Chasing the Dragon Read Online Free

dint of limiting my soft drinks on the month’s journey out, I had arrived with almost what I had when I boarded the ship. “About HK $100,” I said proudly.
    “Not enough,” the man snapped. “Hong Kong velly expensive place! That money not enough three days!” And he bustledoff importantly in his fine peaked cap and starched shorts to find his superior. They consulted a moment, and then came back at me in officialdom. “Even though you Blitish,” said the Chief, “we refuse you permission to leave the ship. Wait here.”
    I gathered that they thought I was a prostitute looking for easy earnings from U.S. troops on “rest and recreation” trips from Vietnam. With no means of support, no home, no friends, no nothing, I was left to watch all the other passengers land, wondering what they were going to do with me. Into my mind flashed horrible visions of their locking me up in the ship’s hold and sending me back to England in disgrace. I would have to meet all my friends who would say, “Told you so! Fancy setting off round the world and leaving all the plans to God—very irresponsible!” What was I going to do? How had I landed here in the first place?
    My mother had only been expecting one of us and when, as an end-of-war bonus, she gave birth to twins, my father was granted 48 hours compassionate leave. It must have been a disappointment for him, hoping for a rugby team and ending up with four girls instead. So I tried to make it up to him by behaving like a tomboy. I loved climbing and running, boys’ toys and bicycles, and later I developed a passionate interest in rugger and scrum halves.
    One of my first memories is from when I was four. I was leaning against the radiator in our home in Sutton, outside London, thinking,
Is it really worth being good?
I knew there was a choice, but I wondered if it paid to be good. So I went on sitting on the radiator—it made a lovely hollow noise when you banged it—and thinking. I ended up deciding that whatever I did was bound to be found out by someone some day. There would be a reckoning.
    About a year later, my twin, Gilly, and I were sitting in Sunday School when a proper missionary came to talk to us. She was dressed up like the pictures of missionaries in Victorian children’s books, complete with long dark skirt and hair pulled back in abun. Pointing at each one of us sitting on our baby chairs, she fluted, “And could God want you on the mission field?” I remember thinking the answer to that question could not be no because, of course, God wanted everyone on the mission field. What exactly a mission field was I had no idea; I had a dim picture of myself sitting at the door of a mud hut, a sort of White Queen in Africa, feeling worthy. There were people like that in a missionary booklet I had seen.
    I later told a friend at our little junior school that I wanted to be a missionary. It was a disastrous mistake. I soon found that everyone expected me to be better than everyone else. “But I thought you were going to be a missionary?” they would say accusingly when I was naughty. I always felt this was cheating somehow—it did not seem quite fair. So I learned very early that in England it is better to keep quiet about these things.
    So I invented a series of careers to throw people off the scent—a conductor, the first woman to climb Everest, a circus performer. But occasionally I was found out. Once when a school friend’s mother gushed, “So, you’re the one who’s going to be a missionary, aren’t you?” I went very pink and hoped no one would mention it again.
    However, privately, some things still bothered me. One day Gilly and I were walking over the railway bridge on our way back from meeting Nellie, our friend and the family daily help. As usual we had scrounged lime green penny lollies off her, but I had hardly got past the bit where it stuck to your tongue when an awful thought appeared:
What are we doing on the earth? What is life all