The Hungry Ghosts. Anne Berry
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you, Ralph, if I am drained dry by our daughter,’ she wheedles, her voice as velvety as moss. ‘And it’s not just that,’ she continues. ‘She is putting such a strain on our relationship, darling.You must see that.We need time to ourselves, time free of endless worries and arguments about Alice. Besides, I am very concerned that her disruptive behaviour may eventually rub off on our son, on Harry.’
Now she is praising a school she has found in the Highlands of Scotland, of all places, an establishment founded on strict principles of discipline and regulation. She is describing its location as if she were selling me a holiday home. The cadence of her voice is very nearly poetic. She paints a scene of rolling heather-covered mountains crowned with garlands of mist, spotted with strutting stags, of the blue-black lochs, ice-cold liquid bodies stretched out for miles, mirrors to the scudding clouds above, of the swarms of midges, and of the banks of virgin snow. I picture Alice in this setting, and marvel that Myrtle believes a remedy can be found for our turbulent daughter so far away, as if geography is the answer.
I turn my whisky tumbler around and around in my hands. The peaty aroma I inhale seems most apt.As the marauding gangs charge through the streets of Central, their war cries a united tirade against colonial rule, my bowels loosen and my legs turn to water. Perched on high in my office I watch the Hong Kong Police, their arms linked, like playground children at their games. Red rover, red rover, let the rioters come over! A human wall barricading the road, poised for the impact that will surely come. A couple of days ago, peering though my binoculars at this brave force, this force whose job it is to repel the wrath of mighty China, I focused on the face of a boy…he was no more than a boy I tell you, a Chinese boy, pitting himself against the rabble, against his own people. For this I know he will earn the title of ‘Yellow Running Dog’, for he has sided with the ‘White-Skinned Pigs’, the European interlopers.
Music thunders out from loudspeakers in Central District, the volume at such a high level you can hear it in the flat on The Peak, as if it is coming from the next room. It drowns out the slogans and propaganda, being broadcast from the communist-owned buildings. People are being attacked.They are being murdered.And a Chinese boy wearing the khaki uniform of the Hong Kong Police Force stands erect, head held high, and blocks their path, while I, Ralph Safford, representative of the British government, look down from my safe offices in the sky, my bowels liquid, my heart pounding too fast, and my hands slick with sweat.
‘Damned communists!’I recall saying conversationally to a colleague on one of the darkest days. I peered down at the advancing, boiling mass, at the bracelet of police standing firm. They were advancing on the Hilton Hotel. If they break through, I thought, terror jerking at my heart, perhaps they will pour up Garden Road, past St John’s Cathedral,and the lower Peak Tram terminus.Then higher,why not, half of the bloodthirsty rabble peeling off up the slopes to Government House to lynch the 24th British Governor of Hong Kong, Sir David Trench,the rest continuing their march on Victoria Peak,where they knew we lorded it over them in luxury.
‘Damned Red Guards with their “Little Red Books”,’I blustered, trying in vain to steady my voice. I gestured at the angry crowds beneath our windows. ‘Not exactly what we Brits would call a Cultural Revolution, eh?’ I managed a chuckle, but the sound was hollow.‘We simply can’t have this sort of thing.After all,these fellows are making trouble on British territory,’ I said, sounding like the stereotype of a stoic British officer in a bad war film. I tried to instil outrage into my voice, fury at this insult to my sovereign Queen. And I very nearly pulled it off.But the sudden slump of my colleague’s shoulders made it clear I was fooling no one. About now, I thought, the film camera should pan to the skies above, buzzing with British warplanes come to put an end to this rebellious nonsense. I glanced upwards, a clear, blue sky, a disarmingly beautiful day on the island of Hong Kong. I wondered if the Chinese boy in his man’s uniform was glancing up too. I wondered if he was thinking that it was a good day to die, to become a sei chai lo, a dead policeman, with no clouds to impede his soul’s flight.
My mind slides forward in time and I am back on the veranda with my wife. I raise my glass and toss back my drink. Myrtle takes it from me. She doesn’t even ask me if I would like a refill. She busies herself with the new decanter, with the ice bucket. I hear the cubes of ice clunk and rattle as they are agitated with the metal tongs. Looking down, I see a brochure Myrtle has deposited in my lap for a boarding school in Argyll. I flip through the pages. They are full of snaps of Amazonian girls with flushed cheeks doing wholesome things. I pause at a shot of one leaping in the air, arms outstretched, hands spread wide.The netball she has just shot is arcing earthwards, about to slip through the goal ring. Her thick black hair is crushed back by the wind.The expression on her face is vicious. I will mow down anyone who gets in my way, it bugles through slit eyes, ballooning cheeks, a funnelled mouth and gritted teeth. There is a malignancy about it, I decide, that I find decidedly distasteful. I toss the brochure onto the drinks table. Myrtle notes my gesture and quickly hands me my drink. She has poured me a stiff measure. If I down this too fast I shall fall asleep. My lips curl upwards longingly at the thought of slumber, of drowning in slumber.
I wonder where it will all end? I overheard talk today of the People’s Republic of China seizing control of the island, taking back Hong Kong from right under our noses. Once a remote, even a ridiculous, idea, this now feels tangible, a very real probability, a probability I am living with every day, down there in Central District. Up here on the Peak, to a great extent the family is insulated. As I listen to Myrtle prattle on about how difficult life has become for her, I smoulder with resentment. I cannot help it. I am in the firing line, the thick of it, not her. For the time being at least, she is tucked up safe in the flat on The Peak, with amahs to care for her. Still, foolish though it may be, I like to believe she’s safe, that Harry and Alice are safe, that the communist agitators will draw the line at charging up The Peak and laying siege to the flat. After all, we are British subjects. I am fighting the urge to laugh at this notion, this notion that because we are British subjects, servants of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, they will tread carefully around us. It will not make an iota of difference to the raging mob down there. No. I take that back. Of course it will make a difference. It will spur them on till they have butchered all the ‘White-Skinned Pigs’.
I must stop this.What with a couple of swift ones before leaving the office, and the hefty measures I am getting through now, I’ve had far too much to drink on an empty stomach. I am growing maudlin. I ignore my own caution and take another slug of scotch. I bare my teeth at the night sky. I can’t concentrate on my wife and her tribulations, tonight of all nights. Why is Myrtle bothering me with this, when what I need is pause, time to regroup, to prepare for the next onslaught, for most certainly it will come. How can I think about Alice’s future—when I’m not sure if any of us even have one.
‘I think it’s for the best,’ Myrtle says again, taking a gulp of whisky herself.Then, when I turn to her, my face blank, she adds a reminder of the subject under debate, ‘Sending Alice to boarding school in Scotland.’ She takes up the brochure, leafs through it, and seizes on the very page with the grimacing netball player that I stumbled on. She brandishes it at me, stabbing a manicured fingernail at the action shot.‘Just look at that,’ she urges.‘That girl wants to win.That could be Alice in a few years from now. Think of that!’
I do not tell her this is the very thing that I am thinking of, this is what I am afraid of. I am too spent to argue. Besides, Scotland seems a long way away tonight, as does England. Sometimes I think I have forgotten what England is like, forgotten that it is home, my country. I feel as if I have been trying to create a little England, here, on the doorstep of China, and that anybody who really considers this will see that it is an impossible task, the work of a lifetime. For what? In just three short decades, as the century closes, China will reclaim her island, and she will probably do a very thorough job of obliterating all evidence of the British, as speedily as she can. And who would blame her?
‘Ralph? Darling, are you listening?’ Myrtle’s voice sounds in my rambling thoughts. ‘About Alice? Scotland? What do you think?’
From somewhere I find the might to withstand my wife’s determination to dispense with Alice. I take a shuddering breath and meet her eyes, my gaze steady.
‘No. It wouldn’t work out