Despite the heavy workload, the school was proud of its record on the playing fields and inter-school carnivals were taken seriously. I involved myself in every sport, with a particular enthusiasm for soccer, which I had learned as a child in Burma.
During one match, when the school was pitted against an army team, I was approached by an Indian gentleman.
‘I am the president of a local sports and cultural club for Indians,’ he explained. ‘Would you consider becoming a junior member of the local Tagore Club? It is a social club that encourages many activities, some on the playing field and others based on the studies of the Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore.’
‘Thank you, but I will have to consult the school principal.’
I went to see him the next day. He was a very reasonable man. ‘Certainly, if you wish,’ he said. ‘The Tagore Club is very reputable and it will give you an opportunity to meet people from outside the school. But school activities must take precedence. We will review your involvement if your schoolwork begins to lag.’
‘I understand, sir. Thank you.’
So I became the first non-Indian member of the South Indian branch of the Tagore organisation. My involvement was not extensive. The games were mostly at home and took a couple of hours at weekends, and I enjoyed the association. It was a release from the strictures of school and provided an opportunity to meet and mingle with locals. Despite some barbed references to my association with the ‘Chi Chi’ crowd, as the locals were called by my fellow students, I continued to play for the club and cultivated many enduring friendships with my Indian teammates and their families. I fitted in.
On one occasion, one of the senior students at school buttonholed me.
‘What’s this I hear about your association with the native boys?’ he asked.
I took the bait straight away. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve never felt threatened by any person of a different race or culture.’
Our differing attitudes would fester into a sore of rivalry. We were each guilty of using our differences about the then accepted standards of European behaviour to a ridiculous degree.
Henry, as he was called, was a quarter-caste Indian but his appearance displayed no trace of his Indian ancestry. He was intensely racist, as were most of the whites and part-whites in India during the British Raj. Henry could never come to terms with the fact that I boasted of my Burmese connection. He extended his dislike for me into every facet of our school life. On one occasion he goaded me into a challenge tennis match, a scheme he hatched with his friends. He was a talented player and I knew he would walk all over me on the sand court. I sent a message back with one of my friends.
‘Tell them I concede that he is the better player and I will not be taking up his challenge,’ I said.
I could not resist adding, ‘I have no reason to prove my superiority, because in my own heart I know I am a better person than he could ever hope to be.’
Henry became incensed.
‘I’ll have that half-caste drummed out of the school,’ he told my unfortunate emissary. He might have succeeded but for an ally in the classroom.
Mr Subramanium was a Brahmin, a high-class Indian. He was also the science master. In spite of his strict and demanding attitude in the classroom, he was truly Indian and displayed, though not too openly, a dislike for the colonial masters of his country. He was highly regarded by the governors of the school for his dedication to his position.
Our relationship was a master–pupil one during school hours, but outside Subramanium and I developed a firm, respectful friendship.
We talked at length of our families and our discussions spilled over into the history of the East – the great rulers of India, the religions and philosophies of the Orient. He explained the caste system and elaborated upon the strange traditions of the different groups of nationals that made up the population of the sub-continent. Seldom did we talk of classroom activities, although he did once advise me to reconsider my choice of subjects for the Leaving Certificate.
‘I get the impression, Colin, that you are struggling to grasp the fundamentals of the science subjects,’ he said tactfully. ‘Perhaps you should consider concentrating on subjects with which you have a greater affinity.’
I did try to keep abreast with the other pupils. I was never in the top bracket, but plodded along quite comfortably somewhere in the middle. With a few exceptions, I got along famously with my fellow students. They loved talking about my experiences before coming to Breeks but, to their credit, they never broached the subject of the trek out of Burma. They had been instructed by the principal to refrain from raising it.
What they did ask about, and I was delighted to tell them, was the freedom of travel that had been afforded me, and would continue to be afforded to me, in the short time I had been in India.
As time wore on, I would have more stories to tell them. I had no family in India and nowhere particular to go in the school holidays. It was a school rule that boarders could not stay in the boarding house during breaks, and so I had to go somewhere.
The first school vacation would soon be upon us and the principal buttonholed me.
‘Where are you planning to go for the break, McPhedran?’
It was a fair question. The system demanded that I give notice of my plans.
I couldn’t wait to get back to Calcutta. This was my chance to explore it without the restrictions the Smees had placed upon me.
‘Calcutta, sir,’ I said immediately.
‘That’s a long way. Are you familiar with Calcutta?’
‘Yes, sir, I spent my first few months in India with some family friends there.’ He seemed satisfied.
I knew little of the arrangements my father had made with Thomas Cook, but they proved to be generous. All I had to do was notify them of my destination, and they arranged my itinerary, including hotels.
Chapter 20
School Days
No two train journeys in this vast sub-continent are the same. Along the way, at the many stops, different scenes are played out. What never changes is the crushing presence of humans.
From Madras onwards, I shared the compartment with a soldier returning to his unit in Calcutta. He was quite a jolly Englishman and I took the opportunity to tell him as much as I could of India and its history.
Then, at one of the stops, a woman and her daughter knocked on the door of the compartment from the side of the tracks. I realised the woman was plying the trains and selling her body for a few rupees. Her hands did the speaking and in a moment my companion and she had struck a deal.
The lights were turned down and the two of them went into action. It was embarrassing to sit there and listen to the two of them indulging in a sex act. Having finished, the soldier produced a bottle of alcohol and offered it around. He pointed to the woman’s daughter, who would hardly have been older that 10 years old.
‘Why don’t you have some fun with her?’ he suggested. I was horrified, but just said, ‘No thank you, sir.’
The woman kept pointing to her daughter with the obvious suggestion that I take her little girl. Again I waved the suggestion off. The two drank some more liquor and then the soldier turned to me.
‘I fancy having her for myself,’ he said with a leer.
The young girl moved over onto the other side of the compartment and lay down. I walked into the toilet and shut the door while my companion committed the act with this girl whom I considered a child. When the train pulled into another station, mother and daughter got off between the tracks and headed away.
It was raining heavily when the train pulled into Calcutta’s Howrah Station. I boarded a taxi and drove to the Grand Hotel, on Chowringhee, in the centre of Calcutta’s business district. Nothing had changed since my stay at the Smees’ house. The airstrip in the middle of the city was still being used by fighter planes. The hotel looked out on to a park, a popular recreation area.
After a brief rest I walked down the street and bo
oked into a movie. It had been a while since I had set foot in a theatre because my Christian connections did not encourage visits to what they considered to be the domain of the devil’s children.
Back at the hotel I made a point of speaking with anybody in uniform. The guests were generally British and American officers, all friendly and prepared to talk about the front line and the action in Burma, where the Allies were breaking through. The Japanese were being pushed back on all fronts. The Allies had taken Bhamo in December, and the Chinese had taken Namkham in January.
‘Any day now, Rangoon will fall,’ they said. ‘The Japs will be on the run.’
I had been growing so quickly that all of a sudden I had put on a tremendous amount of weight and was bursting out of my clothes. The only set I had that still fitted me was the new school uniform Dr Beer had ordered for me when I began at Breeks.
I went to see Thomas Cook to arrange my return trip and dif-fidently mentioned my need for new clothes to the clerk. He went away and spoke to someone, then came back and told me the name of one of the big stores. I don’t remember whether it was Jardine’s or Whiteway’s, but he said, ‘Go and buy what you want. The bill will be taken care of at this end.’
Relieved, I found my way to the men’s department of the enormous store and one of the assistants took me under his wing. He measured me up and said, ‘You can pick up the clothes tomorrow.’
He was as true as his word. The next day I went back and collected two brand new pairs of casual trousers, three white shirts, a set of cricket creams that were my pride and joy, one pair of English leather shoes, rubber shoes for sport and some new underwear. I remember the trousers were the most important because I could barely do up my old ones. Newly kitted out, I set off to explore Calcutta.
I was determined to get out and about. I was doing what I had yearned to do on the day I had been left alone at the Smees’ house during my first stay in Calcutta. I pounded the streets, rode the tram cars, visited the slum areas and ate and drank with the Indians. I even went to the gates of the Smees’ residence and looked around at the scene I had last viewed that day early in 1943.
In the street were the same people, almost, with the same air of going to a destination. Even the smells were there, as were the pariah dogs, sniffing the ground for a scrap of food. I walked along the streets beside the dirty Hoogly River and roamed through the business district and further on to the wharves. There I watched the native labourers unloading foreign ships.
Each day I had lunch at a cheap curry house and in the evenings I explored the affluent suburbs of Tollygunj and Ballygunj. They were clean, with tree-lined streets, and statues, on most corners and in the parks, of long-ago British conquering heroes and distinguished governors. It was the time of day when the wealthy returned home in chauffeur-driven cars and their children came out to play tennis and ride horses in the cool of the day. It was a great city of contrasts – the rich at play, and the poor also playing, but in the gutters. Both were unmindful of the sick and dying in doorways and on the pavements.
My visit to Calcutta was far too brief for my liking, because the school vacation was only short. I vowed to return soon to the city which held me in its thrall.
SUNDAY WAS A FREE DAY AT SCHOOL, when we would sit around and discuss our encounters with girls. All the versions of our experiences were tinged with exaggeration. Most of the liaisons included the girls from our sister school at Coonoor.
One of my best friends was Peter Turley. He had developed a close friendship with Helen, the girl who had befriended me on the train up the mountain, the vivacious blonde with the happy face. The pair would often disappear into the gardens in search of a secluded spot.
‘Give us a whistle when it’s time for the girls to go back to Coonoor,’ Turley would say.
I would, and the pair would reappear, rather sheepish and flushed. I constantly but lightheartedly teased him about her teeth.
‘How do you enjoy getting a mouthful of them every time you kiss?’
He pointed to his chest and said, ‘Who needs kissing when a girl is built like Mae West?’
Whenever I saw Helen after that, my eyes were drawn to her upper tunic like a magnet.
David and Shirley were another couple. Shirley was the daughter of a tea-planter and David the son of the aide-de-camp to the Nizam of Hyderabad. His family lived in one of the many palaces the Nizam owned in South India. He was a fine fellow, but rather serious and subdued. He seldom boasted of his conquests and I admired him for that. However, he and Shirley became very close and I feared that one of them would get hurt. Some months later I was told that Shirley was pregnant and had been removed from school. It was a bitter blow for David, and he became a recluse.
The time flew by. Boarders were given a remarkable amount of freedom. Unlike my earlier stint at boarding school in Rangoon, we were trusted to do the right thing. The boot-camp mentality of the Catholic priests that had dominated the lives of young pupils in St Paul’s was not in evidence here. Corporal punishment was never practised. The system was permitting me to develop freely, although Christian values were slotted in during the compulsory Sunday Gospel service.
Church was not all bad. I enjoyed the rousing hymns and it was an opportunity to view the day girls in a different light. It was pleasant to see them wearing colourful dresses and cute hats, compared with the plain white blouse and blue tunic of the school uniform.
After the morning service the boarders would march back to the boarding school in military file.
‘Did you see Fiona? Didn’t she look good?’
‘Yes, nice legs, too. I caught a good flash of them when she bent over.’
‘What about Maureen? That was a different hat she was wearing.’
‘Who cares about hats. It’s the bits further down that matter.’ The lesson of Salvation that some visiting evangelist had spent hours preparing was quite forgotten.
What a far cry Breeks Memorial was from that horrible place with a saintly name in Rangoon. How could I ever forget my stint at St Paul’s? My father’s decision to send Robert and me to that Catholic institution had certainly taken the sparkle out of my mother. Seeing her carrying the burden of hurt extinguished what little love I had for him. He had enrolled us to be taught by the very Catholic brothers whom he had always called idolaters. The school stood for everything my father detested, yet he went ahead and enrolled us.
One Sunday at Breeks my roving eye latched on to a particular girl, Flora, who was in my class at school. Every Sunday she attended the service with her mother. The male boarders sat together on the right-hand side of the church and Flora and her mother occupied the seats diagonally ahead, across the aisle.
During the week Flora looked like any of the other day girls. She was part of the school scene. However, on Sunday, she wore long, plain dresses and a black straw hat. It was the simplicity of her dress that made her stand out from the rest of the girls at church.
One lunch break at school, I was getting ready for the afternoon session with a teacher who was going to test us on a subject I hated. I was so worried that I could not eat. I sought help from classmates, but they were busy chatting up the girls. Then I spotted Flora reading in the shade of the school verandah. I sauntered over and joined her on the bench. I told her of my predicament.
‘I don’t suppose you would be able to help me.’
‘I’m sorry – I am in the same situation. I really don’t understand the lesson either!’
We talked for a while and it struck me that she was not quite as perturbed as I. ‘Aren’t you worried about being singled out as a dummy by the teacher?’
She shrugged and pointed to the mangy dog that frequented the playing field in search of an odd crust of food.
‘See that dog, Colin, it is not at all concerned about what’s going to happen to it when we are called into class. It will just move on and make the best of what lies ahead.’
I looked at her and noticed her long hair had been pla
ited into two pigtails. It made her look younger still. The bell rang and we walked into school together. The second period arrived.
‘I am most dreadfully sorry,’ the teacher said at the outset. ‘You must have all been wondering what the question was all about. I didn’t give you the correct information!’
I caught Flora’s eye and our friendship firmed from then on. Flora was my first love. We talked and talked whenever the opportunity arose. She told me about the death of her missionary father, and she was the first person to whom I opened my heart about my family tragedy. We cried together as I recalled the trek. There were times when my thoughts flashed back to the Saturdays I had spent at the Buddhist monastery in Burma listening to the monks explain the theory of rebirth as written in the Buddhist canon. It occurred to me that perhaps Flora was the embodiment of my sister.
This partial belief made me look upon her as somebody to cher-ish and love, but not to speak about in the sexual way my friends spoke of their girlfriends. There was nothing soppy about our relationship; it could be better described as a discovery that we were soul mates.
However, it did not inhibit my desires for the opposite sex. I continued to flirt with some of the girls from the sister school. Henry, my arch enemy and a real ‘pants man’ with the girls and, indeed, the younger female staff members of the school, was mad about the daughter of a wealthy Englishman. She was friendly and open and Henry was very possessive, even though she wasn’t actually his girlfriend. Any attention paid to her by other boys was met with veiled threats of a hiding. If he couldn’t have her, no-one could.
Cycling and exploring the wooded hills around Ootacamund were popular recreations on Sundays.
My little mate, Turley, said one day, ‘I want to take Helen for a ride today, but she is stuck with her friend. Why don’t you come along and make a foursome? She’s a nice girl.’
As soon as he mentioned her name, I realised she was the very girl of whom Henry was so possessive.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ I asked. ‘Henry will go berserk.’ Turley, undaunted, said, ‘Well, Helen says she doesn’t like him anyway. He can’t just monopolise someone who doesn’t want him. Besides, if you don’t come, I’ll be saddled with her, and that won’t be any fun.’
White Butterflies Page 19