The Year of the Woman by Jonathan Gash Page A

one way out of her unspeakable shame. She would take it.
    She must borrow enough to construct an infallible scheme. Then let her best friend Betty smirk, the bitch. Linda would be triumphant.
    Bet enough money, gambling became a certainty. You had the thrill of winning without the dismay of losing. She began to plan: Get more money, for the one great gambling coup of her life.

Chapter Six
    KwayFay was followed home. She alighted from the Kennedy Town tram, changing direction until she came to the street players. She watched the marionette Chinese opera, smiling in spite of her fears. The Flag Cloth Opera! The story always gripped her. How many times had she seen it here? She saw the poor little girl from Kashgar, played with a silly (so wrong!) Shanghainese accent of unbelievable shrillness, move with slow jerks across the marionette stage being abducted by the great Western-China General.
    She cried out with the street audience standing amid the traffic, as the girl, Siang Fei, Fragrant Consort to the Emperor, was taken to Peking there to languish alone. Emperor Chien Lung was entranced. KwayFay found herself applauding with delight at the wickedness of the Imperial Palace concubines, hating this new rival’s exquisite beauty. They were defeated by Siang Fei’s innocence. Unaware how time was passing, KwayFay wept as the girl, newly promoted to Fragrant Consort, ascended the Dragon Bed.
    Desperately wanting to see the end, KwayFay glanced at somebody’s watch. Almost eight o’clock! No wonder darkness was on the sea, lights stringing out in the bay like so many stars, the junks now puttering with only three lights showing. She might as well find some street stall and have a bowl of hot rice, perhaps with green vegetables . She could make a drink of tea before bed in her squatter shack, and then it would be dawn and the start of another day at HC’s wilting firm. Amazingly, he still had not sacked her. What on earth was in his mind?
    She walked slowly away, her calves aching from so long a day, saddened by the story she had just left. The crowd would all be in tears as the lovely Siang Fei stabbed herself. Marionetteers always used a knife of hugely disproportionate size, its blade glittering with aluminium dust. As a little girl she had climbed this very thoroughfare, Water Street, and gone through the narrow lane into Second Street to see the same puppet displays ! Were they the same people running the little theatre ? You never saw. Like life.
    Once, thrilled, she had been allowed to sprinkle the precious silver powder onto the wooden knife! She angrily brushed her tears away.
    There was a food stall at the junction with Third Street. She bought a bowl (four HK dollars, a fortune) and seated herself on a trestle stool, eating with a swift shovelling action in the gathering darkness, the mad cars streaming past towards Sheung Wan in a crazy dash down the one-way system.
    For a moment, as the bare rice settled in her stomach and her hunger melted, she wondered why she had stopped off here, then remembered.
    He had not been the same man following her. Not that calm stranger with such a sure tread. The new man was stout, wore trainer shoes boys ran about in to bother pedestrians. Youths pretended they were great runners who had paid the right bribe to Olympic judges at the next Games.
    The new man smoked long cigarettes and wore a hat like a gangster. She was frightened, but the stall was crowded with night people. Cars were still about, but the buses were fewer now and the sea below darker. Hadshe been foolish to choose this way home?
    She walked to Bonham Road and waited for a bus but none came. She had no money to pay a taxi, though two passed her and beeped their insolent horns, just as if she was a
sai-yan
, a westerner, maybe English from the University.
    The man suddenly was there in front of her. Nobody was about. A car roared past. For one insane moment she wondered if the motor might be Alice’s brother Seng