Running in the Family Read Free

frustrated and lonely. Once he was given the car and asked to go and buy some fish.
Don’t
forget the fish! his mother said. Two days later his parents got a telegram from Trincomalee, miles away in the north end of the island, to say he had the fish and would be back soon.
    His quiet life in Kegalle was interrupted, however, when Doris Gratiaen wrote to break off the engagement. There were no phones, so it meant a drive to Colombo to discover what was wrong. But my grandfather, furious over the Trincomalee trip, refused him the car. Finally he got a lift with his father’s brother Aelian. Aelian was a gracious and genial man and my father was bored and frantic. The combination almost proved disastrous. My father had never driven to Colombo directly in his life. There was a pattern of resthouses to be stopped at and so Aelian was forced to stop every ten miles and have a drink, too polite to refuse his young nephew. By the time they got to Colombo my father was very drunk and Aelian was slightly drunk and it was too late to visit Doris Gratiaen anyway. My father forced his Uncle to stay at the CLI mess. After a large meal and more drink my father announced that now he must shoot himself because Doris had broken off the engagement. Aelian, especially as he was quite drunk too, had a terrible time trying to hide every gun in the Ceylon Light Infantry building. The next day the problems were solved and the engagement was established once more. They were married a year later.

APRIL 11, 1932

    “I remember the wedding.… They were to be married in Kegalle and five of us were to drive up in Ern’s Fiat. Half way between Colombo and Kegalle we recognized a car in the ditch and beside it was the Bishop of Colombo who everyone knew was a terrible driver. He was supposed to marry them so we had to give him a lift.
    “First of all his luggage had to be put in carefully because his vestments couldn’t be crushed. Then his mitre and sceptre and those special shoes and whatnot. And as we were so crowded and a bishop couldn’t sit on anyone’s lap—and as no one could really sit on a bishop’s lap, we had to let
him
drive the Fiat. We were all so squashed and terrified for the rest of the trip!”

HONEYMOON

    The Nuwara Eliya Tennis Championships had ended and there were monsoons in Colombo. The headlines in the local papers said, “Lindbergh’s Baby Found—A Corpse!” Fred Astaire’s sister, Adele, got married and the 13th President of the French Republic was shot to death by a Russian. The lepers of Colombo went on a hunger strike, a bottle of beer cost one rupee, and there were upsetting rumours that ladies were going to play at Wimbledon in shorts.
    In America, women were still trying to steal the body of Valentino from his grave, and a woman from Kansas divorced her husband because he would not let her live near the Valentino mausoleum. The furious impresario, C. B. Cochran, claimed “the ideal modern girl—the Venus of today—should be neither thin nor plump, but should have the lines of a greyhound.” It was rumoured that pythons were decreasing in Africa.
    Charlie Chaplin was in Ceylon. He avoided all publicity and was only to be seen photographing and studying Kandyan dance. The films at the local cinemas in Colombo were “Love Birds,” “Caught Cheating,” and “Forbidden Love.” There was fighting in Manchuria.

HISTORICAL RELATIONS

    The early twenties had been a busy and expensive time for my grandparents. They spent most of the year in Colombo and during the hot months of April and May moved to Nuwara Eliya. In various family journals there are references made to the time spent “up-country” away from the lowland heat. Cars would leave Colombo and perform the tiring five-hour journey, the radiators steaming as they wound their way up into the mountains. Books and sweaters and golf clubs and rifles were packed into trunks, children were taken out of school, dogs were bathed and made ready for the