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Chapter Two

Muriel

Writing to Muriel from his family’s new house at Albert Drive, Llandudno Junction, on the day of his arrival on 12 September 1919, Leonard sought to meet up with her as soon as possible. He noted that he was “most distressed to see the conditions” of his brother Arthur. In the event, his letter had crossed with one from Muriel and they agreed to meet up in Liverpool on 18 September before going to her home in Birkenhead where he stayed as a guest of the Smethurst family for five days. The visit was momentous, and his letter to Muriel, dated 25 September reflected this:

“My Dear One,

The Parish in which I reside is Llanrhos and I have written to Rev Foster-Carter informing him of this …

I am now going to visit the Padre to ask him to publish the banns

…

Thank you dearest for sending me the wine. I am happy that Mrs Smethurst approves.

My people are delighted and say such nice things about you … Lou … has known I loved you about as long as I have.

I have played golf with Father, Elsie and Nora this morning, trying to keep my mind occupied, but it would and did wander and I longed to be with you.

How sweet you are I have not fully realised, but this is well as even now I am hardly able to behave sensibly. My love! How beautiful you are, the five days in B’head have shown me a perfect paradise.

I long for your embrace, I dare not dwell in thought on your kisses, my sweet one,

May God make me fit for you.

What heaven is in your touch! What joy in your sweet eyes! My Muriel!”

The mood turned to music in Llandudno Junction. “I was practising some songs last evening which Nora played for us and which suited to partly express my love of you, but only partly as all of a long life will not suffice to show you my love which grows greater every hour I am with you.”

Both families, from their separate bases, began preparing for the wedding day, with daily letters from both Muriel and Leonard continuing to proclaim their love for each other. “I love you; my own Muriel and you don’t know how I long for your kisses that burn me so, the gentle touch of you melts me inside and makes me just yours to do what you will with.”

Various hotels were being considered for the honeymoon, and there was much discussion about the presents they would exchange. They finally agreed that they would exchange silver card cases embossed with the future initials of the recipient – “MW” for Muriel and “LW” for Leonard. Leonard claimed he had “had a busy day doing little or nothing, such as golf, haircutting, gardening and mending bicycle tyres.” Happily, Muriel’s father, away on holiday in Norwich, responded very positively to Leonard’s letter to him seeking his daughter’s hand in marriage.

“My dear Leonard

It was certainly a very great surprise when I received yours and Muriel’s letter telling me of your engagement to one another; I consent willingly and hope you will be extremely happy. Muriel has been a good daughter and ought to prove an excellent wife. My loss I hope will be her gain. You and your family are no strangers to us, and the only drawback is taking her away so far from us. I suppose you are now in a position to marry and will have to make plans. Life in India must be different to life in England; however, I shall see you on my return. I have enjoyed my visit here very much and feel much better for the change.

With my best wishes,

yours sincerely,

JM Smethurst”

Eventually all the preparations, licences and agreements were in place and the happiest of weddings took place at the Claughton Church on 14 October 1919 – just over a month after Leonard arrived in Llandudno for his holiday, having only seen Muriel briefly on four or five occasions, all in 1914, since he left for India in 1910. Leonard at that stage was thirty-one years old and Muriel thirty-five.

The wedding church published details of the wedding in its monthly paper:

“A Christ Church Wedding.

There is but one wedding in our columns this month, but it had a very special interest for Christ Church. The bride was very well-known and loved by us all as Miss Muriel Smethurst. By her lifelong interest in, and connection with us, by her selfless willingness to help, by her splendid and continuous War Service, she has endeared herself to us all. We shall miss her tremendously. But we certainly do not grudge her great happiness, and perhaps we are particularly glad that her husband, Mr Leonard Wilson is, in a sense, also one of us. His family though now alas, is no longer with us but in the more beautiful North Wales land, were also great lovers of Christ Church. We have had of late, more than ever, to chronicle our sympathy with them in their times of sorrow, when the great war took its terrible toll on their most gallant son, Frank, and when the hand of death took away their devoted mother. Mr Leonard Wilson has indeed, unlike his brothers, been long away from us, doing splendid service for the Empire in faraway parts of India. But we shall claim him still as ours, and we shall have another link with our Dependency, when we think of the house which he and his bride will shortly have in India.”

Their honeymoon was spent initially at St David’s Hotel in the Wirral at 16s6d per day however long we stay. “I had asked about fires in our room, but they say that this can’t be done without a Doctor’s certificate and now that you have made me so happy, I look too well to get such a certificate.” Thereafter, they travelled and stayed in the area of the North Wales coast before returning to stay briefly at the Carnavon Arms in Birkenhead, and then at either of the two-family houses.

Leonard’s home leave was extended by two months and fourteen days from 15 February 1920 to 28 April 1920, treated as an extension of furlough on half pay. This, together with his improved status as “Resident Engineer (Scale “A” Junior)” from 1 September 1913, meant that his salary was marginally increased. While the extra leave was much welcomed by both families, Muriel and Leonard had to prepare for their new circumstances in India, and that meant spending a week or two separately preparing for the journey and their new house together in India. During this period, they wrote to each other daily. For Leonard, the days were spent walking in the hills, taking Arthur and the ‘fair haired nurse’ out to lunch in the Grand Hotel, Llandudno, preparing for the journey back to India, repairing the shutters at the house, putting “father on the twelve fifteen p.m. to London,” and walking with his sisters to Colwyn Bay.

Above all he was distressed, in the early spring of 1920 by the fact that Muriel “felt sick every morning” but delighted at what this meant for them both.

Finally, the GIP Railway Board authorised them to sail for Calcutta, via Colombo on the City of Cairo leaving on 20 March. By now Muriel had been pregnant for about four weeks and, given the logistics involved in travelling to Calcutta, and then back by train to Bombay, Leonard was anxious to avoid any unnecessary discomfort for Muriel and arranged to disembark in Colombo and take a short break there before travelling onwards. Both of them referred to the delights enjoyed during this break in later correspondence. Eventually however, they arrived in Bombay in late April 1920, having made the decision; Leonard, very reluctantly, but putting Muriel’s comfort as a priority, to let Muriel escape to the cool climate of Kashmir while she coped with her sickness. Travelling by train from Bombay to Rawalpindi via Agra and Delhi, accompanied all the way by a Sepoy known to Leonard, she was met by Miss Barnett in ‘Pindi’. Miss Barnett then drove Muriel very slowly, over two days, via Srinagar to Baramulla on the west side to Lake Wular, on the Jhelum River, where she was to stay for the next six weeks on a houseboat owned by the Dorans, while she struggled with her morning sickness.

As ever when they were apart, Leonard and Muriel wrote to each other almost daily. Technically, Leonard’s home leave was only due to end on 29 April and he used the remaining weeks in Bombay, initially to recover from a bout of ‘flu’ and then to meet up with Mr Fraser, his new direct report in the Bombay Works Division. On 15 April he moved out of the Taj Mahal Hotel where he had been staying at Rs16/- per day, to the bungalow he had been allocated in Parsik, from where he was to work on the Parsik Tunnel. Prior to starting work officially on 29 April he sought to set up a comfortable home for Muriel in what was a relatively remote area in terms of European neighbours.

The key tasks he needed to accomplish were to:

1 build up his strength having lost 8lbs in weight while he was sick with “flu and eczema”.

2 buy a Daimler “overland” car for R3,900/-.

3 buy furniture for the bungalow to supplement his meagre resources from his bachelor days, at a total cost of R1,300/-.

4 Take, and pass, the driving test which was now a requirement.

5 recruit staff for the bungalow, including a butler, a cook, a dhobi (washing man), a sweeper and a night-watchman.

6 buy a silk suit.

7 collect his old furniture, en route from Shahabad.

8 “dismember the carburettor of the car to learn its internal economy,”

9 pick up a box of linen from England, which was found at Victoria Terminus in Bombay.

10 welcome back his dog ‘Bess’ who lived with him in Shahabad.

11 collect his chairs that had been sent to Bombay from Shahabad but got damaged when “the locomotive or carriage and wagon workshops of GIP Railway went on strike and stopped trains and smashed property as a result of which British troops were sent out to keep the strikers in order.”

12 put up wall lamp brackets and curtain rails.

13 purchase two iron bedsteads for R310/-.

14 look at the need for curtains.

All of these activities were ongoing as Leonard officially started his work on the Parsik Tunnel on 28 April. Daily letters to Muriel spoke of the 96-degree temperature, ongoing difficulties with the servants, and as ever, of his passionate love for Muriel with all the details that came with this – “how wonderful that our physical love should be so perfect,”

The job itself involved being “Resident Engineer in charge of brick lining the Parsik Tunnel of GIP Railway mainline, which is 3700ft long and 36ft wide, originally constructed through fissured rock, without lining.” The work included rock excavation and enlarging the tunnel to take the brick lining throughout the whole length. He was also in charge of a mile-long diversion of a public road to convert a level crossing to an underbridge crossing. When construction of the tunnel had been completed in 1916, the year after it was commenced, the tunnel was the longest in India and one of the longest railway tunnels in Asia. During the course of the project, which was to occupy him until August 1921, his salary was increased from Rs850/- to Rs900/- with effect from 1 September 1920.

By this time Muriel had returned from Kashmir and was fully recovered from her morning sickness. She was also busily ‘feminising’ the bungalow and preparing for the arrival of their first child, due towards the end of October. Leonard had, on occasion, to stay away in Bombay while picking up spare parts and also to attend meetings with Mr Fraser at GI & PR headquarters. The project itself was progressing satisfactorily, despite the dusty conditions underground, and due to “the result of the war in India … an absolute lack of interest in work … I can’t even get the railway to supply high power lamps to light up the tunnel (leading to) … difficulty supervising work in the darkness.” His determination eventually prevailed. “I have now got my work going at half the speed I was aiming at, and even this is double the speed since I started, so that’s something accomplished, though I am far from satisfied.”

Muriel’s presence again in his life and their bungalow brought him great happiness and joy. The last two to three months of her pregnancy went as well as could be expected and finally on 26 October 1920, their first child was born, at the bungalow on Parsik Hill, attended by a nurse, and a little later, a doctor who had travelled out from Bombay by catching a lift on the first goods train with his bicycle and then cycling up the hill to the bungalow. The birth of the boy named Frank Richard (after Leonard’s beloved brother, and his father), was attested to by the village headman who confirmed, in Hindu writing, that a boy was born to Mrs Muriel Wilson and Mr Leonard Wilson. This document was to prove vital fifty years later when the boy, thereafter, known as Dickie or Dick, sought to prove that he was a white man to the apartheid government of South Africa.

The delight of Muriel and Leonard was shared by many of their relatives in Britain and East Africa, as well as friends in India. Muriel’s sister wrote that: “I do hope you didn’t have a very long time of it, it’s a rotten business at any time. I wonder who he is like and what you will call him. John wanted to know if he had got a pram. I do wish I could be with you and see him. I wonder what your nurse is like, also the Ayah. I suppose the nurse looks after you, and the Ayah the baby. I do hope he’s good. I suppose he’s fed on Glaxo, is he?” Another friend, Mary White, wrote of her delight at the birth of Muriel’s baby boy, “he’ll be such lovely company for you when Leonard is away, as he often is … I really couldn’t help feeling amused when I heard that you were going to have a baby, because do you remember our very intimate conversation, in the lounge of the Imperial Hotel, Llandudno? You told me you were going to be like us and not have any children for two or three years!” Given that Dick was born two weeks after their first wedding anniversary he was certainly well ahead of that particular schedule.

Dick’s arrival in October coincided with one of the hottest months of the year, with average temperatures of 28–29 degrees Celsius, cooling to the low twenties in November – February. In April 1921, Leonard was working briefly in Thane, “in a temperature of a hundred and five in the shade, or about a hundred and forty in the sun, measuring the Kulva Belapin Road diversion and instructing the contractor from A to Z all over again, as the supervisor he had until now had given up the job and the contractor does not know what is to be done. Or what has been done.

These temperatures were too much for Muriel and her baby in their bungalow in Parsik and so, in early April Leonard encouraged them both, together with their Ayah to go and stay in Matheran, a hilltop station forty-five miles north of Bombay, which was much cooler than Bombay itself and which was a car free zone with lovely clean air, and wonderful views. The journey itself involved catching the mainline train to Neral, where they changed to the narrow gauge (2ft) line for the last fifteen miles into Matheran itself. There they stayed, excluding Leonard who had to return to work, until early June, exchanging daily letters.

For Leonard, their absence was acutely felt, as it was for Joseph, in charge of the domestic team at the house in Parsik. “Joseph told me today that the bungalow was not nice, owing to the absence of the memsahib and the small son.” However, Muriel was meeting up with other mothers including Mrs Pearson, with children in Matheran, and enjoying her time in the fresh air, going for walks and playing tennis, although however much she ate, she was still not putting on weight. “8 stone won’t do my dear, you must make it more than that as quickly as possible. I insist on at least four pounds per week increase up to about 9st 8lb.”

A short weekend break in Matheran for Leonard in mid-May was much enjoyed by the whole family, although in Leonard’s absence there was “trouble in the tunnel last weekend” and so the next visit had to be delayed. It was further delayed by “a length of arch which is giving trouble.” This was one of a number of health and safety issues he had to deal with. “The foreman of the ballast train engine had two fingers blown off in an explosion yesterday. The train was standing near the tunnel at the Mumbai end, and it is thought that the fireman picked up a detonator and threw it in the fire.” Another incident occurred which, “on lowering the centering on which a length of arch had been built, the brickwork … showed signs of weakness, so I instructed that cement should be poured in and the centering left to stand until my further instructions, a fool pulled out the centering and only his maker knows why he and many others were not killed.”

On occasional breaks from the heat and dust of the Parsik Tunnel, Leonard would drive out to Belapur a “quaint place on the Panvel Creek … with a ruined fort … salt pans,” or more often, to the chemists to get the baby’s medicines. “I am sorry the baby continues to give trouble.” He was keen too to get back to Matheran to see the family, particularly as the heat in Parsik rose to uncomfortably high levels.

So, in early May, he travelled again to Matheran and had another joyful weekend with Muriel and the baby – “I hope you are not too tired after all our activities.” By now he was frustrated at the slowness of the train from Matheran to Neral, which normally took two and a half hours to cover the fifteen-mile journey, on uncomfortable seating. On this occasion he chose to complete the downhill journey in a rickshaw, leaving Matheran at seven fifty-five a.m., reaching Neral at nine thirty, despite a serious breakdown of the rickshaw – “the spring of my rickshaw broke, so I despatched the coolie to fetch a branch of the tree which we passed under the body of the rickshaw and over the springs and this worked quite well without further mishap. The rickshaw journey is much more comfortable than the train which arrived later.”

As so often happened, while he was away in Matheran there was “an accident in the tunnel. A centering was removed, which should not have been removed for seven more days, and the arch fell down but did not injure or kill anyone.”

The ongoing incidence of accidents in his absence forced Leonard to spend even more time on the project and therefore more time on his own away from the family. Of an evening, he would take Bessie out for a walk and occasionally shoot a brace of spurfowl. Bess also showed her worth when racing at and frightening away “burglars prowling around the bungalow.”

In mid-May 1921 Leonard was served with notice to quit the bungalow in Parsik with effect from August 1921 and it was later confirmed that he was to be posted to Poona with effect from 31 July. That news was well received by Leonard, who wrote to Muriel that: “Poona needs to be remodelled – Chief Engineer enquiring when I will be free from Parsik and I told him that I have to leave the bungalow by the end of July and hoped to finish the tunnel by then. As regards the place, the CE could not have done better for a married man, always providing we can get a bungalow. I feel you will like Poona. We can walk in and round Poona and there is quite a good golf course. The gymkhana is a sports and social club like the Bombay Yacht Club and gymkhana combined. There are boats on the river and quite good rowing. There are branches of the big Bombay shops and also a native bazaar.”

A short weekend trip to Matheran gave Leonard a break from the increasingly difficult working conditions on the tunnel and was enjoyed enthusiastically. “I hope you are now rested after the rather strenuous Sunday night,” he wrote, “I had nine hours in bed last night to make up.” He got back to the bungalow to discover that Bessie was on heat.

In the tunnel “work progresses steadily but the speed is reduced owing to shortage of labour, there are 500 feet of tunnel still to be lined of the total length of 4322ft”. Cash flow problems at the GI & PR meant that the workers were not being paid and on 25 May work stopped. On 27 May, workers started to leave, coinciding with temperatures of ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit. This became a serious issue for the GI & PR, and for Leonard, but by the end of the month the 500ft had been reduced to one hundred and twenty feet and the finish was in sight. Best of all for Leonard was the fact that Muriel and Dick returned from Matheran, and the family was together again.

When the tunnel was finally completed, Leonard and the family moved to Poona, which was to be their home until 6 October 1924. Muriel was very happy in this pleasant town while Leonard worked as the Resident Engineer on the “Poona station remodelling” which involved “bridge reconstruction, which work cost £ 400,000 and included a 2,000,000 cubic feet earthwork, eight miles of track in a new goods yard, one 80 feet under span, a public road overbridge in place of 20 feet span, one 50 feet span public road subway in place of overbridge, one new fifty feet span public road subway; a new station building double storied – four hundred feet long by forty feet wide with approach roads, five sub-staff bungalows with service roads. Double track girder, bridge over the river, 11 x 70ft spans on two cylinders of steel above and one below water, and cylinders sunk into riverbed inside temporary sited cuissons sealed to riverbed by divers.”

This large project was to occupy Leonard full time until the family went on leave back to England in October 1924, with relatively few days away, and then only in Bombay to attend a lengthy court case in August 1921. The next major event in their happy lives was the birth, in November 1922, of another son, christened Graham Alexander, who was born in their bungalow in Poona, to the great joy of their respective families in England. The two young boys were the centre of their lives, but this did not deter Leonard and Muriel separately and together, from enjoying a full social life, mainly involving golf, tennis and dining out at friends’ houses, with servants on board to look after the boys. Very early on in his life the new baby was known as “Tiny” due to his large size and boisterous character.

Notwithstanding this seemingly happy situation, Muriel felt the need to have a break away from the routine and so, in July 1923 she took the two boys away for a short ten-day break to Manmad, a town in Maharashtra State, away from the heat of Poona, at an altitude of nineteen hundred feet. Leonard’s first letter to Muriel noted that their bungalow was “very empty without you, no Mummy … no Tiny, no noise, can you imagine how empty.” As ever, the club provided him with the necessary recreational facilities. “I played Bouley golf this evening, fourteen holes and I was about seven up; Mrs B played Mrs Palmer and was, I think three down. Most people we know were playing including Hogarth and Robertson, the latter dining after with the Palmers.” A few days later he “spent the day doing some calculations and also mending the gramophone and then played golf against Mrs Palmer on the same conditions as yesterday, being six up and five. I was round in less than 90 … playing quite well.”

After more than three years on the Poona remodelling project, Leonard and the family were granted leave to return to England, sailing from Bombay on 6 October 1924. Muriel would never return to India, and Dick would not return until 4 March 1941.