janiejampot
Phyllis (my protagonist) is a young Anglo-Indian woman with a taint of Indian blood. She marries Arthur, a British soldier stationed near Nainital, a hill station where she runs a restaurant with her sister in the summer months to escape the heat of the family home in Benares.
Arthur is posted back to England in April 1939 just as Hitler is rampaging across Europe. Phyllis leaves her beloved India for the first time as they make the long voyage on HMT Dorsetshire, a British troopship bound for Southampton. She finds herself living in a cold austere climate under the critical eye of Elizabeth (my antagonist), her disapproving mother-in-law. Elizabeth finds Phyllis eccentric and lazy having never done any housework due to growing up with a house full of servants. Elizabeth reports her findings to Arthur who is away with his army unit, slowly but surely his love for Phyllis starts to fade.
As war breaks out in England, Phyllis has her second child. Arthur is posted to Burma where he is killed in action. Phyllis’s mission is to get away from the clutches of her mother-in-law and get back to India before her father dies of malaria. Finally she gets permission from the war office to travel on a troopship back to Bombay two days before she receives the news of her fathers death on 5th January 1945. Phyllis and her two young daughters make the long journey home, to be reunited with Phyllis’s mother and the country she has missed so much.