Blue Lantern by Gil Hogg Page A

then, as he did now. She ran down ten flights to the manager’s office and implored him to call an ambulance. At the Queen Elizabeth hospital her mother was left in a side room with others, and Vanessa’s entreaties for attention only brought rebukes from the medical staff to wait her turn. As Vanessa waited by the stretcher, the room was full of cries and moans and tears of forgotten people, and the floor spotted with blood. Vanessa found a telephone and in desperation rang Uncle Starboard. In three quarters of an hour, he was at his sister’s side. The place brightened at his presence. He chatted with a doctor and joked with a nurse. Then he patted Vanessa on the shoulder and disappeared, but Vanessa’s mother was taken immediately to a large quiet room on an upper floor. While her mother was being examined, Vanessa waited on the balcony. The hospital hovered high over the sea, and the sun was moving to hide behind the islands. All the doctors and nurses went away, and only one amah was left in the sickroom. Mrs Chan was unconscious. The amah said Mrs Chan needed special care, which she would give in return for tea money. Vanessa said they were poor and had no money. The amah looked doubtfully round the spacious room, and said it was too bad. Vanessa dreamed that night of the flaring nostrils of the old woman. She thought perhaps she should have told Uncle Starboard, but surely the nurses would look after her mother. A day later, her mother died without recovering from an operation to remove a tumour in her stomach.
    Vanessa was left to look after the two children and her father. She left school. Uncle Starboard called at times, observing that housework was boring and unprofitable. After three months, he had tea with her one afternoon, and explained his thoughts. He could get her a job in a bank but what would she earn? Five or six hundred a month for the first couple of years while she trained, and after that, probably not much more. In an office, uncle said, her one important asset would be wasted. He said she had something which could enable a poor girl to become rich – not only rich, but perhaps famous. He had a confident paternal smile.
    This talk puzzled and confused Vanessa who was not sure of herself, and too shy to question her uncle. She was pretty; a little bigger than average with a pale skin, a prized quality; but she didn’t think she was more beautiful than most of the girls she knew. Uncle Starboard explained that she should work in a ballroom. Vanessa had heard about ballrooms. Chinese men went there to meet girls; they danced and drank tea. The ballrooms were said to be elegant and the girls exquisite. Vanessa had had ballroom hostesses pointed out to her on the street, and they were beautiful. Sometimes they married rich men; always they were given money, and treated with respect. Vanessa felt it was a very ladylike life, and somewhat above her. What she was used to was school, housework and Sunday picnics on Lantau with her classmates.
    Uncle Starboard bought a wardrobe of evening gowns and cocktail dresses, and Vanessa went to work at the Majestic, one of the most expensive ballrooms in Hong Kong. She worked only three evenings a week, starting at two in the afternoon, and finishing at ten. All she did was talk to the men who cared to sit with her, and dance with them if they asked. She was quick to learn the dance steps, which she had already practiced with her friends. She was not only proficient but she loved dancing – although her partners were often rather awkward. On several occasions in the first few months, men asked her to dine with them, and Vicky Ho, who was their mother at the ballroom, insisted that she go home directly by taxi. European men came to the Majestic only rarely; they were not excluded, but they were not encouraged. Once Vanessa met an Englishman, and they were able to talk in the sketchy English she had learned at school. But Vicky soon approached