JAMES HADLEY CHASE - A COFFIN FROM HONG KONG

It was not possible to walk two abreast and still more impossible to talk to her. At this hour the streets were crammed with people. Walking in the streets of Kowloon turned out to be quite an experience. Everywhere were glaring neon signs. Chinese characters, I decided,

made the best and most interesting of any neon sign. They lost the vulgarity of a sign you can read and became works of art. Cars, rickshaws and bicycles swarmed along the broad street. The sidewalk was packed with a steady flow of humanity : all as active as ants.

We finally came to the restaurant in a side street which was crowded with children playing in the gutters, vegetable vendors packing up their wares for the night, parked cars and the inevitable blaze of neon signs.

“Here we eat very well,” Leila said, and pushing open the swing door she entered the restaurant that emitted a noise like a solid punch on the ear—stunning and deafening.

We could see nothing of the diners. Every table was hidden behind high screens. The rattle of Mah Jongg tiles, the high-pitched excited Chinese voices and the clatter of dishes were overwhelming.

The owner of the restaurant opened two screens, bowing and smiling at Leila, and we were immediately submerged in noise and privacy.

Leila set her handbag down on the table, adjusted her brassiere, shifted her solid little bottom firmly in her chair and showed me her beautiful white teeth in a radiant and excited smile.

“I will order,” she said. “First, we will have fried shrimps, then we will have shark’s fin soup, then we will have beggar chicken—it is the speciality here. Then we will see what else there is to eat, but first we commence with fried shrimps.”

She spoke rapidly in Cantonese to the waiter and then when he had gone, she reached across the table and patted my hand.

“I like American gentlemen.” she told me. “They have much vitality. They are very interesting in bed and they also have much money. ‘

“Don’t count on either of those statements,” I said. “You could be disappointed. How long have you been in Hong Kong?”

“Three years I came from Canton. I am a refugee. I only escaped because my cousin owns a junk. He took me to Macau and then I came here “

The waiter brought us Chinese wine. He poured it into two tiny cups It was warm and reasonably strong. When he had gone, I said. “Maybe you know Jo-An Wing Cheung who is also a refugee.”

She looked surprised.

“Yes. I know her very well. How do you know her?”

“I don’t,” I said.

There was a pause as the waiter set before us a bowl of king-size shrimps cooked in a golden batter.

“But you know her name. How do you know her name?” Leila asked, snapping up a shrimp with her chopsticks and dipping it in Soya sauce.

“She was married to a friend of mine who lived in my home town,” I said, dropping a shrimp on the tablecloth. I nipped it up again with my uncertain chopsticks and conveyed it cautiously to my mouth. It tasted very good. “Did you ever meet him? His name’s Herman Jefferson.”

“Oh, yes.” Leila was eating with astonishing speed. Three-quarters of the shrimps were gone before I could spear my third. “Jo-An and I escaped from Canton together. She was lucky to find an American husband even though now he is dead.”

The waiter came with a bowl of fried rice in which was mixed finely-chopped ham, shrimps and scraps of fried egg. Leila filled her bowl and her chopsticks flashed as she whipped the food into her mouth. I lagged behind. To do justice to this meal, you had to have considerably more experience with chopsticks than I had.

“He lived with her at your hotel?” I asked as I dropped rice onto the tablecloth in a vain effort to keep pace with her.

She nodded.

The shrimps had disappeared and more than half the rice. She certainly had the technique of getting the most inside herself in the shortest time.

“He lived with her in a room next to mine for three months after they married, then he went away.”

A large bowl of shark’s fin soup appeared. Leila began to fill her bowl.

“Why did he go away?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“He didn’t need her any more.”

As I could cat the soup with a spoon, I managed to keep pace with her.

“Why didn’t he need her any more?”

Leila paused for a moment to give me a cynical stare, then she went on spooning soup into her small, insatiable mouth.

“He only married her so she could keep him,” she said. “When he began to make money for himself, he didn’t want her.”

“How did she manage to keep him?” I asked, knowing what the answer would be.

“She entertained gentlemen as I do,” Leila said, and looked serenely at me. “We have no other means of making money.”

The waiter came through the screens. He brought with him a strip of matting which he laid ceremoniously on the floor.

Leila turned in her chair, clasping her small hands excitedly. “This is the beggar’s chicken. You must not miss seeing any of this.”

A Chinese boy came in carrying what appeared to be an enormous ostrich egg on a wooden plate. He rolled the egg onto the matting.

“The chicken is first rubbed with many spices and then wrapped in a covering of lotus leaves,” Leila explained, squirming around on her chair with excitement. “It is then covered with clay and put on an open fire and cooked for five hours. You can see the clay has become as hard as stone.”

The boy produced a hammer and cracked the egg open: from it came an aroma that was unbelievably delicious. The waiter and the boy squatted opposite each other. The boy eased the chicken out of the layers of lotus leaves onto the dish held by the waiter. The bird had been so thoroughly cooked the flesh fell from the bones as it unrolled onto the dish.

With skilled and enthusiastic hands, the waiter spooned pieces of the chicken into our bowls.

Leila’s chopsticks began to flash again. I began on my portion. It was quite the most sensational dish I had ever eaten. Leila paused for a brief moment, a shred of chicken held securely in her chopsticks to ask, “You like?”

I grinned at her.

“Sure ... I like.”

There was no point in asking her further questions until the meal was over. I could see her concentration was now centred on the food and I didn’t blame her. We finished the chicken, then she ordered mushrooms, bamboo shoots, salted ginger and finally almond cake. By this time I had given up. I sat, smoking a cigarette, marvelling at the amount of food she could put away. After a further twenty minutes, she laid down her chopsticks and heaved a long, satisfied sigh.

“It was good?” she said, looking inquiringly at me.

I regarded her with considerable respect. Anyone who could eat as much as she had and still keep a nice shape was entided to respect.

“It was wonderful.”

She smiled contentedly.

“Yes, it really was wonderful. May I please have a cigarette?”

I gave her a cigarette and lit it for her. She blew smoke from her small neatly made-up mouth and then her smile became inviting.

“Would you like to return to the hotel now?” she said. “We could make love. It would be good after such a meal.”

“It’s early yet ... we have the night before us,” I said. “Tell me more about Herman Jefferson. You say he began to make money three months after he married Jo-An. How did he make it?”

She frowned. I could see Jefferson as a subject bored her.

“I don’t know. Jo-An didn’t tell me. One day I found her alone and crying. She said he had left her. He no longer needed her because he was now making money.”

“She didn’t tell you how?”

“Why should she? It wasn’t my business.”