Behind me a car horn blared into the crowd. A white Lincoln Zephyr was forcing its way through the traffic, hemmed in by the rickshaw coolies and refugees clambering into the entrance of the Amusement Park. David Hunter knelt on the rear seat beside his Australian nanny, blond hair in his eyes as he squinted at the pavement. Forgetting the coffins and the clicking abacus, I pushed my cycle along the gutter, aware that David would see me once the traffic had cleared.

An air-raid klaxon sounded from one of the office buildings, overlaid by a heavy, sustained rumble like a collapsing sky. A shouting coolie strode towards me, bales of firewood on a bamboo pole across his shoulders, from which the veins stood out like bloated worms. Without pausing, he kicked the cycle out of my hands. I bent down to rub my bruised knees and tried to reach the handlebars, but the rush of feet knocked me to the ground. Winded, I lay among the old lottery tickets, torn newspapers, and straw sandals as the white Lincoln cruised past. Playing with his blond fringe behind the passenger window, David frowned at me in his pointy way, unable to recognise me but puzzled why an English boy in a Cathedral School blazer had chosen this of all moments to roll about in a filthy gutter.

The klaxon wailed, keening at the sky. Chinese office workers, women clerks, and hotel waiters were running down the Nanking Road from the Bund. An immense cloud of white steam rose from the Whangpoo River behind them, flashes of gunfire reflected in its lower surface. Around it circled three twin-engined bombing planes, banking as they flew through its ashen billows.

A squadron of Chinese aircraft were bombing the Idzumo and the Japanese cotton mills at Yangtzepoo, little more than a mile from the Bund across the Garden Bridge. The boom of heavy guns jarred the windows of the office buildings in the Thibet Road. A tram clanked past me towards the Bund, its passengers leaping into the road. High above them, on the roof of the Socony-Vacuum building, stood a party of unconcerned Europeans in white tennis clothes, binoculars in hand, pointing out details of the spectacle to each other.

Had the war really started? I was expecting something as organised and disciplined as the Military Tattoo. The planes lumbered through the air, as if the pilots were bored by their targets and were circling the Idzumo simply to fill in time before returning to their airfield. The French and British warships sat at their moorings near the Pootung shore, signal lights blinking softly from their bridges, a vaguely curious commentary on the bombing display downriver.