by Martin Booth
‘Fancy a little snort for the road?’
No one.
From across the water, he could hear an Austin truck change gear noisily. Someone coughed throatily, they might have been hawking or choking.
‘Remember what they say.’
‘What do they say?’ Sandingham asked.
But there was no answer to that.
A Chinese deckhand appeared from a door and walked by, carrying a mop in a bucket of warm, sudsy water. He stopped by the firepoint at the far end of the deck and began to swab the planking. Sandingham turned his attention to the shore again.
There it is, he thought. I can see it. By the steps.
He was no longer standing on the Takshing but in the sidestreet that was now slipping silently by in what had once been a night rife with terror … He could scent the tobacco smoke from the 555s, see the lapping flames of the fire and the billy on the boil. The tea would soon be brewed. And he could hear, quite clearly, coming to him from across the two hundred yards of water, the voice of the long-dead soldier saying, ‘We ’elp ’em up the steps … We ’elp ’em up the steps … We ’elp ’em up the steps.’
It was gone. Kennedy Town came along the shoreline, followed by the two islands that formed the westernmost edge of the harbour. Clear of Green Island, the ferry swung to port and on to a south-westerly course which would take her clear of Lantau. As she made her turn the deck moved at an imperceptible angle. A list. Sandingham’s fingers mechanically clenched on a stanchion.
He returned to his cabin and, from his case, took a bottle of bourbon, purchased before he left the hotel that afternoon. Half of it was already consumed. He finished it off and lay back once more on the bunk, screwing the ventilator to the fully open position and directing the blast of night air on to his face. He was sweating heavily. The rush of air cooled his sweat and dried the tears as they fell on to his cheeks. The luxury of sleeping in a bunk, in a cabin that was rightfully his and already paid for, lulled him into a rich sleep. His last conscious action was to ease off his shoes with his toes, allowing them to tumble to the cabin floor. To do this hurt at the joints of his knees, but he didn’t give a damn.
* * *
He awoke swiftly with an urgency that only his subconscious comprehended. Something was amiss. Someone was waving a football rattle. The ship was no longer under way. He glanced at his watch and cursed. It had wound down, had stopped at four-fifteen.
He struggled into his jacket and put on his shoes, without caring to untie the laces, treading down the heels. Knocking the empty whiskey bottle over in his haste, he twisted the door handle and let in the daylight that was, of its own accord, already finding its way through the slats. The cold morning air made him realise that his flies were unbuttoned, so he slammed the door shut and fumbled to do them up.
A few passengers were lining the rail and looking out to sea. The lounge steward was hurrying along the deck, talking quickly.
‘Pleese. Eve’yone into they-ah cabin. Or into salon. Thank you.’
Few made any effort to move and he started to touch people’s elbows.
‘Pleese,’ the steward repeated, more loudly and more insistently, the tone of his voice drawing attention by its unfamiliar directness. ‘Into cabins or to salon. Pleese. Eve’yone go insi’.’
‘What’s going on?’ Sandingham asked as the passengers began to drift away from the ship’s rail. ‘Why have we stopped?’
‘Communis’ Chinees Navy,’ the steward replied tersely.
Sandingham had not been paying particular attention to the man’s face, but was instead scanning the horizon, waiting for his eyes to adjust from the gloom of his cabin. Now his gaze fastened on the Chinese steward and he saw that the man was terrified. The steward’s skin, normally tan-golden in the delicate way the southern Chinese have, was pale and blotched. His hair seemed greyer than normal for his race. His hand, where it touched Sandingham’s elbow, shook electrically: it reminded him of the feeling he had once had on holding a newly-shot rabbit.
‘You don’t need to worry,’ Sandingham said, though the man’s fear was transferring itself to him and he was feeling his own shoulders tighten and his nerve-ends fray with the first pangs of uncontrollable alarm. It was like the encroaching well-being of opium, but in reverse: in place of peace was turmoil.
The steward made no reply.
‘You’re not an illegal immigrant to Hong Kong, are you? You didn’t get in on a night junk or swim the Sham Chun River?’
The man shook his head.
‘And you’ve got a Hong Kong passport, or identity card or something?’
The steward nodded.
‘Then there is no need to be afraid.’
He took the steward firmly by the arm and gripped him encouragingly.
It was ridiculous and Sandingham knew it. Here he was comforting a man who was going through the same crisis as he had gone through time and again and which he knew he was about to meet with once more. He had no right to comfort him, had had no right to comfort others in the past, as he had done. He was a mute cripple trying to cure a deaf invalid: the blind leadeth the blind unto blissful ignorance, he thought. There was nothing he could do if it came to the crunch. And it might: the steward’s next words confirmed the possibility, his English pronunciation deteriorating pro rata to his escalating anxieties.
‘We in inte-nashunor watar.’
That much Sandingham understood. International waters. Anything can happen in international waters. You can be pirated, murdered, plundered, blown off course, torpedoed …
It hadn’t been a football rattle. He knew that now, had probably known it all along, but some inner valve had kept the fact from his awareness. The rattle was a concentrated burst of machine-gun fire.
An emptiness opened up in the pit of Sandingham’s stomach and grew until it was a huge void that contained him like a vast bubble. He fought against its sides, but it was rubberised and gave and stretched at his touch. Nor had he any means with which to puncture it, no means of escaping the claustrophobia of all-enveloping fright. He had to accept it, and did.
The steward entered the salon to listen to one of the officers who was addressing the passengers.
So far as Sandingham could see, there was no sign of the Chinese Navy lying off the Takshing. Perhaps it was a false alarm.
The ship’s engines started. He leaned over the side. The propellers were churning the sea and the waves were beginning to shift past the hull. They were steering off the course to Macau.
His talk over, the officer left the salon just as Sandingham entered it. He had a frown on his face. The steward, in order to drive away his fear, was busying himself with pots of coffee. Everyone was chattering. Sandingham joined a group of English husbands and wives who were going to Macau for a break from the routine of Hong Kong’s social whirl.
‘What is going on?’ he asked. They looked at him somewhat askance, as if he were arriving late for a Government House cocktail party, after the Governor. ‘I was sleeping in my cabin,’ he continued by way of excuse.
His question was taken up by a man in his mid-fifties dressed in a white suit and a pale blue, open-necked shirt. He wore a gold Rolex watch and his shoes were evidently hand-made and squeaked as he changed his weight from one foot to the other.
‘Weren’t you here?’ he started unnecessarily, ignoring Sandingham’s excuse. ‘Well: it seems the Reds want to ask us a lot of questions. God knows what about! There will be hell to pay after this, I can assure you. And the Bank’ll have something to say, for certain. The minute we get to Macau, I’m ringing the Chief Accountant and the Colonial Secretary.’
‘It won’t be long before the RN get here,’ added another passenger. ‘They’ve been radio-ed.’
‘We aren’t going to Macau,’ Sandingham pointed out. ‘We’re steering in another direction.’
‘Apparently,’ said the first man’s wife, a pretty brunette in a flowery print dress, at least fifteen years her husband’s juni
or, ‘we’ve been ordered to go to Lap Sap Mei Island.’
‘Why?’
No one could proffer an adequate answer to that query, but at this point the steward appeared at their side with a tray of coffee, interrupting their conversation.
‘Toas’?’ the steward enquired.
‘Yes. With ginger marmalade,’ ordered the wife.
Only the British, the real British, Sandingham thought, could specify the type of marmalade to be served in a critical predicament. She would ask for demerara sugar next for the coffee.
‘And brown sugar, please, steward.’
Sandingham laughed loudly. It wasn’t a laugh of humour but one mingled with fear, a laugh that wasn’t meant to be jolly but to release tension.
‘Look,’ said the man with the gold Rolex, realising how Sandingham was feeling and lowering his voice, ‘you don’t need to show it. Damn it! We’re all a bit flustered but nothing will happen. Not to us.’
Not to us, thought Sandingham. No: we’re as invulnerable as the vaults in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. No one can touch us, the Europeans, the colonial pushers and shovers, the controllers of the lives and fates of others. We’re as right as rain. Safe as houses. But the steward, the deckhand with the mop, the poor bastard with the mooring hawser, the engine-room artificer, the baggage coolies, the Chinese passengers on the cheaper deck with all their meagre worldly possessions tied in blue cloth bundles or tucked into rattan baskets. They were the ones who were defenceless.
The ship slowed and stopped. The officer returned to the salon.
‘Ladies and gentlemen. Please be sure you have your passports ready. The Chinese naval forces of the Central People’s Government’ – there was more than a trace of sarcasm in his words – ‘are going to board the ship and search it. Please do not hinder them in the course of their duty. I can additionally let you know in confidence that two of Her Majesty’s vessels are on their way from Hong Kong in response to the captain’s radio alert for assistance. There is no need to be concerned. Personally speaking, I think that this is just a muscle-flexing exercise on the part of the Communist Chinese. The captain suggests that you either remain in the salon or go to your cabins. The most important thing is that we are not seen to be disrupting or hampering the boarding party in any way. Our instructions for such circumstances are that co-operation is better than confrontation.’
Sandingham, looking out of one of the salon windows, saw a grey gunboat coming alongside. A group of armed men in uniform was assembled on its deck and he could hear a ladder being lowered down the hull of the Takshing. He noticed that the steward was still ashen-faced: he was concentrating on collecting or refilling the coffee cups. Another steward who was obviously as worried as his colleague was handing out toast. They were doing everything possible to contrive that they remained in the salon with the European passengers.
It was not difficult for Sandingham to understand their motives. He had often seen men, who would otherwise have shunned one another’s company, cling together for mutual safety and protection.
There was a clatter of metal on metal and the salon door to the deck opened. Two Communist Chinese soldiers entered. They said nothing. The sub-machine-guns at their hips spoke volumes. After they had positioned themselves by the door, an NCO came in and started to look around the room. He did not request passports, nor did he search personal belongings. He looked instead under chairs, into cupboards and into the faces of the stewards. To each of the two Chinese he drew his own face close and studied them. It was as if he were filing away their features for future reference or searching their countenances now for some clue that would trigger off in his mind’s eye a visage from a wanted poster or a dossier shelved somehwere in the police and military archives in Canton. Both stewards looked straight back at him but neither moved so much as a cheek muscle.
Satisfied with his search, the NCO left in the company of one of the guards. The other remained, covering the passengers with his weapon. For their part, the passengers spoke quietly or not at all. The stewards, like figures in a film that has been stopped and then restarted on a projector that takes a few minutes to regain its former speed, carried on with their coffee-and-toast routine.
Sandingham lowered himself heavily into a chair in the corner of the salon and gazed at his feet. He had escaped once more. The threat was gone, removed more by chance than design.
It was ever so with him: there was nothing he could do to alter the shape of destiny, his own or that of others. Events happened to him, and he observed them and recorded them much as a mother might record the growth of her children through the years in a photograph album. And, from time to time, he reviewed them, just as the mother opens the album. The difference was that with her she saw love developing, saw the expansion and life of the flesh of her own body coming to fruition and her joy and pride increased with them. For him, it was a reassessment of failures and lost loves and the destruction of himself and those whom he, in his turn, loved or knew well.
The salon door burst open. Even the remaining guard jumped. Quite clearly, Sandingham heard the safety catch on the guard’s sub-machine-gun snap into the ‘fire’ position. His head swam hazily.
A Chinese officer marched in and barked out a command. No one moved. He barked it out again.
Through a marbling mist, Sandingham was certain he could see Tokunaga standing there. He was looking at him, pointing to him, his hand on the hilt of his sword. He could smell the steel. Though he knew The White Pig had been dead for many years, he nevertheless stood up slowly.
The officer beckoned to Sandingham who followed him; the passengers’ eyes traced his progress to the door.
He was led down the deck to his cabin. Inside, a Communist soldier had emptied Sandingham’s suitcase on to the bunk. He was sifting through the contents with his hands, shaking out the clothing and running his fingers over the linings and seams.
Another indecipherable command was spoken and, at this moment, the ship’s officer who had addressed the assembled passengers in the salon arrived on the scene, fetched by another of the boarding party.
‘He wants to know your name. There is nothing in your case with it written on.’
Sandingham thrust his hands into his pockets and clenched his fists in an unsuccessful attempt to stop his shaking with fear. He prayed the soldier would not notice his shivering.
‘Sandingham. Joseph.’
He almost added his rank and number, long since forgotten or, more accurately, pushed back into a recess in the catalogue of non-successes and hurt he carried, so well indexed, within himself.
‘He wants to know where you live.’
‘In Kowloon. Waterloo Road.’
There was a discussion between the searcher and his superior. The ship’s officer was spoken to again.
‘He wants to know if you are going to Macau at the order of a man called Leung Ping-kin.’
‘Tell him I’m not,’ said Sandingham, his brain active with fear and, simultaneously, considerable curiosity. ‘I’m going to have a few days’ holiday and to do some gambling. I’ve not been able to go to Macau since before the war.’
This was conveyed to the Chinese officer who demanded Sandingham’s passport, scrutinised it and returned it. He gave another curt order and the guard left the suitcase and they both quit the cabin.
Sandingham felt his knees buckle. The ship’s officer caught him and helped him on to his bunk, clearing aside his clothes with a free hand.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ replied Sandingham, trying to show that he had regained his composure.
‘They’ll be gone soon. I suggest you remain here in your cabin.’
His mind was a chaos of confusion. How they had conceivably known his mission was beyond him. He tried to guess what Francis Leung’s dealings with the Communists could be that he should be sought by them. He had no idea. Opium smuggling could hardly be the cause of their searches: if they had wanted that
they’d have stopped the returning ferry, not the outward-bound sailing. But anyway nobody exported opium from Hong Kong to Macau. And the drugs were seldom smuggled into China: usually, it was the other way around. Perhaps it was all a mistake, a Communist cock-up: he struggled to remember if Leung’s Chinese name was Ping-kin.
There was a commotion on the deck. Against his better judgement Sandingham went out to see what it was, joining the other passengers at the rail.
Below them and slightly to their aft was the Communist gunboat. Most of the boarding party had returned to it. Now they were bundling on board its foredeck a Chinese passenger. He looked quite ordinary. He was dressed unmemorably and non-descriptly. As soon as he reached the gunboat he was hustled inside the bridge; Sandingham could see him being forced below.
A scapegoat, he thought. They didn’t find whom they were after – or what they were after – and they didn’t dare return empty-handed, so that poor beggar got it. There was always one.
The Takshing quickly got under way again, and no sooner had she turned than two Royal Naval craft appeared on the scene. The White Ensigns flapping at their sterns gave Sandingham an inner strength, a lifting of an intense oppression. He was liberated once again. He smiled to himself.
‘We not goin’ to Macau,’ he was told by the steward who came to his cabin as he was repacking his case. ‘We go bac’ Hong Kong.’
‘Thank you,’ said Sandingham. Then he added, ‘Are you okay, steward?’
‘Yes, t’ank you, sir.’ the man grinned expansively.
Sandingham tipped him a dollar bill, though neither of them were sure why, and enquired, ‘Why did they take that man off?’
‘He mek money.’
‘What do you mean, he makes money? Everyone makes money.’
‘No. He mek money. At him home. He mek silwer coins and sen’ it to his family in Canton. They spen’ it.’
‘You mean he is a counterfeiter?’
‘Tha’ wha’ guard say.’
Sandingham wondered, after the steward had gone, if that was another of Francis Leung’s games. Coining. Corrupt the body with opium, the soul with evil and the wallet with tin yuan.