Trodden Way , livre ebook

THE TRODDEN WAY
Brian Wilson





First published in 2016 by
ARTHUR H. STOCKWELL LTD
Torrs Park, Ilfracombe, Devon, EX34 8BA
www.ahstockwell.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2016 Brian Wilson
The right of Brian Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The views and opinions expressed herein belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of A. H. Stockwell or Andrews UK Limited.



List of Illustrations
(See pages 31-38)
William G. Moore, my maternal grandfather, in Dublin.
Sarah Emily Moore, my maternal grandmother (she heard the Banshee).
My father in his football kit as a member of the soccer team for Trinity College, Dublin, before the First World War.
My father as an infantry officer in the First World War.
My parents in the 1930s.
Myself at the age of six in the garden of 3 Ross Road, Penang.
Our Chinese cook in Penang.
My Malay ayah in Penang.



Foreword
This is a brief account of my early life in a series of episodes that try to avoid a dry, chronological narrative. Inevitably it tends to be somewhat disconnected and glosses over parts that have been described elsewhere: The Ever Open Eye for my part in the Second World War, Hong Kong Then for my years in Hong Kong. To some extent, this book tries to let my family know something of my past. But it may also be of interest to others, by reason of the fact that, by an accident of birth, my life spanned the periods before and after the Second World War.
Since the majority of the current English-speaking population was born after the Second World War, most people now probably have little idea of pre-war life. Conditions and culture since then have changed enormously, often as a result of technological advances. For instance, the modern provision of bathrooms for every bedroom (en suite in modern parlance) has led to the practice of daily bathing or showering, compared to the pre-war practice of bathing once or perhaps twice a week. When, some years ago, my wife and I visited a school in England to see whether my son might be enrolled there, she was horrified at the dirty sports clothes (encrusted in mud and smelly) hanging up in a bare changing room lit by a naked electric light bulb. There was no evidence of even a pretence at gracious living, and certainly not in the rusty showers and bathtubs. All this has now taken a turn for the better. There used to be an Australian jibe that English migrants to Australia seldom washed and that this was only too noticeable in the hot Australian summer. Happily the air is now fresher.
There is some modern interest in the past, to learn how people lived then and how they coped with the usual problems of life. One constant between then and now is a striving for enjoyment, a youthful vigour in everyday life, and a restless search for a better way of doing things. You could never say that pre-war sport, recreation, the arts, music or literature lacked drive and timeless excellence. The same was true of industry and commerce. Attitudes may have changed (for instance, clothing is no longer so formal; people pre-war used to wear their best clothes to go to the cinema), but the men and women under the clothes are much the same. Looking at old photographs of soldiers from earlier wars, although haircuts may now be different, I see the same eyes and the same expressions as modern soldiers have. I almost hear the same bad language.
This book is to some extent an historical record, both personal and social, although it cannot claim to be anything more than my own views and comments, based on memory and impressions, not on surveys and statistical samples. With the shrinking of Britain’s overseas territories, the number of Britons born overseas of parents in government, business or the armed services will likewise drop. It used to be said in Hong Kong that, when army families left the territory at the end of their tour, it was usually with the addition of another child and a camphor-wood chest. These days, it is not so much a matter of Britons born overseas in colourful places where their parents worked, as of overseas persons now born and resident in Britain.



Penang
Both my parents came from Dublin. My father had served in the British Army during the First World War. After surviving fifteen months on the Western Front as an infantry officer, he had been badly wounded in the leg in an action near Peronne. When he was discharged from hospital, having graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, he became a solicitor in Dublin, but in 1920 fell foul of the Republican movement, with which he felt no sympathy. He therefore left Ireland and joined the law firm of Presgrave and Matthew in Penang, which in those days formed part of the Straits Settlements. My mother joined him there and they were married in 1922 in St George’s Church, which dated from the time of the East India Company. I was born in 1924 (just six years after the end of the First World War), spending my first six years in Penang. At the end of that time, I returned with my parents to Dublin and remember meeting my grandfather, heavily bearded, at the top of the steps to 249 North Circular Road and his astonishment and disgust at my failure to speak English properly. I tended to lapse into Malay as much as English.
Those were the days of sea travel to the colonies and long separations as wives preceded husbands on leave and as children reached school age. I was no exception. From time to time, my father came back to Ireland and England on leave, but I never saw him again from the age of fourteen, when the Second World War intervened; I was twenty when he died.
Life in pre-war Penang was fascinating, even for a small child. We lived at 3 Ross Road near the Residency in a large bungalow raised on brick pillars above the ground so as to avoid flooding in monsoon rains and to allow a cooling circulation of air beneath. High ceilings, ceiling fans and swing doors kept the house cool, together with louvred shutters round the outside to exclude direct sun. Each bedroom had its own bathroom, with a large earthenware Shanghai tub kept filled with water. You bathed by sloshing water over yourself with the aid of a dipper. The thick earthenware tub kept the water cool. The heat and humidity of Malaya made cold water a pleasure. There was no flush toilet. Instead, there was a seat over a metal container placed against the outside wall, with a trapdoor let into the wall. At night, staff from the Municipality (i.e. the local authority) removed the container through the trapdoor, emptied and washed it, then returned it with some Jeyes Fluid in the bottom. Normal electricity lit the house, which was kept clean and managed with the aid of a cook boy and a Malay ayah, who also looked after me. The ayah’s husband was the syce (originally a term applied to a groom), who was dressed in a khaki uniform and drove my parents’ Model T Ford motor car. This four-seater car was an open tourer, with a hood that could be pulled up on folding arms; removable Perspex windows fitted into slots in the sides of the car. My father was driven every day to his office in Beach Street in the centre of George Town.
The house had a large garden, with mangosteen trees on one side of the circular drive and an assortment of other trees elsewhere, including frangipani and Cassia fistula along the frontage of Ross Road. I used to play in the shade of the trees and climbed the sturdy mangosteens. Early every morning whilst it was still cool, my ayah would take me down the road to play with some other European child of the same age. It was probably the post-war migration of newly married ex-servicemen that led to the large number of small European children of my own age in Penang. There was never any lack of playmates living within walking distance. On one occasion, whilst the ayah and I were walking down the side of the road, a car driven at speed by a Chinese passed through a series of liquid cowpats, splashing us both. The ayah was furious, screaming insults after the driver and giving me an early insight into the latent hostility between Malays and Chinese in Malaya. It is sadly too often the pattern that a people native to a country resent the success of more pushing immigrants who play a dominant role in the country’s economic life - e.g. Ugandan Asians, Indians in Fiji and Javanese in other Indonesian islands.
On one occasion, I was with my ayah in the evening in the botanic gardens when a car approached through the twilight. It was a Rolls-Royce understood to be owned by Mr Aw Boon Haw, the Tiger-balm king. The bonnet was designed as a tiger’s head, with the tiger’s eyes acting as headlights. As the car came close, the syce sounded the horn, which gave out a noise like a tiger’s roar; I nearly jumped out of my skin. Tiger balm, which is still popular today, probably has nothing to do with tigers, which are a protected species. The name simply trades on the Chinese assumption that various parts of a tiger promote health and vitality. The balm, which smells of menthol, is rubbed on the body to soothe almost any ailment. Its widespread sale made Mr Aw Boon Haw a suc