Life of Jane continued

                    From India to Canada


      Jane was reading a book in her bedroom when her father suddenly appeared at the bedroom  door. "We're leaving," Mr. Sinclair said in his gruff northern English accent. "Get dressed. We've got to leave here now."
     "Oh Daddy,I - "
     "Quick Jane. get dressed. I said now."
     Ouside in the courtyard, the six Britishers, the Sinclair family and  Jean, the children's nanny,waited in the courtyard for Rama the long time driver. It was a blazing hot afternoon and finally Rama turned up. This short, dark-faced man had driven their Vauxhall car for years. Now he piled their bags of luggage into the back seat of the car and into the trunk.
     The six Britishers squeezed into the front seat and back seat, as fear ran through their bodies. As Rama drove them to the railroad station, they could see on the sides of the road, and sometimes on it, crowds of Indians. They brandished sticks and screamed at the passing car. "Quit India," some of them shouted at these white refugees. "Get out of here."
     "They don't know what they're saying," Rama said." Sahib, they've been paid to say these things."
     "We've got to leave,' Doctor Sinclair said, as he sat beside his  wife who was squeezed with him into the front seats. He wiped his hands through his thinning blonde hair. "We have to get out of here and get to the railway station."
     "It's all over for us here,' said Mrs. Sinclair.who sat perched between her husband and Rama. "That lousy Mountbatten. He's doing this far too fast. What a louse that man is. He set the date for Indian independence for August this year, and he's going through with  it, come hell or high water."
     After ten minutes of  life in a sweaty hot car, Rama drove them up to the railway station. He dumped all their bags onto the road, and just drove off, as soon as the six passengers got out. "Well there goes one good car," Mrs. Sinclair said. "God, we've lost so much including that car."
     "No use looking back Diane," the doctor said. "Now where the hell is that bloody train?'
     
A few hours later the train pulled up. It was packed to the rafters with Britishers fleeing India as this huge subcontinent in 1947 slid into independence and temporary chaos. The Sinclairs spent the next three days on the train as it hurtled across India to a port on the country's west side. Then they were on a ship that travelled through the Suez canal and towards England.
   On the ship Jane bunked in a small cabin, along with Beatrice, her mother, Jean, and at least half a dozen women of all ages The doctor and Jane's brother bunked in a similarly crowded  room full of men. The girls in the room, some in their teens, gossipped, or ran around the ship when they could escape their mothers or nannies. Often they were hungry or sometimes, just plain tired .
     After days of travelling, the ship, a huge ocean liner, slipped into the port of Southhampton.
     "England," her father said as the Sinclair family and hundreds of others made their way down the gangplank. "Bloody England. I don't think this is the best time to come back here."He was right .

                To be continued.