On My Way to Samarkand: Memoirs of a Travelling Writer by Garry Douglas Kilworth
Authors: Garry Douglas Kilworth
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Khormaksar, where our parents were waiting, having spent many anxious hours hoping for news.
My mother, I knew, would be calm but distressed. Dad, well it was always difficult to tell what dad was thinking or feeling. Deep down he was still a farm boy, who said very little and gave away almost nothing. Mum was furious, with everyone but me, and most understood why. Said, the quiet Somali of our household, came privately and gave me his prayer beads. ‘You keep these,’ he told me, ‘and Allah will protect you from any more terrible adventures like this one.’ I paraphrase his actual words of course, since I cannot remember them verbatim, but even as a callow youth I was extremely touched by Said’s gesture.
Rosemary visited both Max and I separately, as we recuperated in our beds. She brought me some chocolates.
Not long after our adventure, Rosemary’s father’s tour came to and end and they left by ship. We bought her a porcelain sheepdog between us, Heaven knows why or where we got it from. She gave us our one and only kiss before she left. Max she kissed first, on the cheek, but I wasn’t having that. When she came to do the same to me, I twisted my head and kissed her full on the lips. She screwed up her nose and smiled.
I wrote to Rosemary for two years after that, then somehow, somewhy, the letters stopped. No doubt she had found a new boyfriend and felt she was being disloyal by writing to an old one. I don’t know whether Max kept up any correspondence with her. Anyway, I still have some of Rosemary’s letters, in my Cabinet of Curiosities . They’re typical schoolgirl letters of the time. My own letters were probably full of spelling mistakes and errors of grammar. I wanted to be a writer in those days, but my skills at the craft were horribly limited. I read widely and loved literature, but found the craft of writing difficult.
~
My family left Aden on the MV Devonshire , a sister ship to the Dunera , and that episode of my boyhood was over. However, my time in Aden as a youth shaped the rest of my life. My memories of those years remain vivid and when I try I can still smell the heat and dust. Aden remains embedded in my spirit, part of who I am today.
Strangely, I would reluctantly return to its shores as a man, as a telecommunications corporal in the RAF, to take part in Britain’s withdrawal from a violent and blood-drenched colony in 1966-7.
Still that second experience, one of the most hated periods in my life, could not overshadow my earlier time in Aden when I was hopelessly in love with its romantic desert places.
4. Rochford, then RAF Bridgenorth
After the voyage back to England, us kids were initially sent to my nan and grandad’s house in Stambridge Road, Rochford, the place where I’d spent my infant war years. There I went to Rochford Secondary Modern while Ray and Derek went to the primary school. I hated the Rochford school and bunked off as much as I could. I made friends with Scotty, Milky and Dinger. We used to walk out at low tide on the mud of the River Roach with our feet hooked into metal dustbin lids. When the tide was out there was only a thin stream of water in the middle of the mud flats and the fish were concentrated there. We would spear them with metal rods and take them home to cook.
When the tide was in we swam in the same river from the wharves of Stambridge Mills. One boy dived off a gantry and never came up again. They found his body further down river a week later. There were stumps of posts in the river, you could see them at low tide, and I suppose the diving boy struck one of them on entering the water, knocked himself senseless and then drowned.
When we weren’t swimming, we were gathered in Milky’s back garden shed, feverishly turning the pages of Spick and Span . This half-foolscap black-and-white magazine displayed photographs of naked women with their private parts blanked out. We used to draw in the genitals and after a while we were probably
My mother, I knew, would be calm but distressed. Dad, well it was always difficult to tell what dad was thinking or feeling. Deep down he was still a farm boy, who said very little and gave away almost nothing. Mum was furious, with everyone but me, and most understood why. Said, the quiet Somali of our household, came privately and gave me his prayer beads. ‘You keep these,’ he told me, ‘and Allah will protect you from any more terrible adventures like this one.’ I paraphrase his actual words of course, since I cannot remember them verbatim, but even as a callow youth I was extremely touched by Said’s gesture.
Rosemary visited both Max and I separately, as we recuperated in our beds. She brought me some chocolates.
Not long after our adventure, Rosemary’s father’s tour came to and end and they left by ship. We bought her a porcelain sheepdog between us, Heaven knows why or where we got it from. She gave us our one and only kiss before she left. Max she kissed first, on the cheek, but I wasn’t having that. When she came to do the same to me, I twisted my head and kissed her full on the lips. She screwed up her nose and smiled.
I wrote to Rosemary for two years after that, then somehow, somewhy, the letters stopped. No doubt she had found a new boyfriend and felt she was being disloyal by writing to an old one. I don’t know whether Max kept up any correspondence with her. Anyway, I still have some of Rosemary’s letters, in my Cabinet of Curiosities . They’re typical schoolgirl letters of the time. My own letters were probably full of spelling mistakes and errors of grammar. I wanted to be a writer in those days, but my skills at the craft were horribly limited. I read widely and loved literature, but found the craft of writing difficult.
~
My family left Aden on the MV Devonshire , a sister ship to the Dunera , and that episode of my boyhood was over. However, my time in Aden as a youth shaped the rest of my life. My memories of those years remain vivid and when I try I can still smell the heat and dust. Aden remains embedded in my spirit, part of who I am today.
Strangely, I would reluctantly return to its shores as a man, as a telecommunications corporal in the RAF, to take part in Britain’s withdrawal from a violent and blood-drenched colony in 1966-7.
Still that second experience, one of the most hated periods in my life, could not overshadow my earlier time in Aden when I was hopelessly in love with its romantic desert places.
4. Rochford, then RAF Bridgenorth
After the voyage back to England, us kids were initially sent to my nan and grandad’s house in Stambridge Road, Rochford, the place where I’d spent my infant war years. There I went to Rochford Secondary Modern while Ray and Derek went to the primary school. I hated the Rochford school and bunked off as much as I could. I made friends with Scotty, Milky and Dinger. We used to walk out at low tide on the mud of the River Roach with our feet hooked into metal dustbin lids. When the tide was out there was only a thin stream of water in the middle of the mud flats and the fish were concentrated there. We would spear them with metal rods and take them home to cook.
When the tide was in we swam in the same river from the wharves of Stambridge Mills. One boy dived off a gantry and never came up again. They found his body further down river a week later. There were stumps of posts in the river, you could see them at low tide, and I suppose the diving boy struck one of them on entering the water, knocked himself senseless and then drowned.
When we weren’t swimming, we were gathered in Milky’s back garden shed, feverishly turning the pages of Spick and Span . This half-foolscap black-and-white magazine displayed photographs of naked women with their private parts blanked out. We used to draw in the genitals and after a while we were probably
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