Read Online World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) by Richard Mason - Free Book Online

their tables she would sit alone, choose a victim, and fix him steadily with her eyes. And her eyes could be extraordinarily disturbing; they had a quality of their own which was a mixture of the hypnotic and sexy. The sailor who found himself held by them would grow uneasy; he would try and ignore her, then find himself drawn; and presently, no matter that he was with another girl, he would get up on the pretext of going to the lavatory, and stop as if accidentally at Big Alice’s table; and in five minutes they would be on their way upstairs.
    It was thus hardly surprising that Big Alice, who at one time or another had stolen boy friends from nearly every girl, should have been unpopular with the Shanghai faction and her fellow Cantonese alike.
    Little Alice, the plump little giggler, was one of the girls most in demand in the bar, though her nature was less agreeable than I had supposed at first encounter: she was, in fact, shallow, irresponsible, and mean. She had had three babies, and for this her parsimony had mainly accounted; for while other girls who found themselves pregnant would go to a Chinese doctor for an illegal injection, regarding the four hundred dollars’ expenditure as an overhead expense of their trade, Little Alice had always resisted making the painful disbursement until too late. Yet unlike the others, and untypical of the Chinese who as a rule adored children, she had no use for babies, and had given away two for adoption. The third had died before she had got round to making arrangements—no doubt from neglect.
    Little Alice’s three passions were eating cream-filled chocolates, going to the cinema, and buying new clothes. Every day she would appear with some new item of clothing or jewelry, and she would discard clothes that she did not like after a single wearing; but she gave nothing away and once, when Gwenny had offered to buy a month-old brocade jacket from her, Little Alice had charged her the full shop price.
    Her selfishness was unique among the girls. And almost unique, too, was her taste in sailors: for while most of the girls preferred older men, who were kinder and less trouble, Little Alice liked boys of twenty, or if possible under. Herself twenty-six, she would put up her price for men much her senior, and offend middle-aged matelots by making it clear, with giggles at their expense, that she only took them on sufferance. On the other hand if a sailor was sufficiently callow, and was out of funds, she would oblige him for nothing.
    The girls were all in their early or mid-twenties except for two; and both of these, Doris and old Lily Lou, were on the wrong side of forty.
    Lily Lou claimed to be only forty-one, and would whisper this figure huskily into my ear, adding, “But the girls think I’m only thirty-seven—you won’t tell them my secret, will you?” She would wink conspiratorially, and pat my hand. “Good boy! Good boy!” In fact the girls knew perfectly well, and so did I, that she was not a day under fifty.
    I could not help liking old Lily Lou. She reminded me of an old theater pro, who had grown up in a narrow professional world, took pride in the old-fashioned thoroughness of her technique, and looked down on the present-day youngsters for skimping their job. She remembered her own training in a smart brothel in Shanghai—oh, in those days you’d got to know how to please a man, you’d got to take trouble and time. It had been a real vocation; none of these modern girls would have lasted a minute. “They’ve got no mystery, dear,” she would whisper huskily, confidentially, patting my hand. “And that’s what a man likes—mystery.” And she would smile her carefully enigmatic smile that, despite the old whore’s shabbiness and over-rouged cheeks, could still just pass for mystery in the low diffused light of the bar.
    Lily Lou was the only girl besides Little Alice who sought out