by Isla Blair
Her ugliness must have caused her great anguish, for she grew a shell of bitterness that caused her, on occasion, to act with a savagery that was startling. She never had a suitor; no beau called for Ann Stewart at Loonbrae in Blairgowerie to ask her to a dance, to tea, to walk. During World War I, she claimed, like countless others in her situation, that her fiance had been killed. It was her shameful secret that no fiancé had ever existed. Did she know, I wonder, that her secret was common knowledge in Blairgowerie? “Poor Ann,” they would say.
Poor Ann sealed up her ears and hardened her heart. Men were shallow, faithless creatures anyway. In her eyes, all boys would grow into men and therefore were not to be trusted. Indeed, they were to be punished just for their gender before they grew into the enemy.
Little Ian was a ravishingly beautiful child, with blond curls and a sensitive, sweet nature. His beauty and his sweetness provoked Aunt Ann’s ire, so that punishment of him was a daily occurrence: punishment, it seemed, just for existing. His hands were strapped and caned if his eyes cast the wrong look. It was common at that time for boys’ hands to be put into splints to prevent thumb sucking and nail biting. He had a ruler pushed down his shirt to make him sit up straight; he was shut in a cupboard in the dark until he “learned to behave.”
On one occasion, in a sweet shop in Blairgowrie he went to buy sherbet dabs and gob stoppers with his pocket money, when he was overwhelmed by the need to pee. His bladder opened involuntarily. He was mortified and didn’t know how to make amends. He handed over his treasured penny to the shopkeeper. “I am sorry, Sir, I will give you a penny if you wipe it up.” The outraged shopkeeper gave him a thrashing and the news of this shameful incident soon reached Aunt Ann.
“You wicked, dirty boy, how could you shame this house?”
He was beaten again and sent to bed with no supper. He lay in the dark and wondered where his mother was, his father – what had become of him? And his ayah, his beloved ayah, where was she? Ian was three years and seven months old. These tales of my father’s childhood, so part of our family history, provoked from my mother murmurs of “Poor wee boy,” but Ian just laughed. “It was fine. I got over it. It made me stronger.”
Aunt Ann was perverse though. For it was she who took him to a studio in Dundee, brushed his hair and made him pose, with a clay pipe, as a representation of Millais’ “Bubbles” – the image was later used to advertise Pears soap. Fiona still has the picture, which hangs in an Edwardian ebony frame in her house. It was Aunt Ann who was to be my father’s tutor at Miss Ann Stewart’s School until he went to the local school, aged five, and thence onto the parish school, Hamilton Academy. Roy was sent, aged eleven, to the public school, Glenalmond.
* * * * *
Ian spent his teenage years living in Uddingston with his aunt and uncle, Sir William and Nell Marshall, and, when he was not away at school, his brother and friend Roy joined him there during the holidays. He grew to love and respect these surrogate parents who treated him with kindness and affection and allowed him to find his own way through the thorny path of his adolescence. He remained thin and wiry, his brown hair, with the hated curls, Brylcreemed and brushed daily. He supported Uddingston Football team and learned to play cricket and tennis – he wasn’t very accomplished at either, but his enthusiasm made up for his lack of prowess. He and Roy were given a dog to share, to love and to care for – he was called Roy-dog, a rough-haired, smiley-faced mongrel, who followed them through heath and heather, into rivers and ponds, chased balls and butterflies and lay panting between them after the exertions that boyhood brings.
Ian pretended not to notice when young girls with sleek hair and dimpled cheeks smiled at his good looks. Ian was too shy to approach them and anyway, fishing for tiddlers was safer and more pleasurable than going to a dance in the stuffy village hall, a hall that smelt of sweat and fruit sweeties and illicit Woodbines. He never dared imagine that one of these slender creatures would honour him with a dance. What would they talk about if she did? Would he have to take her home? What then?
Ian had his first cigarette aged 9. He was caught by Uncle Will Marshall, who hoped to put him off the habit by insisting he smoke two full cigarettes right to the end. He was, not unnaturally, sick. But it didn’t put him off tobacco. He and Roy would pick up discarded Weights and Woodbines, only half smoked, and save them up to smoke away from the house, down by the river or behind the cricket pavilion, clichéd as it was. By 14, he was regularly buying packets of five cigarettes or singles; by 15, he was spending his pocket money on packets of ten.
In the summer months he and Roy would hitchhike through the soft Scotch mist to Pitlochry to the Highland Games and down to Blairgowrie, now no longer their home, where they earned a small wage for picking the raspberries and sweet loganberries that were turned into jam in Dundee.
One summer they took a ferry to the Isle of Man for the TT races. They took Roy-dog with them and the three of them stayed in a small boarding house in Port Erin where dogs were allowed. They rolled up their trousers and paddled in the sea with Roy-dog splashing beside them. They ate silky thick ice cream between two wafers from the Italian/Scottish man in his van, had Manx kippers for breakfast and fish and chips doused in vinegar and wrapped in newspaper for their suppers, sitting on the edge of the short pier, their legs dangling over the side. They watched girls parade along the promenade in floaty little skirts and seamed stockings and strappy shoes, white net gloves and pulled-on little cloches that prevented their curls from blowing free in the sea breeze. Roy took much pleasure in relating these anecdotes and we took much pleasure in listening to them.
Ian was pleased to leave school. He had worked hard at his lessons, but he didn’t shine in any subject and, unlike Roy, he was not a natural sportsman and, while he enjoyed music, he could not play an instrument. His diffidence, shyness and sensitivity made him a target for bullying, especially when things marked him out as different from the other boys: that he didn’t have a proper kilt jacket to go with his kilt, or the right knee high prickly green wool socks or a dirk to put in them. He didn’t have brown or black brogue shoes, but plain school ones that he wore every day and which were constantly being re-soled and heeled. Andrew and Sara, his parents, were always short of money (the reason they were unable to visit their children), so sent home enough to cover the children’s board with the Marshalls, but not enough for clothes or extras. Both boys outgrew their short trousers and shirts, jumpers and shoes and there are many photographs of them both with knobby wrists protruding from too-short shirts and jackets.
William Marshall bought the boys new clothes and ensured that Ian was engaged as a junior clerk with W. M. Marshall, Ross, Munroe, solicitors in Motherwell (his own firm) and shortly after as an audit clerk with Messrs. Fraser & Ferguson, Chartered Accountants in Glasgow. He was exchanging weekly letters with his stranger-father who put the idea to him that a life in India might be an agreeable one for a lad “without many accomplishments.” In fact, Ian was a bright boy – and diligent. People just expected so little of him, that he never expected much of himself.
Parting from Roy was harder than he had imagined. Despite their different educations, public school/local academy, they remained close. Roy had become a clerk in a bank and laughed with Ian that it was “Dull, old boy, but I’ll play rugger at the weekends and maybe some golf and I’ll be fine.” He saw his brother off at Central Station in Glasgow and Ian long remembered his wavy, sticky-up hair, his red cheeks and the warm clasp on his shoulder as he smiled his too tight smile of goodbye. “Dear chap, I’ll miss you, but you’ll be too busy to think of me. We’ll write. Make sure you do!”
He stood on the platform in his bank clerk suit and his dark Glenalmond Old Boys tie and waved Ian away to the sun and a life he admitted he could not imagine. He ran with the grey muzzled Roy–dog down the platform as the train, puffing smoke and steam, chuffed its way forward, carrying Ian to his new life, as Roy waved him away with all the goodwill from his generous
, brotherly heart. They were not to meet again for ten years.
On the 25th October 1930, Ian sailed on the SS Orford for India, where he spent the next 29 years.
* * * * *
People said that each child born of the Raj felt that they were in some way superior to the natives of the country their fathers’ ruled; that being British gave them permission to look down on anyone who wasn’t. This was not true of Ian. I am not sure what his parents taught him – they were, after all, absent during his childhood and were themselves children of the Empire – but he brought Fiona and me up to believe that all men and women were equal. The chance of birth could mean that their lives were very different, but he knew that each life was as valuable as anyone else’s, not just in the eyes of God, but in his eyes too. The caste system in India was complicated and unfair, but so too was the class system in England.
SS Orford arrived at Colombo where he was met by his father, Andrew, and they proceeded to Cochin and thence up the winding ghat to Munnar, the strange and beautiful place that was to be his new home. My father told me they were shy of each other and the first meal they shared at the Malabar Club House in Cochin was strained and awkward, with frequent pauses – only to be broken with both of them speaking at once. Ian had the impression that his father was already disappointed in him. This probably was not true, but he was so anxious to be approved of by the man who had been the distant hero of his boyhood, a fantasy father that he felt unable to measure up to in any way.
He had no physical contact with his parents in the intervening years; James Finlay’s records show the company constantly turning down Andrew’s requests for an advance of his salary to visit his boys in Scotland. The pain this must have caused Sara can only be imagined. In Ian’s breast pocket was a photograph of Andrew on a horse playing polo and another one, sepia and crumpled, of both his parents on horses, his mother seated side-saddle and being led by an Indian syce. He had gazed at it secretly and with longing through the lonely years without them – and now here was his father, broad-chested and sun-tanned, with white crinkles around his eyes; a man who laughed easily and loudly, but who became silent and embarrassed by the admiration and hero-worship in his young son’s eyes. They shook hands as they bid each other good night. “We’ll make any early start in the morning. We’ll go first to the High Range Club and I’ll introduce you to some of the chaps. Mr Pinches the General Manager will be there; he is boss to all of us. But Mr Davison is the manager of Letchmi Estate. You will be answerable to him.”
Munnar, seen from the High Range Club House in the early morning light, resembled nothing so much as the soft hills of Perthshire – only the heather was missing; not like one’s image of India at all. A slow moving river cut through the middle of this grassy punchbowl and beside it grew reeds and rushes, and willows wept just as they did beside the river Ericht as it ambled its way through Blairgowrie and the undulating fields and peaty moors.
Generations of planters had made it an enviable sports ground. Tennis courts, cricket nets and a nine hole golf course. And about two or three miles away, the High Range race course, where my grandfather rode with some success. Polo was played with great enthusiasm; indeed I still have the silver cup won by my grandfather, “Andrew Blair-Hill on Euclid in 1906.”
Letchmi estate had the highest rainfall of anywhere in the High Range, closely followed by Kalaar. Averaging 225 inches in the monsoon months, it could be much more; one July in 1924, 171.20 inches fell in that month alone. With the rainfall came the leeches and Letchmi and Kalaar estates had an abundance of them.
The assistant’s bungalow was small and white-washed with a corrugated iron roof. Inside, it smelt of kerosene, stale tobacco and citronella oil; the floors were dark brown wood, the furniture was practical but drab – heavy brown chests and cupboards and wicker chairs. There was not much in the way of crockery or cutlery and not much in the way of adornment, either. A picture of George V and another of a hunting scene hung from the wall. There was a single bed in the bedroom, a small bedside table with a kerosene oil lamp and a carafe and a glass and a copy of the Bible. The bathroom too, was small. It had a “thunderbox”, a large latrine encased in dark brown wood, emptied each day by the sweeper, and a small tin bathtub with a large tin cup used for “dunking”. There was a china basin with a large jug in it, with a small mirror above, suspended from a hook on the wall by a piece of string. The mirror was slightly cracked in one corner and Ian, who was superstitious, hoped it didn’t mean bad luck.
Tea and the High Range Hills
He met his cook and his young chokra and learned to salaam them both, putting his hands together and bowing his head. He prepared for his first night alone in his new home by unpacking his topee and his shorts and shirts, bought at Simon Artz shop in Port Said. His mother had stayed at the High Range Club in order to meet him and spend a few days with him before she and Andrew left for the Plains, where Andrew was transport manager for the company in Trichinopoly. It seemed odd to come all this way to see his parents again, only to be parted after such a short spell in their company.
So this, then, was his new world. Arriving in India just as the nights were drawing in in Scotland, he was to enjoy the delicate air of the hills and witness each day dawn with a soft sunrise and a sun shining on his head until it slid behind the Anamudi Mountain in the west.
He had been obliged to sign a contract with his employers, James Finlay & Co., before he set out from Glasgow on his long journey to the unfamiliar east. Young planters were to be given a period of six months trial or probation and they were paid a basic salary of 200 rupees a month (roughly £15) and they were not encouraged to take home leaves or “furloughs”. It was part of your contract that you would not marry for the first five years. The young men were required to have Tamil classes, the least easy to master of all the Indian languages, and until he acquired the necessary standard of fluency, Ian was not allowed any leave at all. This would take at least three years. You got 250 rupees (£19.25) if you passed your oral exam and 1,000 rupees (£77.00) if you passed the Tamil reading and writing exam, so there was incentive. You were allowed two failures, but if you failed a third time, you were on the boat home. The company decreed: “Managers and Assistants proceeding on furlough pay their own expenses from the estate to England, but will receive the sum of 500 rupees towards the cost of their return journey.”
In those early days he rode round the estate on horseback. Indeed, some of the young men would arrange to meet up at “Cigarette Point”, a crossroads where they would have a smoke and exchange news, or just chat for a few minutes. In this isolated area, the need for conversation was not often met; sometimes the only conversation you had in English was in the Club at the weekends. The nights must have seemed long; oil lamps to read by after supper, but then what else to do but go to bed. Besides, the dawn would soon press its pink fingers against the blinds.
The day started early with the “mustering” of the labour at 5.30. The pocket check roll and other records were the assistant manager’s responsibility and, like the workers, he had to carry his “tiffin” (lunch) out to the field. The working day lasted until 6.30 or 7.00 pm, seven days a week, and as most estates had three or four assistants, they were allowed one day off in the week in rotation.
Despite the fact that his bungalow was provided, it is hard to imagine how he was able to pay for all his needs: servants, food, clothes, his horse and his (admittedly meager) bar bill, let alone save any money in case, when his five years enforced bachelorhood was up, he chose to marry. To be fair, the company did give you allowances: 175 rupees for a horse, 150 rupees for a wife. And 100 rupees a month for the servants.
In the 1920s, the tea pluckers were paid about 12 annas for a ten hour day, the equivalent of a shilling (the 1920s wage of an English private soldier). Pretty poor wages, but there were perks and benefits; they had a rice allowance (instigated by Andrew, my grandfather) and their children were given a somewhat rudimentary primary educatio
n, and the medical care, whilst primitive, was the same for everyone who worked for the company, planters and pluckers alike.
There were the hazards of snakes and scorpions – Ian was not afraid of either, but was respectful of both. There were the pests of cockroaches and rats and mosquitoes, although in the High Range malaria was rare. Water had to be boiled at all times and ice was never taken in drinks, for fear of typhus, typhoid and cholera. In 1930, when Ian first arrived in India, there were no antibiotics; if you had an injury that turned septic, it was only patient good nursing that pulled you through. Hygiene was very important. You washed your hands at every opportunity and he was taught the rule about food: “Peel it, boil it, cook it, or forget it.”
You never went barefoot for fear of the dreaded hookworm. The larvae of these ghastly little creatures entered the body through the skin (usually the soles of the feet) and they travelled through your blood, up into the lungs (which sounds hard work), through the bronchi and trachea and then would get swallowed, but their journey was only half way through. They would then pass into the digestive tract, attach themselves to the wall of the small intestine, where they would mature into adult worms and live happily for about ten years. Your skin would itch and irritate from a rash, you would get asthma–type symptoms or pneumonia, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, weight loss and excessive farting, anaemia – due to the little buggers feeding on your blood – weakness and heart problems, even heart failure. Wearing a pair of slippers or shoes at all times seemed a good habit to get into.
The assistant (senadori) was expected to know his place and his dignity took its fair share of dents. One of my father’s friends, who rode neither a horse nor a motorbike was obliged, on his first chukka (round) of the estate, to maintain a gentle trot on foot beside his mounted manager (periadori). The young assistants rarely had cars, and being given a lift back from the club one night, my father’s friend was dropped off at the estate office and had to walk through the monsoon rain and the leeches, some four miles to his bungalow without even a torch or light, drenched of course, and fearful of meeting some dangerous wildlife on his way. In turn, the assistants got up to some scallywaggish behaviour, constantly scheming and conniving to outwit their managers. One trick was to lie in bed after a late and often excessive night and send their syce appropriately attired in solar topee and field clothes around the estate on the horse, occasionally passing the manager at a strategic distance offering a business-like wave. Another ruse was to keep one’s hat and raincoat soaking wet on a peg in the porch to prove that one had “just that moment” returned from the field. The manager was seldom duped.
