Joyce notices us hovering in the doorway. She looks at us without embarrassment. I realize that I can’t imagine Joyce ever feeling embarrassed about anything.
“Hello!” she seems to shout. She is still very excited. “Didn’t see you. I don’t have eyes in the back of my face.”
“Is this a bad time?” I say.
“What? Bad time? No. Just teaching cheeky grandson that he has to work hard.”
“He seems very young to be doing homework,” my mother says.
“Father sets homework. Not school. School just let them do anything. Relax. Watch television. Watch video games. Just relax. Like millionaires. Like playboys. As though the world owes them a loving.”
“I know, I know.” My mother sighs, staring sympathetically at the child. “What’s your name, darling?”
He says nothing.
“Answer lady!” Joyce roars like a sergeant major faced with a dopey private.
“William,” he says. A tiny voice, full of tears.
“Like Prince William,” Joyce says. She ruffles his thick mop of shiny black hair, pinches his smooth round cheek. “Sister called Diana. Like Princess Diana.”
“What lovely names,” my mother says.
“We were wondering how you prepare the ginseng,” I say. I want to get out of here. “How you are meant to take it.”
“Take it? Many ways. Can drink it. Like tea. In a nice cup of tea. Can put it in soup. Like Korean people. Easiest way-just chop up ginseng. Put it in saucepan with water. Boil it. Let it simmer for ten minutes. Strain it off. Use one pint of water for every ounce of ginseng.”
“That sounds easy enough,” my mother says, smiling at William.
He stares up at her with blank wet eyes.
“You tried ginseng yet?” demands Joyce.
“Not yet. That’s what we-”
“Good for you.” Her fierce brown eyes blaze at my mother. “Especially women. Older ladies. But not just older ladies.” She looks at me. “Good for when you not sleep. Tired all the time. Feeling-how to say?-a bit run over.”
“Run down.”
“Yes. Run over.” She pushes her face close to mine. “You looking a bit run over, mister.”
“Just what I need!” says my mum, clapping her hands with delight.
Joyce offers us tea-English tea, she calls it-but we make our excuses and leave. Before we are out of the door, Joyce is shouting at William about having a Chinese face.
And for the first time I get a sense of how hard it is when you want to become international.
“I can’t stay long,” Josh tells me when we meet for lunch in a crowded City pub where I am the only man not wearing a suit.
“Got to reach somebody in Hong Kong before they leave the office?” His firm still does a lot of business with Hong Kong and I like hearing about it. It makes me feel as though I still have some connection with the place. Something more than memories.
“No. Got a client coming in. A woman. You should see her, Alfie. Top-of-the-range pussy, mate. Looks like Claudia Schiffer but talks like Lady Helen Windsor or somebody. A real plums-in-the-mouth job. Not so much tits and arse as tits and class. Quite fancy my chances, I do.”
“A bit of posh? Just right for you, Josh. Knock off your rough edges. Show you which fork to use. Teach you when to say lavatory and when to say sofa. Stop you wiping your nose on your sleeve. Keeping coal in the bath. All that.”
He flushes, not liking it very much when you suggest that he is not quite the Duke of Westminster. Usually you can say what you like to Josh. He has the sensitivity of a brick. But you are not allowed to suggest that he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, or up his butt.
“She’s coming into the office at two,” he says, looking at his watch. “Can’t stay long.”
I am not offended. Our meetings often begin with Josh telling me that he has to be somewhere else very soon. I’m used to it.
We order curry at the bar and I notice that the damage to his face is fading. The bandages are long gone and there’s no sign that his broken nose has been reset. There are black and yellow bruises under his eyes, but they look as though they are the result of a night without sleep rather than a head butt from a drunken middle-aged skinhead. We collect our curries and find a glass-strewn table in a smoky corner of the pub.
“You ever think about that night?” I ask him.
“What night?”
“You know. That night in the Shanghai Dragon. The night you got your nose broken. The night I got my ribs smacked.”
“I try not to.”
“I think about it all the time. I can’t quite work out what happened.”
“Surprise attack. Caught me off guard. Pearl Harbor and all that. Fat bastard. Should have called the police.”
“I don’t mean what happened to us. I mean the old man. What happened to him.”
“Nothing happened to him. It was all over by the time he showed up.”
I shake my head.
“That guy-that fat skinhead-was ready to fight anyone. Then the old man turned up. And the skinhead backed down. I didn’t understand it then. I still don’t.”
“There’s no great mystery,” Josh says through a mouthful of curry. “The skinhead probably thought that Charlie Chan had fifty of his relations out the back, all armed with machetes. Come on. I can’t hang about. Eat your curry before it gets cold.”
“That’s not it. At least, I don’t think that’s it. It was just that he was-I don’t know. Perfectly relaxed. You could see it in him. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t afraid of a much younger, much bigger man who was ready to fight anyone. He just wasn’t scared of him. And the skinhead could sense it. There was no fear in him.”
Josh snorts.
“Did you feel a tremor in the Force, Alfie? Did you sense that the Force was strong in the old cook? Were you once more privy to the mysteries of the East?”
“I’m just saying that he wasn’t afraid. That’s all. And he should have been afraid.”
Josh is not listening to me. He is quickly shoveling in his curry and thinking about the blonde, upper-class client who is coming into his office at two. He is thinking about his chances with her. But I still feel the need to explain something to him.
“It just made me think how great that must be-to go through your life without fear. Imagine how liberating that must be, Josh. Imagine how free that must make you feel. If you’re not afraid of anything, then you can’t be hurt, can you?”
“Only if they’ve got a baseball bat,” says Josh. “How’s your old man? Still shacked up with Miss Sweden?”
“Miss Czech Republic. He’s gone for good. I’m pretty sure of it.”
Josh shakes his head. “You’ve got to take your hat off to him. Still getting the shaven haven at his age. It’s not to be sniffed at.”
“I don’t want some old swinger for a father. Nobody does. Everybody admires Hugh Hefner. Everybody likes the old boy who plays around. But nobody wants him for their dad.”
“Not much of a role model, I suppose. Shagging the hired help.”
“He doesn’t have to be a role model. I just want a bit of stability. A bit of peace and quiet. That’s all anybody wants from their parents, isn’t it? That’s the best thing they can give you-a little less embarrassment. I don’t want my dad to be out there chasing young Czech women and trying to pump up his biceps and all the rest of it. I want him to think about other things. He’s had his time. He should understand that. He’s had his time for being young. Nobody wants to get old any more, do they?”
“Not if they can help it.”
“Nobody wants to get out of the way and let the next generation come through. Everybody wants one more chance.”
“What’s so bad about that?”
“It makes a mockery of the past. Every time you start again, it diminishes what you’ve had before. Can’t you see that? It chops your life up into these little bite-sized morsels. If you have endless goes at getting it right, then you will never get it right. Not even once. Because constantly starting again turns the best thing in the world into just another takeout. Fast love. Junk love. Love to go.”