Golden Boy (32 page)

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Authors: Martin Booth

BOOK: Golden Boy
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‘Go and get Wong,' my mother ordered me.
‘Wong go,' Ah Shun said.
‘Wong go? Go where?'
It was no use speaking Cantonese to Ah Shun. She only spoke Shanghainese.
‘Go, missee.'
Wong was not in the kitchen or the servants' quarter. I reported his absence, admitting selfishly to myself that this diversion could not have come at a handier time.
‘Oh, my God!' my mother exclaimed, jumping to conclusions. ‘He's left her.'
A frantic phone call to my father drew a blank. Predictably, he could not get away. Looking out of the window, I could see an aircraft carrier riding at a buoy off
Tamar.
He would try and return early that evening.
My mother sat next to Ah Shun and put her arm round her. A short time later, we heard a movement in the kitchen. My mother rushed out to find Wong depositing the shopping bags on the floor.
‘Thank God!' she said. ‘Wong, Ah Shun is sick.'
‘Lo sick, missee,' he answered calmly.
‘Wong, she can barely get up. She's tired. I'm going to call the doctor.'
‘Lo call, missee. Ah Shun no sick. Ah Shun got baby come.'
My mother stared at him for a long moment. I looked at Ah Shun. By now, I knew a fair amount about the birds, the bees and babies. She certainly did not look fat but then the uniform she wore was hardly close fitting.
‘When?' my mother asked.
‘Lo long time,' Wong replied. ‘Maybe wung week.'
‘One week!' my mother exclaimed. ‘Wong, you cannot let Ah Shun carry on cleaning, doing the laundry.'
‘Lo p'oblum, missee. Ah Shun can do.'
‘Ah Shun cannot do!' my mother replied.
‘Must do,' Wong said. ‘Dis her job. Mus' work for money.'
‘Never mind the money!' my mother replied. ‘You help Ah Shun to her bed. I'll call a doctor and then put the shopping away. You find another amah to help you.'
It didn't occur to my mother until later that, in China, Ah Shun had probably delivered herself of her other children. I was told to ring my father and tell him what was happening.
‘Ah Shun's having a baby,' I stated bluntly.
‘Jolly good!' my father replied offhandedly.
‘Now,' I added, feeling he had missed the point.
‘Now? You mean this very bloody moment?'
‘Soon. The doctor's coming.'
‘Oh, bloody hell! Can't your mother cope? I've got HMS—'
‘Can you cope?' I called out.
‘Is that what he said?'
I nodded. She stomped over to the telephone table.
‘Give me the phone. Ken? Yes, I can cope. Marriage to you is all about bloody coping. It's also supposed to be about sharing bloody problems.' She held the receiver three inches above the cradle and let it drop. ‘I hope that's given him a bloody headache.'
An hour later, a naval midwife in attendance, Ah Shun's waters broke. I was told to stay in my room and amuse Tuppence. He had never, at least not to my knowledge, been in my room and we played with my toy soldiers and military Dinky toys.
Ah Shun gave birth to a little girl whom they named Su Yin. My mother was appointed ‘godmother' and relished the role. Not only was she proud to be asked, but here was another link to China.
My father, who never broke any law, by-law, rule or regulation that might even vaguely apply to him, read his tenancy agreement and informed the naval quartering officer of the event. A month or so later, a letter came to the effect that the servants' quarters did not cater for four, that babies were not allowed in quarters as their crying might
discommode other residents,
that fire regulations were being breached and that, in general, the Royal Navy did not approve. It was tactfully but firmly stated that either the servants be dismissed or the amah be let go, or the infant be sent to live with relatives.
My mother went incandescent with rage.
‘Sack my servants! Put them out on the streets! With a new-born baby! Remember, Ken, they've already got children lodging elsewhere.'
‘Wong shouldn't be so fecund,' my father answered.
‘What does fecund mean?' I enquired.
‘You keep your bloody nose out of this.'
‘They're not going, Ken.'
‘I mean, don't the Chinese take precautions?'
‘Against what?' I asked.
My mother went into the bedroom and slammed the door. The key turned in the lock. My father poured himself a pink gin. I decided it politic to keep my mouth shut.
An hour later, my mother reappeared, poured herself a gin and tonic, sat down and announced, ‘Ken, get me an interview with the Commodore.'
‘Under no circumstance whatever,' he answered.
‘Either I have an interview or I have a ticket for myself and Martin on the next P&O liner to come into port.'
I knew this was a bluff – ny mother would pull her own teeth out rather than leave Hong Kong before she had to – but my father begrudgingly said he would see what he could do. The outcome was that it was not a naval matter but a civilian one to do with fire regulations and suchlike.
‘In that case,' my mother declared, ‘I'm going to see the Governor.'
‘That, Joyce, I certainly will not allow.'
‘Allow?' my mother responded, her eyes narrowing. ‘I'm not asking your bloody permission. I'm telling you what I'm going to do. Out of bloody courtesy.'
An exchange of letters with Government House followed, culminating in my mother being granted an audience with His Excellency, Sir Alexander Grantham KCMG. She demanded I
accompany her partly, I suspect, because she was scared witless now that her persistence had paid off and I was acting as a sort of hip flask of Dutch courage, or perhaps she wanted me along to demonstrate that she was also a mother who would not be parted from her offspring.
My father refused even to drive us to the meeting – perhaps he was afraid his car licence plate might be noted down as belonging to a subversive – so we went to Government House by taxi. We were met by the Governor's ADC under the portico to the front door.
‘His Excellency is fully acquainted with the situation,' he said as he guided us in to a large lobby. ‘I'm afraid he can only give you ten minutes.'
The Governor appeared, shook my mother's hand, then mine. He asked my name.
‘Martin, sir,' I admitted.
‘Good name. Strong name,' he replied. ‘Do you know who I am?'
‘His Excellency the Governor, sir,' I answered.
He smiled and led us into a room furnished like an English country house, indicating we all sit down. A steward came in with a tray of Chinese tea.
‘Would you like an orange juice, Martin?' the Governor asked.
‘I would prefer tea, sir,' I answered.
‘It's Chinese tea,' the Governor warned me.
‘That all right, sir,' I replied. ‘I drink lots of tea at the
dai pai dongs.'
His Excellency raised an eyebrow, smiled and said, ‘Do you, indeed? A real little China Hand. Do you like Hong Kong?'
‘Yes, sir. Very much.'
‘I'm afraid,' he apologized, ‘this tea might not be up to the standard of a
dai pai dong.'
The tea was poured into cups, not bowls, and my mother and the Governor then got down to business. I minded my own, sipped the tea and studied the paintings hanging in the room. In less than the ten allotted minutes, the matter was settled. So long as the landlord did not object and the fire escapes were acceptable, servants' families would no longer be arbitrarily split up. The matter would take some months to go through Legislative Council. In the meantime, as far as he was concerned, Wong, Ah Shun, Tuppence and Su Yin were to remain where they were pending a change in the law. We shook hands again and my mother and I were shown to the porch where a government car had been hailed for us.
That evening, when my father returned from work, my mother waited until he had a drink in hand then told him of the meeting.
‘So the landlord has to agree,' he commented. ‘That's the Navy.'
‘I'm sure they will,' my mother responded sweetly.
‘I wouldn't count on it,' my father forewarned her.
‘I'm not,' she said mildly. ‘I'm counting on you. You let me down and I will go to the Commodore, with or without your bloody say-so.'
And, now, my father knew, she would.
Several months later, the law was changed and the Wong family's tenure was secure. My mother felt she had struck a blow for Chinese rights – which she had. My father admitted defeat. And, as I heard my mother say to a friend, ‘We'll still have Wong's marvellous sponges.'
 
 
One Sunday, my parents and I were invited to lunch on Stonecutters' Island in the western half of Hong Kong harbour. A
colleague of my father's, a Mr Newton, lived there with his wife and son, Andrew, whom I liked. Even better was the fact that, near their house, there was a large anti-aircraft gun left over from the war. It was still operable, the gearing well greased. We could rotate it on its base and elevate or lower the barrel. It was the ultimate boys' plaything.
To reach Stonecutters', which was a closed military site on account of the signals station on it, one had to take the naval launch from HMS
Tamar
to the island. Once there, we walked to the Newtons' bungalow along narrow paths, the undergrowth encroaching over the wartime concrete. It was said that unique species of rare snakes lived on the island, escapees from a Japanese wartime laboratory that had sought to use their venom in biological weapons. All I ever saw there was a dead, red-necked keel-back water snake on the shingle beach, being voraciously picked over by dark blue and red rock crabs.
There had been a landslip on Garden Road caused by recent rain, so my father had to take a longer route to HMS
Tamar
via Happy Valley then through Wanchai. In Hennessy Road, a coolie on a tricycle suddenly appeared from a side street, pedalling hard. My father, used to demon-dodging pedestrians, slammed on his brakes. The road was wet. The car skidded and hit the front of the tricycle, the coolie jumping clear at the moment of impact.
One of the two front wheels of the tricycle was buckled but the vehicle had otherwise suffered no discernible damage. The coolie, however, was livid. He waved his hands in the air, appealed for justice to the inevitable crowd of onlookers (which was swelling by the minute) and harangued my father who, not understanding a word but capturing the general gist of the diatribe, just stood staring at the infinitesimal dent in the Ford's chrome bumper.
Finally, my father drew himself up and roared at the shouting coolie, ‘Who do you think you're screaming at?'
The coolie fell silent.
‘It was your own bloody fault,' my father bellowed. ‘You didn't look, you blithering idiot. You just came swanning out with not a care in the world. Now look what you've done …'
He pointed to the bumper. The coolie took a cursory look, waved his hand in the general direction of his tricycle and let off a stream of invective in a high-pitched squeal. This, I knew, was bad. When an angry Chinese voice rose an octave, there was soon going to be physical action. My father knew as much about street fighting Hong Kong-style as he did Cantonese. Or astrophysics. It was plain before it started who would win a punch-up.
My mother got out of the car, as did I. She was about to muster all her command of Cantonese to defuse the situation but, at that moment, a police paddy-wagon appeared, the crowd melting away. A Chinese sergeant told off the coolie for the dangerous driving of a tricycle. The coolie argued for money to cover the repair to his wheel but the policeman denied his appeal and sent him on his way. A European police inspector then had a brief word with my father and it was all over.
‘He could've made that bloody coolie pay for the damage to the bumper,' my father complained as we set off again. ‘It'll need re-chroming.'
‘The cost of repairing a barely visible dent might equal a week's coolie wage,' my mother pointed out. ‘You could've offered to pay to straighten his wheel. He could be out of work until it's fixed. That would have been the gentlemanly thing to—'
‘What?' my father retorted. ‘It wasn't my bloody fault. He … and you side with …' He was left spluttering for words.
The outcome of this minor traffic accident was that my father became an unnecessarily over-cautious driver. He would, for example, be driving along a wide road in the New Territories, in the high heat of midday, with nobody and nothing moving on it
– no buffaloes, pigs, hens, farmers, duck-herds, ducks or dogs. We would pass, say, a country temple set well back from the road. Seated on a stool by the door would be an old crone smoking a thin silver pipe.

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