Harry is seduced by his Asian half-sister and they journey down a path of no return. (Enjoy)
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I was playing outside, pestering the frogs and newts in the little pond at the end of the garden, when I heard Gran calling me. As it usually meant I was in trouble, or she wanted me to do something, I burrowed further down into the long grass; frogs and newts are more interesting to 8-year old boys than chores, or a telling off; besides, I had almost captured a beaut of a frog to show off in school the next day.
“Harry! Haaarrryyy! She shouted from the doorway, “I can see you, come here, now, your fathers’ on the ‘phone! Hurry up!”
Dad. That was a different thing, a call all the way from Hong Kong! I jumped up, running back to her, to grab the handset from her and blurt out “Dad! Are you coming home soon?!” His voice was clear but far away, not as loud as I hoped, but I could still hear him clearly.
“Harry-Boy, I’ll be home in a few months, late summer, once the handover goes ahead; in the meantime I’ve got to make sure my replacement is up to speed, and that all we’ve removed all the government paperwork. So, I’ll see you in July, son!”
I was over the moon, Dad was coming home! To be honest, I hardly knew him, but his infrequent visits to England always meant a great time for me; we’d go anywhere I wanted, he’d spend hours with me poring over my Airfix plane kits, helping me glue, paint and string them up, and try to play Super Mario against me on my old Nintendo. I lived with my grand-parents in deepest Staffordshire; Dad lived and worked in Hong Kong. My mother had died when I was born, so Gran was my mum as far as I was concerned.
I gave the ‘phone back to Gran, grinning madly, and went running to tell Grandpa, Dad was coming home!
For the next few weeks, I was wound tight, counting down the days to his arrival. Grandpa told me that Dad would be leaving within a few days of the handover, whatever that was, and so we watched the ceremony on July 1st, 1997, trying to spot dad among all the officials. When it was done, Grandpa sighed, causing me to look quizzically at him.
“That’s it, Harry, it’s all over now, no more Hong Kong the way I remember it…” he sighed.
I asked him what he meant, and he told me some of his war stories, about the battle of Hong Kong, and something called ‘Black Christmas’, and his life as a prisoner, in a camp in Burma; old news.
Grandpa was concerned about how dad would fit in here; he was born and bred in Hong Kong, schooled in England, but had worked in the Hong Kong Police all his life. He spoke Cantonese, Mandarin and Hokkien fluently, and was completely at home in the company of his Chinese and Gurkha police officers; more so than when he was back in England.
Two weeks later we were waiting at Heathrow for dad to arrive. Just when I thought he’d never arrive there he was, grinning from ear to ear, shaking hands with Grandpa, hugging Gran, and lifting me up to bear-hug me and ruffle my hair.
On the drive back, Dad told us about the handover ceremony, about meeting Prince Charles, how bad he’d felt watching the ‘Britannia’ sail away from Victoria, flags dipped, taking away the last Governor, Chris Patten, his boss, and how sad he felt, now that his home was gone forever, at least the way he knew it. Now some Chinese government political appointee had his job, his Chinese officers, all friends, had done a bunk to Singapore or Taiwan, getting out from under the PRC before it was too late, all his Gurkha police troopers had gone to Singapore, Oman or Brunei, and it was all over. He sounded sad, and I remembered what Grandpa had said about him.
Life at home soon settled down. Dad got a job with the Ministry of Defence in Lichfield, and we all lived together in the big house in Bilbrook, near Wolverhampton.
As time wore on, though, Dad became quieter, more reserved, his willingness to play with me, or sit with me diminishing, and, as I got older, I grew away from him, as we gradually discovered we really had nothing much in common, nothing to talk about, and no interest anymore in talking to each other. Gran saw this, but there was nothing she could do; it was obvious what was wrong, but there was no way to fix it.
By the time I was twelve, Dad and I had effectively stopped communicating. We weren’t hostile or anything, it was just that the meagre store of things we had in common was depleted, so we just nodded to each other in passing, were polite and courteous at meals and so on, but in reality we were done with each other, now just two strangers sharing a name.
I had been sent to a boy’s boarding school, and, because it was in Shropshire, just 30 miles away, I would come home at weekends to spend time with the grand-parents and hang around with some of my old friends. Then, one of these weekends, known as ‘Coach Weekends’, I felt an atmosphere as soon as I walked in. There was definitely something up; Gran was tight-lipped and angry-looking, Grandpa looked confused and upset, and Dad was even more uncommunicative than usual, his face set and distracted. After a day and a night of this, I’d had enough, so I braced Dad about it, asking why everybody was walking around angry, with the house virtually silent.
“Tell him!” snapped Gran, “You had no problem telling us! What’s the matter, afraid of what a twelve-year old will think?”
OK, this didn’t sound good, and it didn’t sound like Gran — she was really steaming mad.
“Harry,” began Dad, “You don’t remember your mother, but I do, and I loved her very much. When she died, I was devastated, I loved her so much. When I went back to Hong Kong, I met someone, someone I liked very much, someone who helped me when I needed to have somebody. Can you understand?”
I thought I did; he had a girlfriend out in Hong Kong, so what, big deal, yadayadayada. Gran was still looking mad, and cleared her throat meaningfully when dad looked like he’d dried-up.
“There’s more, Harry,” he went on. “The … person, the lady I met, we sort of… fell in love, and we were living together. For seven years.”
Seven years? Why had he never said anything before? Not that I really cared; Dad was now so distant from me that this was starting to sound like none of my business. He looked me square in the face.
“Harry, we, this lady and I, we had a child, a daughter, your half-sister.”
I was stunned; I hadn’t seen that one coming, and my astonishment must have shown, because Dad hurried on.
“Her name is Sai Fong, she’s ten years old, and she and her mother live in Guangzhou. I’m telling you this because her mother is very ill, she’s dying and I want Sai Fong to come and live with me, with us. Her mother’s from the provinces, so she has no relatives in Hong Kong, and she’ll be alone, I can’t allow that; she’s my daughter, I won’t abandon her like that.”
Gran snorted and stalked out of the room, Grandpa trailing after her, casting apologetic looks at Dad and I.
My head was reeling; I had a sister? A half-Chinese sister? Was this why Gran was spitting sparks? Dad was looking closely at me, waiting for me to say something, but I was still trying to digest this.
Eventually I asked him “Does she want to come and live with you? You haven’t seen her for four years; does she remember you at all? Does she know about me, us, everything?”
“Yes to all of those, Harry,” said Dad, “I call her every evening, to wish her a good day at school, and to tell her I love her, because I do, just like I love you; you’re both my children, and I want you both near me. And she wants to meet her big brother. She needs us, her family, you and me.”
A sister! I had no hang-ups about the fact she was mixed-race, half the boys in my school were Chinese, Korean or Japanese, their fathers managing the huge electronics factories in and around Telford, so I was unworried by the race thing; it was the sister-thing that threw me. A sister, a younger sister!
“Dad,” I said, “How long does her mother….” I trailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence.
“A few weeks, maybe a couple of months,” he replied sadly.
“Sai Fong is going to need me, and I need you to be OK with this, I’ve been trying to work out a way to break it to you, you managed to do that quite well by yourself!”
He smiled, thinly, but it was a smile, the first genuine smile I’d seen from him in a long, long time.
“I was a more than a little shocked, when you told me, but I guess I’m OK with it; it might even be fun to have a kid sister to boss around!” I grinned, over the surprise, and more than slightly curious as to why Gran was so mad.
I asked him, and his expression became set again.
“Your grandmother thinks I’ve brought shame on the family, having a mixed-race child, and out of wedlock…”
This made no sense to me; many of the people I knew in and around Wolverhampton and Telford were of mixed parentage, and my Gran’s attitude was… just weird, and a little frightening in its intensity. In all the stunts I had pulled as a little boy, all the things I’d broken, or lost, or damaged, I’d never seen her lose it like this, so hostile and unforgiving.
“She comes from a different generation, Harry, it’s how she was brought up. Don’t judge her by today’s standards; that’s just how it was in her time, that’s what she learned, and that’s how she’ll stay. She’s already made it clear that Sai Fong is not welcome here; that being so, I’m in the middle of buying a place near Cosford, and the three of us will live there, if you have no objections.”
I had no objections; in the grand scheme of things, where Dad lived was of no great importance to me; I lived in a boarding school, only ever coming home on select weekends, so where I came back to for the weekend only was immaterial. Dad was the one with the problem; how was he going to deal with a ten-year old girl and work, so I asked him.
“We’ll be having an au-pair living with us,” he replied, “a student from Scandinavia, she’ll handle the daily routine for Sai Fong, making sure her clothes are OK, she’s fed and taken to school, that kind of thing, because I’ll be at work most of the time and you won’t be there, so Sai Fong’s going to need someone to look after her; she’s only 10, after all. The au-pair’s required to have the weekends free for study, so I’ll manage that, with help from you, if you’re OK with it. It’s not like Sai Fong’s a baby or anything like that, so weekends together shouldn’t be too much of a crisis! How does this fit in with your weekend plans, Harry?”