Once the funeral was over the brothers had to take stock of the situation they were in.The estate had been bled dry over the years and was on the point of bankruptcy and the brothers could not avoid the comparison of Luckland astride their property, coining money, and in wonderful agricultural health, with the highest yield in the district, and theirs which was on its last legs and at the mercy of their creditors. Two days later they approached Father for his help in rescuing their property. This he agreed to do for a modest fee, but only on condition that he had absolute control, and worked with Charlie who was more amenable to taking orders, and that Hubert would leave the property and seek a job elsewhere, as he although a nice sociable man, would always strike off at a tangent and would never do anything systematically.
It was a bitter pill to swallow, and Hubert never forgave Father over it, but neither party had any alternative in the desperate situation they were now in. Slowly the estate was turned round, with good cultivations and fertilizer and in the space of five years it became a highly profitable enterprise. The brothers were lucky in having a friend next door in Father who was now regarded as one of the finest and most experienced planters in the country, with an unrivalled reputation. He had that rare combination, of always inquiring into a better means of doing something, together with a painstaking attention to the smallest detail, yet seeing the overall picture and the goal he wanted to achieve with a dazzling dogged clarity.
Whilst he was helping with the property, he would often meet Charlie’s bride to be Lilian who was a nurse at the planters upcountry nursing home at Hatton. She was an attractive blond woman 35 years of age, 20 years younger than Charlie. Tongues wagged in the district and one day the manager from Gampaha , a man called Slingsby at a function called her to one side and gently said:
“I hear you are going to marry Charlie and have got engaged.”
“Yes he is an attractive man, good fun, a brilliant tennis player. I feel very lucky”.
I don’t know if you are aware of quite what you are letting yourself into if you marry Charlie. True he is a nice chap, and all the things you say are correct, but there is another side to him. Over the years he has been playing around with numbers of estate and village girls and has a number of doses of VD, each time a bit more dehibiliting. It is now well known that he is impotent, you will never be able to have a child and he can hardly do anything now in bed, as he himself will be the first to admit if you really ask him point blank. My advice to you my dear is, you are an attractive young lady, dont ruin your life with him, chuck it, and get a younger cleaner man elsewhere.”
She was thoughtful as he said these words and took them to heart. She was faced with an appalling dilemma. Like so many girls of her generation, men were hard to come by. She had been brought up in the harsh tenements of Leicester, had worked hard for her nursing qualifications, and had been lucky later to have obtained a nice post in the heart of the upcountry tea country with its easy going life of clubs, tennis and wide open spaces. The very thought of returning to those harsh conditions at home appalled her. Here was a chance of marrying a proprietry planter, with his own estate in the most beautiful location and if the price was lack of a true bedroom life, well there is usually a cost somewhere. She felt that she would shoulder this burden, especially as she was slowly getting on in years, and there may not be a second opportunity.
A couple of months later they got married and the problems that she had been warned about materialized and it was not long before she got the reputation for being “easy” with the young assistants.
Meanwhile at Luckyland stress in the home increased with the endless succession of creepers. Helen was growing up into a difficult child with an iron willed personality, and Mother spoiled her continuously as she did not want her to be over bossed like her mother had been to her. She had firmly decided against having any more children when suddenly in 1930 she discovered that once again she was pregnant. On realizing this she firmly decided that she would come back to England and stay with her friend Gwen at Pinner in calm and peace and without any family traumas. This she did and eventually on the 31st March 1931, I was born in a nursing home at Ladbrooke Grove.
Whilst she was away for seven months in England, Father meanwhile was getting ever more engrossed with turning Allagolla round, socializing there and enjoying the quiet soft sympathetic company of Lilian. It was for him a studied contrast to the strident hectoring that he had over the years been on the recieving end at Luckyland, and the contrast was welcome. Slowly he fell in love with her, and in this he was extraordinarily aided by Charlie, who being impotent, was frightened to lose her company and was quite content with “ a menage - a - trois” arrangement. Each evening he would change into his blazer and jacket, drive the one mile to Allagolla and have drinks in a way that became a magnetic attraction.
On her arrival back from England, it was not long before Mother realised what had been going on. She was faced with various alternatives such as trying to persuade him back, but here her strident personality did not help. She had always been a bit neurotic and had an awful shrillness in her voice when angry, so much so that she had been warned against it in her youth by her father. “ Madeleine if you go on screaming like that you will be a lonely woman in your old age” he prophetically warned!
There was no question of divorce, as in those days with the social mores of the time, it would have meant dismissal from George Steuart’ s Agency for Father at a time when he was heavily indebted over Hugoland, and with the depression jobs were hard to get, and he had one of the best now. So over the next 15 years, my parents marriage were dominated by the effects of Lilian Patterson.
I as a child grew up with the blazing rows that this saga caused at home, with Father most evenings never being at home to play with me, but like a Pavlovian dog instead, he had now become indoctrinated with his ladyfriend down the road.
