My grandmother still speaks of the Woodmans with great affection. In her time with this gentle English family, my grandmother would learn what was like to be part of an English family. She became accustomed to Western behaviour like drinking tea at three and going for long walks after Sunday lunch. She took so well to the English way of life that the family and their friends came to describe her as ‘the English rose with a Chinese heart.’
Having recently arrived in Hong Kong, The Woodmans lived on Robinson Road, which meant Lilly had not only achieved her ambition to venture behind the forbidding gates of it mansions but she was working no more than five minutes from Eva. My grandmother was again engaged as a nanny, this time to two young children.
Her experience in this household had none of the formality and discipline of her last post as the Woodmans were an entirely different breed from the Van Houtens. Mr. Woodman, had none of the Mr. Van Houten’s detachment. Nor did he share any of his cold formal attitudes to employees and Lilly came to love him for it. Tall and balding with slightly sticking out ears, when he smiled, he showed his gums and his eyes formed into two small slits as if he were a parody Chinese. He became known to Lilly and the other servants as the ‘English Chinese man’ because of his unusual looks.
Mr. Woodman was responsible for the rebuilding of the entire electricity supply to Hong Kong. He was a very important man in industrial circles but he was quintessentially English and bewildered by the exotic sights and sounds of Hong Kong. In the hot and humid summer that Lilly first came to the Woodman household, be was perpetually exasperated by the demands of his new job.
Lilly’s role morphed quickly into all round household help and city guide as well as one of unofficial confident and guide, even if it mean reminding her flustered master that his glasses were on the top of his head and he was expected to work Saturday mornings as part of the typical working ethos in Hong Kong.
Lilly’s spirit of fun fit well with the Woodman’s family self depreciating good humour. After so many years of hardship the family’s genuine affection for each other made my grandmother feel at home in their house. .
However her duties also included looking after Mr. Woodman’s elderly mother, know respectfully Mrs. Woodman senior.
Mrs. Woodman senior was a heavily built old lady who was failing in her health. She had a good heart and of and grateful for the attention my grandmother gave her. The connection between the too grew into a lifelong friendship. Mrs. Woodman senior’s advice and support made her hugely influential in my grandmother’s life. Of all the Woodman family, it was her who came to love my grandmother like their one of her own
One of the great pleasures of the job, recalls my grandmother, were the walks she used to take with Mrs. Woodman senior. Though she was in her sixties and my grandmother was still only in her twenties, the two found they had much in
common. They loved to walk by the sea and watch the activities along the pier. My grandmother would always comment on the white flowers floating on the water where the river joined the sea. She loved their beauty and delicacy, and admired their strength; they were able to survive in the powerful waters around them. It was Mrs. Woodman senior who told her that they were called lilies, the name of the magical water flowers that inspired my grandmother to adopt the English name, Lilly.
But despite the ease with which my grandmother could move in Mrs. Woodman’s world, her employer had little idea of the squalor in which her trusted servant lived. Mrs. Woodman senior was intrigued and she often quizzed her about her home life as they travelled together by car or taxi through the crowded streets.
Eventually Mrs. Woodman Senior decided to take her investigations a step further and asked my grandmother to show her how the Chinese really lived. More particularly she wanted to see how Lilly lived.
Although Lilly had spent many hours with Mrs. Woodman, and they had grown very close, she was not yet ready to show her home. But the old woman was insistent. So one afternoon at the end of a shopping trip, my grandmother took her back to the slums of Wan Chai. As soon as the cab came to a halt in the thin, dark street, my grandmother began to blush in shame. The presence of Mrs. Woodman senior brought into sharp focus the misery of the place where she and her family lived. It was something that, out of familiarity, she had previously ignored. The windows of her little apartment opened out on the street below, which itself teamed with people spitting and smoking. There was underwear flapping about in the wind hung from a piece on sting across the veranda; the gutters were filled with gravel; and weeds were growing out of the cracks in the concrete walls. Piles of wood ends and rusting metal obstructed the entrance to the concrete steps that led into the gloomy hallway. Mrs. Woodman senior commented on how forlorn, lost and forgotten Lilly’s home was and she could not understand how someone could really live in such conditions.
The interior was even worse. Rubbish was strewn in a corner and dirt stained cloths partitioned the rooms. It was cold and depressing in the cramped accommodation and the lingering fumes from their kerosene oven made the old woman choke as she stepped across the threshold. The lack of plumbing and basic running water meant that the whole place stank of urine, not just from my grandmother and her family but from the hundreds of other who called the block home.
Mrs. Woodman senior was shocked to tears at the sight of my grandmother’s apartment. She covered her mouth with a handkerchief as she picked her way through the debris, afraid to sit down. Looking at her with sad expression, she asked rhetorically how Hong Kong could call itself a British colony with such terrible medieval living conditions prevalent amongst its residents.
Excerpt from Sweet Mandarin by Helen Tse. Published by Random House in 33 countries. Now available to download on Kindle.
