On Borrowed Time

by Graeme Hall

  He looked himself. ‘Yes, I’m afraid you’ll get soaked.’ Sam turned back towards Emma before adding: ‘But sure, I don’t think there’s anything that can’t wait until Monday. Oh … and don’t forget you’re welcome to join us for drinks later, if you like. We’ll be at Hennigan’s from seven-ish.’ He had invited her to the department’s usual Friday post-work drinks.

  ‘I’m not sure I can, but if I’m finished in time I’ll try and see what I can do. If not, I’ll see you Monday.’

  As Emma stepped out into the street, rainclouds still filled the sky and the downpour showed no signs of relenting. Sheets of water covered the pavements, and small lakes were starting to form where the drains were blocked with litter and rubbish. Emma had hoped to get a taxi, but as soon as she saw how bad the rain was she knew it would be next to impossible, and anyway the traffic was already almost stationary. Confident she could get there faster on foot, Emma put up her umbrella, although it would scarcely be enough to keep her head dry, and headed out into the early evening crowds.

  Alice had given her the address of a flat in Mid-Levels that was close to the series of covered escalators and footbridges that snaked their way uphill, taking people home from the shops and offices of Central. By the time Emma had reached the escalator, she was relieved to be under shelter again; water dripped off her while she was carried between buildings and above narrow streets. She found it next to impossible not to be drawn into looking through the various windows she passed and always felt uncomfortable at seeing so many private lives on display. Couldn’t they use curtains? She would in their place, blinds at least. Short of closing her eyes it was difficult not to watch the overweight man in a grubby singlet and shorts; the housewife cooking in a tiny kitchen; the older woman hanging laundry.

  Leaving the escalator at Caine Road, just as she was finally starting to dry a little, she once more had to rely on her umbrella to try and fend off the rainstorm that wasn’t showing any sign of easing. If anything, it had somehow managed to get worse. When she found the building she was looking for, an unremarkable high-rise barely distinguishable from its neighbours, Emma hesitated. She really wasn’t sure about this and was regretting that she had allowed Alice to twist her arm. Especially when she was now soaked to the skin. Would it hurt if she just went home? She couldn’t think what difference she could possibly make to anything. She could always blame work. Tell Alice that her boss had needed her to do something. Her finger hovered over the intercom with indecision before she remembered it was a friend she had promised. She pressed for flat number 14E; she was committed now. A man answered in English and the door catch was released to let her into the dry. She shook her umbrella to get some of the worst of the water off and took the lift to the fourteenth floor.

  The door was opened by Alice.

  ‘Oh dear …’ Alice looked at a bedraggled Emma and tried not to laugh. ‘Come in.’

  ‘Thanks. Is there anywhere I can tidy myself up a bit?’

  ‘End of the corridor on the right.’

  A few minutes later, and looking a bit more presentable, Emma joined Alice in the living room. A black leather sofa took up one wall and there was a small dining table with a number of chairs. In spite of the rain it was still warm and a ceiling fan gently stirred the air. In addition to Alice, there were five others seated or perched on various spots around the small room.

  ‘Emma, this is Kelvin.’ Alice introduced a Chinese man who Emma guessed to be about forty. ‘This is Kelvin’s flat.’

  ‘Welcome, Emma, please have a seat.’ Kelvin rose and offered Emma the chair he had been sitting on.

  ‘Thanks. Sorry though, I’m going to get everything wet.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Hong Kong in the rain, what can you do?’

  Kelvin left to fetch another chair and Alice introduced Emma to the others. One was a Westerner, Charles, probably in his sixties; Lily and Yannie were local women, both around Emma’s age. ‘And this is Liang-bao.’ Alice placed a hand on the arm of a tall – at least six foot – young Chinese man with high cheekbones who was sitting at one end of the sofa. ‘Like you, he’s a new member. Everyone – this is my good friend Emma.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Emma to the room, adjusting slightly the position of her chair so that she could more or less see everyone’s faces, which always helped her hearing.

  Kelvin returned with the extra chair. ‘Can I offer you a glass of wine?’ He picked up a bottle and offered it to Emma.

  ‘Please, thanks.’

  Kelvin poured Emma a glass and then took his seat before beginning the meeting.

  ‘So, now we are all here, let’s get started,’ he said, looking around at his guests as he spoke. ‘Firstly, welcome to Emma and Liang-bao. It’s always good to have new members. As the rest of you know, we need to discuss Yan Xiao-ling, but for the benefit of our new friends I should perhaps explain a bit.’ Kelvin turned his attention towards Emma and Liang-bao in particular. ‘He’s a medical researcher in Beijing, a lecturer at Tsinghua University. He’s been doing work on recent sharp increases in infectious diseases in China but his figures don’t match those of the government. He’s been suspended from his university position and put under house arrest. The Chinese Communist Party never likes bad news. They always shoot the messenger.’

  ‘Sometimes literally,’ added Yannie.

  ‘How did you come to hear about him?’ asked Emma.

  ‘I’m in the medical faculty at Hong Kong University,’ said Kelvin. ‘I haven’t worked with Yan Xiao-ling myself but some of my colleagues have. They put me on to him when they realised he was suddenly, how do you say … persona non grata.’

  ‘So what do you propose to do?’

  ‘Well, that’s mainly what we need to decide but there are some fairly standard things we can do. To start with we need to get the media involved, and that’s where Yannie comes in. Her husband’s a journalist.’

  ‘Kelvin exaggerates,’ said Yannie. ‘He’s a sports reporter for the Sing Tao Daily but he does have friends on the news desk.’

  ‘Which is what we need. What we don’t have though is a contact in the English language press.’ Kelvin turned to Emma. ‘I don’t suppose you have any journalist friends by any chance?’

  ‘Sadly no. But temping, I do tend to come across quite a range of people so I can keep my eyes open.’

  ‘I can use my professional contacts to keep Yan Xiao-ling’s name remembered in the academic community,’ Kelvin continued, ‘and meanwhile we can all write to the Chinese government to protest.’

  ‘Do you think that will do any good?’ asked Liang-bao. It was the first time he had spoken and Emma was surprised by how good his English was. Not only was it fluent and natural, but his accent sounded very proper. He was one of those Chinese people she came across from time to time who somehow managed to seem more British than the British themselves.

  ‘Who knows, but we have to try, don’t we?’ said Alice.

  Kelvin started handing out papers that had been on the dining table.

  ‘What I’ve done is to prepare a basic information sheet so you have all the right facts to hand, and just in case you don’t know it – or you’ve lost it – I’ve added the address of the Xinhua News Agency.’ Although technically a news agency, everyone knew Xinhua was the de facto Chinese embassy in Hong Kong. The unofficial representative of Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party in colonial Hong Kong.

  After a little while the business of the meeting came to an end and conversation drifted to more general matters. Kelvin brought out another bottle of wine and some food, while Emma got to know the others. Charles was a retired civil servant who had spent his whole working life in Hong Kong, Yannie worked in the same trading company as Alice, and Lily was Yannie’s sister.

  ‘So how did you find the meeting?’ Kelvin asked Emma.

  ‘Interesting, thanks. Have you been involved in this sort of thing for long?’

  ‘I guess it was after Tiananmen Square I sta
rted thinking about politics. There was a guy I knew when I was a student who was killed that night.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’

  ‘It’s okay, we weren’t close or anything, but still … it was a wake-up call.’

  ‘I bet it was.’

  ‘So I joined Amnesty and then a couple of years ago I started this group.’

  ‘What made you want to do that? After all, Amnesty is so well known.’

  ‘It is and it does great things. But sometimes it gets dismissed by China as being too Western. It’s too easy for Beijing to paint Amnesty as a bunch of interfering foreigners. I wanted to try and build something more local. Something grown here in Hong Kong. We’re only small at the moment though. There are a few others not here tonight but it’s just so hard to get local people involved in politics. Hong Kong people often just want a quiet life, you know? As long as they have good jobs and dim sum they don’t like to cause trouble.’

  ‘Even with the handover next year?’

  ‘Even with that, yes. Tiananmen did make some people stop and think, at the time anyway, but that was seven years ago so any panic that caused has largely died away. You probably know how many people tried to make sure they could go to Canada and so on if they needed to, but even that was just insurance. They don’t really want to leave unless they have no choice. So, trying to get people interested in human rights, well … it’s not easy, but you’ve got to start somewhere, haven’t you?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Charles was waiting for a chance to cut in.

  ‘I think Charles wants a word with you.’

  Leaving Kelvin and Charles to talk, Emma couldn’t help but notice that Alice was spending a lot of time with Liang-bao, and when Liang-bao excused himself Emma took the opportunity to get Alice to one side.

  ‘Okay, are you going to tell me what’s going on?’ Emma asked.

  ‘What do you think of him?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’ve only just met him. He’s good looking though. Tell me more, and anyway, why didn’t you tell me on Sunday?’

  ‘I nearly did. We met in the cafeteria at Hong Kong U about a month ago. He’s a student there as well. We got talking, found we had some common interests.’

  ‘Is he a mainlander?’ Emma was a little shocked. She’d always thought of Alice as being a very traditional young Hong Kong woman. That she might be dating someone from the mainland was unexpected.

  ‘I know. It feels exciting somehow. Almost illicit. It’s like I’m having an affair with a married man.’

  ‘I take it your parents don’t know?’

  ‘Of course not. Shhh … here he comes.’

  Liang-bao came back into the room and Emma was curious to find out more.

  ‘Alice tells me you’re a student at Hong Kong U?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m doing a Masters there.’

  ‘You have very good English.’

  ‘For a mainlander?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Emma blushed, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean to sound rude.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Liang-bao laughed. ‘It’s a fair question. I did my first degree in London. I lived in a flat in Stepney for three years.’ Emma knew Stepney and knew that Liang-bao didn’t have a Stepney accent.

  ‘Well if I’m going to make a fool of myself I might as well go the whole way. You’re very tall for a Chinese person.’

  ‘Emma!’ Alice looked shocked at Emma’s blunt questioning.

  ‘Again, a fair comment.’ Liang-bao was unconcerned. ‘I’m from Harbin in the north. We do tend to be taller than average for China.’

  ‘Enough,’ said Alice. ‘Enough of this interrogation.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Looking at her watch, Emma saw that it was half past eight. ‘Anyway, I need to be going. I hadn’t realised what the time was.’

  ‘So what’s the rush?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Just some work drinks I said I’d try and make. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.’

  ***

  ‘Now that the others have gone, I can tell you what I found out about Emma.’

  Kate and Sam were sharing a table in Hennigan’s. The rest of their gang had moved on to get something to eat before hitting Wan Chai later. Kate had declined going with them, pleading, with some truth, that she was still feeling the effects of her birthday, but also guessing that Sam wanted to stay on in the hope that Emma might yet make it.

  ‘Currently single and unattached. Not sure whether or not there was a boyfriend when she came to Hong Kong. She was a bit coy about that.’

  ‘How did you find this out?’ asked Sam.

  ‘I happened – by pure chance, of course – to be in the ladies at the same time as her and we got talking. As you do.’

  With the rain still falling, the bar was predictably full and they had been lucky to get a table. Friday night partygoers taking shelter where they could. Hennigan’s was not the smartest bar in town – nobody could remember when it had last been decorated, and the chairs were worn and threadbare – but the 70s music made it popular with expats and locals alike, and above all, tonight, it had the very great advantage of being indoors.

  ‘And what makes you think I’m interested in her anyway?’

  ‘God Sam, I love you and all that, but you can be so dim at times. For one thing I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at her all week. I bet she’s noticed as well. And to be fair, why wouldn’t you? She’s very good looking. And you’re sitting here hoping she’s going to turn up when you could be with the others. Oh, and by the way, sometimes I think I know you better than you know yourself.’

  ‘That’s all very interesting,’ said Sam, ‘but it doesn’t look like she’s coming.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but to be fair she did say that she might not make it. Let’s have one more drink and then go and get some food ourselves.’ Kate waved to get the attention of a waitress.

  ‘I haven’t asked how your birthday drinks went,’ said Sam, ‘though given how late you were the next day I take it they were fun?’

  ‘They were, though somewhere along the way I managed to lose a shoe. I didn’t even realise until I got out of the taxi going home. It was an expensive pair, as well.’

  ‘Poor Cinderella.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Waiting for Prince Charming to turn up with your missing slipper.’

  ‘Oh, I get it now, yes, I suppose so, though at four in the morning Wan Chai is short on charm.’ Two beers arrived together with a bowl of popcorn. ‘Still,’ continued Kate, ‘the night must have been quite good because the next morning I found a slip of paper in my handbag with a man’s name and telephone number on it.’

  ‘Somebody you met?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I think I know who it was. Tall guy, bit of a jock.’

  ‘So are you going to call him?’

  ‘I already have.’

  Sam always had confused feelings when Kate started going out with a new man. It wasn’t that he was jealous of anyone dating her, they had never been an item, and although they joked about it they both knew they never would be, but he feared that one day Kate would find someone and he would lose a close friend. When they’d finished their beers, Sam and Kate left the bar and found that the rain had finally stopped. With the downpour over, the crowds were starting to fill the street again, and as they got into a taxi they didn’t see the young blonde waving at them as she came down the road.

  Chapter 4

  ‘You must be excited about Hong Kong returning to China.’

  Once a week the basketball players would go out for beers, and Kwok-wah found that after a few drinks his new friends started to open up to him a bit more. But he was already getting tired of this question; the question everybody seemed to want to ask him.

  ‘Glad to be rid of the British, I expect.’ This was from Zhao Zhanyuan. Kwok-wah didn’t pay much attention to politics but even he had recognised early on that Zhanyuan was the most hard-line.
Li Lao had warned him that Zhao Zhanyuan’s father was a major in the People’s Liberation Army and Kwok-wah learnt to be careful and non-committal in anything he said. In truth Kwok-wah never knew how to answer these questions, if they were questions at all. They seemed more like slogans that had been learnt by rote. He had never thought of himself being under any colonial yoke; he had grown up under British rule and had simply accepted it as a fact of life. Just one of those things, as inevitable as June rain and cockroaches. His answers were always quietly neutral, and if he could he’d try and change the subject.

  Mostly though they talked about girls. A couple of his room-mates had girlfriends back in their home towns, but that didn’t seem to stop them eyeing up their options.

  ‘Have you seen that girl in the calculus class?’ asked Li Lao in a typical conversation one evening. ‘The one that sits in the front row wearing a short skirt. She keeps crossing and uncrossing her legs until Professor Wang mixes up his second order derivatives from his partial integrals.’

  But Kwok-wah soon came to the conclusion that they were all talk. He never saw his room-mates actually go up and speak to any of the female students. Kwok-wah himself was unattached. There had once been a girlfriend in Hong Kong but she had dumped him when she concluded – completely correctly – that he was more interested in his research than in her, and he wasn’t particularly looking for anyone.

  The bar they were in one Friday was one of their favourites. A little away from the university, there was less chance of bumping into any of their teachers and it was also popular because it had an American theme with a jukebox and pictures of NBA stars on the walls. The fact that his friends could switch so quickly from praising China as the next great superpower to a fascination with all things American never ceased to surprise Kwok-wah, but he was learning discretion. He knew better than to say anything.

  ‘It’s your round, Hongkonger,’ Zhanyuan said. He’d taken to calling Kwok-wah that as if to emphasise the difference between him and the rest of them. Kwok-wah was far from sure it was his turn to get the drinks, his round seemed to come more often than the others, but he didn’t feel inclined to argue. Anyway, the drinks were much cheaper in Shanghai than back home. The waitresses seemed busy so Kwok-wah went to the bar himself. Once he’d ordered, his eye wandered over the room. It was busy, as always on a Friday. Mainly young, probably mostly students since the bar was close to Fudan University. Some slightly older customers, dressed more smartly as if they had jobs in media or law but were not yet ready to move on to the expensive downtown places.