Chapter 4: A Passage to England
In May, my husband was demobilised and we went to England. We set off by train from Baghdad to Basra aiming to get a boat to India. It was very hot and the train journey was very trying. We had a big water cooler in our compartment and we drank nearly all of it that day, as well as the mineral waters we had in a case. It was so dry that one felt continuously thirsty. Most of the time the train ran between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The landscape was dull, just desert dotted with scrub and dusty camel thorn, with a little vegetation by the river. We had departed at night and we stopped for breakfast somewhere in the desert. There were some tents ready for us with tables laid and breakfast waiting.
When we arrived in Basra later that morning, the authorities did not know what to do with me; they were not used to officers with wives at that time, so we stayed in a hotel, a very comfortable place. It was hot there with a temperature of 95°F, and we did not have enough energy to eat. But in the late afternoon we went out in a rowing boat around the creeks and saw many strange sights. Native houses are built on both sides of the creeks and their inhabitants live and die in full sight of the water. We saw a dilapidated coffin hanging from a tree over the water. In one place there was a camp of Indian troops, and we saw a very graceful girl drying her wavy black hair that hung right down to the ground; but when she turned, we saw that she was a man, a Sikh with his beard rolled up behind his ears.
At dinner we celebrated our wedding anniversary with a small bottle of champagne; we did it every 23rd of the month. Now we forget it when it comes once a year. I got quite gay and attracted the attention of the couple at the next table; they asked us to join them for coffee and liqueurs. They said we were so young and so happy that it did them good to look at us. He was Belgian and his wife was French. He appeared quite elderly to me, but then all people over thirty were old, so perhaps he was not really so aged. She was much younger than he – a nice-looking woman, well-groomed and very chic. He spoke English and she spoke French and Russian. He was the head of the Customs in Persia, but as the Belgians were not running the customs any more, they wanted to go home. They could not get a passage as all the boats were full up carrying the demobilised troops to England. They asked us when we were going and we said in three days; we had a passage booked on the "Penteconta". The next day he asked my husband if we would mind letting them share our cabin, suggesting the wives should sleep in the cabin and he and my husband sleep on deck. It was only a few days' journey across the Persian Gulf, so we agreed; otherwise they might have had to stay in Basra for weeks. They were very grateful to us. But when the boat came in and we got on board, some officers heard about our arrangements and told us there was no need to double up, as some of them could sleep three and four in a cabin; so they left one cabin empty for our Belgian friends.
It was terribly hot in the Persian Gulf; the boat was a very old one and the captain said that it might sink at any moment. He said it jokingly, but on her return she did sink! We were always being teased by some of the tough campaigners as we were so young (my husband was 24), so the captain, a most jolly and kind-hearted man, let us use the bridge deck and would make special ices for me. He was very good at conjuring tricks with cards, and he showed us how they were done. My Belgian friend and I were the only two women on the boat. She did not come out much on the deck, so I went to their cabin to see if she was ill. She was well, but she said that her curls would not stay in place as it was too hot and damp. She asked how I kept mine so well, and when I told her that mine curled up tighter with dampness, she said I was lucky to have nice hair and such good teeth.
But she added, "You must not leave it all to nature; you must look after yourself and always dress well, to keep your husband from falling for other girls."
She said that many women lose their husbands through saving their husbands' money instead of spending it on beautifying themselves and dressing well. I thought that was strange talk. She was so good-looking and her husband was so much older and had a "slipped chest." I could not imagine her having any difficulty in keeping him in love with her, and I said so.
She said, "He is rich and that is a great attraction."
Then she asked me if my husband had money.
I said, "Yes, he has 125 rupees, and we will not get paid until we land in England and he is demobilised."
"And what are you going to live on when you get to England?"
"We are going to live with my husband's people, and my husband is going to be a pupil to study Railway Engineering."
She looked at me and said, "You poor darlings!"
I did not see why she pitied us; I was sorry for her because she had an old husband. I was very enthusiastic about our future; I thought it would be lovely to have a father and mother, brother and sister again; they were my husband's, but I loved them already and thought they would love me too. Such is youth's conceit. Up to then I had met more people who liked me than who did not. I thought again she was a strange woman.
In Bombay we went to the "Taj Mahal" hotel. After Persia and Mesopotamia, the hotel seemed like a palace to us. We had a lovely suite of rooms with a bathroom. The floors were porcelain mosaic of all colours and were very cool. The first night, when I was having a bath, I saw a shadow move against a glass door that I had not noticed before, and the handle started to turn. I yelled, and the figure disappeared. I found afterwards that the bathroom was shared by two suites of rooms, and whoever used it had to lock the door leading to the other suite.
We went for a drive around Bombay and were enchanted with it. The trees were flowering everywhere; the blazing tropical colours dazzled us. I had never dreamed of anything like that. My husband had gone out to Mesopotamia via South Africa, so all this to him was not so new, but to me it was bewildering. All the English people whom we met at the hotel looked tired, yellow, and fed up, and complained of the monsoon. Most of them had been unable to get leave during the war and were waiting for boats to take them to England. I know now that feeling at the end of a tour of duty, when one hates the human race and can't be easily pleased, but then I thought they were odd not to appreciate all these wonders.
We stayed five days in Bombay waiting for our boat, the "Prince Ludvig". One day my Belgian friend asked me to go shopping with her as she could not speak English. We went to a very big shop and she tried on nearly all the dresses. I got very uncomfortable about it, as it was a new experience to me. She bought one dress, and I had to apologise to the attendants, explaining that she was French. She said she did not think that her husband would like her to buy any more there, as they were on their way home. But she was wrong; he went with her in the afternoon and bought her about twenty. We went with them, and my husband bought me one. It was a pretty dress and the first one that I had bought ready-made. To my great surprise, the first one that I tried on fitted perfectly. In Russia, we used to have to go for several fittings to the dressmaker when a dress was being made. I wore that dress to parties for years when we came to England!
After we came back to the hotel, and while my friend and I were trying on our dresses, she said to me, "I think, after all, it is better to have an old husband with money than a young one without."
We left them at Bombay waiting for a French boat. We went on board the "Prince Ludvig" and as soon as we had got out of the harbour, we met the monsoon that was just beginning. For days we tossed about like a walnut shell. The first morning, there was nobody in the dining saloon for breakfast except myself, and I was not expected; even the stewards were not happy.
I was very lonely for the first few days as my husband could not move out of his bunk, but lay there looking green and not eating anything. I was very alarmed because I felt fine and always hungry. It was lovely to watch the boat climbing a huge mountainous wave, shake and squeak for a few moments at the top, then get thrown into the trough. Sometimes we went sideways and the boat shivered like a sick animal, and I wondered whether she would be able to get up again. When we got to Port Said, we went ashore with some of the passengers, and after having an ice cream in a garden café, we went looking in shop windows. The best things we saw were embroidered silk kimonos, but when we found they cost twenty pounds each, we went away to see the town. We got into some curious streets where there were some interesting churches, with extraordinary paintings on the walls and statues dressed up in odd, bright clothes adorned with beads and other ornaments. They were of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. We came back and went on the causeway to see the monument to de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal.
At Port Said we took in coal – a horribly dirty business as the coal dust got in everywhere. We had about three hundred Turkish prisoners of war on our boat, going to Port Said, but when we got there the port authorities would not admit them. However, as soon as we got outside Port Said, there was an outbreak of plague among them. We were not told what it was, but we all had to line up every day outside the surgery and inhale a spray. Every day saw several deaths, and I don't think there were many prisoners left in the end.
From there we went to Beirut, but we could only admire it from a distance as we were not allowed to land or come near the place. They did not want the prisoners there either. From the sea it looked a pretty place, on top of a hill with white and yellow houses among the green trees. So we had to go back to Port Said. This time they took the wretched Turks off our boat, at least what was left of them. It was rather an anxious time for us all, especially so for those in authority.
When we got to Malta we were in quarantine, so we had to look at it through binoculars; we could not go ashore and explore. I was sorry we could not see it properly, but traders came out in boats and kept the passengers amused by selling them useless little trinkets made in Birmingham. My husband bought me a lace collar, and I still have it, a beautiful piece of work.
There was a Russian baron on our boat, but he was a cynic and he and I were not the best of friends. The passengers were otherwise a cheery crowd. In first class we had very good concerts, deck games, and sports, all pastimes which were new to me then and which I enjoyed.
The person who taught me English when I was a child came from Yorkshire, and so I had a Yorkshire accent, and my husband was always correcting me. Some of the officers on board who came from the North and the Midlands objected, saying that Southerners should not assume that their way is the correct way of speaking English. So my husband said that as I was his wife and I didn't know enough English to decide what was right, he would see that I spoke the same language as he did.
We did not call at Aden, only passing it in the distance. It looked a desolate place, basking in the sun. It was very hot there even on the boat. We passed quite close to a French prison island against which the waves were splashing with terrific force. It appeared unapproachable, but there must have been a better landing place on the other side. It was a bare and unfriendly-looking rock, and we pitied the custodians as much, if not more, than those in their charge.