As road making continued apace, linking Luckyland with its outlying division of Naplabokka, it was inevitable that the roads would have to cut through the adjoining property of Allagolla which lay in between, and whose permission was therefore required. The property was owned by an elderly lady ,Mrs Patterson who had come out in the 1870’s to marry her husband a wealthy coffee planter. They had two children Hubert born in 1875, and Charlie two years later. Shortly after their birth however, the coffee disease appeared, and they were indesperate straits, as the old bushes had to be grubbed out and replanted with china tea seed which was all that was available at the time. On top of this disaster and even worse one befell the family when her husband developed blackwater fever and died in 1885 , leaving her alone to manage the property as well as rear two boys and bring them up. There was no question of them being sent to England for their education, which was done in Ceylon. As it was there was barely enough to eat, and they lived on rice, curry and rhubarb for most of those bad years.
In the very snobby world of middle class planting ,they were always derided to an extent in the district as being “ country bottled”. As they had no father, and reached their teens, they became notorious for their heavy drinking , wild ways and always partaking the delights of the estate girls. Their hobby was hunting, and they kept a pack of about 20 beagles which they would use on the Welimada plain and later at a hunting lodge at Madulla in the low country directly east and below the Udapussellawa range. Here in the untold miles of fabulous virgin low country jungle, they could enjoy their pastime far from civilization with only the odd veddah (aborignal tribesman) to meet and converse with about the game in the area.
The Pattersons had such a reputation as hard drinkers that they were banned from Nuwara Eliya before the War,and consequently were isolated in not having many young friends. This was exacerbated during the First World War when their Mother whom they adored, put her foot down and absolutely forbade either to go to the front on pain of being disinherited. Of course she was absolutely right to forbid her sons to become cannon fodder, but the district , full of men back from the front, did not see it that way, and as a result they were ostracised by their neighbours.
The brothers only once ever went to England and that was in 1923. They announced their intention suddenly to Mother and Father one evening. “
But how can you go to England when the only clothes that you possess are a pair of torn shorts, and some rough long trousers?” she inquired.
“ Oh that is easy. We have gone and got ourselves measured in Hemachandras the outfitters in Colombo and asked them to pack everthing two gentlemen would require in the way of smart clothing, evening dress etc. for a journey to England and have it put on board our cabin on the P&O liner”.
The arrangement worked perfectly,and they turned up on the liner in rough old shorts, changed immediately into the nattiest suits and sailed away to enjoy their one and only leave in England.
They drank so much Hubert told me later that by the time they returned he was sufferring from such severe DT’s that he was continuously hallucinating with creatures covering the walls of his cabin. He told me of one repetitive hallucination he would get, in that he would be standing taking a salute on a podium as the men paraded, each sticking out their tongue at him in turn as they marched past!
In the later 1920’s their Mother who held the purse strings throughout, was getting progressively meaner with their allowance, and they were perpetually short of cash for their whisky. They were now reputed to consume a regular bottle a day, but would sweat it out on the following day walking the estate, as well as hunting with their hounds. Consequently they started stealing from their own property, selling the fertiliser to villagers,to augment their allowance to the detriment of the tea, which all through the twenties steadily detiorated, until the bushes grew like small umbrellas with their roots all exposed. Their Mother also had a phobia about either of them getting married, and being pushed around her own house, and so forbade any european woman to come to Allagolla ,another position the brothers meekly accepted.
The only woman allowed at their Bungalow which was only about a mile from Luckyland, was my Mother. One evening in 1930 she sat with Hubert on a step in the garden chatting whilst they sipped a whisky. The old lady was indoors sitting in the bay window looking out at them as the fireflies swarmed around the orange trees close to where they sat.
“ You know Madeleine it wont be long before she pops off. I have got it all worked out. I have got onto Raymond the undertaker and he has made the coffin and it is all ready here on the estate in the factory stores, the plot is all booked, and once she goes, all we have to do is tickle the telephone and the wheels will be in motion. We will be free at last!”
She looked up at the old girl nodding off quietly in the window, whilst all this was being said, completely oblivious of the way her son was talking about her, and probably just as well.
