When Cheung was a boy, Wong Nai Chung Village had smelled of warm mountain, sea air, steamed rice, and incense, and sometimes of salted fish when his cousins from Chek Keng and Wong Mo Ying in the New Territories near the border to the Chinese mainland came down with a freshly prepared batch to exchange for the rice that Cheung’s father bought wholesale at the docks in Victoria Harbour. In the old days, the family grew its own rice in the paddies below the village. Now this Portuguese painter Baptista had painted the village out of existence. But Cheung knew that it was still there, under the line of trees. It didn’t smell too good anymore, though. These days, the village smelled as though the whole of the filled-in swamp had taken residence there. It reeked of rotten grass and sewage.

He’d long wished his mother would accept that the village was finished and move to Tai Hang with the rest of Wong Nai Chung’s former inhabitants. There was really no point staying after his father’s death. A move would also be a reprieve for his sister, Hok-Yee, who had stayed only to look after their mother. But now that the Tai Hang house was gone, Cheung didn’t know what to wish. Would they come and live with him at the HKCC steward’s flat, if he asked?

“There you are, Cheung!” Colville shouted from the far end of the hallway. “Can you get down to the kitchen? The bar wants devilled eggs, and young Nigel doesn’t know how to make mayonnaise.”

“Of course, sir,” said Cheung. What a fool he was to be daydreaming when there was work to be done. He hurried down to the kitchen to give young Nigel Yik-Shun a lesson in sauces and dressings.

The toffs were restless and they drank and laughed and chatted until late at night.

The moon was high and all the trams had stopped running by the time Cheung was finally free to go. He could have hailed a rickshaw, but money was tight, and with everything so uncertain, he decided he’d save his coins and walk. All along Hennessey Road, the little grocers, tea shops, sundry kiosks, money changers, and pawn shops were shuttered. There was no one out except other workers like him returning home exhausted after a late shift. To cheer himself up, he sang a little tune his father had taught him before he died.

Lonely on the mountain path

Through mist and rain

Through rain and mist

I’m searching always searching

Searching for you

Lonely down beside the river

Through mist and rain

Through rain and mist

I’m searching ever searching

Searching for you

Lonely by the ocean too

Through mist and rain

Through rain and mist

Searching still I’m searching

Never finding you