The Year of the Woman (18 page)

“Peninsula Hotel in ten minutes, Little Sister. Better get in.”

“The gentleman said a tram …”

“He joking,” the youth rasped out in English. “Tiger Wong all time joking.”

He knew the old man? She entered the vast motor, as large as her shack. She seated herself, knees together. He signalled for her to put the safety belt across her
shoulder
. She managed it.

“All time joking,” he said again, and added, “Except sometimes. Peninsula Hotel, ten minutes. And eat many bowls. Not for your health, Little Sister, for mine.”

Tiger Wong asked the young suits guarding him, “Which bird won today at the Singing Bird?”

“The smallest.”

“Did she bet?”

“Yes, master. And won.”

He settled back. “It is she. Tell her to arrange funeral house.”

“When for, master?”

“She will know when.”

The Peninsula, elegant folk said, had seen better days. It stood in the most prominent position by Hong Kong harbour, Kowloon side. Its fountain was a changing delight, enough to bring the Colony’s typical
exclamation
Waaaiii
! from a thousand voices. Its fame was perennial.

Servants in their elegant uniforms were the most pleasing anywhere. Rolls Royces, Bentleys, large American gas-guzzlers, adorned the front drive awaiting liners and aircraft, to bring yet more guests in time for faultless service. The Peninsula was the epicentre of all power in the Crown Colony, ceded New Territories and all. The true centre lay in the Governor’s House, ending soon. Until the end came, the Peninsula Hotel ruled tourism’s elite.

KwayFay was welcomed, five uniformed acolytes slickly competing to hand her out onto the steps. Doors opened as if by magic. Lights dazzled, floodlights on the façade and the windows gleaming. Astonishingly she felt only a little nervous, as if she had been there before. A Eurasian gentleman, dressed quite like some newsreel politician, greeted her. She’d seen his like when, a filthy child haunting Nathan Road of a night, she had free viewing as the main stores shut and Rediffusion came on, so many TV sets to each of the supermarket
windows
.

“
Siu-Jeh
, welcome! Will you have dinner first?”

She was starving, had almost keeled over in the car. The car! She didn’t know whether to pay the driver or not. Would the old gentleman’s warders be cross if she
offered? And with what money?

“Dinner?” she asked humbly. “I don’t want to be any bother.” And how much would it be? A hundred paces away, she could get a bowl of hot rice for HK$ 2.50, with a scrap of green vegetable.

“Any you wish, Little Sister! I cannot tell you how honoured we are! Miss Brody, please!”

A half-coloured girl advanced, smiling. She had a
glorious
figure, and wore the Peninsula colours. Her hem was exquisitely cut, KwayFay noticed with envy. Her hair was coiffeured, and one of her rings would have kept four squatter shacks in luxury from one Moon Cake Festival to the next. What a delight to be so exalted, able to stroll about this elegant foyer among the rich!

“Your dinner first? Or will you have tea while we send for a selection of dresses and lingerie?”

The choice bemused KwayFay. She’d never heard of shops bringing clothes for you to choose. Had the girl got it right? And was it either-or, like in those logic questions she used to overhear in the Sai Ying Pun schools when, during inclement weather, she listened while crouching in the ventilator hoods. Dinner
or
clothes was it? Old Man had said she was to do both, for the message to work. He must be desperate. She had to get it right, for his sake, spend the money, as yet uncounted. What if they wanted it back? She became confused. Were threat-men watching in these palatial surroundings, reporting she was being disobedient? She felt tears start.

“Send?” was all she managed.

Miss Brody waited, not at all put out by her guest’s
evident poverty. Her own clothes would absorb all KwayFay’s income for three years or more. She
desperately
wanted to know how the girl had got herself into such a giddy all-paid position. Sleeping with managers? Sucking off some Government civil servant, so often done down Wanchai and Causeway Bay? Or had this KwayFay learned even more heady skills scavenging among the bars? Was she from Gao Lung at all, or some squatter hovel on the Island? The plastic shopping bag was disgraceful.

“Perhaps a light tea first…?”

“Tea!” KwayFay blurted. Tea was a recognisable
landmark
.

She frantically felt for her handbag, terrified of losing the money and the Rolex. She was sick of the watch, beginning to wish she’d never seen it. Any cheap thief, any
chaak
prowling the waterfronts to rob unsuspecting tourists, might have it off her. It was a liability.

“Little Sister, your
sau-doi
will be safe,” the girl said. “Nothing can be stolen in the Peninsula.”

KwayFay stared in wonder. Nothing stolen here? She had never heard such a thing in all her nineteen years – if in fact that was her age. Could Ah Hau be wrong? He’d been strangling chickens for the meals he prepared for hawkers. They collected their hot food each night. (He made eighteen Hong Kong dollars a time from four hot-food hawkers every day after paying the squeeze on rent, supplies, and permission from the Triads. Not much, but not a bad deal.) She had asked, out of the blue, “How old am I?” and he’d said, coughing away, “Seven, Little Sister”. Each year she’d added one to her number, as Ah Hau taught her. Her lucky number was
seven. She looked about the hotel’s luxurious interior for a seven, for comfort.

For the first time since entering through the double doors into this world of bliss and nectar-scented cool air, she really did look.

Orchestras seemed to be playing, like those she had listened to in the Mandarin Hotel in the Island when she was small, by the kitchens with five other children who let her join their thieving team. Here, ladies drifted by her in western attire, some seeming almost to float, their diamonds flashing. Amazingly, shops were aligned along arcades stretching into infinity. Signs indicated
restaurants
, boutiques, hair-dressing emporiums, gift shops, windows crammed with jewellery, watches, clocks, paintings and even sports goods. It was a strange heaven.

“Tea, please,” she said.

She hesitated, for Miss Brody was now posed in an attitude of mid-flight, nodding encouragement, get to the verb, Little Sister, and we’ll do your bidding. KwayFay looked at the attentive faces. Was she suddenly so important that this creature, quite like an American doll in her superb clothes, would attend her whim? The question of money, that accursed wad she
had
to spend or else, plagued her.

“Where, Little Sister?” Miss Brody asked, and explained, “Tea. Where would you like it served?”

KwayFay’s vision blurred as tears came. She fumbled. Her hankie was gone. She panicked, rummaged in her handbag and found the money and watch still there.

The girl took her arm kindly yet with firmness. Two other similar girls appeared as if sprung out of the
nearest
pillar.

“Little Sister has decided to visit her suite first. Jessica? The lifts, please.”

Three girls wafted KwayFay into an elevator and along a sumptuous corridor a whole hillside of squatters could inhabit. KwayFay sank, actually sank, into a
carpet
. They opened double doors, and KwayFay entered a sumptuous lounge.

Miss Brody summoned maids to run a bath – goldplated taps, fittings, mirrors everywhere. Miss Brody fired off imperatives, clapping her hands, while KwayFay sat miserably in an ornate armchair.

“Miss KwayFay has decided to have tea in twenty minutes,” the concierge carolled. “Hairdressers afterwards. I think Jakondio, or perhaps Wilhelmoso – alert both.
Allez! Allez!
”

The girl’s hand-clapping worried KwayFay. There were no price lists. She was used to faded fly-dotted curling sheets taped to plaster walls saying how much a bowl of rice, how much green
sochoi
vegetables, and for the shredded
geung
ginger western tourists held in such awe. She was famished, desperate for some of the fruit that stood in a huge wicker-gilt basket on the marble table, but was it real? Maybe it was only wax, real fruit being too expensive?

White and gold doors opened. Maids hurried with dressing gowns and towels. A bath was running. She wondered if it was near this vast room, hoping it was for her. Where would she put her own clothes? And what if the ones Miss Brody was bringing proved too costly? Would they hold her to ransom, clothes withheld until she could afford to pay? That happened in steamy
bath-houses
, the old trick for stealing a tourist’s money while
he was naked, his clothes locked away and the key on a string round his neck. After he’d had his rapture and was towelled by vigorous topless girls, he would find his belongings gone. The usual frantic phone calls to cruise ships or travel agents, the loans from relatives, were a mere endgame. His clothes would be given back.

She knew all the tricks. Money in her handbag, though, and the watch would cover whatever this cost. She waited until they seemed preoccupied, then
nervously
put her hand into her handbag and slowly counted the money unseen. Several thousand. Except, was the yellow note bigger or smaller than the brown?

“Little Sister.” Miss Brody approached. “Do you want your personal safe activated? Or you can use the
manager
’s?”

KwayFay eyed her with mistrust. This might be the start of the old wallet con. She had helped two
bath-houses
to work it when she’d been little, everybody trusting a child. Here, though, in the Peninsula?

“I’ll keep it with me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I must pay. My money …” Miss Brody seemed trustworthy, but didn’t everyone?

“Little Sister, no payment is necessary. Your bath is ready.”

No payment? KwayFay knew that old waterfront trick, too.

Two bath girls stood ready at the bathroom door. KwayFay pointedly clutched her handbag, ready to run for it if they made the slightest move. With the three maids, Miss Brody, and the two bath amahs, she was outnumbered, but she had escaped before.

“Will you still be here when I am washed?” she asked Miss Brody.

“If you wish, Little Sister. What do you require?”

“A price list.”

The girl looked quite blank. “Price list for what, Little Sister?”

“I want it all written down, the cost.”

The girl felt for her Motorola phone as if in serious doubt for the first time.

“Miss, there is no charge. It is already assigned.”

“Assigned?”

KwayFay knew moneys were assigned, but debts? The term applied only to debt collectors, Triad
threat-men
, police squeeze-extortioners whose duty was to share illicit moneys leeched from shopkeepers and
businessmen
wanting to trade unhindered. It was all too familiar.

“Yes. There is no cost, Little Sister.”

That old litany, reassurances before the filch! KwayFay’s eyes narrowed. She wanted to show she was on to their game.

“Itemise the bill, Miss Brody,” she said with what menace she could. “I want it here when I finish my bath, understand?”

“Very well, Little Sister.”

It was either the good act of a superior con artist, or this Miss Brody with her half-idiomatic Cantonese, her obviously fluent Mandarin Chinese, and her impeccable English, was honest or an idiot.

“Yes,
lamah!
” KwayFay used the sharp ending. She would not change her mind.

She peered past the two bath amahs into the
bathroom
.
It seemed huge, its ceiling vaulted like the English cathedral near the Peak Tram Terminus. Steam rose from a bath she could have swam in, though she had never swum. Other street children had wanted to teach her – a fish child scavenged more slickly than one unable to plunge into the harbour. She had been too frightened at the thought of not having solid earth beneath her feet. You could run away if your feet were on ground, but in water?

“No wash amahs, either,” she said, clutching her handbag.

“Very well,” Miss Brody said faintly. More imperious hand-clapping and terse instructions. No more doubts, though, and a good thing too.

They were all waiting. Slowly, before their eyes, she entered the bathroom, twice checking the lock to ensure she, and not they who watched in tableau, would have control. There was a con trick on businessmen, quite good, with an excellent financial return, that depended on locked bathrooms. Japanese and Indonesians responded best, understanding abduction as an art and even having official ransom rates payable, almost as if they were South Americans like in Columbia where the ransom rates were given in local newspapers before any kidnapping ever happened.

With a stare to show she was conscious of duplicity everywhere, KwayFay slowly closed the bathroom door.

KwayFay soaked. The bath was so warm it seemed as if her skin was sucking sweetness from the pale blue water. All those bubbles! She tried to sing, because she’d once seen a movie in a Causeway Bay cinema where a pretty girl sang in her bath against a back-drop of mountains and snow. KwayFay’s price ticket had been earned by giving an American sailor a quick grope, plus a clumsy maul of her breasts. The cinema’s air-conditioning had saved her life, almost; she’d been so dehydrated she’d fainted all over Wanchai. Lucky, though, that discarded cartons from orange drinks were never quite finished. In the Ladies she drank the dregs of several cartons, and so kept going. Hydrated, she’d left the American sailor stranded and gone on her way.

Now, the pale pink of the bathroom ceiling lulled her. She felt so happy. Her handbag was safely within reach hanging on a gold tap. She started to doze, not really wanting to because of all the people out there who were going to charge her a mint for this luxury. She hoped she would get the money right. Old Man Tiger Wong depended on the hidden message getting through. Who among all these hotel people was his friend? Miss Brody didn’t look quite up to it.

“Why?” Ghost Grandmother snapped, in a temper.

Just my luck, KwayFay would have thought if she hadn’t been on her guard.

“Why what, Grandmother?”

“Why you deserve bath in gold water fountain? Are you Empress, greedy girl?”

“No, Grandmother.”

“You sack from
See-Tau
Ho! Always smile and say nice thing when sack from work. You listen?”

“Listening! I am to smile and say something
pleasant
.”

“No-Pay Girl, you!” Ghost Grandmother said, yet with a hint of fondness that lifted KwayFay’s hopes. Could this be a pleasant visit? Except, a No-Pay girl meant prostitute.

“I pay, Grandmother! With money from my handbag. A Triad gives it. They say I did well.”

“Did well what?”

“I don’t know,” KwayFay confessed. “They sent me here in a
fo-cheh
.”

“Big motor,
a
?” Grandmother laughed with scorn. KwayFay could have sworn Ghost Grandmother actually simpered as she said, “I once was a Mui Chai. You won’t remember.”

KwayFay was shocked. “
Mui Chai
? You, Grandmother?”

“Yes.” Ghost chuckled. For once KwayFay did not groan at a coming harangue crammed full of useless old tales.

“Really?”

“I tell truth, disrespectful girl!” Ghost’s silence extended. KwayFay put in a score of profound apologies for the incautious remark. This time, she wanted to hear Grandmother’s tale. Ghost Grandmother, a sold slave sex-girl?

“I was bought by a Pocket-Mother from Chao-Chou in Kwantung Province. She was of course a Hoklo, spoke that dreadful dialect, worse even than the other Hoklos from the coast of Fukien. Nobody likes it. They
talked Chang-Chou dialect, which is ugly.”

“How old were you?”

“When sold to be
Mui Chai?
Eight, lucky age for
buying
slave girl.”

“Slave!” KwayFay wailed. In English it sounded so much worse than in Cantonese.

“Don’t feel bad, lazy girl,” Ghost said comfortably. “I did really well. In Mandarin, they call us
Pei Nu
. Treated us vilely. I was sold with a cousin, MayTay, taller but ankles not pretty like mine. She’d be your …” Ghost gave up working it out. “She died of a thrashing for breaking a bowl. I still see her about, very little changed but with her hair quite pale. I told her only the other day I hate it. She never listens.”

“Was it hard, Grandmother?” How had Grandmother survived terrible slavery in order to become her Grandmother two centuries ago?

“Hard-hard, Granddaughter.” Oh, KwayFay thought, I’m granddaughter now am I? Not just lazy girl, or
No-Pay
Girl? “I worked every waking hour. Until I
fourteen
. Then I ousted First Wife and took her place!”

“You took First Wife’s place?” KwayFay squeaked in awe. “How?”

“Bad question!” Ghost cried angrily. “No ask bad question!”

KwayFay fell silent. Ghost calmed and went on, “I could have been sold into prostitution by the Hoklo woman. She was district regular Pocket-Mother, bought children each month to sell to Flower Boats on Pearl River and in Canton godowns. Did I tell you my cousin MayTay was also sold and died of a thrashing?”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

“You no
Mui Chai
, hear me?”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

“Speak to Old Man, Tiger Wong
Sin-Sang
. Tell him, Ghost say no. Save endless trouble.”

“Ghost say no,” KwayFay repeated carefully, anxious to get it right word for word.

“He from Sha-Tin. His family farmed in valley below Lion Rock. His ancestors not happy. Hong Kong change name of their land. Very cross people!”

“Not happy?” KwayFay stirred in alarm. Unhappy ghosts could do anything, change to spirits nobody even knew about. There was no telling with discontented ghosts. She shivered in her warm bubbles.

“I not write or read, Granddaughter,” Grandmother said with the oblique pride of the handicapped. “His ancestors can. Old China people say Lion Rock is truly Tiger Head Hill, Hu-T’ou-Shan. Very bad to change name of mountain. What are dragons to do with
Fhung Seui
spoiled? They cross.”

“Cross!” KwayFay moaned. “
Fhung Seui
spoiled!” Wind-water orientation, that westerners called Feng Shui, could never be overstated.

“That’s why I told you, tell him change name!”

“Is that enough?” she wailed, not wanting Grandmother to leave her with half a tale.

“No, stupid Granddaughter!”

“Sorry, Grandmother.”

Ghost’s voice grew dreamy. “It was beautiful long house, the Hakka families at Sha-Tin. Tseng Family house, with round end gables. Whoever heard of such a thing …”

Ghost rambled on about strange buildings, ponds,
special green vegetables she used to like, the strange habits of the English who ate hard yellow slabs they made from cow milk by churning it in barrels, which was odd and unknown in old Hong Kong. She told of
everyday
things as if they were amazing, and amazements as if they were mundanities: “You remember seeing those two men flayed for their skins at the Execution Gate, near where …?” until KwayFay’s mind gave up.

She came to. Grandmother was still talking, about how she’d almost been sold for a prostitute in Canton when she was bought by the Pocket Mother. She escaped this fate, though it would have been lucrative by pretending she could tell the future.

“Of course I could do no such thing! No such thing as good news!” Ghost cackled her sudden laugh. “I was kept, washing and cleaning all day long. They gave gifts, hoping I would promise good fortune! I just kept them guessing. With the money I bought myself free. I was eighteen, went home. All
Mui Chai
girls wanted to do same. That was when the man, official for Provincial Governor, took me back as Number One wife …”

Somebody knocked on the bathroom door, calling KwayFay.

“Can I go now, Grandmother?”

KwayFay couldn’t help boasting a little. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could do to a ghost, but this
was
her own grandmother; surely that must count? She took the risk. “I have never slept in a bath before, Grandmother, in a real bathroom. I want to remember it. I’ll never have another chance.”

A real bath was once-in-a-lifetime for a street girl. Even labouring Hakka women, in their black fronded
wicker hats and black pantaloons and jackets, digging and shovelling roads, called Cantonese street urchins Cockroach Children, fond but disrespectful. See how she had got on!

“No sleeping when hair done,” Ghost reminded. “Bad hairdressers take hair and use it to make spells.”

“Am I to let them do my hair?” she asked in alarm. “They want to sell me clothes and jewels, and say I need not pay. It will lead to scandal.”

“You no-account girl. How can no-account girl create scandal?” Grandmother spoke more peaceably, a sure sign a ghost was getting tired. “Tonight, lazy girl, I test you on three ceremonies and four rituals. I pick which, you tell which.”

“I’m so tired. Too many new things …”

KwayFay came to some time later, the water cooling and people still knocking on the bathroom door calling was she all right because they heard voices.

Ghost had gone.

She stepped from the bath, careful not to slip, and stood for a moment regarding herself in the enormous gold-rimmed rococo mirror. For the first time, other than night reflections in Whiteway’s waterfront
windows
, she had the chance to see herself in full.

The look she exchanged with her reflection, she realised with a start, was one of deadly complicity. Whatever opportunity was here had to be used,
otherwise
why had it come?

She covered herself with a large towel.

“I was merely singing,” she called out as if irritated. “I am ready now.”

The old woman from the gambling emporium in Kwun Tong was waiting for Old Man as he alighted at the Benevolence Bath House. He did not need to be told his slow progress across the pavement was safe. The fact he was not warned off by his threat-men was assurance enough.

Girls brought him to an upholstered gilt chair in the foyer.

“Tell.”

“Little Sister bathe,” the old woman said quietly. When young she had been a medium, but now had lost her gift. Useful still, but only for interpretation of what was overheard. “She does not want to buy clothes,
jewels
, food. She say it give scandal.”

“Scandal?”

Old Man was startled. What was the matter with the girl? Something to do with prayers, maybe? Hong Kong’s local Taoism was famously adaptable and could bend round any moral corner.

“
Chau-man
,” the old woman confirmed. “Scandal. She said it. She asked the ghost about it. It speaks,” she added, working things out, “Cantonese. It told about Lion Rock. The girl was puzzled by its new name.”

“Good.” So he had been right to change his name. “No more?”

“In bath, she spoke of your honoured ancestors by Lion Rock.”

He thought for some time about this, then gestured for the old woman to continue.

“No more, First Born.”

“See the girl spends money.” He raised a finger slowly, to the terror of the bath girls, the old woman, and the
four indoor guard-men watching his every move.

“Yes, First Born.”

“And tell me every item.”

The old woman faded. Tiger Wong nodded, and allowed himself to be taken into the bath house and undressed. He would have wanted to use one of the girls, but they lacked the enormous breasts he especially admired. Such decisions were unspeakably taxing. He felt drained.

The girls asked if they could. He told them yes. They flipped him naked onto the slab and slopped warm water over him. He hated this stage but it was the essential prelude to the flailing with hot towels he particularly liked so had to be endured.

“Different girls,” he ordered irritably. He was peeved by the strange beliefs of Little Sister. Starving herself, and in virtual tatters? He was becoming annoyed. The two bath-house girls fled. Two others instantly took their places.

Worried about scandal, as if she was a great society lady instead of Cockroach Girl from the gutter? It was not right. She should exploit his generosity, take what she could grab. That he could understand. It was logical. It was what people did.

Yet she had delivered the strange old documents in the untraceable file about Kellett Island. You couldn’t argue with that. It was a new and disturbing experience, to be in a quandary with no resolution. Also, and just as wrong, was the fact that she was a girl, not a man. If she’d been male, then even with strange powers he would have understood.

But a girl?

“Slow,” he grumbled. “And no talk.”

Wearily he submitted to their ministrations and the first heavy soapings. He was a martyr to everybody, including all these hangers-on he gave jobs, homes, food, protection, pensions, money, careers, while he
suffered
like a slave.

“No good,” he groused, sulking. “Different girls.”

They were replaced by two more. It was one thing after another, tribulations always heaped upon the Business Head, never on servants. Hard life for the
master
, easy for the hirelings. It was always so, hence the old Cantonese saying: A father’s problems never end.

He sighed, filled with self-pity.