Jillian, a girl, but welcome for all that, and my second, Nicola, impossible not to like, with her indomitable charm and her discretion. She understood the boundaries so well and never overstepped the mark. And then our third daughter, Alice. Alice had already made it apparent that she did not understand about boundaries. She was colouring outside the lines. I felt annoyed just thinking about her. If I could…if…I could…swap her life for his, then…At first the thought was so terrible that it floored me. It had all the menace of dark fairy tales. I will give her up if you will…
But gradually in the dullness of that room my wicked thought glowed like a hot coal.You may take Alice but leave me my son. I will never renege on the contract. Take her. Take Alice. Take Alice. Take Alice, was my incantation. She’s yours. I shall never want her back, only leave me my son. It seemed the demons were not listening, or perhaps they didn’t want Alice either because as it was they both survived.The next day you brought our daughters to see their new brother. You stood, Ralph, and the girls sat on the low wall that surrounded the hospital.They squinted up through the fierce sunlight as I stepped onto the balcony from my second-floor room, my fragile son in my arms. The doctors felt it would be better to keep my sickly babe away from any possible source of infection for the time being, until he grew stronger.They recommended no direct contact with our other children during those first crucial days.
The girls were wearing matching pinafore dresses, with white blouses, Jillian in French navy, her blonde hair in pigtails, Nicola in bottle-green, her dark silky locks cropped short, and Alice in red, blood-red, her mousy-brown bob with a side parting, held back from her face with a grip.The green and blue blended in with the flashing gold of the sun and the cooler acid green of the young palm trees. The girls waved.You waved, Ralph. I looked down at my son and felt pride wash over me.
‘Here in my arms are all my hopes and dreams,’ I thought.
But the red of Alice’s dress hooked me back again. Even then she was a jealous child.
You were reassigned after that, this time to the British Colony of Hong Kong. When you first mentioned it to me, the new posting, I was intrigued.
‘How would you like it if I spirited you away to a beautiful island in the Orient?’ you asked, jumping up suddenly from the wicker chair you had been sitting in. We were in the bedroom of our bungalow home in Aden.Above our heads a fan rotated noisily,doing its best to hold the heat at bay.
‘I should like that very much,’ I said, only half listening, concentrating on our blue-eyed, golden-haired boy, wriggling in my arms.
‘Then your wish is my command. I shall transport you to Hong Kong,’ you shot back, unable to hide your delight.
‘Hong Kong?’ I said, trying out the name and finding it both familiar and unknown.
You elaborated. ‘It’s a small island in the South China Sea, not much more than 400 square miles I believe. But then there is the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories too, just across the harbour.’
‘Oh,’ I said, trying to sound enlightened.‘It seems odd that we should own an island so far away.’ You smiled knowingly and continued.
‘It was leased to Britain after some skulduggery which involved the shipping of a great deal of opium grown by us in India into China.Very lucrative apparently. When China, unsurprisingly, protested and asked that we desist in the trade, we were so outraged we went to war with them.’ Here you paused mid-stride and chuckled.
‘Ah,’ I said, switching my son from one shoulder to the other, and patting his back gently. In a while I would call for his nanny, but just for now it was nice playing mother. You packed tobacco into the bowl of a wooden pipe, then paced thoughtfully around our bed. You used to smoke a pipe back then, though you gave it up when we got to Hong Kong. I rather liked the smell of it and missed it later. ‘And we won?’ I asked.
‘We did, and among the spoils we acquired Hong Kong Island in 1842, and a bit later on, Kowloon and the New Territories, leasehold for 99 years.’
You perched on the side of the bed, Ralph, leant forwards and gently stroked your son’s golden curls.Then you placed the stem of the pipe in your mouth, struck a match, and held the flame to the bowl, sucking hard until the fragrant strands of tobacco caught. For a while you puffed contentedly, your expression dreamy. After a bit you removed your pipe, those engaging eyes of yours searching my face. ‘So how do you fancy a spell residing on Queen Victoria’s ill-gotten gains?’ you asked, your eyes alight with mischief.
I thought about it for a moment—only a moment, mind. I recalled a red pagoda towering up into the sky, the roof of each diminishing segment looking like an oriental hat, the brim curving upwards into delicate points. I recalled a fly beating its wings against the grubby window of a bus, longing for liberation, and I remembered too the dull greyness that seemed to encroach on everything back then.
‘I think I should like that very much,’ I said. So we packed our trunks and set off again. In the late spring of 1962 I had my first sighting of Hong Kong,as we sailed into busy Victoria harbour.We would come to know that bridge of water between the island and Kowloon as if it was an extension of our own bodies.The dull, green face of the sea was dotted with sampans and junks and ferries. From here, my gaze strayed past the mass of buildings that crowded the waterfront, and on up the verdant slopes looped with winding roads. We had docked off a bustling, mountainous island, the summits veiled mysteriously in dense powder-grey clouds. And it was a short while later up these mountains we wound in a shiny, black chauffeur-driven car.
‘Our flat is set almost on the highest point of The Peak,’ you told me,Ralph.‘Fabulous views.’We threaded our way higher and higher, into what seemed to me an impenetrable fog. ‘That is of course, unless we are temporarily lost in the mist. I understand it can be a real problem here,’ came your wry observation.
But any qualms I may have had about our mountain home were soon quelled. Here was a grand, airy, top-floor flat, situated right at the summit of The Peak, with the views you had boasted of to be enjoyed from every window.The white, flat-roofed building was only six floors high, double-sided, the central column housing the stairwell and the lift. Our front door opened onto a hall that would have graced any stately home back in England, while doors to either side of it led on the left to a lounge, this in turn giving onto a long, open veranda, and on the right to a dining room, and thence into a spacious kitchen. Beyond the kitchen was a communal sheltered area for drying washing. It led through to the servants’ accommodation, six tiny bedrooms in all, with a shared rudimentary bathroom and toilet, and for their use a separate stairwell leading down to the ground floor. Returning to our hall I explored further, the children running ahead excitedly.My high heels clicked smartly on the wooden floors of the long corridor that ran the length of the flat. Light flooded through tall wide windows to my right, while on my left doors led off it into large bedrooms, the first of which had a luxurious en suite bathroom. A second bathroom lay at the end of the corridor from which, on fine days, you assured me, you could look out over Pokfulam and the sea.
There was room aplenty for the Safford family and we had soon settled in. I told you that, for the time being, I could make do with just two servants. So Ah Dang, with her glossy jet-black hair drawn back into a tight bun, her wide girth attesting to her own passion for food, and her glittering gold front teeth, became our housekeeper and cook.And Ah Lee, with her bouncy, dark curls and her constant nervous giggling, juggled the tasks of washing, ironing, cleaning and shopping and, it seemed, found plenty to amuse herself in each.We provided them both with the standard uniform—drawstring black trousers, and plain three-quarter-length white tunics. The children were dispatched to English-speaking Little Peak School and Big Peak School respectively,both within walking distance,Alice attending the former, and Jillian and Nicola the latter. Four-year-old Harry, our son, soon followed,
