“Whyn’t we go back to that great club with the horse and acid?” Chappie Parker suggested. “Skip Alaine’s party. Nobody but old dead-beats there.”
“I think not, Chappie,” Jonathan replied judiciously. “Let’s go back to Belgrave Square. I’ve got some new hash hidden behind the Picasso.”
“Hash, man!” Chappie snorted. “That’s for kids. Why not the club, real action?”
“We’ll never make the ten o’clock plane if we don’t get a bit of sleep,” Mary admonished her wavering brother. “And it’s a two-hour drive from Zurich to St. Moritz. I want to be on the slopes tomorrow afternoon.”
“You’re a real tough doll, ain’t you?” Her cousin was admiring. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it.”
“Ho … Ho … Ho Chi Minh!” The raucous chanting was aggressive. “Ho … Ho … Ho Chi Minh!”
Alaine d’Alivère emerged from the Theatre Royal to pose for avid photographers between the white pillars. Her blond beauty framed by the ermine stole draped over her cloth-of-gold gown, Alaine was as radiant as her sapphire-and-diamond necklace. She raised her clenched fist in salute.
“Ah … laine! Ah … laine! Ah … laine!” The spaced syllables were a counterpoint to the rhythmic chant: “Ho … Ho … Ho Chi Minh!”
Kissing her hands to the demonstrators, Alaine entered her waiting Daimler. Distracted by the by-play, the rank of gawking constables broke under the crowd’s renewed assault. A pole knocked a mounted constable from his horse. The foot constables drew their truncheons, but their thin line was overborne by the weight of the throng.
“Pigs!” Chappie shouted. “Kill the pigs!”
Dragging Jonathan along, he hurled himself into the melee. After hesitating momentarily, Little Lady Mary followed. It looked as much fun as schussing straight from the Corvatch to the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz. She slithered through the battling throngs toward her brother and cousin, who were bearing down a struggling constable.
“Kill … the … pigs! Kill … the … pigs!” Chappie chanted to the rhythm of a metronome ticking within his own brain. “Kill … the … pigs!”
“Ho … Ho … Ho Chi Minh!” Jonathan’s lighter voice responded. “Long live Chairman Mao! Long live Chairman Mao!”
Flung wide in the struggle, the constable’s hand struck Mary in the face. She bit down reflexively, and the constable screamed. Mary unlocked her teeth and echoed her brother’s cry: “Long live Chairman Mao!”
The mounted constables forced the crowd back, their disciplined horses gradually channeling the writhing mass of screaming youths. A knife jabbed a velvet flank, and a horse reared. The crowd shrank from the flailing hooves, leaving the three young Sekloongs isolated. Four constables converged to imprison them in blue-clad arms.
“Kill … the … pigs!” Chappie chanted, jerking his knee at a constable’s groin. “Kill … the … pigs!”
“No, you don’t, you little Yank bastard!” The constable slammed his truncheon down on Chappie’s thigh.
The Black Maria and the bleakly utilitarian police station, redolent of Dettol, subdued the cousins. Despite his relief at having slipped his last two joints behind the Black Maria’s hard bench, Jonathan’s fingers trembled. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and, elation departed, considered his predicament, above all, his father’s reaction.
“I think my leg’s broken.” Chappie was still flying high on LSD. “Goddamned pigs won’t let you live. But don’t worry. I’ve had this scene before. The slammer’s not that bad.”
He perked up when a stout wardress led Mary away.
“Watch that one,” he stage-whispered. “She looks like a bull dike, and she’s got eyes for you.”
A subdued Jonathan gratefully accepted the opportunity to telephone his father’s solicitor, his cousin John Philip Duane Osgood, who was Lady Mary’s nephew.
“Not to worry,” John Osgood reassured him. “I’ll have you out in time to make your plane. Good thing your parents are abroad. But, do tell me, old chap, what was the exercise in aid of? What was the point?”
Mid-July of 1967 was unbearably hot—steaming, miserably hot even for Hong Kong. The daytime temperature had not dropped below 92° for two months, while the humidity, inexorably linked to the thermometer, ranged between 88 and 97 percent. The low of 88° during the hours of darkness brought no relief to millions sweltering in the tenements of Wanchai and Kowloon. Those were the readings at the breezy eminence of the Royal Observatory in Kowloon. The asphalt melted in downtown Victoria, and thermometers read 110° in the sun on posh Shouson Hill Road, where the privileged complained that their air conditioners labored to bring the temperature down 10°. Working-class families gasped like landed fish in minuscule bed-alcoves in Mongkok and Kuntong. The red lines on their cheap Chinese thermometers reached 120° and could rise no higher.
Haggard with physical and nervous exhaustion, all Hong Kong’s people scanned the weather forecasts and prayed for a typhoon. The vicious tropical storms that intermittently scourged the Colony in June often brought floods and landslides, but they also filled the reservoirs and drove temperatures down. In 1967, however, typhoons Queenie and Rita maddeningly veered away to savage Taiwan and Hainan Islands. No rain had fallen for eight months, and the Colony’s reservoirs were great baked mud pits.
The desperate shortage of water was the ultimate torture, and the authorities were compelled to enforce rationing by closing the valves on the mains. For just two hours once every four days, taps tantalizingly yielded brackish trickles to half-fill bathtubs and plastic buckets. The pressure was too low to carry water above the sixth floor of jerry-built high rises that lacked elevators. The unfortunates above that divide labored up narrow staircases carrying slopping kerosene tins filled at public taps where hundreds waited. Sweat-soaked garments unlaundered for weeks covered sweating bodies caked with salt.
Nature had conspired with diplomatic protocol to afflict the Colony. Failure of the normal spring rains had invariably required water-rationing in the 1950s. But the Colony had not suffered rationing for almost ten years, not since Kwangtung Province contracted to provide supplementary water through new pipelines. Unfortunately, the agreement stipulated that Hong Kong would not draw on Chinese water from mid-June through mid-September. Civil servants, diplomats, and newspapermen, all drenched in their own sweat, wondered whether the Chinese would actually reopen their enormous valves when mid-September came. Kwangtung was still shipping the pigs, the chickens, and the vegetables that fed Hong Kong. But the timorous feared that the failure to provide emergency water was an extension of the militant Cultural Revolution, a deliberate attempt to exert indirect but powerful pressure on the Colony.
The actual reason was less subtle and less ominous. The managers of the Kwangtung Waterworks dared not depart from the letter of the contract by opening their valves. It was, they felt, better to do nothing, rather than render themselves vulnerable to political criticism by acting positively.
The Castle and the demi-mansions of Sekloong Manor possessed their own holding tanks. Since those rooftop tanks stored only three days’ normal supply for the Manor’s hundred-odd inhabitants, Lady Mary reluctantly ordered new pumps for the well that had served Sekloong Manor before water mains came to The Peak. But she insisted upon stringent water discipline. July 1967 was no time to flaunt one’s privileges. The Sekloongs would maintain a very low posture amid Hong Kong’s manifold troubles.
“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink,” Archbishop Charles Sekloong observed plaintively to his mother. “And hardly a drop to wash in.”
Charles had arrived four days earlier to assess the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’s implications for the Church and to counsel the Colony’s large Catholic population in its fearful perplexity. The Roman Curia preferred to rely upon Charles, who was one of their own, rather than heed the astringent Belgian Jesuit who had devoted eighteen years to analyzing the People’s Republic. Charles had, however, already decided that he m
ust depend largely upon that Jesuit, as well as the diplomats and newspapermen the world called China Watchers.
Though happy to return home, the Archbishop felt slightly uncomfortable in The Castle, where even the water shortage seemed a self-abnegating pretence. He could, however, hardly spurn his aged mother’s hospitality. She had passed her eighty-seventh birthday on June 28, 1967, and he could not hope that the Lord God in His mercy would grant her many more years.
“Water, water everywhere, particularly here.” He laughed, and Lady Mary suddenly saw the mischievous Little Mandarin of half a century ago in the heavy-set churchman.
“You’re getting fat,” she twitted. “If you don’t look out, you’ll be one of the fattest archbishops, as well as one of the youngest. And do stop going on about water.”
“Would you rather I talked about wine?” he asked. “The pleasures of the table, Mother, are all that are left to me.”
“And the pleasures of power, Charles. No Sekloong could ever resist power.”
“But power exercised with discretion, and for the common good.” The Archbishop was suddenly serious. “Not for self-glorification.”
“So they all say, Charles, everyone who loves power. At least you’ve given up trying to convert me.”
“Never tried, you know. A doctor doesn’t treat his own family. Anyway, you’ll do. You’ll be waiting in Heaven for me—if you don’t outlive us all.”
“I may outlive your mad grandnephews and grandniece if they don’t stop their nonsense. And perhaps your brother James as well.”
“This is the year of the riots, Mother,” Charles said. “The madness is everywhere—Paris, Hong Kong, New York and, of course, all China. I heard about that escapade in London. Any more news of Tou-tou or James?”
“Nothing more than James’s one brief letter,” she sighed. “He wrote that Tou-tou had been severely injured, perhaps crippled. But not a word about himself.”
“We can’t expect that, can we? If he’s in difficulties, he’d only make them worse by broadcasting them. But James will survive. I’m worried about the younger ones.”
“What has got into the children, Charles? Sometimes I fear they’re all mad.”
“Not mad, just terribly self-indulgent and, though it sounds an unlikely combination, overzealous. Youth is always too zealous, age, perhaps, too tolerant.”
“Charles, you’re being obscure.”
“I mean, Mother, that the children are muddleheaded. As Christians, they know that good and evil exist. But they can’t really distinguish between them. Nor can they, as Chairman Mao teaches, distinguish clearly between their friends and their enemies.”
“Nor distinguish their own interests,” Mary said tartly. “They are allying themselves with people who want to destroy everything the Old Gentleman built.”
“That’s more your province than mine. I shudder at their misguided moral fervor. And they see everything in hard-edged black and white.”
“Not when they’re flying high, as they say, on drugs.”
“That, too? I feared as much. What can we do?”
“I’m having them out in August, Mary, Jonathan, and that unspeakable Chappie. I can, at least, talk with them. I don’t think their parents ever try.”
“This August, Mother?”
“Yes, Charles. They’ll learn more from Hong Kong in turmoil than in tranquility.”
“With the riots and the threat from China?”
“Fiddle-faddle, Charles. You sound like that fool Lachlan Wheatley, the new taipan. He’s bleating nonsense all over the Colony: ‘What could we do if half a million Red Guards pour across the border?’”
“What could we do?”
“Nothing, because they won’t. The Liberation Army has already turned back twenty thousand Red Guards who wanted to march on Hong Kong. Probably knew they’d never come back.”
“And our own local Red Guards?”
“They’re pink pussycats, not red tigers. Anyway, the people have made their choice. And, I suspect, so has Peking. All the sound and fury is just face-saving.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“As sure as I can be. Hong Kong Chinese don’t like the British. We’re stuffy and self-righteous and venal. But they like the Communists even less. They’re stuffy, self-righteous, venal—and brutal.”
“But the riots and the bombs? Hong Kong’s hardly reassuring just now.”
“Neither is it terrifying. Tell me, Charles, what have you learned about our little Cultural Revolution? I think the children can learn from it. You might too.”
“Not much yet. I’ve only just arrived, you know. Naturally, I’ve chatted with a few people, read the local press, and …”
“The local press, indeed! May I tell you how it’s looked to me? I’ll try not to bore you.”
“You never could, my dear.”
Charles congratulated himself. He placed much higher value on Lady Mary’s views than those of the bureaucrats, but he had wanted her to volunteer her account.
“It all began in April with a gaggle of labor disputes.” Lady Mary spoke rapidly, and her violet eyes were animated. “The workers were right, of course, but that became a side issue. Our local Maoists—most of them fat-cat capitalists, by the way—didn’t really know what Peking wanted, but saw the chance to prove their militant loyalty by bringing the Cultural Revolution to Hong Kong. And what better pretext than labor disputes?
“Early in May, a few thousand students and workers were marching through the streets waving their little red books, chorusing the Chairman’s quotations, and demanding justice for the striking workers. Occasionally, the proletariat’s leaders alighted from their Mercedeses and Rollses to chant slogans.”
Charles was amused by his mother’s acerbic acuity.
“Albert was caught in an incident on Connaught Road. The rioters hurled bricks and paving stones. But the police stood firm behind their wicker shields. Their confidence was, no doubt, enhanced by their steel helmets. Nonetheless, three constables were hospitalized. But they didn’t savage the rioters. Too patient, perhaps.
“Then it turned nasty. The rioters sallied out to attack the police from their fortresses: the China Products Emporiums, which sell mainland goods; the Bank of China, which virtually enjoys extra-territorial rights; and the trades union headquarters in high buildings. Some wielded stolen revolvers. Most had knives, crowbars, clubs, and bicycle chains.
“The China Products stores and the Bank were out of bounds politically, and it was suicidal to climb the narrow stairways to the union offices with missiles raining down. By the time the riot company reached the top, the rioters had escaped across the rooftops to another fortress. But someone used his head. Helicopters dropped onto the rooftops to discharge the riot companies. Attacked from above and below, the Maoists were trapped.
“Then the slogans began to change. The Maoists demanded ‘justice’ for their imprisoned comrades, which meant letting them go free. They also demanded the end of British imperialism. ‘Limeys, go home!’ as Albert might say. It got terribly sticky when someone on the other side decided to join in. The border police were pinned down by machine-gun fire from the Chinese side, and the Gurkhas had to rescue them. For a few days, we had a mini–border war. But Canton finally told the hotheads to cool down.
“Government House was besieged by demonstrators bearing petitions. The police finally winkled them out of Lower Albert Road, and that was the prelude to the real confrontation.
“About one thousand rioters massed around the Hilton. Some tourists got a nasty shock. One minute they were happily watching our quaint natives demonstrate. The next minute, the Maoists shattered the big plate-glass windows and poured into the Coffee Shop. I’m told one American matron’s blue hair turned white with fright. Actually, it wasn’t funny. Three of the old dears were badly cut by flying glass.
“I saw the confrontation from Kennedy Road through binoculars. A thousand or so rioters were trying to force their way up the
hill to Government House. A few hundred policemen faced them. The Maoists swore terrible oaths I couldn’t possibly repeat. They kicked the constables in the groin, gouged at their eyes, and thrust fingers up constables’ noses. But our little Cantonese boys stood firm.
“I wish the foreigners had been as firm. Almost all the big taipans and the little taipans, Chinese and foreign, discovered pressing business elsewhere. Simply had to fly off for urgent medical attention. It was disgraceful, my dear.
“At any rate, I watched those policemen stand in the fearfully hot sun for two hours, abused and mauled. Their discipline was almost unbelievable. What those stocky little chaps put up with. A sergeant’s skull was fractured, and those hell-cat female comrades stabbed a corporal. He was almost emasculated.
“When the rioters charged the police, the superintendent finally gave the order, and the constables waded into the demonstrators. I can’t say that they were gentle, though they never unslung their rifles. In ten minutes, the battle of the Hilton Hotel was won.
“Since then, it’s been downhill, though the police have had to use tear-gas and rubber bullets several times since. We still have amateurish small bombs exploding here and there. Most hurt the poor Chinese—curious workers or children who pick up packages left at bus stops. Very amateurish, though I shouldn’t like to be the chap who defuses the bombs.”
“You make it sound like a jolly Christmas entertainment, Mother,” Charles protested.
“It wasn’t my dear, I assure you. Reminded me of the riots in 1900 and 1909, particularly the political riots in 1900. It’s frightening the way these clashes between Chinese and British recur. In 1900 the Boxers besieged the Legations in Peking. In 1967 the Red Guards besieged the Russian Embassy and burnt the British Embassy. Chinese and foreigners just can’t seem to get along. The Maoists in Hong Kong again stuck up placards demanding: CRUSH BRITISH IMPERIALISM. KILL THE WHITE-SKINNED PIGS. One couldn’t really leave then, could one? Besides, our own people were in danger.”
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