Sir Jonathan’s eyes swept the green arc of the harbor where three dark-gray destroyers of the United States Navy swung at their buoys and a blue-gray cruiser of the Royal Navy steamed among a hundred anchored merchantmen. Asia was at war again, and the pulse of the commercially avid Colony was quickening to the opportunities offered by the conflict in Korea. Yet the debris of the last war was still rolling down upon the Colony; its hillsides were garlanded with the scrap-wood-and-corrugated-iron huts of some 700,000 refugees from the Communist conquest of China in 1949. Nevertheless, the Colony was reasserting the vitality that had increased its population from 86,000 in 1860 to 2.5 million by late 1950. Tokyo was just reviving under American military occupation, while Shanghai had fallen into desuetude with the coming of the Communists twenty months earlier. Its chief rivals having been neutralized, Hong Kong was, once again, the commercial capital of the Far East.
It was a nervous capital. For the first time in a century, Hong Kong feared a Chinese invasion. Assertive after the triumphant conquest of all China, a division of the People’s Liberation Army was camped behind the last bare hill range that loomed between the Colony and the vastness of the Chinese mainland.
The Old Gentleman lowered his eyes from the panorama to the leather-bound book on his knees. His broad-nibbed pen moved deliberately, the broad serifs of the letters tapering into slender vertical strokes in the manner of Chinese calligraphy. He wrote in English, rather than his own shorthand. This volume, unlike his private diary, was a chronicle he wished his children, grandchildren, and succeeding generations to read. Like the scholar-officials of the Confucian dynasties, he was devoting his old age to literary composition. Beneath the winged dragon embossed in gold-leaf, the blue leather bore the title: The Recollections of Sir Jonathan Sekloong, Baronet, Knight Commander of the Most Honourable Order of St. Michael and St. George.
… but, this time, the outcome must be quite different. He completed the paragraph, blotted the black ink, and closed the book. His hands, honed fine by time, were translucent in the pale sunlight. But they served him competently, trembling only minutely as he pealed the silver bell that stood on the porcelain rice-barrel beside his cane chair.
Opal strolled onto the terrace. He would allow only Opal to serve him, complaining that the new servants were clumsy. Junoesque at twenty-six, the Polynesian wore a silk-padded long-gown and jacket. The damp cold of The Castle chilled her bones and raised gooseflesh on her bronze skin. Her deep breasts swelled under the long-gown, for she was still nursing the boy-child she had borne three months earlier to a father whose identity only she knew.
“Come inside, Old One,” she said, toying with the frogs that secured her bodice. “I’ll make you warm, and there is much milk.”
“No,” Sir Jonathan answered peremptorily. “I don’t need it today. Just bring me a cigar and whiskey.”
“But you need—what you call it—nourishment.”
“Do as I say. The whiskey and the cigar are nourishment and pleasure enough for today.”
“I can give you greater pleasure,” she rejoined, twisting the frogs.
“I want a cigar and my whiskey. Nothing else. I want to live to a hundred, not forever, you know.”
Opal returned with a silver salver bearing a crystal goblet of whiskey, a single panatella, a box of kitchen matches, and a gold cigar-cutter. She idly watched the familiar ritual as Sir Jonathan cut the cigar, lit it with a kitchen match, and carefully laid it aside.
“They’re expensive,” the multimillionaire said fretfully. “I’m not made of money, you know.”
Parsimony was a new trait, an unaware reaction to the insecurity of the turbulent new age. When the cigar was drawing, the Old Gentleman lifted the crystal goblet and sipped the whiskey.
“You’ve watered it again,” he accused her. “Bring me the bottle. I want a proper drink! Best thing for my arteries.”
Opal walked through the terrace-doors and slowly descended the stairs. She had watered the whiskey, for she was determined to give him no more than the two ounces the doctor allowed each day. If she tarried long enough, he might be more amenable when she finally returned.
After twenty minutes, she reappeared with a fresh bottle of Glenlivet. The goblet, she saw, was empty, and a spiral of smoke rose from the cigar in the ashtray. Unmindful of her presence, Sir Jonathan was again gazing at the panorama of Hong Kong, the city-state he had conquered and made the fortress-capital of his dynasty.
“Old One,” she said. “I’ve brought the bottle. Are you sure you want more?”
He did not reply, and she was reluctant to intrude upon his reverie. However, he did not stir when she placed the bottle on the porcelain rice-barrel.
“Well, you’re showing some sense, Old One,” she said. “You didn’t really want more, did you?”
Sir Jonathan remained silent, and Opal walked across the balcony toward the stone balustrade in order to see his face. Gold-tinged skin taut over high cheekbones, his head rested against the high back of the cane chair. The blue-white cigar-smoke curled into his unseeing hazel eyes.
Opal stood rooted by shock for a full minute. Then the Tahitian dirge for a great chieftain welled from her throat.
After her first searing grief, Mary Philippa Osgood Sekloong counseled herself to accept the inevitable with grace and humility. So long expected and so long dreaded, Sir Jonathan’s death should, she felt, occasion almost as much joy as sorrow. He had taken his leave with the same dignity he had shown all his life. His achievements were attested by the sheafs of condolatory telegrams, by the bold headlines that briefly displaced reports of war and revolution, and by the tremors that shook the chancelleries and counting-houses of four continents. He had lived almost as long as he had wished; he had accomplished even more than he had dreamed as a thrusting youth; and he had died surveying the realm that bore his ineradicable impress. Sir Jonathan Sekloong had bowed gracefully to the world and then departed, holding his head high.
But that rationale was cold consolation for the profound deprivation Mary felt. The Old Gentleman had dominated all their lives for half a century. Charles and she had virtually controlled the Sekloongs’ affairs for more than a decade, but Sir Jonathan had always been there to offer his cheerful cynicism, his devout faith, and his tough-minded counsel. Still she could not abandon herself to grief over their loss. Her husband needed all her strength, for he was stricken by his father’s death.
At seventy-four, Charles Sekloong had finally come into his inheritance. He was the Sekloong, the belated distinction truly earned by his gentle resolution and by his commercial acumen, which had both flowered during the past three decades. After so many years in’ waiting, the second Baronet was Taipan to the Chinese associates and “Sir Charles” to the British officials and magnates who called at The Castle. Yet he started when he was addressed by those titles, having lived too long in his father’s radiance to assume his new eminence with ease.
Charles was suddenly a very old man. He had been too long heir-apparent to wear the crown comfortably, too long buttressed by the Old Gentleman’s ultimate authority to stand by himself. Besides, no new heir-apparent shared his power, his wealth, or his burdens, since his three surviving sons were committed elsewhere. Mary hoped to allay that anxiety by showing Charles in time that Albert, Jonnie’s younger son, was the natural and the happy choice. But her first task was to reassure Charles, who tragically felt himself aged—as if his years, rather than his spirit, were the true measure of a man’s age. At seventy, she herself did not feel old. Her internal vision, her innate sense of self, placed her somewhere between forty and fifty in the prime of her years.
The demanding preparations for the funeral were, however, a revitalizing challenge to Charles, who was determined that the ceremonies must pay full homage to his father. Wholly Chinese in his filial piety, he was assisted in planning the obsequies by Sir Mosing Way and their common grandson, Mokhing Way, who was Charlotte’s son. The entire clan, Charles believed, wo
uld be diminished if it failed to render splendid public obeisance to the Old Gentleman’s spirit. Mary suspected that, despite his devout Catholicism, he feared the old Chinese gods would punish the Sekloongs if they were remiss. For the first time she knew beyond doubt that great love had bound her husband and his father, despite their quarrels.
Her own grief for Sir Jonathan and her anxiety for Charles were distracted by her own tasks. Sustained by Sarah and Opal, Mary dealt with the influx of mourners into The Castle.
Two grandsons came first. Lieutenant Henry Osgood Sekloong was flown by the Royal Air Force from Malaya, where his regiment was, for the second year, fighting the undeclared war against Chinese guerrillas whom the British authorities in that territory contemptuously described as “Communist terrorists.” As superstitious as the Chinese regarding ritual terminology, the British further called the uprising the “Emergency,” rather than a revolution. Major George Chapman Parker, Jr., United States Air Force, who had arrived on a Military Air Transport Service Skymaster, was required to depart immediately after the funeral. Fighting another undeclared war, the euphemistically termed “police action” in Korea, the Americans were hard pressed by the armies Peking had just committed, the so-called “Chinese People’s Volunteers.”
Bishop Charles Sekloong was en route from Rome to officiate at the Requiem High Mass. Charlotte Sekloong Way d’Alivère Martin was to land that afternoon in the personal Super-Constellation of her new admirer, the Armenian shipping and oil magnate Avram Barakian. General Thomas Sekloong had come to Hong Kong that morning aboard a C-46 Curtis Commando of retired Major General Claire Chennault’s airline, Civil Air Transport. The Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China had offered public condolences. But James Sekloong had not replied to a telegram addressed to General Shih Ai-kuo at the General Headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army. His mother feared that he was already serving in Korea with an army that did not grant “compassionate leave,” unlike the sentimental Americans.
Jonnie and Sarah’s seventeen-year-old son Albert, a student at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, telephoned to promise he would be present, “Even if I have to carry Pan American’s DC-7 on my back.” His twenty-one-year-old cousin Blanche, Major George Parker’s sister, was on the same flight, recklessly cutting classes in her final year at Bryn Mawr. Charlotte’s eighteen-year-old daughter Alaine d’Alivère cabled sympathy to the family from which she had been estranged for a lifetime, but regretted that the production schedule of her first motion-picture made it impossible for her to attend. Paris was still a long way from Hong Kong—much further, it appeared, than London or Philadelphia, though not as far as Peking.
From Taipei, his capital-in-exile on the island of Taiwan, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek sent his personal sympathy and his official representative, a deputy chairman of the Kuomintang who landed at Kaitak with Thomas. Morris Abraham Cohen, the Two-Gun General, emerged from the past on the same C-46. As overwhelming as he had been in his first appearance at The Castle in 1911, he gallantly kissed Mary’s hand and volubly mourned “the thrice-tragic passing of the most excellent Sir Jonathan.” Both William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope lent their words to his florid expressions of grief.
By the morning of the funeral the black-leather volumes on the rosewood table in the circular entrance hall that recorded the signatures of the men and women calling at The Castle had been replaced twice. Among the earliest callers was Sir Alexander Grantham, the Governor of Hong Kong, bearing a message from King George VI. A subdued Iain Wheatley displayed no perceptible satisfaction at “the old bastard’s” death. Judah Haleevie had preceded Sir Jonathan, but Sarah’s seven brothers turned out in a phalanx. The dozens of Seks who also appeared astonished the family by the multiplicity of their presumed kindred. Rothschilds, Barings, Rockefellers, and Warburgs sent telegrams by their representatives in the Colony. From Singapore, Bangkok, Saigon, Manila, Tokyo, and Jakarta, hundreds of overseas Chinese telegraphed profuse expressions of sorrow. From Europe, Australia, and America, governments offered sympathy.
All Hong Kong mourned its own special loss. Flags drooped at half-mast, and incense burned before Buddhist shrines as well as Catholic altars. The Anglican Bishop presided over a memorial service at St. John’s Cathedral, and the Abbot of the Taoist Monastery on Lantao joined his monks in seventy-two hours of continuous prayer. The Crown Colony tendered its supreme gesture of respect when the Jockey Club canceled the Saturday afternoon races at Happy Valley “to demonstrate sorrow and avoid interfering with the cortege.” The Commissioner of Police sighed, canceled all leaves, and ordered all his auxiliaries mobilized to control the throngs.
The family was numb with exhaustion when the cortege finally wound circuitously down The Peak by way of Stubbs Road and through Wanchai to the Roman Catholic Cathedral above Victoria. Five open cars heaped with flowers preceded the great white hearse, and eighty-six limousines followed the massively rounded sandalwood coffin visible through the hearse’s plate-glass windows. Saffron-robed Buddhist priests chanted among the black-clad throngs on the pavements, and thirty-two white-uniformed bands played the rousing tunes the Chinese had adopted to demonstrate that joy at the departed spirit’s reunion with his ancestors in Heaven leavened the selfish grief of the deprived survivors. “Marching Through Georgia,” “The British Grenadier,” and “Dixie” resounded through the narrow streets of Wanchai.
Street bonfires were surrounded by scarlet altars heaped with roast pigs, baked ducks, and pale chickens; weeping professional mourners dressed in the white robes of sorrow consigned their offerings to the flames. Transmuted into smoke, there ascended to Heaven miniature paper replicas of the earthly necessities—ranging from rickshaws and chamberpots to piglets and servants—the deceased would require on his journey. That gesture affirmed the unbreakable continuity of the eternal generations of the Chinese race. Before the Chin Dynasty substituted life-sized clay statues in the third century B.C., cooking implements, chariots, bullocks, pigs, and living retainers had been buried with great noblemen. The Tang Dynasty had in the seventh century A.D. brought to aesthetic perfection the statuettes of horses, warriors, servants, friends, and pets interred with high-born corpses. Though the modern age was less profligate, the paper-and-wood necessities provided for Sir Jonathan Sekloong’s voyage to the other world included facsimile banknotes for HK$20 billion, a thousand motorcars, three hundred mansions, and ten million gold taels. His entourage numbered two hundred fifty servants, a hundred bodyguards, and fifty-six concubines.
After those street spectacles, the service was no more than a fragrant blur to Mary and, at the Catholic Cemetery in Happy Valley, she feared she might faint. A pale, expressionless Charles drew her close, and she leaned gratefully on his arm. In the Rolls returning to The Castle, they held hands and did not speak.
Late that evening in the white fastness of the Hong Kong Club, the Old China Hands drank brandy-and-sodas and reminisced about the Old Gentleman. Their scurrilous tales paid left-handed tribute to both Sir Jonathan’s sexual prowess and his commercial shrewdness. Iain Wheatley, the seventy-five-year-old taipan of the Universally Virtuous hong, sat silent amid the men who were almost his peers.
“Well, Iain, old boy, John Chinaman really put on a show today,” the Managing-Director of the Gazetted Bank of Asia and Australia laughed. “I thought the old bastard would never die.”
Iain Wheatley rose and pronounced the impromptu epitaph that shocked the British Establishment into silent near-sobriety: “Jonathan Sekloong was a bigger, better bastard than any of you bastards will ever be!”
Five days after the funeral, Opal brought Charles and Mary the blue-leather-bound volume that had lain on Sir Jonathan’s knees when he died.
“This must come to you,” she said. “The Old One wrote it, he told me, for you.”
Two streams [Mary read aloud] have constantly intermingled, my own career an
d historical events. My own endeavors, I believe, altered those events, if but minutely. A man of business, a Chinese patriot, was surprised to find that he was also a British patriot.
I shall first recall events from the end of the Second Great War to this date, July 3, 1950. After that War began in 1941, Hong Kong could no longer live in secure isolation from the outside world or the turbulence of China. My family has been caught up by those political maelstroms.
Late last year, the white-sun flag of the Republic of China fluttered down for the last time, replaced by the five golden stars of the so-called People’s Republic of China. The change may ultimately benefit the Chinese people, but I am far too old to alter my allegiance. A new dawn is also rising for Hong Kong, kindled by the energy, the talents, and the capital of hundreds of thousands of refugees, the greatest influx in our history.
“It’s the recollections I hoped he’d write,” Charles exclaimed. “Perhaps we could publish it—if it’s not too personal. How far did he get?”
Mary flicked to the final words Sir Jonathan had written minutes before his death.
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