The Vulcan Disaster

“Oh,” she said, and put a reassuring hand on mine. “No, Nick. It isn’t what you’re thinking. And you’re right: if he’s anything to me it’s a father. But when he brought me out of China, and my mother was killed as we ran the border, we had an immediate problem of how to establish some sort of diplomatic identity. He had a false identity of his own, which he assumed. Papers were issued quickly; the man whose identity he had taken over had been a war hero, with a pension and a World War II Victoria Cross. But I? I was thirteen. I had nothing. Adoption was out of the question; Will was a single parent, and a male. The only way to get me any claim on citizenship was to marry me. I am listed now as Mrs. Arthur Jeffords: that’s Will’s official name.”

“And you’ve survived all these years this way?”

“Yes,” she said. “Will and I... we’ve never been... you know. Yet in my own way I have been true to my strange marriage. I have had lovers: a few, anyway. But they have never had any claim on me. Never until...”

I plowed onward. “And you have the income from your work, and the income from Will’s pensions, to live on. And that’s it?”

“Well, no,” she said, pouring tea again. “Will does have his little business. He has a little tattoo parlor on Temple Street, in the middle of the market. He also functions as a Chinese-language scribe, in a community where few can read and write. But these businesses he maintains mainly in order to keep in touch with the facts of the community’s existence at the basic, rock-bottom level. As a scribe, he intercepts messages within the Chinese community; as a tattoo artist he overhears sailor talk. He operated at first in Wanchai; then, when the action shifted to the peninsula, to a little place in Tsim Sha Tsui, not far from where I work. He...”

“Yes, Nick, the action’s over on this side now,” Will said in a weak voice. He was sitting up, looking at us, his hands rubbing his temples again. “Excuse me for butting in... but I came out of it a moment or so ago.”

“Hey,” I said. “Do you think you should be sitting up so soon?”

“Oh, quite all right,” he said. “I just feel as though I had drunk a 55-gallon oil drum full of jungle juice and had the great Katzenjammer of the world to contend with. Tatiana, my dear: do you suppose I could have a bit of tea?”

“Oh, Will. Certainly. I’ll fix you some soup...”

“Yes, yes, that would be fine. Thank you. Anyhow, as I was saying, Nick, the action’s over here now. That’s the thing about Fiddler’s Green.”

“Fiddler’s Green?” I said.

“That’s the old name of Sailortown, in these shore cities. It’s where the action is... but it changes from time to time, as channels silt up and the turning basin changes, and ships are diverted to new areas of the harbor for docking and loading. The original Fiddler’s Green of Hong Kong — the place the city was named for — was Aberdeen, where the other big floating village is. The Cantonese name for Aberdeen is Heung Kong Tsai, or ‘small fragrant harbor.’ It gave its name, suitably mispronounced by the British, to the whole colony.”

“Then,” Tatiana said from the galley, “it moved to Wanchai. Many of the Caucasian sailors still hang out there, as the tourists tend to congregate in Tsim Sha Tsui.” I noticed she’d buttoned up the robe; somehow I felt better about that. Will went on:

“But with the Ocean Terminal’s completion in Kowloon — and, I suppose, with the additional flow of people through Kai Tak, and the gradual reclamation of more of the shoreline! — Kowloon has assumed greater importance. There was a time, not so long ago, when all deep-draft ships had to lie at anchor well out in the bay and get unloaded by cargo lighters. Now the important ones can deal with cargo at dockside, right here in Kowloon — a railhead, mind you.”

“And the unimportant ones? Or the ones which... the ones like our missing ship, with the arms cargo?”

“Ah,” he said. He’d regained at least part of the merry smile. “Now that sort of thing is why I moved to Yaumati, or, more correctly, Yau Ma Tei” — he gave the words a proper Chinese singsong that mocked the simplistic British pronunciation — “and installed myself on Temple Street.” The smile was knowing; the drawn face winked at me. “Cargo not bound for the main slips here is still unloaded well out into deep water, with the old tub lying at anchor. The lighters which serve this entire sector of the Bay all dock at Yau Ma Tei, in this picturesque shelter, when they are not working. Their captains and crews are my friends and neighbors.”

“Hey,” I said, “that means...”