by Isla Blair
We had picnics by the river, tormented by wasps and midges, but we swatted them and laughed and cared not a jot. We were happy and heady with excitement that the beautiful young Queen Elizabeth had been crowned in a golden coach with a “heart of gold”. We would all laugh, chat and hold hands. I’d brush Mummy’s hair and she would comb mine and say “Hello, Saluki.” It was so lovely having our Mother with us and even in this hotel that wasn’t our home it felt as if we belonged, because she was with us and she was ours – and even without Daddy, we felt like a family again.
But the holiday came to an end and this time we were taken to Central Station in Glasgow to meet the “Glasgow Escort” by our mother. That awful cold sick feeling started in my tummy when I knew the moment had come to part from her again. This time I wasn’t brave and stoical at all, but clung to her like a baby monkey. I cried, but silently; my grip on her arm was like a vice. Fiona, who was usually the tearful one, was dry eyed as she pulled me away and told me to “Stop it! Can’t you see it’s just as awful for Mummy?” And it was. I could see it was. Her blue eyes looked nearly black as she held me in arms that shook and she was crying too. She wiped my eyes with her handkerchief and told me to blow my nose. By this time, the deputy headmistress, Mrs Cock, had come forward and had taken our hands and told us to wave goodbye. The last I saw of Mummy was her slight frame in her green suit with her arms folded over her chest hugging herself as if to keep her heart from escaping. I felt ashamed of causing her distress and I shouted out “Sorry, Mummy,” but I don’t think she heard above the train’s whistle and the puff-puffing as it pulled away. That picture of her lived with me; there was no opportunity to ask forgiveness, for her to say it was all alright, the regret and the guilt were part of the pain of loss.
Abandonment is a word that people, through the years, have thrown at me, accusing my parents. Although we were in truth sent to boarding school and left to survive the pleasures or loneliness of various holiday homes, hotels or relatives’ houses, I didn’t feel abandoned. Lost sometimes, yes, but I always knew that my parents loved me. They didn’t want to be rid of me. I have no reason not to believe that lots of people had lives like mine, went to boarding school, and had long separations from their parents. I think Fiona suffered more than I did; she was older and she must have felt very alone sometimes. But it never occurred to me to blame my parents; these separations were just a time to be got through until we saw them again. Besides, my imagination was coming to my rescue and I spent more time day-dreaming with Debbie Reynolds, Jean Simmons and Audrey Hepburn – and I didn’t complain about the company I kept.
EIGHT
Monsoon in Munnar
We were going home! Home, home, home. We were going to the sun, to the lime trees, the eucalyptus and the tea, to Boy and Matey and maybe we could visit Ayah and we were going to them, our parents. It was five years since we had been away. I knew that my father had moved from headquarters office to a different tea estate, Kalaar, so our home wouldn’t be the house we grew up in, not Ailsa Craig with a view over the valley that looked blue in the evening light, where the swing still hung from our lime tree and the lilies bowed their heads against the monsoon rain. But we were still going back to our familiar Munnar with the bright sounds and the dazzling light and the air that tasted of lemonade; besides, our parents were there and where they were was our home.
I packed, unpacked, and packed my suitcase again, quite tidily for me – I wanted so much to pack presents, like strawberry jam or peppermint sweets, but Fi said they’d be too heavy and probably get smashed on the journey, so in the end I didn’t pack anything. I fluttered with excitement, feeling a bit sick all the time, planning, imagining, anticipating, expecting – and soon it was time to begin our journey down to London, in order to catch the plane (our first ever flight) from Heathrow to Bombay, as it was then.
We didn’t have quite enough money for dinner at the Grosvenor Hotel where we spent the night before departure. When we found ourselves in the huge dining room with peach-coloured tablecloths, the waiter gave us an enormous leather bound menu each. We tried not to feel intimidated and babyish. Fiona scanned the menu and then looked into her purse. We only had enough money for the soup (Brown Windsor) but you got the bread and butter free. We had lots and lots of bread and butter. We breakfasted on cornflakes, and toast and then left by taxi for the airport, to Heathrow. There was a constant whirr of excitement, intoxicating, making my heart beat fast, my breathing becoming a little shallow, but everything was in sharp focus, as if I had been wearing sunglasses and had taken them off – smells, sounds, sights dazzled me.
It’s difficult now to imagine Heathrow Airport as just a series of Nissen huts with corrugated iron roofs and rather empty linoleum floored halls, but so it was in 1956; glamorous girls with their hair in French pleats, BEA or BOAC uniforms with nipped in waists and cheeky little hats and crisp white gloves greeted us. I thought they were the height of sophistication and if I hadn’t set my heart on wowing theatre audiences, I think I would like to have been an air hostess – even if it meant having to get French O Level, an unlikely aspiration. The hostesses’ eye makeup – well, all their make-up, come to that – was a sort of wonder to me: thick, black eyeliner that tilted up at the ends, and very red lips or very pale lips, almost white. The girls wore quite thick foundation too, and powder, and had a scent of Mitsouko by Guerlain or L’Heure Bleue – anyway something sophisticated, not like Yardley’s Lavender Water or Californian Poppy. They smelt slightly musky, heady, tuberose-y or spicy, glamorous and shining, with white teeth and confident smiles.
As unaccompanied children, we were gathered under the ground hostess’s wing and taken to meet our friends from India – last seen five years ago and almost unrecognisable. The boys with their thin, scabby knees and down on their chins, or slightly hippy, budding-breasted girls, round eyed and giggling. The Beaumonts, the Duncans, Desmond McIntyre.
There were stopping-off places where we all had to be rounded up again as the plane was refuelled. Paris, Dusseldorf, Geneva, Rome, Beirut, Bahrain, Cairo.
I remember Fiona giving me the window seat in her generous, older-sister way – she was squashed in the middle next to a man in a dhoti who jiggled his legs for the whole journey as he worked on his worry beads. It must have been infuriating, but Fiona endured it with forbearance and never complained. I loved seeing the little houses disappear as we took off and appear again as we landed. In between times, I remember being bored, feeling a bit sick and sleepy. I was never very hungry which, poor Fiona again, felt was a bit remiss as it was free, so she ate my untouched or picked-over food, more out of big sister duty than hunger or greed.
It was the first time we had been on a plane and the journey took over twenty-eight hours, with constant re-fuelling stops. At that time, air fares were hugely expensive and could only be afforded by our parents on rare occasions. It seems unimaginable now with non-stop intercontinental flights and “no frills” cheap airlines. There was nothing cheap about flights to India in 1956 and there were plenty of frills – meals beautifully served by gracious hostesses, with cotton napkins and plenty of silver and glass; there was cologne and hand cream in the toilets and the cabin crew never seemed tired or bored, but welcoming, warm and attentive.
At Bombay (Mumbai) we were met by an unknown woman, one of a group whose duty it was to meet English children off the plane from London and to put them on the dawn flight, Indian Airlines, to Cochin.
Isla and Fiona arriving at Mumbai airport 1956
That single night in her house brought India back to me – the light, the textures, above all the smells – slightly musty and monsoon-y, wood smoke and snuffed out candles and kerosene oil lamps, Sunlight soap and floor polish. We had billowing mosquito nets around our beds and I tried to fight off the notion that there was a snake in my bed, a scorpion in my shoe and another snake coming up out of the lavatory. Snakes seemed to be the thing to look out for – the enemy – and any rustle would goad my imag
ination into further extreme scenes of horror. But it didn’t put me off sleep. We were both so tired and so excited. Tomorrow we would see them; our parents. We had so much to tell them.
Dawn came and we were brought sweet tea and plantains and we got dressed. The drive to the airport in the dawn light was interesting, to say the least: rows of men defecating on the side of the road in a companionable sort of way, with no shame or embarrassment. Bullock carts with tired, resigned beasts plodding through puddles made by the rain the night before, shanty towns – houses made of tin and corrugated iron tumbling one on top of another, and naked children and pye–dogs with sticking–out ribs, women washing their hair, pots boiling over smoking fires. It was as different from Dunblane and Inverness as it was possible to be, not a sheep or a pine tree in sight. Not a rhododendron bush or a ploughed field with orange turnips.
The plane ride was a bit hairy as it was wobbly and turbulent, bumpy and sick-making and we had to stop off in the middle of a field in Belgaum; there was no explanation as to why. I don’t think it actually was a field, just a small stopping off place where the pilot gathered his thoughts and picked up a few more passengers. But soon Cochin was in sight; the harbour, the thousand year old Chinese fishing nets, the clumps of palm trees that made up the backwaters and, yes, there they were on the tarmac, blonde head and dark head, stripy cotton dress and short sleeved shirt and khaki shorts – our loved and missed parents. We seemed to tumble out of the plane into their arms. My father with his pipe and slow grin, my mother, beautiful and blonde and high cheek boned and, yes, there it was, lilies of the valley – the smell of home and safety and love and all the choked up missing seemed to melt away. To be replaced by an unfamiliar, unexpected shyness. I had so much to say to them, but seemed unable to utter a word.
We went to our rooms in the Malabar Hotel and there was that India smell again. We unpacked a little, got into our swimming costumes and headed to the little swimming pool, where we showed off madly – jumping, diving, butterfly stroke, crawl, back stroke – “Look at me.” “Daddy, Daddy, watch”. “Look at me, Mummy.”
We’d had so long without their attention, let alone their approval, that there wasn’t enough we could do to prove we had grown, were clever, good, funny. We wanted to be all of those things, all at once – we wanted their pride and approval in great gulps. I couldn’t get over the notion, despite all my excitement at seeing them, that maybe they were a bit disappointed in me. I was no longer the slender, shiny haired little girl with wide eyes, I was gawky, yet stocky, and my eyes had gone puffed up and slanty and I had this quite prominent bosom and lumpy legs. I bit my nails. I think, though, that it was me who was disappointed in me. I was no Jean Simmons or Audrey Hepburn, no Debra Paget or Debbie Reynolds – I wanted so much to be the sophisticated film star girl and I was just an eleven year old who had already stepped over the threshold from childhood into a rather pudgy puberty.
We ate sandwiches and nuts and fruit at the poolside and had to fight off the very vocal crows. They swooped and snatched the bread off our plates, which was funny at first, then a bit annoying and finally, rather threatening. But I loved the sound they made, sort of “caw-cawing” – nothing made that sound in Scotland.
Morning arrived and with “Bye, see you later,” “See you in the Club tomorrow,” as we piled into the little black Ford and made our way up the winding ghat through the plains, up the creeper-clad hills, waving at the monkeys and wondering at the darting green birds, up and up through the mist and into the mountains and through the rubber trees and pepper groves. The scent and the air changed, wood smoke again, now fir and gum trees and then the sweet scent of the tea – laid out like sloping lawns, green, ordered, manicured, immaculate. The tea bushes and the hills beyond meant one thing – we were nearly home.
Our bungalow was a long verandahed house with red polished tile floors and white columns, nestling beneath the cut–back jungle. A small stream waterfalled onto the rocks beneath, and there were the usual Indian sounds of cicadas and birds and buzzing things. We’d taken our English summer holiday in late July ‘till mid September so, of course, it was monsoon time in Munnar. My father’s estate was called “Kalaar” and it and Letchimi had the highest rainfall of anywhere in the High Range Hills. Each tea estate had its own factory and lines of houses lived in by the tea pluckers, factory workers and their families. The floors of our bungalow were cool; the sitting room was plain and – I thought – elegant, with sofas and chairs covered in thick, cream woven linen and cushions with blue hydrangeas all over them. The curtains, too, were thick cream linen, with soft billowing muslin ones behind them – and all the windows opened out onto the verandah.
Mummy showed us into the bedroom I was to share with Fiona. It was whitewashed and clean with the same red tiled floor and the two single beds had yellow counterpanes on them made of heavy cotton. There were thick towels folded at the end of each bed and a bathroom that was off the bedroom which was ours alone. It was like the impersonal room in a hotel, because there was nothing special of ours in it that we had left behind five years before. This didn’t unduly surprise me; it was what I had expected. It wasn’t the home I’d left; it was the home where my parents lived now and that I was visiting. There was a strange growl behind us, just one low growl that preceded the entry into the bedroom of a small cream coloured cat with a coffee coloured face and feet.
“Meet Mr Chang,” said our mother. We made cooing noises and went to greet this tiny creature who wanted to make his presence felt. Mr Chang became our companion and friend and where he led we followed. He soon became the dominant one in our trio.
It took a few days to become re-acquainted with our parents. They were shy of us, too, and to begin with our conversation was polite and rather stilted. But in time Daddy started to tease us, ruffling our hair and commenting on our Glasgow accents and I was proud to notice all over again how handsome he was, especially now that he was in his own working environment. He wore long khaki shorts and check shirt and long socks and shoes and a khaki sun hat and his metal-strapped watch. I thought he looked like some of the movie stars in my film annuals, especially Jack Hawkins, for he was sun tanned with white crinkled lines around his eyes. He said to me, “You’re so grown up, Isla, quite a young lady. You are no longer my little girl.” While I was pleased that I was grown up, I wondered if he missed his little girl.
We sat with our mother on the sofa and we would all link arms as we listened to the BBC World Service, not Children’s Hour this time, but dance music, Victor Sylvester and Henry Hall. She showed us how to tango and the one-two-three of the waltz and we’d show her how to boogie and jive. We started to follow her everywhere – to the kitchen and the store room with Boy, out to the cowshed to watch the cow being milked and we went, of course, to the bees – who had somehow been persuaded to come to Kalaar from Ailsa Craig. We told them we were back as we had promised. We would sit with Mummy on her bed as she put on her makeup and her pearls (“Never spray perfume near pearls, it makes them lose their lustre.”) when we were about to pay a visit to one of her friends for tea or a tennis party and we would put on her high heels and strut up and down the long corridor until she said, “Enough girls, you’ll turn your ankles over!” She seemed so very pretty, just as pretty as Debbie Reynolds, prettier than Doris Day or Mitzi Gaynor, or Lana Turner for that matter, and her quietness gave her a serenity. But I sensed that she was as shy of Fi and me as we were, to begin with, of her. It seemed impossible that these good looking people could have a lump like me as a daughter with a spindly pony tail and stumpy hands (peasant’s hands, Granny had called them).
I was trying on Mummy’s diamante earrings in front of her dressing table mirror as she was tidying out her handkerchief bag. I sighed and she asked me what the matter was. “I wish I was prettier. I wish I looked like you.”
She came behind me and put her arms round me. “But you are pretty. Look at your straight nose, see that? It’s the Skeoch nose, small and ne
at, and you still have your conker coloured hair. My baby Saluki – but you know what? It’s what you feel and think that makes you pretty. You have seen people with sulky faces, whose mouths turn down at the corner? Granny always says ‘A woman of twenty has the face she was born with; a woman of forty has the face she deserves.’ You are a lovely girl because you are a lovable girl. Daddy and I wouldn’t change a single thing about you.” I had been fishing for reassurance and I got it. I was relieved.
It could be a bit dull if it rained, which it did nearly every day, so we sat inside by the wood fire, drawing or thumbing through magazines and papers sent out on the crinkly see-through airmail paper from England. The news was always days late. Each evening, when the tapal coolie arrived with the mail and the papers, he ran down the road, covered only by a cumbli (a thick, not very waterproof blanket), and delivered the mail and made his way to the kitchen where his clothes were dried and he was given a meal. We used to look forward to the tapal coolie and would fight over the copies of Woman’s Weekly and Tatler and Country Life. There was a record player and we played songs over and over again, “You Belong to Me” and “Salad Days” which was a recent hit in London. Once the tapal coolie had been, we listened to the news on the World Service and Mum and Dad had drinks, whisky heavily diluted with soda, and we had delicious fresh lemonade, but made of limes. We called it “Nimbu Pani” and we felt very grown up. We would then go for our baths which Michael, our chokra, would run.