A gong stroked the din away. In the silence light footsteps and a familiar wheezing were clearly audible, as into my restricted view came three women and Fatty. He took a seat, overwhelming its frail structure. The women were exquisite, all different in style and dress. One, fortyish, looked Malaysian, her animated oval face smiling as she told some amusing story. The Cantonese girl who perched next to Fatty was pint-size, sleekly dressed in a bright purple. The last was possibly Eurasian, as delectable but heavily jeweled. They were stunning. A handshake would have been enough to send me delirious for a fortnight. I’d never seen beauty like this outside the world of antiques. I was glued to my keyhole, mesmerized, as Fatty piped some command and a score of amahs clacked forward to parade the girls.
The penny dropped. A beauty contest, with three women and Fatty judging? The girls were walked in, made to stop in the light, then dismissed. One or two tried arguing, a few wailed loudly, but most went in utter dejection. I only had eyes for the three judges who sat, pictures of elegance in their tatty surroundings, occasionally exchanging a word about the girls under inspection. Once or twice they asked a direct question. More usually they listened to a curt introduction shouted by one of the old pajama ladies.
Each scrutiny took only a few seconds.
The parading girls were all ages. Some came poorly dressed, some grubby. One or two were well-nigh toddlers. The majority seemed ten to sixteen. Some girls had gone completely Western, or up-aged themselves in ultramodern dresses and makeup, going so far as expensive hairdos and outfits nicked straight from last week’s Oscar catwalkers. I felt sorry for them, all that effort and summarily discarded with half a glance. Worse, I began to realize how devastating it must be for these hopefuls to do their juvenile utmost and then get looked over by three goddesses who’d stop traffic with an eyelash.
Three? Four. Ling Ling walked in, ushered by a couple of amahs. Scurry-scurry of helpers and she was seated with the panel. The process went on without interruption, the pace unchanged, the slight irregular thunder of feet continuing as girls filed in, paused, got the elbow. By pressing hard against the panel I discerned a small group of nonrejects, eight or nine, kept back near the exit.
We’d been watching maybe two long hours when Johny’s watch bleeped. I nearly leapt out of my skin, but he nudged me and clicked the back of our cupboard ajar. We shuffled free through a small lavatory and went, shutting doors behind us, down steps and corridors until we were out in the scalding sun.
The day had warmed in every way. Traffic grappled, buses and hawkers brawled for every spare inch. All normal.
“What was that all about, Johny?” I wanted to know. He returned to life once we were out, his motor running as if on a released spring as he swayed and tapped to an inner rhythm. I was beginning to comprehend the extent of the authority that ruled. “And how much did all that cost?”
“Next, man, no sheet, we’s gwine sailin’, dig?”
Obediently I dug, but managed to persuade him to pause beside a drinks stall for a few seconds. We had a couple of colas in tins. “Not lahk ree-yull American big A Coke,” he said.
I shrugged agreement as our unpaid taxi appeared from the melee and paused beside us. “All right, Johny. So I’m not to ask. But just remember I’ve an appointment to keep.
Okay?”
“Raat own, Lovejoy man. Next, typhoon shelter.”
Round One had been odd—well, spy-holing three or four hundred bonny little girls parading from a hidden cupboard wasn’t my idea of the norm. Round Two was at least as eccentric.
We were dropped near my original typhoon shelter and were taken in a sampan propelled by a water lady, black pajama suit and wicker-weave hat, to bob about in the harbor. That was it.
As we reached a spot a hundred yards out from the typhoon shelter I honestly expected something to happen—I mean, somebody had gone to infinite trouble to organize this Cook’s tour. The sampan woman seemed to have been waiting for us.
Without instruction she stern-oared us out of the shelter and then swung the sampan so we pointed to the shore and simply kept us there.
“Well?” I asked after a few moments, but Johny’s head was clapped between red earphones and he was rapturously undulating in situ, eyes closed. Switched on seems to mean switched off these days. I looked about.
The sun was oppressive, a physical weight. A sampan—“three-plank” it means, apparently—is a small craft, no shelter or deck, easily propelled by one stern scull. I took off my jacket and put it over my thatch. The woman grinned gold teeth. The pack on her back, I suddenly realized, was a baby. I saw its little head wobble. It goggled at the world. So did I. The woman stood there, attentively adjusting our position by slow thrusts of her oar.
A typhoon shelter is like a harbor within a harbor, merely an area of water. A long thin stone mole runs out from the shore and stops just short of another mole coming to meet it, near enough at right angles. The gap is the gateway for junks to sail through.
The rectangle is the shelter, and that’s it. The space was almost crammed with junks moored in lines. So?
It was quiet—not unbusy, you understand, for ships, ferries, sampans, and a rare pleasure boat were hard at it swishing about, sometimes hooting at each other. But Hong Kong’s milling traffic seemed curiously far away. The longer we stayed there, the more detached we seemed to become. Still nothing happened.
The harbor’s water was sort of flat and gleamy, not oily but trying to look that way. A certain amount of debris swilled about. Why so many plastic bags and orange skins?
And no sea gulls! Hooded still, I waited. Unless Captain Nemo’s Nautilus rose from the ocean… A junk detached itself from the lines and maneuvered towards the entrance. It came closer. I glanced at our boat lady, winked at her baby to pass the time.
The junk’s diesel chugged—they all have diesel engines. It glided forward, towards the entrance outside which we bobbed idly. I glanced up at the lady. She too was looking, still standing reassuringly at the oar. The junk was nearing.
No problem. Broad sunlight, vessels everywhere, ferries toing and froing. The junk was bigger than our sampan, but it could see us. Of course, in my terrible introduction to destitution Hong Kong-style two or three days ago, I had seen junks knocking about the harbor, same as I’d seen the Star Ferry ships and the P and O liners. But at the time I’d been practically delirious, paid no attention. Now, here was one emerging from the typhoon shelter with a bow wave growing under its nose. And growing.
And turning towards our sampan. This one. Mine.
“Watch out, love,” I said. The boat lady too was looking. Unperturbed, she made a slow but skilled correction.
Growing. Fifty yards off. And growing. Christ, were they all that big? It was a ship, not a mere boat. Three masts, tree trunks stripped bare. Ropes, spars. People. And coming at us. Me.
I gave a scream. “Look out, you stupid—” The sky darkened. The prow loomed, filled the sky. Its deep slow cough became a boom. Our sampan lifted on the wave. It missed us by a fraction as we rocked aside. I was yelling blasphemy and prayers, clutching on the sides. The air stank of fumes which hung about us. Johny Chen was laughing, bloody fool, still sitting and shuffling.
The junk’s huge stern stormed past and we were safe, rocking madly but still afloat.
The boat woman was calmly slogging at the oar, forcing round our sampan’s bow in a superb demonstration of natural skill. I stared in awe after the receding junk. The stern had railings and a great rudder. Unbelievably, a range of garden boxes ran the width of it. A goat’s head showed for a second. Chickens peered down at us from a crate.