For a couple of years, when we were young teenagers, my school friend Caroline and I went to the island of Lan Tau to spend a fortnight with her father. We would catch the ferry from Queen’s Pier and bob across the sea, leaving the raucous noise of Hong Kong behind for the large, peaceful and pastoral haven that was Lan Tau Island in those days, with very few tarmac roads and very few people.

Caroline’s Dad was a Government Waterworks Engineer at the time, and he and his men were building an enormous reservoir to augment the supplies to Hong Kong in the summer. So many people had fled to Hong Kong from China that Hong Kong’s own reservoirs’ reserves were inadequate and for several summers we only had four hour’s water supply every four days, most of which the Hong Kong Government had to buy from China. It was an uneasy arrangement and depended uncomfortably on the whims of Mao’s Government. Furthermore people were getting fed up with collecting water from standpipes at 6.00 o’clock in the morning and with China threatening not to supply us at all, annoyingly frequently.

So Caroline’s Dad and his team were busy on Lan Tau Island, building locks, dams, walls and other mighty things involving diggers and huge holes and enormous pipes, none of whose functions I can either recall or understand, now or then. I do remember staring blankly at it all from the top of a huge bank of earth, dressed in an adored pair of denim shorts and a tee shirt and longing to get back to the beach, while Caroline’s Dad stood stockily in his long white shorts and open neck shirt explaining things to us. He had a thick streaky shock of blond hair, a tanned face and bright blue eyes, and spoke with a strong Scottish accent. We would dutifully stand there listening to him, for we both admired and respected him. He was kind and fair but quite authoritarian so that as young teenagers we felt free to dream and listen to our music, living safely and easily within his parameters.

It was the beach and the sea that Caroline and I loved. We would lean our arms across the wide, cool, stone windowsill of our bedroom in her Dad’s house, the big steel ceiling fan whirring unnoticed above our heads, and gaze down the rocky path through the pines to the sea. The green, tree-clad land curved around in a great arc as if it were capturing the blue-green water in the arms of its silvery beach: five miles long, empty, beckoning and blisteringly hot. We would spend our afternoons lying on the white sand in a soporific daze beside our abandoned homework, idling the time away as teenage girls do, speculating on various boys at school and bursting into vacuous giggles over nothing. We spent hours lolling around in the sea, as brown as berries, as fit as any young and free creatures and in a way, waiting for our lives to begin.

Sometimes Caroline’s Dad would tell us to put on our ‘glad rags’ as he was going to take us with him to the little town of Silvermine Bay. We rushed about dressing ourselves up and then jumped into the back of his rough and seatless old Landrover. We stood there clinging to the overhead railings as he lurched and swayed at speed down the uneven track to the town, through the peppery scented pines, the buzzing cicadas, the sun going down over the sea to the right, the mountains to the left, we laughing and shrieking and he occasionally shouting “hang on girls!” The evening drew in, the air was soft and scented. The lethargy of the day left us and high spirits overtook us all.

Eventually we would draw in to Silvermine Bay, then something resembling a three-horse town in the Wild West. I can’t imagine how it is now. A few little streets, a few shops, a rough wooden bridge over the stream, a few open-air restaurants serving wonderful Chinese food al fresco and a few bars. One of these was fondly known as “The Club” by the Waterworks men. There was a jukebox which Caroline’s Dad gave us few coins to play on while he drank beer, played darts or cards and horsed around. He would buy us some crisps and a Green Spot orangeade each and we watched and listened to the men. At weekends some highly blond and brown-tanned women would sometimes appear. They laughed and smoked and we listened to the increasingly bawdy larking

about between the men and women, until finally he decided that was enough, would round us up and home we would go in the Landrover.

This was the very best part of the evening and why I wanted to come with him so much. Caroline’s Dad drove home very slowly along the track, sometimes singing quietly, mostly not. The stars were dense in the night sky, as if they were so close and bright they were in danger of falling on to us. The incessant zizz zizz zizz of the cicadas accompanied us as we stood in the back of the vehicle, holding onto the poles at the side and gazing up at the magnificent night sky. The Landrover swayed slowly along the track and we heard his nice baritone voice intermittently but we girls were silent, sniffing the pine-scented air and breathing the smell of the sea. There were no lights, no cars; Caroline’s Dad after a few beers drove gently along. Tears came to my eyes at the beauty of the night; spending two weeks doing little with Caroline was worth it just for this. Even now I can cast myself back to those times: her Dad at the wheel in a rather sweat-stained pink shirt, Caroline and I leaning together as we hung on to the rails of the Landrover swinging slowly down the track, with the sound of “You Take the High Road” hummed under his breath.

The bungalow Caroline’s Dad lived in was stark, in the way a man’s house is without a woman. No rugs graced the stone floor, no flowers on the table, and no curtains at the windows. Her Mum allegedly hated Lan Tau. It was, she said, too hot, too full of insects, too boring and too remote. And there were snakes, that was true. This suited all of us very well; she stayed in a semi-constant state of high dudgeon in their air-conditioned flat in Hong Kong and we enjoyed the peace and calm without her. Fortunately our needs were in fact catered for, because the Government had provided an Amah to cook and clean and she it was who would be waiting for us as we drove up from our evening out. She would meet us with a beaming smile on her face, her long black pigtail down her back bobbing as she greeted us, dressed as was usual in those days in a white Chinese side-buttoned top and loose black trousers. She would bring us drinks and peanuts, a San Miguel beer for Caroline’s Dad and two Green Spots for us. The three of us would sit on the verandah with our feet up on the railing, gazing at the sea and stars, cogitating the meaning of life, while I covertly glanced at the golden hairs on Caroline’s Dad’s brown legs, glinting in the light of the moon.

Sadly, as all idylls must, these periods of peaceful delight would come to an inevitable end. We girls would slump morosely on the wooden benches of the ferry back to Hong Kong, surrounded by our various tatty bags of belongings, as it pulled away from Lan Tau pier and chugged out to sea. Slowly the great green island of Lan Tau slipped away from us, as we glumly watched the tiny moving dot that was Caroline’s Dad’s Landrover weaving its way along the slash of red that was the track along the base of the mountain, he going his way and we going ours.

Farewell, farewell, peace of mind and heart.