Sundays were always a luxury: the day of the week when everyone slept at least half an hour longer. Mei-lin rose at six. Lit the coal range and boiled the water, opened the tin of Oolong tea and sniffed the dark smoky leaves. She loved that smell, the almost muskiness of it. After her father had gambled everything away, before he had sold her, there had been no tea, only cups of hot water. She put a scant teaspoon into the porcelain teapot, added boiling water, watched the leaves expand and unfurl, the lighter twigs floating on the surface of the colouring water. She put on the lid and replaced the pot in its padded wicker basket. Then she started on the rice gruel. She washed the rice, added pork bones marinated and roasted in garlic, ginger, rice wine, sugar and soy, put the pot on the range, two-thirds filled it with water, added several more slices of ginger, and tilted the lid just a little so it wouldn’t boil over.
The brothers rose at 6.30. Jo san, early morning, they said to each other as they met on the stairs. They drank their tea, then Shun scrubbed out the shop with soda, soap and hot water. He wiped the shelving and benches, the cash register and the scales. He scrubbed the floor. He brought the soft ripe fruit in from the window and replaced it with the freshest, the rosiest fruit. And once, he paused for a moment, looking out through the glass at the empty street, at the dark shop windows – Mackenzie’s Butchery, Wilson’s Drapery, Krupp’s Pharmacy – at the clear blue sky.
Out the back, Yung arranged a line of upright apple boxes. He lit a kerosene lamp, then went into the banana ripening room. He stared for a moment in the semi-darkness, breathing in the gas, then came out again, blinking at the brightness, carrying a case of bananas which he placed on top of an apple box. He brought in three empty banana cases from the stack outside the back door and placed them on either side of the full one. Then he sorted the bananas into three groups – green, semi-ripe, ripe – carefully arranging them in the appropriate case. As he worked he sang arias from Cantonese operas, folk songs, ditties he made up as he went along, bringing case after case out of the gaseous twilight of the banana room. When he had brought out and sorted all the bananas, he put the unripe ones back, the semi-ripe closest to the door, then took the ripe ones into the shop. Any spotty or overripe fruit on the shelves – apples or pears with smooth depressions of brown rot, or bananas blighted with freckles or bruises rising though the yellow skin – he put into the marked-down bins for stewing or baking or frying. Salad bananas. He didn’t understand English – the language, like the people, kept changing the rules. They cooked a banana and called it salad; they ate raw lettuce and called it salad. He shook his head and smiled. On special occasions, when he boiled lettuce and poured oyster sauce-flavoured mushrooms on top, did this make it salad also?
At 7.45, Mei-lin called them for breakfast. They washed their hands and came to the table.
‘It’s a good day,’ said Yung, as he sprinkled spring onion on his gruel. ‘Warm and not too windy.’ He slurped happily. ‘Today, I was thinking of doing something different.’
Every Sunday the men went down Haining Street to eat and drink and gossip with their village cousins and others from their county – with any Chinese, in fact: the accents might be different, sometimes even difficult to understand, but here in the New Gold Mountain they were all brothers. Mei-lin stayed home with Wai-wai, or sometimes took him to visit the few other women and children.
But sai yan, westerners, took outings on Sundays. In summer time they might go to the Basin Reserve or take the ferry to Days Bay or go for a swim along Oriental Parade. Even the women did it. Yung had seen some of them. There had been a crowd (mostly men) watching, enjoying the daring of the latest attire. Their costumes exposed their arms and shoulders, the tops of their chests and a V of flesh on their backs; they even exposed their thighs. Where the wet fabric covered them, it clung to every curve, leaving little for the imagination.
Mrs McKechnie had told him about the cable car, how there was a tram at the top and one at the bottom, how one slid up while the other slid down, passing in the middle, stopping at each station with a ring of the bell. She told him about the grand Kiosk at the top where the young gentlemen took the young ladies to have tea and cakes for sixpence.
‘It goes up the hill to Kelburne,’ Yung said, ‘and you look out at the hills and houses and the harbour. You can come back down on it again or walk through the botanical gardens. I think I’ll take a tram and then the cable car. I can take Wai-wai too. It won’t cost anything for him and he’ll love the engines.’
Shun raised his eyebrows. They’d never been on a tram, let alone the cable car. Trams cost a penny so they walked everywhere.
‘The cable car only costs a penny for a return ticket,’ Yung said. ‘Won’t it be fun, Wai-wai?’
Wai-wai began to plead louder and louder with his father. Shun always found it hard to say no to him, and he did not like the idea of his son knowing and experiencing more than him. He would go too. He looked across the kitchen table, through the wisps of steam rising from the bowls of gruel, and saw the disappointment on Mei-lin’s face.
Why not, he thought and smiled at her. ‘Wai-wai’s mother can come too.’
Mei-lin could feel the beginning of tears at the back of her eyes. She blinked, willed them away. She had never been on an outing, never ridden a tram or cable car. She looked across at the father of her son. It had been months and she had barely spoken to him.
That night, Shun woke with Mei-lin in his arms. Why hadn’t he done it earlier? He brushed the hair from her eyes, told her he would arrange an adoption. If they could not find a suitable boy in Melon Ridge, then they would look for a Wong from White Stone or Sand Head villages. They would find a number two son for his wife back in China.