I loved our private back garden in Golden Valley. The roses in June and July, the huge poinsettia bushes with the bright-red flowers, the anthuriums, the purple asters surrounded by big drifts of pale-blue butterflies, and the lovely orchid tree with its heart-shaped leaves and flowers of white and pink. The birds too, especially the luminous green ones and the hawks swooping across the clear blue sky high above the ancient padauk tree which had been there long before the house was built.
When we moved in I’d asked the Burmese gardener what the padauk was called in English. He said it had no English name but told me it was a member of the pea family and it produced a hardwood a bit like rosewood. He offered to chop it down, but I told him no. I’m so glad I did because in April, when the weather was so hot and dusty I thought I’d never survive, it burst into blossom and turned gold overnight. And, as the delicate fragrance of the padauk hung in the evening air, Simone and I would sit out, watching for the snakes living in the trees and batting our hands at the flying insects. We’d drink our gin and tonics and laugh about our husbands’ quirks and sometimes end up quite drunk. We rose at five in the morning back then to escape the heat and I slept most of the day.
The gardener also told me it was Thingyan or water festival time, and Burma’s new year, when everybody who dares go out is met with a bucket of water thrown over the head. Not a bad thing, I thought, given the weather, although Douglas cautioned against it and it was never wise to disagree.
Our house was beautiful. Painted white, the airy bedrooms caught the breeze from the veranda circling the house, and I often spent the afternoons resting on a chaise longue in the upstairs day room where a through draught gave some relief from the heat. All the hardwood floors were dark and polished to such a sheen I swear you could see your face in them. The wooden shutters, originally bright green, quickly faded to a subtler paler green which I preferred. Tall palms shaded the front of the house and tropical bushes and plants lined a curving pond at the side.
Among the other trees we had one bodhi tree, an acacia and a shady tamarind where the ayah would park my darling’s pram.
I will never forget the day they dug my precious garden up and dragged the pond, killing the fish and destroying the planting, and what did the police find for their trouble, digging for all they were worth in that terrible burning heat?