It was an odd feeling coming back to Ceylon for this very last time to work but without my Jill and the children, and there was the horrible feeling of six months loneliness ahead as I would have to struggle to wind up all my affairs in a country that was incredibly beautiful, and on the outside the same as ever, but politically was so unstable and about to deteriorate and fall apart fast. Also I knew that I would have to contend with the appalling red tape to get all the requisite permits, tax clearance certificates, exchange control etc before I could even consider booking a passage back to England. My driver Marimuttu had come down to the airport to meet me, and in his usual garrulous manner gave me a non stop account of everything wrong on the estate, all the tittle tattle and all the politics of the country. I was not bored whilst I drove to pay my respects to George Steuart’s and the following morning started my journey up country through the south west part of the island, making a brief call with my friend David Hart at Sapulmakande in the hot steamy low country to discuss our plans for departure. Like me he had left his pretty wife Nicky and the children in England whilst he worked out his contract. As we drove up the Gingatenne pass under the shadow of the Adams Peak range, breaking suddenly out from the lush lowcountry palm and rubber scenery, the hills with all their steep ruggedness were once again all before us. For the very first time in my life in spite of all the years that I had lived in Ceylon I had never quite appreciated the wonderful ‘blueness’ of the hills. Here before me were hills covered with wispy clouds all bathed in a soft but magnificent purple blue haze ,in a complete contrast to the dry bleached landscape and wide open vistas of Turkey at the end of the long dry summer.
As we drove down the last mile to the Luckyland Bungalow, the whole avenue of all the yellow Cassia trees that Freddie Keun had planted were in flower, and the garden was a riot of red, pink and purple bouganvilleas, and garrish cannas all flowering at the end of the long dry weather which had just been slaked by the first of the equinoctial thunderstorms. The huge bungalow with its long corridor now echoed with a feeling of complete and utter loneliness, with no companionship and no children’s footsteps any more to welcome me. I felt that I was being torn and uprooted away from everything familiar from my very earliest childhood, and was about to be replanted into a new unknown place that was hard to imagine or visualize. I was about to embark on a new journey and a new hard life which was impossible to predict how it would all end. All I was certain was that we must move on whilst I was still young and active enough to make the difficult transition into a new country with no deep connections.
The next six months were an unbelievable tedious and painstaking trial in sorting my affairs out. One of the main problems was to sell the Trinco Bungalow, as neither Father nor I would ever have a use for it again. I was extremely lucky to find a good buyer in the form of a Director of the Standard Tea Company for its use as company holiday home for their senior managers and assistants. That was the easy part to have found a willing buyer. The hard part was to get the transfer arranged with all the documentation by the Trincomalee Local Authority. Trinco was almost 200 miles away, and about 8 hours drive first on twisty hill roads, and then on a straight narrow but bumpy road though the last 80 miles of jungle. I would leave in the Land Rover by myself with just a thermos of tea at 2 or 3 am, driving alone with my thoughts in the cool dark night , and watching out for the nocturnal civet cats and other animals, but at least with no hazards of people all over the roads to slow one down in the villages. At 10 am I would eventually arrive at the Local Office or Kacheri in Trinco, and just wait and wait in a queue for maybe 3 or four hours whilst I endeavoured to get some document signed, rubber stamped and approved by some petty functionary. The whole art was to be calm, polite and above all patient, however trying, cross and frustrated one felt. Then finally exhausted by all the hanging around, I would set out in the late afternoon have to drive on to Colombo another 8 hours away. I would spend a night at the Negombo resthouse some 20 miles away from the city and early next morning be on my way to Colombo to see accountants, income tax inspectors, exchange controllers etc, before returning in the evening back for the 5 hour drive to the Estate. I cannot recall how many of these interminable trips I did, and slowly but surely the bits of the red tape jigsaw were put into place. Meanwhile on the estate all inessential bits of my private possessions I sold for cash to try and gather enough money to go farming in England. Every £70 in those days I said represented one dairy cow, and it was just a question of getting it all together. In the estate workshops carpenters worked making large wooden packing cases for the bigger items such as the rich family Turkish carpets, Soffranoff paintings etc. Every day whenever possible I would write to my darling Jill about the slow progress of it all. At Christmas I met my friend David Hart for a commiserating lonely holiday at Trinco. We both arranged to telephone our respective wives from the Central Post Office. The calls were booked with a five hour delay and finally late in the afternoon my call was connected. I shouted as hard as I could, as did Jill and we could just about hear each others voices as though we were yelling down a half mile echoing tunnel. There was no chance of a real conversation, all one could say was ‘Happy Christmas’ to her and each of the children and then the three minute call was over at a cost in todays money of £100! We had a good curry in the resthouse and then drove out to Blue Lagoon at Nilaveli to camp and had a Christmas drink on the sandy beach of the fast flowing estuary. Next morning I awoke to see all the beach surrounding the landrover covered in pink toilet paper. David had got a stomach bug and had been up all night non stop whilst I was out of this world, fast asleep. Later he compounded his agony by diving into the estuary from a tall rock and grazing his chest on an underwater one. I patched up his angry graze across his chest and he healed well with out it going septic. So that was the way Christmas 1963 was spent as a small break to make me ready for the final part of leaving. In the early new year I eventually had sold the house, got its documentation complete and then it was just a question of endless trips to Colombo to meet accountants, exchange controllers etc.On one of these trips as I returned up the Ginagatenne Pass in the late afternoon I stopped the land rover to change out of shorts into long trousers and put on a sweater as the air was cooler in the mountains. The weather was damp and I was very careful as I got out of the car with my change of clothes and I leapt onto to a large flat boulder by the side of a rushing torrent. I changed got back in the car and drove on to Brunswick Maskeliya to spend a night with my friend s David and Penny Perkins. Some two hours later as I was coming close to their estate I suddenly felt a wetness in my groin. Curious I put my hand in my pants and it came out red covered in blood. I stopped the car pulled down my trousers and there fallen off from my balls was the most enormous buffalo leech that I had ever seen. He was gorged to the size of one of my fingers and all the while I had not felt a thing. I flung the repulsive creature into the tea and drove on quite appalled with the shock, making a quick change of my underclothing when I arrived. I never had any after itch, or septic patch all common with leech bites. He had obviously put in so much anti- coagulant that it self cleaned the wound!
About three weeks before I finally departed I had a visit from Peter Perera to say goodbye. We sat in the lovely morning room at Luckland with windows all round and the open double door framing the stupendous view of the valley to the far hills in the background, sipping a good brandy. Peter had started life as Father’s Conductor, and was an avid reader, and a self educated man. Mother would always be passing on books for him to read , and magazines such as “The Illustrated London News”. He married Cristobel my Nanny before the war and had two sons one of whom Reggy, was my assistant. Later Peter was promoted to Assistant
