It stung a bit. "
Well", I said at last, gloomily, "
I can't compete on those terms ". Nor could I. I would be returning to the UK soon, and leaving the RAF. I could not keep a cat, much less a wife *,on the salary I would be going back to at home.
Note *:
There was in those days a curious convention that the husband went out to work and "earned the bacon"; the wife stayed at home, did the housekeeping and looked after the children. This arrangement, which had served humanity well since the dawn of time, is of course now completely non-PR, passé, and generally regarded with derision.
And in any case I'd no intention of marrying June or anybody else. I was not in love with her - nor she with me ! Really, when I came to think of it, this was the best of all outcomes - and I was "off the hook".
I could not blame her. "
Tout comprendre, c'ést tout pardonner". A girl must look to her future. Now that she had successfully "gone to ground", her next priority had to be a new husband to restore her position in British Indian society, to "
make an honest woman of her". As I'd proved a non-starter, she'd had to go for Plan B. So everything went smoothly when I returned to Cannanore, we all accepted the changed situation gracefully and there were no reproaches. "
This has so much against it that it will probably work", I mused to June. Gravely, she agreed.
Privately, I thought Alan a fool. Not on account of her recently displayed "form", but rather from the fact that, of all the young ladies that a man out there could bring home to Mum, a Daughter of the Raj was about the worst possible choice. These girls had never had to lift a finger for theselves in their whole lives, everything had always been done for the Miss-Sahibs. They could not boil an egg, and had no idea which end of a broom to pick up - there would always be someone who could and did. From the time they were out of their convent schools they had been besieged by ardent young men, regarded this as their natural right, and saw no reason why it should not continue. In short, they were spoiled rotten. It was not their fault, but that of the system which had made them so. Now imagine such a creature brought back to cold, grey, war-weary Britain, probably packed into a small semi with her in-laws - for housing was desperately short. It's not a pretty picture, is it ? You might as well shove a bird of paradise into a hen coop and expect it to settle down.
In any case I was far too busy to worry about my loss. My airmen and officers were vanishing, day by day, for repatriation on release, while I had to organise the disposal of the CDRE's remaining gas stocks, then was involved in a bitter altercation with 225 Group over the destruction of my remaining three Vengeance. On March 12th we flew them to Nagpur for scrapping. I would not sit in a cockpit again for nearly three years. At the end of April I was on my way home myself, after handing over to Alex Bury who would have the task of closing the unit down.
It would have been nice to know how they got on, but it is far too long ago and far away to be worth bothering about now. Nothing remains but an old man's fading memory of a few week's idyll by the shores of a tropic sea.
And the Fool ? Well, to reverse Kipling:
"Most of him lived, but some of him died"
THE END