‘Seven hundred square feet,’ though whether in apology or boast Alan could not tell.
It was a concrete shell. It was perfect. The walls had been lightly painted with whitish paint. Four tiny rooms led off the main area. Two were bedrooms, one containing an actual bed, double, with a thin foam mattress. Alan walked around the flat. This did not take a great deal of time. A kitchen, with a Calor Gas stove on a tiled concrete shelf. A bathroom with a shower in it. ‘Water is sometimes a problem on Tung Lung, my friend,’ King said. ‘We use the Ng well here, of course. If it runs dry, we have permission to use the standpipe below the last flight of steps. That is connected to Chuen-suk’s well, and that never runs dry.’ And the concrete apron before the house, half of it shaded by the balcony above. On the far side of his fence, another tumble of the purple stuff; was it bougainvillaea? And a jumble of houses marching down the hillside before him, and beyond them the harbour of Tung Lung and beyond that the South China Sea. He turned inland, to a flat-bottomed valley floored with a chessboard of green fields. Allotments, really. Alan could just make out a man working on his little square of green, two watering cans suspended from a yoke that rested on his shoulders. He wore a pointed hat; he too lived in a Chinese scroll. Alan found that he could smell the sea.
‘I love it. If you’ll have me, I’ll take it.’
‘Yours for seven hundred dollars.’
‘Done.’
‘Then let us sign the lease. How are you off for furniture? I can sell you some electric fans, chairs and so on.’
‘Thanks. Though I’m a bit strapped for cash just now. At least, I will be once I’ve paid you a deposit.’
‘Pay me later, then. No hurry. I may be a landlord, but I am a landlord with a human face.’
‘A noble landlord,’ Alan said idiotically.
Kingston greeted this with a great hohoho, like the demon king. ‘I can see that this is going to be a very happy community,’ he announced. ‘A great future stretches before us.’
They returned to Kingston’s flat. After the bare expanse of the downstairs flat, the contrast was apparent. Kingston’s style of decoration was disconcertingly – Alan groped for a word – permanent. There was even a large photograph of a family group. This had been printed onto canvas, to make it look like a painting. It showed a pretty woman with an elaborate, slightly dated hairstyle, a pigtailed girl, a boy who looked like the illustration on the fruit gums packet. Kingston stood at the rear of the group, beaming in satisfaction.
Alan signed his lease, wrote a cheque for $1,400, deposit and first month’s rent, and received a second bone-crushing in recognition of the completion of a deal. ‘I’ll move in tomorrow or the next day,’ Alan said. ‘Just as soon as I have fixed up things with the landlord of my Mid-Levels place.’
‘What’s he got to do with it?’ André asked. ‘Does he owe you money?’
‘I think I owe him, actually.’
‘Then surely the only thing to do is to lug your stuff into a taxi and get the hell out? He’ll never trace you to Tung Lung.’
Alan could not help but think about this. Such a manoeuvre would, he reckoned, save him about $2,500. The thought went, and he was sorry to see it go. ‘André – can I be utterly frank with you? I don’t have the nerve.’
André looked for a moment deeply saddened, as if by a friend’s unwitting blasphemy. ‘My dear, it’s hardly the right way to begin your career as a freebooter.’
‘André, I was brought up to be honest – more or less, anyway. It’s a handicap. But keep faith with me; I’m sure I shall rise above it in time.’
Alan stood at the centre of a kind of refugees’ camp. Six vast striped plastic bags formed a circle around him: the contents of his flat in Mid-Levels. He had in his pocket a cheque for $1,000, returned deposit on the furniture.
The loading and unloading of the taxi had been accomplished, not without superhuman exertions. The carrying of the bags, two by two through the little gate beside the ferry turnstile, normally used for the passage of vegetables, had brought out resources Alan did not know he possessed. But the next stage, the carriage of bags to the ferry, seemed impossible. He could not even begin to think about the 176 steps.
The ferry arrived, and eventually opened its doors to admit new passengers. Alan made his first effort, and carried two bags on board. He fought his way back against the unstemmable tide of passengers to collect two more, in a state of blind frazzlement. He had just reached his encampment when he heard a voice call: ‘New neighbour!’
An impression of suit, size and extraordinary freshness of face. Alan was not quite in the mood for being bothered, but managed a flustered greeting.
‘Your gear?’ the stranger demanded.
‘Yes, I –’
‘Hold,’ he said sternly. He handed Alan a briefcase and a pink carrier bag. Then he squatted, and addressed the four bags rather formally. He inserted his arms through all the handles, straightened his back, and seized his own forearms in a grip of steel. He inhaled and exhaled through his nose, very noisily, about half a dozen times. Then he stood. Miraculously, the bags rose with him. He marched inexorably to the boat, benignly shoving passengers from his path with every step, tendons standing out from his neck like steel hawsers, breath roaring from his nose. Alan followed bearing his presumed neighbour’s briefcase, his own shoulder-bag full of valuable items, and the pink carrier bag. Condensation had formed, though not to his surprise, on its surface. With every appearance of relish, the neighbour lowered his preposterous load to the floor, back still perfectly straight.
‘Thank you,’ Alan said inadequately.
The neighbour rose with slow grace from his squat, and rotated his shoulders just once, so that the shoulder blades almost touched. Then he made a strange, rather papal gesture to the stairs that led to the top deck of the boat and a smile of rather unearthly beauty lit his face. ‘Beer!’ he said. Then he turned and absolutely sprinted up the stairs.
Alan followed more sedately, arriving on the top to find his neighbour sitting on the very back seat, both arms outstretched along its back in a crucifixion position. Alan passed him his two bags. The briefcase was placed on the floor, but from the carrier bag he produced two cans of San Miguel, passing one to Alan. Alan thanked him and reached for the ringpull. The neighbour at once placed a huge paw over Alan’s hand. ‘Wait!’ he said. ‘Not until the ferry moves.’
He sat quite silent, after this, his own unopened can in his hand and a rather solemn expression on his face. Alan watched as the stragglers came aboard. The day was chill, and most people wore jackets on top of shirts. They crowded together towards the front, enclosed section of the boat, from love of crowds, from dislike of air. There was a clatter from below as the gangplank was raised. The engine roared, and the ferry pulled away with the usual exchange of referees’ whistles. Alan’s neighbour, roused from a species of trance, smiled his beatific smile, tore the ringpull from his can, tossed it over his shoulder into the wash of the screw behind them and then positively threw the can into his face. Alan watched, fascinated, as his throat worked convulsively, like a pump. At last, he lowered the can, and smiled again.
‘Hello, new neighbour. I’m Charles Browne, the man upstairs. Browne with an E.’
Alan
