Noble House by James Clavell
Do I want to marry her? No.
Do I want to let her drop? No.
Do I want to bed her? Sure. So mount a campaign, maneuver her into bed without commitments. Don’t play the game of life according to female rules, all’s fair in war and war. What’s love anyway? It’s like Casey said, sex’s only a part of it.
Casey. What about her? Not long to wait for Casey now. And then, is it bed or marriage bells or good-bye or what? Goddamned if I want to get married again. The one time turned out lousy. That’s strange, I haven’t thought about her in a long time.
When Bartlett had returned from the Pacific in ’45 he had met her in San Diego and married within a week, full of love and ambition and had hurled himself into beginning a construction business in southern California. The time was ripe in California, all forms of building booming. The first child had arrived within ten months and the second a year later and a third ten months after that, and all the while working Saturdays and Sundays, enjoying the work and being young and strong and succeeding hugely, but drifting apart. Then the quarreling began and the whining and the “you never spend any time with us anymore and screw the business I don’t care about the business I want to go to France and Rome and why don’t you come home early have you a girlfriend I know you have a girlfriend….”
But there was no girlfriend, just work. Then one day the attorney’s letter. Just through the mail.
Shit, Bartlett thought angrily, it still hurting. But then I’m only one of millions and it’s happened before and it’ll happen again. Even so your letter or your phone call hurts. It hurts and it costs you. It costs you plenty and the attorneys get most, get a good part and they cleverly fan the fire between you for their own goddamn gain. Sure. You’re their meal ticket, we all are! From the cradle to the goddamn grave, attorneys kite trouble and feed off your blood. Shit. Attorneys’re the real plague of the good old U.S. of A. I’ve only met four good ones in all my life, but the rest? They parasite all of us. Not one of us’s safe!
Yes. That bastard Stone! He made a killing out of me, turned her into a goddamn fiend, put her and the kids against me forever and nearly broke me and the business. I hope the bastard rots for all eternity!
With an effort Bartlett took his mind off that gaping sore and looked at the rain and remembered that it was only money and that he was free, free and that made him feel marvelous.
Jesus! I’m free and there’s Casey and Orlanda.
Orlanda.
Jesus, he thought, the ache still in his loins, I was really going back there. So was Orlanda. Goddamn, it’s bad enough with Casey but now I’ve two of them.
He had not been with a girl for a couple of months. The last time was in London, a casual meeting and casual dinner then into bed. She was staying at the same hotel, divorced and no trouble. What was it Orlanda said? A friendly tumble and a shy good-bye? Yes. That’s it. But that one wasn’t shy.
He stood in line happily, feeling greatly alive and watching the torrents, the smell of the rain on the earth grand, the road messed with stones and mud, the flood swirling over a long wide crack in the tarmac to dance into the air like rapids of a stream.
The rain’s going to bring lots of trouble, he thought. And Orlanda’s lots of trouble, old buddy. Sure. Even so, there must be a way to bed her. What is it about her that blows your mind? Part’s her face, part’s her figure, part’s the look in her eye, part’s … Jesus, face it, she’s all woman and all trouble. Better forget Orlanda. Be wise, be wise, old buddy. As Casey said, that broad’s dynamite!
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
10:50 A.M.:
It had been raining now for almost twelve hours and the surface of the Colony was soaked though the empty reservoirs were barely touched. The parched earth welcomed the wet. Most of the rain ran off the baked surface to flood the lower levels, turning dirt roads into morasses, and building sites into lakes. Some of the water went deep. In the resettlement areas that dotted the mountainsides the downpour was a disaster.
Shantytowns of rickety hovels built of any scraps, cardboard, planks, corrugated iron, fencing, canvas, sidings, three-ply walls and roofs for the well-to-do, all leaning against one another, attached to one another, on top of one another, layer on layer, up and down the mountains—all with dirt floors and dark alleys that were now awash and mucked and puddled and potholed and dangerous. Rain pouring through roofs soaking bedding, clothes and the other remnants of a lifetime, people packed on people surrounded by people who stoically shrugged and waited for the rain to stop. Tin alleys wandered higgledy-piggledy with no plan except to squeeze another space for another family of refugees and illegal aliens but not really aliens for this was China and, once past the border, any Chinese became legal settlers to stay as long as they wanted by ancient Hong Kong Government approval.
The strength of the Colony had always been its cheap, abundant and strife-free labor force. The Colony provided a permanent sanctuary and asked only peaceful labor in return at whatever the going rate of the day was. Hong Kong never sought immigrants but the people of China always came. They came by day and by night, by ship, by foot, by stretcher. They came across the border whenever famine or a convulsion racked China, families of men, women and children came to stay, to be absorbed, in time to go back home because China was always home, even after ten generations.
But refugees were not always welcomed. Last year the Colony was almost swamped by a human flood. For some still unknown reason and without warning, the PRC border guards relaxed the tight control of their side and within a week thousands were pouring across daily. Mostly they came by night, over and through the token, single six-strand fence that separated the New Territories from the Kwantung, the neighboring province. The police were powerless to stem the tide. The army had to be called out. In one night in May almost six thousand of the illegal horde were arrested, fed and the next day sent back over the border—but more thousands had escaped the border net to become legal. The catastrophe went on night after night, day after day. Tens of thousands of newcomers. Soon mobs of angry sympathetic Chinese were at the border trying to disrupt the deportations. The deportations were necessary because the Colony was becoming buried in illegals and it was impossible to feed, house and absorb such a sudden, vast increase in new population. Already there were the four-plus million to worry about, all but a tiny percent illegals at one time.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the human gusher ceased and the border closed. Again for no apparent reason.
In the six-week period almost 70,000 had been arrested and returned. Between 100,000 and 200,000 escaped the net to stay, no one knew for certain how many. Spectacles Wu’s grandparents and four uncles and their families were some of these, seventeen souls in all, and since they had arrived they had been living in a resettlement area high above Aberdeen. Spectacles Wu had arranged everything for them. This was more of the land that the Noble House Chen family had owned since the beginning that, until recently, had been without value. Now it had value. The Chens rented it, foot by foot, to any who wished to pay. Spectacles Wu had gratefully rented twenty feet by twelve feet at 1.00 HK per foot per month and, over the months, had helped the family scavenge the makings for two dwellings that, until this rain, were dry. There was one water tap per hundred families, no sewers, no electric light, but the city of these squatters thrived and was mostly well ordered. Already one uncle had a small plastic flower factory in a hovel he had rented at 1.50 HK per foot per month lower down the slopes, another had rented a stall in the market area selling tangy rice cakes and rice gruel in their Ning-tok village style. All seventeen were working—now eighteen mouths to feed with a newborn babe, born last week. Even the two-year-olds were given simple tasks, sorting plastic petals for the plastic flowers the young and old made that gave many of the hill dwellers money to buy food and money to gamble with.
Yes, Spectacles Wu thought fervently, all gods help me to get some of the reward money for the capture of the Werewolves in time for Satur
He stifled a yawn as he plodded on barefoot down one of the narrow twisting alleys in the resettlement area, his six-year-old niece beside him. She was barefoot too. The rain kept misting his thick glasses. Both picked their way cautiously, not wanting to step on any broken glass or rusting debris that was ever present. Sometimes the mud was ankle-deep. Both wore their trousers well rolled up and she had a vast straw coolie hat that dwarfed her. His hat was ordinary and secondhand like his clothes and not police regulation. These were the only clothes he possessed except for the shoes he carried in a plastic bag under his raincoat to protect them. Stepping over a foul pothole he almost lost his footing. “Fornicate all hazards,” he cursed, glad that he did not live here and that the rented room he shared with his mother near the East Aberdeen police station was dry and not subject to quirks of the weather gods like those here. And thank all gods I don’t have to make this journey every day. My clothes would be ruined and then my whole future would be in jeopardy because Special Intelligence admires neatness and punctuality. Oh gods let this be my great day!
Tiredness wafted over him. His head was hunched down and he felt the rain trickling down his neck. He had been on duty all night. When he was leaving the station early this morning he had been told that there was to be a raid on the old amah, Ah Tam, the one connected with the Werewolves, whom he had found and tracked to her lair. So he had said that he would hurry with his visit to his grandfather who had been taken ill and was near death and hurry back in good time.
He glanced at his watch. There was still time enough to walk the mile to the station. Reassured, he went on again, eased past a pile of garbage into a bigger alley that skirted the storm drain. The storm drain was five feet deep and served normally for sewer, laundry or sink, depending on the amount of water therein. Now it was overflowing, the swirling runoff adding to the misery of those below.
“Be careful, Fifth Niece,” he said.
“Yes. Oh yes, Sixth Uncle. Can I come all the way?” the little girl asked happily.
“Only to the candy stall. Now be careful! Look, there’s another piece of glass!”
“Is Honorable Grandfather going to die?”
“That’s up to the gods. The time of dying is up to the gods, not to us, so why should we worry, heya?”
“Yes,” she agreed importantly. “Yes, gods are gods.”
All gods cherish Honorable Grandfather and make the rest of his life sweet, he prayed, then added carefully, for safety, “Hail Mary Mother and Joseph, bless old Grandfather.” Who knows whether the Christian God or even the real gods exist? he thought. Better to try to placate them all, if you can. It costs nothing. Perhaps they’ll help. Perhaps they’re sleeping or out to lunch but never mind. Life is life, gods are gods, money is money, laws must be obeyed and today I must be very sharp.
Last night he had been out with Divisional Sergeant Mok and the Snake. This was the first time he had been taken with them on one of their special raids. They had raided three gambling joints but had, curiously, left five much more prosperous ones untouched even though they were on the same floor of the same tenement and he could hear the click of mah-jong tiles and the cries of the fan-tan croupiers.
Dew neh loh moh I wish I could get part of the squeeze, he told himself then added, Get thee behind me, Satan! I want much more to be in Special Intelligence because then I will have a safe, important job for life, I will know all manner of secrets, the secrets will protect me, and then, when I retire, the secrets will make me rich.
They turned a corner and reached the candy stall. He bartered with the old toothless woman for a minute or two, then paid her two copper cash and she gave the little girl a sweet rice cake and a good pinch of the bits of oh so chewy and tangy bittersweet sun-dried orange peel in a twist of newspaper.
“Thank you, Sixth Uncle,” the little girl said, beaming up at him from under her hat.
“I hope you enjoy them, Fifth Niece,” he replied, loving her, glad that she was pretty. If the gods favor us she will grow up to be very pretty, he thought contentedly, then we can sell her maidenhead for a vast amount of money, and her later services profitably for the good of the family.
Spectacles Wu was very proud that he had been able to do so much for this part of his family in their hour of need. Everyone safe and fed and now my percentage of Ninth Uncle’s plastic flower factory, negotiated so patiently, will, with joss, pay my rent in a year or two, and I can eat good Ning-tok rice gruel three times a week free which helps eke out my money so that I needn’t take the squeeze that is so easy to obtain but would ruin my future.
No. All gods bear witness! I will not take the squeeze while there’s a chance for SI but it’s not sensible to pay us so little. Me, 320 HK a month, after two years of service. Ayeeyah, barbarians are impossible to understand!
“You run along now and I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said. “Be careful as you go.”
“Oh yes!”
He bent down and she hugged him. He hugged her back and left. She headed up the hill, part of the rice cake already in her mouth, the cloying tacky sweetness oh so delicious.
The rain was monotonous and heavy. Flooding from the storm drain carried debris against the shacks in its path but she climbed the path carefully, skirting it, fascinated by the rushing water. The overflow was deep in parts and here where the way was steeper, almost like rapids. Without warning a jagged five-gallon can came swirling down the drain and hurled itself at her, narrowly missing her, to smash through a cardboard wall.
She stood stock-still, frightened.
“Get on, there’s nothing to steal here!” a furious householder called out at her. “Go home! You shouldn’t be here. Go home!”
“Yes … yes,” she said and began to hurry, the climb more difficult now. At that moment the earth just below her gave way and the slide began. Hundreds of tons of sludge and rock and earth surged downward burying everything in its path. It went on for fifty yards or more in seconds, tearing the flimsy structures apart, scattering men, women and children, burying some, maiming others, cutting an oozing swath where once was village.
Then it stopped. As suddenly as it began.
On all the mountainside there was a great silence broken only by the sound of rain. Abruptly the silence ceased. Shouts and cries for help began. Men and women and children rushed out of untouched hovels, blessing the gods for their own safety, adding to the pandemonium and wails for help. Friends helped friends, neighbors helped neighbors, mothers searched for children, children for parents, but the great majority nearby just stood there in the rain and blessed their joss that this slide had passed them by.
The little girl was still teetering on the brink of the chasm where the earth had fallen away. She stared down into it with disbelief. Eleven feet below her now were fangs of rocks and sludge and death where seconds ago was solid ground. The lip was crumbling and small avalanches of mud and stones cascaded into the abyss, aided by the flooding from the storm drain. She felt her feet slipping so she took a tentative step backward but more of the earth gave way so she stopped, petrified, the remains of the rice cake still firmly in her hands. Her toes dug into the soft earth to try to keep her balance.
“Don’t move,” an old man called out.
“Get away from the edge,” another shouted and the rest watched and waited and held their breath to see what the gods would decide.
Then a ten-foot slice of the lip collapsed and toppled into the maw carrying the little girl with it. She was buried just a little. Up to her knees. She made sure her rice cake was safe then burst into tears.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
11:30 A.M.:
Superintendent Armstrong’s police car eased its way through the milling angry crowds that had spilled over into the road outside the Ho-Pak Bank, heading for the East Aberdeen police station. Mobs were also clogging the streets outside all the other
Everywhere the mood was volatile and dangerous, the downpour adding to the tension. Barricades erected to channel people into and out of the banks were manned in strength by equally anxious and irritable police—twenty per thousand, unarmed but for truncheons.
“Thank God for the rain,” Armstrong muttered.
“Sir?” the driver asked, the irritating screech of ill-adjusted windshield wipers drowning his voice.
Armstrong repeated it louder and added, “If it was hot and humid, this whole bloody place’d be up in arms. The rain’s a godsend.”
“Yes sir. Yes it is.”
In time the police car stopped outside the station. He hurried in. Chief Inspector Donald C. C. Smyth was waiting for him. His left arm was in a sling.
“Sorry to be so long,” Armstrong said. “Bloody traffic’s jammed for bloody miles.”
“Never mind. Sorry but I’m a bit shorthanded, old chap. West Aberdeen’s cooperating and so is Central, but they’ve problems too. Bloody banks! We’ll have to do with one copper in the back—he’s already in position in case we flush one of the villains—and us up front with Spectacles Wu.” Smyth told Armstrong his plan.
“Good.”
“Shall we go now? I don’t want to be away too long.”
“Of course. It looks pretty dicey outside.”
“I hope the bloody rain lasts until the bloody banks close their doors or pay out the last penny. Did you go liquid yourself?”
“You must be joking! My pittance makes no difference!” Armstrong stretched, his back aching. “Ah Tam in the flat?”
“As far as we know. The family she works for is called Ch’ung. He’s a dustman. One of the villains might be there too so we’ll have to get in quickly. I’ve the commissioner’s authority to carry a revolver. Do you want one too?”