by Martin Booth
* * *
‘How much?’ he asked, as he dressed himself and she dried the sweat off her legs with a towel.
‘Eight dollar.’
He hadn’t been any use on the bed, but that was not her reason for cutting the price. Business was business where that was concerned.
He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to nine.
‘I thought it was twenty-five bucks an hour?’
‘Mistah Wong take eight dollar for one hour,’ she told him. ‘You just pay him money. I fuck you for free.’
He regarded her in silence. It had been a long time since anyone had given him anything. He tried to remember the last occasion, and couldn’t.
With his foot, he pulled the shoe over and bent down. He knew his money was safe for he hadn’t let himself doze off. He thrust two fingers into the toe and pulled out the wad of crumpled notes.
‘Where you get so much?’
‘I stole it,’ he replied bluntly. ‘There’s more’ – he patted the lining of his jacket – ‘but I need that to pay my rent at the –’
He stopped. He didn’t want her to know where he lived.
‘I go now,’ she said, not noticing. ‘You leave room. Jus’ close door and it lock okay.’
Sandingham stood up and kissed her on the cheek. He thought then how beautiful she was. He handed her twenty-five dollars but she took only ten and gave the rest back to him. He saw, to his astonishment, that she was crying. She stood up on tiptoe and quickly kissed him back, like an innocent girl with her first love. Then she left and he heard her stepping quickly down the wooden stairway.
He finished dressing, put twenty dollars behind the joss-stick holder in front of the household god and left.
As he walked past the bar on the way to the tram stop he could hear the shouts of sailors inside. Soon, he knew, Lucy would be back in that tiny room, her legs spread out on that same bed with another man thumping his belly on hers.
As the tram juddered over a set of points at the bottom of Garden Road he thought to himself how much more bearable, somehow, life would have been in those bleak years, had he known that she was on the outside, waiting and thinking, counting the weeks off for him.
* * *
It was past ten when he reached the hotel. The manager was sitting on a stool at the far end of the green marbled bar with a milk shake before him. He was talking to a Chinese man several years his senior. Sandingham went up to them.
‘Excuse me, Mr Heng. May I see you for a moment, please?’
‘Good evening, Mr Sandingham. I trust you have had a good day?’ Somehow he made the pleasantry sound genuine.
‘I have your rent. Rather’ – Sandingham saw the irony of the distinction – ‘I have my rent.’
They went to the hotel desk and Sandingham took the money out of his pocket – he’d transferred it there from his shoe – and received a receipt for the full amount. He sensed Heng was curious.
‘Gambling,’ he lied. ‘Wonderful people, the Chinese’ – he spoke as if to a European – ‘will gamble on anything. I won this on a cricket fight.’
‘Really? Where?’ Heng knew Sandingham was lying, but played along. He spoke as a European, too.
‘North Point,’ Sandingham said, ‘or beyond. Near the tram terminus in Shau Kei Wan.’
‘Sai Wan Ho,’ said the manager. ‘They do a lot of that there.’
He had not been through that part of Hong Kong Island in twelve months, but it was better to humour his guest. At least he now had the rent securely in the cash-box and would feel neither the wrath of the owners nor the acute embarrassment of having to evict Sandingham.
It was not a long walk to Ah Moy’s hideaway in Mong Kok. On the way Sandingham stopped at a kerbside food stall to eat a bowl of fried rice with cubes of diced fish, peas and cabbage in it. It was inexpensive and nourishing and, laced with soya sauce, was tasty. He ate with the gusto of a Chinese, holding the rice bowl in his left hand and scooping the rice and watery gravy into his mouth with split bamboo chopsticks. A few passers-by noticed and gave him a second fleeting look, but most ignored him.
He was careful in his approach to Nam Tau Street. He leaned on the wall at the corner with Canton Road for over five minutes pretending to read from a street library. Such places, well patronised by people who could not afford to purchase books, always drew a crowd. On the windowless end wall of a building hung an array of Chinese paperback books and comics and, for a very small fee – five cents, perhaps – one could read a book for a set length of time. Every now and then the ‘librarian’ collected the fees. Even this late at night there was a throng of readers who provided Sandingham with the camouflage he needed.
Satisfied that he was not being watched, he walked slowly along the pavement, keeping close to the shop fronts and, at an appropriate moment, ducked into a doorway. A corridor ran down to a staircase.
At the head of the stairs was a door. He knocked on it seven times. In Cantonese, a voice asked for his name. He answered ‘gweilo’, a derogatory word for Europeans but the nickname by which he was known. He wasn’t overly concerned by the rudeness of this password. He was the only European who visited here. Such a precaution was necessary.
Four bolts slid back and the door opened several inches on a chain. Reassured that the visitor was alone, the door-keeper removed the slider on the links, opening up so that Sandingham could quickly enter. As soon as he was in, the door was promptly slammed, chained and re-bolted.
In front of Sandingham stood a diminutive Chinese woman dressed in baggy black trousers and a white smock top. She looked like a child’s amah in a well-to-do civil servant’s house on The Peak.
She remained silent but held out her hand. Sandingham gave her Leung’s piece of paper and thirty dollars. Still without speaking she led him into a room about twelve feet square. Along two walls, up to the ceiling, were rows of bunks without mattresses, eight in all. They were lined with base-boards, and each had a hessian pillow on it.
He lay on a bottom bunk noticing, as he did so, that three of the other bunks were occupied. The room was dark and he could see a glow at the edge of a top bunk.
The woman returned and gave Sandingham a small brass pipe, a little porcelain oil lamp with a tiny, smoky flame and a round ball of wax-like, brown opium the size of a child’s marble. He pressed this into the pipe and got it melted and going over the flame. Soon it had burned away; he blew out the lamp and lay back. The pipe and lamp were removed by a young boy. He arranged the pillow under the back of his neck, knowing that this way would be most comfortable.
The sweetish odour of the opium clung to Sandingham’s nostrils as he closed his eyes. He felt his arms grow heavy, then magically lighten. He heard Lucy say, quite clearly but as if from a great distance, ‘This time I fuck you for free!’ Laughter chimed and echoed round his head. Then he heard, as clearly as he heard Lucy, a voice say with considerable peeved annoyance, ‘Well, fuck this for a laugh!’
It was an emaciated Englishman dressed in tattered shorts, with wooden sandals on his feet. He was standing by the bunk. His sleeve was torn and there was dry blood caked in the lines of his palms, and under his immaculately manicured fingernails.
PART TWO
Hong Kong: Christmas, 1941
THE FIRST FIFTY yards of Harlech Road were only just wide enough to allow passage for the Austin K30 truck. The private driving it had difficulty getting the vehicle round the corner, his problem compounded by the fact that the headlights were covered with black metal masks which stopped all but the flimsiest of beams from escaping. What was more, the officer in charge had instructed him to turn the corner as quickly as possible. As long as the lorry was at the junction it was visible as a tiny but significant silhouette: a shrewd observer over on Kowloon, equipped with a pair of powerful night binoculars and looking up at the mountain, would see the movement and note it down for further action in the morning. In his hurry to get into Harlech Road the driver had scraped the broad mudguard a
long the stone wall at the bottom of Mount Austin Road; the steel was bare along the deep scratch, and there was a white stripe like a flesh wound on the granite blocks.
The officer walked behind the truck. All he could see was the white disc attached to the rear axle, under the wooden-sided truck bed.
Where the road widened somewhat, the driver stopped the lorry and the officer worked his way around the nearside and got into the cab, his boot clicking on the running step.
‘Been here before?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then carry on but take it easy. The road stays narrow for some way – after a bit there’s a passing place where you can pull off to the left and stop. I’ll tell you when.’ The officer paused, then added, ‘When you do pull over, watch for rocks. Some of them stick up a bit. Certainly as high as the sump cover.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The driver jarred the gears which slurred heavily together as he sought first: they moved off at dead slow speed. The faint lights showed virtually nothing in the shade of the trees that overhung the road.
‘Go slower here.’ Then, more urgently, ‘Stop. Switch off the engine.’
The lorry halted. As soon as the motor was silent both men could hear water sluicing and tumbling in the night.
‘There’s a waterfall just in front, to the right of the roadway. I’ll walk ahead and you follow me. It’s on a corner. Tight bend left, iron railings on either side. Try not to decorate them with khaki…’
The driver nodded his understanding in the darkness and the officer got out, holding behind his back a sheet of message paper. The driver could see this as a white, indistinct blur. He started the engine once again.
The waterfall drew nearer and, walking ahead of the truck, the officer was freed from the incessant moan of the vehicle motor. He listened to the water.
It had a peace about it. No matter how powerful or surging the torrent, no matter how much threat it might hold, water always seemed peaceful. Perhaps that was why, Sandingham reasoned, the Chinese talked of the fung shui, the local gods, who were of water. Shui meant water. As the Romans had the lares, so the Chinese … There was a squeal. A mudguard met the railing. The lorry stopped.
‘For Chrissake, driver!’
He walked smartly back to the arched bonnet of the truck.
‘Sorry, sir. Can’t see none too good.’
‘Move aside. Let me do it.’
The driver slid into the passenger seat and Sandingham took the steering wheel. He deftly squared the lorry off and drove around the bend. Once through the difficulty of the corner, he drove on.
The trees thinned out and, in the starlight, both men could see the mountain climb sharply above them and drop away on their left to a reservoir far below. Beyond lay the sea and the end of Lamma Island.
Both men knew, though their difference in rank and the ever-important rules of morale prevented them from mentioning it outright, that Hong Kong had had it. It was only a matter of time now until annihilation or capitulation. The Imperial Japanese Army had not found it difficult to fight their way through the New Territories behind the Kowloon Hills. Resistance had been dogged and determined but the local garrison and volunteers had been vastly outnumbered. Now the Japanese occupied the entire colony except for Hong Kong Island: the last-ditch stand.
‘I wonder if they’ve made that island yet, sir,’ said the driver, thinking out loud and looking down the hillside.
Sandingham made no answer but, as if in reply, a light shone briefly on the island shore, then died out. A few moments later a muffled bump reverberated up from the valley beneath them.
Sandingham stopped the lorry and got out.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘bring the torch and keep it angled very low. Very low, you understand?’
The private was young, not more than twenty. Sandingham was twenty-four and a fully-fledged man. He could see the soldier’s face dimly in the light of the torch. A bloody boy. Newly arrived and still wet-arsed. Had it been summer, he’d have had sunburnt knees.
A large boulder loomed up in the darkness, blacker than the surrounding sandy soil. It had not rained recently and the ground was dusty. Scrubby grass grew where feet and heavy-duty tyres had not crushed or rubbed it out.
Once behind the boulder, Sandingham reached down for the field telephone relay box. It was military green in colour and the private could see that it had been lightly camouflaged with tufts of grass and twigs. These fell off as Sandingham lifted it on to the flattish top of the rock.
‘Get the roll.’
The private went off with the torch and Sandingham stood up. He pressed his hands into the small of his back, stretching his muscles. The cloud cover was patchy and, through it, starlight coruscated upon the South China Sea. He turned to check that the torch wasn’t showing.
‘Here you are, sir.’
‘Good. Hold the reel by the lugs on each side and run the line out down to that tree there.’ The stars were out now and the tree came into ghostly view a hundred yards away. Now that their eyes had grown accustomed to the night the headlamps on the thirty-hundredweight truck were a help, too. ‘When you get there, put the reel down and come back at the double. Make sure the wire is off the road – we don’t want some clumsy-footed infantryman tripping on it. Not even one of theirs.’
He trimmed the twin-core telegraph wire bare at the ends and connected it to the terminals in the box. He couldn’t see very well, but he knew how to do it blindfold. He had wired up a set of three boxes once in the pitch black of a broom cupboard, for a bet, in Aldershot. Two and a half years before: it seemed more than a lifetime away. They had drunk the five quid he won in the wager in an old pub in Farnham, driving over there in Noel’s Lagonda. That was the night he’d first met Bob. He was wearing a cream panama hat with a boating blazer and a Cambridge tie.
‘I’ve done it, sir.’
‘Fine. I’m done here. Now we work our way along this road for about half a mile. You follow in the truck: don’t pass me. I’ll pay out line and, when I reach the end of the roll, I’ll wave to you and you give me a connector. There’s a box of them in the back behind the cab. Under the canvas. Got it?’
He spoke sharply. There wasn’t all that much left of the night.
‘Sir!’
‘Let’s get on with it, then.’ He looked up and across to the west. Few of the clouds that were building appeared of any size. There should be enough sky light to see by for a bit. ‘Switch the lights off. You’ll see me better.’
The truck crept along at the slowest possible speed, the driver keeping the revs low to prevent the sound of the vehicle travelling unnecessarily down the mountainside.
On the way, the break in the line appeared where he was informed it would: a shallow crater, ten feet across at the side of the road, showed where an attempt had been made to sever the communications that Harlech Road offered. He couldn’t tell from the scorched earth and stripped trees whether it had been done by an air strike or fifth columnists.
The thought of the latter suddenly made him nervous. He reached into his holster and checked the revolver. He made sure it was loose in the leather, like a western gunfighter checking his draw would be rapid and smooth.
They reached the junction with Hatton and Lugard Roads within thirty minutes.
It was too risky at this point to allow the driver to switch the masked lights on again. Their intelligence was poor but the meeting of the three roads was visible from Stonecutters Island which they knew had fallen. It was necessary to get the truck down Hatton Road and this meant negotiating a bend at the start of the road and another, a hundred-and-eighty degree twist, halfway down.
‘Move over once more, driver. I’ll take it from here – it’s a tricky stretch ahead.’
Indeed, it was not easy and, at the sharp corner before the hairpin, Sandingham wondered if he were up to it. He had been putting himself to the test a lot of late, usually just getting by. The bend was tight and he was forced to make a six
-point turn to get round. Once the oversized tyres, intended for maximum cross-country purchase, scrabbled on the rim of the tarmac, scrubbing the earth for a grip. The young driver would certainly not have managed it.
Looking at the young man in the darkness, his face lit by the dashboard light, Sandingham could see he was petrified. God, he thought, if the boy’s scared of the lorry slipping off the metalling, what will he be like when the show starts in earnest? He wanted to touch the boy, to pat his thigh or, just once, stroke his wrist. To reassure him. But he was an officer and that added even more barriers to their communicating.
The remainder of the downhill journey was easier and they soon reached the massive concrete gun emplacement, driving the Austin K30 into the central courtyard and tucking it in close to the wall for protection. A sentry had hailed them but no one else had been seen or heard. He sent the driver off to a room across the courtyard where the other ranks slept.
With tired arms, Sandingham yanked down on the iron door handle and struggled to get the steel door open. He entered the fortified position with a momentary sense of security. A weak electric light briefly shone its beam on to the outside stonework, but it would be impossible to see it except from the air or the top of The Peak. And no sorties were being flown at night. There were too many mountains around.
‘You’re the signaller wallah, are you?’ asked a voice from the shadows cast by the dim bulb. ‘Damn glad to have you here: been out since the afternoon. Get through now, can we? Heard a bit of jingling on the line.’