Lowaicue
英語在香港
It was Mrs Gwendoline (pronounced with a long ‘i’ to suggest the lady was of American heritage) Featherstonehaugh (pronounced Fanshaw to prove a marriage to one of the more ancient and respectable English families) who first introduced me to Proust (pronounced Prowst to distinguish the young gentleman from the French novelist).
Proust was a social climber of the least acceptable sort, if indeed there are gradations in such a group, and would be seen in and around the various recreation clubs of Hong Kong resplendent in striped blazer and whites when those whose company he sought were slacked and shirted with ne’er a hint of cravat.
It was Proust who had been one of my first contacts in this strange place and it was Proust who took it upon himself to educate and guide me. He suggested that no one actually ‘worked’ and that one of the main activities of this idle class was the hiring and subsequent firing of a stream of nursemaids, gardeners and chauffeurs and the constant chorusing of ‘staff are so very difficult these days, don’t you think?’
I didn’t think. Indeed I did not know, for why should I coming as I did from an aspiring lower middle class family. My mother aspired. My father perspired in a constant struggle to climb the social ladder with the metaphorical weight of his spouse on his metaphorical back.
But Hong Kong then was much easier than it is now. It was pleasant. It was like living in a fat luxurious bubble. It was never having to understand the local currency because there was always more no matter how much one lost on horses and champagne in the company box at the Happy Valley races.
We enjoyed the novelty. We really did. A neighbour, a Lady Pamela once asked my line of business and I happened to say my office was in Mong Kok, the mosted crowded place on the planet, according to the Guinness Book. She almost had an attack of the vapours, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. ‘Mong Kok’, she repeated. ‘Oh, how awfully ghastly for you.’
I didn’t think it was ghastly. I rather liked it. It had real people in it. People who pushed to get on the trains, people who spoke no English, people whose worlds contained far more interesting nooks and crannies than those of Proust and Lady Pamela. There was an alley just a five minute stroll from my office that sold birds. Song birds, pet birds not birds for the table. Bird Alley stank. You could smell Bird Alley several streets away on a hot still day in summer, you could smell Bird Alley In Tibet when a breeze blew!
A couple of streets away was a street filled with shops selling paints and building materials which at night, with shutters shuttered and hidden doors opened and neoned, became the bustling centre of business of a different hue (which, incidentally, is yellow in Chinese culture). The delapidated blocks which towered above the bags of cement, Laminex, cheap hammers and trowels contained hundreds, maybe thousands, of what are called locally ‘One chicken, one house’ apartments. The law on prostitution defining an illegal brothel as a place where two or more ladies of the night plied their trade.
Lady Pamela knew nothing of this. She read only newspapers from home and watched television only on Saturdays when UK programmes such as ‘Terry and June and Keeping Up Appearences’ were shown.
She regretted, most of all that Henry, her brow beaten husband was from a family that did not actually have the wherewithall to send him enough to buy a Rolls in the manner of their close neighbours, the Willoughby-Smythes. The Willoughby-Smythes car was a bottle green Carmargue but they had a Chinese chauffeur whereas Lady Pamela had a Mercedes with a beturbaned Sikh at the wheel.
I grew to dislike Lady Pamela and her poor husband and was not sorry when they left for their cottage in Northern France where they ‘haw-hawed’ their way about the various golf clubs in the district. I have it on fairly good authority that it was then that Lady Pamela began her worship of Bacchus or perhaps it was Dionysus but the result was the same. She was seldom sober and Henry soon skidaddled with a piece of French totty from the local vineyard.
Proust disappeared too, having been dismissed from his bank for his somewhat unconventional time-keeping.
Gwendoline returned to the colonies, somewhere in the southern states of the United States, I think, after losing her dear husband to the terrors of the heart. He died within the hour. I was with her but was of little comfort, I think. Though I did my utmost to be a staff against which she might steady herself.
Poor Gwendoline.
Please leave a comment if you would like more adventures in the Orient.... or if you don't!
Proust was a social climber of the least acceptable sort, if indeed there are gradations in such a group, and would be seen in and around the various recreation clubs of Hong Kong resplendent in striped blazer and whites when those whose company he sought were slacked and shirted with ne’er a hint of cravat.
It was Proust who had been one of my first contacts in this strange place and it was Proust who took it upon himself to educate and guide me. He suggested that no one actually ‘worked’ and that one of the main activities of this idle class was the hiring and subsequent firing of a stream of nursemaids, gardeners and chauffeurs and the constant chorusing of ‘staff are so very difficult these days, don’t you think?’
I didn’t think. Indeed I did not know, for why should I coming as I did from an aspiring lower middle class family. My mother aspired. My father perspired in a constant struggle to climb the social ladder with the metaphorical weight of his spouse on his metaphorical back.
But Hong Kong then was much easier than it is now. It was pleasant. It was like living in a fat luxurious bubble. It was never having to understand the local currency because there was always more no matter how much one lost on horses and champagne in the company box at the Happy Valley races.
We enjoyed the novelty. We really did. A neighbour, a Lady Pamela once asked my line of business and I happened to say my office was in Mong Kok, the mosted crowded place on the planet, according to the Guinness Book. She almost had an attack of the vapours, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. ‘Mong Kok’, she repeated. ‘Oh, how awfully ghastly for you.’
I didn’t think it was ghastly. I rather liked it. It had real people in it. People who pushed to get on the trains, people who spoke no English, people whose worlds contained far more interesting nooks and crannies than those of Proust and Lady Pamela. There was an alley just a five minute stroll from my office that sold birds. Song birds, pet birds not birds for the table. Bird Alley stank. You could smell Bird Alley several streets away on a hot still day in summer, you could smell Bird Alley In Tibet when a breeze blew!
A couple of streets away was a street filled with shops selling paints and building materials which at night, with shutters shuttered and hidden doors opened and neoned, became the bustling centre of business of a different hue (which, incidentally, is yellow in Chinese culture). The delapidated blocks which towered above the bags of cement, Laminex, cheap hammers and trowels contained hundreds, maybe thousands, of what are called locally ‘One chicken, one house’ apartments. The law on prostitution defining an illegal brothel as a place where two or more ladies of the night plied their trade.
Lady Pamela knew nothing of this. She read only newspapers from home and watched television only on Saturdays when UK programmes such as ‘Terry and June and Keeping Up Appearences’ were shown.
She regretted, most of all that Henry, her brow beaten husband was from a family that did not actually have the wherewithall to send him enough to buy a Rolls in the manner of their close neighbours, the Willoughby-Smythes. The Willoughby-Smythes car was a bottle green Carmargue but they had a Chinese chauffeur whereas Lady Pamela had a Mercedes with a beturbaned Sikh at the wheel.
I grew to dislike Lady Pamela and her poor husband and was not sorry when they left for their cottage in Northern France where they ‘haw-hawed’ their way about the various golf clubs in the district. I have it on fairly good authority that it was then that Lady Pamela began her worship of Bacchus or perhaps it was Dionysus but the result was the same. She was seldom sober and Henry soon skidaddled with a piece of French totty from the local vineyard.
Proust disappeared too, having been dismissed from his bank for his somewhat unconventional time-keeping.
Gwendoline returned to the colonies, somewhere in the southern states of the United States, I think, after losing her dear husband to the terrors of the heart. He died within the hour. I was with her but was of little comfort, I think. Though I did my utmost to be a staff against which she might steady herself.
Poor Gwendoline.
Please leave a comment if you would like more adventures in the Orient.... or if you don't!
