Having met one or two at school, I came to the conclusion that my father was a natural-born bully. On the other hand, I did grow
up mixing a mean cocktail. Maybe that was one of his benchmarks of a good son.
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Although we now lived on the Peak, across the harbour from and over a thousand feet above all my mother's Chinese friends, she remained in constant touch with them, meeting the room boys from the Fourseas on their days off, going to tea houses with them, sometimes spending an afternoon with them and their girlfriends or wives at the beach. At other times, she went on picnics with them. These frequently took place on school days but when they occurred at a weekend or in the school holidays, I was invited along.
My father took a dim view of these outings. My mother ignored his opinion completely until one Saturday when she announced she was going out with âthe boys and girls', as she put it, the following day.
âI see,' my father remarked shirtily. âSo I'm left here with Martin.'
âNo!' I chirped up. âI'm going, too.'
âIf you ask me, Joyce,' my father went on, giving me a filthy look, âyou should stay home at the weekends. To go off midweek is one thing, but ⦠All this gallivanting about will get you a reputation.'
âGallivanting with the natives will get me a reputation, will it, Ken?'
âYou know what I mean.'
âI'm sure I don't.'
âWell, you should. Tongues'll wag.'
âI don't care if they flap in the wind like flags,' my mother
rejoined. âAnd neither should you. If some old biddy with nothing better to do starts bad-mouthing me, it's up to you to defend my honour.'
âDrawn cutlasses at dawn?' my father replied ironically.
âDon't be ridiculous, Ken. Besides, what's the alternative? Spend the weekend watching you snore. Some live spark you are, Ken. About as bright as a NAAFI candle.'
For some reason I could never fathom, my mother assumed that candles purchased from the Navy Army and Air Force Institutes were always incapable of burning brightly and frequently used this metaphor.
âI work hard all week andâ'
âSo does everybody else, Ken, but they don't spend the weekend sleeping and snorting like a grampus.'
Half an hour later, we met up with Ching, Halfie and some of the other Fourseas staff at the Outlying Islands ferry pier in Central District. A black-and-white Hongkong Yaumatei Ferry company vessel pulled alongside and we boarded it with a throng of boisterous Chinese weekend picniceers, all bound for Cheung Chau and carrying rattan baskets or bags.
No sooner was the ferry underway than everyone produced an array of snacks â chicken's feet, pork spare ribs,
wah mui,
crystallized ginger, pomeloes, oranges and melon seeds. Vendors travelled the deck selling bottled drinks and sweetmeats. The bones, peel and shells were thrown over the side, as in any Hong Kong street, with scant regard for those below: the ferry had a bottom passenger deck.
After an hour, the ferry turned into the harbour of Cheung Chau, a dumb-bell-shaped island with an ancient village in the centre. Deepwater fishing junks rode at anchor, with sampans weaving between them like agile aquatic insects. A drift of joss-stick smoke indicated the location of a large temple.
As soon as the gangplank hit the jetty, a phalanx of passengers ran ashore to claim the best tables in a nearby restaurant. We followed but by-passed the eating place with its tanks of live fish and crabs destined for the table.
âWhat is the temple?' I asked Ah Tang, one of the room boys.
âPak Tai,' he answered. âSea god temple. More old all Hong Kong.'
I wanted to visit it but it was not on our itinerary. Instead, we went south along the
praya,
passing fish vendors, sleeping cats and vociferous dogs, fishermen mending nets or baiting lines and houses with their windows shuttered against the fierce sunlight. At the periphery of the village, we struck out along a path running through a tunnel of trees and rocks.
âWhere are we going?' I asked my mother.
âI haven't the slightest idea,' she replied. âI'm just going with the general flow.'
The path was alive with tawny Rajah and delicate cream-and-black dragontail butterflies supping on fallen fruit. In the dry leaves, smooth skinks with black side stripes rustled and flashed out of sight. Birds sang and flitted through the branches of a sacred banyan tree upon which pictures of the gods had been pinned. Joss-sticks smouldered in the roots. Here and there were groves of yellow and green striped bamboo, many of the stems substantial enough to make a coolie's pole. All the while, the sea glinted away to my right through sparsely needled pine trees.
My mother was happy, walking with a jaunty step, swinging our picnic basket. Where the path widened, she took my hand.
âThis is fun, isn't it?' she asked.
I agreed that it was but, after a short distance, posed a question that had long been bothering me.
âWhy doesn't Dad come to places with us?'
She looked down at me.
âHe's a stick-in-the-mud,' she responded. âAnd he's got a chip on his shoulder.'
I asked what that meant.
âIt's hard to explain. It's just â well, he thinks he's better than everyone else but they don't agree.'
âWas he always a stick-in-the-mud?' I enquired.
âNo! We used to go for cycle rides in the country and go to the pictures or for walks on the Downs, and we'd have lunch in a little village pub at Cowplain â¦' She paused. I sensed she was sad but then she perked up. âWhat the hell! It was all a long time ago.'
Up ahead, our companions were singing a Chinese song in time with their steps. My mother joined in.
The path descended a hillside towards the sea. We halted by a group of boulders. Within minutes, someone had a small primus alight and was boiling water for tea. A cloth was spread over a flat rock and weighted down with stones. With the others, my mother set about laying out our picnic.
I settled myself on a slab of pinkish granite, the sunlight dancing on the mica fragments as if on tinsel. To my left was a cove surrounded by low cliffs, gentle waves sucking at the rocks. My mother approached with Ah Tang.
âMartin, come and see this!'
We followed Ah Tang along a cliffside path and down towards the shore where there was a tumble of huge boulders.
âYou come all same me,' he said beckoning to us.
We slithered down the boulders to find several of them had formed a sort of cave. He gestured us in. The entrance was narrow, the roof low and the floor sand.
Squatting on his haunches, Ah Tang said, âThis place for Cheung Po Tsai. He live here.'
âWho is Cheung Po Tsai?' I enquired.
âLong time before, more four hund'ed year, Cheung Po Tsai
big time py-rat. Got many junk, many men work for him, all same py-rat. He also got
gweipor
wife. Catch her on one ship one time. She love Cheung Po Tsai, no wan' go back Inglun'-side. Stay here.'
My mother gazed out of the entrance to the sea.
âJust imagine,' she said, âliving here with a pirate chief, thousands of miles from home and knowing you could never return.'
The romantic in her was working double-speed.
When the picnic was over, some of the room boys' girlfriends started to dance. It was a Chinese dance that involved tiny steps, moving in a circle, singing a song and, with arms raised, making a twisting motion with the hand, as if one were screwing in a light bulb. My mother was invited to join in, being taught the words and motions. I watched as she danced with these young Chinese women. She did not look, I thought, very different from them, except that her hair was blond not black. She was, as she would have put it, as happy as a sand boy.
We walked slowly back to the ferry jetty, the lowering sun warm on our faces. The butterflies on the path made no effort to fly off at our approach: Ching said they were drunk.
âHow can a butterfly get drunk?' I said.
âThe juice,' Ching explained, âcan make alcohol in the hot sun.'
As we sailed back to Hong Kong, my mother leant out of the ferry window, the warm wind ruffling her hair. The gleaming sun reflected gold off the sea and on to the ferry cabin ceiling. The Chinese day-trippers were mostly quiet now. A few played cards but most dozed or read a newspaper or magazine. Ching and Halfie faced each other over a set of
tin gau
tiles.
At the HYF pier in Central, we said our goodbyes and took a taxi home. My father was sitting with a gin and tonic listening to
the BBC World News on the radio. I went out on to the veranda and looked down on the city. The first neon lights were coming on, bright as coloured stars in the shadow of the Peak.
âHave a good time?' my mother asked.
I nodded.
âIt's days like this you never forget, no matter how old you get,' she advised me. âIt's what life's all about. Warm sun, friendship and music.'
She did a little twirl, miming fitting a light bulb in the sky and went inside.
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What first prompted the thought in my mother's mind I have no idea, but a fortnight after my ninth birthday, she warned me not to make any arrangements for the following Saturday morning. When I asked why not, she was uncharacteristically equivocal.
âJust wait and see,' she said, âand don't â I repeat, don't â mention it to your father.'
On the morning in question, my mother waited until my father departed for the office then took me to the top terminus of the Peak Tram, the famous funicular mountain tramway. We descended nearly two thousand feet to the bottom terminus, hurriedly made our way past the cathedral and by banks and shipping line offices, crossing Statue Square to the Star Ferry pier. All this way, my mother hardly spoke, ignoring my enquiries as to our destination.
Once over the harbour and off the ferry, our pace slowed to a normal walk.
âWhat was all that rush about?' I asked.
âI didn't want to bump into your father. He thinks I'm having coffee with Biddy Binns.'
âSo what we're doingâ' I began to suggest.
âIs a secret,' my mother interrupted, confirming my thoughts. âYou must never tell your father. It's not that what we're doing is wrong but, if he found out, I'd never hear the last of it. And neither would you.'
Finally, we arrived at a tenement building, the ground floor of which was occupied by a camera and binocular shop. To one side was a narrow doorway closed by a galvanized metal door. My mother opened it and we started to ascend a staircase that smelt of cats and boiled rice. At last, we arrived at a door with a number painted upon it and a picture of Kwan Ti pasted beneath a spy-hole. On the wall to one side was a brass plate in Chinese characters such as one might find outside a doctor's surgery.
Immediately, my anxiety grew. I was in for some kind of treatment: but I was not ill. A boy I'd known at school had recently been circumcised and told all in graphic detail to his friends. Was this my fate? I felt my penis and testicles shrink with fear. Then it occurred to me: was my mother ill? A shiver went down my back. She looked healthy enough, yet ⦠What if she died? A future of Dickensian proportions and misery spread ahead of me.
My mother knocked on the door. The spy-hole momentarily darkened before several bolts were drawn and we were confronted by a middle-aged Chinese woman wearing Western clothes.
âGood morning, Mrs Booth,' she greeted us in a slightly American accent. âPlease come in.'
She stepped aside and we entered a small and sparsely furnished tenement flat. Upon one wall were a number of mathematical charts and tables. In the window hung the almost
obligatory bird cage containing a lone zebra finch. A door opened and an elderly Chinese man entered wearing a long, dark-blue brocade gown, the character
sow,
meaning long life, woven into an almost invisible pattern. His face was lined and the nail of his left index finger was at least two inches long. This, I knew, signified he was a man of learning who never involved himself with manual work.
âGood morning. I am Mr Zhou,' he introduced himself. He shook my mother's hand then looked at me. âAnd this is the subject?'
I felt instantly more apprehensive and wondered if I was here to receive some maths tutoring: the charts suggested that this might be the case and, indeed, I hoped that it was, preferring even maths coaching to circumcision. But then my father would have approved of maths coaching. This visit was to be kept secret. I was in a quandary.
âMay I introduce my son, Martin?' my mother said.