JG Ballard
JG Ballard, author of Empire of the Sun, writes in Saturday’s Times about his childhood in Shanghai and experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
When I was six, an old beggar sat down at the foot of our drive. I looked at him from the rear seat of our Buick, a thin, ancient man dressed in rags, undernourished all his life and now taking his last breaths. He rattled a Craven A cigarette tin at passers-by, but no one gave him anything. After a few days he was visibly weaker and I asked my mother if No 2 Coolie (we had 10 Chinese servants and knew none of them by name) would take the old man a little food. She eventually gave in and said that Coolie would take the old man a bowl of soup. The next day it snowed and the old man was covered with a white quilt. I remember telling myself he would feel warmer under this soft eider-down. He stayed under his quilt for several days and then he was gone.
