Golden Boy by Martin Booth Read Free Book Online Page B

Mahtung. He good boy for me.’
    â€˜Behave yourself,’ my father said pointedly as my parents bade me goodnight. ‘If I hear from Ah Choo that you’ve been monkeying about …’ He left the rest unsaid. I caught a brief vision of a leather slipper.

    The first thing Ah Choo attempted to do after my parents had departed was undress me. I had not been undressed before by anyone in my life save my mother and grandmothers and I wasn’t going to let this diminutive, alien stranger called Sneeze be the first.
    As soon as she unfastened one button and turned to the next, I did the first up again. Finally, unable to undo more than three shirt buttons at a time, she gave up, informing me, ‘You bafu w’eddy.’ Going out of the room, she left me to disrobe and wash myself.
    I gave her a few minutes, wet the bar of foul-scented hotel soap, pulled the bath plug and glanced outside the bathroom. I had expected to find her in my bedroom. She was not there. The door to the corridor was open. Leaving the room, I headed nimbly along it and down the stairs, into the lobby and out on to the street. I knew this excursion came under the ‘monkeying about’ heading yet I could not resist it. The street called to me as a gold nugget must beckon to a prospector. Until then, my life had been bounded by my parents’ small suburban garden, a nearby playing field, an ancient tractor and, more recently, a ship’s rail. Now, it was colourfully lit, boundless, unknown, exciting and throbbing with adventurous potential.
    No-one paid me any attention. The hotel doorman completely ignored me. Reasoning that I would not get lost if, at every corner, I turned left and would therefore end up where I started, I turned left.
    Buzzing with the frisson of an explorer stepping into unmapped territory, I made off down the street. The first shop I stopped at was a jeweller’s. In the brightly illuminated window, gold bracelets, necklaces and chains glistened enticingly. Strings of pearls glowed with a matt marbled lustre. A black velvet-lined tray of diamonds sparkled like eyes in a jungle night. Inside the
shop stood a sailor, his arm round the waist of a young Chinese woman wearing a very tight dress that shimmered under the shop lights. The sides of the garment were slit from the bottom hem to the top of her thigh. When she moved, almost her entire leg was visible. I had never seen anything like it – the dress or the female limb.
    The sailor’s uniform was very different from a British naval rating’s. It was all white with thin blue edging and insignia, topped off with a pill-box-shaped hat that made me think of Popeye. His sleeves were rolled up tightly to his armpits showing the tattoo of an anchor, a palm tree and the words San Diego. As my grandfather had several faded tattoos, these did not surprise me. What did take me aback was that, as I watched him, he slid his hand in one of the slits in the dress and squeezed the young woman’s buttocks. She made no sign of complaint and I wondered if this was how one greeted all Chinese women.
    I was still contemplating the social manners of the Orient when the shop door opened and the pair came out, the young woman admiring a gold bangle on her wrist.
    â€˜Hey, kid!’ the sailor addressed me. ‘How yah doin’?’
    Not quite understanding him, I answered defensively, ‘I’m not doing anything, sir.’
    â€˜Why you out late time?’ the young woman asked. She stroked my hair. Her fingernails were long and painted vermilion. So were her toenails, visible through the ends of her high-heeled sandals.
    â€˜Where d’yah live, kid?’ asked the sailor. I pointed down the street. ’Well, y’ come along now, y’ hear? Ain’t right for yah to be out so late.’
    They took a hand each and walked me back to the Grand Hotel, passing me into the custody of the desk clerk who was given an earful of