What purpose had been served by delving into that awful time in his life? What we needed to do was to forget old miseries and think about future happiness. The hotel would soon have been open for business for a full year, and a party to celebrate would give us a positive event to plan for and look forward to.
When the boisterous Newcastle group who had come down to London last May rang to make another booking, the Saturday night of their stay seemed a good time to hold it. Their last visit might have ended awkwardly, but they had intended no harm, and with the six of them present a party would never be dull. Andrew, having at last decided he had spent enough time looking up family members in New Zealand, was due back. He would probably not want to stay to the end of the kind of party I had in mind, but was certain to enjoy getting together with all his friends for the first hour or so. His return journey was to begin with a flight to Thailand, not so much because of the country's sexual enticements, but with the intention of visiting some of the famous temples.
The sort of party I wanted was one that would fill the house with clamour, a huge mêlée of people all talking energetically, drinking, dancing, attacking the food like a flock of starlings, flirting, acting the fool, and being found in dark corners in the embrace of someone they had met only half an hour before; the sort of gathering at which people forget who was drinking from which glass, mislay items of clothing, and when they want to leave have difficulty locating whoever they came with; the sort of Saturday night party from which it takes most of Sunday to recover.
Tom and Darren were keen, and we compiled an invitation list, including everyone working at Ferns and Foliage, friends from the Beckford Arms, and a few of Darren and Cheung's friends from the club. Assuming that some of those invited would not come, but that others would bring a partner or a friend, we planned to cater for around fifty people. Coping with a hotel full of guests at the same time would have been difficult and I turned down further requests for bookings for that weekend.
Darren suggested making the Far East a theme for the evening, and Cheung offered to borrow Chinese lanterns and other decorations from his family and friends. A week before the party, he and Tom went off to the West End together and returned with a van full of coloured paper lanterns, decorative banners and film posters depicting martial arts stars flying through the air. Cheung also knew of a wholesaler where we could buy South-East Asian food and drink, and with his help we stocked the hotel freezers with satay, pancake rolls and stir- fries to enable us to provide everyone with hot food from the hotel kitchen. He took all three of us to a shop in Soho where we bought richly coloured silk shirts and trousers of lightweight cotton in a style that was fashionable in Hong Kong at the time.