“Er, won’t we be overheard?” The restaurant was moored among junks and sampans so crammed you could hardly see any water. Steep hills rose on one side, a small city on the other. The whole harbor teemed. Cars snaked endlessly along the harbor road.
“No,” she said. That was that. She poured jasmine tea, a mission in elegance. I searched the table but she smiled a mute apology. “Milk, Lovejoy? Your Indian tea probably needs it. Our Chinese teas would drown.” I nodded to show I’d got the message. China is life’s ancient center; the rest of us are suburbia, barbarians even. Of course I was mesmerized, for perfection blinds. In the harbor below our balcony, a score of sampans jostled as tourists were ferried out simply to look at her. Faces gaped up in awe. I was in the presence of majesty.
“Tell me, Lovejoy. Did you enjoy our search?”
She meant the girl parade. “Er, gorgeous,” I said warily.
“But some more gorgeous than others, ne?”
“Yes. The ones picked out.”
“Some of those children were bought.” She laughed, concealing her mouth with her fan. “You are shocked, Lovejoy? One can buy—yes, buy— half a dozen beggar children in Bangkok, Thailand, for a hundred dollars.”
She was simply explaining. “I usually attend only the final screenings. We hold twenty such sessions a year here, over a hundred elsewhere—the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, almost worldwide.”
“To find the prettiest? Some were babies still.”
“Of every hundred chosen, perhaps one has the intelligence, aptitude, the innate skills.
Some come close. One girl who had every attribute of excellence once nearly became a jade woman—only for us to discover she was unable to sing.”
“What happened to her?”
“She is… an assistant, responsible for our Wan Chai bars, Lovejoy. She is rich and happy, but will never be jade.”
My mind went, she means Marilyn.
“But if she’s gorgeous and clever… ?”
“Didn’t your Shakespeare say it, Lovejoy? ‘The dram of bale doth all the noble goodness off and out to its own scandal’?” She frowned. “Though the quotation varies, ne?”
“Oh, aye.” Waiters kept those tall cylindrical steaming baskets of mini food coming.
Ling Ling saw my puzzlement at the constant bawling. “The fokis are calling down to the people what dishes we chose, Lovejoy. It happens in all Cantonese restaurants. We are so interested in food.” She made a signal and the pace of arrival immediately quickened, to my relief. Eight or so goons lurked almost out of sight in the ship restaurant’s interior. Marilyn and two other women were sipping tea at a small table.
“We make a meal out of any part of any animal, it is said.”
She saw me hesitate, swiftly deflected my attention with opinions on the weather, trade, fashion, finally settling on antiques.
“Your scheme is unusual, Lovejoy.” I was halfway through some dumpling thing. My chopsticks were barely up to it, but hunger’s a sharp driver.
“I thought he’d be mad.”
“Angry? No. Business is business, Lovejoy, and money is power. It is also beautiful.”
“Why has Hong Kong so many definite rules, Ling Ling?”
“That’s the visitor’s problem, Lovejoy.” She turned her lovely head a fraction as a small zephyr came and died. Admirers in the sampans below were calling up, a sea of faces and cameras and coolie hats, asking her to look down for photographs. She indicated the hundreds of small vessels wedged in the nearby creek. Over the years they had simply settled into the mud. Gangways crisscrossed the raggedy but static fleet. “You have learned that Hong Kong is no sanctuary for the distressed.”
“Aye. Free lessons in survival, love.”
Her smile lit the world. “All here is facade, appearance, masks, ‘face’ if you will. Reality is the skull beneath the grin.”
So they’d made me submit and come cap in hand with some bright idea. Finding me had cost one life, bringing me to heel a second.
“And you the heiress who rules the estate, like in Victorian novels.”
“Goodness gracious, no!” She laughed. “Forgive me, Lovejoy. I must accept your compliment—didn’t your Dryden say all heiresses are beautiful?— and Steerforth told you how rapidly a jade woman accumulates wealth. But as for ruling, that is an impossibility.” She sighed, probably sensing my feeling of inadequacy. This gang must have everywhere bugged. “We Chinese reduce so much to money. When I was tiny it snowed here. Can you believe it? Only on the very tips of our highest mountains. Within an hour people had roped it off and were charging a dollar a look, ten dollars a feel.”
Her lovely countenance showed she was flirting impishly with a witticism. “We Cantonese call the Japanese outer barbarians. But they would have written a haiku to the flakes, ne?”
Even feeling as bitter as I was and with my mouth full I smiled at that. In that unguarded moment I changed the course of the world’s history, for myself at any rate, by joking, “How much did you take?”
“Take, Lovejoy?” No alteration to her smile, but in the torpid heat I felt an inexplicable touch of winter.
“Before the snow melted. As a little girl.” My mind shrieked, mistake, you thick pillock!
“Did I infer that I was one who… ?”
“Er, sorry, love. My mistake. Good heavens!” I stared brightly at the table. It was covered in empty dishes. “I’ve scoffed everything and you’ve hardly eaten.”
