“Good Lord, I forgot!” He introduced us, saying that he had met me in the Kit Kat, and that I was an artist living somewhere down in the slums of Wanchai.
“How perfectly thrilling!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Isn’t Wanchai nothing but brothels? You don’t live in a brothel, do you?”
“No, just in a hotel,” I said, sticking to the legal truth.
“What a pity! I’d adore to live in a brothel—I mean, what heaven to be absolutely surrounded by rampant men! Now I’ve simply got to rush. Darling, shall I meet you for lunch?”
“Sorry, I’m tied up for a business lunch,” Ben said.
“Not another? You must be doing an awful lot of business these days. Never mind, you’ll be able to afford a new dress for me. You can hear the whole of Hong Kong groaning every time I reappear in these ghastly old rags. Well, ’by, darling.” She kissed his forehead, and he smiled and squeezed her hand. “Come on, Binks. No, no more scratchy-turn you’re coming on the lead.”
When she had gone Ben smiled at me a trifle smugly, like any proud paterfamilias after a display of family affection and unity.
“Ben, you’re a disgrace to the Royal Navy,” I said. “I don’t know how you get away with it.”
“With what, old boy?”
“Fooling Elizabeth.”
“I’m not fooling her. I mean, not about my feelings for her. I’ve never been more fond of her. And of course she realizes it, and she’s changed out of recognition. She’s even suggested that I should take up sailing again—buy another dinghy. But I don’t care tuppence about sailing now. It was just a sex substitute.”
“Ben, you’re too good to be true,” I laughed. “But I still don’t understand about Elizabeth. Why, she’s positively glowing!”
“I could explain it.” He regarded me with a faint superior smile, as the seasoned officer would regard the midshipman, wondering if he was yet ready for initiation into some esoteric shipboard mystery. “Only I’m afraid it’ll shock you.”
“One gets pretty shock-proof living at the Nam Kok,” I said.
“You may be shocked all the same. The fact is that I’ve resumed full marital relations with old Liz.”
“You mean, while you’re still carrying on with Suzie?”
“Of course.”
“Good Lord! Well, I suppose if it’s working. . . .”
“It is.”
And he proceeded to describe the events of the previous weekend. Since he had no opportunity to meet Suzie on Saturdays or Sundays he had come to dread the weekends, which had seemed to stretch before him like a great arid desert that had to be crossed before reaching the oasis of Monday noon. Then last Saturday afternoon he and Elizabeth had set out with another couple for a picnic by the sea. In the car Ben had made some thoughtless remark about envying a certain young bachelor his freedom: and later, after their friends had wandered off along the beach, Elizabeth had angrily taken him to task for it. Here she was running his house for him, slaving for him, sacrificing herself for him by living in a Godforsaken colony—and all for what? Just to be humiliated in front of their friends by being told that he would rather be a bachelor.
Ben thought for a minute and then said, “Yes, I realize now. It was a beastly thing to say. I’m terribly sorry, Liz.”
Elizabeth stared at him. The wind had been taken out of her sails. Several times recently the same improbable thing had happened—instead of growing angry, arguing back at her, he had admitted the justice of her complaints. But she had still not grown used to it.
“Well, you should be more careful what you say,” she said rather lamely.
“Yes, I really should.”
They lay in silence. He reflected that a month ago the quarrel would have lasted twenty-four hours and left him more exhausted than a running battle with a U-boat; and he was at a loss to understand his own former perversity. Why had he found it so impossible ever to admit that Elizabeth might be right? And even supposing she wasn’t, what did it matter? Wasn’t it worth giving way just for the sake of peace?
She was lying on her back on a towel. He looked at her. “What a lovely profile you’ve got, Liz.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’d forgotten. I think I first fell in love with you because of your profile.”
Elizabeth laughed and said she did not know what had suddenly possessed him, but he could not fail to notice her glow of pleasure. It was Suzie who had taught him to pay compliments. He had never formerly paid compliments to girls, because if a girl was pretty she was probably quite conceited enough already, and if she wasn’t pretty—well, it was just downright dishonest. He had never complimented Suzie. However, this had not deterred Suzie from paying him compliments, and not a day had passed without her picking on some quality in him that she professed to admire; and although he had sometimes suspected her of exaggeration, he had invariably been touched and pleased—for the wish to flatter was a flattery in itself. And it was largely due to her compliments that he had overcome his impotence. He had been in dread of her ridicule—but so far from making fun of him, she had congratulated him on the virility that she had felt certain was latent in him, and had even pretended to dread its release, since it would undoubtedly overpower a little Chinese girl like herself. Such suggestions had been like the touch of a magic wand. His strength had risen to meet them.
And now he had learnt to use the magic wand himself. He had learnt that often a compliment would help to soften a personality, give it warmth. He looked at Elizabeth again. Something almost like tenderness had come into her face.
She smiled at him and stood up. “Let’s go and bathe.”
And the sight of her standing there in her bathing costume had a strange effect on him. He felt quite stirred. He could not have been more astonished, for he had thought that his feelings for her were long since jaded, and he had never expected to be stirred by her in this way again. He chased after her into the sea. He caught her and they struggled playfully. Then they saw the other couple returning along the beach.
“Thank God you’ve come!” Elizabeth shouted to them in her gay brittle way. “My husband was just about to rape me!”
This struck a jarring note with Ben. It was that familiar sophisticated talk which Elizabeth thought rather smart, and that always included a liberal spattering of words like “rape,” “brothel,” “seduce”—and that had now turned an intimate and rather wonderful event into a cocktail-party joke. His desire was promptly extinguished.
But in the back of the friend’s car going home Elizabeth suddenly took his hand. Perhaps she had remembered his compliment. His desire for her rushed back—overwhelmed him. And they had no sooner reached home than, ignoring her protests that she must immediately feed Binkie, he took her by storm.
He had learned much about the art of love-making from Suzie and he gave Elizabeth the benefit of his new accomplishment. It found the beginnings of response in her, an incipient passion. She was no less surprised than Ben.
“What on earth’s happened to you?” she asked afterwards, with a puzzled laugh. “You never behaved like that before.”
“I know, I’ve been a rotten lover.”
“Well, what’s made you change?”
“I was worried about it. I bought one of those books.”
“You’d better let me see it.”
“I was so ashamed of it that I threw it away.”
On Sunday he was overcome again, and made love to her half an hour before guests were due to arrive for lunch. During the meal one guest remarked that Elizabeth looked radiant. Another found her unusually quiet. Ben himself noticed that throughout the meal she never said “rape,” “brothel,” or “seduce,” or made any brittle witticism about sex. And since then, despite the resumption of relations with Suzie on Monday, they had not looked back.
&
nbsp; I laughed and said, “Well, I’m damned. And that’s the man who a month ago was impotent!”
“You’re joking about it now,” Ben said. “But I could see you really were shocked.”
“Yes, I was a bit at first.”
“I don’t blame you. But look at it this way. What was our marriage worth before? Nothing. All right, is it better now or not?”
“It certainly appears so.”
“And let’s face it—man is a polygamous animal. Of course in Europe we try and blind ourselves to the fact. Bloody stupid—why don’t we accept it as a basic truth, like these Orientals? Their attitude is much more sensible. All the rich Chinese chaps keep mistresses, and it’s considered perfectly respectable. They do exactly as I’m doing. All right, so look at it statistically. On the one hand there are a few thousand Europeans in Hong Kong whom my behavior would scandalize—and on the other hand several million Chinese who would accept it as perfectly natural. It makes one think.” He flicked his wrist with a decisive movement to look at his watch. “Lord, look at the time!”
I smiled to myself. Nearly eight bells—time to go on the bridge.
“And I’ve a couple of letters to dictate before I meet Suzie.” He pushed back his chair. “By the way, I suppose she’s really behaving herself—keeping off sailors?”
“Yes, she’s been very faithful to you,” I said.
“I imagine so. Now, you’ll excuse me if I shoot off?”
“Go ahead,” I said. “And I hope you haven’t been pinched for parking.”
“That’d be too bad.” He gave a suave naval grin. “Still, when one’s got this sex business taped, and a marvelous girl like that lined up—well, I mean, old boy, what’s the odd fine?”
Chapter Three
When I had told Ben at the Kit Kat that Suzie was behaving herself it had been perfectly true. But only a few days later she blotted her copybook.
It happened one evening when she was in the bar and a matelot came over to seek her favors. Since the advent of Ben, whom she met only at lunchtime, she had been at a loose end in the evenings, and she had been in the habit of spending them either gossiping with me in my room or with her girl friends downstairs; and whenever a sailor had approached her, she had simply apologized and explained that she was “resting.” However, this particular matelot refused to be shaken off. He had been her boy friend eight months before, when his ship had last called at Hong Kong; and he earnestly assured her that for those eight months he had done little else but think of her and look forward to this return visit.
He was Irish, and his tongue persuasive. And as added inducement he offered her twice the sum that he had paid her before.
Suzie thought of her baby’s future. And since the matter, financially speaking, concerned her baby more than herself, she was not sure that she had any right to refuse on his behalf. Besides, the matelot had been her boy friend before Ben, which gave him a sort of prior claim.
“All right,” she said, and upstairs they went.
And after falling once it made the offense hardly worse to fall again, and she occasionally did so. She would not deliberately offer herself; but if a sailor approached her and she liked the look of him, and if she could bring herself to interrupt her gossip, she would let herself be persuaded.
I thought this very naughty of her and told her so. She was very cross. She told me to mind my own business. Then she relented and apologized for being rude, and explained that she would never dream of deceiving a boy friend whom she respected—but the fact was that she did not respect Ben. She thought he had no strength of character.
“The Navy wouldn’t agree with you,” I told her. “He got a very good decoration in the war. He was a hero.”
But she was stubbornly indifferent to the Admiralty’s estimate of him. “No, he is weak. Oh, I know, he has a big strong body. He has plenty of muscle and a big chest. But there is nothing inside that big chest except a little heart about so big”—and she held up her little fingernail.
“I think he’s got a very good heart,” I said. “Anyhow, that’s no excuse for taking his money under false pretenses. You’re cheating him.”
“Yes—cheating.”
“And aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“No.”
About a week later, however, an incident occurred that caused her to revise her estimate of Ben, and that put an abrupt end to her infidelities. It began, so far as I was concerned, at about eleven o’clock one evening when I had just got into bed, and there was a sudden loud banging on the door. I thought it must be a drunk. “Who is it?” I demanded.
“Ben.”
He entered without further invitation, slammed the door, and stood looming over the end of my bed, with an aggressive aspect that suggested he had been drinking. However, he was nothing like so drunk as he had been on his first visit and was perfectly in command of himself. His chin purposefully jutted, as if the enemy had just been sighted and he stood grimly on the bridge giving orders for action stations.
He said, “You’d better get dressed, old boy. We’ve got a job to do.”
“What on earth’s happened, Ben?”
“It’s that little bitch of mine. She’s with a sailor.”
“Good Lord! Well, what are you going to do?”
“Fish her out.”
“But you can’t go—”
“Come on, man, get cracking. We can talk while you get your things on.”
I began to dress, playing for time. Meanwhile Ben explained that this evening he had been to a stag party given by a rich Chinese client in one of those huge expensive Chinese restaurants the size of department stores. There had been lashings of whisky to wash down the fabulous food, and the usual little Chinese hostesses to joke and flirt with the guests. The attentions of these girls had reminded him of Suzie; he had begun to feel a longing for her that had become almost unbearable; and as soon as the party had broken up—Chinese dinners were never prolonged beyond the end of the food—he had driven down to the Nam Kok and, emboldened by the whisky, walked straight into the bar. Not finding Suzie herself there, he had asked one of the girls where she was; but the girl, evidently a friend of Suzie’s, had disclaimed all knowledge of her whereabouts. He had repeated the question to a second girl with “a waggling bloody bottom like a voodoo dancer,” who had been more forthcoming, and had revealed that Suzie had just gone upstairs with an American.
I said, “That was obviously Betty Lau. Of course, she’d have no compunction about doing Suzie in the eye.”
“Look, man, can’t you get a move on?”
“Ben, we can’t just go barging into some room—”
“Why not?”
“What’s the point? The harm’s done now.”
“You leave that to me, and just get dressed.”
“Ben, I’m having nothing to do with it.”
“All right, if you haven’t the guts—I’ll do the job myself.”
And turning away disdainfully, he strode from the room.
Several minutes passed. Then Ah Tong entered in a state of perturbation to report that Ben had been grilling him to find out in which room Suzie was installed, and that on his assurance that she was not on this floor had gone to pursue his search on the floors below. Ah Tong, perceiving Ben’s dangerous mood, was fearful of what might happen when he found her. He begged me to try and restrain him from violence.
I reluctantly agreed to do what I could and set forth in pursuit. I found him leaving the floor boy’s desk on the lower landing.
“Ah, you’ve thought better of it,” he said, walking briskly past me toward the stairs. “Well, she’s not on this floor,” so that leaves only the floor below.”
I said, “Listen, Ben, I know what we can do. If we can find out her room number, you can speak to her on the telepho
ne.” And I added, to try and impress him with the effectiveness of this measure, “She’ll get the most awful shock when she hears you.”
“I’ve no intention of speaking to her on the telephone.” We reached the first floor landing, and he strode up to the floor boy’s desk. “Suzie Wong, what room’s she in?”
“Uh?”
“You heard me. Suzie Wong.”
The floor boy shook his head. He was looking at a Chinese film magazine with pictures of American stars. I never came to this floor and I did not know him.
“Not here.” He had shifty eyes and was obviously lying.
Ben was about to make some retort when his attention was distracted by a door opening down the corridor. The tiny luscious Jeannie came out, ushered by a gangling American sailor. The sailor paused at the door of the next room, adjusting his round white sailor’s cap from the back with one hand, and thumping on the door with the other. “Hey, Hank!”
A girl’s voice replied from within, “What you want? Hank’s busy.”
“Hey, that you, Fifi? Tell Hank we’re just gonna have chow.”
Hank’s voice from inside said, “Hey, Joe!”
“Yeah? That you, Hank?”
“Yeah, where you gonna eat chow?”
Jeannie put her face close to the door and said, “Hey, Fifi! I take Joe to the Victory. You going to bring Hank?”
“Sure,” called back Fifi. “He make me plenty hungry!”
“O.K.,” said Joe. “See you later, Hank.”
“O.K., see you later, Joe.”
Joe lifted his hand behind his head, screwed his hat round again, and pushed it so far forward that it was almost resting on the bridge of his nose. He had to tilt his head well back to see under the brim. Jeannie took his arm. They came toward us and turned down the stairs.
“Christ, what a place to live!” Ben exclaimed. He turned back to the floor boy. “Now, where’s that girl? I’m from the police.”
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