Hong Kong Belongers

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‘Alan. Excellent. So good of you to wait. I shall buy you a drink. Not dead set on catching the six thirty, are you? Then perhaps I shall buy you two drinks.’

‘Excellent thought. Two Brewers?’

A slightly pained expression passed across André’s face. ‘I think not. The Harbourmaster’s Bar, do you know it? Rather a favourite spot of mine.’

André led the way out onto the crazy pavements of Causeway Bay. It was impossible to walk two abreast as the tall buildings simultaneously debouched their million inmates onto the streets. André led the way: the crowd seemed to part before him, only to reform itself in front of Alan. André did not check his pace for anyone, not even for the road, picking his way fastidiously through the lorries, trams, buses, taxis and private cars. A man who jay-walked through life. They passed the usual collection of street stalls, all selling clothes of remarkable newness and high quality; to each André gave an all-embracing glance that took in both merchandise and price. He was never off duty. He passed onto Lockhart Road, but to Alan’s surprise kept on, past this street of a thousand bars, ignoring the claims of a man selling fishballs from a vat of boiling oil to a small group of enthusiasts starved after two or three solid hours without food. Here Alan was able to move alongside. ‘Not in Lockhart Road, this place of yours?’

‘My dear old thing. No, it’s in the Fragrant Harbour Hotel.’

Alan at once felt his clothes, a fairly respectable outfit as recently as this morning, grow ancient and ragged about him. Jacketless in the sticky April warmth, a yellow shirt, rather too many buttons undone at the front, and the sleeves rolled past the elbows. No tie, of course, not even one in his bag. And this object, hanging from his shoulder and containing too many papers to yield to the zip, lacked the cool precision of André’s attaché case.

The Fragrant Harbour Hotel stood, as Sophie had justly pointed out, on the waterfront, a precipitous many-windowed cliff. A Sikh, bearded and turbaned, guarded the entrance in top boots and a species of guardsman’s jacket. He saluted André as they walked past him: ‘Good evening, sir.’

‘Good evening, Mr Singh, thank you so much.’

He led the way across the marbled lobby to the lifts. Alan, hit by the sudden chill of the air conditioning, rolled down his sleeves and did up a few buttons. The lift panel bore thirty-four buttons, plus a thirty-fifth labelled Harbourmaster’s Bar. This André hit, and they were fired courteously skyward while André gave a brief summary of the nature of Business PanAsia, its strengths and weaknesses, and the problems it created for itself by its refusal to countenance paid editorial. Then the doors slid open.

Thirty-five floors high, they seemed to have descended to the depths of the sea. The room was murky and green with mysterious enigmatic lights. Towards them gliding or swimming rather than walking the normal way, a woman, an angel fish, perhaps. Her face was painted with a beauty that was formal rather than erotic. Yes, there was a tank of fish, a huge tank, its denizens to be admired rather than eaten. ‘Good evening, Mr Standing.’

‘Good evening, Helen.’ She was clad in a wonderful way, a high mandarin collar on a floor-length dress of green silk. There was something odd about the garment but Alan couldn’t quite, as it were, put his finger on it. ‘And would you be so good as to take my bag? Thank you so much.’

‘Lilac will look after you, Mr Standing. Customary table?’ And she gave a sudden instruction, harsh after her honeyed English, to a woman who materialised beside her, smiling almost as beautifully as Sophie had been earlier. As Lilac stepped forward, Alan realised with a glorious start that her dress was split from floor to hip.

She led them to a table in the corner, by the floor-to-ceiling window from which they could see the harbour, Kowloon, the hills of the Nine Dragons beyond the buildings. Alan could see at least one thousand boats; a jet attempted to defy gravity jinking its way through the far buildings to touch down at Kai Tak. ‘I think in view of the occasion, I’ll have a Singapore Sling,’ André said. ‘I seriously advise you to do the same.’

Alan was quite definitely beginning to panic. Even a beer would be beyond his funds. This was hideous. He would have to run.

‘On me, my dear. On me. I’m celebrating, you see.’

‘Well. Thanks.’

André turned again to Lilac and gave the order, with a glittering exchange of smiles. He caught Alan looking, with rather provincial fascination, at the lower half of Lilac’s costume. ‘Did you know that the tailoring of a cheongsam is so complicated that they take a measurement from nipple to nipple?’

Alan was fractionally recovering his nerve. ‘I feel happier for knowing that,’ he said.

Lilac brought the drinks. She had to take extremely small steps in order not to fall over. Every stride threatened to expose the entire length of her, from sculpted ankle to journey’s end, and every dozen or so strides this actually happened, but for no more than a nanosecond: it took all Alan’s concentration to catch the moment as it flew. The drinks she brought were longish and pinkish, and tasted as if the barman had started at one end of the bar and worked his away along, pouring as he went.

‘Good,’ said André. ‘They look after one, don’t they?’

Alan looked down at the puny craft crisscrossing the harbour. ‘It’s rather like being taken to the high place by the devil and shown all the kingdoms of the world,’ he said. ‘By the way, André, what are we celebrating?’

‘Oh, I am going to do a spot of selling for Dean. Wants me to sell some advertising space to airlines, hotels and stuff for Business PanAsia, round up some specialist stuff for Cargo News and Asian Shipping. But he’s planning a Singapore special issue for the autumn, and I’m to try and get a few ads for that. The fact of the matter is that Dean is sending me to Singapore for a fortnight, and putting me up at the Great Orient, nice pub, and it’s all the most frightfully good news because I don’t expect it will take more than a week to get Dean’s stuff sorted out, and earn my commission. I’ve got some awfully good contacts there. So for the rest of the time – well, you know me, Alan. I can always find things to do.’

André started to expound on Singapore, and how it differed from Hong Kong and from KL and various other Asian cities. This became a dissertation on Southeast Asia.

Lilac brought more drinks in response to André’s languid summons. ‘Might pop over the causeway while I’m there. I know a rather nice girl in Johor Baharu. Might be time to get as far north as KL. Met some interesting people there, nothing came of it, but they said to look them up next time. But you see the principle, don’t you, Alan? Dean gives me a free flight and base, and, as it were, a guaranteed minimum for the trip. But my real profit won’t come from selling advertising space.’

‘Where then?’ Alan, feeling the ambush of the Singapore Sling, was moved to forthrightness.

‘I specialise, my dear, in omnifariousness. Chap in Denpasar once told me that. One more? And then perhaps some dinner? In the hotel? On me?’

They dined, then, in some splendour. Alan wore a tie for the occasion, for André produced a spare one from his attaché case. He retired to the gents to put it on: a Chinese ancient watched the knotting process with great concentration, as if he were to be asked questions about it afterwards. Alan joined André, who was already at the table and by now utterly magnificent.

‘Fish, yes, they do it rather well here. We are, as you note, not too far from the sea.’ He ordered sole véronique with a polished French accent and sent back the white wine as imperfectly chilled. Alan wondered rather incoherently if the ordering of the fish was to make possible the ordering of the white and its subsequent rejection.

‘Well, it’s in the blood, you see, as you can no doubt tell from the name, bloody silly name to have in Hong Kong, or anywhere else in Asia for that matter. I have to spell it exactly one hundred times per day. Girls can never say it in bed. I don’t think I have ever made love to a girl who called me by my name. I am always On-jay, or worse, On-lay.’

‘Karen calls you André. I’ve heard her.’

‘She does, bless her. It’s her chief attraction, really.’

André insisted on Armagnac with the coffee. ‘Did you ever meet Pearl? Nice girl, works in a travel agency. I rather think she was before your time. She used to come out and see me on Tung Lung now and then. There was something of a kerfuffle when Karen paid me a surprise visit.’ He started laughing a little. ‘On a clear day you can still hear the echo. Sophie’s a nice kid, isn’t she?’

‘Who? Oh, the receptionist at Business PanAsia. God yes, gorgeous.’

‘I quite agree. An ex of mine, as you may have guessed.’

‘Lucky fellow.’

André put his head to one side and regarded Alan kindly. ‘We really must get you fixed up with a nice Chinese girl. You won’t want to look at a Western woman after a bit.’ He called for the bill and settled it with a lordly flourish of the credit card. The Sikh doorman showed them into a taxi and received five dollars for doing so. André gave the driver hectoring instructions in Cantonese.

‘Oh God, is that the time?’

‘Certainly. Be calm. Allow nothing to trouble your mind. The ten thirty ferry is never less than ten minutes late.’ The taxi pulled up outside a small shop in Lockhart Road; André left the car. He returned a moment or so later carrying, inevitably, a pink carrier bag filled with beer.

‘Oh Jesus, we’ll have to spend the night in town.’

‘Not a bit of it. You worry too much. Fai-dee, fai-dee, aaa!’ This last to the driver, who fai-deed as best he could. They reached the ferry pier after a sick-making slalom along Con-naught Road. André negligently dropped a ten-dollar bill for the six-dollar ride, and strolled towards the ferry. Alan, heaving his bag to his shoulder and rescuing a sheaf of papers with a mad grab, scuttled after him. The gangplank was raised the instant they stepped on board the ferry. The time was ten forty-two.

‘See what I mean?’

‘Oh God.’

‘Have a beer.’

‘André, you are an appalling person.’ By this stage, Alan had begun to giggle foolishly. ‘I can’t begin to keep up with you. Not the beer. I mean, the chances you take.’

. ‘I take no chances, my dear. I take the trouble to learn the odds. There is a difference, you know.’ They reached their seat at the back of the ferry as the boat pulled away from the pier. They sat; opened their cans in unison.

‘Perhaps so. But I couldn’t do it.’

‘That, my dear, is why you are a journalist and I am a merchant venturer.’ They both laughed a good deal at this, but then André was suddenly and rather dramatically transfixed by seriousness. ‘Listen, Alan. Last year, I was down the tube for about thirty grand. Three companies were after me for money I no longer had – never did have, to tell the truth. I went to Bangkok, a few hours before the storm broke. Had five grand up front, in cash, from someone who wanted something I could get in Thailand. I did a deal – one deal. I was gone for a week. It was a rather sordid trip, actually, had to pay for my hotel, and thought I’d better keep my head down, so I stayed at the Malaysia – backpacker’s place, terrible old dump. Anyway, I was back in Hong Kong a week later with all debts paid and twenty grand to the good on top of that.’

‘Christ,’ Alan said respectfully. ‘A miracle.’

‘But it isn’t, you see. You tell me you’ve just written two thousand words on King.’

‘Very true. The business of love and his total faithfulness to his wife.’

‘Laid that one on you, did he? Didn’t tell you about shagging Chai, then?’

‘I thought she just came to clean up his flat.’

‘Oh, Alan. My dear Alan.’

‘Hong Kong will never return to China,’ Alan said, repeating King’s words in King’s voice. ‘You might as well expect the UK to have a female prime minister. These two things are simply impossible.’

André laughed at this impersonation. ‘But where was I? Ah yes. Well, I couldn’t write two thousand words about King or anybody else. But if you want two thousand bucks, then I’ll raise it in no time. Or lose it in no time, but it doesn’t really worry me, because I know I’ll be able to make it up some other way. It’s my experience that most people only have one talent. Yours is journalism. Mine is money.’

‘The other night you said the same thing, but that your one talent in life was sailing.’

André began to laugh again. ‘So it bloody well is. I can sail the arse off anyone.’

‘You’d be first in any capsizing race.’

‘I do regret that, Alan, I really do. But you have to get close to the wind, you know. I thought you’d like it.’

Alan winced at the memory. ‘It wasn’t the closeness to the wind I minded. It was the closeness to the water.’

‘Well again, Alan, as I say, it’s not about taking chances, it’s about knowing the odds. I don’t capsize in races, when I’m playing different percentages.’

‘Charles wouldn’t let you capsize in a race.’

‘He does take it seriously, doesn’t he? Bit of a sobersides when it comes to sailing, old Charles. But no, in a race, I like to win, and so does Charles. You can capsize at home any time you want.’

‘If there’s a moral in that, I lost it somewhere. Give me another beer.’

The ferry at last arrived at Tung Lung. Laughing, zigzagging a little, very happy with each other, they essayed the 176 steps. At one point, Alan fell up a few of them, but André hauled him to his feet.

‘Alan. Something to help you sleep?’

‘A wise precaution, André.’

No light shone from the house. They entered André’s flat, which always surprised Alan by its austerity. There was not a picture on the wall, save a single poster of a catamaran in full sail towing a water-skier. The only furniture was a set of folding tables and chairs from China Products. A ghetto blaster the size of a suitcase provided music when required, which was often. André disappeared into his bedroom, and reappeared with a plastic bag. Delving into its contents, he began to roll a joint. Pure grass, no mixing with tobacco.

‘Hey,’ said Alan. ‘It’s illegal, that stuff.’

‘What are laws?’

‘The crystallised prejudices of the masses.’

‘Karl Marx?’

‘Goldfinger, actually.’

‘I like it.’

‘Isn’t that stuff hard to get here?’

André did not reply, completing his work with great attention to the fine detail. He then lit the joint, bringing the flame to its tip three times to ensure a perfectly even burn. He drew twice before passing to Alan, and then spoke smokefully: ‘Not if you know what you are doing, my dear, like so many other things in life.’