First Love

First Love ('Stirrings?')

The sun shone on us, in those far-off days in Hong Kong's New Territory. I had no thoughts other than football. My life was football. Football my beginning, football my end. Under the hot sun, usually over 30C, we played; we played when it was raining; we never stopped playing and we existed only for the game. Grubby white shirts, always sweaty, the only classmates I recognised were the ones who played football. The others remained nameless and faceless. Lessons were unimportant. I managed to keep a profile low enough to avoid scrutiny by the teachers. To play soccer was my 'raison d'etre.' I was unaware of the conversations there must have been around this time relating to my parents' concerns about the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China, but I knew that my father was preoccupied with the possibility of relocating to United States, to Vietnam or to anywhere else he could arrange. He was a teacher and so was my mother. As I said, all my physical and emotional energy was directed at football. Total attention was riveted on the Game.

On the field I was a competent and slightly bossy player, exhorting others to pull their socks up and put on speed. It was a fall that introduced a modicum of humility. I tripped on concrete and sustained a deep cut on my right knee which was tightly bandaged by the school caretaker with a bit of cloth taken from the first aid kit. Now the butt of my mates' jeering about being 'a one-legged freak', I limped around and outraged by the teasing, shoved a boy hard to the ground. The jeering intensified. One girl held back from the baiting. It was you. Our eyes met. I noticed white teeth above a gentle smile. I detected a softness about you, something special, and I was hooked. Perhaps the tripping and spilling my blood on the concrete marked a rite of passage into manhood. Returning after the break to the classroom, there was new feeling around that I could not explain, something mysterious and engulfing, a consciousness both of self and other. I had not yet learned the indicators of love in the air. My mates continued to make jokes about my temporary disability, but their mocking and teasing no longer bothered me. I was busy stealing glances at the back corner where you sat. You avoided my eyes by lowering your head. Very straight you sat, seldom engaging with the boys around, nor often with the girls. You seemed to have your mind on things more elevated than schoolgirl gossip. I became aware of you to a degree bordering on pain.

Christmas came. There was a class party, an opportunity for the boys to get to know the girls a little. In the general hilarity and we laughed until we cried watching someone fooling around trying to eat a piece of cake off the top of a coke can. It was the laughter bordering on hysteria that the young engage in faced with the novelty of the opposite sex. I watched you closely and my moment came when you passed me some chocolate. I saw the look in your eyes as your head leaned forward towards me and my heart quickened. I was deliriously happy, pulse racing and even more overjoyed when somebody jokingly remarked that I fancied you, probably horribly obvious. You did not object and we laughed together in chocolate acquiescence. So I thought, anyway.

Life continued, school, family, more of the usual. So involved was I in my own affairs, I did not take much notice of the occasional rows between by parents who always slipped into dialect to make their disagreements incomprehensible to the rest of the family.

Out of the blue, my father left for England. Life in Sheung Shui went on as usual. My siblings and I were not aware of much change and my mother managed to maintain pretty well the same lifestyle , teaching music and Chinese, and having lots of people around for dinner. She was a very popular and sociable person in our society. We heard nothing from her about letters from my father or any news about how he was getting on. Small doubts and insecurities starting creeping in causing me to wonder about the future.

Not too long afterwards I was catapulted eight thousand miles away to the other side of the world and pining for my lost love. Heart-sore and unhappy, I wondered whether destiny was against us. The weather was freezing in London and we were struggling. I drank tea continuously to keep warm and felt completely out of habitat. I was without friends and could not speak English. There was no communication with anyone other than family members. Unwelcoming eyes pigeon-holed us alien , untouchable. Worse still the British-born Chinese avoided us, not wishing to be reminded of what they had endured a generation before. 'Too fresh off the boat.............' In our case it had been a 'plane, but too fresh anyway.

Now you know why I seldom went out and in my isolation I engaged in furious correspondence with everybody I knew in Hong Kong, especially you. Two weeks exactly was how long it took to get a reply from Hong Kong to a letter posted in London and I lived for the sound of the postman rattling the letterbox as he dropped something through it. Sometimes I went down and discovered that it was only the wind that had shaken it and there was nothing there. I was elated when I received your letters, more precious than anything were they to me. A great day it was when two basketballs and a winter jacket arrived from Hong Kong in the post, briefly slaking my thirst for happier times. They were tangible symbols of my previous identity. You became the focus of my past and my future.

It was my longing for you and desire to see you again that gave meaning to my existence in those early days in London. Money was tight and I took a job in a restaurant at weekends to save up for a 'plane ticket to Hong Kong. My room was damp and with shivering hands I crossed out the passing days on the calendar . I identified with the prisoner in a film called Babylon, who had only a cockroach in his cell for company. Time seemed to be moving slowly and I estimated that it would be over five hundred days until we met. As a will-strengthening challenge, I occasionally braved the freezing weather to make my way to a petrol station around midnight to buy a chocolate bar, feeling icily triumphant on the way back to have accomplished something difficult. If I could do that, it meant that I could do anything.

Every Christmas Casablanca was on television. This epic love story seemed to illustrate my dilemma and I identified with Humphrey Bogart, casting you in the Ingrid Bergman role. I longed for the day that I would be on the plane taking off to see you, hoping that this would happen before the uncertainties of the hand-over of Hong Kong in 1997.

In order to economize and bring forward the day when I could look into your eyes again, I avoided putting on the heating, preferring to study draped in a dark blanket and sipping hot drinks. Some-times the condensation on the inside of the windows froze and the only warm spot was deep inside me, the heat of my longing for you. Time passed, summer came and winter again and at last, single-minded in my purpose of being with you, I found myself in Hong Kong again.

Once again, it was the same sun shining above us. In a delirium of delicious anticipation and without having given you any warning of my visit, I walked all around Sheung Shui to locate your home. Many addresses and phone numbers had changed while I had been gone. Walking past barking dogs along the stony path, I asked passers by for your address. I heard a rooster crowing bringing back memories of my childhood in the village. I was reminded that in the old days we had lived quite close by and that on rainy days the whole area could be covered in water. On those days I took my school uniform in a plastic bag and the water was up to my waist. Getting on the bus with wet trousers was singularly unpleasant. In the middle of these reminiscences your house came into view, under a large tree and enclosed by a fence. There outside, hammering a nail into a piece of wood, was your father. He said to go in. The dog also was not unfriendly, which was a relief as my dignity was on trial. Arriving there was an accomplishment because it was over five years since I left. I was tired from wandering around in the strong sun, thirsty and quite nervous. Your brother seemed less friendly than the dog, probably wondering what a young man with bad skin was doing visiting his sister. Then you came out holding a small cup of Chinese tea. There was the same sweet look of understanding in your eyes and the same gentle smile. You invited me in to look at some photographs and I handed you the gift I had brought, a pink scarf. You seemed pleased. I was completely overcome and self conscious and trying very hard to appear relaxed. You were gracious and I believe you could read my mind as I gazed at you during the family lunch. Your mother kept pressing me to have more rice, which I interpreted as a gesture of welcome and of approval. She asked me where I came from and, instead of explaining to her that I used to live in Sheung Shui, I blurted out that I was from England. I was pleased not to be asked whether I liked it there. I badly wanted never to return, even if it meant sacrificing my studies. But at the same time I felt obliged to fulfil my father's unconsummated dream of completing a degree. This is what I had to do.

All too quickly the afternoon passed and the heat lessened. On the way to the station you walked behind me. The whole of Sheung Shui seemed to be under construction, tall buildings replacing the single storied. It was a time of rapid development. Rather abruptly you told me that I should concentrate on my studies. I agreed of course, hoping that what you meant was that you would be the prize if I succeeded . I wondered how I would survive another three years without you and it was excruciating to leave with so little resolved.

In the doldrums again in London, I was overtaken by shattering news from my mother. She and my father were to divorce. My heart was severed like the half-moon in the sky that night, the dark side obscured. Devastated, the next day I travelled to Newcastle , where I struggled to put a smile on my face at a friend's wedding. University entrance was two weeks away when I came off the worse with a broken jaw in a fight. I spent a week in hospital temporarily losing my memory. I dreamt of you walking on beaches and it was the thought of you that kept me from slipping away into unconsciousness and beyond. I was losing the will to go on and you became my only reality. I wrote to you about my fears of not being sufficiently well recovered in time to go to university. Your reply was merely to suggest certain authors for my advancement and and I wondered whether you wanted to distance yourself from me, now cast in the role of brawler. The next blow to my dreams was news that you had decided to study further in Australia not considering London (and me) an option.

For eight weeks my mouth was wired up and I had to sip liquid nourishment through a straw. Initially I slept in the student hall, but survived the course and started to recover. I threw myself into my studies and into every kind of physical activity available, football, basketball, table tennis and badminton. At that stage I hardly knew how to do a book search on the computer. Life became a series of games and gatherings, winning and losing, much excitement, waking and sleeping, writing notes, buying books and ultimately acquiring a degree. The same sun continued to shine and I heard nothing of you. Time and life continued to slip away. Christmases (and Bergman and Bogart) came and went.

We met again briefly, in Hong Kong, in the nineties, when we exchanged name cards. We did not talk much. You seemed to be very much a loner. Back again in London a year before the handover of Hong Kong, people in London were wondering whether there would be a white Christmas. On Christmas Eve, the tenth since our memorable one, snow began to fall so heavily that I could hardly open my front door. Casablanca was showing again. I could not count how many times I had watched Bogart pointing a gun at the German officer telling him to put the phone down. My own phone rang....... friends in Hong Kong calling to wish me a happy Christmas. Amongst the news, they told me that they had heard of you had died of pneumonia the previous month. (?????) My heart beating wildly, I went outside and ran uphill into the night blinded by emotion. The wind cut my face and my footprints were soon covered by the soft falling snow. My first love had sprung into being at Christmas. It was Christmas again.

I heard later that you had never taken a lover, in spite of having many suitors and had always kept to yourself. I felt that the bond established when we were very young would remain unbroken through eternity . I will always be grateful for the the special look in your eyes, your smile and for
the promise of what might have been. Fantasies of you accompanied me through some of the worst times of my life, delicately and deliciously distracting me with the divine torture of unconsummated love.