Sunday, February 7, 2010

A Courting We Will Go

There were three ladies teaching in the Colegio. They were Miss Mary Hitchenson of Cambridge, Flora MacLullich of Argyleshire, who is now Mrs Thomas Graham of Dublin, and Netta Kemp of Black Isle, Ross-shire, who was shortly to become my wife. She arrived in Peru in 1920, being the first teacher to join Dr John A. Mackay, after the founding of the Colegio Anglo Peruano. By the time of my arrival she had just returned for her second period of service, having preceded me by exactly a month. She already had a good command of Spanish, which she spoke like a native and was an exceedingly good teacher, besides being popular among both pupils and staff. In these circumstances it was not altogether surprising that by October the second do the same year we were engaged. On January 11th we were married in Cajamarca by Rev J Calvin Mackay.

Our courtship, though brief, was not entirely free from adventure. One evening we sent for a walk in Miraflores along the marine parade, which skirts the shore at the top of the cliffs, some 100feet above the sea. A gully leads from the ’Melecon’ to the bathing sheds along which passes a road flanked with trees. We were looking for a nice quiet place in which to sit and talk, when we came to this gully which struck us ideal for our purpose, since there were seats under some of the trees. We therefore selected a nice shady tree and were really enjoying the beauty and solitude of our retreat. Above, on the Malecon, a policeman was walking his beat. Hearing the murmur of voices belo win the gully , he set out to investigate. Suddenly we became conscious of someone stalking us. We could hear the crunching of the dead leaves under stealthy feet and, looking in the direction we could see the figure of the guardian of the law as he slipped from the shade of one tree to the other with his revolver at the ready. We waited in silence until he reached our tree. Then, placing himself before us and keeping us covered with his gun he spoke. “Que hace Ud. Por aqui, Senor calallero?” he asked. I was only making my first steps in Spanish at the time, so left the talking to Miss Kemp.
‘As you can see’ she replied, ‘we are sitting on a seat’.
‘I can see that.’ He said. ‘But don’t you know this is a very dangerous place for a senorita to be at night?’ Miss Kemp promptly replied that she thought it was an ideal place.
‘No’ said the policeman, ‘this is a terrible place, anything could happen here.’
‘What sort of things’ she asked.
‘Things I could not tell a senorita,’ he replied.
‘Well, just tell me,’ was her rejoinder.
The policeman had met his match. He had intended getting possession of my identity papers, which I would only be able to retrieve upon conditions highly unfavourable to me. But since I had not yet taken out my identity papers, but did not wish to admit this, my lady friend stalled him off again. Finally, finding that his ploy was not going to work, he made a compromise. We must vacate this shady nook and look elsewhere for a seat, which we promptly did.  Neither of us repented our conduct that evening and indeed we both came to the conclusion that looking down the barrel of a gun together wasn’t as bad as some people might think.