Hadley, page 9
I felt one of my lapses of concentration coming on. I drifted back to my days on the Sotobech Sentinel and a fabricated Women’s Institute report sent to a rival paper about a handicraft afternoon in which the only materials at hand for each member were a cucumber, two onions and lots of aluminium foil.
“Sorry?” I realised Joe was speaking to me in the present. Twenty years later. In a house on the Peak in Hong Kong.
“I said, what about that double happiness Valentine’s Day shit?”
“I’m sorry?”
I racked my brain and resented having to. I had produced sixty lines the day St Valentine’s Day coincided with the Chinese equivalent in the lunar calendar. I had had to go out to flower shops and find out how much bouquets of roses were selling for, how much a romantic dinner for two would set you back at the Peninsula Hotel. I had to ask people in the street if love could conquer all.
“Does this day have special significance for you, being St Valentine’s Day and the Chinese equivalent?” I had asked one unsuspecting young Chinese couple as they stepped off a tram.
“Ah?”
“Do you think it’s extra romantic, poignant, because of the two days being on the same day?”
“Ah?”
A few hours later I was banging out my story.
“Love is a many splendoured thing, or so the saying goes, and St Valentine’s Day meant double happiness for Hong Kong’s young and restless on Tuesday as East met West in an alignment of the stars.”
Ah?
“Well, what about it?” I asked.
“Did you think that was a good story?”
“No, it was a piece of rubbish. But it was a harmless piece of rubbish. No one was expecting an in-depth survey. No one’s credibility was at stake. Certainly not mine. It was a fun story about young lovers!”
“What do you know about young lovers?”
“It was an extended caption to go with a picture. We call them slice-of-life stories. Stand-alone stories to accompany a picture.
It wasn’t the Nuremberg trials.”
“Well I want to put your idiot friend Chris Torment on some kind of trial.”
“I am not going to manufacture stories.”
“So write what you see. I know how you feel about Torment. Don’t try to pretend to me that there is such a thing as an objectively written story. Boy, I know more about your business than you do.” Joe leant forward and picked up a copy of a Hong Kong newspaper from the table. “The first story I see… and it backs up my case completely.”
“What case?”
“Oh look, it’s a Shrubs story. What a surprise.”
“What story?”
“Let me read the beginning. It’s great.” Joe cleared his throat and began to read:
“‘An Indonesian taxi driver took a fateful wrong turn at the top of a sixth-floor car park in downtown Jakarta and ended up in a no-stopping zone in the street below’.”
I swallowed.
“He took a wrong turn,” Joe said. “How fateful. He landed in a no-stopping zone. How funny. Let’s read the quote to tell us how the story is backed up. ‘It’s the sixth floor of a downtown building and this is the sixth time this has happened in six weeks,’ a local newspaper said.’”
“That’s what the newspaper said.”
“It’s not even a person being quoted. It’s an unnamed local newspaper. And you believe it? Of course you don’t. What is the matter with your Jakarta reporter? Or reporters? How many of them are there?”
I kept quiet. I wasn’t going to own up to having rewritten the whole thing.
“Clearly Shrubs has some artistic licence,” Joe said. “But I’m just telling you to write what you see. Maybe Torment will take a wrong turn out of a helicopter and you will see that.”
“You’re kidding, I hope.”
“Or maybe he goes back to this gunman Chen’s home in Sri Lanka as a public relations exercise, and combines it with a visit to a monsoon disaster region. And Shrubs sends you along.”
“Why would they?”
“Because I will arrange it.”
“Do you control my company too?”
“Well, of course not. But I think we could arrange something. Something really imaginative.”
“Shrubs has stopped covering showbiz VIPs on aid missions. They cause more problems than they are worth with their fancy hotels, round-the-clock security, women delivered to their rooms. It’s all grandstanding and pretty evil.”
“Just write what you see.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
BAXTER CALL ME into his office the next day.
“Go home and pack your bags.”
“Where am I going?”
“Sri Lanka. Storm aid. Appears your mate Chris Torment is going on a mercy mission and we want you to cover it.”
“Whose idea was this?”
“What does it matter? Part of it was my idea. We can’t just let the floods and mudslides fall off the radar screen.”
“I thought we had stopped covering showbiz farts wasting people’s time and resources.”
“Well, we’ve just started again.”
For the makers of the film, the idea was to make the most of the publicity over the shooting attempt while they waited for the critical spring mist to appear over the Peak. A concerned Chris Torment was going in to assess the monsoon reconstruction and look grave in an ample number of photo ops. He was going to the heart of Macho, apparently a dangerous place, and to be sympathetic with everyone he met. Who knows, maybe he would forgive the ill-starred Chen when he returned to Hong Kong? The film people also wanted to patch up relations with Shrubs in the wake of Torment’s assault on Baxter. Joe just wanted to see Torment discredited. And what did I want? I wanted an easy, short trip, during which stories would write themselves, with bylines flying around the major newspapers of the world. Screwing up Torment’s life would be an added bonus.
The Sri Lankan Chinese group’s attempt on Torment’s life created good publicity for itself for a while. Serious newspapers around the world, used to years of bloody civil war on the tiny, tear-shaped island once called Ceylon, were sending reporters into Jaffna and desperately trying to find someone Chinese. The Shrubs Beijing bureau got a comment from the Foreign Ministry saying merely that China did not interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation like Sri Lanka. Off the record, Chinese officials said they had never heard of the group.
The agency was also trying to locate its Jaffna stringer who had been out of contact with head office for months. He was a fifty-one-year-old Portuguese priest with the very English name of Waverly who wore flowers in his hair. He had a drinking problem and was said to live with a teenage Tamil girl.
Hong Kong did a sidebar on my involvement in the film, my presence of mind during the botched assassination and my “long-time friendship” with Torment stretching back to school.
I had been allowed to visit Chen, the gunman, twice in Stanley prison, where he was awaiting formal charges. Chen ran off a list of Torment’s films that he thought were awful and patronising and I couldn’t disagree.
“It’s not just his acting. He is totally ignorant.”
“And racist, I suspect.”
A bit of prompting there. Joe would disapprove. Fuck off, Joe.
“Totally racist. He makes the world cringe with embarrassment. He is self-promotional and crass.”
Boy oh boy. I was used to having to draw the usable quote out of interviewees, but this guy was a natural.
“So you don’t like Chris Torment?”
“Like I said, he makes the world cringe with embarrassment.”
“Is it because he’s English?”
“The English can be very arrogant in their modalities.”
“And is this personal? Or are you speaking on behalf of your organisation?”
“The Democratic Association for the Liberation of Jaffna Chinese.”
“That’s the one. I’m afraid I had never heard of it.”
Chen looked surprised. “You’d never heard of it?”
“No. Sorry.”
“And that’s another reason.”
“What’s another reason?”
“The ignorance. He called us Muslim extremists.”
“What? Really?”
“We are not Muslim extremists. I am a scientologist.”
Chen had seen a television interview in which Chris Torment had branded all separatist groups in Asia as Muslim extremists. The main separatist group in Sri Lanka at the time was Tamil and most Tamils are Hindu. But then, why would anyone want to ask Chris Torment about separatist groups in Asia? You might just as well ask him to translate Beowulf into Spanish.
“Well, Mr Chen, can you tell me a bit about your group and what it hopes to achieve?”
“Which group?”
“Your group.”
Chen stood up. “The answer is easy. We are democratic and we expect liberation…”
“…Of the Jaffna Chinese. Yes, I know that. But can you tell me a bit more? How many of you are there, for instance?”
“We do not think a cause can be measured in numbers.”
“Of course not. But if there were tens of thousands of you, it would help. I guess the population of Jaffna is well short of a million.”
“This is not painting by numbers.”
“No. But you are expecting a Chinese homeland in Jaffna, which already is a tiny, tiny place. Tamils consider Jaffna their homeland too.”
Chen puffed up his cheeks. “Chris Torment…”
“Yes?”
“…is…”
“Yes?” I had an idea. Tell me he’s a coward. Forget Joe’s homophobic nonsense and say he’s a coward without any prompting from me. Who ever heard of a cowardly James Bond. “Chris Torment is what?”
“… a prick. Do you think they will put me away for years and years?”
“I doubt it very much. Nothing actually happened. But tell me more about how you feel about Chris Torment. How do you think he behaved that night? I guess…” Fuck off, Joe. “…I guess he was pretty brave.”
“Brave?”
“Don’t you think so? Pretty courageous the way he stood up to you.”
“Ha! Are we talking about the same night? Chris Torment? Brave?” I was poised, pen over paper. The man with the golden quote. “He wasn’t brave. The man is the personification of cowardice.” Yes! “His manhood was put on the line and it was found wanting.” Perfection! Time to wrap this up discreetly.
“Mr Chen?”
“Yes?”
“Gotta go.”
Shrubs ran the story, which was thin on detail about the DALJC, but beautifully fat in innuendo about Torment’s character, or lack thereof. I clapped and rubbed my hands together when I saw how the tawdry London tabloid I had laid out the 007 piece for years earlier had used the news – and given me a byline.
“Would-be assassin brands would-be Bond a coward.”
Adolf Lee was furious and threatened legal action.
“I think we should talk,” Torment said on the phone the same day.
“What about?”
“Well, this man, actually. This Chen fellow.”
“I’m just doing my job.”
“But look at what he’s saying, man. Look at what you’re quoting him as saying.”
“Yeah? So?”
“I’m not blaming you. But things have been going badly wrong for me lately. My reputation’s at stake.”
CHRIS TORMENT was suddenly everywhere in the Hong Kong media and in Hong Kong. There was a picture of him in the South China Morning Post handing out school awards. Coming into town by train, I had seen a picture of him on the back page of someone’s Chinese newspaper holding a large fish. Every night, one of the channels would have a report of where Torment had been shooting that day. I had seen him on location three times – the first time outside the backpacker warren of Chungking Mansions, then just around the corner in front of the colonialera Peninsula Hotel (why can’t film people leave the Peninsula Hotel alone?) and then at the Mariners’ Club, the cheapest club in town with a deep, clean and heated pool overlooked by towering trees. It was Hong Kong 1960s style, and one of my favourite haunts.
“Why did you let him in here?” I whined to the English manager, a stout former sailor from Kent.
“What do you mean, why did I let him in here?”
“I mean what business did he have coming in here?”
“He’s making a movie, isn’t he? What have you got against him anyway? He seemed a right gent.”
“Close, but no cigar.”
“What?”
I sat alone at a poolside table and watched a Macau jetfoil captain teach his new girlfriend how to dive while he patted her bottom a lot. I was drinking beer and smoking and, to my astonishment, talking to myself. I caught myself at it and stopped and turned around to see if anyone was within earshot. A 360-degree scowl. The girl learning how to dive was giving me glances.
“Who are those guys?” a voice on the radio said. Ah-Dai, the old Cantonese waiter behind the hatch, had switched to an English-language station. “The stress is important. It’s not who are those guys or who are those guys, but…who are those guys?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said to no one.
“Paul Newman in ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’.”
“That is correct! Too easy, I suspect, for most of you moviegoers out there. If you’ve just tuned in, welcome to ‘Name That Movie!’. We’re at the fun bit of the show where I give our interviewee quotes out of the movies, as short as possible, mind, and ask him or her to Name That Movie! I am Frank and when it comes to watching movies, avid is my middle name. It should have been David, but someone forgot the D.”
“Go away.” I said loudly. The girl fluffed a dive.
“But seriously,” the man on the radio said, “‘Butch Cassidy’ it was, and now I turn again to our star guest Chris Torment…”
“Oh please,” I said, putting my head in my hands.
“…who should get this, after that boxing we all saw in that wonderful movie ‘The Count of Fire Station Foxtrot’. You really are a count.” The presenter laughed. As genuine as a Hong Kong-made Rolex. “No. seriously, Chris, I’m asking. Is it true you’re a count?”
“I was a count in that movie. I played the count.”
“I think it would be safe to leave it there and turn to the quiz movie. Here is your word, Chris. Sorry, two words.”
“That’s three words.”
Laughter from the fuckwit presenter. “I haven’t started yet.”
“That’s four words.”
More laughter. Ha, ha, ha. “Chris, don’t be a count…” More ribald laughter! “Your two words (oh dear, oh dear, breaking down now), your two words… I’ll start so I’ll finish… The scene is the back seat of a car. I used…”
“…to be a contender. Too easy.”
“No, Chris. You’re far too good. Humour us. What movie?”
“‘On the Waterfront’.”
“Yes! ‘On the Waterfront’ it is indeed, and that means I shuffle my cards. Here we go. One word. Lovable.”
“‘Manchurian Candidate’.” This was me. No word from Torment. “‘The Manchurian Candidate’,” I said again. “Come on, Chris, you can do this. Laurence Harvey’s drunk, he’s opening up, pouring his heart out to Sinatra, and he says how lovable he was with his girlfriend, with everyone! Come on!”
“Hadley,” ah-Dai the waiter called from the hatch. “Don’t make so loud. I bring you another beer and you quieten.”
“Lovable,” Torment repeated on the radio.
“Like you, Chris,” the presenter said. “Everyone loves you in Hong Kong. Tick tock, tick tock. Time waits for no man. Nothing?”
Of course there’s nothing. Chris Torment is a hole. He’s an empty white paper bag.
“Nothing stirring behind that handsome face?”
I’ve seen that handsome face and nothing ever stirs behind it. Stupidity stirs on it, under the eyes, around the mouth, but nothing behind it.
“Can you give me a clue?” Torment said.
“You crap.” This was me again.
“Oh dear, okay. A quick one. It stars Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey and it’s on the box this week. In fact, tonight. It was on tonight, if this show is aired at its normal time. Considering we recorded this three days ago. So to speak.”
“‘Pal Joey’?”
Way too much air time. Someone turn him off.
I had arranged to meet Torment at my local, the Honest Bar, and I arrived early, had a couple of eye-openers and enjoyed a subtle verbal exchange with Maria.
“I’m meeting someone here tonight who’s famous.”
“Bullshit.”
I surveyed that night’s clientele. Another New Territories bar owner sat at one of the tables, wearing rings and tattoos and speaking earnestly to a heavily made-up tai tai – a rich Cantonese housewife. A couple of duck farmers sat side-by-side without speaking, one of whom clenched a cigarette between his teeth and was cleaning behind a toenail with a toothpick. His rubber sandals were on the table. At the bar, ten seats away from me, was a gweilo reading a book. I knew this man. Well, I didn’t actually know him, but I had seen him many times at the same place at the bar so he knew my face. He was always reading a book, stroking his moustache, never saying a dicky-bird to anyone. He looked a bit like a famous cricketer.
I looked at Maria now and wondered, not for the first time, what she would be like in bed. She had the body of a supermodel (and was as bad-tempered as a supermodel), but never shared it with customers. She was famous for it. She would bar-fine all right, and go to dinners or parties with fee-paying customers. But that was it. No hanky-panky. She was one of a long line of beautiful girls forced to escape the corrupt, feckless Philippines and work in a bar overseas; another Filipina low on her luck.
“Maria?”
“What?” It was a bark, not a question.
“You’re beautiful.”
Maria had spent ten years in the bars of Hong Kong and the torrent of abuse she could unleash as soon as she had powdered her nose shook the English suits to the core. She had them running for cover, something she had learnt how to do herself in the Manila slum where, as the youngest of eight children, who were beaten by their drunk jeepney driver father, she had spent a lot of time finding places to cower. She came from Smoky Mountain, a giant heap of trash on Manila Bay which literally smoked and burst into flames in different places several times a day as residents hunted through the rubbish for anything they could sell which hadn’t been burnt. It was a vision of hell that was hard to match, yet it had its own Easter Parade, with a Miss Smoky Mountain, which Maria won two years in a row.
