Things changed fundamentally over the next couple of years.
Not long after Dad moved out, Terry, my mum’s new partner, moved in. With Terry came his children, Simon and Sarah. Simon was a bit older than me, and Sarah was the same age. It was weird at first. At that time my dad didn’t have a home and was living in the officers’ mess at Northwood, while we were all under one roof in a little village 15 miles from Stone.
Terry was nice enough though, and he soon won us over. He had met Mum through work, so we’d already met him before everything—my parents’ relationship—had fallen apart, but it was still a new family to me.
Now I can see that I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like our new home, school made me miserable, and, to make matters worse, we had no money. Dad wasn’t around much, although he and I would get together on Thursdays, as he lived in Aylesbury and I’d stop by his house on the journey to and from school.
Fran and I spent a few weekends at the mess in Northwood. This was not just any officers’ mess, but home of the combined commander and chief officer’s ward room, where we would be dining on special dispensation of the president of the mess committee.
It was more like a gentleman’s smoking room, full of high-ranking older officers who’d be sitting, quietly dining with full silver service, while reading or simply enjoying the rarefied peace and quiet. France and I would be on our very best behavior, knowing that we had no margin of error in such an environment. It was the last time such behavior would be required of us.
But France and I had started to argue more than laugh, perhaps as much due to our adolescence as to the tumultuous times that we were living through. And I was changing, rebelling.
The upheaval caused profound changes in me over a very brief period of time. I began to doubt the wisdom of adults, and began to understand that my life was mine to control. But I was still a kid—I wasn’t ready for such big changes.
School held little escape. Aylesbury Grammar’s intake was largely smart state-school boys being groomed toward public-school values. Football—which most of us loved and cherished—was not on the school games list, and rugby took its place. This did not go down well. To rub salt into the wound, the one subject I liked most, art, was held in little or no esteem.
Mixing such a diverse bunch of boys together did not make for the most harmonious of classrooms. We made our French teacher cry more than once, and our second-year tutor had a nervous breakdown. We were smart and rebellious, a terrible combination for a teacher.
I was still keen on cycling—I just didn’t have a bike. My short-lived BMX career was already over, but I started to take an interest in mountain biking. I took on some odd jobs, and Dad said he would match whatever I earned so that I could buy a new bike. So on top of a paper round was added car cleaning and lawn mowing. My financial planning, targeting a new mountain bike, was ridiculously organized.
I had a big wall chart taped to the ceiling where I would monitor progress, relative to weekly and monthly targets, while lying in bed. I would empty my money box and count it all out, like a wee Ebenezer Scrooge. (This was about the most sophisticated I would ever become in planning my finances, although, in fairness, I should point out that things have gotten better recently.) At the end of the rainbow was a Marin Bear Valley ’89, black and gold and very handsome. I bought it in a shop in High Wycombe, and my life in cycling began.
Soon after that, Dad told us that he was leaving for Hong Kong. I knew he was leaving the RAF and training to be a commercial pilot, but Hong Kong hadn’t been mentioned. We presumed he would be near us whatever happened. He immediately said that we could move out there with him, but we didn’t even know where Hong Kong was, let alone what it was like. It didn’t seem real, and although it wasn’t to have an effect on us for a while, affect us it did.
Before he left, Dad and I went to Scotland together to look at boarding schools. I hadn’t been happy at Aylesbury since the beginning. The whole experience felt so miserable, from the cold, dark, silent wait at the bus stop, through the long journey on a double-decker bus, to the death march from the bus station to the school. And then there was the school itself.
It was almost five hundred years old and had the foundations of a great institution, but it was dilapidated and frayed at the edges. Some of the teachers were wonderful, but there were also terrible teachers, young, inexperienced, and badly trained.
At the beginning of my second year at the grammar our form groups were changed around. To my horror I found myself in a class of boys I neither knew nor liked, and I wrote a letter to the headmaster expressing my unhappiness at being separated from my friends. A couple of days later, the deputy head asked to see me.
He explained that the headmaster had read my letter and asked him to speak to me.
“So, David,” he began, “I understand you are not happy with your new form group?”
I stood by my letter. “No, sir.”
“Well, you understand that these form groups were created to help you? We are not in the habit of allowing boys to simply pick their form group. Why should we treat you differently?”
I explained that I understood the reasoning behind the form groups, and agreed it was the best way to educate us. Then I said: “I think my situation is a little different from the other students.
“My parents recently divorced, and we have moved away from all my old friends. This has all happened in the last two years, and I seem to be living in constant change. I don’t feel like more change, sir.”
I hadn’t intended to mention my parents’ divorce, but as I spoke, I realized that it was a key element in my motives for sticking with my friends and being moved to a less academic class. He got up from his chair and moved back behind his desk.
“Well, I will speak to the headmaster and give him my opinion. If we choose to make an exception and allow you to go to the form you want, you can be sure we’ll be keeping an eye on you, so make sure you don’t let us down.”
“Thank you, sir.”
There was a pause. “One last thing,” he said. “I asked around about you before this meeting. Did you know you are thought of as, er, a bit of a ‘wide boy’?”
I had no idea what a wide boy was, but I liked the sound of it. Hesitantly, I replied. “No, sir, I didn’t. Should I say thank you …?”
He smiled at that. Thanks to him, my last few months at Aylesbury Grammar School were not nearly as miserable as they might have been.
—
Dad’s new life took shape. France and I went to Hong Kong to visit him at half term, enduring the YPTA (Young Person Traveling Alone) system of flying around the world. Even now, Frances and I feel a pang of empathy for these kids when we see them in airports with their little travel packs around their necks.
You’ve probably seen them, too, preteens chaperoned on and off flights by cabin crew. They label you, putting a packet around your neck containing ticket and passport. Then you board a flight, seated alone, often surrounded by other kids with their mums and dads, heading off on a holiday—together. It’s a crushing experience. From the moment of leaving one parent and then meeting the other at the final destination, you are in limbo, between families.
Yet it was worth that humiliation to get to Hong Kong, because from the moment the plane landed, I fell in love with the place. I’d stepped from a black-and-white world into life in Technicolor, and I knew that was what I really wanted.
Frances and I were there for less than a week, but it was enough time for me to decide that I wanted to move there. Dad had made it clear that it was an option for both of us, if we were interested. Hong Kong offered an escape, and I didn’t hesitate, even though I knew that when I got back home I’d have to tell my mum.
I can’t remember exactly how I told Mum, but I can remember the distress it caused. She cried every night for weeks. France was the collateral damage in it all. She didn’t want to leave Mum after seeing how upset she was, and this would be what always kept her from Hong Kong. My leaving her behind was to weigh on our relationship for a decade.
Leaving Mum was hard, but I guess that part of me held her responsible for Dad moving out and for us moving houses. This wasn’t—isn’t—necessarily true, but believing it made it possible for me even to consider leaving.
Now, from a distance, I look back and see that it was a life-changing decision. I was a selfish, damaged thirteen-year-old determined to take his life into his own hands. It changed me, hardened me, and laid the foundation for the person I was to become.
Hong Kong was my escape, I was going to the Far East for the same reason as so many before me—to start afresh in a faraway place. The dreariness of Aylesbury was made all the more profound by the knowledge I was leaving for a new life. I felt sorry for everybody who had to carry on.
I didn’t return to live permanently in Britain for fifteen years.