The Year of the Woman (20 page)

The journey to work seemed arduous, quite as if she was now becoming a tourist. Except, she thought as she caught the Star Ferry, she had no
home
. Did Ah Hau’s Café of the Singing Birds off Ladder Street in the Mologai count? She sat in the unaccustomed luxury of the upper deck of the Star Ferry, avoiding the window seats because of her hair. She kept catching glimpses of herself – an amazing creature! So elegant! – in the
windows
of the place called MacDonalds and the waterfront camera shops. Schoolchildren were already out in their bright uniforms, this homework, that task set by
too-strict
mistresses.

Tourist, though. KwayFay shouldn’t feel like a tourist. They had homes. She had none, not even here.

Yet the concierge said she now had a suite in the Peninsula. Had she meant it? And for what exactly? Everything was trade. Transactions, more than stars in the sky or thoughts in mankind, waited to be enacted. Pay your money at the turnstile and the Star Ferry
carried
you to Hong Kong Island from Kowloon. Pay your HK$ 16.00 at the Government Pier in Central District, and the Hoverferry takes you to Cheung Chau, 9.00am start, there in 35 minutes. All was the rule of money. It happened as night followed day. And why? Because you’d paid,
ne
?

Three men in suits boarded and sat close.

She saw their reflections. One talked into a cell phone. The others were the sort who ought to look bored because they were parted from their investment tracker charts. Usually, young suits couldn’t leave off
analysing numbers all the way home, and were still checking when they arrived next morning.

These three were already in their job. She felt them looking round the upper deck as the
Evening Star
, just like the Star Ferry vessels in green and cream, churned slowly out of the jetty.

They didn’t look at her. They examined everybody else. The young man snapped his cell phone shut. She heard him mutter something but couldn’t make it out. Among themselves, threat-men used slang full of puns, even rhymes and homophones. This was traditional. In ancient China, ladies of the Imperial Court wrote to each other using a secret set of ideographs, inventing characters for a written language only they understood.

What were these threat-men telling somebody about her for?

She thought of that wheezing man who’d
interrogated
her, to no purpose, in Kowloon that time, and
suddenly
believed she’d guessed it was he. He must be a Triad Head, who was cruel to his prisoner the poor old man from the Sports Field, who did the
Tai Gik
in the ancient way.

Suddenly it all came flooding in, and she realised.

They were keeping the old man as a business hostage! He was being held for ransom, which was why he refused always to try to escape. Not a prisoner, but someone held to force his family’s complicity.

This explained his weariness, his need of her help. He was stolen from his family! How terrible! She felt almost sick. At least she had her freedom, whereas that poor old man was imprisoned against his will. What for, some merger? The only exercise he was ever permitted
was when the Sports Field at Causeway Bay was vacant. She’d seen him taken out for exercise. How cruel people were! She almost wept at the image of the poor old
gentleman
. Would he never be freed?

Now she fully understood that meeting near the Western Market. The threat-men were obviously
making
sure he didn’t pass on some coded message, the sort of thing a desperate hostage would do. She simply
hadn
’t understood. And his words about money clearly had some double meaning she hadn’t taken in. What a fool she was! How broken-hearted he must be. His poor family, possibly children, grandchildren, all weeping for their poor old grandfather. She hadn’t helped him at all.

These young hoods might be the same ones from the Sports Field. They suspected a rescue attempt, which explained their vigilance, their aggression.

Such a helpless old man. And stupidly she told him he should name himself Tiger! He must have thought she was mocking his imprisonment.

There was only one way out. She would do a deal with these awful men. Some Triad had abducted Old Man, and had chosen her – young, poor, an ex-urchin without connections, dispensable – to be the one who carried the message for the ransom money! She knew well how it was done. Didn’t Hong Kong’s newspapers report
ransom
demands two or three times every single week, sometimes every day? It was the Colony’s horrid game.

She was a no-name person. Even her name was
something
Ah Hau, the cripple of the Café of the Singing Birds in the Mologai, made up to call her when she came begging.

The poor man must be got free. He must not be
allowed to suffer. Ghost Grandmother would be proud of her. And if her decision proved disastrous and they killed her, then at least she would be well received. Who knew what help she might get from the Jade Emperor, Lord of All, if she helped the old gentleman to freedom? While it was still safe and nobody was sitting next to her, she slowly opened her handbag and withdrew the remainder of the money.

She waited until the
Evening Star
docked and the crowd disembarked. The three followed her up the ramps. She could hear one grumbling, something about the time taken crossing on the Star Ferry, instead of driving. One laughed, the other took no notice. She started to walk towards Princes Building. At the end of the concourse she halted and turned suddenly. The men paused. The traffic lights were twenty paces off.

“I have money,” she told them. “Take it.”

She thrust the notes at the one face she recognised, the driver man the others called Tang. He looked
startled
, stared at the money in his hands.

“Leave the old gentleman alone. Please let him go. I know he won’t tell if you set him free.”

“What?” one man said.

She knew what he was up to. She’d used the surprise trick on tourists from the cruise ships, and once at a
furriers
in Wanchai. It sometimes worked, but less as she’d become a teenager.

“Please don’t hurt him. He’s an old man.”

“Old man?” It was quite a good act, she recorded with a twinge of envy, but they must be trained in this kind of thing.

“It’s no time for games,” she said, emboldened. “The
money the threat-men gave me I’ve spent, like they said. That’s what is left. If you want the clothes back, you can get them from the Peninsula Hotel. I still have my old clothes. Please don’t hurt Old Man. He means no harm.”

“What?” the man said stupidly. They looked at each other. She lost patience.

“I can let you have my computer. It’s very expensive. I know where you can sell it. It’s still modern, nearly.”

“Computer?” The fool Tang kept staring at the money in his hands.

“You know where I am,” she said evenly. People
passing
were starting to glance at her, standing talking to three young men who had arrayed themselves in a line before her across the pavement.

“Where you are?”

The man was a dolt, she saw, now fully committed. What could they do to her? She knew she wasn’t worth even killing, only forgetting.

“The Brilliant Miracle Success Investment Company,” she said scornfully. “Princes Building. You know where I mean.”

“Princes Building,” the idiot repeated. He glanced at the taller of the others, making her wonder if she’d addressed the wrong one, a
foki
instead of the
bahsi
. She stepped back to include them all.

“That’s where I am going now. I can sometimes guess investments. I’ll try to do it for you, if you let Old Man go. Please tell them. Promise?”

“Promise, Little Sister,” the tallest one said. He must be the leader because he took over. “I promise.”

“Very well.” She told them the telephone number of
HC’s firm, and how she could be got on a direct line if they wanted to ask about investments. “I have nothing else to give you. Please treat him kindly. Do you give him enough to eat?”

“Yes, Little Sister.”

The tallest threat-man seemed amused at her attempted belligerence. The other two were still acting bemused. She wasn’t taken in.

“Are you sure? He is thin.”

“Yes, we are sure, Little Sister.”

“Please remember he is old enough to be your
great-grandfather
.”

“I shall, Little Sister,” the tall one said gravely.

“He can stay in my hut, if you let him go, if he has no family to take him. I promise he won’t tell the police, just help me carry the water to other squatters.”

“Right, Little Sister.”

“Very well, then.”

She turned on her heel and left them, making for the side entrance of Princes Building. The computer was cutting the shoulder of the new dress, but she’d made her decision and knew it was the right one. Sure, she would have nothing left. And she might even lose her shack if they made her pay her wages to free Old Man. It was the only time in her life she’d been in any
position
to help anyone. She felt really proud.

Saving lives brought terrible responsibility. A person who rescued another was responsible for him for ever. Had to support him against all adversities, in fact, through famines and riot. That was the Chinese way.

In olden times, desperate people would throw
themselves
into fast-running rivers like the Yangtse or the
Pearl, in hopes of rescue – thus making the rescuer their Rice-Bowl-and-Roof for the rest of their lives. Innocent English, newcomers in olden days to the Shanghai Bund or Canton godowns, were often duped into saving a poor “drowning” soul, only later realising their
profound
obligation to the supposed victim and having to fund the indolent leech for ever. The Chinese, wiser in traditions and smiling behind their hands, would watch from the passing boat while the man simply drowned, in the absence of some dupe.

That was the obligation. This, she knew, was a real case of kidnapping for ransom. She almost wept for Old Man. Tiger? More like a lamb. If she rescued him, she could have him as her own private family and keep him for ever. She would transform him into her very own grandfather! She had never done anything like this before, but would try. He could be her family!

She wondered if he had his own teeth. He looked clean. Maybe she could have him mind two or three of the nearby squatter shacks, perhaps earn water money looking after babies while mothers worked in Kennedy Town Market?

There was risk in it, she already knew. She once tried to save a puppy’s life by stealing scraps for it, but some lads from the Yau Tong squatter shelters stole the puppy and sold it to be cooked for rich people who needed belly heat, for which puppy stew was best. They’d made a dollar apiece, the five of them. She’d wept. Tragedy was everywhere when living things got stolen, but what could you do?

The entire office of the Brilliant Miracle Success Investment Company was sombre and quiet. A few
telephones
rang on low switch. Tony was talking but
listlessly
as if his Futures scheme was going nowhere. Alice looked up, quickly bent down to concentrate, not even a false greeting this time, though she stared at KwayFay’s clothes and hairdo and shoes.

KwayFay’s desk was littered with spare notes, scraps of yellow stickers with telephone numbers, Stocks and Shares pages. One or two extinct print-outs from several different FTSE and Dow Jones reports, American most of them with London latests. So much, she thought
bitterly
, for loyalty. They’d all assumed she was gone, and had used her terminal, console, even her desk drawer, for rubbish.

Deliberately she took her time. Let HC come
sweating
and call her in. The SUSPENDED sticker was still there, now curled at the edges. She was past caring. For the first time in her life she felt committed to another living person. Old Man –
her
Old Man – was hostaged. Her duty was to extricate him. She would preserve him and the learning his early
Tai Gik
and old age
represented
.

The desk rubbish she simply scrapped, screwing up the bits of paper and notelets and discarding them. She accepted a drink of water from Charmian the
foki
servant
, and smiled.

“You look beautiful, Little Sister!” the
foki
said
admiringly
.

“Thank you.”

“I missed you, Little Sister.” Then, “No work here.” Charmian covered her face as she helped KwayFay to
get rid of the rubbish.

“Why?”

“Business Head angry all days.”

More than likely, KwayFay thought. She sat down to the console. She was heartily sick of tap-screens. You were forever making sure you didn’t split the wretched things, which gave under the push of your finger in the creepiest way. What was wrong with a resolute key? HC again, moving with the times.

She sipped the water, carefully not letting her lipstick smear the glass. The water was always super-chlorinated, foul to the taste and horrid to the skin, but it was free, and she had a second person to think of. This was how pride felt. Different from a mere job.

The stupid Cook Bounty Island Pacific currency was now ignored on the main currency exchanges, she saw. None of the major currencies or banks had taken it up, except for five or six who’d got their fingers burned. Serve them right. She almost choked to see that HC, in despair, had finally succumbed and taken out loans using a Bahamian international and some Commerce Bank outfit in Hannover. He’d lost the firm’s monthly take, a gross folly. Considering the warning she’d given him, it could only have been a psychic bid of despair.

The investments were in a terrific back-log. She got down to clearing them. The office finished in two hours, but by the time the clock jumped on and the buzzers sounded for closure, she was through a good half. People began shutting down and stretching and calling their bits of news, the usual nonsense, all trying to sound as if they’d set up some monumental buy order. She wasn’t deceived.