After I’d finished I tried it all on Marilyn in celebration. She listened, perched on her studio stool. I acted out the bits, ran the tapes, mimicked Monet’s quarrelsomeness, showed her how the withdrawn Sisley’s taciturnity must have irritated, the lot.
“Well?” I said, exhausted. “Convincing?”
She was silent a moment. “These are people you knew?”
Women. “No, love. How many times have I to tell you? They were in France, over a century ago. It’s my plan, see?”
She nodded. “Very good.”
So that day I took all my made-up notes and concocted tapes to the university. The old man was delighted. I explained, sadly, that these were the very last fragments of everything I had been able to get from my firm about Song Ping, RIP.
“Some of it is disjointed. Most is in English or French, I’m afraid. Our firm’s phoned in a few fragments on these tapes. Other bits might turn up. We might get a Canton address where he first exhibited.”
“Excellent!” He handled my sheaf of scraps with so much care my heart went out to him. A real honest pro. We’re a dying breed. “No chronology, I see, Lovejoy?”
“No. There’s, er, a special chronology fee for putting them in what you think’s the right order.” I’d have to see that Sim authorized the fees directly from a London bank. Life’s all go.
He hugged himself. “Imagine it all in Chinese calligraphy of the period, authentic paper, proper typology! It shall be a truly realistic exhibition!” He rubbed his hands, cackling a merry don’s laugh. “Lovejoy,” he said, eyes misting. “Thank you for this task!”
“But it’s a mammoth—”
“Genuine learning, challenged by time’s decay, emerging triumphantly in mankind’s pursuit of—” He spouted this rapturous crap for some minutes.
“Great, Stephen.” I was moved in spite of myself.
Leaving the steep garden, I met Phyllis Surton just disembarking from the number 3
bus in Bonham Road. Her grayness seemed to blot all color from the surroundings as we enacted a dithery reunion. The racket from St. Paul’s school opposite made conversation difficult, so I turned back with her.
“I’m just taking some materials to Stephen, Lovejoy.” She carried folders and a box.
“Old inks, brushes.” She was like a sparrow, nervy and dithery. We uttered commonplaces: can I carry your stuff; aren’t the flowers nice. She made to sit on a stone seat. The least I could do was sit beside her.
“Do you notice the plants?” she asked.
“Plants?” We were in a garden, for God’s sake. “Aye. Great.”
“No. There.” She pointed.
“Grass?” It was low-lying frondy stuff.
“Look.” She smiled, touched a finger to a frond by the path. Instantly the greenery collapsed. Its falling movement touched others, and the whole green carpet cowered down.
I found myself standing in alarm. “It’s alive!”
“Not really that way, Lovejoy.” She was smiling. “Mimosa pudica, the sensitive plant.
Touch it and it, well, crumples.” She held my gaze as I returned uneasily. “It’s me, isn’t it?” Slowly the greenery was straightening, warily recovering. “I pretend to be like everyone else. But afraid of touch, encounter.”
“Me too.” I kept my feet off the ground. For all I knew this bloody grass had teeth.
“I know,” she said unexpectedly. “I sense it. I look, but can’t dare myself to…”
“Bloody cheek,” I said, stung. “I’m not scared of anything.”
She smiled at that. “Should I tell you something, Lovejoy? I know you won’t tell—
Stephen wouldn’t understand anyway if you did. It’s… about the bar. Where you get picked up—”
“Listen,” I began, but she shushed me.
“… Meet ladies, however you put it.” She stared away. “I’ve saved up, scrimped. For months I’ve had enough to… to, you know, hire somebody. And… and I desperately wanted to. There!”
My gasp sounded really authentic. “Phyllis!”
“I knew you’d be shocked. I actually tried once, even went as far as writing out a note.
I picked out a man and everything.” She watched a group of students climbing the garden path. “I’m so hopeless. Pathetic.”
“Which was he?” I already recognized a few of the other gigolos, the idiot musician Rich, Dennis the blond with a good line in patter, Sidney the pretend aristocrat forever dropping names, Juanito—
“You, Lovejoy.” Still not a glance. Her face was red. “To me you felt the same timid creature riven by unrequited desire.”
“Nark it, Phyllis.” Though it proved she was a woman of taste. “I’m only doing it because I have to.”
“You’re not offended, Lovejoy?” She looked askance.
“I understand.” I gave her my most soulful gaze, really profound sincerity. Saying you understand makes women think you agree. She smiled hesitantly, reached out and touched my hand. I didn’t collapse.
“Thank you, Lovejoy. You’re sweet.” She paused, until the students were out of sight.
“There’s one thing, Lovejoy.”
“Yes?” More sordid secrets? I suppressed a yawn.
“Hong Kong’s dangerous. Please remember that. It fights dirty. So keep safe from risks.”
I chuckled, debonair. “I know all about risks, love.”
Her gray careworn face hung its sadness at me. “Promise. If there’s any way I can help, you’ll come to me. Even if you think I’ll be useless.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, doing my cheap gangster act, not getting a laugh.
I left then, waving to her as she went towards the Tang Chih Building and I trotted downhill to the curving road.
Happy now the scam was underway, I paused, attracted by a crowd near Centra]
Market watching crickets fight. One called Golden Double-Eight Super Dragon won hands down. It ate its vanquished opponent. The sight made me ill. The loser had seemed so sure of itself.
We were in the Lantern Market one evening, me and Marilyn, strolling after supper. It was a couple of days after I’d started work. The place is actually a car-park near the Macao Ferry but becomes a vendor’s paradise at dusk. Hundreds of folk arrive and simply set up business, each around a paraffin lantern. Instantly it could be a scene from the Middle Ages, the yellow glows on huddles of faces against a starry sky.
“Here, mate.” I paused, gave an old bloke a note. He seemed poor, having nothing to sell. He took it without acknowledgment, which narked me. Bloody cheek. He could have said a ta. I’d only given it him because I’d glimpsed my little stumpy leper Titch talking to him, before poling himself off on his rollers as we’d approached.
“Sin Sang.” He was calling after me. Marilyn had halted. The old bloke was effortlessly hunched down, smoking. I saw he had a blackish pet bird in a bamboo cage.
“Go, Lovejoy,” Marilyn said. “Your fortune.”
“Eh?” I didn’t want my fortune told. “It’s all rubbish.”
A number of Chinese paused with us, loudly speculating.
“You must, Lovejoy. You’ve paid.”
The old bloke spouted in Cantonese, pointing, flicked the hemp loop off the cage and presented a deck of cards. Beside him was a pile of small bamboo slivers in an old Coke tin. The bird came out, picked out a card rather snappishly, I thought. I gave it an inexpert trill whistle like I do in my garden back home, just being pally. It ignored this, picked out a bamboo sliver, cast it on the card, and slammed back into its cage. Do not disturb. I was conscious of the crowd’s excited interest. The fortune-teller was silent, looking.