Articles

HANDING OVER HONG KONG

By Stephen Reardon

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Positively the last thing the ambassador wanted, he told us through firmly gritted teeth, was any fuss from us during our trip. What a junior minister and a bunch of middle ranking civil servants from the Department of Social Security were doing on his lawn in Beijing clearly beat him. Didn’t he have quite enough to do negotiating the imminent handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese without London foisting our minister for disabled people on him?

To be fair the minister didn’t want to be there at that precise moment in history either. London knew the unrefusable invitation from the Chinese was their way of diverting the ambassador’s precious time. He had to dot the i’s and cross the t’s in a way that would dress up the return of our colony as a political triumph back home and something approaching liberation to its residents. And the sand was fast running through the ambassador’s hour glass.
We all knew too that the Chinese expected us to come bearing gifts: protocol demanded it. When their delegation had visited London the previous year, its drooling over our British state-of-the-art sports wheelchairs had made it abundantly clear nothing less would do for their disabled Olympics contestants in Atlanta.
Her Majesty’s Treasury had other ideas when it saw the price tag involved. So instead we had brought a Possum, a very clever gismo that did things like turning the lights on and off remotely. It was to be a gift for our minister’s Chinese counterpart, who was himself in a wheelchair. But as it had become apparent the embassy’s ancient wiring wouldn’t be up to the task of showing off Possum’s abilities, the ambassador saw with dismay one more diplomatic elephant trap yawning in front of him.
‘And another thing’, he barked at us, ‘those of you staying at the hotel and not at the Residence will naturally be under surveillance by the Chinese secret police. They’re not very secret, although they think they are. So it will be pretty bloody obvious. I don’t want a murmur from any of you. Just grin and bear it. No incidents – understood?’
I wanted to ask what a Chinese secret policeman might look like, so that I would know who not to murmur about. I needn’t have worried. As the ambassador had said, it was pretty bloody obvious.

On the first occasion I was on the phone in my hotel room and didn’t hear the gentle knock on the door. Evidently assuming the room was unoccupied, the hotel’s resident spook let himself in. When I popped out round the corner beyond the bathroom, it would be true to say a look of considerable annoyance crossed his face. However, recovering his poise he produced a sink plunger from under his jacket, indicated he had come about the pipes, and set about giving the toilet u-bend an unpleasant evacuation.
On his next visit I was actually in the bathroom when he knocked. I decided to lie low, reasoning the ambassador would thank me for my discretion. I gave him five minutes to microfilm the satirical diary of the trip I’d been keeping for the Social Security Christmas panto and get clear. Not long enough apparently. He was still on his way out and we met at the bathroom door like the two toothbrushes.
This time he had forgotten his plunger, so looking round for a handy subterfuge, he lit upon the trouser press on the wall. He shook it violently, counting loudly in Chinese. When he had reached fifty by my reckoning he stopped and bowing slightly to the now loosened press said, ‘You better now’.
The following evening was the ambassador’s reception. I had already gone down to the lobby, leaving my spy’s coast clear, but had to return for something I had forgotten. My door was ajar so I gave a couple of harrumphs to signal my approach. The room seemed empty. Then Pekinese Drummond leapt into view from the far side of my bed where he had been lying prone. With a vicious look he produced a chocolate from his pocket, placed it on the pillow and hissed, ‘Turn down service’.

After a couple of glasses at the reception I thought I might impress the ambassador with an account of my nightly forbearance on his behalf. He fixed me witheringly. ‘Social Security! Absolutely no idea at all, eh? Hong Kong? It’s all tropical suits and Somerset Maugham to you, isn’t it?’

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