Hiroshima Joe by Martin Booth Read Free Book Online Page A

repeated the performance of docking. Sandingham remained in his seat, watching a few sampans drawn up on a thin strand of pebbly mud next to the ferry. On one flimsy craft was a Chinese infant, the seat of his trousers split open to avoid the inconvenience of nappies. His mother was sitting on the flat planking at the stern, eating melon seeds, delicately splitting them open with her fingernail before eating the kernels and flicking the husks over the side. A pipe dribbled sewage into the harbour by the sampan’s prow.
    At last the gangway was lowered and he disembarked, pausing only under the jetty’s colonnaded front to purchase a copy of the day’s paper from a news-vendor. He begrudged having to buy it, having hoped to find a copy on the ferry, but the seats must just have been cleaned for there was none to be had. He looked upon the purchase philosophically as an investment. At least it was cheaper than a magazine.
    He crossed the road and walked up Ice House Street. At the junction with Chater Road he turned right and at the next junction of five roads he crossed again, dodging between two trams to reach the Gloucester Building: it was here that he planned to find the rent for the hotel.
    The pavement of the building, which for the main part consisted of offices, led straight into the Dairy Farm restaurant. It was a large establishment, with waiter service, and its plate-glass windows were half-hung with curtains. These latter served his purpose well, for he could not be observed from the street outside.
    He entered and sat at one of the tables. The place was busy. Shoppers – for the most part European women – were taking afternoon tea with their children around them. It was a scene of ordered chaos. Chinese waiters moved with speed between the tables, balancing trays laden with pots of tea, small cakes and buns, and ices or tall sundaes in glasses. One of the Chinese waiters approached him and he ordered iced lemon tea. The man did not give him a second glance: he was sufficiently well-dressed to be accepted.
    The table next to him was vacated as he arrived, but it was soon re-occupied by a woman in her forties accompanied by three children, two of whom wore white school uniforms. One of the children was a morose-looking boy of about ten.
    Sandingham listened to their conversation. With luck, they would fit the bill – a harrassed mother, a pain-in-the-neck child and two other offspring to offer distraction.
    ‘What do you want, children?’ the mother asked, in a voice tired from traipsing around in the tropical heat.
    ‘A coffee ice, a coffee ice!’ chanted the youngest child, fighting to be heard over his immediate superior’s demand for a peach melba, also repeated several times. Their voices jarred on Sandingham’s nerves, but he managed to suppress his longing to shout at them.
    The sultry boy requested a strawberry ice, his words a near monologue.
    ‘You know you can’t have an ice-cream, Jeremy,’ the mother retorted. ‘It will hurt too much after the filling. Mr Bingham said you shouldn’t eat until the anaesthetic wears off and the filling sets.’
    Bingham: Sandingham knew a dentist by that name. He had known him in times when there had been no supplies of pain-numbing cocaine.
    He had not seen Bingham for many years, but he knew the man had a practice on Kowloon-side, near to the Star Ferry. As if in tribute to the dentist, Sandingham pressed his tongue into a space between his right lower molars. It had hurt like hell at the time, but the abcess had been prevented from spreading. The resultant blood poisoning might, in the circumstances, have killed him.
    A waiter delivered Sandingham’s iced tea, for which he deliberately and immediately paid. He sipped his drink, pretended to read the newspaper and knew it was only a matter of time.
    He was right. Five minutes into the tea, the morose boy stated that he felt ‘woozy’. He shifted from his seat to one next to his mother. She, in turn,