The Year of the Woman (13 page)

The dapper man was at the 5B bus stop.
Tai-Tai
Li had woken her, KwayFay bleary and resentful. Her superb priceless watch said six-ten a.m. Less noise for Sunday, but a man waited in a black
cheh
so hurry, hurry.

KwayFay was there in ten minutes after a skimpy wash and wearing her walk-to-work clothes with her office clothes in her plastic bag, the computer weighing her down.

“
Jo-san
, Little Sister.”

She saw him extinguish his cigarette and slip
something
into his mouth. Mint, or those chlorophyll tablets.

“Good morning,” she said back. Without explanation he drove her to the Central Harbour Services pier, the one she hated because she’d been caught there once, hiding under a barrow stall after stealing a paw-paw. She was seven and made frantic bleats, squealing she’d give the security man four-fold luck for his next Mahjong bet if he let her go. He’d released her. She never knew if he’d made any bet.

The driver booked her a ticket to Lamma Island. Twenty-three Hong Kong dollars, Deluxe Class. The ferry was a triple decker. Weekdays, the fare was only half that, and only HK$ 6.50 Ordinary Class on ferries with fewer decks, but today was Sunday. She hissed at the scandalous price. He gave her the ticket and a manila envelope. Duty pay, no red-envelope gift.

“Get off at Yung Shue Wan, Little Sister. Forty
minutes
.”

“What is in Lamma Island?”

“Ferry sails at half-past seven. Have breakfast.
Joy-geen
.”

“Good bye,” she said back, and embarked.

Even this early the ferry was fairly crowded. Her driver stayed on the pier observing the departure. He lit a cigarette as soon as the harbour waters churned. Did he never get bored? Was that what being calm meant?

The vessel docked on time.

Lamma Island, quite a size, had only a few thousand people. An enormous cement factory, a vast power
station
with twin chimneys you could see from Hong Kong and Lantau, still it was far less noisy than Hong Kong proper. The two villages were rural, Hong Kong people came here for seafood and walks. The crowd drifted along the one main street of Yung Shue Wan. An elderly woman wearing all black and plastic sandals approached. Her teeth had all but gone. She beckoned. KwayFay followed, turning right, away from the little public library and passing the post office.

It was little more than two hundred paces to the
roadside
temple. There, the old woman signed for KwayFay to sit, and entered a shack beside the Tin Hau Temple. Tin Hau was everybody’s favourite, the world’s most worshipped goddess, Queen of Heaven, and rightly so. KwayFay declined to wait, went inside to burn eight joss sticks, setting them upright in the brass earth-filled pot. Only then did she sit outside in the shade of the makeshift umbrella.

Soon a number of girls came in motor cars, from the direction of the only other village on Lamma. Sok Kwu Wan could be walked in an hour over the hilly centre of the wooded island, but people tended to be anxious on account of the prison there. It was harmless. KwayFay
knew no prisoner would attempt escape from it until the end of the following year.

The seven girls who alighted were exquisitely dressed. KwayFay knew they were financed by societies she dared not wonder about. A suave, elegant chaperone accompanied them. KwayFay saw the girls enter the temple and observe the rituals, most of them careless and offhand. They emerged. One seemed not quite Cantonese – Singaporean? Malaysian? – and one was definitely Eurasian, though idiomatic in English and Cantonese. It was pleasant to see and hear them. KwayFay realised her envy when the girls burst out laughing at something one of them said. Sisters, how she wanted a family.

One girl asked the lady how long they would wait.

“One hour.” She seemed to be their supervisor. Were they girls from some high-nose boarding school in the Colony?

One spoke in Japanese, then Mandarin Chinese. The others laughed. Two spoke in English, the other replying in what, Italian or German? More laughs. One girl, a lovely sylphic creature, said something inaudible and trotted inside the temple. She stood posturing before the two plain wooden tables serving as altars. Carrying poles were lashed to the sides of the tables. Women would carry the altars before the portable shrine on Tin Hau’s feast day. The brass burner, with KwayFay’s incense sticks still smouldering, stood on one among plates of fruit, sweets and toffees. Tin Hau’s portable shrine – a simple wooden sedan chair structure with its pointed roof surmounted by a red silk ball – was behind the altars. It was a poor temple, but still belonged to the
Queen of Heaven.

The girl swayed, dancing in the simple temple up to the crude shrine. She plumped herself down in the sedan chair with a shriek of laughter. Two of the girls withdrew in alarm, and one turning her face away in distress. The others laughed, applauding.

KwayFay gasped at the sacrilege. It was the grossest form of blasphemy. Tin Hau was the
Queen
of
Heaven
, no less, the great goddess who ruled storms and the oceans, everything from disasters at sea to the great
dai-fungs
, the great wind storms feared by all fisherfolk. If any goddess was Hong Kong’s own greatest deity, Tin Hau was she: protectress of all who sailed, who
controlled
the very wrath of heaven itself. The girl had committed an unpardonable act of desecration, as had the others who had found her shameful act humorous. Only the three who expressed sadness were safe.

She wept silently from shame that she had not stopped them. The girls dispersed, talking and casually sitting on the wall in the shade of a giant bauhinia. They paid her no attention, except to make remarks about the shoddy girl behind their hands.

Without drawing attention to herself, KwayFay went round to the rear of the little makeshift temple and clapped her hands softly. The old woman appeared, eyes bright with vigilance.

“Have you rice-birds,
Tai-Tai
?”

“Yes. Two?”

“Please.” She paid far more than was usual, two
hundred
Hong Kong dollars, for the two caged creatures. She touched the cage a moment, then handed them back. They would be released during the next service.
This might go some way to repair the insult to the Queen of Heaven. She went back to waiting, not
knowing
what she had been sent here for. She was thirsty from the heat.

After an hour, the elderly woman who had been
waiting
all the while summoned the girls to leave. They assembled. Two cars appeared and parked on the road.

“Which three go first, Little Sister?” the elderly woman asked KwayFay outright. To the chorus of protest from the beauties, she said, “No, no! Quiet, all of you! Little Sister decides! You all want to be first into the car’s air-conditioning!”

Without hesitation KwayFay indicated the three girls who had shown sadness at the others’ antics in the
temple
. The remaining four pouted. The chaperone gestured to the selected three to head down the narrow path. The elderly lady stood until the car doors slammed, then turned to the four who stood waiting.

“You four can go,” she said quietly. “Should you get jobs, pay half your salaries for ever to Hong Kong temples. Speak of what you have learned, you will live less than a single day.”

She walked off and got into the second vehicle. The two cars drove away. A group of tourist walkers came plodding from the direction of Sok Kwu Wan. One played a mouth organ. One tourist whistled at the sight of the four lovely girls.

“Did she mean it?” one girl asked the others.

They talked together, looking sideways at KwayFay. One began to cry, dabbing her eyes with a lace
handkerchief
.

They came to ask KwayFay. “It is true?” and “Who
are you?”

“I do not know what you mean.” She felt flustered. This was none of her business. The old woman from the temple appeared from the shack and beckoned. KwayFay followed her down to the road without
speaking
. At the Tai Hing, a restaurant on the waterfront, the old woman pointed, grinning, and said, “
Sik fan
. Eat rice, Little Sister.” She turned to retrace her steps.

Tourists were now strolling along the harbour front, examining gift stalls and bar menus. The prices seemed scandalous to KwayFay. She was no tourist! A youth emerged and beckoned her inside.

“No price, Little Sister,” he assured her. “No price. Your ferry sails at one-thirty.”

He showed her to a table. On the white cloth lay her return ticket, Deluxe Class on the triple decker ferry, Sunday price.

She could see the four abandoned girls standing
forlorn
at the temple of Tin Hau. As the old lady reached them, they crowded round demanding information. She ignored them, and went inside.

Old Man heard the result of KwayFay’s choice in his house at the Peak with its perilously high view of Hong Kong’s harbour. Ah Min was not often invited, but this occasion was exceptional.

“Did she give a reason?”

“No, First Born.” Ah Min prayed he would not be criticised. If so, he would blame the chaperone; the woman supervisor should think of these things. Otherwise he himself would be to blame, an
impossibility
,
ne
?

“She definitely picked three, no hesitation?”

“Definite, Tiger
Sin-Sang
. The remaining four asked KwayFay what was going on. She said she did not know.”

“Good, good! Wise girl.” The old man thought on as Ah Min tried to guess the verdict. “How much have we spent on these four?”

“Languages, education, training, finance, learning, in all two million three hundred thousand, not counting support paid to families. More than usual.”

Old Man sighed.

“Creating a Jade Woman used to cost only a hundred thousand. It still took years.”

Ah Min remained silent. A Jade Woman, once chosen and trained, was the most valued of a Triad’s assets. She would be light years ahead of any Japanese geisha,
priceless
for visiting politicians, bankers, conventions who wanted perfection. A Jade Woman – the term was as ancient as China – could converse in any major
language
, arrange any cuisine, join any conversation
however
rarified, and be conversant with stock exchanges the world over. They were perfection, brilliant in mind and exquisite in body. It grieved him to discard such a massive investment, even if they had not failed the final test of KwayFay’s divination on Lamma Island. He filled up at the terrible image of money squandered.

“Then,” Old Man concluded slowly, “they will serve as whores in Gao Lung. Don’t sell them to any lowly Triad. I won’t have that. Put them under one of our brothel Mamas. Not in the New Territories. Somewhere along Nathan Road’s east side. No drugs, nothing. Work them. Who recommended them?”

“Two came from the Philippines, that agency in Manila. Two came from the harbour agent place in Singapore.”

“End their services,” the old man said after
deliberation
.

“End …?” Ah Min was unsure.

“End. They have failed. Keep the agencies on, but the managers must end. Do it today.”

“Yes, Tiger First Born. Dead today.”

Ah Min took up his ledger and retired to make the necessary entries. A considerable loss such as this deserved more than just demoting four failed Jade Women to whores. His instincts were to have the girls finished there and then, but at least as street girls they would bring money in. It only showed the master’s
cleverness
. Money in, instead of money out! He would use his best gold pen for the ledger entries. It was his favourite, only used when large sums were involved.

He made the sign for death against the two Philippino scouts, and the one from Singapore. He sighed with pleasure.

HC stared at the file. He had drunk too much in
celebration
, and it was too soon for his meal. The amahs were talkative, which annoyed him. Today he would examine this treasure that would at once redeem his
fortunes
. More money than anyone would ever believe, in an old file plucked from thousands, in that storeroom he had guarded so faithfully at the Brilliant Miracle Success Investment Company.

His moment of triumph.

“Not now,” he called angrily.

The amahs withdrew, whispering. He swelled with importance. His own talent would restore wealth, Linda’s adoration, and humiliate his relatives. They were all swine, almost as bad as Kunmingese and their
inedible
eat-anything meals. By their cuisine you will know them, he thought contentedly. He hugged himself.

Soon he would bask in everybody’s adoration, and be in a position to make them grovel. Knowing Linda
Tai-Tai
ruled in this No-Name house, they had exploited him. From now on, his staff wouldn’t get the double pay necessary for saving face at New Year. Not they! He’d given it to them in the past, every single year, when he could ill afford it. Anything to keep face. Once he cashed in this marvellous boon, he would donate to the God of Wealth, if KwayFay said it was all right. If she said no, he wouldn’t, and blame her if bad luck came his way. But Vitamin M, as Hong Kong called money,
carried
all religions before it.

He opened the file, feeling the tingle along his spine. He felt slightly tipsy. For a moment he didn’t
understand what he was staring at.

A traffic island.
Traffic island
?

Photographed from the air, cars caught in stasis swirling round, driving on the left of the road. He
discarded
the black-and-white grainy photograph. It was old, with fingerprints that had milked the dark greys to blotches. This couldn’t be it. The treasure must be
elsewhere
, under the almost transparent flimsy papers.

He felt in the pouch. The file had Admiralty strings, those old fashioned shoelace ties. Nowadays they’d be rusted staples. No such improprieties years ago. He smiled, contentedly brought out a folded parchment sheet of calligraphy.

Musty, as with all old Hong Kong documents. Some of the Chinese characters were definitely not Cantonese colloquial. Was it Gwokyu Mandarin, the common speech of China? This seemed a double translation, first Mandarin, then Cantonese, virtually the same, in a scripted scrolled hand of great ornateness, so many flourishes he couldn’t follow.

Then a small map. Again the traffic island. He
recognised
it. Once, that odd shape had held the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. It was called Kellett Island. He remembered it well, yachts and ocean-going pleasure boats there all through the Seventies, near the typhoon shelter where the junks waited in staid rows until storms abated. Then had come the enormous excavations of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, driving everyone mad for months. Now the tunnel was finished the cars came churning from the mess called Kowloon, ruining the ambience of Hong Kong Island.

The trouble was, little Kellett Island was no more. It
was now nothing more than a traffic island in the
middle
of a slow traffic jam. He stared, went back over the flimsies, the old photograph.

Surely there must be something more than this? He had ordered her to pick out the one that mattered. Hadn’t he said that? The
one
that
mattered
, alone among the gunge in the storeroom. He’d told the stupid girl. She had betrayed him. She was a fraud.

He lay back in his chair, head resting on the wood and his eyes closed. No fortune, no king’s ransom? She would have to be punished. He must sack her, show she had defaulted. Would that count with the Triads? He felt sweat trickle down his chin and itch under his arms. He might get away with it. By inflicting punishment on her, he could show the Triad he’d done as they commanded, sorted through all those thousands of incomprehensible documents. She had been
ordered
to bring out the one they wanted, the file filled with old shares now worth millions. Money with which they could bribe the
incoming
Chinese mainlanders, uncouth roughs whose
politics
masked nothing but avarice.

Sweat-drenched in his armchair, he imagining the horrendous consequences for himself. He would have to tell the Triad people when they sent their collectors for money. His debts moved like a creeping barrage across his mental landscape.

The amahs knocked. It was wide open. He stared at them in complete incomprehension.

“
See-Tau,
” one said nervously. “
Tai-Tai
send
message
.”

“What?”

“She get good luck from Kowloon.”

Luck? Was there such a thing any longer? He’d never had any, not since that woman had become his wife. Perhaps there was a way of getting rid of her, clearing away all his bad luck in one brave blow?

“Ring Missie on mobile phone.”

“
Ho-wer
,” he said, wholly false. “Good, good.”

They withdrew chatting quietly. He knew what they were saying: Something very wrong. Only he knew how wrong it was.

When he’d been given this investment company to run, a blunt message had come: protect the old files. Destroy none. Preserve. And go through them. Take your time. Select the most worthy, because the Triad needs it before the great Handover when the People’s Republic of China takes over. He’d been so confident. Going through those files would be easy. Somewhere in there was rumoured to be a gold mine, something left by old people. It was his only interview with Triad people in Kowloon, to whom he had bragged about the rumour. Investments, money, possibly gold mines in Australia, South Africa shares in diamonds, some great companies who floated bonds at impossible Victorian rates,
anything
. But it was there. Triad people had chosen HC’s company because it would never be suspected as their repository. They were stacked to the ceiling.

Find it, HC. It was in there. They did not know which. Six years, they’d told him as he took over in his grand new office, you have six years before the People’s Republic of China marches in. Find the file, examine all in great detail, and explain to us what it means. Just do it.

Could it be six years ago? HC had worked the
problem out. The number of files he’d need to check each day, to finish before the British ships sailed over the Kellett Bank and away, leaving Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China, was easy. Six thousand files meant 1,000 a year for six years. About 6,000, some with stuttering printing on tractor paper as the first
computers
had come in, others hand-written in admirable ancient calligraphy and so old they were frayed and
yellowed
. But somewhere among them was the treasure the Triads wanted. And that file was HC’s rescue.

Rescue? The idle ignorant bitch KwayFay had ruined everything.

He sat up. Could it be that she was not in touch with spirits at all? That everything she’d done was nothing more than a trick, to save her useless job? Any girl could outdo KwayFay at computer work. He already knew that. They even made fun of her slowness and her
endless
day dreaming.

What if she was cheating him?

It was his way out! He wiped his face on the
antimacassar
, indispensable in the high humidity. This was salvation. Prove to the Triad’s loan collectors she was a sham, that she had constructed an elaborate hoax. She’d simply pretended she was a necromancer. He would tell them he’d searched night and day, been through every single file. He’d tell them none made sense, even though he’d laboriously translated and burned the midnight oil and found nothing.

The first few days years ago when he’d assumed
control
of his company, swaggering about Princes Buildings, he’d worked hard. Maybe for two weeks, something like that. Then he’d thrown parties, gone with Linda to the
races, lazed in the bath houses, used a girl or two on the side.

And postponed things.

After about a month, he’d reasoned that maybe eight files a day would do it. Reading, say, six files before noon, then do others in the afternoon when Threadneedle Street was going demented. That would do it. If he’d calculated correctly, there were 6,000 files with 15,000 subsidiary documents, wallets, folders, boxes. Menthol was the predominating scent, for first of every calendar month he’d had a
foki
replace the
menthol
balls against moths and insects.

Nine files a day would see it done.

He had imagined all sorts. He would savour that
precious
file, time and again, savour the delicious
achievement
. Then he would airily make a call, when he was alone in the office, and say in a commanding voice, “Tell the
bahsi
I’ve done as ordered. I’ve found the file. Okay?” And without waiting for an answer he would ring off and be there, swinging idly in his captain’s chair when they came bursting excitedly into his office, full of praise for his brilliance.

They would reward him with millions, say a tenth, a third even? Not too much to ask for six long years of laborious perusing of documents he’d guarded with his life?

It had seemed so definite. Hadn’t he a university degree in the bastard investment systems of Hong Kong? All he had to do was read through each of the files one by one. The one the Triads wanted would be so obvious it would seem lit up like a Boundary Street bar. He would send the staff away for a day, scatter old files
round the office and bask in the Triad’s praise.

He hadn’t done any of it.

All those years ago he’d thought, why the hurry?

Then suddenly six months had passed, and he realised with a cold shock he’d done nothing. He couldn’t even tell where he’d placed the first dozen or so files he’d looked at. He could only remember how boring they’d been, old rentals, leasehold deeds, development
buildings
in Mong Kok, none of importance. Back then he’d thought, well, for God’s sake, I’ve years yet. Why not do, say, eleven a day? He’d easily make up the lost time.

Then, another six months had suddenly passed and he’d only five years remaining. He’d planned on tackling twelve, then thirteen a day. It would even out.

As time passed, he’d then begun to feel the first twinges of alarm. No, not alarm, for that was close to fear, and he was not afraid of a few old files. Yet it had definitely felt as if time was somehow running away. He begun to ignore the problem completely, for peace of mind. In fact, he’d stopped even going into the
storeroom
, preferring to send some clerks in for rubber bands or a box of pencils.

He forgot the problem.

Then KwayFay had come, when he was over five years in deficit. He became seriously frightened.

He needed KwayFay to go in there and divine which file was the one; which file was the miracle fortune file the Triad needed. With amazement, then utter joy, he had recognised KwayFay’s extraordinarily strange moments of clairvoyance. Impossible to search through the files on his own. But her mystic powers would do it in a single flash of spiritual insight. And save his life and
make him a millionaire.

Now she’d given him a file about a traffic island. The only way to save himself was accuse her of betrayal. He’d be in the clear, buy time that way, and promise the Triad he’d hire some economics graduates – his own expense – who would work under HC’s close
observation
and discover the file. Solution and rescue
combined
! Naturally, he would offer to pay for the search, promise them a superb job.

KwayFay would die, or whatever they did to those who betrayed them. He, HC, would be thanked – who knew how? – for having identified the traitor and solved the problem KwayFay had caused. He knew he had found a safe way through the minefields. Speak to them sensibly, that was the way. For one crazy moment he thought of dashing back to the office and making a
desperate
lone search. But the People’s Republic’s army was already massing on the banks of the Shum Chun, with the terrible patience of certain seizure of the Colony. He’d no time left.

No, he would have to sacrifice the wretched girl, and that way save his skin. Well, she’d brought this on
herself
, betraying him with a worthless file.

He could see what she’d done. She’d been too idle, dozing about the place. Worthless cow.

Deciding against making a last desperate search, he poured himself a drink. Hopeless at this stage. He
wondered
what Linda was up to. Some trivial bet, he
shouldn
’t wonder, on something worthless. She’d once phoned him in Macao when she’d won seventeen dollars at roulette. Was that the behaviour of a true supportive
loo-poh
,
old woman who stood by her husband?

No, he’d already seen his salvation. He almost threw the wretched file aside. Better to keep it as evidence, show the Triad bosses what a stupid bitch KwayFay was to pass off rubbish to somebody with his brains. Proof.

The worse she looked to them, the better he would seem. The worse her fate, the safer he’d be. It was life.