The Daughters of Henry Wong by Harrison Young

Author:Harrison Young
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ventura Press

I woke up hung over and naked in my own bed. Most of the women in my life seemed to be in the room. Julia was sitting on the edge of my bed in pyjamas and a dressing gown, drinking green tea. She’d taken it up since coming to Hong Kong as part of her program to experience China. Amanda was pacing in and out of the doorway with her own teacup. Like Henry, she’d always drunk black tea. Song was opening the curtains, paying no attention to either of them. Amanda seemed to be having an argument with me. It had presumably started while I was still asleep, because she was in full flight and I didn’t know what she was talking about.

I had the covers pulled up to my chin, feeling vulnerable.

“Get up, Wendy,” Amanda said. “It’s after nine. You have to go play banker.”

Her commanding tone made me worry that she was making progress at getting Henry declared dead. I vaguely remembered Sam telling me, at some stage in our wanderings the previous evening, that Amanda had instructed solicitors, who in turn had retained a barrister.

“I’m not decent,” I said.

“I don’t see why that matters,” she said. I was her prisoner of war. With torture in the offing, why care about nakedness? “Who do you think put you to bed last night?” she asked.

“Sam?” I said hopefully.

“Small man Sam leave right away,” said Song. “Maybe tired.”

“You have nothing to be concerned about,” said Julia, patting my knee. “I’ve seen boys before.”

“All of you, get out of here,” I said.

I examined my memory cautiously. Sam and I had progressed to a Szechuanese restaurant and consumed very hot food with many beers. We’d done war movies, the absurdity of the French, the charms of French women, the geopolitics of Asia, the charms of Oriental women, the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, the history of Hong Kong, and the politics of God.

“Did you know,” Sam had said, “that as soon as Charles Elliot planted the Union Jack here, the Pope, God bless him, declared Hong Kong to be under the control of Rome – ecclesiastically, that is – with the result that when the Japanese took over they considered the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception – don’t you love that name? – to be, somehow, Italian, and since Italy was an ally, they didn’t bugger it up the way they did to St. John’s?”

“No, Sam, I did not.”

“The Chinese Communist Party resembles the Roman Catholic Church,” he had said, warming to the topic. It was coming back to me. “They have ‘cadres.’ They have a creed. They demand obedience, permit no rivals, are equally capable of bureaucratic dithering, sudden brutality and breath-taking pragmatism…”

“And therefore?” I had said – and put my head down on the table.

If you have a meeting in China and something doesn’t get discussed, that was the subject of the meeting. Our drunken evening was all about Serena. I had spent a wrenching afternoon with her, which Sam

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