Continued from yesterday

Dear Frank,

Hope this finds you, Uncle Dan and Aunt Martha, well. I am extremely well, thank you, and thoroughly enjoying myself already.

I am here where I have always wanted to be ever since I passed this way on my way to Rome.

Some bloke once called this island "This other Eden, this demi-Paradise." Well, I have yet to see that part of it although I am told Ceylon is a beautiful country.

I was given a quick survey of the city and its environs on my way from the airport, a twelve-mile ride down a long road with a wide variety of buildings. The city itself is very small and very crowded. Ancient London Transport double deckers jostle with carts drawn by bullocks, rickshaws, bicycles, motor bikes, cars, mostly British made and quite a few Volkswagens.

There is a still strong British presence here, ten years after the island gained Independence from the British. There are a few good department stores like Cargills, Millers, Whiteaways, business houses like Liptons – tea, of course – Carsons, Whittals, Finlays, McKinnons. The Americans have their big oil companies represented.

Politically the country is hotting up. The government is a coalition of a left-of-centre socialist party called the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and some red hot communists. These redheads, by the way, go by different names, some of them too jaw breaking for you, so I’ll spare you.

The place where I stay is the main YCW headquarters. It’s not the Windsor, but it’s all right. It used to be a church and still looks like one. It’s in the very heart of the business centre called the Pettah. Very dusty and noisy.

I have my suite upstairs. That’s all right too, except for a bug or so, but I’ve fixed that.

The priest in charge of the YCW is a Dutchman called Fr Hans Grutzner. Solid man. One hundred per cent. Was in the underground during the war. Smokes like a chimney. There are two assistant chaplains. One is a Frenchman, Fr Labatut. Second T is silent. Smokes about only a hundred cigars a day. Only joking. Great guy. Wears a black beret all the time. Looks very intellectual. Likes an argument. Can’t understand a word of what he says.

The other chaplain is a Ceylonese, Fr Stephen Silva. Small made. Tight as a grenade. Looks like he’ll explode any minute. Talks fast like ack-ack gun fire. Don’t have much to do with him. Don’t want to, really. I find it very hard to get close to him.

My YCW mates have already made plans for me to study the Movement. See the fishing industry at work. Go up to the hills to see the plantations, tea and rubber. I hear conditions on the tea plantations are dreadful. Like Uncle Tom’s time in America.

As I write I can see Fr Grutzner striding across the hall below me. He’s a big fellow. Often refers to me as "the bloody Aussie." He doesn’t mean it in a bad way. Only joking. It’s what he remembers of an Aussie footy match when he was in Melbourne once. Says he lost count of the number of times Aussies all round him used the word Bloody. Thank goodness that’s all he remembers of footy language!

I do miss the footy here. Many thanks for sending the Sporting Globe: it makes home seem closer. Sorry to see that old Fitzroy is not as successful as last year. I will never forget the preliminary final against Nth Melbourne. Fancy being beaten on the last kick of the day. (Enough lamenting!) Give my regards to Billy Stephen, Eddie Goodger, Colin Davey, Butch Gale and the rest of the boys.

I feel at home when I look at the Ceylonese flag and see the lion is the national emblem. Go, Fitzroy!

Write to me now and then, Frank. I miss you all. Love to Uncle Dan and Aunt Martha.

Look after yourself, mate. God bless

Yours sincerely,

Bill.

Chapter 10
Raj had, what his editor, Mr Rhodes Kennedy, called a love-hate relationship with his Vespa scooter. Kennedy had come to that conclusion one afternoon following Raj in his black Volkswagen. He had arrived at the Clarion offices shortly after Raj and had expressed his editorial opinion rather succinctly, peering over his thick lensed, thick rimmed glasses.

The tall, lanky Burgher with the very British sounding name looked always as though he had not slept for half the night. Which was mostly the case. The ex-academic historian, chronicler of the Dutch period of history, was unaccustomed to delegating work. He did everything that came to his desk except the correspondence himself, on the standard excuse that it got done faster. The habit was to earn him much frustration, no extra reward, and an early grave in Perth, where he had migrated.

Raj drove dangerously and self-consciously because he was thinking of his appointment with the Prime Minister, what he told himself was an appointment with fate, the appointment with fate, the appointment of a lifetime.

He went down to the garages, checked the air on his tyres, the state of the plugs, the level of petrol and set out leaving a half hour for the fifteen-minute ride. Traffic would be heavy at that time of the afternoon. He could rest a few minutes before he was summoned.

He wore a white coat, the one he used to wear when reporting Parliament as required. A coat was also mandatory when covering Courts, meeting Ministers of Cabinet rank, members of the diplomatic corps and personages of similar rank. Royalty and formal occasions required the appropriate dress according to the code. He also wore his dark, gilt-rimmed polarised sunglasses, purely for functional reasons. Style never entered his mind.

Soon he was speeding along the tree-lined General’s Lake road, past the lake edged with wharves on one side and a railway on the other. The stagnant water and rotting barges assailed his nostrils.

It was one of the few stretches where one could open the throttle of the scooter and feel the surge of power and hear the contented purr of the engine. It was also a stretch where not a few had taken their final ride hitting trees on gentle bends at night, or on- coming vehicles.

Exhilaration whizzed past his ears.

At the Prime Minister’s private residence along Rosmead Place the lone sentry seated in his pill box let Raj pass one of the gates at the end of the low wall outside. A boy of ten can leap over this, Raj thought. He was amazed at the minimal security, almost a mere formality, surrounding the Prime Minister.

In eighteen months Bandaranaike had made powerful enemies at various levels. He had nationalised public transport, a bold move urged by his Marxist partners in the coalition which had swept him to power in a tidal wave of popular support. Private bus owners who had been deprived of highly lucrative business ventures now hated him. He had liberated millions of peasants who had been crushed by nearly four hundred years of foreign rule in recent history, and later held in thrall by top-hatted, tail-coated flunkeys of British imperialism who ruled immediately after Independence.

Among those he had liberated were also the parasites who hoped to make their fortunes through political favour. The fortresses of power, in business and social strata, felt threatened. The English-educated, Western-clad gentry did not favour the idea of sharing power with those they contemptibly-termed ‘sarong Johnnies’.

Bandaranaike, by affecting the garb of the peasant – a pristine white two-piece garment, a long-sleeved white shirt and a cloth that went round the waist and came down to the ankles – identified himself overtly with the feelings and aspirations of the common people known as the masses.

The garb, however, did not mask his markedly western manner, his impeccable Oxford diction, his incongruous Gandhi glasses, open, buckled, leather shoes and the curved, briar pipe, almost one of his facial features.

Raj waited in the verandah where callers waited, except favoured ones who were ushered into lounges with upholstered chairs. Raj pondered gloomily that Auggie Gabriel would probably have been ushered into those regions whenever he came to see the Prime Minister. Raj also wondered, a little testily, whether Auggie would have been kept waiting twenty minutes after the appointed time, or whether he would be kept waiting at all. A manservant broke into his thoughts and led the way into Bandaranaike’s study.

The Prime Minister was seated at a desk with his back to Raj. The room was fragrant with a rich, aromatic tobacco.

"I won’t be a minute." The voice, muffled by the stem of the pipe held between his teeth, was still round and resonant and strong.

"Now then, whom have we here?" he asked stretching his lips in the semblance of a smile. The eyes were black and penetrating behind the thick lenses.

"I’m Raj Indra, Sir," he said, "here in place of Auggie Gabriel."

"Yes, yes, rather unfortunate, that," the Prime Minister said with an ambiguity that left Raj uncomfortable, "but I have instructed the Minister for Health to have a first class ward ready for him when he comes out of Intensive Care. I’m rather fond of him, you know," he said inclining his head judicially, "he is quick-witted and it is possible to have an intelligent conversation with him. And heaven knows I can do with some of that."

It seemed to Raj that the PM was speaking more to himself and that any kind of response would have been inappropriate.

"However," the PM continued, "the reason why I sent for you is that it seems highly unlikely that Auggie will be recovered sufficiently to accompany me when I go to address the United Nations in September. I asked your Managing Director to submit a short list of journalists in your group..."

Raj’s heart was pounding so loud he feared it might be heard. Fortunately for Raj, at that moment the ’phone rang.

The PM picked it up. "Yes? Hullo, Stanley...yes, yes...I have your note before me...I am giving it my utmost consideration. Leave it with me...yes, I know that chap, dreadful bore...but there you are...most of them are not the life and soul..." He burst into a rasping laugh. "Well, goodbye, then. We’ll meet in the House, later."

He continued as though there had been no interruption. "And your name was the one I picked. I have been reading your reports of Parliamentary proceedings and I find they go beyond, shall I say, the stodgy reporting for which your paper is noted."

Raj flushed with pleasure. "Thank you, Sir," he said, "coming from you..."

"I appreciate the light-handed humour in them. I also liked your piece in the Sunday Clarion on Mark Twain, who as you know is my special favourite."

He drew on his pipe and the smoke spiralled round his head fuzzily in the light of the table lamp.

"An American journalist once asked me whether it was correct that I hated the Americans. I told him, ‘My dear fellow, how can I possibly hate a nation that produced Mark Twain?’ I am told it went down well with the American people."

He smiled at the recollection of the rejoinder.

"In the meanwhile," he said, "I would like you to attend briefing sessions at the Foreign Ministry and familiarise yourself with our policy, which as you know, is broadly one of non-alignment with power blocs. Within the ambit of that framework we will maintain our independence. This will be to our advantage, being a small country, but not by any means inconsequential in the power play of international politics.'

"Well then, you to your work and I to mine. No doubt you will keep in touch."

He replaced the pipe in his mouth and turned towards his desk.