The Man in the Wooden Hat (3 page)

“And so, Edward,” said the bright-eyed girl that night, as the red sun dropped back into the sea, “Eddie, I will,” and she took his hand. “I will. Yes. Thank you. I will and I will and I will.”

Somewhere in the archipelago her friend Lizzie would be drinking in a bar.

All morning she had been saying, “Betty—you can’t. It’d be a dreadful mistake.”

Finally, she had said, “All right. I’ll tell you something. I
know
him.”

“You never said! How? You know Edward?”

“See this pinhead? It’s the world. The middle classes. The Empire club. It’ll all be gone in a few years and I suppose we should be glad.”

“You know Eddie?”

“Yes. In the biblical sense, too. I was wild for him. Wild. He had this quality. I don’t know what it was. Probably still is. But you can’t forget Teddy Feathers. He doesn’t understand anyone, Bets, certainly not women. Something awful in his childhood. He’s inarticulate when he’s not in Court and then you hear another voice. As you do when he’s asleep—I know. He speaks Malay. D’you know he once had a horrible stammer? He’s a blank to everyone except that dwarf lawyer person, and
there’s
a mystery. Bets, you will be perfect for him as he becomes more and more boring. Pompous. Set in stone. Titled, no doubt. Rich as Croesus. But there’s something missing. Mind, he’s not sexless. He’s very enjoyable. It was before I was the other way—”

“Did you ever tell him about that?”

“Good God, no! He’d be disgusted. He leaves you feeling guilty as it is, he’s so pure. But there’s something missing. Maybe it’s his nanny—oh, Betty,
don’t
.”

She said, “Lizzie-Izz, you’re jealous!”

“Probably. A bit.”

All day Betty had walked about, crossing and recrossing the city, changing twice from Hong Kong to Kowloon-side. It was Sunday and she went into St. John’s Cathedral and took Communion. She got a shock when the Chinese priest changed from Cantonese to English when he administered the Bread to her. She always forgot that she was not Chinese. She walked afterwards towards Kai Tak. Planes were landing and taking off from the airport all the time. She had no idea when Eddie’s would arrive. The planes shrieked over the paper houses of the poor. The people there were said to be deaf.

Not noticing the noise, she wandered on among the filthy streets and came to a blistered building four storeys high with rubbish on every cement stair. She climbed up and up, noise bursting from each doorway and gallery, like feeding time at the zoo. The dear, remembered childhood chorus, the knockout smells of food and scraps. She clambered over boxes and bundles of rags and birdcages and parcels guarded by immobile individuals glaring at nothing. Rice bubbled thick on little stoves. On the third floor some Buddhist monks were chanting, and there was the smell of lamp oil, spices and smoke. On the top floor there was an antique English pram, inscribed Silver Cross, nearly blocking the apartment door, which her friend Amy opened when Betty knocked, a blond and rosy child on her hip and another child imminent. She had a Bible in one hand and was holding the place in it with her thumb. Schoolfriends, they hadn’t met since Amy became a missionary several years ago. She had been a dancer then.

Amy said, “Oh. Hullo, Betty Macintosh. Come on in. There’s a prayer group but there’ll be some food. Can you stay the night?” Behind her the corridor was packed with noisy people.

Inside the apartment there appeared to be no furniture except a piano where a very old Englishwoman was going hell for leather at Moody and Sankey hymns, as children of several nationalities were being fed, cross-legged on the floor. The old lady began to sing to her own accompaniment. “She’s a missionary, too,” said Amy. “But she’s got Depression. We have her round here every day in case she jumps into the harbour. She lives towards the New Territories behind barbed wire and guard dogs—she has some antiques—and does it stink!”

A chair was found. Betty sat on it and was given the baby to hold while Amy went off to dollop out rice from a black pot. The old lady stopped playing and singing and began to cry, and a different surge of wailing Buddhist chant rose from the floor below. From a sort of cupboard burst a young Englishman who ran out of the apartment, leaned over the Harrods pram on the landing and began to shout down to the monks that they could damn well give over. He was trying to work. If they wanted food, here it was, but they could stop chanting and let God have an alternative for half an hour. His Cantonese was very good. In a moment several monks in orange robes had negotiated the pram. They came into the apartment where they stood about, smiling in a row, awaiting rice.

Amy, ladle in hand, took the baby from Betty’s knee and dumped it on the knee of the Depressive. It immediately began to cry, which made the Depressive stop, and Amy, holding two dishes of rice, squeezed herself down on the floor near Betty, and said, “So?”

“Hello, Amy.”

“So, when did you get home?”

“Home? I’ve not had a home for years.”

“Oh, get on,” said Amy.

“I’m on holiday. Passing through. I’m drifting.”

“Alone?”

“With a girlfriend. Lizzie Ingoldby. D’you remember? Older than us, at school. Where’s Nick?”

“That was Nick, yelling at the Buddhists. He’s trying to write a sermon on Submission to God. He’s upset. They all fall in love with him out here and he hates to disappoint a woman. By the way, we’re having another.”

“I can see.”

“It will make four. And we’re broke. Have you any spare money?”

“Not a bean. I’m coming into money when I’m thirty. My parents thought I might be flighty. Instead, I’m hungry.”

“Well, don’t become a missionary. We’re not hungry but we’d like a sideline. We’re not allowed a sideline. A rich one who puts his arms round me would be nice.”

The old lady, a Mrs. Baxter, had now silenced the baby with
Hymns Ancient & Modern
, and called out, “Oh, I do agree! I am not a nun.” And began to dab her eyes. Amy passed her a very small cup of rice wine.

“We’re just about all she’s got,” said Amy. “She hasn’t the fare to England and there’s nobody she knows there now if she even got there. So what sort of sideline have you got, clever old Elisabeth of the Enigma Variations and always top of the form, star of St. Paul’s and St. Anne’s?”

“I think—well, I think—I’m going in for a husband.”

“Oh? Really? Oh, very,
very
good. Who is it?”

“You don’t know him. Well, I don’t think you do. I don’t know him very well, either. I came to ask you if I should do it. He’s flying in tonight. I’ll have to make up my mind. I’m sick of fretting on about it. By tomorrow. Maybe tonight.”

“What is he? English or Chinese? Is he Christian or ghastly agnostic? Your eyes have tears in them.”

“He’s English. Christian. Not Christian like you are, full time. More like I am. Doesn’t talk about it. Oh, yes, and he’s already pretty rich. He’ll get
very
rich. He’s got the touch. He’s an advocate. He’ll be a judge.”

“Oh, he’s in his nineties. Does he dribble?”

“No. He’s quite young. He’s brilliant. And he’s so good-looking he finds he’s embarrassed walking down the street. Thinks they belong—his looks—to a different man. He’s very, very nice, Amy. And he needs me.”

“So?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you slept with him?”

“He’s not the sort. I don’t even know . . .”

“He’s a virgin?”

“Oh, no. Not that. I’ve heard. In the war he was close to Queen Mary.”

“He had an affair with Queen Mary?”

They stared at each other and began to howl and laugh and roll about, as at school.

“He must be very grand,” said Amy.

“No. Oh, no. He never knows who anyone is. Social stuff doesn’t interest him.”

“And you? You, you, you? D’you love him?”

“I don’t know. I think so. I suppose I should but you see I’m retarded. I want the moon, like a teenager.”

“You
should
want the moon. Don’t do it, Bets. Don’t go for a forty-watt light bulb because it looks pretty. You’ll get stuck with it when it goes out. You are so loyal, and you’ll have to soldier on in the dark for ever afterwards.”

Mrs. Baxter announced that Jesus was the Light of the World.

“That’s right,” said Amy. “Have some more wine.”

“And Him only shalt thou serve,” said Mrs. Baxter.

“Amy, I must go. He may already be here. At any minute.”

“But come back. You will come back, won’t you? Bring him.”

Betty tried to see Edward standing in the pools of rice in his polished shoes, the Buddhists chanting, Mrs. Baxter weeping.

“I’d love your life, Amy.”

“So you say,” said Amy.

A
nd so, a few hours later, into the sea dropped the great red yo-yo sun and darkness painted out the waters of a bay. Then lights began to show, first the pricking lights under the ramparts they stood on, then more nebulous lights from boats knocking together where the fishermen lived in houses on stilts, then the lights of moving boats fanning white on black across the bay, and then across faraway bays and coastlines of the archipelago; lights of ferries, coloured lights of invisible villages and way over to the south dim lights staining the darkness of Hong Kong itself.

Edward Feathers and Elisabeth Macintosh stood side by side, looking out, and a drum began to beat. Voices rose in a screech, like a sunset chorus of raucous birds: Cantonese and half a dozen dialects; the crashing of pots and pans, clattering pandemonium. Blue smoke rose up from the boats to the terrace of the hotel and there was a blasting smell of hot fish. Behind the couple standing looking out, waiters were beginning to spread tablecloths and napkins, setting down saucers decorated with floating lights and flowers. The last suggestion of a sun departed and the sky was speckled with a hundred million stars.

“Edward? Eddie—yes. Thank you. Yes. I will and I will and I will, but could you say something?”

Some of the older waiters would respond to Elisabeth’s voice in the slow English of before the war. It was beginning to sound Old World. Proud, unflinching, Colonial. Yet the girl did not conform to it. She was bare-legged, in open-toed sandals with clean but unpainted toenails. She was wearing a cotton dress she had had for years and hadn’t thought about changing to meet her future husband. The time in the Shanghai detention centre had arrested her body rather than matured her and she would still have been recognised by her school first-eleven hockey team.

Edward looked down at the top of her curly head, rather the colour of his own. “Chestnut,” they call it. Conker-colour. Red. Our children are bound to have red hair. Red hair frightens the Chinese. Our children’ll have to go Home to England, if we settle here. If we have any children . . .

She said, “
Edward
? Please?”

At last then he embraced her.

“We must get back,” he said and on the ferry again across the harbour they sat close together, but not touching, on a slatted seat. Nearby sat a pasty young Englishman who was being stroked and sighed over by a Chinese girl with a yearning face. She was plump and pale, gazing up at him, whispering to him, kissing him all the time below the ear. He flicked at the ear now and then as if there were a fly about, but he was smiling. The ferry chugged and splashed. The Englishman looked proud and content. “She’s a great cook, too,” he called in their direction. “She can do a great mashed potato. It’s not all that rice.”

At Kowloon-side Edward and Elisabeth walked a foot or so apart to his hotel, climbed the marble steps and passed through the flashing glass doors. Inside among the marble columns and the lilies and the fountains Edward lifted a finger towards the reception desk and his room key was brought to him.

“There’s a party now.”

“When? Whose?”

“Now. Here. It’s tomorrow’s Judge. It’s going to be a long Case and he’s a benevolent old stick. He likes to kick off with a party. Both sides invited. Leaders, juniors, wives, girlfriends, fiancées. And courtesans for flavour.”

“Must we go?”

“Yes. I don’t much want to, but you don’t refuse.”

When he looked down at her she saw how happy he was.

“Have I time to change?”

“No. It will have begun. We’ll just show our faces. Your clothes are fine. I have something for you to wear, as it happens. I’ll go up and change my jacket and I’ll bring it down.”

“Shall I come up to the room with you?”

The new, easy, happy Edward faltered. “No. I don’t think they care for that here. I’ll be back in ten minutes. I’ll order you some tea.”

“It’s a strange betrothal,” Betty told the lily-leaf-shaped tray, the shallow cup, the tiny piece of Battenburg cake and the cress sandwich so small that a breeze from the fountains might blow it away. A trio behind her was playing Mozart. Two Chinese, one Japanese, very expert and scornful. She remembered how people in England used to say that no Oriental would ever be able to play Mozart. Just like they used to say that there would never be Japanese pilots because the Japanese are all half blind behind dark glasses. She was all at once overcome by the idiotic nature of mankind and began to laugh. God must feel like me, she thought. Oh, I love Hong Kong. Could we live here? Could Edward?

Here he came now, washed and shaved in a clean shirt and linen jacket, loping over from the lift, smiling like a boy (I’m going to be with this person all my life!) and he dropped a little cloth bag into her lap and she took out from it the most magnificent string of pearls.

“Yours,” he said. “They’re old. Someone gave them to me. When I was sixteen. In the war. Just in time. She died a few minutes later. She was lying next to me under a lifeboat on deck. We were limping Home up the Irish Sea—everybody sick and dying. She was very old. Raj spinster. Whiskery. Brave. Type that’s gone. She said, ‘One day you can give them to your sweetheart.’”