How to Disappear by Duncan Fallowell Read Free Book Online

the East and that my return air-ticket to London was open for a year. Rita Wallace was also a close friend – I’d met her through the transsexual pioneer April Ashley (they’d been bohemians together in Paris in the 1950 s); Rita had been staying with the de Mel family in Colombo and flown to Trivandrum aerodrome to join Sarah and myself for a little adventure.
    The local coffee and an argument with the patron, to whom we consented to pay only half the bill on account of the rats, proved bracing, as did the Nilgiris themselves. The more you strayed from the railway station and what was called ‘the native village’, the nicer Ooty became. The centre of town is called Charing Cross and from here a policeman on a dais directed what little traffic there was. Beyond it, the purlieus fanned up and about in leafy lanes. Clambering thither in our search for somewhere attractive to stay, somewhere perhaps Sunningdalian, we chanced upon the Emerald Heights Ladies College. They spoke of the poet Browning and said they didn’t let rooms and gave us Marmite sandwiches and mugs of tea at a long refectory table which seemed to disappear into the distance. One of the schoolmistresses recommended the Officers’ Holiday Home and pointed her finger in its direction. So along one of the lanes in late afternoon we dragged our weary feet and in due course came to a low shingled villa. It spread itself comfortably behind flower-flecked hedges and pine trees and there was a little lodge at the entrance to the drive. Its full name, on a polished brass plate beside the front door, was the Ratan Tata Officers’ Holiday Home. It looked divine.
    The establishment was under the guardianship of an ex-Indian Army officer who told us to call him Inkie because everybody else did. The charm of the place became even greater when we discovered that Inkie was actively concerned for our welfare, especially for Rita’s rat-bite which had swollen up nastily on her calf. Inkie assured us there were no rats in his domain, and having negotiated a rate – the equivalent in rupees of £1.50 per head per day full board – we joined a handful of inmates for a fortnight’s rest, and washed and changed for dinner.
    That night Rita wore cream muslin, Sarah a floor-length wraparound skirt and plunging granny-top, and I yellow flared trousers and a tight black Spanish jacket with bobbles round the edge. The black jacket had been presented to me on departure by another of our flatmates in London, Frances Shelley. She said it had been a godsend when she was in India, had got her everywhere, and as you know hippy clothing was very trans-gender. It got me everywhere too and the black bobble jacket became my standard evening dress on this travelling-light journey through India and the East. Travelling light, yes, but I was away for ages, and it’s amazing how you can cram a whole life into a bag when you’re young. It helped that I was skinny. In fact Inkie thought I needed feeding up and said ‘Here you will have an appetite. We are seven and a half thousand feet above sea level.’ Well, I’d not lost my appetite as such, but French ‘blues’ – the soft uppers manufactured by Smith, Kline & French which Sarah and I bought in local chemists and always had a supply of – have a tendency to render one unhungry (or did – they don’t make them any more). We also had the ‘yellows’ – Dexedrine – unadulterated uppers; whereas the ‘blues’ combined Dexedrine with a dash of downer, so had their contemplative side.
    In the dining-room the tallest of the gardeners had also changed, into a red and green jacket many of whose brass buttons had dropped off or almost had. He served us Brown Windsor soup, lamb and three veg, and junket which was scalded on top with cinnamon and nutmeg. The pudding was particularly good, and when we told the gardener so, he said the cook would