Annabel's brother Tony was spending an enforced year in Calcutta (some minor misunderstanding about herbal cigarettes at his school) and we already had formed a comfortable alliance. We were studying French together at the Alliance Francaise and Tony had pretty much decimated the female students there. We were both slightly bored and at that stage of adolescence when adulthood is not quite there but the child has gone forever.
Tony was wandering around taking photographs and exploring where his art would take him. I was floating. I had. at last, put my foot down about school and I think everyone was relieved that the battle was finally over. I certainly was. I used Annabel as my link to the academic world as she struggled over her O and A levels: being lectured to as she fought the intracacies of Donne and Shakespeare. I would go away, quietly, and read what I could then return the next day to argue the point.
Life was quiet and a little dull and then into our lives like an explosion of the real world came Frank and Gregg Allen. We knew about hippies. My mother had rescued a few, rather as she later rescued dogs and horse, and they had on the, on the whole, been rather boring and unoriginal. You should remember that we were slightly retarded when it came current popular culture. Woodstock had only been shown for the first time some three months previously and we were still doing the Fish chant long after the rest of the world had moved on. Then suddenly there were two you see pictured above. Imagine the novelty value if nothing else.
Frank and Gregg's parents were with USIS - not as as formal or as uptight as the consular people and the boys were spending their parents' last few months in India with them. Their sister Catherine was just finishing school at AIS in Delhi.
I started to write this a few weeks ago and shied away because I couldn't find the words to explain their exotic appeal. Then, last night Gregg posted this picture and, Marcel eat your heart out, I was 17 again and there they were. The wild men. And beautiful Cathy - the first girl I knew to ever keep Tony firmly in line. It was literally love at first sight - I saw Frank and something inside turned upside down. I don't think it was reciprocated - he was just patient and very, very laid back.
I was lucky in one sense: they were desperate for music and I had a portable record player and Tony and I between us had a reasonable record collection. At first Gregg was not disposed to approve of my Glam Rock fixation with Bowie but it didn't take long and it remains a shared love to this day. Tony had all the boys albums: Floyd and like which I endured out of love and affection for him. I think that they gave me my passion for Van Morrison but Gregg seemed a little hazy about that so maybe it just came through the ether.
I was always happiest in love: being able to follow devotedly, tongue tied as always - how is it that someone who talks nonstop most of the time, has only to fancy someone to become mute. We spent hours sitting on the floor of their room in Harington St./Ho Chi Minh Sarani/Shakepeare Sarani - think it must have been Ho Chi MInh because Vietnam had a year or so left to run. There were herbal cigarettes involved, a lot of herbal cigarettes - which was fine because I wasn't all that keen on them.
Tony disappeared for awhile - I think to England - and I was left with the two of them until another friend, taking time out from school for those same herbal cigarettes, joined up with us. He was really an old enemy - someone I had fought bitterly with in the past - and, although a truce existed, the easy content and comfort of the time with Tony disappeared.
I know they all went to visit a brothel one night - Gregg said recently it was so full on that he was unwilling to do more than look. It must have been Camac St. - can't imagine that they went to Bhowanipur. I remember being livid - they had found somewhere I couldn't follow them and all three were not as adult or as cool as I had thought. This came mainly from knowing most of the working girls through Sunday afternoons at Trincas and dances at Christ the KIng. I knew their boyfriends and now they suffered because these girls really had very little choice. I was, of course, spitting jealous that my hallowed Frank had been put in harm's way. Yes, I know now he was able to make his own decisions but then it seemed like part of monstrous conspircay,
The time they were there seems to ellipse into a series of images, of parents going away so having endless floating parties that went on for days - of washing Frank's hair - of making cinnamon and cardommun tea - of being jealous and hurt and ecstatic. Of Frank telling me I shouldn't wear shorts - have never worn anything above the knee since. Of Gregg being pissed off because it must have felt like I was always there. Of falling for the pick a favourite star joke - "you picked Uranus!" - and being Joanus ever afterward (yes that was hurtful). Of night after night in the IN and OUT (Calcutta's first discotheque at the Park Hotel). Of dancing to great music and feeling so cool because I was with these two.
It was the year LMOB won the All India rugby and they became fervent fans - the friendship group ebbed and flowed - now with US marines and their Marine House bar with banana daiquiris and imported beer - now with Chandru and Joe Verghese at the In and Out - now watching the rugby and seeing Frank smitten with an incredibly sexy Beverly Savedra - now seeing iron man Gregg cracking at the sight of my beautiful half Tibetan friend Lynette (on extended leave for smoking at school) - now Tony nursing a rare bruised heart from his encounter with Cathy - meeting my friend Phoebe and seeing her head towards becoming another Duncan Smith casualty. Realising there was a world beyond mine and wanting to be part of it and being hopelessly, besottedly in love.
As with all friends it seemed their time was all too short with us and in May 1972 they left. I remember taking their leaving presents to say goodbye and being in complete denial about their departure - I can't remember what I gave Frank - probably something hideously inappropriate with a long letter attached - but I do remember what i gave Gregg. On my sixteenth birthday the aunties had given a pair of brass bangles, "They should be gold dear but there will be so many handsome young men to buy you those." like those given to all Nepali girls as they matured. I gave Gregg one of them. How do I remember? I still wear the other.
They were gone and with them that aching joy of real first love - not obsession - but affection founded on knowing someone and enjoying their company, of the intimacy of washing their hair and making tea. A recently found ex love said in an email to me that I placed far too much importance on the feelings of the past and should look to the future. He may be right although I doubt it - Gregg is one of those people who , with gaps of five or ten years, still remains comfortably a special and loving friend. Frank had the most lovely partner who shares my passion for Cat Stevens and Farmville and he, bless him, seems still to be this lovely laid back person who does not get ruffled when the mad woman of twenty years earlier calls (this was awhile ago) but talks and laughs and is glad to be remembered. Here's to the Allen boys and the great and very happy memories we share.
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