The Year of the Woman (19 page)

“The importance, Ah Min?”

“You own Kellett Island, First Born.”

The old man considered this. Kellett Island was no longer an island. Once, it had been a small rocky,
granite
dot in Hong Kong’s main harbour. A causeway ran to it, forming one arm of the mooring place. A typhoon shelter was there, where junks and all kinds of pleasure craft skulked when great d
ai-fungs
came out of the South China Sea. The English made these safe places, but had committed the uttermost foolishness when they reclaimed land to engulf Kellett Island. No more Hong Kong Royal Yacht Club, just a small traffic island amid swirling screeching traffic. Now, cars wrecked the peace of the early morning
Tai Gik
people, who did the ancient ritual exercises in the parks and on high places. Where was serenity? It wasn’t good enough. Kellett Island was the pearl in the mouths of Kowloon’s Nine Dragons, the Gao Lung of Kowloon’s name.

“I still do
Tai Gik
,” he grumbled.

“Indeed, First Born.”

“My new name!” the old man commanded sharply.

“Indeed, Tiger First Born.”

“The English don’t,” Tiger Wong said, still in a sulk though the last pair of bath-house girls had given him rapturous sex. He should have been at ease, but could not rest.

He liked to do his early
Tai Gik
on the sports field, which he always had cleared to perform alone, in case enemies caught him by pretending to be exercise people. Lately, he’d had to hire a place in the Harbour Hotel or
some such dump, as if he was a common tourist. Shameful, shameful. For a traffic island?

“Significance,” he grumbled.

“A claim could be lodged.”

About money, Ah Min always went word by word, unable to string a whole sentence together. An amah entered on a signal from Ah Min, placed a tray of tea and almond juice on the low wooden table. The old man liked her. She was beautiful, no black hairs on her chin, eyes downcast, shapely, not more than nineteen, good teeth. He felt inclined to use her, though she would be hard put to rouse him. Old age did not come alone, Chinese saying. Except one of these new amahs had been married aged sixteen; her husband had died in an accident. Another Chinese saying:
Never fuck widow; horse thrown rider!
He would make Ah Min check if she was a widow.

“The girl found the file, Tiger
Sin-Sang
. Kellett Island is yours. The deeds are yours.”

“More. In full.” He would never get to the next
bath-house
. He still felt dissatisfied, so the girls couldn’t have done their sex work correctly, no matter how rapturous they had made him feel. They would have to go back to harlotry in the street. He felt hard done by.

“Kellett Island is yours. It never did belong to the Royal Yacht Club. They did not know this.”

“It is mine?”

“It is yours. In perpetuity.”

“This means I have a traffic island,” Old Man Tiger Wong said drily. “The girl is fraudulent after all,
ne
?”

“Wong First Born,” Ah Min said guardedly, choosing phrases with care as he sensed his master’s testy mood.
“The place is small, yes. But the existence of the
Cross-Harbour
Tunnel from beside Tsim Sha Tsui East Ferry Pier, underneath Salisbury Road, emerges in Hong Kong Island beside the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter is there, with the Hong Kong Police Officers’ Club beside it.”

“I wait.”

“Business Head, you own access to all those places because you own Kellett Island. They never paid rent. They never bought it. English law confirmed Chinese Imperial law in the 1840s. The English conquerors said so. Sixteen decades.”

The old man smoothed his
cheong saam
. His joints swelled these days. The last time he had used a lone
bed-girl
his knees became so painful he could hardly walk. His ankles were no better. Doctors were useless. He should have some traditional Chinese herbs. He deserved something, after all the years of dedicated
service
he had given to the Colony. His was dedication, total and generous. That was the duty of a father of business,
ne
? To give constantly, and receive nothing but
ingratitude
. He was not given enough respect. Only the mad girl KwayFay, who had once given him her last ounce of old rice wrapped in cooking foil, showed him respect. She was the granddaughter he lacked.

“What means this decades?”

“One-piece ten years, master. English law insists on Chinese rights,” Ah Min went on, heart shaking at the excitement of the revelation he was about to make. “First Born will remember the Plover Cove Reclamation Scheme? Drought in the late Nineteen Sixties? The Colony decapitated mountains in the New Territories,
on the Governor’s command, and flooded the reservoir so created with clean water.”

“I remember. I should have received millions in
compensation
, but Government paid the villagers instead. We only managed to milk a few paltry million pounds Sterling from that. A disgrace.”

“Now is your time to reclaim your inheritance, Wong First Born. The Government must buy Kellett Island back from you. The fisher villages were paid a going price for their lands round Plover Cove, so must Government pay you. The laws of precedent say so!”

“Or what?”

“Or,” Ah Min said, his beam radiant, “they must close the Cross-Harbour Tunnel from Tsim Sha Tsui.”

“Close?” Now Old Man paid attention.

“Close, First Born. Instantly.”

“Or pay me?”

“Correct, master. The money they owe is almost incalculable.” He was shuddering, almost in orgasm. His Triad master watched with distaste.

“Can they refuse?”

“Only if they bequeath the debt to the People’s Republic of China. An impossibility! Imagine how China would feel! To march in and be faced with the international disgrace of a massive debt left over from Imperial times, that Great Britain had failed to honour.”

“The same argument over the costs of building the new airport on Lantau Island!”

“Indeed, Wong
Sin-Sang
! Neither could face it! Hong Kong Government will give you almost anything you demand! Can you imagine the Kowloon traffic blocked up all the way from Tsim Sha Tsui to the Shum Chun
River? And all China’s exports from Kwantung Province and the whole of South China halted?”

The old man thought a while.

“Fresh tea,” he said quietly. An amah hurried in on Ah Min’s gesture.

She was different, Old Man observed. He watched her figure move, and approved. It was time he went to a bath-house he did not own, in North Point perhaps, or even that terrible place in Quarry Bay. He might take his own bath girls. One of them did quite well when he was faced with a particularly difficult decision.

“I go to bath-house, six o’clock. Quarry Bay, or Shau Kei Wan. Choose six bath girls. I pick three. No Shanghainese or Fukien girls, though. Too harsh.”

“Six o’clock, Wong
Sin-Sang.
”

The old man leant forward to accept the tea bowl. Ah Min froze in fright, for the momentous statement to come.

“You have done well, Ah Min,” Tiger Wong said gravely. “You remember those three cents?”

“Yes, Wong
Sin-Sang
?”

“They are forgotten.”

Ah Min beamed, tears streaming down his face at the Triad master’s magnanimity, and took a bowl of tea from the amah. The two men drank together, eyes on each other.

“Leave your brushes, combs, everything.”

The hairdressers exchanging glances. “Leave them, dearie?” the so-elegant American exclaimed. “But my friend Elmore gave them to me. They’re my
presentation
set.”

“Leave them,” KwayFay said again.

It was her way of testing the system. In any case, ordinary tortoiseshell could be replaced. If she was being honoured, or tricked, then he could charge a new set of implements up to the hotel.

“Elmore will be so upset!”

“Miss Brody.”

“Yes, Little Sister?” The concierge signalled to Vane, the tall slender American hairdresser she’d finally selected for this young and august guest. She fixed Vane with an eye as she told KwayFay, “It shall be exactly as you say.”

Vane was bustled out with his assistants, his lip
trembling
and his backward appealing stare ignored.

“Shall I have them cleaned, Little Sister?”

“No. I shall do it myself.”

The mirror showed a different KwayFay now. Her hair was gorgeous. No lack of lustre in Hong Kong, not among the Cantonese anyhow, but this was exquisite.

She examined her features. How different she looked from the bedraggled creature who’d stared back with such belligerence from the bathroom’s mirror! If she were not dressed in a bathrobe, she might appear even…

“Clothes, now, please. Give prices.”

Miss Brody murmured, worried, “You will not be
billed for anything. I have orders.”

“Price items!”

The parade began ten minutes after she had tea. English biscuits, crumpets, toasted tea cakes, jam and a small pot of marmalade. She had said marmalade because she’d once heard of it. The word had stuck with her as a mantra, mar-ma-
lade
, since she was eleven. Two English ladies had been having tea in the Gloucester Tea-Rooms on the Island, where KwayFay begged at the door. One lady, wafting suavely out, had given her two fifty-cent pieces saying, “Sorry about the marmalade, chuckie.”

KwayFay remembered scrutinising the coins, staring at the Queen’s head with grave suspicion. She bit the edges, rubbed them to test if they shone (always the best test, because of cunning Shanghainese unworthies
practically
taking over Quarry Bay to counterfeit coinages, having nothing worthwhile of their own).

One coin had been sticky. During the biting test, she’d been astonished to discover an amazing new taste. It was bitter, then spread sweetly over her tongue. Ever after she’d passed the Gloucester Tea-Rooms with a kind of reverence, seeing it as a place of special
affluence
, a great tall palatial building at least as grand as the nearby General Post Office but able to create selective tastes surely only royalty were used to.

When the Gloucester Tea-Rooms closed, the sight of the rebuilding work broke her heart. She’d known then she would never again taste that fabulous mar-ma-
lade
. From the euphony, she wondered if the sweet tang was actually made from horses: Big Horse Road in Cantonese was
Dai-mar-lo
, where once the English governors rode their great horses along the harbour
waterfront.

Now, a whole pot! It looked strange, a sticky spoon all its own. Once she licked the spoon the memory came flooding back. Her vision blurred. She had made it to marmalade! And her own jar! Not much in it, but
perhaps
the Peninsula Hotel with its gold taps and priceless arrays of jewellery had secret special-price deals with some hawkers? She drew breath. It must be the costliest food on earth.

Models paraded through the suite.

“Leave this one.”

KwayFay was reclining on a chaise longue,
remembering
that USA actress, famous from the scene where a real live lion sprawled over her as she (the actress, not the lion) snarled and roared. Except the actress lay like the sphinx, forearms out parallel before her, and that would have been inelegant. Different for a movie star, everything permitted. Read the newspapers blowing along the waterfront, and anybody’d know it was true.

The girls paraded at intervals of one minute, ladies from the boutiques on the ground floor and the other shopping malls listing things KwayFay wanted to see again. She had done the lingerie – such shameless shapes! Why, one slip even left a breast showing! She blushed and felt exposed, though it was these thin girls strolling, and even dancing, through the suite to music, displaying colours and styles. She picked three pairs of knickers, two petticoats, a camisole.

“Is that all, Miss KwayFay?” one lady, desperately
trying
to seem French though she was from the Philippines, begged in alarm. “Our superior styles are—”

KwayFay said firmly, “I do not exploit!”

Three times Miss Brody, now quite harrowed, explained there would be no charge. The Peninsula’s only wish was to prove what excellent choices they showed their august visitor. KwayFay was getting used to authority and quickly learned to speak sharply. They even approved of a stern corrective, the models
particularly
appearing smiley when she made a definite choice.

“Only one full set of lingerie, though…”

“Now dresses.”

She stood firm, insisting they leave her old clothes with her cracked old shoes. Miss Brody wanted to send them for cleaning.

“No,” KwayFay ruled. “Leave here, please.”

“But why?” Miss Brody’s helpless gesture said it all: KwayFay’s attire was rubbish. The hotel was eager to replace every stitch by the best, most expensive
garments
that fashion could offer. It was all free.

“If you take them,” KwayFay told her, “I might never see them again. What will I wear then?”

“These new clothes!” Miss Brody wailed.

Miss Brody understood that Miss KwayFay wanted to burn every single strand of her hair trapped in the combs, brushes, on the carpet, but there were
fokis
to do just that. The Peninsula’s famous Domestic Division was renowned.

KwayFay had them bring matches, ash-trays, towels, and a small incinerator device, and burned the
implements
and her entangled strands of hair. Miss Brody swayed with distress. KwayFay sympathised. She too had felt hunger, but the lady’s worry was only caused by thoughts of the hairdresser. In any case, the American
hairdresser’s friend Elmore would leave him for another friend before the week was out – they were already ensconced in a Kyoto hotel making private
arrangements
. Where was the problem? The amahs and
assistants
twittered.

The dresses proved difficult. So many! Eastern,
western
, Indian, Indonesian, saris and sarongs, evening wear and cocktail dresses. Materials were problematic. Some textiles were so heavy! Others were gossamer. The
couturiers
leant towards impact rather than shape, fashion as opposed to detail. KwayFay had a hard time. Finally she selected an elegant silk day suit, the skirt exquisitely cut, the jacket with its false lapels showing a two-tone effect perfectly. Two day dresses were quickly chosen because she was getting tired. She still had to go to HC’s as ordered, but why?

“Now shoes.”

Exotic creatures of indeterminate gender rushed in with tiers of boxes of shoes. Extra mirrors were brought. Brogues, stubby toes she knew were coming back into fashion, and the anklet-hangs were definitely out. She finally selected two pairs of Italian and a slight pair of London design.

She stood while they dressed her.

“Box up all clothes, please, and shoes,” she told them. “In case.”

“In case of what, Miss KwayFay?” cried Miss Brody, now woefully distressed.

“In case I want them.”

Had she still enough money to buy a dinner? She asked to see the itemised bill. She stared when it came, didn’t believe the amount. So many noughts?

She told them to leave her alone as she counted the money in her handbag. To her relief it just covered the cost of one outfit. If she left most, she would still have some money over, six hundred Hong Kong dollars. Would it buy a meal in the Peninsula? She doubted it. If she dressed back in her old clothes and left by the rear entrance, she might escape without arrest and buy a two-dollar bowl with a wisp of green vegetables behind Connaught Road. The Star Ferry was the cheapest way back to the Island, leave this madhouse and Kowloon behind. The Tiger Wong had said spend. She had spent.

Quickly she ate the rest of the biscuits and a piece of cake, which she saw on the bill, but her stomach rebelled at such richness. She poured a cup of cold tea, glancing surreptitiously towards the double doors, and drank it before summoning them.

“Who will pay?” she asked.

“It is already paid, Miss KwayFay.”

“Let me see.”

They showed her the bill. It was cancelled. KwayFay knew this trick, one bill seeming the same as another, then the miscreant was arrested on the way out of the hotel and it was prison on Lamma Island among hoods and robbers. Unlike other thieves, she would have no contacts in the Triads or Hongs or police to get her off a trial. She had helped to work the trick several times, before she’d become respectable employee in HC’s Company.

“I pay.”

“Miss, please …”

Miss Brody was taken away in tears. A second concierge, grand and old, quite forty or maybe even
more, appeared and listened in silence while KwayFay counted out the impossible sum of money onto the rosewood table. The new woman simply agreed with whatever KwayFay said, concurred with her selections, then smiled.

“You only wish to pay for the clothes you are
wearing
?”

“Yes. I shall not have the others.”

That would leave her enough for a good meal every day for a month. She was no fool. And she’d destroyed all her strands of hair, as Ghost Grandmother said.

“Little Sister, it is a pleasure to do business with you. May I extend the hospitality of the hotel before you leave? We have excellent international cuisine and —”

“No. I go to work now.”

“And your purchases? The other ones?”

“Leave them,” KwayFay said cunningly. “Maybe I
collect
them later from your front door, bringing more money.”

“A hotel limousine to your destination, perhaps?”

“No. I go on Star Ferry. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Miss KwayFay. May I accompany you down to the entrance?”

The elderly concierge chatted all the way, pointing out the beautiful jewellery in the hotel shops as she went. KwayFay found difficulty in walking on such costly shoes, and she hated the thought of her expensive skirt being crumpled. It was the unaccustomed susurrus of her silk underclothes, and the impossible shoes
causing
her to tread as if her feet were old, like those of tourists.

KwayFay could not resist pausing to gaze at the
galaxy of brooches, pendants, rings, earrings. Some she had not even seen before, though she had spent year after year night-staring into the windows of the late shops in Nathan Road of an evening. One stone in
particular
caught her eye, a most deep violet blue.

The elderly concierge recognised her guest’s craving and said, “Tanzanite, Miss KwayFay. It is a stone only known for fifty years, from Tanzania. They call it African Sapphire, but it is different.”

“It is exquisite.”

“Isn’t it?” She could tell KwayFay loved the pendant. “They say a famous film star, the one who always buys the most expensive jewels, has the only perfect necklet. Five flawless large tanzanites!”

They went to the main door. Uniformed porters leapt to allow her through.

“Miss KwayFay, your suite will be kept here, by order.”

“What suite?”

“Simply call the hotel and you will be conveyed here from anywhere in Hong Kong, at any time.”

She dismissed the concierge’s words as yet more trickery. Also, how much would a suite cost? KwayFay said painstaking thanks and left, carrying her old
handbag
, laptop over her shoulder, and the plastic shopping bag holding her old clothes and shoes. The concierge watched her go. Tourists and pedestrians paused to see.

The concierge smiled. She went to telephone the head of the Triad, earning her retainer.