World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) (14 page)

II

It was an hour later. The three of us were seated in a little restaurant in Hennessy Road that specialized in Pekin food. We had ordered a single plate of
pin-pan,
a kind of Chinese hors d'oeuvres, most of which Ben had polished off single-handed while Suzie and I, who were neither of us hungry, had sat sipping tea and nibbling at melon seeds.

Ben said, “I'm not an expert on Chinese cooking. But on the whole I prefer Pekin style to Cantonese.”

The conversation had also been largely a single-handed effort on Ben's part. He courteously pretended not to notice Suzie's sullen lack of response. He was still behaving with perfect aplomb—the skipper who, after carrying out the unpleasant duty of punishing a recalcitrant officer, now considered the offense expiated and the incident closed. Never might the Royal Navy have been prouder of him.

“More tea?” he asked Suzie, but she shook her head. He glanced with a faint smile at the handkerchief wrapped round his hand where she had bitten him. “That's going to take a bit of explaining. I'll just have to keep it covered, and say I got it caught in a door.”

Suzie glanced at the hand surreptitiously. She looked anxious. Then she remembered that she was still supposed to be sulking; for although she no longer felt like sulking, her pride demanded that she keep it up. And she tried not very successfully to look pleased she had hurt him.

“How's the time?” The skipper jerked up his cuff. “I say, I must get cracking!”

Suzie watched him rise, longing to know whether or not she had been relieved of her duties, but too proud to ask. Ben paid the bill and we followed him out to his car. He got into the driving seat, slammed the door, leaned his elbow out of the open window.

“I'll have to buzz off—leave you two to get back under your own steam.”

He withdrew the elbow, started up. Suzie could bear it no longer. She said, trying hard to sound indifferent, “You want me tomorrow?”

“Want you tomorrow?” Ben regarded her with an appearance of blank astonishment. (Really frightened the life out of the young puppy! Silly mugwump doesn't realize he's indispensable to the ship!) “Certainly I want you tomorrow. Why not?”

“You're not angry with me?” She could hardly believe it.

“No, we'll forget it. But you're to keep out of that bar in future. Right out of it—understand?” And he put the car in gear and shot off.

Suzie and I stood staring after the car in silence. I could feel the radiation of her joy. We began to walk along the empty street. The pavement was littered with bits of paper, old cigarette packets, discarded fruit rind. Between two shops a woman and two children lay asleep on sacking. Round them were stacked all their household possessions: tins, cooking pans, wooden boxes. The woman clutched an old cornflake packet tied with string. We walked on past shuttered shop fronts, past a cinema, past more homeless sleepers nursing their little claims of stone pavement from passing feet. We entered the flood of light from a modern shopwindow: banked with shoes, it bared its breast to the empty pavement, the silent roadway. We paused, momentarily hypnotized by its unreality, by its absurd refusal to admit that it was night and that everybody had gone to bed.

I said, “That reminds me, Suzie. I need some new shoes.”

“Yes,” she said absently.

“Or sandals might be cheaper. How d'you like those?”

I pointed into the dazzling Aladdin's cave of footwear. As a rule Suzie held strong views about what I wore, and she had admonished me to buy nothing without her approval; but now she gave only a brief vague glance towards the sandals. I do not think she even saw them. “Yes, very nice,” she said automatically. And then with a sudden giggle, “He hurt me, you know! That spanking really hurt!”

“I bet it did.”

“It hurt to sit down in that restaurant. I wanted to ask for a cushion, then I thought, ‘No, that will show him how much it hurt—and I will lose face!'”

“Do you really like those sandals?”

She said rather impatiently, “Yes, I told you—very much.” And then, “Yes, he's really strong, that man. Woosh! Woosh! Plenty of muscle!”

“Well, you always said so.”

“But I made a mistake about him before. I thought he had only a small heart. But I think he must have a big heart—because I cheated him, I did a very nasty thing, but he said, ‘That's all right, we just forget it. I forgive you.' He must have a big heart to say that.”

“I'm delighted to hear it.”

“‘Just forget it, Suzie.' I think that is very beautiful. It was beautiful to say that.”

We walked on, out of the light again, back into the shadows, Suzie's arm brushing against mine. But she was walking in another world; a world where I could not follow. I had ceased to exist for her. I could have slipped away down a side street and she would not have noticed. Or cared.

I felt a dull ache over my heart.

But it's nonsense to feel hurt, I thought. That strong-arm stuff always goes down with the simple type of girl. See them falling in swoons at the cinema over Tarzan: their ideal man. It's exactly what you'd expect with her lack of education, her illiteracy. And frankly, if that's the sort of girl she is, who cares? I shan't pay her the compliment of feeling hurt. . . . The ache was worse. I think it was the first time I had really been jealous of Suzie.

Chapter Four

T
hereafter Suzie kept strictly to the rules of the game. She had been speaking nothing less than the truth when she had said that if she respected a man she would not dream of deceiving him; and now that she respected Ben, I do not think that anything could have shaken her fidelity—nothing, at any rate, short of a guarantee for her baby's education at the best school in Hong Kong, followed by three years at Oxford and a starring role in a Hollywood film.

And the spanking had become one of the proudest events of her life. For in the water-front world, where girls were shared and recommended to friends (“You can't go wrong with Typhoo, mate—she does you real proud. . . .”), a boy friend who jealously demanded fidelity, and who in order to enforce it would descend on the Nam Kok by private car, impersonate a policeman, throw out a sailor, and turn a girl over his knees, had the romantic appeal of Prince Charming, Gary Cooper, and the heir of the Tiger Balm Millions rolled into one.

And now Suzie would tell me, “You know, last night I stayed awake just to think about Ben. I thought, ‘If I got to sleep I may dream about him or I may not—so I had better stay awake to make sure.'” And she would say, “I wonder if I am in love with him? What do you think, Robert? You think I am in love?”

“Of course, head over heels.”

“Yes, I think so,” she would nod pensively. And then add with satisfaction, “And I hate his wife! I hate that woman very much, so I must be in love!”

She had even made herself believe, on the strength of odd remarks of Ben's, that one day he might divorce Elizabeth and marry her; and she asked me endless questions about London, so that when he took her to England she would not shame him with her ignorance.

“Suzie, I shouldn't count on it too much,” I told her. I had come to terms with my jealousy by now, and hated to think of the disappointment that must follow such extravagant hopes.

“But Ben has promised. He has told me often, ‘Suzie, I want to show you London. You will look so pretty in London with your Chinese skin! Yes, one day I will take you, and show you everything, and we will get married in—' I forget where, but it was some big old famous church where the Queen got married in.”

“Westminster Abbey?”

“Yes, Westminster Abbey! He says, ‘We will pretend you are a Chinese princess.'”

I was sure that these had been no more than Ben's idle musings as he lay replete on the bed at lunchtime in the little Chinese hotel, and that he had not intended her to take them seriously. I pointed out that it might be very difficult for him to get a divorce. But she gaily reassured me, “Oh, don't worry, Ben knows all the big people in Hong Kong. He only has to tell the Number One Top Englishman, ‘Good morning, Mr. Governor, my wife is no good; I want a divorce,' and the Number One will say, ‘Very good, I will ask someone to fix it while we have some lunch.'” And she held up the book of London photographs, which now fascinated her more than ever, and pointed to a picture of a beefeater at the Tower of London. “Look at that man—how fat! I will tell him when I go to London, ‘Hey, you're too fat, you eat too much!'” She twinkled happily, then suddenly started back from the book with an “Ouch!” of pretended pain.

“Good Lord, Suzie! What's the matter?”

“This beefeater just told me, ‘You're too cheeky!' and stuck me with that spike!”

She still came to visit me every day but obediently kept clear of the bar; for although she had pleaded with Ben to repeal his harsh edict, which deprived her of so much enjoyable gossip with her girl friends, Ben had firmly refused. However, to keep her out of mischief in the evenings he had granted her permission to work at a new dance hall in the Central District. This had a mixed Chinese and European clientele and was more or less respectable, since no obligation was placed on the girls to extend favors off the dance floor. Suzie loved dancing, and would go along most evenings, making ten or twelve dollars for enjoying herself—or a good deal more if she was bought out and taken to dinner. However, she never accepted a dinner invitation without first making it clear that there would be nothing else doing, and she never allowed a patron to run her home in his car. She had learned by experience that, by the time you had convinced him that you meant what you said, it was less trouble to take a tram.

The dance hall was called the Astoria. And it was through Suzie working at the Astoria that, to my eternal regret, Rodney Tessler came into our lives. Or at least into my life—since Suzie was too wrapped up in Ben to be much aware of him.

It began exactly as it had begun with Ben, with a late night telephone call from Suzie—this time from a restaurant in town where she had been taken to dinner. Her partner, I gathered, was proving difficult to shake off, despite her usual clear warning beforehand: he had turned quite nasty, and she had no good to say for him, except that he was intelligent and “good class,” and also passionately interested in painting. This had transpired during dinner, when she had told him about me. She thought he was a painter himself, she was not sure. Anyhow he had begged to be brought along to meet me and see my work; and if I was agreeable she would be delighted, since it would give her a chance to slip out on him.

I hesitated, and then said doubtfully, “All right, bring him along.” I rang off in a state of some perturbation. So far nobody had seen my Nam Kok pictures except Ah Tong and Suzie, and a few other girls and sailors, whose praise had never failed to delight me, but whose adverse comments had always been easy enough to dismiss—“After all, they're just Philistines.” I hastily looked through my finished pictures. A few minutes ago I would have found no difficulty in persuading myself of their merit; I could even have believed that in one or two I had soared to the most breath-taking heights of artistic achievement. But now, seeing them through the eyes of a hypercritical stranger, all my self-confidence abruptly vanished, and they became distorted by my fears into a pathetic collection of meaningless daubs.

Oh God, I thought miserably, I wish I'd never said he could come. And I hurriedly hid the worst of them, and arranged the others in the most effective order for display, though in apparently casual disorder to conceal evidence of such nervous preparation.

Twenty minutes later, a knock on the door—and Suzie entered with a young man whose crew-cut hair indicated an American. He wore a gabardine suit of expensive but unassuming English cut, a silk shirt with small embroidered monogram on the pocket, a neat spotted bow tie, and suede shoes. He looked about twenty-five or -six.

He held out his hand to me with a charming, frank, boyish smile. “Glad to meet you, Bob. They do call you Bob, I suppose?”

The hand was soft and manicured, with a gold signet ring. His voice had a mild American twang. But I think that without either the accent or the crew cut I would have guessed his nationality. It was in the readiness of the handshake, the blandness of the smile, that seemed jointly to declare, “I'm an American, and proud of it, and when you shake hands with me you are not just shaking hands with an individual, but with America itself—with the Empire State, and nation-wide television, and General Motors, and the American democratic constitution.”

I found such openness disarming, and felt an instant liking for him. I wondered why Suzie had been so disparaging.

“I'm not usually called Bob,” I smiled. “But I don't mind a bit.”

“Well, I hope you won't mind if I call you Red by mistake.”

“Red?”

“You see, Bob, I used to have a classmate who was a namesake of yours—Red Lomax. And ever since I heard your name was Lomax, I've been thinking of you as Red. But I don't think you'd mind my mixing you up if you'd known him, because he was a very fine person—a very, very fine person—and so far as that goes, I think that you two have got a good deal in common.”

“I'm flattered.”

“Well, you should have heard the build-up that Suzie gave you. I wondered if you employed her as publicity agent, but now I've met you I can see it was all true. And I really mean that, Red.” He realized the stupid mistake. He flicked his fingers in exasperation, then grinned and said, “Now, you keep out of this, Red, d'you hear? We all know you're a great guy, but just now Bob and I are busy talking—and as a matter of fact we're getting on very well, and I've got a feeling that Bob and I are going to be very, very good friends.”

I was a little puzzled by this pantomime, for I was almost sure that he had called me Red on purpose. However, I soon forgot about it as he began to admire my room, and the panoramic view from the balcony, with that genuine warmth of appreciation that makes Americans the most delightful guests in the world. I thought him charming. I gathered that he himself was staying at the Gloucester, the most expensive hotel in Hong Kong; and he was very fed up because he had found it so booked up on his arrival a few days ago that he had been obliged to take a suite. It was not the expense that bothered him, but the size. He felt lonely and quite lost in it. And while all that period furniture and ormolu would have been fine in the Ritz, Paris, they were the last thing you wanted here. No, in Hong Kong you wanted atmosphere—like this place. He was crazy about this room of mine.

Then he said, “Look, Bob, may I use your bathroom? It's all this Chinese tea you drink with meals here. It runs straight through you.”

“I'm afraid I've no private bathroom,” I apologized.

“You expect too much, Bob! I'd swap my private bathroom at the Gloucester for this view any time you like—with an ormolu clock thrown in.”

I took him outside and directed him down the corridor, explaining that he could take his choice between Chinese-style and Western-style. I recommended the Chinese-style as more hygienic. Then I closed the door and turned back to Suzie. I said, “But he's very nice, Suzie. Why don't you like him?”

“He got angry because I wouldn't go to bed. He said horrible things.”

“That chap? I'm astonished.”

“He gets horrible when he is angry. I was scared.”

“Well, you skip off. I'll deal with him.”

Suzie suggested that to avoid offending him I should explain that she had just gone round to see her baby, and would be coming back. Then she would ring up to say she could not come back after all because the baby was sick. I thought this unnecessarily complicated, but there was no time to argue so I agreed and dispatched her. A minute later Rodney returned. He said, “Hullo, where's our friend?”

I explained, saying she would be back in half an hour, and meanwhile he must make himself at home. He smiled gratefully, and with such friendly warmth that I felt quite ashamed to be deceiving him.

“That's very nice of you, Bob. I can see you've got a real gift for hospitality and friendship—and nowadays that's something one certainly does appreciate.”

“Why the ‘nowadays'?” I said.

“Well, don't let's kid ourselves, the American stock's pretty low at present. Particularly out here, with our China policy, and Chiang Kai-shek sinking British ships, and all the usual American hysteria about the commies. But you've got to remember, Bob, we're still a young country. We've still a lot to learn. And so far as diplomacy is concerned, we're just a lot of bunglers compared with you British.”

“We've done our fair share of bungling,” I said, though I was liking him better every minute.

“That's just your British modesty. Now, Bob, what about these pictures? Because I've been very, very much looking forward to seeing what you've been doing.”

He explained that he was not a painter himself, but had always been interested in painting above all else. The interest ran in the family, for his mother had one of the finest art collections in New York: and as a matter of fact he was going to pick up one or two little pieces for her in Italy, when he finally reached there on his round-the-world trip. “You see, my mother was a Mitford, and it was her father who started Mitford's in New York. But he died a couple of years back, and my uncle's running the show now.” He saw that I looked blank and smiled. “You don't know Mitford's? Well, I guess that means you've never been to New York, because it's practically an institution there. In fact there's a joke about it, that no American artist goes past it without lifting his hat—because it's put so many of them on their feet.”

“What is it—a gallery?”

“It started as a gallery. But now it publishes art books as well, and runs an agency side, like an agency for writers or actors. You should get them to handle your work over there, Bob.”

“Wait till you see it.”

“Well, if that pastel study against the wardrobe is anything to go by, I'm going to like it a lot.”

And as I began to place my pictures one after another on the easel for his inspection, feeling that I was baring my soul to him, he was indeed warmly appreciative. He obviously knew a great deal about painting. He used words I did not understand and compared me with artists of whom I had never heard. But his comments showed a real percipience that gave weight to his praise and made me purr with delight.

“Of course, I'm bound to admit, Bob,” he said, “that so far as modern painting's concerned I'm biased in favor of the abstract. In fact I've often thought that representational art was dead as the dodo. But there's certainly nothing dead about your work. It's intensively alive. Look at that one, for instance—those girls and that sailor. They're so alive that I can hear them thinking. And what's more important, I can hear you thinking, too!” And he pressed me to send a selection to Mitford's, offering to write to his uncle and tell him about me.

“Mind you, I'm not promising anything, Bob. You must remember that their attitude is basically commercial—what can they make out of you? But my guess is that this stuff will knock them sideways. And I'll be very surprised if they don't—” He broke off. The telephone had begun to ring. He stiffened a little as he watched me pick it up.