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‘Not me. I don’t miss ferries. But come, we must sit at the back.’
He led the way to the last bench, the only one that was open to the world. A sprightly wind whipped in off the harbour; André smiled quietly to himself as he felt it against his face. He sat, removed his tie, wound it around his hand and slipped it into his jacket pocket. Then he placed his attaché case on his knees, caused it to open with a double detonation and produced from it two cans of San Mig. Cold, naturally. They opened, drank.
‘So, my dear, how does it march?’
Alan explained a little. André listened with interest. The connection with HK Business News amused him. ‘Done some work for old Reg myself, in my time. Usual standby, selling advertising space, selling editorial space, too, if it comes to that. No false pride, old Reg. Made rather a little killing, actually, in Singapore.’
‘Really? Oh well, I’ll pass on your regards.’
‘Wouldn’t do that, my dear. Had a bit of a falling-out. The killing wasn’t actually for him, you see. But shall I tell you an important fact? In this town, the one thing you never run out of is clients.’
‘Mags, you mean?’
‘Well, I meant it more generally, actually, but it is certainly true of magazines. One mag folds, another two spring up. Same in every other business. Drives some people crazy. But we who keep light on our feet rather like it that way.’
Alan, more interested in his own affairs than in André’s summary of Hong Kong life, returned doggedly to the subject closest to his heart. ‘Do they take copy from outsiders, then?’
‘My dear, you are living in a freelance’s paradise. You’ll make a great living, have loads of fun. Get some travel under your belt, get around Asia a bit. That’s the thing. Why not start your own magazine? I’ll sell the advertising space, editorial space too. We’ll make a fortune.’
It was not until the ferry cut its speed and made its laborious approach to the Tung Lung ferry pier that André turned to the business in hand. ‘I’ve pretty well settled everything with your new landlord. We’ll go straight up and see him, if that’s all right with you. He’s got a lease all ready.’
‘Chinese guy?’ It seemed worth asking.
‘Lord, no. Well, born in Shanghai, but the son of Baptist missionaries. All English blood, but rather Chinese in some ways. Plus catholique, in fact. Name of John Kingston, lived on Tung Lung for about twenty years. Unusual chap. You’ll like him.’
Alan looked out over the surrounding land, the awaking mountains. It was as if he had received a light blow on the chest: the smallest tap, little more than the brushing of Oddjob’s finger, but a touch performed with such acute, well-nigh surgical skill that it was enough, for one half-second, to suspend the processes of life. I am to live behind this toy harbour, before this green mountain. I am to live in a Chinese scroll.
‘Ready for a climb?’ André asked. ‘You’re going to live in the highest house in the village.’
André led the way past the café and the banyan tree, and past a tiny, almost a doll’s house, branch of the South China Bank. Beside it stood a fly-thronged collection of wide, flat, woven baskets, from which arose the scent of the death of a thousand sea beasts: the ambient odour of Tung Lung. ‘Shrimp-paste factory,’ André said airily. ‘One of Chuen-suk’s money-spinners. Here’s where we start to climb.’ They turned left off the main path and concrete steps rose up before them. Though winter and the temperature barely turning past 70 degrees, Alan felt sweat burst from him. After a while, begging a halt, he asked, mouth-breathing fiercely: ‘How many more?’
‘About halfway. You’ll soon be used to it. Look on it as Nob Hill. Worth climbing 176 steps for. Catch the breeze in the summer, which is pretty good news, on the whole.’
Alan looked around him. A shower of inky blooms hung over a mesh fence; before it danced a butterfly, orange, black-veined. It looked like a stained-glass window. ‘Onwards,’ André said. ‘Onwards and upwards.’
More leg-weary than he had been since his epic walk from Quarry Bay to Central, Alan reached the top. A narrow concrete path led onward, mercifully now along the level. ‘We use Calor Gas for cooking,’ André said. He seemed unaffected by the climb. ‘For an extra five dollars they deliver it. Best deal on the island. Two old ladies do it.’ Alan didn’t actually believe this. André led him to another flight of stairs, no more than a dozen steps. Straight ahead stood a huge pair of iron gates, beautifully ornamented and painted green. They were flanked by two bulging-eyed, door-guarding lions. Through the chain-link fence on either side, Alan could see a shaded green garden, and set within it three separate, small but majestic houses. ‘Old man Ng’s place,’ André said. ‘Richest man on the island.’ He turned his back on this vista of expensive living, and gestured to another dwelling. He announced, not without pride: ‘Here we are.’
The lemon-yellow house stood head and shoulders above those around it. Two houses, in fact. Semi-detached. How odd. Two front doors, a shared front yard, a garden of concrete. ‘My place,’ André said, pointing to the left middle floor. ‘Charles lives next door to me – you’ll meet him soon enough, a great man in his way. You’re underneath me; the flat next door to you isn’t finished yet. Yours was only finished last week. King has the entire top floor; he knocked it through, done a neat conversion job. So he has the roof, and he’s made a nice little garden up there.’
Alan peered through the seven-foot-high mesh of the fence to what would soon be his home. He followed André round to the back of the building. Another door, and more stairs to climb. Halfway was a door, on which had been stuck a colour photograph of a sailing boat leaving behind it a long creamy wake. It also bore the legend ‘Cool Cool Cool!’
‘That’s me,’ André said. ‘But let’s find King.’ Up another flight of steps; there André knocked jauntily on a door. It opened. ‘Hello, King, here’s your new man. Pretty smart of me to find him, I think you’ll agree. Alan Fairs, John Kingston.’
John Kingston stepped onto the landing to meet them. He was tall, with a massive chest, and he moved with a strange deliberation, rather like a troll. It was as if his aim were to frighten, though not very severely, an audience of uncritical children. He fixed Alan with a challenging eye and said, basso profundo: ‘Welcome to the real Hong Kong.’
Alan took the proffered hand; received an expected bone-crushing. ‘Er, thank you.’
‘The people are real here. Do you feel a sense of privilege in being here? Do you feel that already?’
‘Well, I do as a matter of fact,’ Alan said, half ingratiating, half honest.
‘The people here are real.’
‘Yes.’
‘I call them noble savages.’
Alan felt momentarily at a loss. This would have been the case even without the dizzying sensation of the wheel turning full circle. He found himself babbling: ‘Great, yes, sure, I’m glad about that, because I haven’t met anybody noble in Hong Kong yet, apart from André, of course.’
Kingston received this in long, serious silence. After a while, he said: ‘Noble savages.’
André was suddenly beside him, pushing a beer into his hand. ‘Beer. Have a beer, King. I found it in your fridge.’
‘Thank you, André,’ Kingston said. ‘You are indeed a generous man.’ Kingston said this as solemnly as he had spoken of noble savages. Alan was having a little trouble with his sense of perspective. ‘Now. Alan. Come. Before anything else occurs, you must inspect your flat.’
‘All right. Though I am sure it will be perfect.’ Even a concrete shell would be perfect in such a setting. King led a beer-clutching procession back down the stairs and round the outside of the building. A gate, of metal bars, spike-topped and unlocked, guarded the way into the concrete garden. Kingston walked through, opened the door to the flat, and announced, ‘Seven hundred square feet,’ though whether in apology or boast Alan could not tell.
It was a concrete shell. It was perfect. The walls had been lightly painted with whitish paint. Four tiny rooms led off the main area. Two were bedrooms, one containing an actual bed, double, with a thin foam mattress. Alan walked around the flat. This did not take a great deal of time. A kitchen, with a Calor Gas stove on a tiled concrete shelf. A bathroom with a shower in it. ‘Water is sometimes a problem on Tung Lung, my friend,’ King said. ‘We use the Ng well here, of course. If it runs dry, we have permission to use the standpipe below the last flight of steps. That is connected to Chuen-suk’s well, and that never runs dry.’ And the concrete apron before the house, half of it shaded by the balcony above. On the far side of his fence, another tumble of the purple stuff; was it bougainvillaea? And a jumble of houses marching down the hillside before him, and beyond them the harbour of Tung Lung and beyond that the South China Sea. He turned inland, to a flat-bottomed valley floored with a chessboard of green fields. Allotments, really. Alan could just make out a man working on his little square of green, two watering cans suspended from a yoke that rested on his shoulders. He wore a pointed hat; he too lived in a Chinese scroll. Alan found that he could smell the sea.
‘I love it. If you’ll have me, I’ll take it.’
‘Yours for seven hundred dollars.’
‘Done.’
‘Then let us sign the lease. How are you off for furniture? I can sell you some electric fans, chairs and so on.’
‘Thanks. Though I’m a bit strapped for cash just now. At least, I will be once I’ve paid you a deposit.’
‘Pay me later, then. No hurry. I may be a landlord, but I am a landlord with a human face.’
‘A noble landlord,’ Alan said idiotically.
Kingston greeted this with a great hohoho, like the demon king. ‘I can see that this is going to be a very happy community,’ he announced. ‘A great future stretches before us.’
They returned to Kingston’s flat. After the bare expanse of the downstairs flat, the contrast was apparent. Kingston’s style of decoration was disconcertingly – Alan groped for a word – permanent. There was even a large photograph of a family group. This had been printed onto canvas, to make it look like a painting. It showed a pretty woman with an elaborate, slightly dated hairstyle, a pigtailed girl, a boy who looked like the illustration on the fruit gums packet. Kingston stood at the rear of the group, beaming in satisfaction.
Alan signed his lease, wrote a cheque for $1,400, deposit and first month’s rent, and received a second bone-crushing in recognition of the completion of a deal. ‘I’ll move in tomorrow or the next day,’ Alan said. ‘Just as soon as I have fixed up things with the landlord of my Mid-Levels place.’
‘What’s he got to do with it?’ André asked. ‘Does he owe you money?’
‘I think I owe him, actually.’
‘Then surely the only thing to do is to lug your stuff into a taxi and get the hell out? He’ll never trace you to Tung Lung.’
Alan could not help but think about this. Such a manoeuvre would, he reckoned, save him about $2,500. The thought went, and he was sorry to see it go. ‘André – can I be utterly frank with you? I don’t have the nerve.’
André looked for a moment deeply saddened, as if by a friend’s unwitting blasphemy. ‘My dear, it’s hardly the right way to begin your career as a freebooter.’
‘André, I was brought up to be honest – more or less, anyway. It’s a handicap. But keep faith with me; I’m sure I shall rise above it in time.’
Alan stood at the centre of a kind of refugees’ camp. Six vast striped plastic bags formed a circle around him: the contents of his flat in Mid-Levels. He had in his pocket a cheque for $1,000, returned deposit on the furniture.
The loading and unloading of the taxi had been accomplished, not without superhuman exertions. The carrying of the bags, two by two through the little gate beside the ferry turnstile, normally used for the passage of vegetables, had brought out resources Alan did not know he possessed. But the next stage, the carriage of bags to the ferry, seemed impossible. He could not even begin to think about the 176 steps.
The ferry arrived, and eventually opened its doors to admit new passengers. Alan made his first effort, and carried two bags on board. He fought his way back against the unstemmable tide of passengers to collect two more, in a state of blind frazzlement. He had just reached his encampment when he heard a voice call: ‘New neighbour!’
An impression of suit, size and extraordinary freshness of face. Alan was not quite in the mood for being bothered, but managed a flustered greeting.
‘Your gear?’ the stranger demanded.
‘Yes, I –’
‘Hold,’ he said sternly. He handed Alan a briefcase and a pink carrier bag. Then he squatted, and addressed the four bags rather formally. He inserted his arms through all the handles, straightened his back, and seized his own forearms in a grip of steel. He inhaled and exhaled through his nose, very noisily, about half a dozen times. Then he stood. Miraculously, the bags rose with him. He marched inexorably to the boat, benignly shoving passengers from his path with every step, tendons standing out from his neck like steel hawsers, breath roaring from his nose. Alan followed bearing his presumed neighbour’s briefcase, his own shoulder-bag full of valuable items, and the pink carrier bag. Condensation had formed, though not to his surprise, on its surface. With every appearance of relish, the neighbour lowered his preposterous load to the floor, back still perfectly straight.
‘Thank you,’ Alan said inadequately.
The neighbour rose with slow grace from his squat, and rotated his shoulders just once, so that the shoulder blades almost touched. Then he made a strange, rather papal gesture to the stairs that led to the top deck of the boat and a smile of rather unearthly beauty lit his face. ‘Beer!’ he said. Then he turned and absolutely sprinted up the stairs.
Alan followed more sedately, arriving on the top to find his neighbour sitting on the very back seat, both arms outstretched along its back in a crucifixion position. Alan passed him his two bags. The briefcase was placed on the floor, but from the carrier bag he produced two cans of San Miguel, passing one to Alan. Alan thanked him and reached for the ringpull. The neighbour at once placed a huge paw over Alan’s hand. ‘Wait!’ he said. ‘Not until the ferry moves.’
He sat quite silent, after this, his own unopened can in his hand and a rather solemn expression on his face. Alan watched as the stragglers came aboard. The day was chill, and most people wore jackets on top of shirts. They crowded together towards the front, enclosed section of the boat, from love of crowds, from dislike of air. There was a clatter from below as the gangplank was raised. The engine roared, and the ferry pulled away with the usual exchange of referees’ whistles. Alan’s neighbour, roused from a species of trance, smiled his beatific smile, tore the ringpull from his can, tossed it over his shoulder into the wash of the screw behind them and then positively threw the can into his face. Alan watched, fascinated, as his throat worked convulsively, like a pump. At last, he lowered the can, and smiled again.
‘Hello, new neighbour. I’m Charles Browne, the man upstairs. Browne with an E.’
Alan said his own name, and they shook hands. The clasp was gentle, unKingston-like.
‘You are going to like Tung Lung,’ Charles said.
‘Have you lived here long?’
‘Tung Lung? Or Hong Kong?’
‘Both, I suppose.’
‘Hong Kong, all my life, or twenty years. Tung Lung, ever since I went to the bad, or about two years. Here’s how!’ He raised his can once again and drank with the same primeval ferocity as before. He tossed the can, presumably now empty, over the back of the boat. He took another from his pink bag and opened it. ‘Your beer all right?’
‘Yes, great, thanks.’
‘I mean, you do drink?’
‘Of course.’
‘I mean, not a single beer and that’s it for me thanks, I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.’
‘No.’
‘In fact,’ Charles said, more or less beseechingly, ‘you drink quite a lot.’
‘Well –’
‘And get drunk and throw up and go to bed and it spins and get up next morning feeling shithouse and then have a drink to feel better.’
There was an expression of touching eagerness on Charles’s face. Alan could not bear to disappoint him. ‘Oh yes.’
‘Well then. Time for another beer, isn’t it?’
Alan made a quite heroic effort. He lifted his can, half full, and finished it in a series of frantic swallows. Tears pricked the back of his eyes and he wondered for a second if the shock of the chill and the bubbles would effect an instant purgation, even as he wiped his mouth with feigned relish. He threw his can overboard and took the new one.
‘Good man!’ Charles said, with restrained violence.
Alan opened his new can and consigned its ringpull to the deep. He took a semireluctant sip. ‘Are there many Browne-with-an-Es in Hong Kong?’ he asked. ‘I came across that name once or twice when I was working for the Hong Kong Times.’
‘Course you came across the name. My old man owns the bloody place.’
‘What bloody place?’
‘Hong Kong, of course.’
‘He can’t actually own all of it, can he? I expect you’re having me on.’
‘Well, sucks to you, because he does. More or less, anyway. My old man happens to be the chairman of the South China Bank.’
Once again, the wheel spun full circle before him. ‘Golly,’ Alan said. ‘That’s quite a grown-up job, really.’
There was a split-second pause, during which Alan thought he might have caused serious offence. Then Charles threw back his head and gave a dramatic howl of laughter. ‘Grown-up!’ he said. ‘My old man’s got a grown-up job!’ He laughed out of all proportion to the merits of Alan’s remark, rocking forward, resting his forehead on his beercan, finally emerging, wiping his eyes. ‘So that’s what’s wrong with the bastard,’ he said. ‘He’s got a grown-up job!’
‘I had a grown-up job last week,’ Alan said. ‘But I got fired.’
‘Is that why they sacked you?’ Charles asked. ‘They discovered you weren’t a grown-up?’
‘That must be it.’
‘André hasn’t got a grown-up job,’ Charles said. ‘I don’t think King has one either. He acts as if he has one, but I think he’s only pretending.’
‘What about you?’
‘Oh, me? I’ve got a grown-up job. I have a very grown-up job indeed. But shall I tell you how I handle it?’ He turned with sudden elephantine staginess to Alan, and whispered hoarsely and penetratingly: ‘I do it very, very badly.’
It was impossible to tell how serious he was, or even if he was serious at all. ‘Is that a good idea?’ Alan asked.
The response startled him, because it came as a bellow, one that turned the heads of the passengers ranged before them, all engaged till then in noisy conversations of their own. ‘Course it’s not! It’s a bloody appalling idea. They give me hell. Browne, you bastard, they tell me, you’re not shaping up. Do the job properly or we’ll sack you and then you’ll be sorry. We’d sack you today if it wasn’t for the fact that your old man owns Hong Kong.’
‘Jolly good,’ Alan said.
‘What do you mean, jolly good? Don’t talk wet, it’s bloody awful.’ Charles started laughing again. He wiped his eyes briefly, and eased up his laughter a little. ‘Now. Listen to me. I have a plan. It’s a good plan, so pay attention. The ferry stops. We get off it. We take your bags to Ah-Chuen’s. That’s the café by the harbour run by the fat bastard. We drink beer. Then we take the bags up to your flat. Then we have a beer at my place. Then we go down again and have supper, say, a bucket of shit at Ah-Chuen’s. Then, we sit about drinking beer. How does that sound in general terms?’
‘It sounds perfection itself.’
