Golden Boy by Martin Booth

Author:Martin Booth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2012-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

Once a month, a cylindrical package arrived for me by sea mail. It was rolled up tightly, wrapped in brown paper and had twine tied round it and running through the middle. It had been mailed by my grandfather. When the string was cut, the rolled-up contents opened out to show the previous month’s issues of the Eagle, Dandy and Beano. Tucked somewhere in them would always be a ten-shilling postal order. Unrolling the comics, I envisaged Grampy walking to the newsagent’s once a week, an aroma of tobacco following him down the street like an invisible shadow, buying the comics, keeping them safe in the cupboard under the stairs that smelt of ale and stale bread, then once a month making his way to the Post Office. This was, to me, the height of love and I promptly wrote back by blue air mail lettergram to thank him and give him my news.

I held no information back from him, telling him of all my escapades, even into Kowloon Walled City, in the sure and certain knowledge he would not report them to my grandmother and, through her, to my father. She could not be trusted with a pod full of peas. Not once did he betray my confidence and he always replied, although my questions were not always answered. He did not tell me what jig-a-jig meant so I assumed he did not know.

My grandfather was not alone in sending parcels. The comics were certainly unobtainable in Hong Kong, but almost everything else was: in England, food, clothing, petrol and much more were in short supply and had been since the war. Some items were still on ration. An elderly maiden aunt called Olive assumed, despite many letters to the contrary, that we not only lived under rationing but also in pretty primitive conditions. Every two months for our first year in Hong Kong, a ‘care’ parcel arrived from her containing cotton handkerchiefs, soap, aspirin, adhesive and crêpe bandages, safety pins, Dettol, Reckitts’ Blue laundry starch, thick woollen socks for my father, a lipstick for my mother and a Dinky toy car for me. She fell short of sending toilet rolls, presumably assuming we had plants with leaves large and soft enough for the job. (We had.) Eventually, my mother made up a parcel for Olive containing intricately embroidered napkin sets, silk handkerchiefs, brocade cushion covers, a cotton blouse, a tourist book of the sights of Hong Kong, a hand-painted lacquer dragon, a set of chopsticks (with instructions for use), a packet of jasmine tea (also with instructions) and a small jar of Tiger Balm ointment, the ubiquitous Chinese cure-all containing tiny quantities of opium and morphine which could fix, my mother claimed, anything from a wart to an unwanted pregnancy. Parcels from Olive ceased forthwith.

All expatriates referred to the country of their origin as ‘home’. Even the old China Hands, those who had lived ‘in-country’ since the 1920s, did so. At first, my mother followed suit. However, by the winter of 1953, her outlook had subtly changed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.