by Carl Muller
This was the age of the cricket picture craze, collecting fish craze, playing marbles, catching guppies in the Wellawatte canal, fighting, cheering hoarsely at school matches, bullying and being bullied, being always hungry and running the shower behind a closed bathroom door to show that a bath was in progress. This was also the age of a new flowering in the field of art, and suddenly the new rage became the topic in many Burgher living rooms. Burgher artists were commanding the attention of society.
Everyone knew of Aubrey Collette, of course. He was a genius, surely. His newspaper cartoons were turned to, chuckled at and his barbed wit hailed by the highest in the land. 1943 saw a decided renaissance. There was Lionel Wendt, stout, round-faced, a close fit in an upholstered chair and with hair combed back despite his slowly receding hairline. Geoff Beling was quite headmasterish, tending to look over his spectacles. George Keyt was lost in a world of his own while George Claessen was young, energetic with a determined set of jaw. Collete, like his contemporaries Harry Pieris, Richard Gabriel, Ivan Peries and Justin Daraniyagala, was lean, whippy, full of raw energy. Together (and not forgetting the Buddhist monk Manjusri Thero2 ) they formed the famous 43 Group—the most revolutionary milestone in the history of Ceylon, and later, Sri Lankan art.
Carloboy liked to draw. With effort he was pretty good, too, and Sonnaboy couldn’t understand where it all came from. ‘Don’ know like who he is,’ he would sometimes tell Beryl. ‘Can see how he’s picking up the piano? Nobody to show even. Just putting the hands and playing. And asking for Bristol board and big box of Reeves. Drawing on all the exercise books also.’
‘Give, men,’ Beryl would say. ‘If like to do must encourage, no?’
It was a thrill, then, to go in clean white shirt, bow tie, sharkskin trousers, hosed and shoed, to Darley Road where the 43 Group held their first exhibition.
Carloboy was both shy and bemused. He found the show a sense-dazzling, mindstorming one. He was seeing daubs on canvas for the first time. He was seeing the haunting splendour of George Keyt, the bold intensity of Daraniyagala, the simplistic washes of Claessen with shades of El Greco and the delightful near stylistic, delineated works of Beling. So a naked woman was art! He had never drawn a naked woman. Not really naked. She was holding a cloth near her crotch. But it made the boy self-conscious to stare at the grainy picture. Richard Gabriel drew women with their clothes on. All with big breasts and black hair and some with kondays3 also. Browns and chromes screamed at flaring reds, mottled backgrounds, grey-visaged powerful faces, slumbering flesh tones and oh, the geometric juxtapositions of a typical Keyt—ribbons of colour meeting shards of clear tints. He thought of sunsets and cracked mirrors, tram lines and ruffled feathers, a maelstrom of imaginings that raced through his head like paint-daubed brushes streaking to the sun.
‘You like?’ Sonnaboy asked. ‘Came because of you. See how real paintings are. Not just to scribble on your exercise books and then tear the page and throw.’
Carloboy nodded. He had no comment. He just went, zombie like, and he wondered why someone was screaming inside his head.
There was, as expected, press reaction to this first showing of the 43 Group. One reporter, adopting the ‘popular’ approach (and thinking himself very smart, of course) wrote:
To begin with, there were the surrealistic surroundings amid which one discovered that hidden hall in Darley Road. Then there was the crowd of artists and their ‘arty’ friends. Hardly a Philistine in sight: but many a proud papa and fond mama basking in the reflected glory of their offspring’s genius.
Models were also apt to come to life disturbingly. You admired the portrait of a despondent chess player in khaki, and suddenly the identical slim lieutenant stood beside you in the flesh. One or two pianists obstructed your view of their painted conversation piece.
Dominating the scene was an artist who explained his pictures, or the correct attitude towards art with almost ferocious intensity.
Some people were more thrilled by the titles of the pictures than the pictures themselves . . .’
It seems revolting, almost, that the sarcasm should have dripped while little was said about the paintings. It was a report on the event, not its substance. They should have asked Carloboy!
And so Carloboy painted and studied and when St Peter’s came together again there was a tremendous to-do and the cowshed boys and coconut thatch boys were one. That was in 1944 when the Germans were falling back to Montgomery’s onslaught and the French rallied and kissed each other and went around taking German prisoners and the Russians reached Latvia and the Americans kept giving the Japanese beans.
Chapter Eight
Boys everywhere (and that includes their fathers, uncles, grandfathers too) were in their element on D-day. The beaches of Normandy were so real that Aldo Markwick on a borrowed bicycle and Trevor La Brooy on his own battered machine, raced down Hampden Lane, down the weathered steps which led to the canal and plunged in, roaring lustily and upright in their saddles as they hit the water and swallowed more primordial brew than this world was made of! They were, they said, tank commanders.
Aldo rode a Churchill, Trevor a Sherman. They were going to give the German Panthers what-for!
Arguments were fierce. ‘Huh! Can see what the Germans are calling the Shermans? Tommy cookers! Why can’t put big guns on the tanks like the Germans have?’
‘But still our tanks are fast, men.’ (All allied tanks were ‘our’ tanks).
‘Fast, yes, but see, will you, how the Germans just waiting and shooting. Our tanks have to go close to shoot. By the time Germans are shooting from far.’1
Discussions grew quite fierce among the adults.
‘How the story? Ipseems all lies telling, men, about how American tanks going in waves and Germans are turning and running.’
‘Don’t talk rot, men. Saw in the Majestic cinema last night the news. Showing pictures of German tanks burning. Our fellows are giving them hell.’
‘Lissen, will you. I was putting a drink at Lord Nelson. Then one bugger came an’ sat. Asking for gin. Then some other buggers also came. English chaps and all sitting next table. And who is playing the piano? Blind John—’
‘So never mind Blind John. Everyday he’s playing there.’
‘Anyway these fellows drinking gin an’ talking. Ipseems Monty is very angry that fellows in France are saying that Allied tanks are hopeless not like the Germans. Then one fellow said Guards Armoured Division mustn’t complain. Do or die dear boy he’s saying and putting another gin. Blind John playing “Just before the battle mother” also.’
‘Let him be, men, what else they were saying?’
‘Couldn’t hear much, men. Said that five Shermans not enough to knock one Panther and our tanks burning all over. One shot from Germans enough.’
‘Gwan! All bloody rubbish. If burning like that how everyday they are advancing. Going to Rome also.’
‘How do I know? Only telling what I heard, no? And when they saw me looking, bent the heads and muttering so couldn’t hear what they said after that.’
‘Just go, men. The way you’re drinking must have heard all wrong. You think people will talk like that in the open?’
‘But I heard. And only had two arracks. You think I’m just talking. Pictures will say one thing. Papers will say one thing. But what is really happening who knows.’
‘Anney just keep quiet men. You think we are going to lose? What? You want the Germans to win?’
‘Oh go to hell, men. Don’t understand anything I’m telling.’
‘You go to hell! What you’re coming to tell me to go to hell? Coming here to side the Germans? Bloody bastard!’
(And World War Three begins . . . almost!)
Years later it was grudgingly confirmed that the Allies actually named their tanks Ronsons, after the popular cigarette lighter which was guaranteed to ‘light the first time’. American General Omar Bradley, who registered the decimation of the Shermans, wrote: ‘The willingness to exp
end Shermans offered little comfort to the crews who were forced to expend themselves as well.’
Field Marshal Montgomery raged about the complaints. On receiving a complaining report, he had written: ‘I have had to stamp very heavily on reports being circulated about the inadequate quality of our tanks. When equipment at our disposal is used properly and the tactics are good, we have no difficulty in defeating the Germans.’
This drew comment from a British tank driver: ‘It was all right for Monty and his officers in their best uniforms going to church at headquarters on a Sunday when boys were being slaughtered on the frontline a few miles away. I suppose that’s the military for you.’
Nobody knew, really, what it was all about. It was just the typical reaction of thousands of people who never acknowledged that a little learning was a dangerous thing. None knew of the real metallic clash of giant war machines. Montgomery’s brother-in-law actually designed tanks which were immediately labelled ‘Hobart’s Funnies’. He, Major General Percy Hobart, actually came up with his ‘swimming tanks’—the Crab and the Crocodile. The Crocodile was, in reality, a mechanized flame-thrower with a capacity to jet a stream of fire thirty metres. A dirty machine which was born with blue murder in mind. Who cared to ponder on the God-awful business that war actually was? The Crocodile wrought terrible devastation when it was used to spray napalm. Burghers of 1944 didn’t want to know what napalm was. All they did was chalk up the victories, exaggerate the kill and cheer loudly over their glasses of arrack. God, they were confident, was very good in saving the king. Hadn’t the Allies landed at Normandy? And hadn’t Rommel been defeated earlier at El Alamein. And what about that intriguing incident of the Daily Telegraph crossword?
Two ordinary words they were, in answer to the crossword clues—Overlord and Mulberry—but they had been identified as a code connected with the Normandy landings. The story fired young imaginations. Coded messages became a hotly applied school pursuit. Carloboy was pressed into service by his school fellows who agreed unanimously: ‘Your English is best, men. Get a code for all the dirty words first. Then anything we write an’ pass, even if teacher sees an’ takes, won’t be able to understand what we are saying.’
It was an exciting year. All the best and worst of the two St Peter’s were now together. Old friends, old enemies, the Bambalapitiya boys quick to scorn those from Dehiwela, and punch-ups galore. It was a proud event for the Catholic Church. The College flag was hoisted, the College anthem sung.
Lend a heart and lend a hand
And keep the flag on high
Let its glorious colours ring
A greeting to the sky,
Golden gleam and silver sheen,
And blue that rounds the world,
Keep the flag a-flying, boys,
Keep the flag unfurled!
Quite a rousing number, too, although the boys of St Joseph’s, who were St Peter’s rivals and clashed with frantic regularity on every Big Match day (when the schools met at an annual cricket encounter) made up their own vile version and would march to the Peterite tent, and sing:
‘Lend your ass and bend, don’t stand . . .’
and then do the bunk to the safety of their tent.
So, with the blue, white and gold flapping wearily under a hot Bambalapitiya sun, various priests gave speeches and education department officials kept nodding and a High Mass was sung in the college chapel and the Bishop, too, was in attendance. Masters and teachers were sweat-shiny in their best clothes. Boys fretted at the nerve-racking rigmarole and then, magically, it was all over and there were classrooms to march to and desk lids to bang and the usual scuffles for rear-row seats which kept masters at a goodly distance.
The end of the war, too, could be sensed, but even the bomb plot to kill Hitler wasn’t as exciting as this sudden move to the school proper. There were the old regime—‘Glamour Boy’, Father Paris, Father Anslem, ‘Pathol’ Croos, ‘Pappa’ de Ness, and a crowd of others. Above all there was a geography master who taught from his own book and had a red lower lip which he curled disdainfully at every boy he disliked. He rode an autocycle to work and for some time earned the nickname of ‘Put-put’ Baptiss, not because he had any inclination to put or put-put, but because that was exactly the sound of the infernal machine he rode—a sort of adolescent motorbike or, one may say, a bicycle that had graduated.
‘Put-put’ was a good man. A steady, studious man, and as many knew, a devoted family man too. He was quiet in manner, appreciated a good joke, was accepted warmly in many circles and, like all good men, made the butt of schoolboys who tormented him to distraction. Why this is, is hard to tell, let alone analyse. Boys are, if ‘Put-put’ was permitted to describe them before a Senate Committee, the lowest order of Creation. That was what the poor man must have felt. And yet, as the chronicler learned, no word of the many indignities he suffered in school were ever mentioned at home. He had the facility to drop the hours of school as he would discard an old shoe and become the fond father, the respected neighbour, the loving husband, and always, the scholar.
It never occurred to Carloboy or hundreds of Peterites that so diligent a man, whose book on geography was a standard text for many years, must be a person of both substance and stature. Boys are cruel. They bully, taunt, hiss and boo, are incredibly selfish. They make rotten judgements, and, as all parents will vouch at some time or another, are destructive, rash and unfeeling. Now, many of them shared the determination to make ‘Put-put’s’ life as miserable as possible. Why, was hard to determine. Because he was serious-minded, a dedicated teacher, never gave his class a ‘free period’, or was a stickler for detail when calling for contour lines, mapping rivers and indicating the Humboldt current with little blue arrows? It’s hard to tell, but he had one quality all boys detest. He had a tedious manner and somehow, a forty-five-minute Geography class always seemed to last two hours. When ‘Put-put’ Baptiss entered a classroom, Time seemed to go under an anaesthetic. And so, a major operation was planned.
An autocycle is the answer to many a middle-class man’s prayers. When the Italian Vespas hit the market later they became the darlings of young and old. Agencies had this thought-provoking campaign where billboards carried lipsmacking pictures of local beauties with the shapeliest thighs in the tropics. They wore hot pants and sat astride their snazzy Vespas. Their Romeos sat behind, muzzling, and the blurb screamed: ‘It’s better on a Vespa.’
By rights then, ‘Put-put’ on his circumcized motorbike should have earned all plaudits. True, he hadn’t a Vespa, and the rackertacker he rode looked like the offspring of a sewing-machine and a combine harvester, but the offensive machine carried the man most economically to wherever he wished. It didn’t ask for much. A litre of gasoline in its slim tank, a little oil around its knobs and in its many orifices, a blob of grease on its chain, and it was content. Never in its wildest did it think that four schoolboys would surround it, seize it, stand it on its head, unscrew its petrol cap and grin vilely as all its lifeblood drained away. And what sort of transfusion came next? When ‘Put-put’ came for it that afternoon, it was in a state of post-operation shock.
Father Paris sat in his principal’s office fondly admiring his rack of canes. A swarthy priest with a poll of grey-dusted hair and the makings of a middle-aged spread. The bell had rung (must do something about that bell, it has a vile, tinny sound) and the multitudinous clamour of a thousand boys whooping out of school had died down to a tolerable buzz. He expelled noisily and then caught his next breath sharply. There stood ‘Put-put’ and any priest could tell the man was distraught. Baptiss stood, wild-faced, slightly dishevelled, red around the neck and with beads of perspiration that hung from his forehead. His lower lip twitched. The man was grappling—yes, grappling, the priest thought—with a most emotional problem. They didn’t notice the faces of boys who peered with extreme caution, at the window.
‘Someone,’ Baptiss grated, ‘has put pol thel!’
Yes, the man was disturbed. N
ary a doubt. He had even slipped into the vernacular in a rage he could scarcely contain. He hadn’t said coconut oil. He had spat the words ‘pol thel’ instead in the same way any red-blooded man would say ‘fucking bastard’.
‘P-pol thel?’ the priest stammered.
‘Come and see!’ Baptiss hooted. ‘Black smoke coming, all ruined!’
Outside the window, the heads disappeared. ‘Pol thel,’ Gogerly chuckled. Dabare covered his mouth. Lappen hissed, ‘Don’t laugh, men. If hear, hat for us.’ Cautiously the four villains crept away.
‘Put-put’ marched into school the next day to be greeted with long, low-key hoots that seemed to bounce at him from every corner.
‘Adoo! Pol Thel!’
‘Put-put’ was henceforth re-christened. And generations of schoolboys will never, ever forget ‘Pol Thel’ who taught grimly on, at St Peter’s and then at the Royal College (where the nickname followed him) and until he retired after long, dogged and meritorious service to remain ‘Pol Thel’ until he died, and the writer even now demands that God keep him close, for blessed indeed are they that suffer schoolboy persecution for the sake of righteousness!
Art master de Ness was a short, scowly no-damn-nonsense man who wore white suits, badly-knotted ties and carried his cane up his coat sleeve. He believed in a sort of carpet bombing. Suddenly, magically, the cane would appear—an act of prestidigitation much dreaded—and the man would storm down the rows of desks flailing right and left while everybody scrambled on top of each other and bunched along the walls with fearful eyes while de Ness marched blindly on, slaying bottles of ink, boxes of crayons, and wheeling to advance on any boy who had not cleared out fast enough.
This usually created such an uproar that the entire row of classrooms suffered. De Ness was always ‘Pappa’ because he was as irascible and bad-tempered as a ‘pappa’—a tempestuous old grandfather who liked to throw things at people. And yet, a glorious artist who became soft-faced and charming as he sat in the clutter of his Dehiwela home, smeared in oil paints and filling canvases with unbelievable patience.
