Kowloon Tong (22 page)

Just like a child, just like old times—yet he tried not to think of all the confidences he had exchanged with his mother in the members' enclosure at Happy Valley. Wang had packed a hamper, cold chicken salad, smoked salmon and paste sandwiches, slices of cake, some fruit, three bottles of stout, napkins—a picnic.

Seeing the hamper and being told the destination, the taxi driver said, "A nice day for you. Food and sunshine. And you lucky, I think."

The driver was cheery in an envious and salivating way, glancing at them in the rear-view mirror. Over the years, so many times strangers like this, drivers usually, summed up the situation and delivered such a judgment, saying how lucky they were, Bunt and his mother. And they were never right—ever, ever. What they saw and what pleased them was the opposite of the truth. Their compliments were like mockery.

But just as he was at his most resentful, the taxi was stopped in race-day traffic on an overpass into Happy Valley. His mother gave him a pat on the cheek.

"Poor Bunt. I know you don't want to be here."

"No, I do, Mum," he protested, his voice shrill with his lie.

Betty laughed softly. She said, "'Nip over to the factory'—is that the expression young people use these days?"

Her knowing look forced Bunt to turn away. She had made him feel sheepish, but why? He loved Mei-ping. He did not want her to be his Chinese secret.

"What's her name?" Betty said, and giggled a little.

"It's not like that," Bunt said, but he was pleased by the mild way his mother had asked, not out of wickedness but in a spirit of sympathy.

"You can drop us here," Betty said to the driver, who had been eyeing them in the mirror. "Take the hamper, Bunt."

His mother walked ahead, holding her member's pass and cutting in front of the long line of Chinese who were waiting at the turnstile. In spite of himself, Bunt was a bit happier. His mother had just been nice to him.

The members' enclosure was filling with people, and several women acknowledged Betty in a familiar way. They were wearing old-fashioned hate, flowers on the brim of one, ribbons and a great green bow on another. They batted Chinese fans at their chins. Bunt was impressed by their sisterly tone. He had the posh-common accent of the colony, jumped up like his mother. He had hardly ever taken notice of such people. His life had been the factory, his mother, the bar girls, and he had disliked the expression "British community" for the way it seemed to lump him with all the plonkers—clerks and soldiers, twits and tarts—as though they existed in a tight little group of people, refugees from U.K., wagging the flag and grubbing for business and agreeing on just about everything. Yet it was not the case in Hong Kong and probably had never been.

Whatever it had been, it was ending. Royal Hong Kong, the Crown Colony, the Union Jacks stretched out in the wind over police stations, the portraits of the Queen in post offices, the policemen themselves in their panda cars and bobbies' helmets, the reassuring red vans lettered in gilt
Royal Mail.
And this place, the Happy Valley Racecourse, the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club, all these people gathered under the British flag in the members' enclosure—it was almost over.

Perhaps it was the right thing to do, what he was doing. If the deal was closing and the check cleared and they were out of Hong Kong on Monday, then he had to be here in Happy Valley among the smug and seedy-faced Brits, for this was in a profound way a ritual of farewell. He would never have another chance. It was appropriate that he was here with his mother, and he was touched when he recognized it as a ritual, for all rituals were symbolic approximations of real acts—and all the sadder for being approximate. But more than anything this ritual was important as an ending. Under any other flag it would have been a travesty. He needed to be here as a witness, for wasn't this the last British colony?

"I'm peckish," Betty said. "I wonder whether Wang remembered the sandwiches."

She was rooting in the hamper.

"Sarney?"

"I won't say no."

"Smoked salmon?"

"
Paste," Bunt said.

The chairs creaked, the awning flapped and so did the women's hat brims and their paper fans, the pennants snapped, and in the distance they could hear the loudspeaker:
No wagers will be accepted after
... The crowds howled in the stands while the vast movie-screen-sized TV monitors showed the horses being walked through the gauntlet of owners and officials. It would all end, in spite of the Chinese promises. It was nearly over even now. Nothing in Britain's history had ever ended like this. Hong Kong and its people were part of the Chinese take-away—Bunt had not fully comprehended this until this moment. Happy Valley helped him understand the Imperial Stitching sale, which he realized was not a sale at all but a hand-over to Hung. He was oddly moved.

"I'm glad I came," Bunt said, and meant it.

"Eh?"

When his mother's mouth was full and she was working her teeth over the food, she often complained that the chewing deafened her. There were flecks of smoked salmon on her lips. Her cheeks bulged. She could not hear a thing.

Bunt waited, and after she swallowed he repeated what he had said.

"Good boy," his mother said. Her newspaper was folded neatly to display the racing columns she had annotated. "Now finish your sarney and then place some bets for your poor old mum, won't you?"

He ate. He went to the window and placed his mother's bets as he had been instructed: a quinella in the first race and a double quinella in the next two, hedged by a six-up, which covered six races. He collected the betting slips and returned to his chair and looked at the horses and the race officials, the exaggerated frenzy of the Chinese gamblers, the self-conscious serenity of the Englishwomen, his mother's friends in the member's enclosure.

The horses shot out of the gates, and the violence of it, the sight of the screen, the howls of the crowd made him remember Mei-ping's nightmare of execution—Ah Fu being led out by the soldiers of the Chinese army to be shot in the back of her neck. He could see the very spot where she would be kneeling, and from the position of the horses the way she would be shown on the screen. He saw only Ah Fu collapsing onto her side, blood streaming from her neck, not the galloping horses.

"You're not watching the race," his mother said.

"Yes, I am."

"Who won?"

"I don't know."

"See."

But she was not scoring a point. Her smile was maternal, forgiving, concerned.

"What's wrong, Bunty?"

Something within him clutched at his vitals, knotting them like a cramp. That was a tight twist of pain. He felt weak and worried. He had a secret, more than one, and he was no longer strong enough to keep them.

He said, "I don't know what to do."

It was all he needed to say. The rest was up to his mother. When he said it, Betty seemed to relax. She looked him up and down. It was as though he were a strange edifice that she had happened upon, like any of the new, confusing buildings in Admiralty and Central, and she was looking for an approach—a footpath, a stairway, a bridge, a ramp, revolving doors, an arch—a way of gaining entry.

"It's your Chinky-Chonk, isn't it?"

He said nothing, and his silence was yes.

"From Macao?"

Nothing again, like a nod.

"Chinese, Mum. Her name is Mei-ping."

"I had an inkling," she said, and offered him another sandwich. He shook his head no. She put the package of sandwiches down and leaned nearer. "She seems such a sweet little thing. One of the cutters, isn't she?"

"Stitchers."

"I fancy," Betty said, a little uncertainly because she was chewing, "I fancy she was at that dinner with Hung."

He could not reply. The mention of the Golden Dragon dinner filled his head with images. Chicken feet. Entrails. Mr. Hung's teeth. A trussed and screaming woman.

"That's when it started.".

Another race had begun. Horses with tangled manes and jockeys clinging to their necks flashed onto the screen, and their hoof beats were transmitted through the turf. Bunt could feel this sound pulsing against the soles of his feet.

Betty sat back and said, "When that girl went missing."

Bunt sucked a breath through his nose, another way he had of indicating yes.

"Ah Fu," he said, to give her a name.

"And I said, 'I shouldn't be bothered.'"

He nodded.

"But after a bit you asked Mr. Hung about the missing girl."

"In a way," he said in a croaky voice.

"And you got no joy," his mother said.

He had pressed his lips together so as to prevent himself from speaking again. But it was futile, because this way his thin lips indicated that he was in a muddle.

"And now your friend, this girl Mei-ping, wants to go to the police," his mother said.

She showed genius in her intuition, her sense of smell alone was almost unnatural, like that of an animal downwind which raises its head at a vagrant aroma leaking from far away. Bunt knew that he was not able to conceal anything from her, and with instincts like that, his mother might be able to help.

"It's worse than that," Bunt said. "All of Ah Fu's belongings have disappeared. Mei-ping is petrified. That's why I took her to Macao. To calm her."

He looked at his mother. Yes, she believed him.

"She is afraid of Hung," he went on. "Hung wants to find her."

"The man is busy. Why would he want that?"

"Because she is the only person who saw him with Ah Fu. I mean, apart from me. She saw him leave the restaurant. If she went to the police she could describe how Ah Fu went missing—and then all her clothes, everything."

Betty had lifted her binoculars and was holding them in the direction of the track, although no race was in progress. She said in a voice of unconcern, "But she's not going to go to the police."

"She might," Bunt said. "I wouldn't blame her. All the signs point to Hung."

A new race started. Betty kept her binoculars trained on the track.

"I wish I had the guts to report him," Bunt said.

"It would be the end of our deal," Betty said, still following the horses.

"There'll be other deals."

"There is only one Mr. Hung."

"He's a beast," Bunt said.

"Oh, your Mei-ping will be fine," Betty said in a shushing voice. "She's back in her own little flat."

"No," Bunt said. "Mum, this is serious."

He was antagonized by the way she was watching the race as she carried on this conversation—not looking at him, fiddling with the knob on her binoculars. It distracted him, it made him talk loudly, especially now as the race was ending.

"She's staying at the factory," Bunt said. "I'm worried about her. Mum, are you listening?"

To the cheering and the sight of a single horse triumphant on the screen, Betty took her binoculars from her eyes and smiled at him.

"I think you're in love," she said.

"Why are you smiling?"

She showed him the betting slip. "Full Moon. I won."

What a very strange woman she was, to be sure. Just a few days before collecting her substantial share in the one-million-pound deal for Imperial Stitching in Kowloon Tong, she won twenty-six Hong Kong dollars on a horse in Happy Valley, and she was speechless with jubilation. But his mother was a superstitious pagan with Chinese instincts, and this was a ritual: it was the name of the horse that mattered. Full Moon's victory was auspicious; it foretold that the deal would be a success.

That was her wager. Bunt's was a gamble too, for now he had told her everything, and she was smiling. He felt better. He too had won.

The rest of the afternoon they spent in this way in the members' enclosure. Betty greeted more of her friends, and they saw the hamper and Betty praised Wang again. They ate the chicken. They drank the stout, they ate the cake, they emptied the hamper.
The horses will go on running,
the Chinese dictator had promised. But no—they would be different horses, and Mei-ping was right: Happy Valley was more appropriate to executions. It was not just the end of this race day. This was the end of Hong Kong.

It was growing dark when they got back to the cottage. The taxi driver said, "Nice view." They all said that.

"I could murder a cup of tea," Betty said. And she called out, "Wang!"

There was no reply. She called out again, this time angrily, her features distorted, chewing her teeth as she waited for his answer. Nothing. She went to his room as though for the relief it afforded her to vent her anger—slam doors and stamp on the floor and kick the furniture and squawk. Then she was back, puzzled, still chewing.

"He hopped it."

"B
UMHOLE
," Betty muttered as Bunt went through the house to see whether Wang had stolen anything from them—the wooden chest of silver, George's gold watch, the music box, the jewel case, the monogrammed sugar tongs, George's RAF insignia, Betty's winnings from last week's race, the crystal table lamp, the horse brasses. Wang had not, and so the valuables seemed less valuable for being ignored and left untouched by the Chinese cook. The watch she remembered as gleaming was tarnished, so were the horse brasses, one tong was twisted. Again she muttered, "Bumhole."

Wang's small room at the back was empty, all his clothes were gone, only the evidence of his melancholy frugality remained—scraps of saved coupons, bus tickets, paper clips, a clutch of wire hangers in his closet, an old jam jar he used as a teacup, a broken comb, the cracked plastic sandals that set Bunt's teeth on edge when Wang scuffed through the house. Bunt had always blamed Wang for his own horror of odd rice grains: Wang had retched at them and passed on to Bunt the anxiety they might be maggots.

"Gone," Bunt called out to his mother.

"Rat," she said.

Another time, long ago when they lived on Bowen Road, Bunt heard a man's screams from a nearby apartment house. Wang had said, "He has cut off his own penis. Because he was very angry with his wife." The man had screamed all night. Bunt was fifteen and Wang was also fifteen, in his first year as their houseboy. Betty had always seen their employing him as a sort of long-term rescue—a sacrifice on their part, a favor to him and his mother, Jia-Jia, that had gone on all these years.