John le Carré - The Honourable Schoolboy

They found him behind the counter of his shop, just tall enough to look over it, a tiny; darting half-Portuguese who had once earned a living Chinese boxing in the grimy booths of Macao. The front of the shop was six foot wide. His wares were new motorbikes and relics of the old China Service, which he called antiques; daguerreotypes of hatted ladies in tortoiseshell frames, a battered travelling box, an opium clipper's log. Luigi knew Jerry already but he liked Lizzie much better, and insisted that she go ahead so that he could study her hind quarters while he ushered them under a washing line, to an outhouse marked private, with three chairs and a telephone on the floor. Crouching till he was rolled into a neat ball, Luigi talked Chinese to the telephone and English to Lizzie. He was a grandfather, he said, but virile, and had four sons, all good. Even number four son was off his hands. All good drivers, good workers and good husbands. Also, he said to Lizzie, he had a Mercedes complete with stereo.

'Maybe I take you ride in it one day,' he said.

Jerry wondered whether she realised that he was proposing marriage, or perhaps something slightly less.

And yes, Luigi thought he had a boat as well.

After two phone calls he knew he had a boat, which he only ever lent to friends, at a nominal cost. He gave Lizzie his credit card case to count the number of cards; then his wallet to admire the family snaps, one of which showed a lobster caught by number four son on the day of his recent wedding, though the son was not visible.

'Po Toi bad place,' said Luigi Tan to Lizzie, still on the telephone. 'Very dirty place. Rough sea, lousy festival, bad food. Why you want to go there?'

For Tin Hau of course, Jerry said patiently, answering for her. For the famous temple and the festival. Luigi Tan preferred to speak to Lizzie. 'You go Lantau,' he advised. 'Lantau good island.

Nice food, good fish, nice people. I tell them you go Lantau, eat at Charlie's, Charlie my friend.'

'Po Toi,' said Jerry firmly.

'Po Toi hell of a lot of cash.'

'We've got a hell of a lot of cash,' said Lizzie with a lovely smile, and Luigi looked at her again, contemplatively, the long up and down look.

'Maybe I come with you,' he said to her.

'No,' said Jerry.

Luigi drove them to Causeway Bay and rode with them on the sampan. The boat was a fourteen-foot power boat, common as driftwood, but Jerry reckoned she was sound and Luigi said she had a deep keel. A boy lounged on the stem, trailing one foot in the water.

'My nephew,' said Luigi, ruffling the boy's hair proudly. 'He got mother in Lantau. He take you. Lantau, eat Charlie's place, give you good time. You pay me later.'

'Old boy,' said Jerry patiently. 'Sport. We don't want Lantau. We want Po Toi. Only Po Toi. Po Toi or nothing. Drop us there and go.

'Po Toi bad weather, bad festival. Bad place. Too near China water. Lot of Commies.'

'Po Toi or nothing,' Jerry said.

'Boat too small,' said Luigi, with a frightful loss of face, and it took all of Lizzie's charm to build him up again.

For another hour the boys primed the boat and all Jerry and Lizzie could do was sit in the half cabin keeping out of sight and sip judicious shots of Remy Martin. Periodically one or other of them sank into a private reverie. When Lizzie did this, she hugged herself and rocked slowly on her haunches, head down. Whereas Jerry yanked at his forelock, and once he yanked so hard she touched his arm to stop him, and he laughed.

Almost carelessly they pulled away from the harbour.

'Stay out of sight,' Jerry ordered, and for safety's sake put his arm round her to keep her in the meagre shelter of the open cabin.

The American aircraft carrier had stripped off her ornamental garb and lay grey and menacing, like an unsheathed knife above the water. At first, they had nothing but the same sticky calm. On the shore, shelves of mist pressed on to the grey highrises, and brown smoke columns slid into a white expressionless sky. On the flat water their boat felt high as a balloon. But as they slipped the shelter and headed east, the waves slapped her sides hard enough to wind her, the bow pitched and cracked, and they had to brace themselves to keep upright. With the little bow lifting and tugging like a bad horse, they tumbled past cranes and godowns and factories and the stumps of quarried hillsides. They were running straight into the wind and spray was flying on all sides. The coxswain at the wheel was laughing and crowing to his mate, and Jerry supposed it was the mad roundeyes they were laughing at, who chose to do their courting in a pitching tub. A giant tanker passed them, not seeming to move, brown junks running in her wake. From the dockyards, where a freighter was laid-to; the white flashes of the welders' lamps signalled to them across the water. The boys' laughter eased and they began to talk sensibly because they were at sea. Looking back between the swaying walls of transport ships Jerry saw the Island drawing slowly away from him, cut like a table mountain by the cloud. Once more, Hong Kong was ceasing to exist.

They passed another headland. As the sea roughened, the pitching steadied and the cloud above them dropped until its base was only a few feet above their mast, and for a while they stayed in this lower, unreal world, advancing under cover of its protective blanket. The fog ended suddenly and left them in dancing sunlight. Southward, on hills of violent lushness, an orange navigation lamp winked at them through the clear air.

'What do we do now?' she asked softly, looking through the porthole.

'Smile and pray,' said Jerry.

'I'll smile, you pray,' she said.

A pilot's launch was pulling alongside and for a moment he definitely expected to see the hideous face of the Rocker glowering down on him, but the crew ignored them entirely.

'Who are they?' she whispered. 'What do they think?'

'It's routine,' said Jerry. 'It's meaningless.'

The launch veered away. That's it, thought Jerry, with no particular feeling, they've spotted us.

'You sure it was just routine?' she asked.

'Hundreds of boats go to the festival,' he said.

The boat bucked violently; and kept bucking. Great seaworthiness, he thought, hanging on to Lizzie. Great keel. If this goes on, we won't have anything to decide. The sea will do it for us. It was one of those trips where if you made it nobody noticed, and if you didn't they'd say you threw your life away. The east wind could swirl right round on itself at any moment, he thought. In the season between west monsoons, nothing was ever sure. He listened anxiously to the erratic galloping of the engine. If it gives up we'll finish on the rocks.

Suddenly his nightmares multiplied unreasonably. The butane, he thought. Christ, the butane! While the boys were preparing the boat, he had glimpsed two cylinders stowed in the front hold beside the water-tanks, presumably for cooking Luigi's lobsters. Fool that he was, he had made nothing of them till now. He worked it out. Butane is heavier than air. All cylinders leak. It's just a question of degree. With this sea pounding the bows they leak faster, and the escaped gas will now be lying in the bilge about two feet from the spark of the engine, with a nice blend of oxygen to assist combustion. Lizzie had slipped from his grasp and stood astern. The sea was suddenly crowded. Out of nowhere, a fleet of fishing junks had gathered, and she was gazing at them earnestly. Grabbing her arm he hauled her back to the cover of the cabin.

'Where do you think you are?' he shouted. 'Bloody Cowes?

She studied him a moment, then gently kissed him, then kissed him again.

'You calm down,' she warned. She kissed him a third time, muttered 'Yes,' as if her expectations had been fulfilled, then sat quiet for a while, looking at the deck but keeping hold of his hand.