by Martin Booth
‘Good afternoon,’ he greeted her. ‘Your son’s having a good game here.’
‘Yes,’ she replied with unforthcoming deliberation. To the boy she said, ‘Get your toys together, David. It’s time we caught the hotel bus.’
The boy collected his toys into a wicker basket and followed his mother into the building. In the street, Sandingham could hear the hotel Ford shooting-brake start up.
In the hedge remained a toy soldier. It was made of plastic and was a man in khaki battle-dress with arms extended, about to hurl a grenade. Sandingham put the figure in his pocket.
* * *
‘I’ve got your grenade thrower,’ Sandingham told him when next he contrived to meet the boy: it was the following day, and he was having his tea in the dining room.
‘Thank you,’ replied the boy. He sat across the white-clothed table. ‘Can I have him back?’
Sandingham took the toy from his pocket and returned it to its owner.
‘I’ve some other toy soldiers you might like to see. They’re in my room,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ repeated the boy, ‘but I’m not allowed to talk too long.’
To avoid confusion or the scotching of his idea, Sandingham stood up.
‘Another time, then.’
As he pushed the chair back under the table, the boy asked, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Joseph. But you can call me Joe. And you’re Davy.’
‘David’, he was corrected. ‘Why do they call you “Hiroshima Joe”?’
Sandingham was caught off guard.
‘Who’s “they”?’
‘Everyone. They call you that.’
‘It’s because I was there once. Long ago. In the war.’
‘Oh…’
The boy was obviously disappointed not to have had the name explained or at least expanded upon. In this way, he might just as well be called ‘Bombay David’, because their P&O ship had stopped there on the way out and he had stood in the Gateway to The East on the waterfront and gone to the hanging gardens where the tower was that the dead people were put on so that the vultures could eat them.
* * *
In the garage below the hotel, the childen of the guests used to gather after school or in their spare time to chat or play. Mr Heng was annoyed by this, fearing the cars would be scratched or some child would be run over, but he had difficulty in catching them.
The main attraction of the place was not the cars but the fact that one end of the garage was sub-let to three young Chinese men who repaired cars there, serviced guests’ vehicles, maintained the hotel bus and took in outside work. Their area was always littered with the used parts of cars, razor sharp and springy turnings of steel from their lathe, replacement bits, tools and multi-coloured cotton waste, and the air under the bare strip lights permanently carried the pungent scent of hot engine oil and hydraulic fluid. The children collected what scrap they could like magpies.
David’s speciality was ball bearings. He was fascinated by their weight and shining steel coats. They rolled truer than glass marbles and, dropped from a height – say, his mother’s first-floor balcony – on to concrete, they bounced like rubber, especially the small ones. His prize was one specimen nearly an inch in diameter.
Tucked away behind a Dodge, talking in broken English to the mechanic whose head and shoulders were under the sump of a jacked-up car, he saw Sandingham weaving his way through the parked vehicles.
‘Hello, David. What are you up to?’
It was an innocent question and betrayed the fact that he knew the boy was in the garage without the company of his peers who were flying paper darts from the lounge balcony and getting into trouble for it.
‘Ah Chow is going to give me a present because I’m helping him while Ah Foong is out.’
There was a clunk under the car, something dropped on to the concrete and a Chinese voice swore to itself.
‘Davit! You han’ me big ren-ch, pleas’.’
An open palm appeared by the front wheel. The boy placed a monkey wrench in it.
‘T’an’ you.’
The hand withdrew and re-appeared.
‘You wan’ dis one?’
In the fist was a ball race three inches across and dripping light oil.
‘Yes, please!’
His reply was near ecstacy. He took it.
‘Thank you very much. M koi.’
The boy sat on the bumper of the black Dodge and spun the race in his fingers. Oil flicked on to his bare knees and he wiped them clean with a tuft of cotton waste. Sandingham leaned against the next car. He didn’t talk to David, but merely looked at him.
Bob must have been like this once. Poor Bob who was years dead yet not dead at all. As long as there is memory of something, then a part of that something must still exist.
For several nights, Sandingham had lain awake, half-drunk, and dreamed of Bob. In his thoughts, the boy and Bob had become synonymous. One was the other. Now, as he watched the boy entranced in his wheel bearing, he could see his lover once more, untainted by war or fear and unstained by blood or sweat. There was a similarity between the boy and the much-creased photo Sandingham kept under the chipped glass top in his room. It wasn’t age or even physical appearance. It was the naivety of youth, the unmarked experience of undamaged innocence. It was this that made him love the boy, though he had never consciously felt that way for a child before. Not that he could recall.
As he left the garage, he saw that the Chinese mechanic had marked the calendar over the workbench up to date. It was Saturday.
* * *
When next he saw David, the boy was sitting on his own in the lounge. He was sobbing and his face was moist. A dribble of saliva hung on his lip and he sucked it in. He sniffed and blew his nose. Sandingham wanted to hug the boy, caress him, kiss his tears. Of course, he did not dare and instead sat next to him, his heart pounding with the shared ache.
‘What’s the matter, David?’
The boy looked at him then bent his head to stare at his shoes. He held out a manilla envelope.
Sandingham accepted this and saw that it was addressed to ‘David’ and the address. No surname. He opened it and took out a buff sheet of paper with a typed message upon it; the names and places and the date were filled in by indelible pencil.
Dear David, [he read]
I regret that I must write to inform you of the sad loss of your relation/friend [the former was deleted] DANIEL KERRINS who was killed in action on Thursday last. He died bravely and without pain, fighting with honour and glory in the service of his country and the British Commonwealth.
He requested of me that I send to you the enclosed with his affection.
Yours sincerely,
Unit chaplain.
There was no signature: Sandingham knew that the padre had had to write probably thirty such letters that day and in his anguish and exhaustion had forgotten to sign. He couldn’t have known he was writing to a child.
Tipping up the envelope, he let slip into his palm a felt uniform shoulder tab. On it was one word: AUSTRALIA.
He folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope with the badge and gave it back to David.
‘I’m sorry, David. Very sorry.’
Died without pain … with honour and glory: so much army bull with which Sandingham had been familiar too often and for too long. To have given the priest the message to send the badge meant that Daniel Kerrins knew he was going to die and that meant he was in hideous pain. There was nothing honourable or glorious about dying with your guts hanging free or retained only by your tunic buttons or your webbing belt and flies. There was nothing magnificent about meeting death with your hand projecting from a wall of rubble or your body hanging from the mudguard of a Humber.
Back in his room, he lay on his bed and closed his eyes. Bob’s faded photo gazed emptily up through the glass to the ceiling.
* * *
He telephoned Francis Leung at nine o’clock on the Monday morning at t
he only contact number he had for him. Of course, the call was taken by one of his men and Sandingham, in a telephone kiosk at the Star Ferry pier, was instructed to wait there until he was answered. Five minutes went by, then ten. Sandingham knew that Leung had received his message within seconds of the henchman hanging up: he was being kept waiting as a matter of protocol. To reply too soon would suggest eagerness, friendship, consideration even – emotions Leung did not want to have associated with him as far as Sandingham was concerned. Far better to keep him at arm’s length.
It dawned on Sandingham that he might be kept waiting half an hour, long enough for the gardener from the house at Eleven-and-a-half-Mile Beach to drive Leung’s car in to Kowloon, approach the kiosk and stab Sandingham once, neatly under the sternum. This was the reason for his choosing a booth at the Star Ferry at the height of the rush hour: it was surrounded by a tumult of people commuting across the harbour to Central District. He could scream or shout. He could fight and attract attention. Chinese would gather round, as they always did, the spectator nation, keeping back from the action but appreciating the drama of it. The Europeans crossing on the ferry would be the ones to take the initiative. They would come forward and beat off the assailant while another would have called the HKP who would screech up in a grey police Landrover and arrest the would-be assassin. He, in turn, would be traced to Leung. What happened after that would be in the lap of the gods …
The telephone rang. He let it ring three times in revenge delay then lifted the receiver.
‘Yes?’
‘Mista Sandinarm?’
He was disappointed. The delay had been meant to inconvenience Leung, not his go-between.
‘Yes?’
‘You wait.’
This was the inevitable instruction from any of Leung’s men, be they on the phone or at the end of an alley. Several more minutes passed during which Sandingham’s anxiety increased, which was exactly what Francis Leung intended.
‘Is that you, Joseph?’
‘Yes.’
‘I did not see you on Saturday.’ His voice was dense with reprimand. ‘What do you want?’
‘I need more time,’ Sandingham pleaded. ‘I can’t get enough by stealing and I have no other means. And I badly need a pipe.’
‘No sweat!’ Leung told him with deliberate sarcasm, as if he were the master of the world who could shrug off disasters and disabilities as easily as a cloak. ‘Just get some of the money and you will be allowed back to Ah Moy’s place. Say two hundred dollars? Hong Kong, not American.’ He laughed shortly. ‘And as for time, Joe: tonight. Nine forty-five. You needn’t come to me. I’ll come to you, to save you the cost of the bus to Castle Peak. Be at…’
It was in his interests to keep Sandingham in a short supply of opium. Without it at all, Sandingham was useless and the money would be unforthcoming. In itself it was a paltry sum: it was the principle that counted. If one man got away with a small debt – especially a gweilo – then anyone would try it on.
‘Wait. I need to write it down.’
‘Don’t!’ Leung’s voice was hard. ‘Just listen and remember. You will.’
He gave an address in Kadoorie Avenue.
‘And Joe – one more thing,’ Leung added. ‘Do not try and get anything from the shacks of refugees in Ho Man Tin. They have been given their instructions.’ He laughed again but there was no humour in his voice.
The line went dead.
Sandingham spent the remainder of the morning preying on tourists, but with little luck. Now that the winter was almost upon them visitors were fewer and those who were present still were not of the wealthy summer variety. He succeeded in stealing forty-eight dollars from a woman in an Indian tailor’s store in Kimberley Road. Knocking her handbag on to the floor, he had then picked it up for her, apologising profusely and removing her billfold as he did so. He obtained another twelve dollars, all of it in small change, in the cloakroom of a busy restaurant in Nathan Road, rummaging through coats left hanging in the gents while the attendant was out for a moment. But he was a long way short of the two hundred.
* * *
As he alighted from the Number Seven bus at the stop fifty yards past the hotel on the junction with Argyle Street, Sandingham saw David walking back from school. It was the midday lunch recess.
He was wearing khaki shorts, a white shirt and, sewn to the pocket, a yellow- and brown-striped shield-shaped badge with the letters ‘KJS’ along the top. He carried a small, square wicker basket containing his books, his coloured pencils, a towel and a few of his Dinky toys. Sandingham knew the sort of thing the boy took to school for he’d seen him open the basket and check the contents in the foyer one morning when he had been waiting for the rain to cease.
David had reached the pavement opposite the hotel, and now stood at the kerb waiting. The traffic was busy and fast-moving. He looked to left and right but seemed to be making no effort to step off the kerb. Sandingham was about to cross to help the lad over when one of the hotel roomboys appeared and, swiftly dodging between the passing cars, gained David’s side and guided him through to the far pavement.
The opportunity lost, Sandingham was not upset. He knew that the first-floor roomboy was called Ching and he always helped him over the road whenever David’s mother was out.
Sandingham went back to his room, hid his morning’s takings and went to the dining room where he knew David would be eating his lunch on his own. He was right.
In a corner reserved for children in the lunch-hour, the boy was sitting eating cold chicken salad. In the absence of his mother’s discipline, he had served himself with an over-abundance of mayonnaise of which he was more than fond. When he had the opportunity, he would put it on fried eggs and bacon and tomatoes, too. Sandingham had seen him do this. It reminded him of a Belgian Hong Kong Volunteer officer from the transit camp who, upon liberation, had done the same thing. It had made him violently sick.
He sat at the next table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of San Miguel. When it arrived, the beer glass was cold and perspiring. ‘Good morning at school? Would you like a Coca-Cola?’
‘Not very. We had fractions and decimals and I can’t do them very well. We had Geography, too. About India and tea planting in Assam. And I should very much like a Coke. Thank you.’
Sandingham placed the order and it came in a glass as cold as the beer.
‘Cheers!’ said Sandingham.
The boy raised his drink but said nothing. He had not had another adult say this to him, except his father who did it in fun, not for real, like Hiroshima Joe did.
‘What have you done today, Joe?’ he asked.
David’s use of Sandingham’s Christian name gave him a warmth far inside his chest. It was good to be called ‘Joe’ by someone who wasn’t out for something. He accepted the friendship and it fuelled his desire.
‘I’ve had to go to work,’ Sandingham lied, though it occurred to him that that was just what he had done in a manner of speaking. ‘When you’ve had your lunch, would you like to see my soldiers?’
The boy thought about this for three mouthfuls. He had been distinctly and positively told by his mother not to associate with, talk to, be seen with, accept a drink or present from, or – above all – go to the room of Hiroshima Joe. To do so was strictly against her express commands. On the other hand, Joe was an adult. He was not a stranger, for everyone knew him. He was a bit cuckoo, but then so were many grown-ups. And his mother could make mistakes. She’d lost his monocular when they’d been at the beach in the summer, she had sewn his school badge on upside down and had had to unpick it, which was why the edge of it was frayed, and she had gone out to a party when his father was last in port and left her watch in the ladies’ next to the officers’ mess on the ship. And he was naughty: that he knew. She said so enough, but often smiled as she spoke. And he had put too much salad cream on his food, and she would have got batey at that if she’d been there. Surely one more tiny wrong was neither here nor there
.
‘Yes.’
And that was that.
When he had finished his meal, David went to his room and picked up one of his Grenadier Guards. The soldier’s busby was a bit scratched and his rifle was bent. He carefully straightened it and filled in the scratch on the bearskin with a crayon. It looked as good as new. If Hiroshima Joe would swap this one for one of his own, it would be good. Grenadier Guards in dress uniform weren’t much good in a war. They stood out and got shot at: the Hawker Hunter pilot could easily pot them off in the trees.
The guardsman in his pocket, he left his room with its door ajar and walked along the balcony towards Sandingham’s.
For his part, Sandingham tidied his belongings and furniture, set his straight-backed chair beside the bed and switched the fan on rotate so that it spread its breeze.
There was a knock on the door. He opened it.
‘Come in, David.’
The boy entered but did not shut the door behind him. Sandingham could not get past him to give it a shove and so he left it. There would be time enough for that.
‘Hello, Joe.’ The boy was unsure of himself, committing his sin. ‘I’ve brought one of my soldiers. I thought you might like to swap him for one of yours.’
He fumbled in his pocket but the soldier’s rifle got caught in the material and he had to use both hands to free it. The more he tried to get it out, the more entangled it became.
‘Let me do it,’ said Sandingham, leaning forward from where he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He waved his hand beckoningly, as a friend might. ‘Come a little nearer.’
With childish trust, David stepped to the bedside. Sandingham started to shift the soldier through the material, but allowed his hand to brush against the front of the boy’s shorts. Within a quarter of an inch of his fingers, Sandingham knew David’s little cock was resting like a tiny caterpillar in his underpants. He let his hand slip on to the boy’s bare leg.
‘Just a minute. I think I can get at the soldier’s gun. What kind of soldier is he?’
‘A Royal Grenadier.’
‘They stand very upright. He must be at attention in your pocket. Slope arms! Stand easy, private! I don’t think he has. Let me pull the material tight.’