The Year of the Woman

by Jonathan Gash

  He smiled, his cracked features almost shredding before her eyes.

  “The limit is the Tai-Tai’s plan.”

  She began to feel heady. Power took hold. She had never before felt so gifted. She would win. She could touch heaven, the gambler’s heaven, successes piling up in win after win after win. She had arranged to meet Santiago at the Golden Shamrock farther up Nathan Road on the left-hand side away from all those tiresome camera shops. He would be waiting for her.

  “Please do not hurry. Take your time.”

  She swallowed, noted the hands on her watch.

  Santiago had told her he would be there at ten-thirty. Quickly she reviewed her estimate of HC’s worth. HC’s credit was exactly the sum she could afford to lose. His job was secure. She had some depleted savings.

  Her new inner strength empowered her. She had a woman’s convictions, and the force that went with them. The old man’s serenity became hers. Going to place her bets, she would walk on air. What an impression she would create among the other punters! She could afford to borrow the net worth of HC’s firm.

  The logic was inescapable. HC’s money would earn for once. Think winning, instead of working.

  Painstakingly she wrote on the old gentleman’s pad – his fountain pen was heavy gold, she observed – HC’s total worth, including his firm. It looked breathtakingly elegant written there, all those noughts trailing like stars after the comet of the first three numbers.

  “As the lady pleases,” the gentleman said calmly. “How does the lady require it? In thousand dollar notes? American currency?”

  Of course, he probably dealt with large sums every hour, nothing taking him by surprise.

  “Hong Kong thousand dollar notes, please.”

  “Very well.” He pressed a button, and a hatch behind him slid open. He simply placed her signed paper in. It slid to. “One of our servants will carry it for you if you wish, Tai-Tai. Or a guard foki will accompany you.”

  “The guard foki, please. When I wish to return the loan, See-Tau, what arrangements do you make?”

  “You can send or bring the capital sum yourself.”

  “And the interest?”

  “Payable at the time of capital repayment, Tai-Tai. One per cent per day. It is normally twice that.”

  The situation was understood by both. Linda thought of Santiago. Their dawning affair was success waiting to happen. Why else would Santiago have shown such eagerness to talk? Why else had he asked to meet her, suggesting a time and place out of the way of her normal circuit? He was obviously attracted. Why else had he been so keen to back her judgement in this?

  Everything came down to judgement. The money – this vast sum, an amount she had never before seen in one place – would soon be profit. An evens bet would make it all hers, minus the fraction for repayment of the interest. What was one per cent? Negligible!

  She had discovered the perfect system, using money-lenders for profit! She was amazed she had never seen how foolproof it was.

  “Thank you,” she said, using the direct form of thanks for something given, not something merely done as a courtesy. “Do-jeh.”

  “Mmh sai, no need,” the old gentleman said politely. “The lady’s money is waiting, and the foki. Whenever you are ready, Tai-Tai.”

  “I shall see you the day after tomorrow.”

  “Indeed, lady,” he said, smiling. “Indeed.”

  HC was roused. The City Hall was noisier and more crowded than ever. HC had watched as a pathetically small Chinese dragon twitched its way along the tramlines, the feet of its carriers shuffling and flicking like so many inverted antennas. He must have dropped off, in the clashing noises, the drums and the squealing children.

  The City Hall was thronged, and he noticed his drink – inevitably local San Miguel beer – was emptied. He glanced about, but security guards were herding the audience along. Always the shoving and hustling to get a view of what they could see almost any day, some celebratory Chinese dragon stopping the traffic and scaring children.

  “No more,” a man said.

  He was in the next seat, facing the staircase. A plain man, and like HC taking no notice of the celebrations. Strangely, his attire could have been straight out of Hong Kong’s waterfront – say, Kennedy Town near the tram terminus – from the streets of quarter of a century ago. He wore the long cheong saam and black shoes of the scholar, and was close to skeletal.

  HC said to a waitress, “I’ll have another San Lik bey jao.”

  His mouth felt dry. The mob decided they needed a seat. Outside, the Hong Kong Police Band pipers were having a go, the dragon crashing and thumping in its ancient rhythm.

  The waitress ignored HC and simply vanished in the press of customers. HC almost called after her. He felt underneath himself, and retrieved his file. His evidence. He broke into a sweat of relief. Anyone could have taken it while he’d dozed. Very foolish risk to take, but he was so very tired. Worry tired you out.

  “Glad you could come, HC,” the man remarked.

  “What?”

  HC turned to inspect the man. One thing about older Cantonese gentlemen, they reached forty years of age then stayed exactly thus until death. Cantonese women were exquisite until they reached forty-five, when they became sallow crepe and stayed thus forever. Their morphology also aged, the female figure settling as if filled with fluid no longer held in shape.

  This man was in his ageless phase. He smoked a cigarette. Nobody contested his transgression of the inflexible law against smoking in the City Hall.

  “You brought it, I see.”

  The man flicked ash. A waitress ignored the old man, passed on into the crowd.

  “Brought what?”

  “My file.”

  “Your file?” HC’s stomach constricted. He almost retched.

  The man held out his hand with the cigarette stub. Somebody reached out with a silver platter. The old man simply let the stub fall, not even glancing to see where. HC felt his face prickle.

  “Sir?” he said feebly. “I am to give it to —”

  “Thank you, HC.”

  A hand took the file from HC’s hands. The old man did not demur. The file had vanished in the crowd.

  HC was suddenly breathless. He had been told to come here, wait in the City Hall in this phoney place made for rooking tourists, beer costing six times what they might pay elsewhere. At night the charges were even more insolent, atrocious squeeze being slipped onto the bills and receipts arbitrary. Surely after all his planning the Triad was not reduced to meeting here, where the world and his wife crammed to see some cheap dragon cavort on the waterfront?

  “It was extremely hard, sir. Believe me, I worked night and day.” He felt so sorry for himself and the lies he was about to tell. “It almost killed me.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes, sir. The girl KwayFay, the one with the special gift, she told me. I believed her. I gave her double wages.”

  “Then she would work all the harder?”

  “Exactly!” HC was eager. The man was taking it all in. “She tries telling everyone who’ll listen that she speaks to ghosts, has powers of divination. I paid her through the nose to find the right file.”

  “And?”

  “You’ll see what rubbish she finally came up with, sir.”

  HC tried a noble smile. The pipe band crashed and wailed. The presentation of medals by the Police Commissioner would soon begin. Much good those bits of tin would do when the drab Peoples Republic of China’s army came marching in from Whampoa and down Nathan Road past the empty British barracks.

  He wondered why the waitress had ignored his order for more beer. He also realised a space had cleared in the impossible mob around him and the old man.

  “What did she?”

  “Well, sir,” HC said, staking everything, “she ignored my instructions.”

  “Ignored?”

  “She gave me a defunct file, nothing to do with investments. She deceived me, sir. And …” To
o dry altogether now. He managed a croak.

  “What steps did you take?”

  “I have told her to come see me.”

  “What will you do, HC?”

  HC wished the man would stop calling him by his initials. It made even the most benign sentence menacing.

  “Examine the file,” HC said, sweat itching his armpits, “and see the worthless attempt she had made to cheat us – me and you.”

  “What will you do, HC?”

  “I shall sack her. She already knows it’s her fault.”

  “What will you do, HC?” The question kept coming.

  “I shall see she never works in Hong Kong again.”

  HC found himself babbling. The space around them grew. The band outside halted as the cymbals stopped. The drums silenced. HC realised as heads turned that he was shouting.

  “Will that be enough, HC?”

  “No! No! She should be punished!”

  “How, HC?”

  The responsibility was too much. HC shifted in his seat. If Linda wasn’t such a sorry drain on his income, he might have been able to escape. But what could a man do without a wife’s support?

  “How should she be punished?”

  HC said miserably, “She should make restoration, or suffer death, sir.”

  The old man sighed.

  “The trouble with power, HC.” He almost smiled, giving an oblique glance HC’s way as if at some secret amusement. “Don’t you find it so?”

  “Find what so, sir?”

  HC was shocked at how far he had been made to go. He’d never intended to make that suggestion. The girl was probably in difficulties worse than any he or his wife had.

  “Knowing what punishment fits a betrayer’s crime.” Into HC’s appalled silence the old gentleman said, “It must surely be so in business, no?”

  “Well, yes.” HC clutched at the mention of investments as at a straw. “Sir, might I say that if you ever need to invest in any stock, I should be only too pleased …”

  The old man rose. The unseeing crowd simply parted and he left without another word. HC stood and made to follow. Inexplicably the mob became an impassable press. He tried edging along the line of seats and found he was trapped. Dismally, he stood while outside medals were presented to constables of the Hong Kong police force.

  It was a full half-hour before he was able to leave, and then only through the enclosed garden next door, where he would be unable to get a taxi, and have to stand wearing a fake smile while two or three brides asked him to remain among their crowds of well-wishers, such being the customs of Hong Kong.

  He would have to see KwayFay at the office and give her the sack. At least he could bully her, feel secure in chastisement.

  That was a man’s prerogative, and in a way his given duty when a clerk had made her boss’s life a misery, forcing him into making statements he’d never intended. Serve her right.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Linda felt a strange misery. Sated, they lay together, just looking deeply into each other’s eyes.

  She found difficulty saying his name – such long names in foreign languages! Why not one syllable, or at the most two? Santiago was almost a whole sentence. Extraordinary, but already she loved him. He had done everything a man could do to a woman. She had only been partly alive until he had bruised her without mercy, made her whole.

  This affair could not, must not, end. He slept. She cradled him.

  Her investment in the new gambling scheme she had worked out would run the risk of ending their association. She knew Santiago for a supreme gambler. The tales he told! That Monte Carlo business! The London casinos begging him to return, offering him unlimited credit! His Las Vegas jaunts, where he and some woman (undeserving, worthless) had cleaned out Caesar’s Palace with a triple sequence on roulette, blackjack, and finally the breathtaking, almost unplayable against-odds faro.

  Unbelievable! He was the first truly major high-rolling international gambler she had ever met, and now he was her lover. Him so rich, so powerful! Why else would the international Formula One combines beg him to come to Hong Kong? Some incomprehensible deal to fix success for that nasty German driver and the Ferrari team. (Who on earth was interested in that?) Santiago knew them all by their nicknames, told how he’d attended their weddings.

  She was only one person, not a huge industrial combine. He would soon go. Unless she could keep him. But how?

  The next batch of races was due soon. She would gamble then, win hands down. Winning, he said to her, even as he’d entered her and set her working, winning is a bore when you can’t lose. She’d challenged him on this afterwards. It stuck in her mind.

  “The only risk worth taking, Linda darling,” he’d answered, “is when the outcome is almost certain loss. Win then, you’re a genuine gambler.”

  He teased her about it. He liked a woman with some age and charm. That’s what he said, “a deal of charm”. He spoke all languages, conversed in Portuguese with the people in Macao on the Floating Casino where they played Fan Tan. He chatted in English, switched easily to Japanese when a group of tourists blundered onto their table in Macao. He was at home in Malay, she realised with a shock, and spoke Tagalog with the Pacific people. Spanish, of course, to the Philippino mobs with their floral designs and cheery faces. He was a superb horseman. He’d been a picador in the bull fights in Macao. It was a wonder she didn’t know his face from photographs.

  He had simply assumed he would become her lover, had chatted so matter-of-factly while instantly starting to undress her, his lips all over her skin as he discarded her clothes, talking animatedly of gambling, money, life, women… Besotted, she knew she’d do anything to keep him. When she was rich, after her coming gambling coup, she would compete with his lifestyle. She was determined to multiply up, “ascend the dragon steps” as gamblers called that dangerous, risky gambling method.

  That raised the question of the money from the Kowloon money-lenders, the exorbitant interest clicking inexorably. She’d told HC when he asked that she was going to work her own investment scheme, thank you, and wouldn’t need his help. He had argued, expostulated, cried even.

  She had the money. It would see daylight when it began its magic ascendancy, escalating to glorious quantities. Multi-millionairess! The word had a ring to it.

  Meanwhile, she served her man, this lithe, successful, rich demon. They would dine in Macao, at the Jockey Club. He knew everyone, hobnobbed with those who mattered. He shook hands with a chief of police, and was at home in places she’d never imagined.

  They made love that evening after dinner at the New Harbour View before a giant picture window, staring at the myriad multicoloured lights of Hong Kong even as they cried out and grunted in fulfilment.

  The money was smouldering, waiting to ferment inestimable wealth for her.

  She would meet KwayFay and obtain her spirit guidance on winning horses. Nothing must be left to chance. Gambling was life. All else was prelude.

  Cradled in her arms, Santiago slept.

  That same afternoon, a typed note was on KwayFay’s stool in her pod. It read SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, in English and Chinese. She took her things and left without a word.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Walking to Tung Loi Street, KwayFay turned away from the harbour. She was aware of so many things, quite like they said happened to the mind when you faced death.

  There was no sense of premonition. Grandmother had definitely predicted death. Spirits or ghosts could do what they liked within limits set for them by the Jade Emperor, the Supreme Spirit. Presumably Grandmother was being truthful?

  She waited to cross. Hong Kong’s traffic ran in stupid one-way systems she could never get the hang of. She had run wild in these very streets as a little girl, helping old people with their belongings, thieving, earning sums as little as the one-cent paper money, so beautifully printed (only made now for accountants worrying how to adjust their books with 0.0l of a Hong Kong dollar). Still, the l
ovely miniature notes had kept her alive more days than one. She had been lucky.

  The streets were crowded. She realised this with astonishment. She had not thought how strange weekdays would be, out in the open, wandering about aimlessly. It had been a terrible decision not go in to be humiliated by HC and Alice and Beth and Felicity, and Tony, and Jimbo Yip who kept telling KwayFay he loved her. Yet he’d already done the thing to Alice in the stores cupboard, at least he boasted so. One day, Jimbo Yip told the world, he’d pull off a great scam in futures. He had it worked out in gold, copper, and coffee futures. His secret measures would hit the Brazilian, DAX, and the Nikkei. He’d use the Hang Seng, and do it in the exchange in Ice House Street. It would take him a single afternoon. Unlike Mister Nick, the English scammer who’d done for Barings Bank in Singapore to the tune of a billion American dollars, mighty Jimbo Yip wouldn’t get caught. He said. KwayFay knew Jimbo Yip.

  Dowdy, she felt today, dowdy and tired. She knew this was because she’d come on that morning. During her first day she became dispirited. All the other females looked so glamorous, and her feeling so shoddy. They seemed so colourful, their conversation doubly loud about night clubs, dancing with handsome spend-money sailors or share-brokers from Australia. This happened every month, never troubled other girls. She felt so tired, but couldn’t remember if Ghost Grandmother had lectured her during the night. She felt the money in her handbag, twice had had to turn aside when some pickpocket had done his usual sidle to her left. It was easy switching the handbag to her other arm and lifting her jacket flap over the clasp. She did this mechanically several times a day among the office crowd. Office crowd! When would she belong again to an office crowd, able to chat with friends? Now they were remote from her life. They had never been friends.

  No job now. Only doom.

  Wing Lok Street West, with crazy traffic roaring into Central District. Just to make it difficult for pedestrians, the parallel Bonham Strand West traffic ran the other way, westward towards Kennedy Town. She paused, buffeted by hurrying people. Not a foreigner among the teeming schoolchildren in their uniforms – probably the Ying Wa Girls’ school further uphill above Seymour Road, she thought enviously. How she’d have loved to have gone to a school where, she’d heard the others say at work, they sat in desks in rows of seven, the teacher walking along the aisles while the girls wrote their sums and words.