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hair, for luck. He needed it as much as anyone.
    Yet he could not bring himself to cross the concrete drive and do it. Touch it. It was not repulsion for the boy that prevented him, nor any morality such an action might contravene; quite the opposite. It was what the boy was doing: playing soldiers.
    As he watched, he heard the child mouth a whee-ing noise as an imaginary shell hurtled from his finger into the dirt by the machine-gun post. Dirt flew as a pebble hit the dry soil and spurted it upward. The Grenadier’s tunic coat grew dusty. These tiny details implanted themselves upon Sandingham’s mind. When he had to, he could be exceptionally observant.
    Another stone fell. It struck the scout car but did not turn it over. The boy flicked the vehicle over with his thumb, as easily as he might play a glass marble. He pursed his lips and blew his cheeks out to make a toy explosion.
    In the shadow of the hotel porch, Sandingham winced. The burping bang in the boy’s mouth took on the arcing screech and cumbering thump of a three-inch mortar. He looked up. The stone ceiling that was the main verandah looked safe, but the supporting pillars could easily give way. He decided it was best to get into the open. Standing under a building in a raid was not a sensible thing to do.
    He stumbled down the steps of the hotel, pushing past the bellboy in his hurry. The youth laughed at him and shouted in Cantonese, ‘Mok tau! Mok tau!’
    Now Sandingham was screaming a high-pitched whistle like a rat held alive in a trap. He fled clumsily down the driveway and out into the sunlit street. Opposite, the bare earth of the steep hillside seemed to reverberate in the heat of the afternoon. He could see fountains of soil and stunted bushes funnelling upward and outward, falling as a slight rain of grit on him. He wiped it frantically away from his eyes and nose. As suddenly as it began, the attack stopped. He stood leaning on a silver metal lamp-post, sweat soaking through his short hair and running down his neck. He shook and hugged the metal to steady himself. It was almost too hot to touch but he ignored its temperature: it was something solid in an unstable universe.
    Hearing voices he looked up, and saw the blond head of the English boy next to the black-haired head of the bellboy peering over the hotel wall.
    ‘Who is he?’ the fair boy was asking.
    ‘He a c’azy man,’ said the bellboy. ‘He mok tau! ’ He laughed.
    ‘What’s his name?’
    ‘He name? ‘is man he cawld “Hiroshima Joe”.’
    Once again the bellboy laughed, this time uproariously.
    *   *   *
    At the southern end of Nathan Road the bus slowed to go right and drove by the impressive bulk of the grey façade of the Peninsular Hotel. Pulling away from the awning over the front was a huge black American car from the bonnet of which limply hung a Stars-’n’-Stripes, suspended on a chromium-plated rod. It was topped by a small silver-coloured eagle.
    Sandingham watched the car as it drove away from the entrance. He could just discern, in the rear passenger seat, an elderly man with an Havana cigar protruding from his teeth. It had been a long time since he had noticed so grand a vehicle pull out from the Pen, and he shivered at the thought of his last view of such an event. Then it had been a 1938 Ford with large headlamps on the mudguards: this, he guessed, was a Cadillac limousine.
    By the low building that was the main Kowloon Post Office the bus swung into the terminus in front of the Hong Kong-Canton railway station. The standing passengers jostled for balance and Sandingham clung to a rail that ran along the ceiling. His equilibrium was not always good.
    Soon he was standing on the hot pavement and looking up at the clock tower of the railway station. It was a famous landmark and had stood there a good many years. He had mixed feelings as he saw the time: three-fifteen. He could remember when it had been three-fifteen once before.
    Once upon a time,