Stormy Days and Windy Nights

 

We'd throw off our uniforms in a heap on the bedroom floor, jump straight back into our home clothes, against Chinese Nanny's protestations that we are to stay out of her way that day as she'd work to do, and filtering out Mother's instructions that we were still to study and do further homework.  She and Father would be on their way out to work still;  the Education Department has not told THEM not to go into the blistering gales to earn a living, to keep the lazy likes of us, their offspring, watered and fed regardless... I'd have a tiny pang of guilt that Mother would have to walk in streets flooded up to the ankles with rain water, catch a bus, then the Star Ferry to get across Hong Kong harbour for the office.  Hmm...boat, wind - not good.  But being a child given a lease on life, I watched Mother don her plastic rain covers over her work shoes, and parked that growing nasty thought to concentrate on the freedoms presented for that day.

 

 

Brother would also turn on Father's hi-fi system, and we'd play all of his record collection, at every speed - laughing ourselves stupid at the chipmunkish hundred miles per hour sounds, or the deep bear groans at the slowest setting.  Eventually Brother's mechanical curiosity would overcome him, when he'd proceed to dismantle the entire system, just to see what connects where, and if he could put it all back together again before Father came home to give him an Almighty hiding.

 

Cook would have been mumbling and grumbling about not being able to go to market for our food that day, but still don her rain gear with a stiff, trembling lower lip to battle the elements nonetheless. She'd walk out the door giving us that 'goodbye cruel world' look of a martyr.  "Prices for vegetables would be sky high", she'd yell behind her as she plunged down the four floors of our building into chaos.  And "What could be possibly found that's of use, or left?" would echo in the stairwell after her.  Wartime memories were still fresh enough in the colony of that time, so people from my parents' refugee generation could quickly revert into stockade mentality:  where was the stashed tin food - cans of Portuguese sardines and red chillies in olive oil, that had a small key to twist open (and inevitably fail you);  Mother's forever mountain of toilet rolls (gotta go even in war, famine or typhoon!); rice (hey we are Chinese, remember?) and preserved Chinese pickles in tins without the little key (made in mainland China so no such luxury;  you'd have to resort to your meat cleaver for opening).

 

So the hours would wear on after a frugal lunch - Nanny would make us our favourite, either spaghetti Chinese style: boiled, then stir fried with soy sauce and my favourite red chillie sauce - served with pork burgers smothered in dark soy and sugar. Or fly lice.  Er..fried rice.  Overnight rice left from dinner yesterday, with anything and everything thrown in that was also left over.  Absolutely delish.  But post-lunch there would be nothing to do.  I'd try to do the tiniest modicum of revision, in case Mother did ask when she eventually came home; but doze off in bed, listening to the now annoying howl of a relentless wind.  I'd half peep at the sky through my bedroom windows as I lay scattered across my pillows:  an ugly yellowy grey, with bits of rubbish streaking across if that had got taken up from the soggy streets below.  I'd look down at the roads, people still stupidly struggling through knee deep rainwater, their umbrellas long turned inside-out against prevailing forces.

 

Then the light would suddenly drop, the groan of the typhoon deepen correspondingly, to heighten the menace.  And thoughts of my Mother stuck on a wallah wallah (small Chinese row boat) trying to come home to us, would loom.  All your imprinting instincts would fire up then. Mother.  Source of all life, all nurture, all safety.  What if she got blown out of the boat and drowned?  At that horrible notion I'd leap up from bed and start my look out for her return, scanning through sheets of slashing rain for her silhouette.  I'd fail to worry Brother, or Nanny or Cook with my anxieties.  Brother would still be fiddling with Father's hi fi set - but with a greater urgency now that his homecoming hour was drawing scarily closer.  Nanny would be snapping runner beans into a small plastic colander, her biggish rump balanced on the smallest wooden bath stool imaginable.  I often pulled up Cook's stool to help hinder her at such tasks.   And Cook would be stir frying away at "barely anything" from her market adventure, albeit barely anything still smelled jolly good.

 

Then all of a sudden Father would return, an hour early, with Mother in tow.  They'd have caught the last ferry across before the service shut down for the night.  The eye of the storm would pass in the small hours, then the tail of the tiger before dawn.  And eventually all would be back to normal.  Our hearts sank at Father's analysis of the situatiion:  it meant school would be back on tomorrow morning, and I would have to face the consequences of not revising more for that maths test, or written a better composition for English during this extra day of typhoon grace.

 

And to finally quell Cook's remonstrations about the lack of tasty morsels, Father would command the appearance of Portuguese sardines dripping in olive oil.  He, would always triumph over the tiny key, applying a screwdriver to carefully unwind the can top to reveal the somnolent bodies of long dead fishies.  He'd pour the precious drops of oil over his hot rice, regaling us with tales of wartime food austerity, when you made the most of every drop of everything you could lay your hands on.  "Your Uncle Dick carried your Grandmother piggy back style during the Japanese Occupation, you know.  Because she couldn't walk any more.  And he begged for a bowl of rice congee from someone to feed her..."  We'd halt, mid rice scoop into our gobs, at the horror of such ignominy and deprivation.  All of a sudden, Father would light up with a new edict.  "Tell Cook to bring out the butter, a bottle of oyster sauce, and to fry up some eggs - one for each of us!"  It was a dish he'd told us endlessly about, from his boyscout days, and from the war of course.  He'd take a plate of steaming hot white rice, place the fried egg sunny side up on the summit, pour oyster sauce carefully around, and plop a pat of Lurpak butter over the lot.  After surveying his masterpiece, he would mush it all up with his chopsticks, and down the lot with misty-eyed gusto.  "Best thing you could ever have - bit of protein, bit of fat, bit of carbs.  A complete meal on a plate!"  And we'd all laugh in agreement, guzzle the mush with true appreciation, grateful for surviving yet another typhoon day, because we still lived in the lap of comparative luxury.

 

Later in the evening news on television, we'd see squatters' huts being obliterated by the storm, and images of children my own age homeless, wet and miserable on the screen.  Nanny would mock scold to get us back into our already mussed up beds, laying out freshly ironed uniforms in readiness for the morning.  Everyone was tired out for the day's unexpected interruptions.  I'd lie in the dark still listening to the dying song of the hurricane, drift off to a troubled sleep as it'd finally hit home, that I would be an abject failure with that maths test tomorrow.  And a sudden yelp would come from the living room, when Father had finally discovered that his hi-fi was still in half-reassembled pieces, a pile of odd screws and bolts hiding behind the sofa.  And I'd hear my brother snuggle deeper into his blankets to pretend he was fast asleep.