TAI-TAI'S WORD IS LAW RUN MAN, RUN FOR IT, Murat hollers, Igor hollers, they all holler.

For me it's now or never. In one bound I'm out of my amah's reach, and as I race away, ringing volleys of her Cantonese absurd guttural to our Mandarin trained ear throw me into a mad t of giggles. Most of the gang are already there in the tingzi, the summer pavilion, Victoria Parks centerpiece, when I bound up the shallow steps two at a time. Kick-the-can. Bobbies-and-thieves. Catchers. Kick-the-can. Kick-the-can it is. No hiding near amah's corner, cries Jim Paisley, who knows his amah will have him by the ear if he ventures within reach. His words are aimed at Igor and Kolya and those others without amahs who forever take unfair advantage, sneaking behind the benches where those chattering harridans congregate. No fair hiding in Gordon Hall, Igor Kapoostin snaps, and with good reason; Jim has the run of the place. The ground oor of that castle-like building is the British Municipal Councils central police station, and Chief Inspector Paisley of the BMC Police happens to be Jims father. Besides, there is an aura of a shrine about the Gordon Hall, which only thirty years back served as the last-ditch defense when the settlement came so perilously close to being overrun by the Boxer horde.
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Okay, whos it? Stone paper scissors. Right. Alioshka, you and Igor start. Hurry, running out of time. Alioshka is it and were off. I slip through a hedge and run smack into Tiger. Unlike other Chinese who come daily to the park to perform their grotesque slow-motion shadow-boxing exercises or meditate over their caged song birds, this strange eccentric wanders the gravel paths singing to himself in a tinny falsetto. Eccentric is perhaps too generous a term for someone who swallows live grasshoppers and praying mantises. Not only is he quite mad, he tries to involve us in his madness. Without warning, hell burst into our midst holding out a wriggling insect for us to try. And thats enough to send us shrieking for our lives. But we know how to get even. My brother Brian, who disliked seeing Chinese in our Park, taught us how. We creep up from behind and yell, Tiger! Tiger! His eyes pop with terror, and he bolts for the gate, taunted all the way by our jeers and catcalls. But on this particular afternoon he has me cold. He trumpets into my ear: Devil! Little Foreign Devil! Im going to cut your heart out and feed it to the crows. In a frenzy I catapult from his grasp and dart for the man-made hillock where I know his ankle-length gown will slow him to a standstill. Even so, I lie low among the ants and spiders till the danger has passed. First thing I see when the coast is clear is Aliosha combing the benches along the Victoria Road perimeter. His three prisoners, Kolya, Achmet and Marcel, are pacing the pavilion. And there, naked on the gravel walkway, begging to be kicked, is the can. I dont make my move. I wait breathlessly for Aliosha to draw farther away. He does. Im just about to spring to my feet when Dwight Anderson, drat the fellow, emerges from behind the cenotaph, crying: Pax! Pax! Gettin late, gotta go. Others come out of hiding. Its all over. Time to face the amahs, that ock of magpies, still squawking their heads off over our decampment. We go our different ways, Murat and Achmet to their lane off Cousins Road, Igor and Kolya to the Bund
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where a penny sampan will take them across to the Russian side, Karl to the German Concession, Marcel to the French, Dwight to the American Compound. While Jim Paisleys amah is giving him what for, I tag along behind Yi-jie. And I do so because Tai-tai has given the word, and Tai-tais word is law. No good pleading that at seven Im too old for an amah. If I want to go to the park, I go with Yi-jie, and nothing more to be said. But there is more, surely there is. I can say to myself, cant I, that Yi-jie is not really her name, its her title, a gloried title standing for Number One Elder Sister. Some sister! Shes as ancient as the hills. And testy too. She could teach the Empress Dowager a thing or two. Just look at her now staging a tantrum as she maneuvers the pram containing two-year-old Tony through the sidewalks jostling mass. At the curb on Taku Road her claw-like hand snatches hold of mine and pinions it to the prams push bar. And thus we stand waiting for a break in the bedlam of cars, rickshaws, bicycles, and produce carts hauled by mules, by coolies, by combined teams of both. When at last a break does occur, she launches us across with a shrieking zouzou-zou, commanding me to go-go-go. Though she can only waddle on her tiny deformed feet, we cross safely,

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her ery Cantonese threats keeping at bay even the boldest of the coolies, barrow boys, muleteers. Into Meadows Road, comparative peace and quiet, for this is the start of the concessions residential area suburban Hampstead transplanted on to the salt ats of northeastern Hopei. As we progress past the stonework entrance of hallowed All Saints Church, a brace of beggar boys whove had no luck with a kilted swell of the Royal Scots Regiment turn their attention on us. A shrill blast from Yi-jie sends them scurrying for their lives. After that, except for the occasional street hawker and plodding rickshaw, nothing to impede us all the way to the front gate of our three-storied, red-brick house on Edinburgh Road. But thats as far as we get. Standing there, blocking the entrance, is next door neighbors Number Three Son, Frankie Butterworth. Hui jia, hui jia Go home, go home, Yi-jie yells at him. Then she rounds on me. No running away, or youll get whats coming to you. Though a few months younger than I, Frankie is taller, heavier. I never know how to take him. Sometimes hell make me an offering of a cigarette card still fragrant with Virginia navy cut. Sometimes hell pick a ght over nothing. Today he has adventure in mind. Ignoring Yi-jies outburst, he says to me: Lets go Min Yuan throw spears. And for added enticement he brandishes one of those sawn-off javelins the Russian groundsmen stick into the hard-packed earth to mark the cricket pitch boundary. I switch my gaze from the enticing spear to the enticing grounds of Min Yuan Athletic Park situated right across the road from where we are standing. Well, what about it? Frankie challenges. Yi-jie wont let me. Tell her to suck eggs. Come on, you have rst go. I can? You bet. He presents the spear. Go on, take it. With one hand I grip the shaft. With the other I touch the steel point. Its a real spear all right, a lance. I snap
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to attention pressing the shaft hard against the hollow of my shoulder. I advance one step couching the weapon as they do in the cavalry. I am Captain Desmond Fitzdesmond, VC, Third Bengal Lancers . . . Frankie suddenly lets out an electrifying call: Charge of the Light Brigade! Charge! Charge! the lancers battle cry bursts from my lips. We are across the street. We are squeezing ourselves sideways through the perimeter railing into the grounds when a harsh voice, harsher than a ships siren, blasts the air: Flankee, you no gotta ear! Soon dark outside. You no come, my callee Jimmy give you big stick! In a ash Frankie and precious spear are gone. His mother is the one living person in the world he holds in dread. And no wonder a ery native of Swatow, when she cuts loose the crows ap away in great ocks. How different his father, a reed thin Englishman with watery blue eyes and peeled almond head. On the rare occasion that Ive heard him speak, he sounds just like the voice on that record: Sahm, Sahm, pick up thar moosket. He is a Customs man outside staff as
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once was my own father, Stephen Power. Though of tender age, I am already used to the idea that Customs people rank low in the community, just as I am aware that regard for our family is diminished because Tai-tai works for a living. The Customs connection isnt the only thing we have in common with the Butterworths. They, like us, are ve boys and a girl; though it must be said that were not all Powers. Father died in 1924 when I was only one. Three years later Tai-tai married James Henry Lambert (pure coincidence that the name Lambert was her fathers middle name), an NCO in the Loyals whose term of service ended while serving in Tientsin. In time my half-brother Tony came along, then Betty, so while there are six Butterworths, we are really four Powers and two Lamberts. But never mind, we Powers and Lamberts get on pretty well together. There is never the friction one hears about when a step-parent enters the family scene. Yet we Power boys can never bring ourselves to call Mr Lambert Dad. He is Doong Ji to us, a mispronunciation of Dong Jia Master of the House, the term given him by the servants. But back to the Swatow dragon. The tongue-lashing she is giving Frankie is getting ercer by the minute. Its bound to alert Tai-tai, put her on the warpath. Id be safer indoors facing the end-of-day scrimmage with my three older brothers, Pat, Brian, Jocelyn, in the common room we call Madison Square Garden. Pat is holding forth on his days main event: I saw Joe Grandon land a giant catsh on the Bund this afternoon, and he stretches out his hands as wide as they can go. And Jocelyn, not to be outdone, On rue de France Annamites with xed bayonets went right past me. Who swiped All Quiet on the Western Front? Who threw darts at Benjamin Collings banjo? Dont look at me. Kai fan! Kai fan! Our Number Two Boy, Gui Xiang, storms in with our dinner bowls of rice topped with mince and greens and bean sauce. We gather around the table. We eat coolie fashion, bowls to lips, chopsticks working like shovels. Afterwards, each to his own thing: a tattered story
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book, a scratchy crystal set, a mix of lead soldiers. Then all too soon, Yi-jie, shufing in like a lame Zouave, threatens and cajoles. Jocelyn and I are obliged to mount the stairs to our bedroom on the third oor.

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