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.’
‘Don’t rock the boat,’ Wally said. ‘They ought to print that on the front of the Hong Kong Times. Put it on the masthead, a bloody great banner supported by Simpson at one end and PC Wong on the other.’
‘I get worried every now and then,’ Alan said. ‘I’d be in serious trouble if I lost the job.’
‘Christ, you won’t lose it,’ Bill said. ‘You can sub. Besides, no one gets fired.’
‘What do you think this is?’ Wally asked. ‘A newspaper or something?’
‘Just keep your head down,’ Bill said. ‘The one thing Simpson doesn’t like is trouble. Promoted a step beyond his competence, just like Johnny Ram. Perfect way of making yes-men. What Johnny is to Simpson, Simpson is to the chairman. And the chairman is in the same situation vis-à-vis the board of Hong Kong Estates. And Hong Kong Estates owns the newspaper, as they own everything else around here. So – don’t rock the boat.’
‘I’ve had a change of heart about Eileen Sung,’ Wally said. ‘I’d like to bugger her.’
On Boxing Day Alan sat before another harbour with another bottle before him. The sun was going down and his legs were weary. This was because he had walked most of the length of Hong Kong Island. He had walked from the offices of the Hong Kong Times to Central, and there, turning right at the Great Orient Hotel, he had passed on to the Star Ferry Pier. He had then climbed a flight of steps that took him to Blake Pier. He had walked its length in order to contemplate the harbour, as a dismal ceremony of farewell, but he had found a dreadfully sordid café. So he took a seat, ordered a beer.
He had made his walk because walking keeps despair at bay. He had walked through Quarry Bay, North Point, Causeway Bay, Wanchai and Central, managing scarcely to think at all. Now, beer before him and the light beginning to fade, he inspected the boat-jams of Hong Kong harbour. Tangled together were various craft of the Star Ferry, the Jordan Road Ferry that carried motor cars, the ferries to Lantau, Cheung Chau, Lamma, Tung Lung, Po Toi. Alan watched, cut off from the world of purpose.
It was not the row about the Noble Savages letter that had got him the sack. It was the Gestapo. A few days before Christmas, Alan had subbed the report of a speech made by the chairman of the South China Bank, Sir Peter Browne, to the Rotary Club of Hong Kong. About three paragraphs from the end, the speaker had referred to the Hong Kong police and their ‘Gestapo tactics’. Pleased, Alan had seized on this, promoted it to the first paragraph, fitted the story around it, and used the word ‘Gestapo’ in a headline that had fitted to the last character. Nice, he had told himself at the time, bloody nice.
There had been a note on Alan’s desk when he returned to work on Boxing Day afternoon. Written on pink card, in fountain pen. See me. R. S. But Mr Simpson, what I did is just standard practice in Fleet Street. Mr Fairs, you do not seem to realise that we are not in Fleet Street. We are in Hong Kong. I happen to believe that a newspaper has a responsibility to the community. You clearly fail to appreciate that. It is my belief that you never will. Your professional standards, of which you make so much, are not ours.
Alan said thank Christ for that, and marched out slamming the door. No he didn’t. He sat on Blake Pier wishing he had. Instead, he had begged for a last chance, thinking of rent, debt, the distance from home. Pride had gone. Simpson asked if he would vacate the building. Now, please.
And so the great Hong Kong walk; the great Hong Kong adventure in ruins. He turned and looked bitterly at the tallest of the tall buildings on the waterfront, the one with round windows which, Wally had informed him, was known to the Chinese as the House of a Thousand Arseholes. Along the length of the pier, teenage Chinese couples embraced unrestrainedly, Blake Pier being a good deal more private than their homes.
What would he say when he got home? Didn’t work out. Couldn’t get on with the place. Journalistic standards appalling. Walked out of the job after six weeks, matter of self-respect. And they would all say in the pub after he had gone – all those who would never dare to make such a journey themselves – well, he couldn’t take it, could he, scuttling back home with his tail between his legs. Shall we give him a couple of shifts anyway? Oh, come on, hardly the type, is he?
Below, a motor-junk approached the pier, its seesawing deck loaded with large waste-paper baskets full of vegetables; choisum and pak-choi. He heard a voice chanting out some request or order – everything in Cantonese sounded like an order – concluding the sentence with a long aaa clearly audible above the grumble of the engine. Master that sound and you have mastered street Cantonese. The junk’s captain, if it were he and junks had captains, stood stocky and strong in a white singlet as the deck danced beneath him. He shouted again at a man hidden from view, perhaps on the lower level of the pier. Another merchant, no doubt. Buying cheap and selling dear: passage for choisum and pak-choi; passage too, perhaps, for more exciting cargoes, for brandy and American cigarettes,
