Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

My mother ‘alone’

It seems my father was in Rangoon for about 2 years in naval and civil capacities. Altogether, between 1940 and 1947, my mother spent a lot of her time on her own bringing up her three baby sons. From what my father writes about Rangoon, and the little history I have read about Burma, Rangoon was most certainly subjected to reigns of terror for shorter and longer durations. My eldest brother Sandy was about four years old at this time. As reported in my father’s love letters, he seems to be subjecting my mother to his own ‘reign of terror’ in their little house in 2 Chesser Loan, Edinburgh.

The Executioner

In retrospect, I think my father was a bit of a romantic. He seemed to be proud of being a father, but he doesn’t express much concern in his letters about not ‘seeing’ or ‘looking after’ his children. This was also something which he often implicitly remarks is a mother’s job; however, my mother, in several of her letters, writes that her unruly children need a father’s strong hand to chastise their behinds (buttocks). 

I can report from my personal experience that although my mother was ‘the judge’ that passed sentence on her children, she had designated my father as ‘the executioner’. I’m not even sure he liked this role, but he had to ‘obey’ his wife.

As mentioned elsewhere in this family story – this is ironic, because my mother was subjected to the corporal punishment of her mother who used a whip (called ‘tawse’ in Scottish English). It seems her father was not involved in this punishment of little girls and boys. This may explain why her mother said he was ‘soft’; although this might have something to do with how he turned a blind eye to his wife’s extramarital affairs. But this is discussed elsewhere in the ‘family story’. 

Burma as a Home (Page 1)

In this letter, he envisages living in Burma “this place could be very pleasant place to live.” He probably had a higher salary in Burma than he could expect in Scotland. 

“Rangoon as they remember it has gone forever”

Transcription:

“None of us are enthusiastic at the moment about the place, especially the old hands, because Rangoon as they remember it, has gone forever, i.e. that the Europeans were the masters – the country has practically got home rule etc., and will never return to what it was before the war.”

My comments

I could make lots of comments here, but I will rely on the intelligence of the reader. But, I can mention Churchill’s ‘We will never surrender” speech, and his reference to the colonies. In other words, British governments have treated colonies differently, depending on their ‘whiteness’. So one wonders what colonies Churchill is referring to, and why should they feel a need to help their oppressors. Like a son who has been chastised by an abusive father, the father cannot expect the son to help him in time of need – quite the opposite. 

Nb. the page numbers of the letter get mixed up here.

Page III

My father seems to be optimistic here saying that my mother can visit and go there in two years’ time. If I were to read between the lines – I would say that my father is quite happy living in Burma on his ‘own’. I have suggested here that my father had caught ‘yellow fever’.⁷² Of course, I will give my father the benefit of the doubt; he was undoubtedly supporting my mother financially during this period, more so than if he had been working in Scotland.

From a ‘male’ viewpoint it was perfect. He didn’t have to argue with his wife; even more, he didn’t have to bring up his kids. He could go out for a drink with his mates, and now and then meet one of the ‘evil-smelling’ local girls (reference found below). 

Nb. the cohesion of my father’s letters is certainly a problem – he not only writes in a scrawly hand, but has a disregard for dates and page numbers. 

KEY WORDS for letter:

• hot and sticky
• 4 years
• pleasant place to live
• ‘gone forever’

Note to Letter of 13 Nov 1946

The problem with the Rangoon letters is that we do not have the letters written by my mother. However, we can imagine what my mother has written. My father writes:

In other words, my mother had probably asked if he was tempted to be ‘frisky’ with the local women. My father’s response was that ‘they smell a bit when you get within 3ft’. It doesn’t sound very convincing, isn’t it? After all, why was he within 3 feet and ‘smelling’ them in the first place? Ha ha, it’s comical; it’s part of the colonial man’s barroom repertoire. A man like my father, who was very virile, loved whisky, and loved women, had obviously ‘smelt’ many of these ‘smelly’ women.

But this is a typical ‘colonial attitude’. form relationships with ‘colonial’ women, and then say negative things about them to ‘rationalise’ your actions. This is nothing new, and it’s nothing old. Various blogs and websites can be found today where the Western ‘masters’ report that their colonial lovers have ‘cheated’ them. I won’t bore the reader with this topic; but they can search on Google “Is my Thai girlfriend cheating on me?”

Other Pages

⁷² The derogatory term yellow fever is sometimes used to describe the fetishisation of East Asians by people of other ethnicities, especially among non-Asians, as well as having a preference for dating people of East Asian origin.