WHEN WILLIAMS NEXT RENDEZVOUSED WITH HARDING, THE boss was waiting with a reproach. This time it was about the mail. In his loneliness, Billy was corresponding with every young woman he knew from London to Rangoon. The bundle of responses was taking up too much space in the company’s green canvas mailbag, which was shared by the two men. Harding wanted more room for the truly important items in life: whiskey, cigarettes, and the specialty cheeses, including blue Cheshire, he regularly requisitioned.
To be in camp with Harding, Williams knew, was to suffer days at the mercy of his sharp tongue. But now there was a new wrinkle: Harding asked him to play cricket. It was clear this wouldn’t be just an amusement. First of all, while Harding waited, Williams and the elephant men in camp were directed to hack out a playing field in the jungle. That finished, the tense match between Englishmen began. Right away, Harding was furious that Williams jokingly claimed to be left-handed: “What the hell do you think you’re going to do, mow corn? Stand up and bat right-handed like a gentleman.” When Williams took a real whack at the ball they were using, sending it deep into the shaded forest, Harding’s face went “purple with rage,” and he fumed, “Do you think tennis balls grow on trees, you idiot?” Worst of all, it turned out that the old man was actually quite good, “a well-known bat in county cricket.” Williams would later recall, “Cricket has never been my favourite game; but my fanatic loathing of it dates from that afternoon.”
When the rains washed out their cricket playing, Williams was overjoyed. But Harding was undaunted. He had a new sport for them: Northern Quoits, a game like horseshoes played with a steel discus set. If the discus landed with the convex side down, Harding explained, “that’s what we call a ‘lady,’ but you’re too young to know why.” After some play with the discuses, Williams said, “I don’t mind admitting I’ve never seen so many ladies lying on their backs.”
“Nor have I,” Harding said, “and I’m over fifty.”
“This I remember as a very important afternoon,” Williams wrote years later, “because in it I had made Willie smile once and laugh once. It was the beginning of the thawing process, almost as gradual as the melting of the polar ice-cap, but at least a start. And as I got better at the game, so Willie in his unbending way unbent.”
On this trip, Williams led his boss to his favorite place, Bandoola’s camp. It was becoming nearly a second home to Williams. The men arrived early and watched the logging elephants as they neared camp for their afternoon baths. Williams spotted Bandoola immediately. They knew each other by sight now, and Williams often brought the elephant tamarind balls as treats. Bandoola would take them gently from Williams’s hand, curling the end of his trunk around the offering and then popping it into his mouth. He’d then chew slowly, his mouth making loud smacking noises, his eyelids remaining half closed. Williams would pat the front of his trunk or scratch the ridged underside of it. The thickness and weight of Bandoola’s trunk, bigger than both of Williams’s thighs put together, always astounded. The bull himself seemed larger every time they met. While so many things could befall these working elephants, Bandoola was thriving. Harding wouldn’t have any criticisms of him in the lineup.
But then Williams saw another big tusker from a different camp. He had a large abscess on his chest that had clearly gone untreated for some time. Williams figured that Harding would probably erupt over this, though when the old man saw the swelling, he was silent. Williams walked in front of the elephant and tapped his lower jaw so he would raise his head. He touched the abscess, which, he wrote, was “twice the size of my fist.” Still, Harding said nothing. As Williams ordered a knife be brought to him, Harding walked away and sat down on a log to watch.
“I stabbed the abscess with the dagger,” Williams wrote, “and the pus poured down the animal’s chest and foreleg in a stream. I cleaned the abscess out with my fingers, then syringed it with a dilute disinfectant, which I also used for washing the animal’s leg and my own hands and forearm.” It was fast and good work. Williams proudly strolled over to Harding, figuring “that if I had not earned any praise, at least I had avoided a rocket.” But Harding moved away, saying they would discuss the matter later. That evening, the two men sat down for their evening ritual. As Harding sipped his first whiskey, Po Toke appeared and fell to his knees before him in submission. Williams, who felt equally responsible for the abscess, wouldn’t let him face the firing squad alone, and knelt beside him, an extraordinary act for a British man here.
Harding addressed Williams first: “Didn’t this headman tell you the animal was dangerous?”
Williams said no. Harding said it was in the book, and if Williams’s Burmese were better he’d know that. “It’s a wonder the animal didn’t knock your block off,” he said.
Williams was perplexed. He may have been on his knees, but now he was full of fight. “Well, why didn’t one of you stop me operating?”
Harding’s answer was opaque. “For precisely the same reason that the animal didn’t knock your block off,” he said. The boss and the tusker were acknowledging that Williams could get away with liberties around elephants that no other man could.
Then Harding lit into Po Toke, and every one of his words “seemed to go home like a body blow.” Po Toke was shaken when he was dismissed.
Harding turned back to Williams, saying that he didn’t trust Po Toke. Any Burman suspected of nationalist leanings was a threat to the old guard colonialists. Aware of Williams’s loyalty to Po Toke, Harding issued a pointed warning: “Watch him as you go.”
Williams and his big-hearted village dog, Jabo, entertain a visitor.
Williams returned to his regular rounds. But the rainy season brought three serious attacks of malaria. As he had during the war, he would tough them out, but the cumulative effect was telling. He was helped through them by the companionship of a young red-and-white village dog he had picked up named Jabo, who showed him sympathy.
When Harding summoned Williams out of the forest for a trip to headquarters in Rangoon, they hadn’t seen each other in three months. Williams looked so haggard that Harding went easy on him his first night in camp and for the several days of travel down to the capital.
The first thing Williams did when leaving the jungle was catch up on the news from the outside world. He was hungry for it. Aboard the company paddleboat, during the periods of wakefulness, Williams could stay curled up in his bunk reading the newspapers. Back in England, that summer of 1921, unemployment soared, the coal miners ended their strike, and in September, Ernest Shackleton was making his way to Antarctica on what no one knew would be his last voyage.
Harding provided more important news closer to home: He was about to go on leave, so Williams would be temporarily reporting to a different forest manager, a man named Millie. In addition, in a few months’ time, Williams would be overseeing a large district as the replacement for a forest officer going on leave—another move up the ladder for the ambitious young recruit.
Williams and Harding were finally enjoying each other’s company as they cruised down the Chindwin. It felt good to have the boss confiding in him as a colleague. Over drinks one night, Harding went further, becoming nearly paternal: “You may think that I’ve been an absolute devil this last year,” he said. “You’re quite right, I have deliberately. You’ll find Millie a much nicer man than I am, but I trust you to serve him just as loyally all the same.”
Despite the effects of malaria, Williams was happy. “I found myself at last accepted, and the acceptance was all the dearer because it had been so hard to win.” That night, he tried to shrug off how sick he was. But after one marathon card game, he was spent. He was awakened at six in the morning by a cool palm on his forehead. He opened his eyes and saw Harding with a glass in his hand. “Drink that!” he said. “Champagne and stout. Do you a world of good.” Williams drained the glass and went back to sleep. Although Harding would return after his leave, “It was the last order he gave me as my No. 1.”