The Curious Disappearance of Mr Foo Script

THE CURIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF MR FOO

By Moira Kenny John Campbell

A play based on five of the verbatim oral histories, memories and reminiscences captured during the Liverpool Chinatown Oral History 2014

Š The Sound Agents 2018.

Thesoundagents@gmx.co.uk

"Warning: this play occasionally contains violence, strong language, dark humour and content including derogatory words that the British Born Chinese people interviewed have reclaimed to describe themselves�

1

ACT 1 Fade in

Image of café interior in Liverpool Chinatown projected on screen.

The stage set is a small café with tables and chairs. The tables are covered in table cloths with a Chinese plate in the centre Soy Sauce, salt and pepper pots from the Far East Restaurant. Images of Chinatown Liverpool street scenes and cafe are projected on to the screen. Cathleen enters stage shakes her brolly, sits on a chair on stage talking directly to the audience. Cup and saucer and teapot in front of her.

She takes photographs and newspaper clipping out of her handbag and starts to look through them.

CATHLEEN DELANEY My name is Cathleen Delaney. I was born and bred not far from Chinatown, in Caryl Gardens in the Dingle.

My dad came to Liverpool when he was fifteen he came from Southern Ireland, he came here with his Mam, brothers and sister, his father was a Merchant Seamen and he was expected to join him. My dad worked for Liverpool Corporation and my mum was a housewife. She was half Irish, a quarter Spanish, an eighth Scottish and an eighth Scandinavian no wonder she was mad. I have got nine brothers and sisters and I am the youngest girl. My family weren’t practising Catholics they had perfected it.

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We knew all the Patron Saints off by heart, say if you lost a sock or your handbag, the whole family would pray to St Anthony. St Anthony is great because he is also the Patron Saint of lost people so if someone was late home from playing out or my dad late coming home from the pub he came in dead handy.

When I was young I read Lives of the Saints and from that day on, I had an ambition to be an actress like Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Syliva Syms or Beryl Reid.

In those days, Honest to God, you would think it was a sin for a woman to have ambitions in our house.

My friend Brenda lived in Pitt Street so I used to hang around there. Brenda was very cosmopolitan. She had it all, she knew exactly what she wanted in life. When she was at school she had her sights on working in a restaurant like her sister.

I wanted more than that but she was alright to hang around with, always up for going out. She liked a laugh and we could bunk in to the Norwegian Bar. You probably know it as the Nook.

Brenda knew everyone‌ I personally never saw any Norwegians though.

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All of Brenda’s family, aunties uncles and that, lived within three streets and her granddads friend was from Africa and he had never been as far as Nile Street.

Her granddad used to tell us tales of his school days, he used to see immigrants coming up from the Pier Head walking up in groups you know and they used to have an old fashioned charabanc with no hood on, some of them would be in that and that was driven by a Mr Skeleskie he used to live in Pitt Street opposite St Michael’s Church, the old church, the church that was bombed in the May blitz in 1941. Mr Skeleskie was the driver and he used to take them up to St George’s Square to the houses further on from the Doctor’s where the Medical Centre is now.

You know the Façade that is still up there now? Well those big houses? He used to put them in there.

People coming from Spain and Poland and Russia all staying near the doctor’s surgery opposite the Bowley, some were from Germany and they stayed there for a couple of weeks until they moved on to America… and then they would put another load in.

When her granddad was little he used to fight with the foreign kids, none of them could speak English and he 4

used to go up there and he’d be arguing and things like that… and the women had long dresses and scarves on and the kids used to wear the big hats and they’d just hang around on the doorstep, even in this weather and I swear, he said it used to be crowded all around there in 1933.

Even before that they were coming over because America wanted people to go there, to open the land up you know, open America up and these were the people to do it and they just came over in droves. He said the only nationality he didn’t see around there was an Eskimo!

All poor people and they had no suitcases then just a bundle.

Brenda’s Granddad said he didn’t see many Chinese, they had the families in Pitt Street but all around that area it was predominately Jewish. They thought they had arrived in America when they came here and stayed. Poor buggers.

They just disappeared as the area got built up and then the Chinese came over with the Blue Funnel Line. You never heard people moaning then though did yer? You never heard them moaning and this was one of the biggest cosmopolitan cities.

Brenda’s family didn’t like outsiders coming in, they 5

still don’t now, but I was alright because me Uncle Paddy lived in Frederick Street and he worked on the Docks.

My friend Vera, well her mother was 100 a couple of years ago and she could remember people herding cattle up Duke Street straight off the boats.

When you realise what was happening down at the Docks and you know, it was a hive of activity and now there's nothing it makes you cry at times.

Her granddad said he could even remember people living in little courts in Frederick Street and there was one further up just after St Vinny’s. They had them in Roscoe Lane, Parr Street, you know, communal toilets, one toilet between ten families it was disgusting. Absolutely disgusting and people used to live like that, whole families living in two rooms.

It was a strong community and I liked that. I felt like I belonged. In the Dingle everyone was too nosey. They thought they were dead posh, roses around the door and half a kipper for tea. If you didn’t go to mass or behave the right way you were the talk of the wash house. I hated it. Caryl Gardens was near the Southern Hospital. When the Gardens went up it was considered to be built for the 6

workers, people who could pay the rent. My grandfather on me mothers side was a fireman so there were people like that in there, policemen, you know people who could pay the rent. Whenever I told people where I lived they would say ‘ooeh that’s a bit posh’ but it depends on your definition of posh doesn’t it? The Queen Mother opened them and she thought they were horrible. She said she wouldn’t have been seen dead in them.

(Pause) Enter Mr Foo with his striped duffle bag over his shoulder sits down at a table.

Listen to this, when I went around to Brenda’s one night, there was this Chinese fella standing on the corner of the street I think he had just come off the boat and he just kept looking at me.

He was gorgeous like Humphrey Bogart in the film ‘In a Lonely Place’ all smart and smoking a cigar with one of those stripy duffle bags over his shoulder.

He just kept staring at me, so I said; ‘What are you looking at? Do you want a picture?’

And he laughed and walked off towards the Nook. I 7

went around every night after that to see if I could see him again I told me mother I was going to mass.

Me mother thought I was planning to be a nun or a missionary and started knitting hats for the little African children that I was supposed to be going to work with.

I didn’t see him for ages. Foo I found out his name was. I played skipping outside Brenda’s house with all the kids in the street just in case I saw him again but then I gave up.

I left school and got myself a job in the Gaumont Cinema in the Dingle, I had to walk down the aisles with a flash light and count all the heads and Brenda got a job in a café, The Central. We sort of lost touch for a while as you do. I hadn’t seen her for ages but met her one night at the Davey Lewis Theatre and she told me that the fella that had been staring at me in the street that time had called in to her café.

The projection images change from present day café image to Black and White Bert Hardy image of men sitting in a café Enter Mr Foo sits at one of the tables on stage and talks directly to the audience.

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MR FOO My name is Mr Foo. I was born in Shanghai I came here in 1945 just after the war. Chinese seamen were blasted off the Atlantic in Merchant Navy by German.

It was terrible… so many of Chinese sailors were torpedoed during the Atlantic run. I never liked you know seafaring, it was not very good to me like, it was very hard working the Sea but at that time what can you do like?

When I came to Liverpool I lived in Nile Street they called it the Boarding House. The Boarding House was owned by the Blue Funnel. We used to have the Davey Lewis here but I don’t think you would know because it was taken down a long time ago.

I used to go to the Central likey we got vouchers off the Blue Funnel, the company was called Alfred Holt Company. I came here because of me Uncle. He worked for the Ocean Steam Ship Co and China Mutual. He came back to China one day and said to me that I could get a boat with him and send me money back home to me mother and me wife. I didn’t want to go but what can you do?

I travelled around the world to get here. I would 9

have walked across China and swam across rivers to help me family. I arrived in London with nothing and couldn’t speak a word of English.

Me uncle gave me the directions like, he had gone on before me and told me like when I arrived in Lime Street Station, I had to make me way to meet a man called Mr Smith. He would give me a job as a Sailor.

I looked very smart like, I had a suit on. Very smart. I had a big cigar me uncle gave me and I had a bit of money and an address to go to.

I told me wife I said ‘what can I do? I don’t want to go’ but we lived on a farm and we were starving. In those days, that was the time when the Japanese would come to the village and take what they want and use a chopper on old people.

She said ‘you have got to go if you don’t what will happen to us? We will die’ So I went like.

She was alright me wife like, we had only been married for three months. Not like now, not like here, you didn’t fall in love like. It was arranged between the families. She was a friend of me mothers she came from Ning-Po, from a very poor 10

family. There were lots of farmers and in those days we all worked on the farm from the age of six.

There was no education when we were growing up. Me mother burnt me stomach, so I could be identified if anyone came and took me, she needed me to work.

CATHLEEN DELANEY Well I said to Brenda ‘Goway’ he’s come back! And the next thing I went down to the Central.

I swopped me shift with another usherette so she did the matinee and I went and sat in the café for ages. I got all dressed up and then he walked in.

I used to dress like all the big stars in those days.

He came and sat on the same table as me, he was dead friendly with Brenda ‘cos she worked there and saw him all the time. They were having a laugh and all of a sudden he told me that Brenda had told him I fancied him like mad. I could have killed her. She made a holy show of me!

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He said to me ‘look over there’ and I turned to look out of the window and he kissed me on the cheek. I said ‘Ay I don’t even know you get off’ And he said ‘You’ve got a whole life time to get to know me’ Before we knew it we were going out.

He told me he came from Shanghai it sounded lovely and romantic. Brenda was going with his mate and we used to have a ball.

We always ended up in the Nook Pub.

(Projected Images of The Nook)

The landlady Mrs Jones wore these massive hats. They were this big (holds her arms out full length) I swear I don’t know how she got through the door.

All the sailors used to bring birds of paradise home for her and little monkeys and she would stuff them and stick them on her hat. (pulls face) I know… don’t ask… it doesn’t bear thinking about!

She even had one of her hats in a glass case. She was made up with them. It must have got too heavy for her head.

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That was there for donkey’s years I wonder what happened to that?

She used to sit on this high chair, 3 sons she had; Tim was a policeman‌ Gerald and Coleman.

She did get all the customers though and everyone respected her.

All the Chinese sailors drank in there and there was a Chinese club upstairs.

(Laughs) I would be standing under the exit sign under the clock in work watching Garbo on the silver screen dreaming of Foo and meeting him in the pub.

Images of Gladstone Dock projected on screen

MR FOO

When the ship docked in Liverpool the Chinese crew went in to town with all their money and gambled like, we played Pak-a-Pew and Mah-Jong. The prostitutes came to the ship before we got off and knocked on all the cabin doors. What can a man do, away for months likey?

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Some men said “Not today thank you very much” but some men needed it. They would knock on all of the doors and they were very polite and organized they would meet in the pub and go down as a group.

Most of the ship men been away a long, long time so they were happy to oblige like but I don’t know about the Captain.

A lot of the Seamen got benefits from the Shipping Company they were paid to the Owners of the Boarding Houses and the Sailors would get like pocket money… that’s all.

We all just wait around spending all of our time in Nelson Street playing games.

(Laughs) We would gamble on two flies walking up a wall.

Bert Hardy Image of Chinatown projected

CATHLEEN DELANEY

Foo fell madly in love with me but I couldn’t take him home because there would have been murder.

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Do you know what I mean?

He wasn’t a Catholic apart from anything else and I mean… he was Chinese.

I nearly died every time he came to meet me at the Gaumont in case anyone saw us. He would be standing outside smoking his cigar waiting for me and when he saw me he would pick me up by the waist and twirl me around.

I used to panic because one of me aunties used to go to the pet shop up Park Road, she said she liked to talk to these lovely little Chinese girls taking exotic birds in boxes to Lime Street station and sending them off all over the world.

And then she would buy the wool for the hats from the knitting shop for the poor little African babies that I was supposed to be going to work with and I knew if she saw me that would be the end.

Anyway… once me and Foo got to Chinatown it was alright.

Everyone was accepted there.

Images of old Chinatown and people projected on to the screen Foo was the centre of attention, we would walk past the 15

Shanghai and Aunty Loo would be sitting on the steps talking to everyone and all the kids would be playing in the street waiting for their uncles to come out of the houses after playing the Mar-Jong. If they won, all of the kids, it didn’t matter who they were, they’d all get money and ham baos that were massive they were this big (holds hands out the size of a football) and Lichee nuts off Wu Fang.

Foo used to make the kids scream by showing them his scars on his stomach. He told them he was attacked by the Japs.

God he was a liar.

He used to tell them stories about his trips to Australia, India and America and then he’d go and buy bean sprouts off the old man who grew them in a cellar.

Sometimes the Black Mariah would come to Nelson Street and all these Chinese men would come up from a basement in one of the houses opposite the Blue Funnel Office laughing their heads off, all pretending they couldn’t speak a word of English.

One of the little kids would run up to Kent Gardens and shout ‘the coppers are here’ and all the women would come running to watch. It was dead funny. They had already 16

been warned a few days earlier by this Detective. It was like a film. There was never any trouble.

MR FOO There were hardly any fights like and if there were, they were only between the Chinese and even then there was this Chinese fella who lived in Pitt Street and someone would run to his house and he would turn up and stop the fight.

Cathleen Delaney Women weren’t allowed in the gambling houses but one day, one of the women got so sick and tired of having no housekeeping, do you know as soon as her husband got off the ship he would go straight in and lose it all. He kept getting arrested and she was fed up getting him bailed out.

Well she walked in and saw about four of them sitting at a table smoking and she saw them playing the Mar-Jong banging the tiles around making all this noise, you could hear it in the street.

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MR FOO She stormed over to them and lifted up the whole table and chucked it across the room like! (Laughs)

CATHLEEN DELANEY She was dead nice you know everyone was really shocked.

But imagine having five kids and no money and he expected a meal on the table and the kids to look nice. What was she supposed to do? There was no social in those days.

‘Street Angels House Devils’ that’s what some of those sailors were and not just the Chinese either. All nice to everyone outside then nasty indoors.

Her kids would have starved if she hadn’t gone down to the ship with the business girls and kept some of the men company. A few of the women did that but no one said anything. I admire them.

(Asks members of the audience)

If you were given the choice of watching your kids starve, no money to feed them let alone take them to the David Lewis Dispensary or a bit of how’s your father no questions asked…

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What would you do?

Think about it.

(Pause) Personally, I wouldn’t do it myself like, to be honest with yer.

Not all the women were like that, Jesus no.

There were loads of jobs around there you could walk in to one in the morning get sacked and walk in to another in the afternoon.

I knew a woman who worked in the snuff factory, Patsy her name is. She got mesmerized doing the same thing over and over again and fell in the vat of snuff. Her sister Nancy said they just picked her out and she lost her job just like that, but she walked in to another the same day covered in snuff.

They were hard working women, people took in washing to get a few bob and one woman used to scrub the iron stairs on the Far East on her knees she donkeyed them and everything. It was hard times for women.

It was hard work but a joy to go to the wash house meeting up with all your neighbours and having a laugh. There was nothing nicer to watch a load of clean washing going out tied up with a stocking!

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MR FOO We went deep sea, away for about three months at a time.

CATHLEEN DELANEY When the ship came back all of the women and children would be standing at Gladstone Dock waiting for them and waving and shouting. They would have tins of boiled sweets and presents for everyone.

MR FOO We would draw around the feet of all the kids in Chinatown and bring back shoes and slippers for them, and games like, Robots made out of metal that could walk.

CATHLEEN DELANEY You couldn’t get anything like that in England.

MR FOO We would bring a couple of birds back and take them to the pub for the landlady to put on her

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hat. Mrs Jones would ring the bell and shout 'Time' in Cantonese.

I spoke Shanghaies and so did my friends we all came from the same village but had different jobs on the ship. Some of them were Cooks, Fitters, Greasers, Firemen and that. The men who spoke Cantonese and the men who spoke Shanghaise did not mix. They could not understand each other you know likey.

(Images of Blue Funnel posters projected) I learnt to read and write on board the ship like. I was on the deck, I did all the painting and cleaning I had an English Chinese dictionary and I taught meself to read and write. I am very clever likey.

This woman like, her name was Cathleen, she was a friend of the girl in the café she used to come and meet me off the ship and she wanted me to marry her but you know likey, I wasn’t bothered because I was already married but I couldn’t tell her that. Every time the ship docked there she was like a bad penny.

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CATHLEEN DELANEY He was such a flirt he used to call me ‘bad penny’ I would laugh me head off and say ‘Foo! You’re terrible’ and pretend to be shocked.

MR FOO So I just played along with her like.

I was The Number One Gaffer in Chinatown and I got the men work. I went to the Docks every morning and by this time I could speak Cantonese, Mandarin and Hakka as well.

I had a camera memory I could just look at something once and then I would remember it.

On board the ship if you didn’t gamble you just had to sleep when you weren’t working. Every day was the same.

Worked 12 hours a day. Two men would share a cabin, we had bunk beds and it was small. The toilet and that was down the corridor. It was alright like, there was no doctor on board if you fell ill you had to wait until you got to a shore. The food was old, it was all frozen because we were away so long.

All the ships were named after Greek classics and myths. I can name them all now Achilles, Adrastus, Aeneus, 22

Agamemnon, Agapenor the Ajax an’ all that.

We saw the world and people even poorer than we were.

When we got back to Liverpool we came to Gladstone Dock then we would all go to Nelson Street like. Sometimes there would be 200 men standing in the street.

CATHLEEN DELANEY The authorities did not like them. They did not like the way they kept together and they said they tried to make life difficult. They used to split them up and made them report to the police station every day.

MR FOO We stayed in Boarding Houses one for the Shanghai men and one for the Cantonese.

Images of Chinese Sailors portraits and ID cards projected on screen It was alright like you know likey in the boarding houses.

We could cook and wash our clothes. We had bunks in each room like.

One of me friends said they were three beds high in the one he stayed in but when the authorities came they took one down and put them back up again when they left.

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CATHLEEN DELANEY And I heard that was illegal

MR FOO Some of the men were sick with the TB and when all the blood came out (gestures coming out of the mouth) they went to hospital some of them we never saw again.

I stayed in the Oxton Home for Seamen for a while when I had TB. It was for Chinese. Alfred Holt made it Chinese atmosphere, Chinese food and staff who had been missionary’s in China.

In those days, sometime when we came back from long voyages, we would stay in the boarding house and then sometimes go Coasting.

CATHLEEN DELANEY Some of them would go around Europe coasting for a few weeks while the rest of the crew would go to lifeboat class in Nelson Street. Foo was friends with the fella who taught Lifeboats skills. He was very popular.

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MR FOO (Pause) Me and Cathleen we got on very well likey and I started to even look forward to seeing her. She worked in the pictures and she got herself a part time job in the Nook, all of the sailors went in to that pub. She was a hard worker. It was only small but everyone went there or the Queens Bar like. I never went to see the pictures like. I used to walk down to the Dingle to meet her after work when I was on shore.

Image of Mr Woo’s mother projected.

I wrote to me wife like in China and said that I should go back to be with her but she said no, she said me mother would starve and they would all die if I went back so I had to stay here.

Immigration was after me they were after all of us. One fella I knew used to tie himself to the bed and get his kids to sit on the bed when they knocked on the door he would be out of the window like a shot. When they left he would climb back in.

One of his kids, one of the Half-Castes likey said 25

the bed would move across the room towards the window and come to a stop next to the chest of drawers. I wasn’t going to do all that.

CATHLEEN DELANEY If you ask me all the Chinese seamen are all heroes But the government called them undesirable. Even the British women who married them lost their identity and were classed as ALIENS. I personally think that’s terrible.

MR FOO We deserved a medal from the British for fighting in the war and the Atlantic crossings and getting torpedoed like, not sent back like a piece of rubbish you would put in the bin. You know likey?

(Pause)

I couldn’t just stay here like, immigration was after everyone. Don’t get me wrong like, some men wanted to go home.

I had to get married.

Projected images from Chinese wedding albums.

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Soundscape drones, wedding bells, distant laughing

CATHLEEN DELANEY I had a feeling he was going to ask me to marry him. I told him Everyone was getting married I told him about the Chinese jugglers from the circus.

They ran away to Gretna Green but the authorities wouldn’t let them go through with it because they didn’t live there, so they got married in a restaurant in Chinatown and it was in all the papers. The headline was TERRIBLY IN LOVE. Okay, I was only a little kid when that happened but isn’t that romantic?

MR FOO Me friend said to me that he would arrange a marriage for me, his landlady had a friend who would marry me. She had a face like the back of a bus like, but she was alright she had a good heart. God she was fat though. I would not want to be recognized in the street with her.

No I said, I will marry me Cathleen likey. When I was sick in hospital Cathleen came to see me every day and bought me food. I looked forward to seeing her like. I will never forget that.

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I was in hospital for a few months with TB and then went back to the boarding house. I couldn’t go away to Sea for a while so I stayed in the Boarding House.

Brenda got married to one of me friends like and when she was at work and he was away Coasting me and Cathleen could go and sit in their house.

Walks over to a standard light and small table and lifts open the lid of a gramophone and puts on a record.

Soundscape of drones still audible.

She had this gramophone and I used to play one song over and over again and tell Cathleen that I would take her to Shanghai and introduce her to me mother and me brother I didn’t mention me wife like.

Foo plays song: I’ll take you home again Kathleen He walks over to Cathleen and takes her by the hand.

Foo and Cathleen join at this point and dance and laugh Lights change projection of Shanghai countryside and Chinese Families.

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I’d tell her how beautiful the countryside is and I promised one day I would take her there and build a house, with a garden and we would have children one for her and one for me and maybe a couple more. We would dance around like you know and laugh.

(Go back to sitting at separate tables Cathleen takes a hair brush out of her handbag and brushes the front of her hair back in to place preens herself fixes her clothes) We would tidy it all away for Brenda to come back and I would go back to the Boarding House and Cathleen would go home. I would sit in the Boarding House reading a book and smoking.

The men would lie in their bunks waiting for a ship. Some were cooks on board ship and they would cook like.

CATHLEEN DELANEY Ah… he was lovely. He would go back to the boarding house and I would go home and dream of him.

I’ve just remembered, there was a young lad called Boy, that’s what everyone called him Boy. He was badly burnt on one of the ships and he died in that boarding house.

Everyone in the neighbourhood went to his funeral like, ah god, they didn’t even know him. But that’s what it was 29

like in those days.

His headstone is at the back of the Anfield Chinese Section you know.

MR FOO I would walk in to Nelson Street to see some friends and gamble for a bit like. What else can you do?

When we got a ship we went away for three months and everything was alright like. I sent me allotment to me mother and me wife, the Blue Funnel sorted that out for all of us. Most of us had wives that’s why we joined up.

Not to train as a sailor just to have a better life.

Very soon I had shares in five businesses I was good at the Mar-Jong. One night I won a chip shop outright but I couldn’t take it off the family. I said you know like, you stay there and give me it one day if I need it, it’s alright like.

Projected on screen an image of the Gaumont

CATHLEEN DELANEY I went home one night and they were waiting for me. He had his sleeves rolled up and she had been crying. She stood in front of the fireplace crying and I could see the back of her head reflecting in 30

the mirror. He was going mad.

‘What will the priest say? What will the neighbour’s say? You dirty little prostitute. You bastard dirty whore’.

I tried to ask him what I had done or who said what but he belted me right across the face. He picked up the poker and me mother flinched. He hit me right across me back right near me waist. A metal bar it was right across me back.

‘Chinese… you are going with a Chink you dirty slut that’s the last time you come in to this house. Get out.

You’re not taking anything with yer get out’.

That’s what he said and me mother just stood there in front of the mirror and wept crossing herself like mad.

She wouldn’t look at me. I haven’t spoken to her since. I tried to once but she just blanked me in the street and spat.

‘Don’t deny it he said you’ve been seen. You’ve bought shame on this family, a good catholic family like us and you are nothing but a tramp’ Soundscape same drones as happy time when Cathleen and Foo danced together muffled violent inaudible shouts slamming of doors. Lights change 31

He pushed me into the hall, passed the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with him looking all sad pointing to his bleeding heart with a tear rolling down his cheek, passed the vestibule and threw me on to the street. ’Once a tramp always a tramp’ he said. ‘People will laugh at you’ I looked him straight in the face and said ‘like they call you dirty Irish behind your back? You’re dead in my eyes you gob-shite’.

He was dead six months after that.

Silence It’s a curious feeling I remember how nice I once was, it was like something had happened to me not him.

Any road, I stayed in Brenda’s that night and I couldn’t stop crying. Brenda said she was going to get her fella to go around and hit me dad with a poker to see how he liked it, but I didn’t want trouble. Brenda went around herself and banged on the door but they didn’t answer.

She said everyone was looking at her, women standing together with their arms folded in doorways and curtains twitching.

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Brenda went to meet Foo, I was black and blue and it hurt when I walked. She stood outside the Gaurmont but he didn’t turn up like he said he would.

I had nothing… I felt ashamed. Brenda gave me some clothes, even Mrs Jones from the pub said she would look through her wardrobe and sort out some clothes for me. I said ‘oh it’s alright queen’ Can you imagine, I was hard up but I wasn’t mad! As if I was going to wear one of those hats.

Everyone felt sorry for me because I had nothing. People from work gave me tea towels and a kettle. I actually had nothing. The shame.

I had to pack the job in at the Gaumont so I didn’t bump in to anyone from my family or the neighbours or the people from St Finbar’s.

I knew they wouldn’t be seen dead mixing with us.

I went to church and asked the priest for communion and he said no. He said I had bought disgrace on my family and not to go back there. (laughs) What did I expect though, even the Chinese Catholics had to sit at the back of St Peter’s on a Sunday I don’t think they were 33

even allowed near the font, I mean the front.

Apparently one of me aunties had seen Foo pick me up after work and saw me linking him in broad daylight. She followed me to Chinatown and found out I had a job in a pub.

It wasn’t the Aunty I thought it would be either, she ended up being alright and marrying a Chinese herself, loads of the girls did in the end. They made excellent husbands.

Images project of photographs from family albums Foo had promised me he wasn’t going away until the week after, he said he would buy me a ring while he was away and we would be engaged properly then. He said we would get married.

I went around to the Boarding House but I couldn’t find him. I went around all the pubs but he didn’t turn up. I searched everywhere for him.

(Image of Gladstone Dock projected Soundscape drones shipping sounds Cathleen shouting Foo in distance) I stood down at Gladstone Dock and shouted

‘Foo’

I even went to see Mr Smith in the office and he said he 34

was sure Foo was alright and that he must have decided to take a ship. I waited and waited for him.

Without him I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Lights darken soundscape breathing, footsteps, scuffles, drones, banging. Chinese voices panicking. Orders shouted ‘Get in Line’

MR FOO I was in the boarding house it was late sometime after dark.

We heard this banging on the door. We were rounded up in the corridor. This time there was no Black Mariah and no one was laughing.

The Detective who took a back hander for the gambling den raids was nowhere to be seen. Every one of us in the Boarding House was taken down to the Dock.

Some of the men said they were married and had children but that made no difference you know like.

First they took the ones who were troublemakers, 35

then they took the ones who had a criminal record then they took the ones they said had VD, Syphilis and Gonorrhea. They were asking us were the Opium was and pushing us around.

I didn’t know what was going on.

We went to the Docks and they put us on a ship took us down to the holds and we waited.

We felt the ship, it was called the Sarpedon like, we felt it move and then stop again. They took us to the west float through Albert Dock and anchored in the Sloyne. We waited for two days. Then more men came and joined us.

They had heard rumours men were being rounded up like so they hid in cellars and when they thought the coast was clear, they came out of hiding you know likey, Special Branch were doing an intensive search to find them and to take them down to join us on the ship.

They said they were rounded up off the streets and some said their houses were raided like and their 36

kids were asleep in bed.

I don’t know how true that was but that is what they said.

Soundscape fade to (Piano 2 Chords wav) Lights change. Spotlight on Cathleen

CATHLEEN DELANEY I still wanted to tell Foo what had happened with me dad and I was worried he would turn up at the Gaumont and not be able to find me. I thought he might write a letter and send it to Brenda for me and every day I ran to the front door in Brenda’s to check but nothing ever came. I started being sick with worry.

Then I realized the reason I was being sick was more than worry.

Brenda said that other men had gone too and Bessie Braddock was going mad and a load of women had met in Nelson Street and they were trying to find out where their fellas had gone as well.

300 British wives of Chinese seamen met on the Sunday and formed a defence association in Liverpool. Brenda said she read it in the Echo.

37

They had even sent a telegram to the Chinese Ambassador appealing for intervention on their behalf.

I know this might sound terrible but that would make a good film wouldn’t it! 300 Aliens in Chinatown!

Sorry my

sense of humour is very dark sometimes.

There was another meeting as well in the Engineers hall in Mount Pleasant, the Lord Mayor was there and all the MP’s.

I’ve got this cutting here from the Echo, Marion Lee was the leader, it says 19th August 1946 Reads from cutting “During the war the Chinese seamen were paid £17.17s. per month on which they were able to keep their families respectably. Recently they were signed off at ports in the Far East where new crews are being recruited at a wage rate of £7.7s. a month” Jesus that was terrible they didn’t even get Danger Money and yet the British wives of GI’s got loads of assistance.

I didn’t go to the meeting though because I wasn’t married to Foo and I felt ashamed in case he just didn’t want to know me anymore.

38

I had heard of women whose kids had ended up in Fazakerly Cottage Hospital and women who went away and never came back… and women who had gone to the mad house just ‘cos they were having a baby and I didn’t want that.

I wanted Foo.

I’ll take you home again Kathleen plays quietly in the background

Brenda said she knew of a woman who was on the game who used to go in to The Central and she gave her some advice.

She told Brenda I needed to go to the Chemist and ask for Bob Martins powders, to say it was for my dog and to mix that with loads of Gin in a glass of… I don’t know what.

And something to do with a red hot poker.

I wasn’t quite sure if I was to drink the Gin with the Bob Martins and get in the bath the red hot poker. Or put the poker in the drink.

Anyway, I didn’t like the sound of it but thought I would give it a try.

39

I stood outside the Chemist and Brenda went in. She was in there for ages and then she popped her head out of the door.

‘Cathleen’ she said ‘he wants to know what kind of a dog you have got!’

‘Tell him I’ve got a fucking Alsation’ I said.

She was a dozy mare, she went in and said to the chemist ‘She said she’s got a fucking Alsatian’.

Any road, he wouldn’t sell it to her. I just had to admit it to myself I was pregnant and I was going to have Foo’s baby and when he came back he would be made up as our little family was already starting and then we would get married up Mount Pleasant in the registry office with a ‘doo’ in the Far East afterwards. The Far East was were all the best people went. (Pause)

Well I was kidding myself wasn’t I, after a while I stopped pestering the postman and the Usherettes in the Gaumont and Mrs Jones in the pub to see if there were any letters from Foo that he might have sent to me desperate to get in touch.

40

Drones turn to (Dramatic soundscape Russian Steps

Piano 2 Wav)

(Black out lighting)

MR FOO They took us to Hong Kong.

Some men didn’t make the journey like. One man jumped ship and when we shouted man over board they just ignored us. We heard rumours about difficulties entering Shanghai and we couldn’t go back like. (pause) I heard the Chinese Seaman’s Union and the the Kuomintang and the Communist infiltrated union, had all been transferred to Hong Kong.

The Kuomintang were brutal against unionists from 1930 there had been mass executions. We were in danger to go back to Shanghai like. The staff of the Chinese Association of Labour in Chunking had all been arrested.

Workers who were politically active just disappeared like.

41

The Colonial Office gave orders to Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai like, if any Chinese sailors attempted to get back on board not to let them.

Lights fade to Black Soundscape fades to piano 2 Chords

Lights come back on spotlight on Cathleen. Mr Foo has disappeared

Interval

42

ACT 2 CATHLEEN DELANEY

So it was true, the bastard had done a bunk. The woman who did the accounts in the Blue Funnel Office told me he was already married in China and he only wanted to marry me to stay here. He had been sending money back to China the whole time.

I wish he had told me because I would have helped him. To be honest most of us knew they were already married in China but they were lovely and they looked after the family and they didn’t drink or batter their wives.

I knew of this woman, we all did, who sent her son to China to help her husband’s Chinese wife and family out because they were starving. I could have helped out.

I moved to Falkner Street. I lived on the ground floor. I had one room and a small scullery and the toilet was in the yard and it was freezing. I didn’t have any curtains on the 43

window just an old sheet. I remember my bed was up against the wall it being a very, very small room and I had a small chest of drawers I had pulled the bottom drawer out for when the baby came and I can’t remember anything else about that room except it was very, very cold.

When the regulars in the Nook found out they had a whip round and bought me some lovely curtains and a bedspread and clothes for the baby and one of the women in the house gave me her old pram. A Silver Cross it was.

Alfie was born not long after. I won’t go into details because it will knock you sick.

Alfie, after Alfred Holt rest his soul without him I would never have met Foo. No matter what anyone said I had a feeling in my heart call it a premonition if you like but I knew that he would not have left me without telling me.

Soundscape continued Spotlight on Mr Foo

MR FOO

I was worried about me Cathleen and kept singing that 44

song to keep me mind off what was happening.

I managed to slip away one night like. I got introduced to a friend of one of the sailors and paid a gang master to take me back to England.

I was to pay off weekly out of me wages likey and I could go back to Liverpool. It would take years to pay back like but I had the shares and I could sell them and pay it off quicker and I had that chip shop like.

I got the ring for Cathleen and wrote to me wife and told her that I had fallen in love and explained to her it was a modern thing that people do in the UK.

CATHLEEN DELANEY Brenda fell on hard times, I don’t know what happened to her. Her fella disappeared as well.

She started drinking.

A lot of the time she wasn’t happy, at the time I suppose she did the best she could.

She did the best she was capable of I suppose, whatever 45

went on.

When Brenda had the baby girl she would have been eleven months old or so when she was taken in to care and was put in to an orphanage somewhere in the Leeds area and she was there for eighteen months. She told me that she had a choice to make it was either her little boy or the baby.

It was something to do with family allowance and she was the one that went, apparently social services or whoever it was at that time, welfare had said that she could keep one child but she could not have the other child back until she lived in suitable accommodation.

She told me that she bought the baby back because a couple wanted to adopt her and they were school teachers and the ‘Home’ had written to say that these people were interested in adopting the baby, now I don’t know sort of how true that is.

Projection of children from the family albums I do know she was in the Home I have got a photograph of her sitting on the step when I went to visit and also this woman who is still alive and lives in Old Swan, she told me last year that she was the one who made Brenda 46

get her act together when she found out she had a child in an orphanage, and she made Brenda get her act together and she went to whichever area it was in Leeds to bring the baby back, at that time Brenda lived in the basement in one room in Huskisson Street.

(pause) Any road, you won’t believe this! By sheer coincidence I met another fella called Foo. I got myself a job working for a factory but I could work from home making thingy’s…

I mean handbags. I used to sit on the step and sew them up.

He was introduced to me by the owner of the factory when Alfie was one year-old and he was alright.

Foo 2, that’s what I called him. No relation to the other one. He said he wanted to marry me. So I said ‘alright’ and we did.

Nothing special just a little tea in St Michael’s Church Hall after the registry office, not the original hall, that one had been blown to bits years earlier along with the church and the entire area during the May Blitz.

Foo 2 was kind and good and Alfie called him Papa. When I 47

got pregnant the second time, this time all official. Foo 2 called Alfie, Number 1 son we used to laugh and say Foo 2 looked like Charlie Chan in the film Honolulu! Now… was it Sidney Toler or Warner Orland in the title role?

He gave me money every week for a treat to the cinema and to buy nice clothes. He never once told me that he loved me.

He used to say to me ‘keep your chin up’ when people walked past us and called me names. My own brother spat at me in the street and called me a whore and the C. word.

I could put up with the other swear words but that hurt and his spit landed on Alfie.

Foo 2 just said ‘keep on walking dear’

MR FOO In 1947 I got a ship and made me way back to Liverpool and met the owner of a café I was to work for him and pay me way like. The café wasn’t in Chinatown.

I could not go out for seven months because the master had said that immigration would get me and send me straight back.

One night, I plucked up the courage like. I popped me head 48

out of the door and then I did that every night and then I ran to the end of the street and back like and I did this until I was brave enough to go around to the Nook you know likey.

I was told Cathleen didn’t go there any more like and then I went to the Gaumont you know and I hung around for a while until someone came out and told me she had left you know likey, ages ago.

I heard she had a little boy, my number one son! I couldn’t wait to see her to give her the ring.

CATHLEEN DELANEY I don’t like to talk about this and don’t repeat it, but Foo did come back.

When I found out where he was working I took Alfie down to Ranleigh Street to see him… in his pram. I parked him by the door, Dolly from the baths in Cornwallis Street told me where he worked.

I remember it clearly. I walked in and the door was like… here, behind me, there was a long narrow space at the side of the tables. The counter was at the far end. I walked up to Foo and he actually 49

looked really pleased to see me.

I said to him ‘Where the fuck have you been’ he looked surprised.

‘I haven’t had any fucking money to look after your son and you have been off to see your wife… Well you didn’t tell me about her did yer’?

Foo came around to the front of the counter and tried to put his arm around me but I hit out at him. He took off a ring that was on his middle finger and said he bought it for me.

‘That won’t buy me fucking food will it?’

And I threw it across the café and got Alfie and walked out. I nearly died. I never saw him again.

That was when I decided to marry Foo 2. I went straight around to his chip shop and he was sitting there surrounded by those wooden lanterns he used to make and he asked me to marry him. I remember it clearly. He smiled.

That was the closest he ever got to romance.

Years later, when Alfie was about five years old he came home from school and he said a man had been 50

standing at the gates and had given him a box of chocolates and told him that he was his real father and that he was going to work on the Isle of Man boats.

I told Alfie not to take any notice. I told him that he did have another dad but he was dead, torpedoed in the Atlantic and he believed me.

He used to pray for his dead dad every time they sang that hymn in church ‘for those at peril on the sea’ he would cry his little cotton socks off. He had bad dreams about it, like he was visualising him going down with ship.

Oh Yeah we could go to church by this time like I said it was a different kettle of fish in Chinatown, we went to St Vinny’s and to St Michaels they just accepted everyone, even now it’s like an institution that place. Foo 2 adopted Alfie and treated him like his own and we had a baby of our own.

MR FOO I paid off my debt and decided I couldn’t stay on shore.

I been worked the Isle of Man boats for 51

years and got myself some shares in a café on Great George Street like. It was alright likey.

Somewhere to stay when I came back from Sea.

I moved around Liverpool with me chip shops and I married the woman me old landlady suggested years earlier. (goes to light cigar) She was alright like she didn’t bother me. I went out at 8 in the morning and got back at 12 at night.

She didn’t bother me like.

CATHLEEN DELANEY

Life just went on. Alfie and baby Ella used to go to Sunday school and watch Chinese propaganda films. Every year there was a Chinese picnic organised by the Chi Kung Tong. We would all go on the bus for a day out and we had a laugh.

MR FOO I kept away from Cathleen I knew when someone tries to pinch a girl, knives come out like 52

CATHLEEN DELANEY

In 1958 this fella, a photographer came knocking on our door and asked us if we would take Alfie and Ella to his studio to be photographed to take part in a film.

I took them along; all the Half-Caste kids were there. Some were getting rejected for not looking Chinese enough and one for not having really dark hair, I thought that was a bit sly.

It was bad enough the full Chinese not accepting them for some photographer to rub it in.

Any road, I got a letter off Twentieth Century Fox Alfie and Ella got chosen to be in the film The Inn of Sixth Happiness Hollywood were making. It was about this missionary called Gladys Alyward.

To be honest, I’d never heard of her.

I had to drop them both off in Norton Street and sign a form when I handed them over and that was that.

I pretended they were going on holiday, I gave Alfie a box of Maltesers when he got on the coach and he 53

was still crying when they drove off. He told me years later, he opened the box straight away and all the Maltesers rolled down the aisle, so he sat there crying, holding the empty box all the way to Wales.

(Project images of N. Wales mountains) The pay was good. It was about £12.50 a day for each kid. I did miss them at first they were away for about six weeks but then I got used to it.

They had a chaperone so I knew they would be alright.

They went to North Wales, Beddgelert and later on Alfie had to go to London for the close ups because he was a star and had a talking part and he held that Ingrid Bergman’s hand most of the time in the film and who was that fella? They sellotaped his eyes to make him look Chinese? … Robert Donat! Well he was in it as well as Curt Jergins and Bert Kwok.

Robert Donat, he died you know when they filming, not on the set, he had a brain tumour, a thrombosis and bad asthma. He was in that film, oh god what was it called now? The 39 Steps.

54

So, I had all this money and all this time on my hands and I thought: ‘Sod it I’m off’.

I went to America because I wanted something exciting to happen in my life as well. Good times that’s what I wanted and laughs with people I like. I just packed a case and left I never even said Goodbye to Foo 2 or the kids. I just went. It was easy then you only had to go down to the Pier Head. I had had enough.

You have to put things in perspective, we had a hard time you know, women in those days, knocking around with Chinese.

Even to this day there is a bit of a stigma, isn't there?

It might not seem as bad as it was years ago. But in those days it was hard.

It’s still prevalent in Liverpool. The Chinese are more placid they don’t like making a fuss.

Other people are more outgoing and talk about it aren't they? Being Chinese wasn't good.

55

It was worse for my kids in a sense, because they were inbetweeners. They are not English and they are not Chinese.

They are stuck in the middle.

Some Chinese don't like Half-Castes. And English people, some of them don't like Half-Caste Chinese, any road. So they are stuck in the middle.

Do you know what I mean? You're not one or the other.

How many black people do you see even today working in the shops in town?

In those days...If a woman was knocking around a Chinese man she was a whore. So, it's not something that you really want to talk about.

I have had a dog's life. Apart from that, my own family disowned me as well. Most of the women that was knocking around with Chinese was... well, excommunicated, for want of a better word.

(Pause) Projection Neon lights Chinatown

I didn’t stay long in America I tried to get work in the movies (laughs) I must have been off my head thinking about it now.

56

I liked money, but I didn’t know how to make money… and even if I had some, I couldn’t hold on to it. My mother used to say to me when I was a little girl, the streets are paved with gold, but you’ve got to know how to pick it up. I could pick it up alright, but it used to drop out of my hands quicker than I could pick it up.

Foo 2 said nothing to me when I came back. By then we

were

living

in

the

tenements

in

Lydia-Ann

Street. It was as if I had never been away, and Alfie kept on singing ‘This old Man’ over and over and over again he learnt it in that bloody film.

Sound of boy singing this old man in distance Alfie and Ella were made up when they saw me at first, but I don’t think ‘He’ ever forgave me.

I took them for a walk down Nelson Street nothing had changed. I could see the oil cloths on the tables in the cellar, do you remember that? Everyone went there, it was quite posh the Shanghai and you could see through a little hatch in the kitchen.

57

I took them to see Eddie Mac Creaney’s horse in Bailey Street and they stood by the gate and fed it the roasted peanuts Chang Kan gave them. Alfie always called Eddie Billy for some reason.

I was going to say I was sorry but forgot and then it seemed too late.

Foo 2 bought a restaurant in Southport and we moved out of Liverpool. He was very popular. We didn’t have to ask for anything.

MR FOO

I stayed in Liverpool until the 1980’s the Council came to me and said I had to leave Great George Street as they were knocking me café down like and I had to move to St John’s market. I wouldn’t go. What could I do? I had to stay in Chinatown like.

In those days the council destroyed Chinatown you know like. They strangled it building the council houses and they pushed us out. They sold buildings for £1. People were dispersed all over Liverpool from Kent Gardens. They moved them out to 58

Skelmesdale, Netherley, Kirkby, Norris Green everywhere like. They should have kept it like the old Chinatown you know.

I went to Manchester, the council there were opening up empty warehouses for Chinese business.

(Pause) I came back to Chinatown Liverpool though years later, me daughter and son came over from China. I had managed to go over and see me wife there a couple of times there like.

(Pause sits quietly) I go to St Johns market and walk around for a while.

I used to be able to go to Chinatown and bump into people but now there is nowhere to go.

I am ashamed to even call it Chinatown it is only half a street.

In those days no one thought about the future about keeping a record, they thought about taking a casket and they would bury it and then it would be opened in a hundred years to give a picture but it won’t be a true picture it will all be scattered.

All the Half-Caste lads, the second generation, 59

they have got nowhere to go to meet. I want to bring them all together one last time.

I am very old now just waiting to die like. (laughs)

(Exits stage)

CATHLEEN DELANEY

Putting her photographs away in the carrier bag.

I heard on me mother’s death bed she said that she felt like she had made a mistake not talking to me. She said that she wished she had told me to go to Shanghai and find out where Alfie and Ella could have lived. It made me laugh.

Alfie joined the Bluey’s for a while but he didn’t like it he got a job on shore but he gambled his wages so he worked the Isle of Man boats for 30 years to keep him away from the bookies. It’s in their blood gambling.

Ella works for a TV company. They have got five kids between them, all of them got A stars and are at University.

60

I must admit, I nearly died when they were doing the family tree at school. It’s just dragging up things that should be left in the past. It’s easy to invite all those memories in to your life but hard to get rid of them. (stands up ready to leave) About 12 years ago there was this fella talking on the radio his name was Keith Cochlan. He said he was researching in to the Forced Chinese Repatriation apparently it did happen in Liverpool in 1946.

Chinese sailors disappeared over two days. They were deported back to China.

His own father had gone missing

and he knew someone called Lawrence Kee who had heard it happening when he was young he heard them screaming and shouting in the streets while they were getting taken away.

There were people causing a commotion shouting things like ‘Ay let go of him, he is married to Lilly Emmett and got two children’ but they took no notice.

They just shoved them in O Neal’s vans.

No one battered an eyelid, they just took it in their 61

stride.

There had been a war on hadn’t there.

Sing Zhay Woo told me the other day about 2000 men were forcibly repatriated. His brother Too-Pay knew all about it, he was lucky he was on a ship at the time and missed it.

I hope our Alfie never hears about it. Can you imagine wondering if your father had been deported not torpedoed at sea?

Jesus, maybe I wasn’t deserted after all. (exits stage) Mills Brothers Chinatown my Chinatown

No part of this script and no Content may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, publicly ... to any other computer, server, Web site or other medium for publication or distribution or for any commercial enterprise, without The Sound Agent’s express prior written consent.

62

NOTES The language used in this play is the exact language used in the oral history recordings.

Peoples names have been changed to protect the identities of the interviewees. This story is fiction based on the true accounts of five oral histories recorded in 2014.

The names of ships and names of people pages 61 and 62 are correct the information for this account comes from a BBC film ‘Shanghaied’ the story of Keith Cochlan and oral histories.

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