A Story of War

Bags of rain. Shillong society: Jim and Jane Lindsay, he a “boxwallah” of Calcutta and she most attractive and with a liking for dirty stories – we have a sort of Ladies night here on Tuesdays and Fridays and I try to organise them out here.  Daphne Myer, on whom a 7 G.R. spends all his money, but who seems to prefer my company. She always asks me what I am doing tomorrow, am I going here and there, presumably hoping I shall invite her. But I don’t – she comes up and asks me to dance with her – aged 21, with a sister Peggy who won’t come out here however much I try to coerce her. In love with a chap in the 8 G.R. who have now left, so presumably that’s the reason.

There’s the Assam Industries, with a sideline serving coffee and run by the local ladies. Here I encounter one Sheila Clarke, aged 28, still beautiful though the first chap to whom she was engaged appears to have shot himself. Working with her is the real prize, the queen of Shillong Pat Anderson, Tony Ward’s girlfriend, and wears the 10 G.R. badge always. Young and natural and I hope to have snared her out here for our mess warming party tomorrow evening. Damn Ward, who has now left for the frontier (the Assam-Burma border that means nowadays).

Peter Allan, of course, up here on leave after road building down by Manipur Road. If Daphne was only Pat, I would fall, though as things stand at present I have to maintain a fairly impassive front.