Life was always very easy for me, that is, except when it wasn't, if you know what I mean. No? My fault probably. Put it this way. I wasn’t precisely born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth. It was more likely bronze, or brass perhaps. Anyway, it worked its magic, at least most of the time. And when it didn't…
My father was a bastard, and I do mean that both figuratively and literally. He cared not one jot for me, only himself. Could that have to do with the fact that, as a child, he received no parental love and care? Who gives a damn? Actually, that was exactly the case. His own father, Viscount Chilbolton, a Conservative grandee, knocked up a scullery maid, who promptly expired in the act of childbirth. He did acknowledge and provide for his offspring, but at a good deal more than arm’s length, such that they would see each other physically only once every year, so that the old boy could be assured that he was indeed paying the bills of an actually live being – he would never have accepted that this son was in any way human – and not a phantom dreamt up by his accountant, whom he never ever trusted.
My mother was only a half-bastard. Her own birth, to a pair of absolute nonentities that had bestowed on her no wealth, hardly any brains, but extreme good looks, was entirely legitimate. But she too cared nothing for me. No, the meaning of life for my dear – I trust that the irony is adequately evident to all and sundry – parents consisted almost entirely of making the most of the remarkably, some might say commendably, generous living they had been endowed by the said Viscount; which living they themselves augmented through the acquisition of crippling levels of credit, and therefore debt, gaming the good name of the family. Some of it went into odd commercial ventures, always doomed to failure from the very outset. Most though was squandered on vain attempts at being part of the jetset in a variety of upscale Mediterranean resorts.
I would see my parents almost as infrequently as my father had seen his. At the most tender of ages, I was packed off to preparatory school, and from there to Marlborough College. This, given that all the legitimate boys in the wider family would pass through the hallowed portals of Eton, was deemed an entirely appropriate venue for the processing of the bastard's son. I had no objection to this whatsoever. The less I had to see of the parents, not to mention estranged relatives, the better.
Now this was not to say that I also enjoyed the actual experience of being at school. Marlborough places great emphasis on sporting prowess. I on the other hand was an obnoxious swot, quite deliberately, I fully admit. I was utterly useless at anything in any line of athletics or competitive sport, and quite unattractive either physically or socially. At least I was weedy, so that I never had to endure what these days they call fat shaming. Indulged a bit in that myself, but we'll not go there today.
So, swot, swot, swot swot and swot is what I did, elucidating two quite tangible results. The first was a level of unpopularity never before or after rivalled in all the annals of the old school. The second was a place at – I cannot emphasise enough that I am most definitely not joking – Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. I was reading Natural Sciences – biology to you – with a distinct emphasis on animals. So much more interesting dissecting them, rather than plants, don't you think?
Another area of intense study for me was behavioural science, not that it counted towards my degree. I wasn't taking any formal classes, was I? No, I was busy observing – swotting up on, so to speak – my fellow students, of whom the vast majority were born into a great deal more privilege than was I; a few of the dons too. My goal was, if you will, to become them in their language, attitudes and mannerisms, to exude the whiff of entitled success with every look, every gesture, every breath. This was to be my metamorphosis.
And there were other epiphanies awaiting me. One such occurred at the end of my second year at Cambridge. As I have previously explained, my dear – euphemism intended – parents had little time for me as a child, and none whatsoever now that I had become a snotty-nosed late adolescent, well on the way to adulthood and greatly desired independence, on the part of all parties concerned. To avoid any and all unwanted contact during that summer of 1967, they packed me off to a modest little resort in Mauritius. The accommodation was basic and the food quite unappetising. But this is where I learned to dive, where I discovered my love of – not for, please note – aquatic life. Not that this newfound fascination was without its drawbacks. I do tend to suffer horribly from motion sickness, whether in planes, boats or trains, cars too; and even in a diving suit underwater! I am the star of any diving party, the veritable jewel in the crown, constantly having to remove my mouthpiece to retch into the depths.
I suppose I also began to find love of other sorts. But we'll come to that later, if it's all right with you..
Meanwhile, like the dutiful swot that I was, I completed my undergraduate degree with distinction, duly converting the same to a Master's, as one does at Cambridge. Then, off to Bangor in North Wales for my PhD in Marine Biology. I shan't bore you with the details of my research, much of which turned out to be a lot less absorbing than I thought it might. But I was able very much to impose myself as the archetypal Cambridge man, amongst the various provincials with whom I now had to rub shoulders. I also drew to the maximum on the family's finances, shamelessly threatening to track them down on any and every holiday occasion, unless, of course, they would prefer me to head off back to Mauritius; they did.
That is where things first almost slipped off of the wheels. With the jolly old Dr now in front of my name, what to do next? Probably number one would not have been what I did do, which was get jolly well married. She was a perfectly decent cove, you understand, I hope. She seemed not to mind me, which was in itself remarkable, and I quite enjoyed her company, which I found I could ration at will. There was the obligatory PE, if you catch my drift, but that turned out not to be quite as taxing as I had feared. It just seemed the regular normal thing to do, which should have been my first warning. Let's just drop the subject, shall we?
The main thing was apparently that now I had to find gainful employment. The only things I really knew were academics and diving, but the thought of having to teach ghastly sweaty specimens filled me with dread. There had to be something else, and there was. The thing is that dear Margaret – had I mentioned that we were married? – had an uncle who was something or other at the Foreign Office, and he said that, if her jolly old husband were to care to put in an application to the British Council, then something could surely be arranged. And arranged it was.
A year learning the ropes in London, and off we were whisked to Enugu, southeastern Nigeria, still in a bit of a state following the civil war, you know, the Biafra thing. I got stuck into the entire gamut of everything the Council does in something of a one-man dog and pony show. The old girl discovered a passion for charity by day and duty free Chardonnay by night, voraciously consuming the contents of the Council library along the way. No need for offspring, as we had an entire menagerie of servants and their little nippers all billeted in the extensive billet kindly allotted to us courtesy of HMG.
Not an awful lot of opportunities for diving; please refer to map (not included). But we did still get to take the odd vacation, in the Canaries or the Caribbean, where she could lie around or have a spa treatment or whatever. And I got to scuba and puke-a. No need too to twist the arm of the old man, since I was raking in quite a comfortable salary. He meanwhile seemed to be having problems with creditors, which is another story entirely, utterly irrelevant to matters at hand, and not, therefore, worthy of any further attention.
This now brings us to the venue for, as it were, our main event: Sri Lanka.
My second proper posting in the British Council, and already it was as though my every wish had been granted. Here I was back on the Indian Ocean with the opportunity to go diving practically every weekend. It was just a couple of hours' drive down to Galle. And the road ran right past wife heaven, upscale resorts at Bentota, where I could offload her without the smallest qualm of conscience. The local gods must most definitely have been smiling on me, as I found that my nextdoor neighbours at the generous residence we now occupied were themselves proprietors of Galle's premier scuba diving establishment.
The office too was set up almost exactly to my own specifications. We were three expats. Gillian Lewis, the other Assistant Representative, and I arrived almost together. Our esteemed boss – not terribly esteemed actually, but we'll get to that – was a cove by the name of Robert Everest – Bob to me, but no one else, and we'll get to that too. Well, being ever so slightly biassed towards the male of the species, he gave me first dibs on files to look after. Thank you very much, said I. I'll take universities, science and estates: tea and rubber and spices and so on.
Gillian got technical cooperation training, libraries, and volunteers: the young boys and girls sent out to do this and that by Voluntary Service Overseas, for whom Gillian was supposed to be a sort of surrogate godmother. She was the least explicable person I had ever met, at least up to that moment. I actually rather liked her, and certainly I felt very sorry indeed for her every time she had to endure one of Bob's incoherent tirades. But the fact is that she seemed completely out of her depth, and apparently she had no intention of rectifying the situation.
Me, I got out and about getting to know all the deans of campus, estate superintendents, even the old planters that had stayed on after nationalisation. Personal touch, you might say; yes, I had finally advanced a little in the social skills department. Gillian on the other hand seemed positively rooted to Colombo – office, home and swimming club, with the odd outing to a boutique or an in restaurant – and let her charges come to her; which they did. Bob would get positively apoplectic about it. And Gillian would smile, which infuriated him even more. What would Disney say? That's entertainment. At least I think that's right.
Bob was equally disapproving of what appeared to be Gillian’s closest relationships, those with the Deputy Librarian in Colombo, Zeinab Ismail, and the Branch Librarian in Jaffna, Theresa Subramaniam, who, being the avid reader of Thomas Hardy, preferred to be called Tess. He viewed these 'friendships' – he always somehow managed to attach inverted commas to the word – as highly suspicious and inappropriate. It's just as well he wasn't aware of the true nature of my own friendships. If he cared, mind you, I'll bet he wouldn't have had the balls to say anything about it.
Then, very shortly after the elections, that swept Mrs B out of power and ushered in the era of JR, there was a discernible change, which, at the time, I was unable precisely to put my finger on, if you see what I mean. Yes, I am going to explain. Possibly with a bit of drama.
It was a Monday morning, and we had gathered in Bob's office for weekly Prayers. That's not to say that we actually engaged in any kind of religiosity licit or illicit. It's just the ridiculous name given to a sort of round table – without the actual table – sharing of our respective agendae for the following work week. In this immediate post-election period, Bob was super keen to win brownie points with the High Commissioner, whom he always referred to as His Excellency, or more frequently just H.E., by gathering useful intelligence – Bob could certainly do with a bit of that – on potential hotspots given somewhat officially stoked racial tensions at the time.
I gave my habitual fully abreast of the situation performance, citing numerous long distance telephone conversations I had had with the deans of the various campuses of the University of Sri Lanka, and with a few of the old planters up in their Hill Country eyries. In my ever jocular hail fellow well met style, I threw in a little joke about my fervent wish that all of this phoning should not break the bank that was our Council budget. And I threw in as many Bobs as I could to see if any of it might rattle the pompous ass. Better luck next time, as they say.
Gillian though, who had the simplest of tasks of having a chat with as many of the VSOs – volunteers deployed by Voluntary Service Overseas, hence the name – she could lay hands on, at least metaphorically, seemed not to be aware of the task she had been entreated to accomplish. This did drive dear Bob right up the proverbial lamppost – or was it wall? He started screaming at her that he was sick and tired of her utter failure to heed his advice and instructions, and banished her from the gathering. And she, far from ignoring him completely, as she had done so often in the past until he calmed down sufficiently to pretend there had never been an issue, upped and fled, looking like she might burst into tears at any minute.
Well, the command given by Bob was that she should depart Colombo at the earliest possible opportunity and, at long last, get out into the wilds to meet her charges – the VSOs and branch librarians, that is – in their natural habitat. This, again to my complete confoundment, is exactly what she did, and hence I didn't see her for another three weeks of travel and sick leave. The latter, undoubtedly connected to the former, we shall come to anon.
Dengue fever, the affliction that led to Gillian missing a further week of work on her return from trips up north to Jaffna, and into the Hill Country, was possibly the least of her troubles. She had escaped violent riots on the peninsula by the skin of her teeth, or rather, and more accurately, having departed a half day prior their breaking out. At Gallebodde Estate, she might have lost her life to an angry mob had it not been for the theatrical ingenuity of our Deputy Librarian, her close friend (not mine!), Zeinab Ismail, and the clear-headed organisation of the Estate Superintendent, whose name for the moment escapes me. That apparently was the exact moment that she succumbed to said dreaded lurgy.
There followed the most surreal episode I think I have ever in my life experienced; and one I most decidedly do not wish to repeat, as it then segued, as they say – quite horribly, if you know the pronunciation – today, into the most depressing episode of my life. We'll review them chronologically, shall we?
First off came that fateful meeting in Bob's office. Not the one we already had; a new one. It began with the usual Monday morning Prayers, which proceeded much as they had the last time that Gillian was present. I was brilliant, naturally, and she was hopeless, although this time she did at least have something to say. Unfortunately, the news she had to bring to us was what we already knew full well, such is the nature of the passage of time. Meanwhile, Bob had a bee of a completely different ilk in his particular bonnet.
At the end of Prayers, he asked our Administrative Officer, Joe Siriwardena, and I to remain behind, along with Gillian, who found herself in the proverbial dock of some unholy inquisitorial tribunal. I was designated as the court scribe. Joe and I were also appointed as decidedly unequal magistrates in a charade of monstrous magnitude. Bob had some ridiculous litany of charges, which he had already written down in his awful scrawl on a Council notepad, and which he insisted I should still record as he read them out, rather than simply passing me the stupid paper himself. I’m not going to dignify the process, as dear deluded Franz Kafka would undoubtedly have put it, with a full list of these accusations. Suffice it to say that he still wouldn’t get over Gillian’s long-time refusal to get out and about in the field. Then he was livid that she had allowed an office car to be driven somewhat off-road in the direction of World’s End, a wonderful place that I have visited twice, once incidentally in an office car; but we’ll stay schtum on that for the present, shall we? He also alluded to some sort of elicit personal relationships – you and I both know what that was supposed to mean – that she was apparently having with all and sundry among Council local staff and VSOs.
Well, it was all a bit ridiculous, probably more than a bit actually, and Joe and I both said as much to Bob, perhaps not as directly as we could and should have done, but, you know, we did hint pretty bloody strongly. Still, Bob insisted on running the Board of Inquiry, as he now started to refer to this silly little exercise in small male power, to its natural conclusion. And that was when Gillian denied that she was, in fact, Gillian. Yes, I too almost fell off the proverbial, not to mention actual, chair.
She claimed suddenly to be someone else completely, a Gillian Lewis doppelgänger in reality called Lillian Selby, who somehow – and this apparently involved the divine intervention of a disgraced former, actually only ever probationary, Council driver by the name Willy Joachim – materialised in the home of our own dear Gillian, herself disappearing who knew where, on the weekend just prior to that fateful earlier Prayers meeting to which I believe I have alluded above. With me still?
And then, having made this supernaturally surreal announcement, she promptly – well, yes, admittedly after a few extra rants from our great leader – fainted.
Bob was, as he said at the time, or at least I think he did, having nothing of it. To him, this was all some sort of improvisation deliberately designed to deflect from the deliberation that was in development, as it were. My mind went off on another tangent entirely. I recalled that Gillian had once admitted to being an orphan, and that her birth parents’ surname was Selby, the same name claimed by this self-professed Gillian lookalike. Were there identical twins playing silly buggers with our conscious – I’ll be grateful for the benefit of the doubt on that one actually – minds? Or were we in the presence of a potentially dangerous schizophrenic? The matter was not immediately about to be resolved, it seemed, as good old Joe had disappeared and come back with the sawbones regularly employed to provide sick notes for Council staff, the good Dr Neville Salgado. He decreed that Gillian (or Lillian) should return forthwith to her home for rest and recuperation. And, even in the highest of high dudgeons, Bob baulked at the idea of gainsaying the old doc. Off Gillian did go, pleading only for the ministrations of the aforesaid Zeinab.
Ministrations? More like machinations. And that brings me to…
Second was what I can only describe as an attempt at blackmail, more than an attempt, in fact, because it damn well succeeded. It was the work of the odious Zeinab. Up until that moment, I had absolutely no idea that she could have had it in her. Had I not been so consumed with fear and rage, I might almost have felt envy. If only I could be quite so ruthlessly systematic in tearing down the edifice of a fellow's – in this case, my – dream life.
Now, I think I may already have made mention of the next door neighbours in Colombo. One I had already heard of prior to being assigned to this most perfect of all postings. He was the renowned British science fiction writer, Conway Hastings. I'm not personally an aficionado of the genre, but those that are accord him almost godlike status. His work has even been translated into major cinematic releases, which again I have not personally seen. His other passion, after space, I mean, is deep sea diving. Which is how he first got to know the partner with whom he shared a home, a scuba diving instruction business, and much else, Vincent Samaraweera.
From the moment that we first met, Vincent and I hit it off like nobody’s business, which is what it should have been, and would have were it not for sneaky, know-it-all Zeinab Ismail. Because, of course, and not to put too fine a point on it, diving was not the only passion that Vincent and I shared. Nor indeed, to put it another way and see if the penny drops at all, was he the first, or last, diver with whom I shared passion. Strictly male, mind you, lest anyone think I may have any, let us say, catholic tendencies. All of this Zeinab worked out. All of this she brought to my attention, very gently I have to admit, in the course of a luncheon in a rather down-market establishment serving, horror of horrors, only vegetarian fare.
She offered me a choice. I could be forced out of the closet, so that my proclivities, as she put them, without prejudice, she assured me, would become common public knowledge. This I most certainly did not want, as it would upset the extremely delicately balanced web of personal and professional relationships I had worked so hard to establish. In the alternative, as they say, I believe, in the inns of court, I could, as the scribe designated to record the proceedings of that recently convened Board of Inquiry, prepare a note detailing the degree of harassment meted out on poor Gillian Lewis by the dictatorial and misogynistic Robert Everest – not Bob, at least not in formal parlance – leading to her suffering a mental breakdown. I would not, she assured me, actually have to submit said note to London and its ever ready, intrusively nasty auditors and inspectors. The mere prospect – let us not say threat – should be enough to persuade Bobby Boy, as she relished in referring to him, to back down. Plus, I could count on implacable support from the rank and file in the office, so not to worry.
Well, no one will be surprised to know, given the state of subliminality of my actual confidence, I did as she requested, and it all worked out perfectly fine. Except it didn’t.
Yes, Bob did back down and agreed to spare Gillian his wrath. But that was the end of the cosy relationship we had enjoyed hitherto. I couldn’t bring myself to use the sobriquet anymore and, Lord help me, I started calling him Robert. Gillian meanwhile reverted completely to her former self, seeming to have no recollection of what had so recently transpired in her life, no interest even. Distance appeared to creep into her relationship with Zeinab, which had always been close and, it seemed to me, become even closer during those past couple of weeks, when she had metamorphosed into Lillian. I was left wondering why I had ever agreed to said Zeinab’s extortion, and whether, in view of the gathering glaciality between Gillian and herself, she might renege on our agreement and rat me out, as Raymond Chandler – or was it Dashiell Hammett? – might have put it.
But then Gillian left, followed soon after by Zeinab, and then Robert himself. Where they ended up I have no idea, but it was not in any further connection with the British Council. I began to think that I too ought to start exploring new horizons, if just to get out from lingering pall of all the drama in which I had just participated, as a leading player no less. In actual fact, the play had not yet ended. Far from it.
The one person on whom I thought I could count, apart, of course, from Vincent, was my dear wife, Maggie. We had, as I think I have explained or at least implied, the absolute perfect arrangement, whereby she could have all the benefits of casual acquaintances in Bentota, say no more, whilst I pursued a somewhat more serious liaison. It seems I was sadly mistaken. She too hankered after something with a bit more substance to it. She found that in the arms of some Canadian mining engineer, who had been prospecting, for business, rather than actual minerals, in the region and decided to stop off for a spot of sunbathing and whatnot on a Sri Lankan beach. The whatnot turned out to be my wife, who fell for him hook, line and sinker, and promptly demanded a divorce, or I knew what would equally promptly enter the public domain.
Add to that what I really have to admit was a certain degree of delusion on my part. I somehow genuinely thought I was on top of the world in the work I was doing at the British Council. Dear old Bob certainly gave me nothing but praise, at least up until the moment I upset him one time too many, and then in a way that one has to accept was irrevocable. But it turned out that the powers that be were somewhat less than overwhelmed. When I made a polite entreaty to Personnel to know what they might have in mind for me in the near term, they suggested, equally politely, that I might want to look elsewhere, and that in the near, medium or any term that might take your fancy.
And so, now without any further connection with to the chinless wonders that had produced my father, which had lapsed in the most natural of fashions with his own demise from cirrhosis of the liver, I came back to an England that was more foreign than anywhere I had ever previously called home. What to do, as I would often say, quite stupidly, in imitation of good people who had befriended me in Sri Lanka? Initially, I tried my hand at academia of a sort, landing a lectureship at a minor polytechnic. I won’t embarrass myself or the college by citing its name, because I was not a roaring success in the venture. Finally, having still a little capital on which to fall back, I settled on the one enterprise at which I might still excel, or at least not prove an unmitigated failure. I opened a diving school in Cornwall, Porthcurno to be precise, which proved good enough to provide a very modest living. It will be a surprise to no one that, like my late – parted, not departed – wife, I succumbed to the lure of alcohol, though not any other drug. Thus did I resolve to be content to be miserable.
Until that bloody military looking fellow, some sort of private investigator, showed up at my door with all his impertinent and unwelcome questions. What was he looking for? Zeinab. Damn him. Damn her. Damn them both to hell!
