“I’ll meet you at the funicular at one,” Martin told her.

At one, Claire was at the tram station waiting. She had on a new dress the tailor had delivered just the day before, a white poplin based on a Paris original. She had found a Mr. Hao, an inexpensive man in Causeway Bay who would come and measure her at home and charge eight Hong Kong dollars a dress. It had turned out quite well. She had sprayed on a bit of Jazz although she still found it strong. She dabbed it on, then rubbed water on it to dilute the smell. At ten past one, Martin came through the station doors, and gave her a kiss.

“You look nice,” he said. “New dress? ”

“Mm-hmm,” she said.

They took the tram up the mountain, a steep ride that seemed almost vertical at times. They held on to the rail, leaned forward, and looked outside, where they could see into people’s homes in the Mid-Levels, with curtains pushed to one side, and newspapers and dirty glasses strewn on tables.

“I would think,” Claire said, “if I knew that people would be looking in my house all day from the tram, I’d make a point of leaving it tidy, wouldn’t you? ”

At the top, they found that the Arbogasts had hired rickshaws to take their guests to the house from the station. Claire climbed in.

“I always feel for the men,” she said quietly to Martin. “Isn’t this why we have mules or horses? It’s one of these queer Hong Kong customs, isn’t it? ”

“It’s a fact that human labor here often costs less,” Martin said. Claire stifled her irritation. Martin was always so literal.

The man lifted up the harness with a grunt. They started to roll along and Claire settled into the uncomfortable seat. Around them the green was overwhelming, tropical trees bursting with leaves that dripped when scratched, bougainvillea and every other type of flowering bush springing forth from the hillsides. Sometimes she got the feeling that Hong Kong was too alive. It seemed unable to restrain itself. There were insects crawling everywhere, wild dogs on the hills, mosquitoes breeding furiously. They had made roads in the hillsides and buildings sprouted out of the ground, but nature strained at her boundaries-there were always sweaty, shirtless worker men chopping away at the greenery that seemed to grow overnight. It wasn’t India, she supposed, but it certainly wasn’t England. The man in front of her strained and sweated. His shirt was thin and gray.

“The Arbogasts apparently had this place undergo a massive cleaning after the war,” Martin said. “Smythson was telling me about it, how it had been gutted by the Japanese and all that was left was walls, and not much of those at that. It used to belong to the Bayer representative out here, Thorpe, and he never came back after he was repatriated after the war. He sold it for a song. He’d had enough.”

“The way people lived out here before the war,” Claire said. “It was very gracious.”

“Arbogast lost his hand during the war as well. He has a hook now. They say he’s quite sensitive about it so try not to look at it.”

“Of course,” Claire said.

When they walked in, the party was in full swing. Doors opened onto a large receiving room which led into a large drawing room with windowed doors open onto a lawn with a wide, stunning view of the harbor far below. A violinist sawed away at his instrument while a pianist accompanied him. The house was decorated in the way the English did their houses in the Orient, with Persian carpets and the occasional wooden Chinese table topped with Burmese silver bowls and other exotic curiosities. Women in light cotton dresses swayed toward one another while men in safari suits or blazers stood with their hands in their pockets. Swiftly moving servants balanced trays of Pimm’s and champagne.

“Why does he do this? ” Claire asked Martin. “Invite the world, I mean.”

“He’s done well for himself here, and he didn’t have much before, and wants to do something good for the community. What I’ve heard, anyway.”

“Hello hello,” said Mrs. Arbogast from the foyer, where she was greeting guests-a thin, elegant woman with a sharp face. Sparkly earrings jangled from her ears.

“Lovely of you to have us,” said Martin. “A real honor.”

“Don’t know you, but perhaps we shall have the pleasure later.” She turned aside and looked for the next guest. They had been dismissed.

“Drink? ” Martin said.

“Please,” said Claire.

She saw an acquaintance, Amelia, and walked over. Too late, she saw that Mrs. Pinter was in the circle, partially hidden by a potted plant. They all tried to avoid Mrs. Pinter. Claire had been cornered by her before and had spent an excruciating thirty minutes listening to the old woman talk about ant colonies. She wanted to be kind to older people but she had her limits. Mrs. Pinter was now obsessed with starting up an Esperanto society and would reel unwitting newcomers into her ever more complicated and idiotic plans. She was convinced that a universal language would have saved them all from the war.

“I’ve been thinking about getting a butler,” Mrs. Pinter was saying. “One of those Chinese fellows would do all right with a bit of training.”

“Are you going to teach him Esperanto? ” Amelia asked, teasing.

“We have to teach everyone but the Communists,” Mrs. Pinter said placidly.

“Isn’t the refugee problem alarming?” Marjorie Winter said, ignoring all of them. She was fanning herself with a napkin. She was a fat, kind woman, with very small sausagelike curls around her face.

“They’re coming in by the thousands, I hear,” Claire said.

“I’m starting a new league,” said Marjorie. “To help the refugees. Those poor Chinese streaming across the border like herded animals, running away from that dreadful government. They live in the most frightful conditions. You must volunteer! I’ve let space for an office and everything.”

“You remember in 1950,” Amelia said, “some of the locals practically ran hotels, taking care of all their family and friends who had fled. And these were the well-off ones, who were able to book passage. It was quite something.”

“Why are they leaving?” Claire said. “Where do they expect to go from here? ”

“Well, that’s the thing, dear,” Marjorie said. “They don’t have anywhere to go, imagine that. That’s why my league is so important.”

Amelia sat down. “The Chinese come down during war, they go back up, then come down again. It’s dizzying. They are just these giant waves of displacement. And their different dialects. I do think Mandarin is the ugliest, with its wer and its er and those strange noises.” She fanned herself. “It’s far too hot to talk about a league,” she said. “Your energy always astounds me, Marjorie.”

“Amelia,” Marjorie said unsympathetically. “You’re always hot.”

Amelia was always hot, or cold, or vaguely out of sorts. She was not physically suited to life outside of England, which was ironic since she had not lived there for some three decades. She needed her creature comforts and suffered mightily, and not silently, without them. They had been in Hong Kong since before the war. Her husband, Angus, had brought her from India, which she had loathed, over to Hong Kong in 1938 when he had become undersecretary to the Department of Finance. She was opinionated, railing against what she saw as the unbearable English ladies who wanted to become Chinese, who wore their hair in chignons with ivory chopsticks and wore too-tight cheongsams to every event and employed local tutors so they could speak to the help in their atrocious Cantonese. She did not understand such women and constantly warned Claire against becoming one of such a breed.

Amelia had taken Claire under her wing, introducing her to people, inviting her to lunch, but Claire was often uncomfortable around her and her sharp observations and often biting innuendo. Still, she clung to her as someone who could help her navigate the strange new world she found herself in. She knew her mother would approve of someone like Amelia, even be impressed that Claire knew such people.