Hiroshima Joe (46 page)

‘I know what you do. You dirty man!
Lun jai!
You filt’y man! You no like girl. You like small boy who no can fight you.’

He lifted his arm back and fetched Sandingham a powerful clout on the side of his head. It knocked him off the chair.

‘I didn’t mean to steal it,’ Sandingham whimpered. ‘I won’t … Bob! Make him stop! Bob!’

The second explosion of agony hit him in the groin. The roomboy had kicked him as hard as he could in the testicles. It wasn’t as vicious as it might have been or as straight a delivery as the Chinese had intended.

‘Hiroshima Joe! Better you no talk Davi’ nex’ time. I see you talk to him one more time, I tell Mista Heng. You get t’rown out of hotel.’

He laughed at the man doubled up on the bed.

‘You shi’!’ he said and slammed the door.

Sandingham saw, as the door swung shut, David standing on the balcony corridor. He was grinning. In his hand was the guardsman, his rifle barrel snapped clean off.

*   *   *

As the ache subsided so Sandingham’s self-reproach increased. He knew that it had been a foolish move. The one friend upon whom it seemed he might be able to rely, albeit only a small boy, had been rejected by a stupid approach governed by his plain yearnings and not by common sense.

He thought perhaps it was the lack of drugs that had heightened his sexual awareness. Opium was said to repress bodily desires. He had not wanted a man so much for a long while. And he had now to go and choose a mere boy.

At no point before had he ever had paederastic feelings. The very word ‘paederast’ made him flinch within himself. It was not in his code to consort with children and now he had broken that and was riddled with a shame which grew until he could no longer bear the guilt that flooded his thoughts.

If the mother discovered what had happened he was well and truly for it. It wouldn’t take the roomboy to have him flung out; David’s mother would call the police, her husband would fly back from Korea on compassionate leave and the case would be splashed about the pages of the
South China Morning Post
as he faced a judge in the law courts before the Bank of China on Hong Kong-side. They’d put him away in a secure hospital, dry him out from the booze, kill his habit and then incarcerate him in Stanley Gaol where the other prisoners would make his life a living hell. Child molesters – again the words struck a chill chord in him – were regarded as ordure by other criminals, whether they were petty thieves or hardened murderers. Accustomed as he was to being gaoled, he was not keen to relive the experience, even as a ward of the as-yet-uncrowned Her Majesty. It would be, he had to admit, no small poetic justice if he were to end up in Stanley: the Japanese had used the prison as their civilian camp during the occupation. All his liberty could have been thrown away for the failed seduction of a child.

Sandingham searched his memory of the encounter for a sign that he would be shopped. The roomboy had not said that he would tell the mother. But the Chinese had definitely said that he would the next time … Next time: never!

He tried to move and found the pain greatly reduced. The kick had glanced off his inner leg, and although the skin was badly bruised there his private parts were not as painful as he had supposed.

He lay back and tested straightening his legs. There was no pain. His kidneys did not hurt either. He stood up and it was not sore to stand or walk.

He pulled a cigarette from a crushed packet of Lucky Strike on the table, and lit it. Seated in the chair, he looked out of the window at the blank wall opposite and fell into a reverie in which Bob appeared before him on the concrete outside as if in a magic-lantern show. He was highly critical of Sandingham’s behaviour and castigated him for even thinking of shafting a child in such a squalid manner. His words, partly invented by Sandingham and partly a retention of memories long submerged in his brain, flung themselves into Sandingham’s face like blasted sand. He rubbed his eyes, but the particles of grit simply ground into his eyeballs. His tears were irritant. He scoured them aside with a shirt sleeve.

The cigarette, hardly smoked, had burned down to his fingers and scorched them. He dropped the stub and, as he leant over to retrieve it from the parquet floor, he lost his balance and toppled sideways, his head glancing off the mattress on the bed which took on a hardness it did not possess.

He lay and immersed himself in an amalgam of remorse, disappointment, self-disgust, recrimination and the anxiety at being found out.

By three o’clock he felt more himself again and, despite the lesson learned at the expense of his budding friendship, he sensed sexual urges stirring in him. There was only one way remaining for him to gratify these, and that lay in Lucy and her company.

As he left the hotel, he saw David once more on the front lawn. He was setting up his soldiers in their familiar battlefield. He did not look at the boy, but stared ahead down the driveway.

‘Mok tau!’
the child said through the hedge. ‘That means “blockhead” in Chinese. That’s what you are. A crazy man! You haven’t got your marbles.’

Sandingham stopped. The boy’s inept use of the idiomatic would have been funny in another context. He slowly moved his head to face him through the mesh of the hedge.

‘You shouldn’t play with soldiers. Every time you play with soldiers, a war is born in your mind. And in war, men are killed.’

‘Mok tau!’
was the only answer he was given.

‘You will learn. One day, somewhere, David, you will know I’m speaking the truth.’

‘Mok tau!’
the boy tauntingly repeated.

‘Your father might be killed in a war. In Korea – like Daniel was.’

He spoke the words but could not quite think at that moment why he had taken such drastic and spiteful recourse against a small boy’s gibes.

David fell silent. Through the foliage, Sandingham could see his face. He looked more grave than Sandingham could ever remember a child appearing. He was instantly sorry for what he had done but there was no way he could let David know. That one sentence had wreaked more havoc in the boy than the entire episode of crude, lustful advances could have done. The sexual fingerings he only partially understood. This he comprehended fully.

Once on the street, Sandingham peered back over his shoulder. The boy was hunched up on the stone balustrade of the hotel frontage watching his receding back with all the hatred he could muster.

*   *   *

‘Lucy no wuk here now,’ he was told by one of the other girls in the bar.

‘Where is she?’

The girl hoisted her cheong-sam higher up her thigh and eased the zip in the slit up a few teeth. She pushed her small breasts forward and upward with her hands, her nipples ridging through the silk. Younger than Lucy, she was a good deal more experienced, having started on the game at fourteen. Her name was, improbably, Araminta.

‘I no know.’

‘You do,’ Sandingham cajolled her. ‘You’ll tell me, won’t you?’

He leant against the bar and touched her arm lightly. If he showed he fancied her, her pride might let her tell him. She shifted enticingly on the tall stool.

The barman appeared from the back quarters. He did not welcome Sandingham as he used to on his visits to Wan Chai.

‘You go. You wan’t ta’k girl, you pay an’ screw.’

‘Screw yourself,’ Sandingham replied, putting his hand in his pocket. The barman thought better of it and disappeared the way he had come. People could hold all sorts of things in their pockets.

‘How much you pay?’ asked Araminta.

‘Five dollars.’

‘Ten dollar.’

Taking his hand from his pocket, he reluctantly gave her ten ones and she gave him the information.

‘Lucy wuk in Happy Palladize Bar. It a ve’y good bar, ve’y classy joint.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Five dollar.’

‘I can get the address from the phone book,’ he said, ‘but I’d rather have it from you to save me the effort. Give it to me and now and for nothing, or…’ He replaced his hand in his pocket.

‘Okay. Tonnochy Road. Not ve’y far.’

He left the Vancouver Bar and headed eastwards along Lockhart Road. Each step took him nearer to Percival Street.

One of a group of urchins, playing on the arcaded pavement, flicked a scratcher under Sandingham’s feet. Scratchers, as the children in the hotel called them, were pellets of red phosphorus and sulphur bound together with glue. When one trod on one or scratched it on a hard surface it ignited, and jumped about sparking and crackling loudly.

Concentrating on his memories, which were temporarily dislodging even Lucy from his mind, Sandingham failed to notice the scratcher and stepped straight on it. It fizzled and banged, dancing from his feet across the paving stones. He leapt sideways by instinct, bumping into one of the pillars supporting the building overhead. He ducked behind the upright and pressed himself into it. The firework continued for a few seconds and spent itself. The ragamuffins were most amused by Sandingham’s antics of avoidance and at once set two other scratchers going.

He looked down the expanse of Lockhart Road. Cars were going to and fro. A rickshaw was being pulled along with a pile of cardboard boxes in it. A dog sauntered across the street. Nowhere could Sandingham see the Indians with their .303s, or the Japs: he could not hear a Bren gun rattling but believed he could hear the sputter of small arms fire. He could hear, too, the crump as the mortar shell hit above his head and the ceiling caved in. He rushed over the road. A taxi screeched to a halt to avoid hitting him.

‘Dew lay lo mo!’ swore the driver out of his window.

The children cantered about with glee.

Safely over the road, Sandingham composed himself. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief and carried on walking, all the while getting nearer and nearer to the place where Bob had been killed.

The Happy Paradise Bar was indeed as up-market as Araminta had suggested. As Sandingham entered he was not met by a surfeit of bad, cheap taste composed of plastic curtains, plastic seats and plastic bar tops. The lighting was typically subdued but the lamps were of an expensive type and modern. The floor was carpeted except where there was an oval area of planking left bare to serve as a dance floor. The bar was made of mahogany with a brass rail and leather trim and the cubicles were curtained on the inside of filigree carved screens. There was a scent of lavender and jasmine in the air. The girls were not chattering loudly and coarsely to each other but sitting almost demurely upon padded chairs at a table by the far end of the bar. Mr Wong, Lucy’s previous pimp, was nowhere to be seen.

She saw him before he spied her and, leaving the other whores, she wove through the empty tables to his side.

‘Hello, Joe.’

He turned and saw her, held her by her upper arm and kissed her fleetingly on the cheek.

‘You free for a bit?’ he questioned her, adding, ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

‘You go, quick,’ she hissed. ‘This place no good for you. You will come to much trouble if you stay here.’

He noticed immediately that her English had much improved.

‘Rubbish!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m just coming in to buy you a drink, take you out for half an hour.’

Whereas previously she might have replied, ‘No can do, Joe,’ now she said, ‘It can’t be done.’

‘Why on earth not?’

He was getting impatient.

‘I am not allowed, Joe. I am special girl here, booked for special customers.’

‘The hell with that!’

‘You not understand, Joe. This police bar.’

This took a moment to sink in. Then he understood. This was not a watering hole for US sailors on R&R to get loaded in; not a boozing spot for beery squaddies from Nathan Road and Murray Barracks. This was a bordello more or less reserved for the European officers of the Hong Kong Police.

‘Lucy, can I see you later? Tomorrow, maybe. In the morning?’

‘No. I am watched all day and all night. Now I no have rooms in other building. I live upstairs.’ She looked at the ceiling. ‘Nice room, but…’

She looked over Sandingham’s shoulder. In one of the cubicles sat a man. He nodded to her, ever so slightly.

‘I must go now. Sit with other girls. You do not stay here, Joe. You go.’

She walked quickly back to her seat, rejoining the girls who had watched their conversation in curious and awed silence. Sandingham took a step to follow her and halted.

From the cubicle came a sighing noise as the occupant stood up from the padded settle upon which he had been resting. He came out on to the carpet and stood facing Sandingham. He was a large and powerful man, half-Chinese and half-Filipino with more than a dash of Yank ex-marine stirred in, dressed in a smart three-piece suit with polished, two-tone shoes. His muscles moved under his tight-fitting clothes like the plates of skin on a reptile’s back.

‘You leave now, Joe,’ he ordered, his mouth twisting on Sandingham’s name.

‘I’ll have a drink first,’ Sandingham replied brazenly. He had to call the play to save face. ‘This is a bar and I’ll have a San Mig.’

He moved away from the girls towards the counter. The Filipino did not move or try to stand in his way. He did not lift his hand but snapped his fingers by his side. The barman put down a bottle of spirits he was inverting into a chromium-plated holder and reached under the rack of mixers. He lifted out a three-foot-long riot truncheon.

‘That’s his bottle opener,’ the Filipino explained. ‘He’ll open your bottle for you, if you want.’

Sandingham moved nearer. The truncheon was lifted ready and, without his expecting it, it was swung full at him. He dodged nimbly backwards to meet the blade of the Filipino’s hand in the small of his back. He stumbled and fell over a table.

‘Get the drift?’

He got the drift.

‘Now get out.’

He raised himself to his feet and, glancing quickly in Lucy’s direction, took in the full impact of the look of sorrow for him on her face.

‘One thing more,’ the Filipino threatened as Sandingham gained the entrance, his accent gaining a thick Hollywood pastiche. ‘Don’t try to get off with Lucy – or any of the other whores in this place.’ As an afterthought, he added, ‘Else Mr L gets to know. Y’ hear?’