Free Golden Boy by Martin Booth

books and some sandwiches wrapped in translucent greaseproof paper. Some of my fellow pupils were taken to school by an amah; some came by car. I stood out, accompanied by this imposing but obviously gentle man who acted like a bodyguard.
    One day, I asked Ching where he lived. He was reluctant to inform me. However, he embarked upon his life story, which he told me over the next few days, walking back slowly from school with the warm, late-afternoon sun in our faces, little eddies of wind lifting miniature dust tornadoes off the road surface.
    His father had been a wealthy landlord in Kwangtung province, not far from Canton. I asked how he came to speak such good English if he had lived in China. He replied that his father had been rich enough to send him to a Christian missionary school.
    â€˜It was a very good school. The brothers were trained teachers, men of learning. I was taught by them, not only English but mathematics, geography, history. One, a Chinese brother, also taught Cantonese and Mandarin. Then, one day when I was eight years old, there was much fighting. People were shot in the street and the paddyfields. It was Japanese fighting Chinese. Then, when I was seventeen years old, there was more fighting. This time, it was Communist Chinese fighting Kuomintang Chinese.’
    â€˜What are Kuo—’ I began.
    â€˜Nationalist Chinese,’ Ching explained. ‘The army of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.’
    â€˜What happened?’ I asked.
    â€˜They lost,’ Ching said candidly. ‘Then the Communist soldiers came, and the officers, and they took away my father’s land and our house. Our belongings were taken, our farm animals killed. My father had a motor car. They burnt it. We had horses to ride. They shot them.’
    â€˜Were the horses ill?’ I enquired. I knew sick horses were shot: I had stayed for a holiday on a farm in Devon the year before when a dray horse broke its leg and was put down.
    â€˜No.’ Ching shook his head. ‘They just shot them.’
    It seemed incomprehensible that anyone would deliberately set fire to a car and barbaric that they should shoot a perfectly healthy horse.
    â€˜What happened to you?’
    â€˜We were told to go, so we went. If we had not they would have killed us. They killed our friends who refused to go. I came to Hong Kong.’
    â€˜If your father is so rich,’ I ventured as we waited to cross at a busy junction, ‘why do you work as a hotel room boy?’
    â€˜I have no money,’ Ching answered. There was no regret in his voice. ‘All I have are my clothes. When the Communists drove us away, we could only take what we could carry.’ We crossed the road and started walking slowly along the pavement towards the hotel. ‘There are many, many people like me in Hong Kong.’ Ahead of us, the Fourseas Hotel transport, a cream-painted, American shooting brake with varnished wooden bars on the side, drove out of the hotel garage and across both lanes. ‘You see Mickey, the hotel driver?’ Ching asked. ‘He is one who escaped from the Communists. At least half the room boys have
escaped from China. Some with their families, some, like me, alone.’
    I felt a terrible sadness for Ching and took hold of his hand.
    â€˜You’ve got me and my mum,’ I said comfortingly.
    I never discovered where Ching laid his head, but I found where others did. A week or so later, my mother was invited out to a dinner party on Hong Kong-side.
    It was already dark before she left in the Studebaker shooting brake for the Star Ferry to cross the harbour to Hong Kong island. I waited a respectable time, got dressed and walked out of the hotel tradesmen’s door, a steel gate that gave on to a street called Emma Avenue. I turned left and headed for Soares Avenue, a fairly busy thoroughfare used by traffic taking a short cut to the next main road, Argyle Street.
    At the time I was not to know