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The approach of night and its sense of the foreboding presence of Arf Arfer penetrated my whole but fragile armour of daylight. Very rarely my parents were near a city and friends would come to dine. The men would sooner or later laugh – arf, arf, arf – and I would wake in terror. Arf Arfer had come! With his great goggle eyes and painted visage, bright, bright as … “'and, 'and”, I would wail. My father would clasp my hand in his great strong one and I could sleep. Not when there was company though; on those occasions even my mother was different. If she came she was dressed in strange clothes, cold, like the place where saints in glory stand, bright, bright as day. That was no happy land for me, but more, had I known it, like the Ypres Salient, glistening, cold, cold. 'Quo fas et gloria ducunt'.
“Hush dear, shsh, what's the matter?”
Nickel Sehn was the matter, Hodson's Horse was the matter; the whole damned lot were the matter. “Go away” I would say through my sobs. “Go away!”
None the less I loved India. The blazing, intolerable sun – how wonderful it was! The mid-day silence, the great trees with leaves hanging motionless in the breathless air, the brain-fever bird with its rising reiterated call, “Brain-fever, brain-fever, brain-fever …”, then silence again.
I discovered it was a marvellous place to play trains. The intense heat conspired to produce masses of fine white dust. Nonchalantly I kicked it up and was rewarded by a great cloud that rose into the air. I did it again. Before I had time to think I was racing around, kicking up huge clouds of … steam … in front of me like a huge ‘Ee Ay Ah’ locomotive. The Devil entered into me: The Devil, unlike Arf Arfer, was a great friend of mine. “Go on! Do it again”, he said. “Lead us
not into temptation“, I learned to pray, but only rather half-heartedly. Temptation, unlike heaven, was such fun. The immense speed at which I was travelling, the intoxicating sulphurous fumes of smoke which belched out from the pistons in