‘Oh well, then, I suppose so,’ I said.
We rode along a path that was used by a small tribe of little-known Indians, the Togas, who lived in the high country. We crossed some green fields and found a rocky outcrop. Turley and Helen chose a space between two rocks.
‘Leave us alone. There’s a place on the other side where you can go.’
Great guy, I thought. Here he was with his favourite girl, wedged in a secluded spot, and I was left with a nice girl for whom I had had no desire, not even to be her escort for the afternoon.
Our embarrassment was compounded by the squeals and laughter coming from around the rock. I stole a glance at the girl’s blushing face. She was actually a beauty queen, blessed with a fine complexion, growing out of the awkward period of her life but not yet ready to blossom into maturity.
It was agonising, sitting there like a couple of rawhides waiting for the first draw. How did I get into this situation and why was I not doing anything about it? There was Turley acting out a love scene, one he would delight in bragging about back at the boarding house. He would no doubt make me verify his story.
The girl was sitting with her hands around her knees.
I half turned to face her, gently pushing her backwards until she lay on the sloping ground. I drew my body up to hers and kissed her on her neck. She squealed softly but offered no resistance. The petting grew heavier and I soon found my hand under her blouse and on her breast, but I went no further. Holding her tightly, I said, ‘Come on, let’s get those two. We’d better get back to the boarding house.’
Back at the boarding house the boys were reliving their weekend’s experiences. Some, children of wealthier parents, had returned with baskets of good things to eat. Others reminisced about delicious cakes at the coffee house down town. The more athletic described hikes in the hillsides. And there were those who could not go beyond the subject of the opposite sex. Today I was one of that group. Although I had been caught up in the foursome quite by accident, I had to admit it had been fun.
But I took exception to the way the other boys – even Turley – expected me to reveal every detail.
‘Well, McPhedran, how far did you go? Did you get into her pants?’
‘No, I did not, if you want to know, and I object to you fellows bringing her name into this.’
‘Oh, come on, we all know who she is.’
But I wouldn’t be drawn anymore. She was a decent girl who did not deserve to have her name dragged along the corridors of a boarding house full of randy young fellows.
Fortunately, Henry never did find out about our assignation. But later on I discovered, to my chagrin, that our friends from the sister school indulged in almost exactly the same sort of gossip about us as we did about them.
Some years later, in London, I attended a reunion of former pupils of Breeks Memorial. To my surprise, the same girl turned up. She had matured into a self-satisfied young woman, typical of the well-heeled, smug British upper-middle classes of the time. I was slightly disappointed, but not altogether surprised, to see that despite her early promise she had not blossomed into a truly beautiful woman.
I began to focus more on study. The word which filtered down to me from my father indicated that the consequences of failing would not be pleasant. I still played sport, but the weekends spent flirting were over.
Flora and I spent more time together and most of our energies went into revising. We grew close and I sometimes played with her waist-length hair and learnt to plait her dark locks whilst she read aloud. Often her mother was present and we talked about the work of missionaries in India.
The political situation was hotting up as the war with Japan was being won. I wondered what Flora and her mother would do when India finally achieved its independence. One day they asked me where my future lay.
I told them I would catch the first transport home to Burma and enter the Hukawng Valley in the north to seek out my mother who, I was convinced, would still be alive and living in a remote village.
One Sunday, while Flora and I were waiting for her mother to emerge from church, she said, ‘You know, Colin, Mother cried for you after you told her about your mother. She has constantly prayed that you will find her alive and well. Mother says you will not rest until you find out what happened to her. She prays that you will go on and have a joyous life no matter what you find in Burma.’
I was touched. It seemed there were people around who were genuinely prepared to share the burden of somebody else’s grief.
Through the years, the images of Flora and her mother have never dimmed. I often see them dressed, as they always were, in plain clothes, heads covered with straw hats, stepping out of the red brick church on the hill in Ootacamund.
Chapter 21
War is Over
1945 rolled on. The war in the Pacific was drawing rapidly to a close. The soldiers I had spoken to in Calcutta earlier in the year had been absolutely right about the situation in Burma. Rangoon had fallen shortly afterwards, on 1 May.
Since the news from the war was so encouraging, I decided I should pay another visit to my beloved Calcutta during the long break. It was so close to Burma that I would surely meet somebody from the war zone who could tell me what was happening up in the mountains.
It also meant that I could stop off at Madras to meet my brother Donald’s wife, of whom I had only recently learnt. Unbeknownst to me, Donald had met her in Calcutta while he was a student at the university. She was an evacuee from Burma who, with her family, had been imprisoned in Myitkyina in a concentration camp run by the Japanese during their occupation of upper Burma.
Her family, the McRaes, had suffered dreadfully at the hands of the Japanese. After Myitkyina had been liberated in 1944, the remaining members of her family arrived at the evacuation centre in Calcutta before joining their grandparents in Madras.
Donald had fallen in love with Pamela, who was a real beauty, a former Miss Burma, and they married in Madras shortly afterwards. He left university to join the army. A few months before my visit, Pamela had given birth to their first baby, a boy named Robert, after our brother.
The visit was not a success. Donald was away in the army, and Pamela was all at sea with her young baby. She immediately seized upon me to help out with him, and so for the few nights I was there I babysat the poor little fellow while she went out. It did not suit my teenage temperament and I did not feel welcome. I was glad to get away, and put the visit out of my mind.
So I found myself back at the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, booked again for me by Thomas Cook.
With the war drawing to a close, security had loosened considerably and after the hotel guests, mostly soldiers, had consumed a few drinks in a relaxed environment, I learnt quite a lot about the Allies’ advance to Rangoon in April.
Calcutta was getting over the ravages of the famine that had killed an estimated one million people. People were still dying on the streets and it was a common sight to see emaciated people scavenging through rubbish bins outside the hotel.
The Indian Congress Party was creating some problems for the British authorities. Gandhi and Nehru, the two leaders of the Party, were stepping up their agitation for self-rule in India. People gathered daily and when the beating of drums had summoned a crowd, a Party member would address the gathering.
There was always a heavy police presence and on some occasions, when the mob got out of control, the police would step in, their batons flailing at anybody nearby. The mood of the citizens was certainly changing. Some Indian youths took to abusing Europeans brazenly. I kept away from any trouble spots.
I befriended a young university student whose family were well-to-do Indians and lived in the Central Provinces. One day, loudspeakers blared out that Gandhi would be addressing a meeting in the park.
‘Let’s go and hear the great man speak,’ my friend suggested. I was afraid initially.
‘Don’t worry, the police will be in control if hostilities break out,’ he said. ‘
Besides, there will be over a million people there to hear Gandhi, and it will be an experience of a lifetime for a young fellow like you!’
I joined the throng heading toward the meeting place. There were people on bikes, some riding in horse-drawn vehicles, others walking and even some limbless people crawling along the dusty road. I had never experienced anything like it, and probably never will again. When we arrived, the seething masses were being bombarded with speeches from the preliminary speakers, whose voices screamed out from loudspeakers.
Pushed and jostled by this frenzied mass, I felt nervous, but my companion said, ‘How can you go back now against the flow of people? You may as well stay with me until the great man speaks and then we will be able to move back with the crowd.’
It seemed logical. Gandhi spoke in Hindi and as I could pick up only a few words in the distorted din, I was none the wiser afterwards. Back at the hotel, elated, I recounted my experience to some interested listeners.
‘I am so glad I was present at such an historic event!’
‘Just as well you didn’t get crushed in the crowd, young man.’
A visit to the back streets of Calcutta soon brought me back to earth. I now understood what was disturbing the local population. I wondered whether this might be my last visit to Calcutta and I set out to see as much as I could of the large, sprawling city and to mingle with the people. I knew the Indians were becoming restless and were thoroughly sick of foreigners running their affairs.
One day I received a message from the offices of Thomas Cook. I went in to see what they wanted.
‘You are invited to visit a Miss Coutts, a friend of your father’s,’ the clerk told me. ‘She is Principal of the St Andrew’s Presbyterian Orphanage near Kalimpong, a few hours by train and bus from Calcutta. I have your itinerary here.’
Kalimpong was a town near Darjeeling in the Himalayas. I arrived by bus at the gates of the orphanage, which was a few miles outside the town. Miss Coutts appeared to be in her early 40s, a similar age to my mother. She was a good-looking Scottish woman with a strong accent, quite matronly but with a certain kindness in her manner.
There must have been a couple of hundred Indian children in the orphanage, mostly from Sikkam, on the border of Tibet, and Nepal.
‘Welcome, Colin, I hope you enjoy your stay. It’s a great pleasure to have one of Archie’s sons here for a visit. I’m so glad you could come. I’ll let your father know how well you are looking.’
She was obviously on very close terms with him, but I didn’t dare ask how or why. At that point it did not occur to me that they might have been more than friends, but it did strike me as curious that she knew him so well.
She had some news for me. A Burmese neighbour of our family in Maymyo had evacuated from Burma early in the war and had come to live in Kalimpong. Miss Coutts had arranged for me to visit.
The lady’s name was Mrs Bellamy, and she had been married to a Tasmanian, a bookmaker who ran a book at the Rangoon Turf Club. Mr Bellamy had passed away just prior to the start of the war in the East.
Mrs Bellamy had been quite friendly with my mother, and she and her daughter had been frequent visitors to our house, Jamshed Villa. They were of royal lineage – Mrs Bellamy was one of the daughters of the last reigning king of Burma, King Thibaw. When the British had annexed the whole of Burma after the teak wars, they had exiled him to India in 1885, thus ending the rule of the monarchs in the country. After she grew up, she had returned to Burma to live.
Mrs Bellamy’s Burmese name was Princess Ma Hlat (‘the pretty one’). Her daughter, June-Rose, had inherited her good looks and became a very beautiful young woman.
Years later I heard that, after the war, they returned to Burma and some time during the 1970s June-Rose married General Ne Win, the Burmese dictator who had seized power in 1962. He had been bewitched by her beauty. She was his second wife and the marriage only lasted a short time. Divorced, June-Rose went to settle in the United Kingdom where she wrote a book describing in detail her short spell as Ne Win’s wife. Apparently, she detailed the General’s inadequacies in the book and, before publication, he struck a deal with his ex-wife to have the draft of the book destroyed. June-Rose was more than a match for the General. She drove a hard bar-gain and it is said to have cost him the crown jewels, literally, to win the settlement. The last I heard of June-Rose, she was living in Switzerland.
I spent two days with them in Kalimpong and feasted on Burmese food. When it was time for me to return to the orphanage on the second afternoon, I decided to walk along the mountain track rather than catch the bus. I hoped to view the scenery and chat to the villagers whose huts were dotted along the bush track.
As the afternoon wore on, I suddenly realised that the light was fading fast. I hadn’t a clue how far I had to walk and before long the night closed in. I was guided by the flickering lights in the huts along the way. The Sikkimese people who inhabit this region are Buddhist and there were numerous poles outside most of the dwellings, laced with prayer flags fluttering in the breeze.
Eventually I became rather concerned, so I stopped and asked some villagers the way. I arrived quite late and was met by a very relieved Miss Coutts.
‘I was so worried that something had happened to you! You gave me quite a fright, young man.’
Back at the hotel in Calcutta’s renowned Choweringhee, the scene was changing. The pavements were seething with people in uniform. Mingling with them were hordes of pickpockets, hawkers and prostitutes. Every day, after a clean-up, I had dinner and strolled down the street into Park Street to sit down in one of the better-class cafes where I took in the scene over a cup of coffee and some French pastries. The war news was encouraging.
‘The Allies are giving the Japanese a pounding!’
‘It can’t go on much longer.’
‘The war will soon be over.’
Indeed, everything pointed to the end of hostilities. There seemed to be more drunkenness in the city. Black African troops and their white counterparts swayed on the footpaths with heavily made-up Indian girls in tow. Still there was an undercurrent of resentment by many of the Indians, including the middle class and the merchants.
I returned to my hotel. The drinkers in the bar always overflowed into the rather small lobby. To reach the stairs one had to push past men and women with drinks in their hands. I walked through to the garden lounge and found a seat outside. The spectacle of men and women emptying their glasses as if their lives depended on it was overwhelming. I wanted to get away from it all and wondered what the ordinary people of Calcutta were thinking.
It doesn’t take much to stir dissatisfaction among people struggling to survive, while around them they see a scene of lavishness. Certainly, the very poor and the street beggars’ lots were marginally better, since a fair amount of money had found its way into their hands. But it was those of the higher caste who, I thought, displayed a mood change. It was getting uglier every day, although I had not struck any trouble. Perhaps I had been kept safe because I had followed my instincts and moved with the crowd.
The waiter came over.
‘I’ll have a gin and lime, please,’ I said, remembering it was a favourite with Europeans in the East. I felt guilty about consuming alcohol at my age, but if ever there was an occasion for it, this was it. The khakiclad officers were becoming rather boisterous. The Indian waiter came back.
Speaking with his hands as well as his voice, he said, ‘War finished!’
I was overcome with joy. The first thing that flashed through my mind was that now I could make plans to return quickly to Burma and search for my mother. I had no thought of returning to school to complete my studies. I had to find a way home. I remembered there was a government of Burma in exile in India at Simla, a hill station some days from Calcutta by train. I even thought of boarding a ship and hoping it was heading for Rangoon.
I wandered out into the streets and asked anyone I could about a passage to Burma. I had no luck. Eve
rything was a whirl.
On my return to the hotel there were officers everywhere. They were sprawled in the lounges, in the corners and on the floors and every one of them appeared to have a painted doll clutching him. Outside the hotel many a brawl erupted. I wanted to get out of the city, which no longer seemed like the one I so loved.
I had planned to go to the movies but they were closed, no doubt to keep the celebrating hordes out. Instead, I sat in a corner and took in the scene. A waiter approached.
‘Would you like a lady for the night?’ he asked.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘My sister is a beautiful girl and she has had a Catholic education. Would you celebrate with her?’
I didn’t know what to say, but it did not matter. In a matter of minutes he reappeared with a young woman in tow.
The waiter left us, pushing through the mob, and returned with two glasses of gin and lime. I don’t recall much of our conversation. I was on a high one moment and in deep depression the next. However, we talked and I noticed that she was quite attractive and well-spoken, with a set of beautifully formed white teeth. Every time she smiled, her teeth gleamed.
Even after I took her to the room I shared with another officer and made love to her, still half-dressed, all I remembered was her beautiful teeth. There was nothing mind-boggling about it, nor did any bell ring out in my head. My memory of that moment was simply this dark-skinned young girl looking up at me with beautiful white teeth. I paid her for the privilege, as this seemed to be the norm, and never saw her again.
There was nothing more I could do. I had pursued every avenue I could about returning to Burma. I had broached the subject of returning to Burma with a few of the soldiers at the hotel. They were brutally frank.
‘You’re crazy. It’s turmoil over there. You’d be mad to try to go back. You’d probably be killed.’
White Butterflies Page 20