White Butterflies

by Colin Mcphedran

  I knew I had been lucky in many respects. I had travelled far and wide, from Assam in the east right across the sub-continent to Bombay, and from towns like Darjeeling and Simla in the Himalayas up north down to Ootacamund in the far south. It had been a lifetime’s experience crammed into a few short years. I had met some outstanding people. Each and every one of them had had something to teach me.

  PART III

  EAST TO WEST

  Chapter 24

  Father’s Land

  The ship entered the Bay of Biscay on its final run to the port of Liverpool. It was late January 1947, and I, at 16, was confronted with a new chapter in my life. The skies turned grey and the little I knew of England signalled that this was going to be an entirely new experience. On the final night I thanked my chaperone sincerely.

  ‘Remember to call on me if ever you need to,’ she said kindly, and gave me her home address.

  The dining room was only half full for breakfast in the morning. Passengers were too busy gathering their possessions, I supposed, to worry about food. I decided to walk outside to get my first look at this new country. I went up to the promenade deck, opened the heavy door and stepped out on to inches of snow. I had never touched snow before; I had only seen it on the distant Himalayas. I felt frozen, but stood my ground and looked beyond at the buildings also covered in a carpet of white, with a backdrop of dull grey skies. I wished I could stay aboard and return to a place where the sun shone in mid-morning. I could not believe anybody could call such a depressing place ‘home’.

  I trudged off the ship with my worldly possessions in one small suitcase and followed the other passengers to the terminal building. I began to wonder where all the locals were. I had been used to milling hordes in India and here I was, in a fairly heavily populated city, and very few people were about. I supposed the weather had something to do with it. Who in their right mind would venture out in such atrocious conditions? It was slightly warmer inside the building, and orderly queues formed. Customs officers had already begun searching the luggage; it was a slow and tedious process and, for some, very embarrassing.

  One passenger ahead of me seemed to be having great trouble. I gathered that he was none too pleased with the Customs officer. There appeared to be a mountain of clothes on the table and among them some bottles of liquor. Suddenly the passenger gathered the bottles, walked out on to the wharf and emptied the contents into the water. All eyes were trained on the poor fellow. I glanced at his large trunk and noticed a yellow stain on the garments.

  When my turn came, the Customs officer nodded his head at the departing passenger and said, ‘The gent packed a jar of mango pickle in his trunk, and the lid worked loose. It spread right through his luggage!’

  The officer was very sympathetic to me.

  ‘I doubt whether you’d be carrying any contraband,’ he said in a friendly voice. He must have believed I was too poor to own anything but my few clothes.

  He smiled and I was quite taken aback by the greeting. I could not believe anybody could find anything to smile about in this frigid climate. We talked for a while and he mentioned again the poor fellow in front of me.

  ‘I’ve encountered many of his type before in my job,’ he said confidentially. ‘They come home, and because they have had servants in the colonies, they think they can order us about. We bring them down to earth with a bang.’

  He wished me good luck.

  I walked out onto the street into an adjoining railway station. I knew I had to catch a train to Manchester, but how and when, I had no clue. I walked around gaping and a friendly wharfie stopped me.

  ‘Are you lost?’ he asked.

  I told him I was trying to find where to catch the train to Manchester. ‘Further down the street,’ he said. ‘You can’t miss ’em.’

  On the platform I discovered the timetable and looked for a phone booth. I had the number of a family friend, a Mr Morrison, who had offered to take care of me for a while. I read the instructions and as I pressed the button for the connection, out poured a stream of coins. They fell and rolled around my feet and the noise drew the attention of passers-by. I bent down and sheepishly picked up some of the coins. I was embarrassed, but a friendly old lady helped me scoop them up and told me not to worry.

  ‘It happens when the box gets filled,’ she said.

  I pushed what I could back into the slot and went to another booth. I arrived at Manchester late in the evening, cold and hungry. There did not seem to be anywhere to get a meal. I sat on a bench and waited. Mr Morrison arrived shortly afterwards and welcomed me warmly.

  ‘I do apologise for the terrible weather,’ he said. ‘It is the worst winter in years and the transport system is in chaos.’

  We had to travel a few miles out of Manchester to the suburb of Denton. Along the way I saw machines clearing roadways, the snow banked high on either side. It was a slow journey and when we arrived at the right stop we stepped off the bus into deep snow to walk the few yards to his house. My feet were frozen. I wished somebody in India had forewarned me of the European winter.

  I was introduced to Mrs Morrison and their daughter. She was about my age and was in her final year at school.

  ‘Come in, Colin, and stand by the fire. You’ll soon get warm.’

  I stood by the coal-burning fireplace and, as my body began to

  thaw, I ached all over.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea and something to eat?’

  Despite the fact that it was hours since I had eaten, I was by now too exhausted and depressed to cope with the thought.

  ‘No, thank you. Might I be taken to my room?’ I asked.

  Their home was a terrace house and my bedroom was upstairs.

  The room was like an ice-box and I hurried into bed.

  Mrs Morrison had said, ‘You’ll find a hot-water bottle between the sheets.’ I had had no idea what she was talking about. I felt under the covers and found a warm, hard pottery bottle. I had never experienced anything like this. Bed warming, where I came from, was unheard of. I laid the bottle on the floor, found a warm spot to put my feet on and lay back. I had spent less than 24 hours in the country, and I had hated every moment of it. I knew I could never love it.

  I was a stranger in a strange place and I lay in bed and cried. It was still dark when I awoke, and I peered out of the small window. The glass was frosted over and there was a greyness, something jail-like, about the limited view. Even today, when anyone talks of England, that image springs to my mind.

  Mr Morrison had confirmed that my father was back in Abadan as an employee of the Anglo–Iranian Oil Company, which was part of the Shell conglomerate.

  ‘He is not due for another stint of furlough for quite some time. When you have settled in, you will need to start thinking about what you want to do here in England. Your father did not leave any instructions.’

  After a few weeks Mr Morrison invited me to lunch at a restaurant in the city. ‘Meat is still rationed in England, so you will have to bring your ration card,’ he said.

  The card had been issued on my arrival. At this point I suddenly realised what a hard time the English had been forced to endure during the war. We queued for our lunch.

  ‘Have you made any plans yet for the future?’ Mr Morrison asked, as we got down to eating the tiny morsel of meat and a few boiled vegetables.

  I could see I should have something mapped out, but I didn’t know what. So I said quickly, ‘I would like to visit my Scottish relatives, if that could be arranged.’

  Privately, I made up my mind that, from now on, I would be the person who would make the decisions about my life.

  Mr Morrison’s body language indicated that he was pleased with my choice.

  ‘I have no qualms whatsoever about your ability to get around the country on your own,’ he said with a smile. ‘Despite what you have been through, Colin, you have handled the big step into manhood well.’

  I felt good. Then I wondered how anybody else, in
the same situation, would have handled the task of living.

  So I said goodbye to the Morrisons and caught the train to Glasgow. There was not much to see, save acres of land covered in snow. I spent the night in a cheap hotel in the city and the next day found my father’s relatives.

  They lived in Bishopbriggs, some miles out of the city. I arrived to an unexpectedly warm and teary welcome. My two female cousins, who were years older than I, were thrilled.

  ‘We’re so happy to meet you! It’s wonderful that you could come,’ they said, wiping their eyes.

  I bonded with them immediately. My uncle, their father, was a delightful Scot. He was short and spoke with a broad Glasgow accent. The first thing he said was, ‘I thought I would see a wee black boy!’

  We all laughed. My aunt, to whom I was also introduced, had recently suffered a stroke. As she sat motionless in her chair, I detected a tiny smile. I kissed her and tears formed in her eyes too.

  ‘We told her about you and she was overjoyed with the news that you would be visiting us,’ one of my cousins explained.

  My father, it seemed, had been her favourite brother, but it appeared that they had fallen out. Nobody seemed to be prepared to talk about why. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered she had taken a dim view of how he had conducted himself in relation to his family.

  My cousins, the Mackies, were devout Christians like my father and also belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, but they were more broad-minded than he. They took me on tours of their favourite Scottish places. I toured the engineering works where my father had started his apprenticeship and the shipyard on the Clyde where my uncle worked as a boilermaker. There he showed me first-hand the birth of an ocean liner.

  There was hardly a moment when I had time to think about myself or the years since we had set out on that fateful walk. I loved the friendliness of the Scottish people, but I thought they had a lot to learn about good food. Perhaps, I thought naively, it was the restricted rations.

  I STAYED WITH MY COUSINS ON AND OFF for more than a year. During that time my uncle retired from the shipyard and the younger of my cousins married a man from the church. He was a salesman for the Caledonian Oat Cake Company, a Scottish institution that made biscuits. He was a go-getter and wasted no time in talking the family into buying a guesthouse in the English town of Ilfracombe, in the county of Devon. I travelled down with the couple to inspect the property, a well-established business in a popular seaside resort.

  The whole family moved down to Devon some months later, and I went along to help. They knew little about the hospitality business, but they worked hard and provided a good service. The girls did all the cooking, serving and housework for 20 guests; their father too lent a hand. But my cousin’s husband took life easily.

  ‘My job,’ he always said, ‘is to look after the finances.’

  My invalid aunt’s health deteriorated with the move, and she passed away. It was the first time since losing my mother, brother and sister that a close family member had died. I was saddened, because I felt she would have given me the love that I had craved since the loss of my own mother.

  Once again I wanted to run away from the grief and sadness that death brings. I made plans to move on.

  I applied for a place in a forestry college at Glenmore in Argyllshire. I was accepted and off I went back to Scotland, alone again. What had prompted me to enrol in the three-year course was the dream that I could one day apply for a job in a timber company with interests in Burma. I joined 15 other new students at the hostel in a tiny village, Kilmun, on the shores of the Holy Loch in the west of Scotland. The nearest town was Dunoon, an hour away.

  The move did not turn out as I had hoped. I certainly met some great Scottish characters and made good friends among the kindly locals and the other students, including a madcap from Rhodesia who first put the idea into my mind of emigrating. I even fell in love for a while with a Scottish girl whose father was a ship designer. But the forestry training was not what I had been led to believe it would be. Instead of receiving an education, we were used for the most part as labouring fodder. I stayed for a year, but could see it was getting me nowhere.

  During my year in Scotland I met Donald again. He took a job with the Scottish Forestry Commission, and for a while we worked near one another.

  Donald had gone back to Burma after the war with his wife and, by then, two children, his son Robert whom I had seen as a baby in Madras, and his daughter Bettine, who was born in 1947 in Burma. Bettine was named after her mother’s sister who had perished in the internment camp at Myitkyina. Her second name is Ethel, after our own sister. Robert now lives in Canada, while Bettine lives in Melbourne. My children and I are all exceedingly fond of Bettine and her family.

  According to Donald’s record of events, the marriage had become rocky and he had come to Britain in the hope that Pamela and the children would all join him to start a new life as soon as he found the money for their fares. Unfortunately, the marriage did not last, but eventually the children did come to live with him in England, as he had custody of them and their mother had moved on.

  His main memory of me during that time in Scotland is my continuing obsession with finding out what had happened to our mother.

  As soon as I had made the decision to leave forestry college, I packed my few belongings and set off for England. It took me months to make my way back to London. I gave into my gypsy spirit and pottered all over the country, stopping in any place that took my fancy, doing odd jobs here and there, and meeting good people wherever I travelled. It was easy to lose track of time in such a root-less existence. The experience almost had me convinced that England, after all, was not such a bad place.

  It could not last. After a stint in Kent, I found a room in a cheap guesthouse in London’s Russell Square. It was all I could afford and the tiny room and sparse fittings depressed me.

  I had heard a lot about the Madame Tussaud waxworks gallery, and one day I decided to go there. It was a quiet day and very few people were about. I walked down into the Chamber of Horrors and stood before the figure of one of England’s most notorious mur-derers. A young woman came up and struck up a conversation. We chatted for a while and decided to go for a walk.

  ‘What are you doing in London?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I am working as a prostitute,’ she said candidly, giving me a sideways glance to see how I reacted. ‘I use the art galleries to pick up clients.’

  I was momentarily lost for words. She seemed to be a decent person, well dressed and well spoken. I conjured up visions of my new-found friend displaying herself with the other girls in Grant Street, the brothel strip in Bombay.

  ‘I come from the Midlands,’ she explained as we walked along. ‘I moved down to the big city with my boyfriend, but he ditched me. I couldn’t go home. My father would have killed me. In the end, this was the only way I could survive.’

  She was a nice person and we became friends. Whenever she made a pick-up she would joke, ‘I have to make some money to pay the rent. If I relied on you, I would be thrown out of my digs!’

  After a good week, we often took a train into the country. We liked the pubs in Kent best. Then, one day, she made an announcement.

  ‘I’ve decided that I’m going across to the Continent.’ she said. ‘The work will be better over there.’

  I too had been thinking it was time to move on. That night I returned to my room, had a quick wash, lay down and fell asleep.

  I was awakened by loud banging on my door and jumped up, to see a distressed old lady in the corridor.

  ‘There’s water seeping through my ceiling under your room! Something’s leaking!’

  After I shut the door I discovered that my washbasin was over-flowing. I had left the plug in and had not turned off the tap.

  At breakfast I confessed my wrongdoing to the landlady, a generous Londoner.

  ‘I’m dreadfully sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ll make sure it won’t ha
ppen again.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said, but I had reached the end of the road. The mishap and the parlous state of my finances made me realise that I had little choice but to eat humble pie and seek help from my father’s associates.

  Chapter 25

  My Father’s Other Life

  My father was an executive with one of the Shell oil companies and I figured that somebody at their head office would tell me whether he was still in Persia. It was quite possible that he had returned to England. He wouldn’t have known my whereabouts, because I had deliberately dropped out of sight.

  It was mid-afternoon when I walked into the offices.

  ‘My name is Colin McPhedran,’ I said. ‘My father is Archibald McPhedran, and I understand he holds a position in your company. I wonder if you know of his whereabouts?’

  ‘Please wait here,’ I was told. A man presently arrived.

  ‘Your father is in London,’ he said. ‘He is not at the office today, but he will be here tomorrow.’

  He gave me an address in the north London suburb of Neasden. ‘You will have no difficulty locating the house,’ he said.

  Great, I thought. If I was in India, he would have delighted in personally escorting me to the address.

  It was dark and cold when I left to catch the train. By now it was late autumn. I arrived at the street and made enquiries. I drew a blank on every occasion until I spoke to a milkman, who pointed to a house.

  ‘There are new people in that house, foreigners,’ he said.

  I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

  ‘It can’t be the right place, because my father is no foreigner,’ I said. He shrugged and went back to his deliveries.