Hadley, page 11
“Well, that was an incredible insight into Chris Torment’s personality,” the presenter said to camera. “It was like a real English tale with a kicker. The kind of tale, I reckon, that would ably support the kind of experience to benefit you in your later acting career, as Macbeth or Hamlet, perhaps?” Torment was frowning. “Or maybe the next James Bond, who knows? Did you see the new Bond film yet?”
“It was marvellous.”
“And presumably you are next in line?”
Torment raised his hands in mock horror. “As far as I know, I am not up for the part.”
“Go on, you can tell us.”
“No, really. There have been no discussions along those lines.”
“Go on, you can tell us.”
“No, I can’t. Of course…”
“You can tell us? Don’t be a coward.”
Torment managed to collect himself: “I was going to say, of course, that I presume you mean the part of James Bond.”
“Oh yes,” the presenter said, winding up the most uncomfortable interview ever televised in Hong Kong and turning again to the camera. Torment looked into the wings for support. “Ladies and gentlemen, do you believe that?” The tone of the question was “Do you believe that shit?” The presenter was pointing to Torment with his thumb. “Whether or not you do, of course, is up to you, but I’m willing to lay bets on who next picks up the 007 mantle with the associated licence to thrill. Chris Torment, thank you.”
“Far too much air time,” I said as the lights dimmed and the presenter leant forward to shake Torment’s hand and banter until someone had turned off the camera.
“Got to get you out of my life, Chris,” I said. “One way or the other.”
WHILE CHRIST TORMENT was suddenly everywhere in Hong Kong, Joe had suddenly disappeared. Having Joe in sight was unpleasant, but manageable. Having Joe out of sight was, to be honest, a bit of a nightmare.
I went in search and took the tram up the Peak, setting off along Harlech Road, the noise of cicadas and other deafening insects in the new spring greenery to my left. I passed joggers and tourists and two boys shooting what appeared to be air guns. I stopped to read graffiti on the cement propping up the hill. There was nothing offensive, not in English anyway; just lots of declarations of boys loving girls and vice versa and one ‘Joe was here’, which didn’t make me smile. I turned into the cutting where Joe’s limo had turned. The quiet of Harlech Road turned to absolute silence as I walked towards what I now saw was called ‘The Circle’. I peered into long gardens next to white stuccoed bungalows and passed the untended tennis court. A blond woman was loading boxes into the back of a car in the drive next door to Joe’s apparently empty house.
I loitered a while and then approached.
“Hello there.”
The woman looked up, pushing the hair from her eyes, and smiled. “Hi.”
“I see your neighbour has moved.”
“Joe? Yes.”
I stared as I suffered a minor relapse of my wandering. Where was that journalistic instinct?
“You have a lot of boxes,” I said. “Do you happen to know where he’s moved to?”
“I don’t. Are you a friend?”
“Yes. I seem to have lost touch.”
A car was pulling up into Joe’s drive and my first reaction was to duck and hide, but it wasn’t Joe. The driver was a woman and no one I knew.
“Your guardian angel, right?”
What did she mean? What did she know? “That was part of it.”
“I miss him. He was very colourful. Loads of fun. I’m surprised he left in such a hurry.”
Loads of fun? Could this be the same man? “Why’s that?”
“He liked Hong Kong. Said he could put down roots here and that his job had only just begun.”
“But what did he do, do you know? What was his job?”
“I never knew anything about that. He was a bit of a mystery. He seemed to love his fancy-dress parties.”
Fancy-dress parties? I examined the car pulling up next door. The driver was Asian with big hair, checking something in her lap.
“Fancy-dress parties? Joe?”
“I saw him in fancy dress a few times. It was always very late at night. Once it was a tight Chinese tunic, like a Mao suit but much nicer. A bit like Dr No, if you ever saw that movie. Other times it was a white dinner jacket and an eye-patch.”
“Like Blofeld.”
“Ooh, I can see a trend. And he’d carry that cat with the diamond necklace.”
“A cat?”
“I hate cats. That bloody cat has scared off all my birds.”
The Asian woman was getting out of the car. I had to speak to her.
“Look, this beautiful lady might be able to help,” the neighbour said.
The woman from the car was approaching Joe’s front door.
“Anything else?” I feigned a laugh. “Joe. What a crazy guy.”
“Once I saw him wearing a billowing white toga,” the neighbour said.
“Good God.”
“Like a Roman senator. He was a bit out of character that time. I think he might have had a bit too much to drink.”
The woman from the car was turning the key at Joe’s front door. “Almost certifiable, I reckon. Many thanks for that. I’ll go and see if this lady knows anything.”
I ran across the lawn and caught the woman as she was entering.
“Hi there.”
“Hello.”
I breathed in an expensive scent and took in the wide smile. Big round eyes on an oval face, eyebrows arched, hair done up in a bun with a dangerous silver skewer holding it in place. I guessed Korean.
“Boy,” I said.
“Boy?”
“No. No boy. Sorry.”
I was having a moment I supposed only men would understand. I wanted this woman immediately. There and then. Pull yourself together.
“Joe,” I said. “My friend Joe used to live here.”
“Yes?” The eyebrows were raised, the smile was innocent and affectionate. Smoothly applied lipstick, maybe a touch too much Max Factor No 5. Definitely Korean.
“I seem to have lost touch.”
The woman looked across at the neighbour packing the boxes.
“What to do?” she said. “He didn’t tell me where he was going, I am afraid. I am here to check the appliances.”
“Well, can I come in? We were at a party here the other night and my friend…” I turned and waved at the neighbour who waved back. “…my friend thinks she may have left a ring in the bathroom.”
“I’m afraid I am not allowed…”
“No, you don’t have to worry. We’ve been here many times. It’s the bathroom behind the drinks cabinet. Where Joe stocks his malt whisky. We’re frequent visitors. What’s your name?”
“I am Miss Kim.”
“I’m Hadley.” We shook and I held on to her hand a second too long. An old trick. “You are very beautiful, Miss Kim.”
Miss Kim looked demurely at her feet then raised her head to meet my gaze.
“You’re way out of your league, sleaze ball,” she said.
I stepped back. “Well that’s not very nice.”
“Neither are you, jerk off. Just piss off. Or I’ll tell your ‘friend’.”
“Look, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, but…”
Miss Kim stepped into the house and slammed the door in my face. Way out of my league? Hel-lo? Have you ever seen Maria? I was furious. The neighbour was still at her car and watching. I waved and set off round the back of the house, keeping low so pasty-faced Miss Korea wouldn’t see me through the windows. She had that spear in her hair after all.
But I didn’t know what I was looking for. I didn’t know what I was doing. My life was a game show with a particularly strange host who, depending on how the mood took him, appeared in a toga or a Mao suit. I opened the door to an outhouse where there were two rubbish bins. One was empty, the other about a quarter full of papers and magazines. I no longer cared about the dagger woman and turned the can noisily on its head and threw it aside. No messy food, just papers: advertising fliers, air miles offers, utility bills and magazines. I uncrumpled an envelope which looked like personal mail. It was a letter to Joe Stein, but the address on the front was different. It was a flat in Jaffe Road, a street full of cheap basement clubs and whore houses near Lockhart Road, the main bar street in Wanchai. Did Joe have an office there? Or an apartment? 30D Rich Mansion, Jaffe Road.
I committed the address to memory.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN I JOINED Shrubs and found I would have to travel to places unknown in times of trouble, I was given a piece of advice by a senior hack, a former Beijing bureau chief who echoed exactly what Joe had said more recently: write what you see. On drives into turbulent capitals when you don’t know who is shooting at what, write what you see. Write about the two old women sitting in a window, staring at the sky, one of them clutching a doll. Write about the man with a shirt over his head running into an abandoned post office. Write about the two dogs bonking on a pedestrian crossing. They are all part of the big picture.
Baxter gave me the same advice now, after briefing me on my trip to Jaffna, in north Sri Lanka, where the flower-power stringer was still missing. And then a three-day trip with Torment to Macho Island.
A couple of days before departure, Adolf Lee threw a junk party to which all the ‘I Love Hong Kong’ cast and crew were invited, plus a few hangers-on, including the glum man in bar. Baxter was invited but he declined, instead offering his place to Fagin, the world’s most anti-social sub-editor. Fagin hated junks and all their expat associations and he hated parties. Naturally, he also declined.
The junk set sail. I helped myself to the Black Label and leant with my back to the rail as I assessed the situation. There were lots of beautiful women onboard and I watched them as they talked and smoked. A Macau hydrofoil whistled past on the starboard side, leaving a trail in the water half a mile long. On the other side, a Discovery Bay ferry was about to cut across the junk’s path. The lights of Hong Kong island rose up on the left, layers of skyscrapers gliding like plates across layers of lights behind. My brother, on seeing Hong Kong for the first time, had described it as a science fiction city. He imagined cartoon traffic of rocket taxis and shuttle buses nipping in and out of the buildings.
Two bald Chinese men came over and stood near me. I had briefly seen them with Panda Koo earlier and assumed they were bodyguards, though at the time my eyes were mostly on Panda’s jeans. The men nodded at me but said nothing. Adolf Lee was surrounded and unapproachable. I had managed to catch the eye of both Gretel the audition woman and Candy Kam but neither showed any sign of recognition. Panda Koo looked so angry that I couldn’t understand how anyone would dare try to talk to her. Never mind. I was enjoying the breeze, the booze and the bright lights.
Then I spotted Torment. He was on the far side of the boat with that prick of an actor who played Magnus, looking earnest. Seconds later, Maria appeared at the top of the stairs, brushing down a ridiculously short black skirt. She skipped over to Torment who slipped his hand around her back and introduced her to Magnus. My heart skipped a couple of beats. I suffered an overwhelming pang of jealousy, the likes of which I hadn’t known since I was a teenager.
“First your sister, now pretty Maria,” whispered Joe, who had appeared from nowhere. I smelt an expensive aftershave.
“She wouldn’t,” I said. “What makes you say that?”
“He’s shameless.”
“But she’s not.”
“Whatever you say.”
And then Maria caught my eye and beamed and rushed across the deck, her hips doing their best to rock the boat from stern to hull. “Hadley! Chris said you would be here.”
“Maria. You’re beautiful.”
“Oh stop it.”
My heart was racing. Maria had a protruding ridge down the middle of her upper lip which flattened and disappeared when she smiled. Her eyes were milky and bright.
“You’re here with Chris,” I said. Really observant.
“He’s bar-fined me for the night. Huge.”
“Wonderful.”
“But I told him, no jiggy-jiggy.”
“Oh, good.” I inhaled another exotic and expensive scent.
“I only do jiggy-jiggy with people I like.”
I exhaled an “oh Maria” which almost came out as “Ave Maria” and had a life of its own, cracking on the second syllable of her name. It came from nowhere and took me by surprise. It also prompted Maria to raise her hand to my face, with a frown, and then to pull it away, a gesture Torment caught in a brief glimpse over his shoulder.
“I have to go back to him,” she said. “He wants me by his side.”
“Of course,” I said.
The power to bonk anyone, any time, Torment had said. Maria squeezed my hand and tripped back to Torment, who greeted her with a big, phony “ah, there you are” look and pretended I did not exist.
I turned to the drinks table and accepted a scotch with a shaking hand. This feeling I had with Maria was completely new. It was a powerful, alien force. Was it possible, god forbid, that I was having a heart attack?
Near me an old American with shaggy black hair and a cigar was speaking to a group of assorted aides. Everyone was wearing far too much jewellery in and around their nostrils and mouths. I listened.
“… I still think making a film is a bit like creating the universe. Except without the day of rest. What you must tell me is which is worse, the fact that I once thought film making was like creating the universe, or that I still think it?”
I wanted to vomit all over the man’s unkempt hair, but managed to keep myself in check. I caught sight of Maria, now apparently alone. I also caught sight of Joe standing by the wheel house, staring at me and nodding towards Maria. I walked to the railing to the right of a couple of fat skinheads with earrings and headrings and cranium scars. Closest to me was a man whose jeans were hung below his hips and about to drop. Written on the back of his t-shirt was ‘Bog Man’. Joe had talked about Bog Man, who was a cinematographer at the top of his field. He belonged in a field.
“…In the lights on the water I see a thousand shards of an oriental night,” Bog Man was saying. “I see your love skipping like a water lily over my dead body…”
What was the matter with these film people? All that creativity and imagination running wild and turning them into people who could barely speak a sentence without making the average casual listener, a resident of the real world, want to throw up all over them. In one way or another, they were all bog men.
Adolf Lee approached with two men in suits and I was beginning to look forward to the junk turning around and steaming back to Central.
“Hadley, forgive me for interrupting. These two gentlemen are from Belgium. They are commodities dealers and I thought you’d have a lot to discuss.” Adolf Lee looked at the two and added: “He’s a journalist.”
I knew as much about commodities dealing as I did about the greater Brussels sewage system. The two men were identical. They looked like Mormon missionaries, without the sense of mischief.
“Hi there,” I ventured. “So you subscribe to the Shrubs news service?”
“You work for them?”
“Mais oui.”
“Commodities?” the one on the left said.
“General political news. Some economic news. Some commodities, yes. Metals, grains and the like.”
The two shuffled their feet. “If you come into our office, you can tell we are commodity traders,” the one on the right said.
“Oh? How’s that? I cannot tell that you are Belgian, by the way. Your accents are perfect.”
“Thank you,” the one on the left said. “Our telephones.”
“Sorry?”
“Our telephones will tell you that we are commodity traders,” the one on the right said. “They’re green and yellow and shaped like corn on the cob.”
Silence. Not a hint of irony or self-deprecation. They were waiting for a reaction. I coughed. “Your telephones are shaped like corn on the cob? That’ll certainly have people guessing.” Corn on the cobblers. “What’s your connection with the movie, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“We helped raise funds. Matched up a couple of investment opportunities.”
“Commodities?”
“Pas du tout. Norwegian bond market. We introduced a hedging tool.”
“A hedging tool? Like a Black & Decker?”
I desperately tried to think of a commodities-related joke that would have them rolling in the aisles. Roulant dans les allées. The one on the left frowned and then let loose like the nervous beginning to an audition for a movie extra.
“Got to short the Hong Kong dollar,” he said. “They’ve got to raise interest rates or revalue the yuan. Either way you’ve got a head-and-shoulders straddle which will extrapolate the long bond and raise the benchmark puts. Then, once property prices hit bottom, no one will be able to pay their mortgages and red chips and H shares will hit the fan and you can call your Oslo option.”
“Forward,” his friend added.
“Right. You can call your option forward.”
This is an impressionist version of the conversation, you understand. As I didn’t understand one word of what they were saying, it is impossible to repeat word for word. I do remember that I considered the option of jumping over the railing into the path of a fast approaching Macau hydrofoil. I would have been less out of my depth. “I can call it forward?”
“What choice would you have? I reckon put in a million now and you’ll have 100 times that in two weeks. You’ve got to short the Hong Kong dollar. Then, and only then, I would seriously consider Norwegian equities.”
“But what if, before I took the Norway route, I bucked the trend and did a 180-degree turn?”
“Don’t quite follow you, I’m sorry.”
“Well, what if I did as you advised, and called my Oslo option and told him to get his skates on (ha ha). But what if then, instead of calling it forward, which presumably the whole market would be doing by this stage, what if I called it… backward? Then I could really think about the whole Norway package.”
“It was marvellous.”
“And presumably you are next in line?”
Torment raised his hands in mock horror. “As far as I know, I am not up for the part.”
“Go on, you can tell us.”
“No, really. There have been no discussions along those lines.”
“Go on, you can tell us.”
“No, I can’t. Of course…”
“You can tell us? Don’t be a coward.”
Torment managed to collect himself: “I was going to say, of course, that I presume you mean the part of James Bond.”
“Oh yes,” the presenter said, winding up the most uncomfortable interview ever televised in Hong Kong and turning again to the camera. Torment looked into the wings for support. “Ladies and gentlemen, do you believe that?” The tone of the question was “Do you believe that shit?” The presenter was pointing to Torment with his thumb. “Whether or not you do, of course, is up to you, but I’m willing to lay bets on who next picks up the 007 mantle with the associated licence to thrill. Chris Torment, thank you.”
“Far too much air time,” I said as the lights dimmed and the presenter leant forward to shake Torment’s hand and banter until someone had turned off the camera.
“Got to get you out of my life, Chris,” I said. “One way or the other.”
WHILE CHRIST TORMENT was suddenly everywhere in Hong Kong, Joe had suddenly disappeared. Having Joe in sight was unpleasant, but manageable. Having Joe out of sight was, to be honest, a bit of a nightmare.
I went in search and took the tram up the Peak, setting off along Harlech Road, the noise of cicadas and other deafening insects in the new spring greenery to my left. I passed joggers and tourists and two boys shooting what appeared to be air guns. I stopped to read graffiti on the cement propping up the hill. There was nothing offensive, not in English anyway; just lots of declarations of boys loving girls and vice versa and one ‘Joe was here’, which didn’t make me smile. I turned into the cutting where Joe’s limo had turned. The quiet of Harlech Road turned to absolute silence as I walked towards what I now saw was called ‘The Circle’. I peered into long gardens next to white stuccoed bungalows and passed the untended tennis court. A blond woman was loading boxes into the back of a car in the drive next door to Joe’s apparently empty house.
I loitered a while and then approached.
“Hello there.”
The woman looked up, pushing the hair from her eyes, and smiled. “Hi.”
“I see your neighbour has moved.”
“Joe? Yes.”
I stared as I suffered a minor relapse of my wandering. Where was that journalistic instinct?
“You have a lot of boxes,” I said. “Do you happen to know where he’s moved to?”
“I don’t. Are you a friend?”
“Yes. I seem to have lost touch.”
A car was pulling up into Joe’s drive and my first reaction was to duck and hide, but it wasn’t Joe. The driver was a woman and no one I knew.
“Your guardian angel, right?”
What did she mean? What did she know? “That was part of it.”
“I miss him. He was very colourful. Loads of fun. I’m surprised he left in such a hurry.”
Loads of fun? Could this be the same man? “Why’s that?”
“He liked Hong Kong. Said he could put down roots here and that his job had only just begun.”
“But what did he do, do you know? What was his job?”
“I never knew anything about that. He was a bit of a mystery. He seemed to love his fancy-dress parties.”
Fancy-dress parties? I examined the car pulling up next door. The driver was Asian with big hair, checking something in her lap.
“Fancy-dress parties? Joe?”
“I saw him in fancy dress a few times. It was always very late at night. Once it was a tight Chinese tunic, like a Mao suit but much nicer. A bit like Dr No, if you ever saw that movie. Other times it was a white dinner jacket and an eye-patch.”
“Like Blofeld.”
“Ooh, I can see a trend. And he’d carry that cat with the diamond necklace.”
“A cat?”
“I hate cats. That bloody cat has scared off all my birds.”
The Asian woman was getting out of the car. I had to speak to her.
“Look, this beautiful lady might be able to help,” the neighbour said.
The woman from the car was approaching Joe’s front door.
“Anything else?” I feigned a laugh. “Joe. What a crazy guy.”
“Once I saw him wearing a billowing white toga,” the neighbour said.
“Good God.”
“Like a Roman senator. He was a bit out of character that time. I think he might have had a bit too much to drink.”
The woman from the car was turning the key at Joe’s front door. “Almost certifiable, I reckon. Many thanks for that. I’ll go and see if this lady knows anything.”
I ran across the lawn and caught the woman as she was entering.
“Hi there.”
“Hello.”
I breathed in an expensive scent and took in the wide smile. Big round eyes on an oval face, eyebrows arched, hair done up in a bun with a dangerous silver skewer holding it in place. I guessed Korean.
“Boy,” I said.
“Boy?”
“No. No boy. Sorry.”
I was having a moment I supposed only men would understand. I wanted this woman immediately. There and then. Pull yourself together.
“Joe,” I said. “My friend Joe used to live here.”
“Yes?” The eyebrows were raised, the smile was innocent and affectionate. Smoothly applied lipstick, maybe a touch too much Max Factor No 5. Definitely Korean.
“I seem to have lost touch.”
The woman looked across at the neighbour packing the boxes.
“What to do?” she said. “He didn’t tell me where he was going, I am afraid. I am here to check the appliances.”
“Well, can I come in? We were at a party here the other night and my friend…” I turned and waved at the neighbour who waved back. “…my friend thinks she may have left a ring in the bathroom.”
“I’m afraid I am not allowed…”
“No, you don’t have to worry. We’ve been here many times. It’s the bathroom behind the drinks cabinet. Where Joe stocks his malt whisky. We’re frequent visitors. What’s your name?”
“I am Miss Kim.”
“I’m Hadley.” We shook and I held on to her hand a second too long. An old trick. “You are very beautiful, Miss Kim.”
Miss Kim looked demurely at her feet then raised her head to meet my gaze.
“You’re way out of your league, sleaze ball,” she said.
I stepped back. “Well that’s not very nice.”
“Neither are you, jerk off. Just piss off. Or I’ll tell your ‘friend’.”
“Look, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, but…”
Miss Kim stepped into the house and slammed the door in my face. Way out of my league? Hel-lo? Have you ever seen Maria? I was furious. The neighbour was still at her car and watching. I waved and set off round the back of the house, keeping low so pasty-faced Miss Korea wouldn’t see me through the windows. She had that spear in her hair after all.
But I didn’t know what I was looking for. I didn’t know what I was doing. My life was a game show with a particularly strange host who, depending on how the mood took him, appeared in a toga or a Mao suit. I opened the door to an outhouse where there were two rubbish bins. One was empty, the other about a quarter full of papers and magazines. I no longer cared about the dagger woman and turned the can noisily on its head and threw it aside. No messy food, just papers: advertising fliers, air miles offers, utility bills and magazines. I uncrumpled an envelope which looked like personal mail. It was a letter to Joe Stein, but the address on the front was different. It was a flat in Jaffe Road, a street full of cheap basement clubs and whore houses near Lockhart Road, the main bar street in Wanchai. Did Joe have an office there? Or an apartment? 30D Rich Mansion, Jaffe Road.
I committed the address to memory.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN I JOINED Shrubs and found I would have to travel to places unknown in times of trouble, I was given a piece of advice by a senior hack, a former Beijing bureau chief who echoed exactly what Joe had said more recently: write what you see. On drives into turbulent capitals when you don’t know who is shooting at what, write what you see. Write about the two old women sitting in a window, staring at the sky, one of them clutching a doll. Write about the man with a shirt over his head running into an abandoned post office. Write about the two dogs bonking on a pedestrian crossing. They are all part of the big picture.
Baxter gave me the same advice now, after briefing me on my trip to Jaffna, in north Sri Lanka, where the flower-power stringer was still missing. And then a three-day trip with Torment to Macho Island.
A couple of days before departure, Adolf Lee threw a junk party to which all the ‘I Love Hong Kong’ cast and crew were invited, plus a few hangers-on, including the glum man in bar. Baxter was invited but he declined, instead offering his place to Fagin, the world’s most anti-social sub-editor. Fagin hated junks and all their expat associations and he hated parties. Naturally, he also declined.
The junk set sail. I helped myself to the Black Label and leant with my back to the rail as I assessed the situation. There were lots of beautiful women onboard and I watched them as they talked and smoked. A Macau hydrofoil whistled past on the starboard side, leaving a trail in the water half a mile long. On the other side, a Discovery Bay ferry was about to cut across the junk’s path. The lights of Hong Kong island rose up on the left, layers of skyscrapers gliding like plates across layers of lights behind. My brother, on seeing Hong Kong for the first time, had described it as a science fiction city. He imagined cartoon traffic of rocket taxis and shuttle buses nipping in and out of the buildings.
Two bald Chinese men came over and stood near me. I had briefly seen them with Panda Koo earlier and assumed they were bodyguards, though at the time my eyes were mostly on Panda’s jeans. The men nodded at me but said nothing. Adolf Lee was surrounded and unapproachable. I had managed to catch the eye of both Gretel the audition woman and Candy Kam but neither showed any sign of recognition. Panda Koo looked so angry that I couldn’t understand how anyone would dare try to talk to her. Never mind. I was enjoying the breeze, the booze and the bright lights.
Then I spotted Torment. He was on the far side of the boat with that prick of an actor who played Magnus, looking earnest. Seconds later, Maria appeared at the top of the stairs, brushing down a ridiculously short black skirt. She skipped over to Torment who slipped his hand around her back and introduced her to Magnus. My heart skipped a couple of beats. I suffered an overwhelming pang of jealousy, the likes of which I hadn’t known since I was a teenager.
“First your sister, now pretty Maria,” whispered Joe, who had appeared from nowhere. I smelt an expensive aftershave.
“She wouldn’t,” I said. “What makes you say that?”
“He’s shameless.”
“But she’s not.”
“Whatever you say.”
And then Maria caught my eye and beamed and rushed across the deck, her hips doing their best to rock the boat from stern to hull. “Hadley! Chris said you would be here.”
“Maria. You’re beautiful.”
“Oh stop it.”
My heart was racing. Maria had a protruding ridge down the middle of her upper lip which flattened and disappeared when she smiled. Her eyes were milky and bright.
“You’re here with Chris,” I said. Really observant.
“He’s bar-fined me for the night. Huge.”
“Wonderful.”
“But I told him, no jiggy-jiggy.”
“Oh, good.” I inhaled another exotic and expensive scent.
“I only do jiggy-jiggy with people I like.”
I exhaled an “oh Maria” which almost came out as “Ave Maria” and had a life of its own, cracking on the second syllable of her name. It came from nowhere and took me by surprise. It also prompted Maria to raise her hand to my face, with a frown, and then to pull it away, a gesture Torment caught in a brief glimpse over his shoulder.
“I have to go back to him,” she said. “He wants me by his side.”
“Of course,” I said.
The power to bonk anyone, any time, Torment had said. Maria squeezed my hand and tripped back to Torment, who greeted her with a big, phony “ah, there you are” look and pretended I did not exist.
I turned to the drinks table and accepted a scotch with a shaking hand. This feeling I had with Maria was completely new. It was a powerful, alien force. Was it possible, god forbid, that I was having a heart attack?
Near me an old American with shaggy black hair and a cigar was speaking to a group of assorted aides. Everyone was wearing far too much jewellery in and around their nostrils and mouths. I listened.
“… I still think making a film is a bit like creating the universe. Except without the day of rest. What you must tell me is which is worse, the fact that I once thought film making was like creating the universe, or that I still think it?”
I wanted to vomit all over the man’s unkempt hair, but managed to keep myself in check. I caught sight of Maria, now apparently alone. I also caught sight of Joe standing by the wheel house, staring at me and nodding towards Maria. I walked to the railing to the right of a couple of fat skinheads with earrings and headrings and cranium scars. Closest to me was a man whose jeans were hung below his hips and about to drop. Written on the back of his t-shirt was ‘Bog Man’. Joe had talked about Bog Man, who was a cinematographer at the top of his field. He belonged in a field.
“…In the lights on the water I see a thousand shards of an oriental night,” Bog Man was saying. “I see your love skipping like a water lily over my dead body…”
What was the matter with these film people? All that creativity and imagination running wild and turning them into people who could barely speak a sentence without making the average casual listener, a resident of the real world, want to throw up all over them. In one way or another, they were all bog men.
Adolf Lee approached with two men in suits and I was beginning to look forward to the junk turning around and steaming back to Central.
“Hadley, forgive me for interrupting. These two gentlemen are from Belgium. They are commodities dealers and I thought you’d have a lot to discuss.” Adolf Lee looked at the two and added: “He’s a journalist.”
I knew as much about commodities dealing as I did about the greater Brussels sewage system. The two men were identical. They looked like Mormon missionaries, without the sense of mischief.
“Hi there,” I ventured. “So you subscribe to the Shrubs news service?”
“You work for them?”
“Mais oui.”
“Commodities?” the one on the left said.
“General political news. Some economic news. Some commodities, yes. Metals, grains and the like.”
The two shuffled their feet. “If you come into our office, you can tell we are commodity traders,” the one on the right said.
“Oh? How’s that? I cannot tell that you are Belgian, by the way. Your accents are perfect.”
“Thank you,” the one on the left said. “Our telephones.”
“Sorry?”
“Our telephones will tell you that we are commodity traders,” the one on the right said. “They’re green and yellow and shaped like corn on the cob.”
Silence. Not a hint of irony or self-deprecation. They were waiting for a reaction. I coughed. “Your telephones are shaped like corn on the cob? That’ll certainly have people guessing.” Corn on the cobblers. “What’s your connection with the movie, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“We helped raise funds. Matched up a couple of investment opportunities.”
“Commodities?”
“Pas du tout. Norwegian bond market. We introduced a hedging tool.”
“A hedging tool? Like a Black & Decker?”
I desperately tried to think of a commodities-related joke that would have them rolling in the aisles. Roulant dans les allées. The one on the left frowned and then let loose like the nervous beginning to an audition for a movie extra.
“Got to short the Hong Kong dollar,” he said. “They’ve got to raise interest rates or revalue the yuan. Either way you’ve got a head-and-shoulders straddle which will extrapolate the long bond and raise the benchmark puts. Then, once property prices hit bottom, no one will be able to pay their mortgages and red chips and H shares will hit the fan and you can call your Oslo option.”
“Forward,” his friend added.
“Right. You can call your option forward.”
This is an impressionist version of the conversation, you understand. As I didn’t understand one word of what they were saying, it is impossible to repeat word for word. I do remember that I considered the option of jumping over the railing into the path of a fast approaching Macau hydrofoil. I would have been less out of my depth. “I can call it forward?”
“What choice would you have? I reckon put in a million now and you’ll have 100 times that in two weeks. You’ve got to short the Hong Kong dollar. Then, and only then, I would seriously consider Norwegian equities.”
“But what if, before I took the Norway route, I bucked the trend and did a 180-degree turn?”
“Don’t quite follow you, I’m sorry.”
“Well, what if I did as you advised, and called my Oslo option and told him to get his skates on (ha ha). But what if then, instead of calling it forward, which presumably the whole market would be doing by this stage, what if I called it… backward? Then I could really think about the whole Norway package.”
