by Graeme Hall
‘And were you?’ said Kwok-wah. ‘Stringing me along?’
‘No … Well, perhaps, but it’s not that simple.’
‘What happened to you in Shanghai? I saw you taken away in a police van. They said it was drugs but—’
‘You saw me being taken? I didn’t know. I’m sorry you saw that. You shouldn’t have had to see that. It wasn’t drugs no, but …’
‘What was it then?’
‘Sorry, that’s something I can’t tell you. Please don’t ask me about that.’ Susan moved to where there was an empty shop waiting for a new tenant. ‘Let’s stop here for a moment, it’s easier to talk.’
‘Where did you get those papers about Shu-ming from?’
‘Ah, good, you got them safely,’ said Susan, not answering the question. ‘Will you tell Granny Sun what you know?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Yes, that’s difficult, but I think she’d like to know. I expect deep down she knows already.’
‘I don’t even know if I’m going back to Shanghai.’
‘Really?’
‘It hasn’t exactly worked out for me.’
‘I suppose that’s my fault. Perhaps in a few months you’ll feel differently? Don’t burn your bridges. But … if you do go back, be careful.’ Susan went to put her hand on Kwok-wah’s arm but stopped short.
‘Careful?’
‘Don’t talk about me. Don’t ask what happened to me. Act as though you never knew me. And be especially careful around Zhao Zhanyuan. Don’t trust him. Also, you know Alice’s boyfriend I suppose?’
‘Liang-bao? Slightly. I’ve met him a couple of times.’
‘Well, be very, very careful around him. I’ve warned your cousin but I don’t think she believes me. Can’t say I blame her, I don’t think she likes me one bit, but if you have any faith in me at all keep an eye out for Alice.’
Kwok-wah was trying to take everything in. He had come to the arcade to get away from thoughts of Susan and Shanghai, but instead of losing himself in the pleasures of technology, here she was talking like someone out of a movie.
‘I thought I knew who you were, now I’ve no idea. Why should I believe anything you say? Is Susan even your name?’
‘It is actually, yes. I am from Oakland and I follow the Warriors.’
‘But building science isn’t your thing, is it?’
‘Oh my God, no. It was so boring!’ Susan laughed and Kwok-wah caught a glimpse of the woman he’d got to know in Shanghai. He remembered what Granny Sun had said about Susan just before he’d left. If she liked Susan, then perhaps whoever she was he should give her the benefit of the doubt.
‘Do you remember back in Shanghai that I told you about a military guy who kept visiting the labs?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘I’ve seen him here … in Hong Kong, that is.’
‘Really? When was that?’ It seemed to Kwok-wah that Susan was suddenly very alert.
‘Last Friday. I was meeting Alice and some of her friends when I saw him come out of the offices of one of those big law firms in Central.’
‘Which one?’
‘Oh, I can’t remember the name, but it’s in Queen’s Building. Alice and Liang-bao said I must have been mistaken but the more I’ve thought about it since then the more I’m sure I was right. You seem to know everything, what do you think?’
‘I don’t know, it seems unlikely. Did you get a good look?’
‘I thought I did, but I don’t know … Will I see you again?’
‘No. I’m flying back to the States soon. You’ll never see me again after today. I know it’s probably not much consolation, but I did have real feelings for you … You’re so kind-hearted, you deserve a proper girlfriend. Not a fake counterfeit. I’d better go now. Don’t follow me, and it might be best if you stayed in the arcade for a while before you leave. Just in case.’
Before Kwok-wah had time to say anything, Susan had turned away and started to work her way through the crowds towards the exit. He didn’t follow her.
***
Making her way back to the hotel, Susan smiled to herself. Even after everything that had happened, Kwok-wah still hadn’t twigged just why she had been spending so much time with him. She’d felt a pang of anguish at how downcast he’d looked when she told him that they wouldn’t meet again. Perhaps Alice had been right, perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to see him. But it had been worth it beyond her expectations, and perhaps staying on in Hong Kong to find Kwok-wah hadn’t been just an indulgence on her part after all. Her mind was connecting up the dots and a very interesting picture was coming into focus.
The only thing that bothered Susan was how she was going to tell her superiors that a senior PLA officer they had been watching in Shanghai was visiting a major Hong Kong law firm when she wasn’t even supposed to still be here. More than that, she knew exactly which firm it was that had an office in Queen’s Building: McShane Adams. Where Emma Janssen’s boyfriend worked. Susan never knew whether to believe in coincidences or not. But possibly, just possibly, she was starting to see the glimmer of a chance of redeeming herself after Shanghai.
Chapter 23
At the close of business on Friday, 27th June 1997, the last working day before a weekend like no other, the Hang Seng Index had risen by nearly seventy points, and the last two digits of the index rounded up to ninety-seven. People who believed in such things, and there were many, thought that it must be an omen. Those who were more cynical, and again they were not in short supply, thought that it must have been a fix, even though they had no idea how it had been done.
‘A slight extension to the Colony,’ Lord Salisbury, the prime minister back in 1898, had said, justifying the ninety-nine-year lease acquiring the 365 square miles that became known as the New Territories. Ninety-nine years? Even at the time there were voices saying that was too short; others said that no doubt it could be extended later. But then what was so special about the New Territories? Most of the land was mountainous scrub and rock. There was very little arable land, and what there was was low quality. Would they have thought differently if they had known what Hong Kong would become? Did any of those Victorian colonial officials ever imagine that a hundred years later Hong Kong would be a city of over 6 million people? A major trading port, a financial and legal centre? Would they have been so cavalier as to think that ninety-nine years was long enough, when in the eyes of the Middle Kingdom it was a mere instant?
In his more reflective moments Sam tried to imagine what anyone from those early days of Hong Kong would think if they could suddenly have been transported across the years. Even in more recent decades, in living memory, the changes had been rapid. Sam had come across older expats who had been in Hong Kong most of their lives and who could still remember when cricket was played in Central in front of the Hong Kong Club. A time when the tallest building was the old Bank of China, just a few storeys high. When there was water rationing with the taps only running on certain days. A time when the rickshaws at the Star Ferry pier were a genuine form of transport and not just a tourist gimmick.
However much people tried to ignore it and pretend that it wasn’t so, it was the land and people across the border that shaped and changed Hong Kong. For better or worse it always was and always would be. In the 1950s and ’60s it was the refugees that flooded across the checkpoints – legally and illegally – doubling the size of the population. Without homes for the incoming thousands, they were forced to live in ramshackle, and deeply unsafe, shanty towns. A series of fires, culminating on Christmas Day 1953 with the fire at Shek Kip Mei when over 50,000 people were left homeless, led to the massive public housing estates that still dominated large parts of urban Hong Kong. From the 1980s it was the money that started to come across the border. Pretty much every deal Sam had been involved in since he first arrived in Hong Kong had something to do with China or Chinese money. His clients were so often European or Americans using Hong Kong as a wa
y into China, or they were Hong Kong companies opening factories in Shenzhen, and now increasingly it was Chinese money looking for a safe haven outside of the People’s Republic. It was inescapable. The reality was that the return of Hong Kong to China started long before 1997 and that 30th June 1997 was just one waypoint on a longer journey.
But that wasn’t to downplay the importance of the date. It was the day that the ninety-nine-year lease expired and, given that the parts of Hong Kong not limited by the lease were not viable on their own, the day that at midnight Hong Kong would officially return to China.
And yet even on 30th June itself life also went on its normal way, which was why Emma and Sam found themselves in IKEA in Causeway Bay looking at Billy bookcases and considering a new dining table. But the normality of shopping for flat-pack furniture seemed abnormal to them. Earlier in the morning they had been on the harbourfront in Central and a person would have had to have zero empathy not to sense an electricity in the air, to recognise that it was not in fact a normal day after all. But then there were not usually warships moored in the harbour and Her Majesty’s Yacht Britannia (smaller than they expected) was not a common sight either.
***
The rain had started the night before with a violent thunderstorm, and although that had eased by the afternoon the clouds had started to gather again. When the flag was lowered for the last time at Government House the rain was only light. The flag was folded and presented to the governor with Government House staff watching on, some taking photographs, others mopping at damp eyes. By the time the schedule had moved on to the late-afternoon leaving ceremony in the open air at Tamar – once, long ago, before it was reclaimed, the British naval base – the rain had come on again in earnest. But the bands played on; the Hong Kong Philharmonic under shelter playing on cheap disposable violins, nobody prepared to risk valuable instruments to the heat and humidity of Hong Kong in June; military bands and pipers were not to be discouraged by such a minor inconvenience as a torrential rainstorm. When the Governor spoke movingly, declining the offer of an umbrella, the rain hid his tears.
In the evening Sam and Emma were part of a McShane Adams party in a Causeway Bay restaurant. It was barely a mile or so from the Convention Centre where the handover ceremony would be taking place, but a different world separated from the dignitaries by lines of police and security. It might have been any other restaurant on any other day, except that while they ate lobster and drank Meursault, an advance guard of PLA soldiers were already crossing the border, standing erect in the back of military trucks. Showing strict even-handedness, it rained on them as well. While Sam tapped his feet to a surprisingly good Filipina jazz singer and wished he’d brought his sax, in the streets outside the police played Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony over loudspeakers to silence protestors. Whether the police had chosen the music deliberately or not, the irony of the choice was apparently lost on them.
For Sam the music distracted him from the clock and the TV screens that were set up to show the official handover ceremony. As for his own feelings, he was confused. For weeks he had regarded the handover with detachment. He didn’t see that it would make much difference to him, and he was fed up with clients and friends in the UK asking him about it: ‘What do you think will happen?’, ‘I suppose everything will be in Chinese?’, ‘Will it be safe for you there?’ Repeatedly having to try and explain the concept of ‘one country, two systems’ – the fact that Hong Kong would continue to have its own legal system and its own currency – had become very trying long ago. He had become blasé about it, bored of it before it had even happened, and yet now that it was almost upon them he couldn’t deny that he felt a little less confident. A little less sure that in the morning everything that mattered to him would be just the same.
Superficially it might have been any other dinner with friends, but it wasn’t. Conversation was strained, even Kate was not her usual ebullient self. The banter was more than a little artificial at times as everyone tried to pretend that nothing special was happening, and Sam could tell that Emma was distracted by something. He assumed that she was also more worried about the change of sovereignty than she had let on, but when he asked her she simply put it down to her tinnitus and the noise in the restaurant. He was surprised at how slowly time passed. He’d thought that like when he was approaching something he dreaded, an exam or a trip to a dentist, the time would fly by, but it was quite the opposite. Whenever he checked the time it was only a couple of minutes later than when he last looked. He started to wonder if the watch was running slow. But then, as midnight approached, he found that time was suddenly accelerating again and Sam wished that he could stop all the clocks in Hong Kong, to hold back the inevitable for just that little bit longer.
But of course he couldn’t and suddenly it was midnight. They watched the ceremony taking place in the Convention Centre; Jiang Zemin and Prince Charles standing like mannequins on a dais as soldiers in crisp dress uniforms lowered the Union Jack and the colonial Hong Kong flag before raising the new Hong Kong bauhinia and the Chinese flag. Golden stars on a red background fluttering indoors in an artificial breeze. In the restaurant champagne corks popped, toasts were made and whistles blown as if it was New Year again, but Sam felt a mixture of emotions. Pride and sadness. Hope for the future and the promise of autonomy for Hong Kong, and deep down an anxiety that somehow it wouldn’t work out that way. Outside, in the streets, taxi drivers blew their horns at midnight and in cities across China firecrackers sparked.
So it was over. What had started when Captain Belcher of HMS Sulphur raised the flag on 26th January 1841 at a spot on a barren rock that later became Possession Street, ended with the lowering of a flag in smart new convention centre built on reclaimed land jutting out into the harbour of one of the greatest cities of the world.
Chapter 24
‘My brother loved going to the races when he worked in Hong Kong, but of course he would never have been able to come here.’
Those were the words that had brought down the façade of equanimity that Emma had carefully maintained during dinner at the Jockey Club. It wasn’t just the words, but the way the speaker had looked at her. Ostensibly he was addressing the whole table, but they both knew that the words were carefully chosen and directed at her alone. That night, again unable to sleep, she replayed the dinner and remembered how she’d been taunted. Played with like a matador with a bull; the words the red cape to which she was supposed to react. Did he want her to rise to the bait and create a scene? Perhaps it was sufficient that he saw her flinch when she realised the significance of what he was saying. Perhaps he got enough pleasure from telling her that he knew; enough satisfaction from seeing the pain that he had inflicted on her.
***
‘I don’t know why you’re so worried.’
Those had been Sam’s words throughout the day. Emma knew that he meant well, but the more he tried to reassure her, the more worried she became. But how could he understand? Here she was, for the first time, about to be his plus-one at dinner with his boss and a major client. No, far more than a plus-one, she was his other half. His significant other, or whatever the current terminology was. And all that was without even thinking about who the client was, and things about the client that Sam didn’t know. To make things worse, her hearing was playing up badly. Stress never helped and she hadn’t been this anxious in months.
‘You look fabulous, as usual,’ Sam said when they were ready to go out. Here Emma felt on safer ground. She knew that she looked good. After much searching she had found the perfect dress; a Vera Wang copy at a fraction of the price of the real thing. Knee-length, it was long enough to be respectful while still showing her figure; and the red chinoiserie pattern seemed suited to what was after all meant to be a celebration, at least in the eyes of their host.
It was an old joke that the most important people in Hong Kong were the governor, the chairman of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, and the head of the Jockey Club. Not necessar
ily in that order. Nobody thought that the handover made any difference, and entering the dining room of the Jockey Club’s Happy Valley clubhouse did nothing to change that impression. There was the money, of course. That went almost without saying. From the marbled entrance to the plush carpets of the rooms, there was no shortage of evidence of wealth. But there was also an aura of something more than just money. Something more important than mere riches: control and influence. This was where the real deals were done, both in politics and business. In the restaurant all the tables were full; whether everybody was celebrating the handover or not she couldn’t have said, but there were Chinese and new Hong Kong flags on all the tables. Chinese and expatriates united by the common bond of money and power. Emma had never before felt so much out of her depth.
They were six for dinner, including Sam and herself. Emma remembered Paul Ridgeway but hadn’t especially cared for him; she recalled how his eyes would follow her around the office. His wife, Elizabeth, was the only other woman at the table and Emma had hoped that she would be somebody she could talk to. Instead Emma found her to be cold and haughty. Dressed in Chanel, she reminded her of the expatriate wives who would hang around the tennis club all day complaining about their maids. Emma also sensed that she didn’t think much of her dress. Mr Leung, on the other hand, Emma did like. She remembered him from when she was working for Sam. He was very gentlemanly and courteous in an old-fashioned way.
The final dinner guest was a colleague of Mr Leung. He was quite different, younger and more contemporary in appearance in spite of thinning hair. Emma wondered what had brought them together.
‘Paul, Sam,’ said Mr Leung, ‘you know Mr Gao, of course, but perhaps I might make the introductions. Mr Gao, may I introduce you to Elizabeth Ridgeway and Emma … sorry, Johnson?’
‘Janssen.’ Emma tried to keep calm. Mr Gao? Surely not? Surely it couldn’t be him? Mr Gao offered his hand, and in spite of her fears Emma took it and they shook hands. ‘A pleasure to meet you,’ she lied, ‘Mr … Gao?’