Ronald

When we went out you'd just had the Press decorated had you?

Bernard

It was decorated every three or four years because of the rapid deterioration. You always had to pay the decorator well in advance, you know, give him some money so that he could buy his paint. Nobody used a paint brush. They used rags to dab it on with. If you wanted a painter, it was like New Testament times, if anybody wanted to be hired for the day they used to go to the Market Place and hire 'em. If you wanted a painter in Calcutta you went to Ochterlony Monument. Painters gathered under Ochterlony Monument, round the base there. If you wanted a rickshaw, not a rickshaw a hand cart puller you went to Park Street, outside Park Street Cemetery, hand cart pullers gathered there, and if you wanted one you just went up and took one on.
Ronald

Did they use scaffolding?

Bernard

Oh yes. Bamboo scaffolding. Yes. All bamboo scaffolding. It looked as if it was going to fall down any minute. They did a good job... very good job.

All property needed attention at least every two or three years. Of course some of those Press walls were about 18 inches thick, which is pretty thick, and they were that thickness to keep the heat out you see. In the daytime, in the hot weather, you closed everywhere up and then you opened it again at nightfall. It was just like being in air-conditioning because the hot air hadn't been allowed to come in.

I don't know how many wooden beams there were in the Press House. There must have been... ooh, well I couldn't say. There were a fair number of rooms. I mean, one flat above ours, and then Hazleton's on other side, and then their was down below. Every week... every month, they had these termite inspectors came round who had the contract... white ant experts. They used to come round and inspect all the woodwork in the Press, especially the beams, to keep the white ants down. You couldn't exterminate 'em but you could drive them off somewhere else. That was their job to examine all the beams and where any needed treatment then they treated it. Of course actually what happened was I suppose they drove white ants somewhere else. You couldn't exterminate 'em really. But they were very destructive... very destructive,

I know when we had a cricket match at Serampore, annual cricket match, I'd got a school blazer hanging up and I went, you know, just to make sure it was properly aired and the thing was riddled with white ants. Do you remember?

Freda

Yes I do.

Bernard

Great holes in it! Huge! The only thing that they'd left were the brass buttons and the Heanor Secondary School badge (Heanor, Derbyshire). That was in tact. So I said "Uugh, take this out bearer... Ugh." He took it out to get rid of it... throw it away. I said "We'd better cut that badge off." So we cut the badge off and next thing I saw were church bearer's wife wearing it. Wearing the blazer with holes in it. He'd not chucked it away. He'd probably sold it.

Ronald

Riddled with white ants as well.

Bernard

Ah. I don't know if the white ants were still there.

Ronald

Well are they white?

Bernard

No they're grey actually... they're grey.

Ronald

Just they all look like ordinary little ants then?

Bernard

Well they don't look like ants, they look like... more like lice really. I did read somewhere where they could even bore through steel. Get into safes. Whether that was so or not I can't say but they were a menace.

So when finally the report came that all the beams, wooden... teak... they were teak beams, they weighed about half a ton, that supported the ceilings in the Press house, and in the Press itself, would have to come down because they were riddled with sawdust inside. You couldn't see from outside. The problem then was to get steel beams to replace them because steel was in short supply, but luckily for us, the Minister for Consumer Supplies to the West Bengal Government, it always struck me as being a bit comical, he was the authority who we had to approach to get a permit to buy steel. I didn't know anybody could eat steel but he was the Minister of Consumer Supplies, Mr. P. Nag, and we applied to him officially and said that we needed this steel for these steel beams to replace wood riddled with white ants and would he please give permission for so many to be purchased?

Mr. P. Nag sent his man. You always have to send your man to do anything in Calcutta, or India for that matter. "Please send your man tomorrow." He sent his man, but his man happened to be the Chief Inspector and he delivered it in person you see because Mr. P. Nag was a deacon of Lower Circular Road Baptist Church. I think he gave us a little preferential treatment as you might say.

Anyway, the order was issued by your Uncle Norman for this work to be put in hand and young Margaret (Norman's daughter was born in June 1956) had just been born, as long ago as that, and I said to him, I said "What you should do is when these chaps are let loose, you know, to do this replacing of these wooden beams with steel, is to make 'em do it one room at a time because if it was left to Indians they'd have the whole place in turmoil and nobody would have anywhere to sleep..." I said "...and your new baby won't want a lot of extra noise."

So they started one room at a time and when you saw these coolies arrive with their ropes and... well you couldn't say tackle it was chiefly ropes and hammers and sledge hammers... you began to wonder whether the whole place was going to come down. And you looked at the beams, and you looked at these men, and like Duke of Wellington when he reviewed his troops at Waterloo "I don't know what effect they have on the enemy but they frighten me." We'd got these beautiful red stone floors you see and I'd got a mental picture if anything came crashing down, or they couldn't get the beam up properly, they'd scratch these beautiful red floors. Beautiful red stone floors they were. Anyway these chaps started and, to cut a long story short, by the time they'd finished they'd not made a mark on any of those floors. The wooden beams were down and the steel beams were up in their place. They'd done an absolutely first class job and that was just a local Indian contractor who had done it.

Eventually steel took the place of all the wood beams throughout the house and of course the wood that came down you could see the ends were just sawdust inside. You couldn't see from outside. It was just like sawdust inside where white ants had got at it. In short if they'd stayed up many more years the whole house would have collapsed, because the termites... the white ants had got inside the wood beams. So all the wood that was useable again was stacked under the house, for future use. The maddening thing of course is that the whole of the house has come down and I don't know what has happened to the steel beams.

Ronald

Where did you get under the house? How could you get under it?

Bernard

Well it was all open underneath.

Freda

All open.

Bernard

All open underneath. Yes. It was on stilts. You could walk... you couldn't walk but you could...

Ronald

About three of four feet up?

Bernard

Oh three or four feet up. Yes. To get air circulating underneath (and to avoid flooding during the monsoon).

Ronald

Did you have any problems with monkeys and snakes and things?

Bernard

Oh yes, we had problems with monkeys. They weren't as vicious as they were down Hastings (Alipore) or Strand Road (by the Hooghly and Fort William) but there was one monkey in particular that had a regular run and he'd come from Mulikbazaar, over the house tops, across Elliot Road, and up the wall, and across the Press and finish up in Ripon Street because there was someone in Ripon Street who used to feed it. He was a big monkey. When it sat down it was about three feet tall, at least. We used to see it lolloping along the ledge of the Composing Department. We'd look through the bedroom window and see this monkey (about 20 feet away) just walking along as if it owned the place. One morning I was coming out of the Composing Department (at the top of the outside staircase) just turned round to go down the steps and met this ruddy great monkey. I don't know who was more surprised, the monkey or me, so I looked at it, and it looked at me. So I back peddled and let it go and then it continued its sedate way to Ripon Street.

But one Sunday afternoon your Mother said "What are you doing in that dining room?" and I said "I'm not doing anything. I'm on my bed." She said "There's somebody in that dining room. Or some thing." Of course I went in and there was this flaming monkey. It had eaten all the oranges out of the fruit bowl on the table hadn't it?

Freda

Yes.

Bernard

It just stood at the top of the steps and looked at you, as if to say what are you going to do about it?

Then poor old May Hazleton, she had 'em in her flat. They did what they didn't ought to do on her settee. And Barbara Angus had all her lipstick smeared all over her mirror, and when she looked across, you could look across t'other side of Elliot Road, and saw monkeys bathing in the water... drinking water tank on top of the house on t'other side of the road. They didn't know down below that there were monkeys bathing in their drinking water. I don't know if they actually unscrewed the top but they were certainly inside swimming round.