number 3, hailing him by shouting, 'Ah Sam!' I never knew his real name.

  What really fascinated me about him were his legs. First, he was barefoot, the slap of his soles on the road as distinct as the sound of a shod horse. In the hot weather, this was accompanied by the suck of warm tar as he took the next step. Every varicose vein stood out, the sinews like cables, his calf muscles huge and powerful. One day, I witnessed an altercation between Ah Sam and a taxi driver. With one kick, the coolie stove in the taxi door, deforming the panelling and frame to such an extent the door would not close.

  In a letter to her mother, my mother wrote, Ken gone to Japan. Lonely. She was also anxious, even though she knew my father was not going into the actual line of fire. To counteract her solitude, if not her apprehension, she turned to me and I found myself exploring Kowloon with her.

  We started after school one afternoon by going to the Peninsula Hotel for tea. Known locally as the Pen, the hotel was considered one of the best in the world. We sat in the grandiloquent entrance lobby, surrounded by gilded pillars and serenaded by a string quartet. Silver pots of Indian, Earl Grey or jasmine tea, cradling over methylated spirit lamps, were served with wafer-thin sandwiches and delicate little cakes. The bread and butter came with four different jams. My mother was in seventh heaven. To her, this was a film star's existence. When the bill was discreetly presented, she blanched.

  'Martin, go outside and wait round the back of the hotel. I'll be out in a moment,' she said abruptly.

  'Where are you going?' I enquired.

  'For a pee,' she replied.

  I did as I was told. Five minutes later, my mother appeared, walking briskly along the street. Taking hold of my hand as if I were a baton in a relay race, she headed for the nearest bus stop.

  Yet my mother was a woman of honour. Returning the following afternoon, she made straight for the head waiter's desk. Holding out the previous day's bill and payment, she blushingly explained the situation. He consulted the maître d'hôtel. I am sure my mother was anticipating the view from the nearest police lock-up. The maître d'hôtel, a Frenchman, stepped over and said, 'Madame, these accidents may happen.' He closed her fingers over the bill and money in her hand. 'Please, be our guest for tea for yourself and your son this afternoon.'

  And we gained more than four free teas from this escapade.

  Leaving the Pen, my mother made her way down Hankow Road, one of a grid of back streets, window-shopping the jewellers' shops. She paused outside the Hing Loon Curio and Jewellery Company. In the window was something that caught her eye and we entered. Thereupon began a friendship that was to last decades.

  The interior of the shop was like a treasure cave. Heavy Chinese furniture stood piled piece on piece to the ceiling, layers of cardboard protecting them from marking each other. Glass cabinets contained cloisonné trinkets, ebony carvings, ivory figures and beads, trays of gold rings set with multicoloured stones, displays of unmounted gems, gold chains, pendants and brooches. One display case was filled with netsuke, another with jade miniatures and Chinese snuff bottles, Siamese silver and enamel fingernail covers and models of junks.

  The proprietor, Mr Chan, approached my mother, smiling. 'You like a drink? Very hot today. You like a Coke, Green Spot, San Mig. ?'

  My mother, no
t knowing one from the other and feeling it impolite not to accept such a kind invitation, went for a San Mig. At this, Mr Chan poured her an ice-cold beer. I, being adventurous, asked for a Green Spot and was passed a bottle of sickly orange juice.

  Whilst well intentioned, the drink was of course a means of keeping a would-be customer in the shop. For twenty minutes, we sat on leather-topped stools in front of a glass-topped counter. My mother bought a curio or two to send 'home', which meant Britain. When she was done, Mr Chan asked me, 'What year you born?'

  'Nineteen forty-four,' I replied.

  'What mumf?'

  'September.'

  'You mahlo!

  From a jam-packed cabinet behind him, he produced a small, crudely carved ivory monkey.

  'For you,' he said, handing it to me. 'I see you again.'

  Mr Chan was to be my mother's jeweller for the rest of his life and his two sons thereafter until the end of her life. She never bought a single item of jewellery from any other Hong Kong shop, declaring to all who would listen that Mr Chan was the only man of his trade who had not once attempted to swizzle her. For years, she directed friends, acquaintances, visitors and even tourist strangers who accosted her for directions in the street to his shop – 'Just mention my name – Joyce Booth – and you'll not be done,' she would tell them.

  It was not long before my mother acquired a social life. The wives of my father's colleagues began to invite her out during the day, and to dinner or cocktail parties in the evenings. When this social whirl began in earnest, she delegated the job of seeing me safely to and from school to one of the hotel room boys. Tall for a Chinese, he was handsome, in his late twenties and spoke English without the usual Cantonese accent or pronunciation. His full name was Leung Chi-ching, but we called him Ching. In a very short time, I came to love this man as if he were a favourite uncle. Every morning, he guided me across the traffic on Waterloo Road, Chinese-style. This meant crossing to the central white line and lingering there as vehicles zipped by on either side, waiting for a gap in the traffic to complete the journey to the far pavement. He insisted on carrying my rattan school case – an oblong sort of picnic hamper-cum-briefcase known as a Hong Kong basket – containing my books and some sandwiches wrapped in translucent greaseproof paper. Some of my fellow pupils were taken to school by an amah; some came by car. I stood out, accompanied by this imposing but obviously gentle man who acted like a bodyguard.

  One day, I asked Ching where he lived. He was reluctant to inform me. However, he embarked upon his life story, which he told me over the next few days, walking back slowly from school with the warm, late-afternoon sun in our faces, little eddies of wind lifting miniature dust tornadoes off the road surface.

  His father had been a wealthy landlord in Kwangtung province, not far from Canton. I asked how he came to speak such good English if he had lived in China. He replied that his father had been rich enough to send him to a Christian missionary school.

  'It was a very good school. The brothers were trained teachers, men of learning. I was taught by them, not only English but mathematics, geography, history. One, a Chinese brother, also taught Cantonese and Mandarin. Then, one day when I was eight years old, there was much fighting. People were shot in the street and the paddy-fields. It was Japanese fighting Chinese. Then, when I was seventeen years old, there was more fighting. This time, it was Communist Chinese fighting Kuomintang Chinese.'

  'What are Kuo—' I began.

  'Nationalist Chinese,' Ching explained. 'The army of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.'

  'What happened?' I asked.

  'They lost,' Ching said candidly. 'Then the Communist soldiers came, and the officers, and they took away my father's land and our house. Our belongings were taken, our farm animals killed. My father had a motor car. They burnt it. We had horses to ride. They shot them.'

  'Were the horses ill?' I enquired. I knew sick horses were shot: I had stayed for a holiday on a farm in Devon the year before when a dray horse broke its leg and was put down.

  'No.' Ching shook his head. 'They just shot them.'

  It seemed incomprehensible that anyone would deliberately set fire to a car and barbaric that they should shoot a perfectly healthy horse.

  'What happened to you?'

  'We were told to go, so we went. If we had not they would have killed us. They killed our friends who refused to go. I came to Hong Kong.'

  'If your father is so rich,' I ventured as we waited to cross at a busy junction, 'why do you work as a hotel room boy?'

  'I have no money,' Ching answered. There was no regret in his voice. 'All I have are my clothes. When the Communists drove us away, we could only take what we could carry.' We crossed the road and started walking slowly along the pavement towards the hotel. 'There are many, many people like me in Hong Kong.' Ahead of us, the Fourseas Hotel transport, a cream-painted, American shooting brake with varnished wooden bars on the side, drove out of the hotel garage and across both lanes. 'You see Mickey, the hotel driver?' Ching asked. 'He is one who escaped from the Communists. At least half the room boys have escaped from China. Some with their families, some, like me, alone.'

  I felt a terrible sadness for Ching and took hold of his hand.

  'You've got me and my mum,' I said comfortingly.

  I never discovered where Ching laid his head, but I found where others did. A week or so later, my mother was invited out to a dinner party on Hong Kong-side.

  It was already dark before she left in the Studebaker shooting brake for the Star Ferry to cross the harbour to Hong Kong island. I waited a respectable time, got dressed and walked out of the hotel tradesmen's door, a steel gate that gave on to a street called Emma Avenue. I turned left and headed for Soares Avenue, a fairly busy thoroughfare used by traffic taking a short cut to the next main road, Argyle Street.

  At the time I was not to know it, but these streets were to be my patch, my playground, and I was to become as well-known in them as any of the shopkeepers.

  The streets were warm, the air heavy with the unfamiliar scents of exotic food cooking in the tenements. Traffic fumes fought to suppress these smells but failed. Above the sound of passing cars was a trill of argumentative birdsong from the trees. Finches in bamboo cages, hung outside the tenement windows for an evening airing, joining in the conference with their free-living brethren.

  Walking along the streets was mildly hazardous. First, one was periodically peppered with bird seed and desiccated droppings as a finch had a scratch-about in the bottom of its cage three floors above. Second, one was dripped on from laundry hanging out to dry over the street on bamboo poles. Third, and less benign, was the fact that one could be hit by a chicken bone or other detritus from a completed meal. This I found curiously incongruous. The Chinese were a fastidious race and yet here they were throwing their garbage out of the window and into the street. Without looking first. From some way up. When I passed my thoughts on to Ching, he explained that it was habit: in China, one threw waste food into the street and the local pigs or dogs ate it. That there were no pigs wandering the streets of Kowloon seemed immaterial to the residents. At least there were pi-dogs – stray mongrels – although none of them looked porcinely overfed.

  In Soares Avenue, there was a line of shops. I crossed the road and started to inspect them. They did not have front windows, being more like square caves giving directly on to the pavement. One sold everyday kitchen utensils, but even some of these were alien to me. Shallow, cast-iron cooking pots, which I subsequently learnt were called woks, hung from hooks overhead, a shelf bore what I was to discover were rice steamers and there were sets of woven baskets, one inside the other. Packets of chopsticks, rice bowls, serving dishes, quaint porcelain spoons tied together with string, minute bowls, soy sauce dispensers, teapots decorated with red and gold dragons and handle-less tea cups and bowls with lids stood or lay in profusion on a table board balanced on trestles. Near by were displayed wooden cutting blocks bound by steel hoops, meat chopp
ers and knives of medieval ferocity.

  Moving on, I came to a fruit seller whose stock, spread out under bright lights, was even more unusual. He sold oranges, lemons, bananas and apples, but the remainder of his offerings might well have been picked on another planet – waxy-looking star-shaped fruit reminiscent in texture of my grandmother's hat flowers only not as dusty; huge grapefruit-like fruits, split open to show pale citruslike segments within; knobbly custard apples; deep sea-green watermelons bigger than footballs; spiky ovals I discovered to be durians; and what appeared to me to be short lengths of leafless tree branch.

  The shopkeeper, seeing me standing admiring his stock, came round the front and spoke to me, picking up the grapefruit-like pomelo and holding it out. By now, I had picked up more than a smattering of Cantonese and said, 'M'ho cheen.' To emphasize my impecuniosity, I patted my pockets. He laughed, stroked my blond hair, took out a sharp knife, sliced open the pomelo and offered me a segment. It was time to keep my promise.

  I accepted it, said, 'Dor jei,' and put it in my mouth. It was sweet and tart at the same time, the cells of the segment erupting upon my tongue. 'Ho!' I said and I meant it. It was very good.

  The fruit seller smiled and picked up one of the lengths of branch. It was pale silvery-green and about an inch thick. He shaved the bark from all of its length but a few inches at one end, with which he handed it to me like a truncheon. I had no idea what to do with it. Seeing this he prepared another length, bit some off the end and chewed it. I followed suit. It was sugar cane, saturated with syrupy sap. When he had sucked the stringy cane dry, he spat it out on the pavement. I copied him. Then a fish head hit me on the shoulder. I was, I considered, now at one with the streets, duly initiated and baptized.

  I made friends at school but rarely visited my friends' homes or spent time with them away from the classroom or playground. My life was centred on the Fourseas and the adjacent streets and alleyways.