"مذكرات وذكريات مسؤول في الخدمة السياسية الهندية" [و‎‎٥‎٩] (١٥٦/١١٧)

which had saved our lives. Somehow or another, our own two punctured wheels were
repaired. But this was not the end of the story. One day, at the races, my wife
and sister were speculating while waiting in the queue at the Tote, how - apart from
the tyres - we were going to be able to return home as our small stock of petrol coupons
was now exhausted. A gentleman - yet another complete stranger - overhead this con
versation, and whispered to my wife that if she went to a certain pub the next day and
asked for an evelope addressed to her, she would find what we required. Sure enough
the envelope contained sufficient petrol coupons for our return home, and more besides.
Furthermore, the writer said that, if in the future we ran short again, he would be
glad to oblige!
In the ordinary way my leave would not have ended until early December but, during
October, I received instructions through the Commonwealth Relations Office (the succes
sors of the old and hallowed India Office) that I was required urgently in New Delhi to
take up the appointment of Deputy Secretary in the Political Department. For this
purpose, a special booking had been made for me to return by air to India travelling,
not in the BOAC York aircraft which was the usual conveyance, but the much faster
Lancastrian ’plane, carrying only eight passengers. (This aircraft was in fact a con
version of the Lancaster Bomber; instead of passenger seats facing forwards, one sat
along one side of the ’plane on bunks, facing outwards. I suppose the space the passen
gers occupied was where the bombs used to be kept, when the Lancaster was on RAF
operations.)
Anyway, such a fuss was made of the necessity of my reaching New Delhi by the quickest
possible means that I began to fancy myself as a sort of V.I.P. or ’key-man’. But
events turned out otherwise. When I got to Victoria Terminal early one morning
prepared to be whisked off to the airport (Northolt I believe) it was not long before we
learnt over the 'tannoy' that the flight was delayed. Much later on we were told that
there was a technical hitch, so we sat in the terminal for the whole of that day. In
the late evening we were instructed to come back again next day. When finally we left,
we were more than twenty-fours hours late and the normal, slow, lumbering York air
craft which had left the day before, was already at Karachi. Eventually we took off in
the Lancastrian: myself and seven high-powered Australian businessmen, and reached
Delhi without further incident.