Among the Very Foreign by John Bryson

Author:John Bryson [Bryson, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781922219343
Publisher: John N. Bryson
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

A Good Pirate Crew Can Swarm Sitting Down

YOU CAN DO BUSINESS of any sort from the Gangplank. The Gangplank is a bar in Taipei where it costs ten dollars, in premium grade currency, for a rum highball with a twist of scurvy. Waiters here swash and buckle about in pirate rig, the bartender’s parrot knows all the libretto from Penzance, and girls in pantaloons ply you with strong cigarettes. There’s enough tar in a packet of those cigarettes to paint a quarterdeck.

Smith waved from the corner. I’ve known Smith for years. He turned up last night at the Hilton. He is the sort of chap who turns up on the flat at Newmarket with a straw of semen secretly drawn from Phar Lap on his death-bed, and you can have it for a grand, or in the pub at Birdsville with a sketch-map of the desert which Mrs Lasseter threw out while cleaning the attic.

Smith was here with friends. They sat in the dimmest cubicle in the bar. There were two men and a woman.

Smith introduced Mr Lew. Mr Lew spoke English with an accent which would have placed him as a graduate from any university where you can major in poker and billiards. The other guy was a white American in his thirties. I did not catch his name at first, and he seemed to have difficulty when I asked him again. His name was I Q. He wore an army jungle cap appropriate to the rank of Colonel, and his T-shirt read: Kindle Detente With Napalm. I Q might have been a jazz musician by the way he spoke. As soon as introductions were complete he said, ‘Now this guy’s cool, right?’ He seemed troubled by the memory of something he had once gripped tightly with his hands.

‘I Q and I are, with Mr Lew, in arts and antiquities,’ said Smith. This was a surprise, for I knew that Smith’s wife thought he was present presently the cosmetics buyer for Woolworths. But it explained why Smith had grown a grand beard in the year since I had seen him, and why, although the lighting in our cubicle was sepulchral, he had not removed his dark glasses.

The lady, Miss Pei, made me welcome. Miss Pei was at my elbow. Little parts of her rested on it. She was the manager, not of the bar, but of a band of lasses who wandered between the tables in search of a smile. Miss Pei suggested I should call her Daisy. Daisy’s figure was as lean as a mantis in training for courtship. Although her command of English was not wonderful, she enlarged her vocabulary in a tactile idiom with amazingly strong fingers. For some time, her words were indelibly imprinted on my thigh.

‘You like Taiwan girls?’ she asked. ‘Tidy. Well brought-up.’

‘I’m sure they are,’ I said.

‘What denomination you have?’

‘Church of England,’ I said.

Daisy had more in mind the denomination of my banknotes. She was an expert on money. Her interest in it was detailed and passionate.

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