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Passage to India Part 7 - My Father's Flight to India in 1934

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Published: 16Dec2009
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My father continued the story: Towards evening several of the ruffians offered themselves as our guards for the night, but we didn't like the look of any of them much - the only one we fancied at all was a small man who had fetched us the milk and water. He seemed cleaner than the rest and not so aggressive in manner and speech, though he like the rest could never stop spitting which got on my nerves more than anything.

However, we chose him and he took our £2 and we spent the most peaceful night we'd had up to now. At about 6.30 a.m. on Monday morning and just before it was light we suddenly heard the drone of an approaching aeroplane. We jumped up, the excitement being intense as we were quite certain it was rescuers coming to look for us. Nearer it came, not very high up, but straight for us. We lit a small fire of handkerchiefs and rags soaked in petrol hoping to attract its attention in the half 1ight and make it easier for it to find us, but on it sailed, a large K.L.M. machine and we can never describe the sense of utter futility and disappointment we felt while we sadly watched all our hopes steadily vanishing into the distance and the sound of the engine getting fainter and fainter, 1eaving us once more to our desert silences. This incident depressed us considerably and we spent the morning in an endless discussion as to our ultimate chances of rescue.

You see we had no way of knowing if our messenger Hassain had really started off originally. From what we could gather from the natives it was about an even money chance, some said he had gone, but others were equally certain that he was still in his village, sleeping- (though why "sleeping" we never made out.') and so our discussion went on, full of "ifs" and "ands", and suppositions and wonderings of this and that.

We tried hard not to think of it too much but after keeping off the subject for sometime, one or other of us would always start again by saying, "If Hassain really went and he got to Bushire in two and a half days walking, and if they send out for us at once, when can we possibly expect them" etc etc, and so it went on. But we always felt it was just a nightmare, and from nightmares one must always wake up sometime however bad they may be at the time. The natives on this day were definitely more friendly and several brought us more food - one dates, another a tin with what looked like stuff you clean furniture with, but what we found was a kind of honeycomb, quite good and sweet to eat. A third brought us two raw eggs, not a thing I'm very partial to as a rule, but on this occasion by breaking their on the edge of the cockpit and tipping them into our mouths they tasted excellent.

During the afternoon the people started bringing along their sick cases in the hopes we could cure them. Every conceivable kind of cut and sore, all of them in an advanced septic state was brought to us to be doctored, One woman in particular was in great pain from a septic sore which covered all one side of her face, the only "dressing" on it being two bits of the filthiest old newspaper possible, and which we had to peel off to look at it - and what good could we do them when all we had of medicines consisted of iodine and vegetable laxative pills? Both of these we used freely, the former doing wonders for the lesser cuts etc, and the latter most useful to rid ourselves of some of the more tiresome of the children who pestered us most of' the day.

After giving them one they never returned for more! One small boy in particular who had been annoying us for days by continually poking the aeroplane with a large stick and when told not to making (obviously) rude remarks at us we gave three to, and that was the end of him and his bumptiousness.

That night our nice "milkman" (whose name we never discovered) guarded us again for £2, though this time, much to our chagrin, he produced our much hated friend Haidar to keep him company during his watch and we feared a repetition of our first night's trouble with him but nothing occurred, and if it hadn't been for the discomfort of our bruised hip bones through continually lying on the hard ground, and which we had never done before, one could have had a good night's rest which was sorely needed by both of us as up to now we had hardly had any proper sleep at all. Tuesday morning found us with no cigarettes till Lady Blanche remembered that while in Cairo she had bought a hundred amber scented ones, more for a joke than anything else as she didn't really like them. These we fished up from the bottom of her suitcase and we rationed ourselves to one each every half hour for that day, eventually coming down to one every hour, and at the end to sharing one a puff at a time each, so as to prolong the life of our last half dozen to the bitter end!

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