The Man in the Wooden Hat (6 page)

As she walked over to the dark cab, the driver got out and opened the passenger door. He said, “Veneering?” and she said, “Yes.”

They turned quickly away from the lights and quays, then inland. As they climbed, the traffic and people thinned and they drove towards the New Territories among cities of unfinished blocks of workers’ flats, all in darkness, waiting for the New Age. The road curved and climbed, flattened and then climbed again. It climbed into trees, through trees and then into thick woods.

Woods?

She had not known about the woods of Hong Kong. Woods were for lush landscapes. She had believed that outside the city all would be sandy and bare. The cab plunged now deep into a black forest. The sky was gone and the road levelled and began to drop down again. The cab turned on to an unmade-up track. Small dancing lights began to appear, around them, like a huge entourage, the moving shadows of hundreds of people carrying the lights in their hands.

The shadows did not rest. Sometimes they came up close to the cab. They were moving, sometimes quite close to the cab’s closed windows. They were in twos and threes, not speaking. Not one head turned. They even seemed unaware of the cab which was moving through them now quite fast, but still silent, the driver never once flashing his lights or sounding his horn. Nobody moved out of their way. Nobody turned his head. There seemed to be a white mist near the ground and the cab became very hot.

The strangeness of the crowded forest was its silence.

To left and right in the trees, a little off the road, a bright light would now and then shine out, then vanish, masked by trees and trees. There must be big houses up there, she thought, rich men’s second homes. She had seen the sort of thing long ago in Penang, most of the year empty, shadowy palaces locked inside metal armour lattice and on the gates the warning with a zigzag sign saying
Danger of Death
, blazing out in English and Chinese and Malay.

The hosts of the shadows paid no attention to the houses hidden in the trees. The shadows swam altogether around the cab in a shoal. They concentrated on the dark. They became like smoke around her in the forest and she began to be afraid.

I want Edward. He has no idea where I am. Nor have I.

The driver’s little Chinese head did not turn and he did not speak when she leaned forward and tapped his shoulder and shouted at him in Cantonese, “Will it be much longer? Please tell me where I am. In God’s name.”

Instead, he swung suddenly off the road, obliterating the moving shadows, and up a steeper track. After a time, a glow appeared from, apparently, the top of some tree. In front of the light the cab swung round full circle and stopped.

The light was glowing in a small wooden house that seemed to be on stilts with tree branches growing close all round it. There was some sort of ladder and a gate at the bottom bore the electric charge logo and
Danger of Death
.
All Admittance Forbidden
.

She looked up at the top of the ladder and saw that a wooden cabin seemed held in a goblet of branches. Its doors stood open and light now flowed down the ladder. Veneering was beside the cab. He opened the door and took her hand. He stood aside for her at the ladder’s foot and at the top she looked down at him and saw that behind him in the clearing the cab was gone.

So was the silent, shadowy multitude and so were all the dotted lights of houses among the trees. This house seemed less a house then an organic growth in the forest, sweet smelling, held in the arms of branches. Veneering shut the door behind them and began to take off her green dress.

T
he next morning
Do Not Disturb
was still hanging from the door handle of room 182, the beds still unmade, unslept in. There was the untouched chaos of scattered clothes and belongings, the smell of yesterday’s scent. Nobody there. And no light flashing from the bedside telephone. No messages pushed under the door.

Perhaps no time had passed since yesterday morning. The hairdresser, the green dress, the taxi standing waiting, the strange journey, the glorious night, the dawn return with the black cab again standing waiting in the trees, perhaps all fantasy? A dream of years can take a second.

But I’m not a virgin any more. I know that all right.
And
it’s about time. Oh, Edward! Saint Edward, where were you? Why wasn’t it you? Pulling off the dress, she stuffed it in the waste-paper basket. She made the dribbling shower work and stood under it until it had soaked away the hours of the sweltering, wonderful night, until her hair lay flat and brown and coarse. It’s like a donkey’s hair. I am not beautiful. Yet he thought so. Who was it? Oh! It
must
have been Edward! I’m marrying him. He hates—she couldn’t say the name. I’ve been bewitched. Then, thinking of the night, she moaned with pleasure. No, it was you. Not Eddie. Eddie was preparing the Case. He had no time. Yet you had time. The same Case.

And it’s always going to be like this. She watched, through the window behind the shower, white smoke puffing up from the air conditioning into the blue sky. His work will always come first. He’ll sign and underline and ring for it to be collected by the typists, before he comes home to me. And where is he? And Lizzie? I’m alone here now. I can’t stand here all day, naked. My new, used, happy body. I suppose I should sleep now. I must need sleep, but I’ve never felt so awake. I’ll ring Amy.

“Yes?”

In the background to Amy’s voice was a hornet’s nest of howling and shouting.

“I must see you, Amy. I have to see you.
Please
!”

“I’ll come now. I’ll do the school run and then I’ll drive in. What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you. Well, not
wrong
. Well, yes—wrong.”

Amy’s tin-can car appeared in less than half an hour outside the Old Colony, stopping where last night’s cab had stopped. And this morning’s. Elisabeth saw it, put on some cotton trousers and a shirt, and ran out. The alternative had been the crumpled cotton check or the green silk in the trash basket. She fell into the clattering car and, as they drove away, said, “Oh, Amy! Thank God!” Amy had less than an inch of space between herself and the steering wheel. The coming child inside her was kicking. You could see it kicking if you knew about such things. Betty, who didn’t know, sat staring ahead.

“Where are we going, Amy? This isn’t your way home.”

“No, it’s my day for health visiting. New babies. Home births. I’ll say you’re my assistant. You can carry a clipboard. Now then, what’s the matter?”

“I can’t actually tell you. Not yet. I’ve just got in. I was out all night.”

“Sleeping with Eddie Feathers? Well, about time. That I will say.”

“No. No. He won’t do it. He thinks if it’s serious, you don’t do it before marrying.”

“He said this?”

“Not actually. But he sort of indicates.”

“Well,” she said. “It’s a point of view. Mine, as a matter of fact. And Nick’s. But we couldn’t stick to it. So who were you with on the night you became engaged? You’d better tell me. Oh, we’re here. Get out and I’ll tell you how to behave. Then tell me what’s going on.”

They were on a cemented forecourt of what looked like an overhead parking block ten storeys high. “Take the clipboard. Walk behind me with authority. O.K.? We are weighing and measuring babies born at home. Every family will greet us with a glass of tea. If there is no tea it will be a glass of water. If there is no water then it will be an empty glass. Whichever is handed to you, you greet it as if it were champagne. O.K.?”

Inside the rough building among the shadowy wooden joists Elisabeth was reminded of the unseen people of the wood. At doorways they were bowed to, and tightly wrapped babies were presented, unwrapped and hung up by Amy from a hook above a little leather hammock. Like meat, thought Elisabeth. The baby was examined, peered at with a torch, tapped and patted, then measured and returned. The mother or grandmother—it could have been either—bowed and offered the glass. The babies’ eyes shone black and narrow, and looked across at Elisabeth with the knowledge of Methuselah. She caught one proud young mother’s glance and smiled in congratulation. “Beautiful,” she said and the mother made a proud disclaimer.

“That last one will die,” said Amy as they walked back to the car. “We’ll go home and I’ll get you some breakfast. Let me hear your earth-shattering experiences with your substitute future husband.”

“He wasn’t. I told you.”

“Then who was it?”

“Someone else. I’d just met him.”

“Ye gods! Here, help me.” She was unloading the back of the car of the paraphernalia of the maternity run. “Met him here? In Hong Kong?”

“Yes. I think it was hypnosis.”

Weights, measures, bottles were heaped in Elisabeth’s arms.

“Rubbish, it was lust. It was natural desire. Or maybe it was only resentment,” said Amy.

“How do you know?”

“I know because you told me, yesterday, that your marriage frightened you, because it meant you would never know passion. You did it to have something to remember and to have known desire.”

“No, it was love. I’m not excusing myself. Edward will never know. It is love.”

“Elisabeth, what
are
you doing?”

“Is it so wrong to want a glorious memory?”

“It’s sentimental and obscene. You won’t like yourself for it in the end. You don’t like yourself now.”

“I never thought you were a puritan, Amy.”

“Well, you’ve learned something. I am.”

“After the way you went on at school.”

“That was ten years ago.”

“So you have been purified by Nick?”

Amy was rolling from side to side up the dirty stairwell, trying to support the unborn baby as it kicked to get clear of her ribcage and slide into the world. From above came the wailing of apparently inconsolable children and the voice of a roaring man.

A saffron monk stuck his head out of his doorway as they passed, his hairless shining face determinedly blissful. He asked if he could eat with them. “No,” said Amy. “There’s too much going on,” and the monk blissfully retired.

“Where in
hell
—” shouted Nick at their open door. “You’ve been hours. We’re going mad.”

Mrs. Baxter, in a rocking chair, held an unhappy bundle. “I’m afraid she’s wet again.” An untouched bottle of formula stood near, untouched, that is, except by flies. “It’s time to get Emily back from school.”

“Well, here’s the car keys,” said Amy, picking the baby out of Mrs. Baxter’s bony lap, dropping the nursing gear, scooping another child out of Nick’s struggling arms. “Oh, and can you give Bets a lift back to the Old Col?”

“Bets?” Nick took a hold, looked at her and switched on the polite. “So sorry. Don’t think we’ve met. Are you new here?”

“I’m passing through.”

“We were at school,” said Amy.

“Oh.
Excellent
. Sorry about the scenes of married bliss. Didn’t see you there, ha-ha. You’ll want to be off.”

“No. I don’t want to go.” She looked at Nick in his plastic dog collar. “Amy, I don’t know what to do.”

“Pray you’re not pregnant,” said Amy, also behaving as if the two of them were alone. “Try prayers. Go ahead with earlier plans.”

“Someone will tell him. You know they will. You know Hong Kong.”

“Oh, probably. If so, I suppose that’ll be it. But I wonder? He doesn’t sound the ordinary old blimp, your future husband.”

“What is all this?”

“It is something, Nick,” said Mrs. Baxter, “that I don’t think we should be listening to. You are making us eavesdroppers, Amy.”

“I’ve more to do than stand here dropping eaves,” said Nick. “I’m teaching a Moral Sciences seminar in twenty minutes.”

Amy and Elisabeth continued to stand in silence and it was (surprisingly) Amy who began to cry.

“You’re—oh, if you knew how I envy you, Bets! You’re so
innocent
. You’re going to be so
ghastly
soon. All this will be an uneasy memory when you’re opening bazaars around the Temple church in the Strand, and organising book groups for barristers’ wives. You’ll metamorphose into a perfect specimen of twentieth-century uxorial devotion. You’ll have this one guilty secret and you’ll never forgive me for knowing.”

“I don’t know what the hell’s going on,” said Nick.

“You and I, Bets, will be the last generation to take seriously the concept of matrimonial fidelity. Wait until this lot gets cracking with sex and sin in the—what?—in the sixties.”

“How do you know?” said Elisabeth.

“I know.”

“Are you
happy
about it, Amy?”

“I am bloody, bloody
unhappy
about it. Have a child at your peril, Bets. It will hurt you to hell.”

One of the children then began to cry for its dinner and slap, bang went Amy with the rice pot.

“Nick—take Betty
now
. Bets, see you at the altar? Right?”

Mrs. Baxter began to sing “When I survey the wondrous Cross” as she unwrapped the wet child, who at once spread out its wet legs and went thankfully to sleep.

A
t last there was a message for Elisabeth Macintosh when she returned to the Old Colony Hotel. She was called over to the reception desk and an official-looking letter was put into her hands. The envelope came from Edward’s London Chambers and it chilled her. Her name was typewritten. So, it was all over.

She took it upstairs—the bedroom still untouched, the two beds a mess, but she found a red light flashing by the telephone. Which first? Face the one you fear.

She opened the letter and inside, in Edward’s beautiful, clear script, read,
I have wonderful news. Ross will bring you to the Old Repulse Bay Hotel tonight to celebrate it. I have not had a minute—literally, I mean it—to telephone or write. You will soon see why. I love and long for you, Edward
.