with a derisory compensation. So the weekly news from the Estate was lost and he was in his last few years rudderless. Worse was to come two years later when his dear sister Lilian died in 1978. Quite apart from the emotional family loss, and no one to lovingly bicker with, he was bounced into a move of address. The plot of land where the two bungalows were situated was about the only piece of land in Karsiyaka that had not been developed into high rise flats. The property was now wholly owned by the two brothers Roget and Fred Mainetti. Roget of course was a multimillionaire with his industrial combines and car plants thriving. He looked upon Father as if he was his very own and always one evening a week he would come from work and have supper and a chat and a scotch, and it was also a chance to escape from his all enveloping unbalanced jealous wife Flavia. She could accept him visiting his uncle as even she knew there were no other women involved which so terrified and frightened her. But Fred his brother who had gone to work in Africa in the tobacco industry was quite different. He valued everything in mean monetary terms. He had prospered well in Africa and latterly had married a wealthy Greek widow with a farm in Tanzania. They had bought villas in Rhodes and Athens and Fred was keen to expand his property interests in Greece and so when his Aunt Lilian died leaving her house to him he insisted that the whole plot be sold and Father be re-housed in a first floor flat nearby. This move for a frail elderly man who had been so kind and had supported their Mother in the harsh days following their father’s Maurice Mainetti’s death when they were 12 and 14 years old, was the last straw. No longer could he sit out in the sweltering Turkish Summer under the huge pepperina tree, or potter about the small untidy garden that Lilian had made and look at the violets and snowdrops in spring. No longer could he pick and eat a sugar filled black plum straight from the tree, and chatter over the fence with his neighbours. Instead a man who all his life was accustomed to wide open vistas, and the broad open sea was now cocooned in a hot pigeon hole of a flat. Roget was upset and apologised as well he might, but he was always conscious that his brother was less well off and felt he had to be mollified. At the age of 88 Father was moved and a year and a half later he died as I will relate later. I would never forgive Fred for this terrible mean repayment of all the kindness, comfort and advice that Father had given him. Even the very idea of joining BATs in Africa and expanding his horizons from the small beginnings he had in Turkey, and all his subsequent wealth had come from Father who had the broad international outlook and had persuaded him to apply for it. Like so many others in the latter part of the twentieth century, Fred had developed an amnesia, and a gluttonous greed for money regardless of the feelings of those that had helped him when he was down and out.Now when he was a wealthy man anyway, he took advantage of an old mans weakness, to treat him roughly and discourteously with a total lack of consideration and re-housed him regardless of his protestations as though he was like some dog who was in his way!
Paul had gone to Bradfield when he was 14 and was once again at Army House where we had all been. But there had been changes, and dear Mr Swinbank had retired and the new housemaster was not a man of such high calibre. For a start although he was married, his wife was out to work, and they did not have a family of their own like most housemasters do. I felt he neglected the care of the boys and their upbringing. Also Paul was one of those who was easily led astray and got into bad company and was caught smoking etc and was gaited from going out at week-ends which accentuated his problems because he was more isolated from his home. He did not do well in his “O” level exams and Jill quite rightly felt that he was the sort that needed to be schooled locally from home where she could keep and eye on him. Accordingly in 1976 we withdrew him from Bradfield and placed him at Collyer’s sixth form College in Horsham. Each week Jill would see that he had done his homework and check up on him that he was not slacking and in the end he achieved quite reasonable results in his A levels two years later as he was not stupid but just lacked drive and enthusiasm. But as a compensation for him leaving a private education we decided that it would be nice to take him on a trip of discovery to Ceylon. He had always heard of us talking about it, and heard the memories of Peter and Janet who were 7 years when they left, so it would be a way of catching up on them. Joining us on this first trip since we had left in 1964 was our dear Yorkshire friend Beryl McKittrick who had lost her husband Pat from the rabies injection. We flew out immediately after Christmas on Boxing Day 1976 for a period of three weeks. We arrived at Colombo just at dawn and as we descended from the plane a Vickers Viking onto the tarmac ,I felt the warm balmy tropical air again for the first time which brought back so many childhood memories. Harold Ratwatte who was on Luckyland had arranged a car for us and we drove straight to Ambepussa resthouse for a breakfast curry of fried eggs and string hoppers. Paul was enthralled by it all. The hot spicy curry, the man with a python draped round him and our slow journey to Peradeniya gardens and a walk round all the beautiful Amherstia trees with their long orchid like flowers and the orchid house festooned with exotic colour. And then on through the cool of Nuwara Eliya the Scottish style Hill Club where we stayed. Finally the following day we arrived back at Luckyland to a wonderful reception from the labourers, the staff, and a never ending stream of villagers. One dear old girl even came clutching a wedding photo of Jill and myself taken about 22 years earlier. They were all so welcoming, and the reception was so touching that it quite took our breath away. I had to make endless speeches in my rusty Tamil and Sinhalese but with each day of constant use the vocabulary improved. It was wonderful to drive around the pea green fields of neatly plucked tea bushes and smell the wonderful aroma of fresh tea being made in the factory whose smells brought back so many pleasant memories.
I had only fleetingly met Harold and his charming wife Innocent before, when I had been introduced to them at a dinner party by Father’s Partner Dorothy Gordon who lived on the other side of the island at Bogawantalawa about 3 or 4 hours drive away. She had been very impressed with him as a young man starting his planting career in that district and had gone to great pains to see him integrated well into the social life of the local clubs. Harold came from the highest Kandyian Chieftan clan who were classed as Ratmahatiyas or the equivalent of English Dukes. The Ratwattes amongst their other duties of attending on the King, were also the Keepers and chief custodians of the Temple of the Tooth, the most sacred shrine in Ceylon and formerly the Royal Palace. In fact Harold and his Grandmother once showed us the silver bowl that a rooted cutting of the original Bo or wild fig tree which Lord Gautama had sat under in India and had achieved the first Enlightenment that led to the founding of the Buddhist religon about 400 BC. This cutting was brought to Anuradjapura and is still alive to this day, as the oldest historical tree in the world. Politically Harold was well connected with his socialist Aunt Mrs Bandaranaike who was President of the Republic and later his niece was to become Prime Minister and follow her Mother. Harold had that quiet dignified and self assured courtesy that is so often evident in the aristocracy of any country whether in Europe or in Africa, witness the splendid bearing and the dignified self confident pose of a real chieftan with a lineage such as Nelson Mandela! His wife Innocent was the daughter of a senior Christian Judge Mr Dissanayake, and was tall good looking and extremely elegant and was a perfectionist in all she did. She had a tremendous boundless energy and enterprise and was forever trying to find new ways of making money. At that time when we first became firm friends she had a huge cut flower business and later when they left Luckland to an estate near Kandy, she started up a Bed and Breakfast Business in their ancestral home and then later she switched from that to start up a Security Guards operation providing 500 uniformed trained guards for establishments all over the island. I was always enraptured with her quiet self confident and firm style and her self assurance and capability. One felt with her you were in the presence of a remarkably adventurous spirit who at the
