by Carl Muller
And the Japanese did attack, and it was Easter Sunday, 1942, and the Sunday Observer screamed in headlines that a large Japanese aircraft carrier had been sighted 800 miles south of the island and there were all manner of battle-wise statements from military types and a picture of Lord Louis Mountbatten who had actually actually set up an operational command headquarters in the Royal Botanical Gardens of Peradeniya.
Mountbatten, as Sonnaboy would relate, liked his eggs and Sonnaboy ought to have known, for there was that day when he had brought engine and train to the Colombo Fort platform and there was a terrific hustle and bustle as the Army and Navy trooped in and the stationmaster rushed to the engine to announce that Mountbatten would be a very very important passenger. ‘Schedule is changed,’ he said in hushed tone, ‘Now you go express to Peradeniya where the admiral will get off. And don’t jerk too much and whistle also. Admiral don’t like when engines making unnecessary noise.’
To digress a little, the chronicler must state that the railway in Ceylon of those times and in Sri Lanka of this day, is not without its brigands. They are those who believe that anything that is consigned to the Goods Brake Van for carriage from point A to point B should be carefully assessed and removed if possible. For example Tommyboy Kelaart wishes to send his friend Bertie Oorloff in Colombo a fine bunch of bananas. Tommyboy is in Rambukkana, where, as everybody knows, the finest bananas in the land are grown. So he purchases a princely-looking bunch, each banana, for sheer size, looking positively obscene. He then lugs his gift to the station where the booking clerk admires them with reverence and books them for passage to Colombo and attaches a tag that says: BANANAS BUNCH ONE. Tommyboy’s gift is then put into the Brake Van of the train to Colombo where it is ardently regarded by guard, underguard, porters, brake goods man and other railway types who all agree that as bananas, this bunch is hard to beat. Meanwhile Tommyboy telegraphs Bertie and impresses on him that the bananas he is sending certainly merit his attention. Bertie is impressed. Good old Tommyboy, he says, never forgets a pal. He tells his wife: ‘That Tommyboy is sending us bananas. Big ones.’
‘That’s nice, dear.’
‘Only thing is how to bring all the way from Fort Goods Shed. Will have to take a buggy.’
‘So go and bring, dear.’
But somewhere between Rambukkana and Colombo, Tommyboy’s bananas undergo a metamorphosis. Bertie, with buggy parked outside the goods shed railing, produces his pink goods ticket. He is ushered to a corner where his bananas await deliverence. And there he sees the most woebegone bunch of bananas he has ever clapped eyes on. Oh, the booking tag is there. BANANAS BUNCH ONE. But what, he asks the seven gods, are these mangy things? Even the labourers give him pained looks. What, they wonder, is this fellow going to do with this sorry emaciated bunch? When it was brought into the goods shed it was greeted with shouts of laughter. ‘Look, will you. These are plantains?’
One said they reminded him of the penises of adolescent toque monkeys. ‘Real monkey pricks.’
‘For what things like this sending I don’t know. Must be to insult, for sure.’
The goods shed clerk knew better, of course. ‘From Rambukkana sending,’ he said, ‘guard must have put this and taken real bunch.’ And this was true, for at Maho, the guard had arranged the switch. A porter was given five rupees and told to bring a bunch of bananas from the nearest market . . . and for five rupees all that worthy could find were the sorriest bunch ever. But they serve. Oh, they serve. After all, doesn’t the tag baldly state BANANAS BUNCH ONE? In Colombo, the guard lugs Tommyboy’s magnificent bunch away. Stationmaster Joseph is impressed. ‘I say, men, pukka plantains. From where you bought?’
Guard beams. ‘You want some to take home?’
So Tommyboy’s bananas are carried to the Guards Inspector’s Office where the bunch is cut into several combs and the driver gets a share, the stationmaster and underguard their share and everybody is pleased . . . all, that is, except Bertie who accepts the consignment, puts it red-facedly into the buggy and goes home to tell his wife that he is going to write Tommyboy a letter. This, he announces, is the end of a beautiful friendship. This is war. Tommyboy’s bananas are an insult to human dignity. If this is Tommyboy’s idea of a joke, he, Bertie, is not laughing. He is furious. He would like to take Tommyboy apart and dance on his several parts. Even his daughter’s pimples are bigger than these bananas. Naturally Tommyboy rushes a protest. He swears on the Holy Shroud, that he sent the biggest, finest bananas in Rambukkana. Bertie writers back to inform Tommyboy what he could do in future with his bananas devoting two pages to a host of suggestions which, if suitably expurgated, could become a best seller titled One Hundred and One Ways with Bananas.
Well . . . to get back . . . Sonnaboy drove the train to Peradeniya where Lord Louis Mountbatten alighted and nearly started a fierce local war. His eggs had disappeared. Four dozen eggs, carefully packed and lovingly stored in the guards van had gone the way of Tommyboy’s bananas. What was more, there was no substitute,
‘What eggs?’ the guard asked.
‘The Allied Supreme Commander’s eggs!’ an aide-de-camp growled.
The guard thought this was funny. ‘Big ones?’
The brake was searched, so was the Royal Mail bogey, the doglocker inspected and eventually the whole train fine-combed. No eggs. Mountbatten, as would be expected, was annoyed. His eggs were not booked as goods. All he had instructed was that they be placed in the brake for safety. Some military types came to the engine. Sonnaboy squinted at them. Fireman Jamis actually stood at attention thinking that this was the correct thing to do.
‘What do you want?’
‘Are you the engineman?’
‘Why?’
‘We are looking for eggs.’
‘On the engine? What’s wrong with you buggers? What eggs?’
They climbed on the footplate and winced at the coal dust and grease. The clinker was stoved against the firebox door and the fire roared angrily. On the platform the stationmaster was hopping and bobbing around as if he was in a Punch and Judy show. Even the platform flower-pots were searched.
‘Oi,’ said sonnaboy, ‘if putting eggs here, will be hardboiled by now.’
Eventually Mountbatten stalked away with his party to climb into his Riley staff car and drive to his command post in the Botanical Gardens sans eggs. The Guard was served with a letter from the General Manger of Railways demanding explanation. He said he had no idea. His manifest had no listing of eggs. He considered that this was a persecution of sorts and intended to table the matter at the next meeting of the Guard And Enginemen’s Union.
So, with such shennigans to relieve the tedium, Easter Sunday rolled up and all over, Burgher families dressed for church and hoped it would be a happy day despite the closing-in war and the shortages and this new business of having to queue for food and producing ration cards for oil and milk and sugar. Sonnaboy had to do a stint of arms drill and actually live in military camp as a lance corporal of the Railway Volunteer Force. He was proud of his stripes and boots and puttees and spent a lot of time polishing the brass buckles of his web belt and tunic buttons and teaching Carloboy the army way to shine boots—rub in the boot blacking very thinly, then spit on the treated area and rub in the spittle with one finger swathed in soft cloth with a circular motion. Carloboy set to work with a will. Pthoo! rub, Pthoo! rub while Beryl said it was sickening to watch and ‘having shoe brush what is all this putting spit and for how long, I don’t know, rubbing.’ Sonnaboy would also take Carloboy to camp at times where the boy would be made to sing and everybody would get most rowdy over beer and hard Army biscuits and bully beef and the mess would ring to ‘Lili Marlene’ and such roistering rounds as:
The quartermaster jumped upon the sergeant major’s back.
and that hot favourite of the times:
Hitler had only one big ball,
Goering had two, but very small,
Himmler, had something sim’lar,
But Mister Goebbels had no balls at all, tum-ti
tarum-pum-pum.
It was a hop and a skip to St. Lawrence’s Church, which was in the next lane and Sonnaboy and Beryl rushed the family to the first mass of the day because Beryl insisted that she needed time to prepare the Easter lunch. All of the previous evening, eggs (not Mountbatten’s) had been hardboiled and coloured and the baker had been relieved of his stock of hot cross buns. Sunday morning was smiling and clear-skied and as the dawn raised the haze of night, Sonnaboy, stepping to the gate said he saw aircraft flying high among the patchy clouds, so high that they looked like tiny toy planes winging noiselessly at about 65,000 feet.
The family took the short cut through a garden which had a board stating PRIVATE NO ADMITICEN and which everybody used since such boards with correct or incorrect spelling, were always ignored. A trek through the garden brought them to the bottom of St. Lawrence’s Road and thus to the church where all the good people of Wellawatte converged in their Easter best, wearing white or butter yellow and the girls wore their Madonna expressions and carried candles done up with little satin bows and the men carried handsome black leather missals and Rona Redlich minced in on incredibly high heels and sat at the organ and began fiddling with piles of music sheets.
St. Lawrence’s Church was an airy L-shaped building with half walls and wire grills, a few pews up front and chairs and benches making up the rest of the seating arrangements. It was not an imposing church. More like a sprawling dormitory and overcrowded with ornamentation which was nothing to write home about. The wooden altar and the carved, polished communion rails and the ebon prideaux were handsome enough, but Father Grero had no aesthetic sense. Statues with frightful faces were scattered everywhere, each reminding worshippers that Heaven must be a singularly unattractive place. St. Sebastian stood, an arm raised, for all the world like an advertisement for underarm deodorant. Arrows skewered his stomach and chest and gouts of red blood had been painted in with enthusiasm. The smile on the face was pathetic. The sort of smile that would say: ‘Look, Ma, I’m a shishkebab.’ St. Lawrence held pride of place, naturally, with an oversized painting of his martyrdom, where he lay on a rack, being roasted to a turn with a look that the painter hoped would convey ecstasy. The figures of the Stations of the Cross looked like a succession of the late Jim Henson’s puppets, while large angels beside the altar with wings and scrolls and lopsided haloes stared blindly at the worshippers and looked for all the world like creatures in the last stages of some catatonic state or an atrophy of body and soul.
Father Grero believed that his flock, when in church, must be surrounded, enwrapped, toiled and moiled in all that the kingdom of God could throw their way. Pictures and images of saints were everywhere. Every pillar held its special ornamentation. There was Saint Cecilia making cows eyes at an organ; Saint Anthony with a wistful expression as though he had just been relieved of his gall bladder; Saint John embracing a cross and looking most uncomfortable. This Easter had the Tabernacle cloth in gold, banners of white and yellow and streamers of gold tinsel rustling from pillar to pillar. Bowls of white lilies filled the sanctuary and candles burned at every statue while old Muriel Rozairo went from niche to niche, kissing the clay feet of numberless saints and the Virgin and getting into everyones way with her circulating display of reverence for the graven images around her.
Father Grero came to the foot of the altar and the Easter Mass progressed with a lot of ringing of bells and standing and kneeling and the choir reminding the neighbourhood that Christ the Lord is Risen today. Leah and George were there and so was Anna, and Mass over they met in the garden to wish each other a happy Easter when the air-raid warning sounded.
There was something urgent about that fiendish sound. What is more the smaller siren installed at the Wellawatte Police Station also began a fierce keening and far away there were strange pok! pok! sounds as though children were popping paper bags on some distant hill. Father Grero urged everybody to come into the church. Sonnaboy set a stubborn jaw. ‘Every day the same story,’ he growled, ‘those ARP buggers blowing their whistles and sirens and everybody running and hiding. Damn nonsense. Just come go home. You wait and see, when Japanese come nobody will know and nobody will blow sirens when the bombs are falling.’
Beryl chewed a lip nervously. ‘So never mind if bombs falling or not. We can wait until all clear and go home.’
‘Yes, men,’ old Mr Capper said, ‘sense, no, your wife is talking. Come go inside and wait.’
Sonnaboy wasn’t pleased. ‘All balls!’ he snorted, ‘You think I’m afraid of these bloody sirens? You stay then if you want. I’m going home,’ and with a face like a monsoon cloud be strode off while Beryl sniffed and drove the children into the church saying: ‘One thing, your father . . . stubborn is not the word. Let go and do anything.’
Old Capper made clucking noises. ‘Real one, your husband. Slightest thing get angry. How you put up with temper like that I don’t know.’
Beryl sighed.
Sonnaboy strode home, found the doors locked and realised that Beryl had the keys. This enraged him, so kicking shut the gate he sat on the front step, glowering at the sky. Suddenly he saw a clutch of aircraft zoom out of a high cloud, plunging down, down, and he realised with a shock that the red rising sun emblem was painted on each underwing. Japanese planes, and roaring out of nowhere to meet them were British fighter planes. The air, from two thousand feet to as low as six hundred feet over the road swirled and smoked and there was a great thrumming and whining and the screech of metal and the staccatto crackle of turret fire. A dogfight, right over his house. And suddenly the distant thuds and booms were louder and he knew that they were gun batteries and shore emplacements and that this time the sirens had been for real. Far away were sounds of an urban frenzy. Screaming motors and was that a fire engine? He leaped to his feet and rushed to the road. Above the planes banked and swooped and tree tops swayed in the rush of their arcing and wheeling. He heard the phut-phut-phut of guns and saw long lines of red dust kick up on the road. Sonnaboy ran. He raced through the garden, up St. Lawrences Road and pounded into the church as though all hell was behind him. There, holding Beryl and the children close he told of the air battle and everybody listened ashen-faced and Mrs Van Starrex declared that she would faint, so there, and women squealed while the men raised hands to their ears and shouted ‘Listen! Quiet!’ and took each sound to be some dismal disaster of war. ‘You can hear? Those are big guns. What was that? My God, something exploded, no? Don’t know if bomb even fell. Or something blown up . . . there, bells. Must be ambulance.’ Don’t know how many dead no? And what is burning can’t say. Good Lord, don’t know if our houses gone. Planes come low and shoot, no?’
Father Grero insisted that everybody should pray instead of scaring each other silly, and one bright spark asked what would happen if a bomb fell on the church, whereupon Mrs Van Starrex kept to her threat and fainted, and Capper doused her with holy water which had absolutely no effect on her. When she did come to she was propped against the organ and vigorously fanned with hymnals and had to be assured every 25th second that no bombs were homing in on her.
An hour passed. Father Grero gave up on the mob and regarded his flock sourly. Of course, many decided that prayer would not be out of place but they all throbbed with excitement and paced around while old Farter Moldrich (so named because he had this tendency to wait for a moment of absolute silence and then break wind in a long drawn-out manner) was describing how shrapnel from bombs and shells could make a man look like minced meat and how several bombs dropped in a close pattern could cause a firestorm and other delicious bits of information that made the women white in the face and clutch their children to them and Mavis Ludekens embraced an altar boy and screeched: ‘We all die for sure, we all going to die for sure!’ until her husband pushed her into the confessional, sat her down and snarled: ‘So die! But don’t make such a bloody noise!’
Another hour passed. Leah was discuss
ing Easter lunch with Beryl. George sat, picking his nose and grunting at everybody who tried to pick a conversation with him. Men strolled around the garden, heads turned to the sky. Sonnaboy had seen Japanese raiders right over his head. They hoped to see some sign of battle too.
Leah was telling Beryl: ‘Fine one, that George. Telling yesterday go straight to the market and buy a chicken for lunch. How, child, to go straight the way he is telling? So I told, how to go straight men, must turn, no? when come to top of the lane and again turn to Manning place and then again turn to the poultry place and if turning all over like that how to go straight? And he saying you’re a damn fool, men, in front of the children also. One thing, I don’t know what’s wrong with these men. Just see how Sonnaboy went. Very good if planes fell on his head. And how the way he came running? All big talk only. So how, anymore children coming? Don’t allow, men. Already have four, no? Last week he’s coming home and grumbling that three girls coming one after the other and next time must get boy. Easy for them to say, no? We are the ones with all the pains and the big stomachs and all. I told George no more nonsense. Enough, men, two. Think of all that have to do even for these two. And who knows with this war and all, how we will manage? One thing, George is careful. Yesterday also he said good if have no more children. And Ivor also sickly. Giving, men, all the nourishment but always getting something. And if get cough and cold will go on for how long I don’t know. Whole night going hacka-hacka-hacka and crying and no sleep for anyone. One thing, children are real problem, men. Elsie won’t keep quiet. If the children are too much, she hammers. Whole trouble is we are too kind. Everything seeing to. Asking anything we are giving. And George won’t even correct them. Telling you’re the mother, you correct. Fine thing, no? Everything on my shoulders putting. But one thing, thank God, they are all right in school. Nuns saying that Marlene is very good and learning nicely. How your lot? That Carloboy looks a real devil, no? But must be bright. For that my Ivor. Very slow, men. Only likes to torment his sister and hiding her pen and homework book and then big fights. So are you coming in the evening? Made some cake and some tinned fish sandwiches if anybody comes. What else to do; nowadays can’t throw money, no? George will pull a bottle. I don’t know how these men can drink like this. One thing, that Viva won’t touch, child. Only other day I was telling how if our buggers are in Bandarawela? In that cold everyday will be drinking. But see Viva—in all that cold, won’t touch, men. And lucky devil . . . company house and van and no Japanese to come and bomb or anything . . . .’
