Marie Grace John

Story

My Sister Marie Part 1.

My sister Marie (born Marie Grace Faithful) was born in Patna to James and Maude Faithful and was their first child. My parents were married in Bankipore Cathedral on 2 April 1923 and Marie duly arrived on the 2March 1924 the first of eight children, myself Elizabeth being the last.

She went to St. Joseph’s Convent in Bankipore along with my two other sisters, Ida (born 1925) and Winnie (born 1927). She told me many stories of life during her childhood. Since she was almost 13 years older than me, she was like a little mother to me and to all of us, her siblings. She was a tall, beautiful girl slightly Junoesque in stature and the most loving and devoted of sisters anybody could wish to have.

Both she and my other sisters told me how they had to have cold water baths every morning despite the weather which in Patna is cold in the winter and that Winnie the youngest of the three and always delicate had contracted pleurisy but the German nun in charge of their morning ablutions insisted she continue with the cold water bath and when she started crying hit her with her Kharam (wooden clog) on the back which made Winnie almost faint. At this, Marie – trying merely to stop the nun from hitting her little sister, grabbed her wimple which came off in Marie’s hand and the result was instant expulsion from the convent for Marie. My parents then took the other two out of the convent and that was the end of their formal education.

In those days of the Raj, life was pretty structured and girls were supposed to be ladies and not pursue occupations classed as unladylike hence, things like swimming, cycling etc., were not encouraged (I have never learned to cycle nor to swim!). Marie, however, decided she would like to do this and she told me that one day she grabbed the postman’s bike and got on it and was riding round the garden – our house was surrounded by about three acres of garden – and when my parents saw her, they gave chase with hockey sticks trying to knock her off the bike. It must have been quite hilarious although probably a bit frightening for her at the time.

I remember my sister Ida being soundly ticked off for whistling (A whistling woman and a crowing hen are an abomination to the Lord and Man). Marie not only whistled very well but could yodel and had the voice of an angel. Marie could also swim and skate.

She was altogether a beautiful and talented girl who in today’s world would have been encouraged to excel in all the things which were then rigorously suppressed.

We were living in Sandell Street in Princes Mansions when the Second World War was declared and I remember Marie taking us, her siblings, to the pictures to see ‘Caught in the Draft’. On the way back the air raid sirens started and it is a sound which one never forgets. Marie shepherded us all into a nearby Modi\’s shop. The Modi (grocer) knew my mother and took us into the back of the shop where we sat among sandbags until the all clear was sounded when we went home.

I also remember an incident when we were coming down the stairs when a black cat jumped at Marie and she screamed and jumped to avoid it and fell down the stairs breaking her ankle. She did not like cats and although in later life she was not so nervous about them, she did not like them to touch her. I, on the other hand, always loved cats and used to have at least one at my home.

Anyway, in 1942 after the Japs bombed Calcutta, my mother’s sister, our Aunty Dolly took us – all the seven remaining children to Ranchi where we lived in a large house in Old Commissioner’s Compound very near the Ranchi Lake. Life was very civilised. Ranchi was a one horse town in those days only famous for the lunatic asylum run by Col. Berkeley Hill who was a friend of ours. My tutor was Mrs Aileen DeSilva and our days were spent keeping a shining home and doing needlework both for the house and for the churches. We made altar cloths for both the Catholic and Anglican churches. Aunty Dolly was Anglican and the rest of us Catholic so we were visited by both priests, Father Da Molda (Dutch) and Reverend Syng (English). Since my Uncle ran a furniture contracting business and supplied the British Army we also had many British Officers visiting us.

Marie was married from the house in Ranchi to Wilson John – ten years her senior and she left us and went with him to Assam but came back home for the last few months of her first pregnancy so Ivan, her first boy was born on Sunday evening the 12 March 1944 in the Ranchi Hospital amid great excitement for all of us.

See Part 2

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