‘But do you think they’ll let him in, Bill, in that shirt?’
‘I’ll have a little word with the doorman.’
The occasion was the sub-editors’ evening break. Alan accepted their invitation, flattered and a little flustered. Bill disrobed himself of his cardigan, which was baggy and leather buttoned; Wally removed his own generous maroon sweat shirt. Alan, who had not known to arm himself against the boreal chills of the Times’s air conditioning, merely stood. The wet warmth of Hong Kong greeted them as they left the building.
They led Alan not to the opulent doorway he had feared, but to a small grocery store a couple of hundred yards from the newspaper offices. Its owner, a wispy-bearded and gold-toothed ancient who looked like Lao-tzu, greeted them. Then, very spryly, he rolled a great wooden cartwheel from its resting place against the wall and unfolded from it four legs: at once it was revealed as a table. He next unfolded three stools; then, as the final touch of elegance, he placed a roll of lavatory paper on the table. He asked, in Cantonese that Alan could follow even then, if all three required San Lig, meaning San Mig, meaning San Miguel, the beer of Hong Kong. They did.
Cans served, Bill and Wally each helped himself to a sheet of lavatory paper and commenced the energetic cleaning of the can top. Alan, eyeing their every movement like a hobbledehoy at a banquet, followed them a beat behind. Satisfied, they pulled the ringpulls from their cans, tossed them lightly into the gutter and drank. ‘Thank Christ,’ Wally said. ‘Why do we live here, God fuck it?’
Wally always wore a safari suit: trousers that matched in colour an epauletted, patch-pocketed, quasi-military garment that was neither jacket nor shirt. Alan was to learn that he had three of them, and that he wore them each for two days at a time. One was salmon pink, one pistachio green, the third pale dogshit. They were safe and conservative Hong Kong clothes. Wally was a slight man with a belly that travestied pregnancy.
‘Got my flight fixed up for Christmas,’ he said. ‘A whole lovely bloody week in Bangkok. Thank Christ.’
‘What does one do in Bangkok?’
‘In Bangkok one gets fucking well fucked.’
Bill was quieter, bitterer. Wally spoke with a flamboyant, almost a romantic pessimism; in Bill, as time passed, Alan wondered if he would not sense despair.
‘Why do we live here, God fuck it?’ Wally asked again.
‘Anywhere.’
‘Soon be dead, anyway, thank Christ.’
‘Downtable sub on the Purgatory and Hell Gazette,’ Bill said. He was, Alan was to learn, a man of quite extraordinary professional competence. That afternoon, challenged by Wally, he had named the last three prime ministers of Belgium.
Alan knew sub-editing skills when he found them. He had done his time on local newspapers, subbed in Fleet Street and had contemplated seeking permanent employment within its fastness. But the combination of the end of a love affair and of his training prompted him to seek jobs abroad: Robert Simpson had offered him, sight unseen, a job on the Hong Kong Times on three months’ trial. Thus the great adventure had begun.
Wally knew his job too, though he attacked it with the same savagery he brought to conversation. He called Soviet dissidents ‘fucking troublemakers’; the Pope was always ‘Popeye’; stories about the local police gave him especial delight. ‘Listen to this: “A bullet was removed from his left kidney.” Good on yer, PC Wong. Shot the bastard while he was running away, didn’t he? “The suspect remains in critical condition.” Course he does. They took the poor fucker to Queen Elizabeth Hospital; no one gets out of that kip alive.’
Alan did not reply. Well, he told himself, Hong Kong was what you asked for; Hong Kong is what you have got.
‘Ah Christ, why do we live here, God fuck it?’ Wally asked, taking another mighty pull from his beer.
‘How long have you lived here, Wally?’
‘Twelve years, Christ help me. I must be mad. Been a Hong Kong Belonger for five years now.’
‘Belonger?’
‘After seven years you can apply for Belonger status,’ Bill said. ‘Did it myself a couple of years back. Regularises the visa situation, means you can vote in municipal elections. Not that anyone ever does. Just an administrative convenience.’
‘It’s the day they throw away the fucking key,’ Wally said.
That first expedition to the Country Club had been an initiation. Soon Alan was flinging his ringpull into the gutter without a backward glance, dining merrily and nightly on three cans of San Lig or Mig and a packet of peanuts. Remarkably good peanuts, which he would hull abstractedly, broadcasting the shattered halves into the street.
‘What were you rowing with Johnny Ram about?’ Bill had asked him on their last day at work, the night before Christmas Eve. There had been a slight, unseasonal chill in the air, and they had retained their air-conditioning-beating overgarments. Alan had bought himself a rather sporty top with a hood to wear in the office.
‘Letters page,’ Alan said. ‘Unbelievable stuff. I suggested to Johnny that we really ought to leave it out. He was of a different opinion.’
‘Opinion? Johnny? Do me a favour,’ Wally said. ‘Johnny doesn’t have opinions. Other people have opinions, other people being Simpson. Know how the letters page is run? Simpson skims the letters that come in and scribbles instructions on ’em. Then he passes them to Johnny and Johnny does what he’s told. What you were doing was asking him to walk into Simpson’s office and say, Simpson, you silly bastard, this letter is bollocks.’
‘Look at it this way,’ Bill said. ‘Can you imagine Moses going back up Mount Sinai with the tablets and saying, look, Jehovah, you silly bastard, can’t you see that this commandment about coveting your neighbour’s ox is bollocks? What was in the letter anyway?’
‘Some lunatic from one of the outlying islands. He said that the people who lived there were noble savages. I thought that was a bit stiff.’
‘So you subbed out the word “noble”?’ Wally said.
‘I said that no self-respecting newspaper would print such rubbish. I made him quite cross.’
‘Nevertheless, you made a valid point about the Hong Kong Times,’ Bill said. ‘What did you do?’
‘Par-marked it. Put “Noble Savage” in the headline, why not?’
‘The boy learns wisdom,’ said Wally.
‘I think I know the old bugger you mean,’ Bill said. ‘Always writing to the paper. One of those. Lived here since the fall of Shanghai. Dedicated man.’
‘They should send PC Wong over to his island to sort him out,’ Wally said. ‘Couple of slugs in the kidneys then over to the QE Hospital for the coup de grâce.’
Alan rose and purchased three more beers. They all tore, wiped, threw. Alan saw a sleek and graceful rat cross the street a few yards off, but knew enough not to pass comment. ‘Johnny really was rather cross,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t bear grudges, does he?’
‘I’d like to fuck Eileen Sung,’ Wally said. ‘Did you see her in the newsroom this evening? That arse of hers in those red trousers. Jesus.’
‘He won’t complain to Simpson about Simpson’s choice of staff,’ Bill said. ‘He won’t go out of his way to help you, but he won’t go out of his way to harm you. Either way it would be rocking the boat, and that is against everything that Johnny understands.’