Running in the Family (4 page)

His quiet life in Kegalle was interrupted, however, when Doris Gratiaen wrote to break off the engagement. There were no phones, so it meant a drive to Colombo to discover what was wrong. But my grandfather, furious over the Trincomalee trip, refused him the car. Finally he got a lift with his father’s brother Aelian. Aelian was a gracious and genial man and my father was bored and frantic. The combination almost proved disastrous. My father had never driven to Colombo directly in his life. There was a pattern of resthouses to be stopped at and so Aelian was forced to stop every ten miles and have a drink, too polite to refuse his young nephew. By the time they got to Colombo my father was very drunk and Aelian was slightly drunk and it was too late to visit Doris Gratiaen anyway. My father forced his Uncle to stay at the CLI mess. After a large meal and more drink my father announced that now he must shoot himself because Doris had broken off the engagement. Aelian, especially as he was quite drunk too, had a terrible time trying to hide every gun in the Ceylon Light Infantry building. The next day the problems were solved and the engagement was established once more. They were married a year later.

“I remember the wedding.… They were to be married in Kegalle and five of us were to drive up in Ern’s Fiat. Half way between Colombo and Kegalle we recognized a car in the ditch and beside it was the Bishop of Colombo who everyone knew was a terrible driver. He was supposed to marry them so we had to give him a lift.

“First of all his luggage had to be put in carefully because his vestments couldn’t be crushed. Then his mitre and sceptre and those special shoes and whatnot. And as we were so crowded and a bishop couldn’t sit on anyone’s lap—and as no one could really sit on a bishop’s lap, we had to let
him
drive the Fiat. We were all so squashed and terrified for the rest of the trip!”

The Nuwara Eliya Tennis Championships had ended and there were monsoons in Colombo. The headlines in the local papers said, “Lindbergh’s Baby Found—A Corpse!” Fred Astaire’s sister, Adele, got married and the 13th President of the French Republic was shot to death by a Russian. The lepers of Colombo went on a hunger strike, a bottle of beer cost one rupee, and there were upsetting rumours that ladies were going to play at Wimbledon in shorts.

In America, women were still trying to steal the body of Valentino from his grave, and a woman from Kansas divorced her husband because he would not let her live near the Valentino mausoleum. The furious impresario, C. B. Cochran, claimed “the ideal modern girl—the Venus of today—should be neither thin nor plump, but should have the lines of a greyhound.” It was rumoured that pythons were decreasing in Africa.

Charlie Chaplin was in Ceylon. He avoided all publicity and was only to be seen photographing and studying Kandyan dance. The films at the local cinemas in Colombo were “Love Birds,” “Caught Cheating,” and “Forbidden Love.” There was fighting in Manchuria.

The early twenties had been a busy and expensive time for my grandparents. They spent most of the year in Colombo and during the hot months of April and May moved to Nuwara Eliya. In various family journals there are references made to the time spent “up-country” away from the lowland heat. Cars would leave Colombo and perform the tiring five-hour journey, the radiators steaming as they wound their way up into the mountains. Books and sweaters and golf clubs and rifles were packed into trunks, children were taken out of school, dogs were bathed and made ready for the drive.

Nuwara Eliya was a different world. One did not sweat there and only those who had asthma tried to avoid these vacations. At an elevation of 6000 feet the families could look forward to constant parties, horse racing, the All Ceylon Tennis Tournament, and serious golf. Although the best Sinhalese tennis players
competed up-country, they would move back to Colombo if they had to play champions from other nations—as the excessive heat could be guaranteed to destroy the visitors. And so, while monsoon and heat moved into deserted Colombo homes, it was to Nuwara Eliya that my grandparents and their circle of friends would go. They danced in large living rooms to the music of a Bijou-Moutrie piano while the log fires crackled in every room, or on quiet evenings read books on the moonlit porch, slicing open the pages as they progressed through a novel.

The gardens were full of cypress, rhododendrons, fox-gloves, arum-lilies and sweet pea; and people like the van Langenbergs, the Vernon Dickmans, the Henry de Mels and the Philip Ondaatjes were there. There were casual tragedies. Lucas Cantley’s wife Jessica almost died after being shot by an unknown assailant while playing croquet with my grandfather. They found 113 pellets in her. “And poor Wilfred Batholomeusz who had large teeth was killed while out hunting when one of his companions mistook him for a wild boar.” Most of the men belonged to the CLI reserves and usually borrowed guns when going on vacation.

It was in Nuwara Eliya that Dick de Vos danced with his wife Etta, who fell flat on the floor; she had not danced for years. He picked her up, deposited her on a cane chair, came over to Rex Daniels and said, “Now you know why I gave up dancing and took to drink.” Each morning the men departed for the club to play a game of billiards. They would arrive around eleven in buggy carts pulled by bulls and play until the afternoon rest hours while the punkah, the large cloth fan, floated and waved above them and the twenty or so bulls snorted in a circle around the clubhouse. Major Robinson, who ran the prison, would officiate at the tournaments.