Press Archive

Observer Magazine
February 21, 1996
Title: The Promise


Jay Morley was rescued from a life of toil in nepal on the promise of a stranger. Now our government wants to send him back.

One day in 1984 computer consultant Richard Morley was climbing Annapurna when his lung collapsed. His life was saved by a Nepalese hillman who ran down the mountain to get help. Basu Khadka wanted only one thing in return: a promise that his son would be taken care of if he died. Six years later, fate brought Morley and the orphaned Jayaram Khadka together and the promise was kept. Now, however, British red tape is preventing a happy ending

THE PROMISE WAS MADE. Made without thinking. Made, shook upon and deftly booted into that useful hinterland of tenses, the future unlikely. It was a bizarre request and would never require payback. The man, for God's sake, had just run for three days without stopping through the world's highest mountains; far from being ill he looked as natural, as permanent, as the Himalaya itself.

The visitor from Britain, himself exhausted, took in the pidgin and the gesturings with bemusement, shrugged, shook his thanks again and turned away from the man whose name he had just learned - a name he suspected he would forget. Nearby, the bus was starting to rattle and belch its message of departure. Weary, he walked over, hauled himself in and began, at last, to lurch back south, every pothole and rock ratcheting him further from that place of near-death, back into the promise of living. Soon the trees had fallen far behind; the valley was lost, the village a memory.

But the promise was made.

ELEVEN YEARS AGO, Richard Morley was 31 years old and almost dead. The computer consultant, who would later go on to make millions by founding a successful small business, was indulging his other main passion - exploration in Nepal. One day in 1984, heaven-high in the Annapurna massif after 5,300m of fat backpacks and thin air, his lung collapsed. 'We'd walked up far too quickly,' he recalls. 'I was sitting down at one point, having a cup of tea in fact, when I suddenly felt this immense pain. The only way I could breathe was by taking tiny little breaths ... it was very scary.'

His walking companion carried him by fireman's lift to the nearest village, Akalopani, where the villagers propped him by a fireside, tried to feed him and watched him sink into oblivion. For almost a week, only hot tea -lapped the shores of his consciousness. Then, at last, a helicopter came, the Nepalese authorities and British Foreign Office having busily wrapped up about three days in red tape. As he was being airlifted to hospital, he remembered to ask the villagers which of them had gone for help: IGladka, he was told. A Mr Khadka.

When he had recovered, Morley made one detour before returning to Britain - a bus trip back to the village to see if he could find the man who had run for three days to save his life. When he finally found Basu IGladka, a local policeman, in front of his hut, IG1adka proudly offered him tea, showed off his home and the youngsters running around outside. In a mixture of languages, through nuances and grunts and gestures, they spoke.

'Thank you,' said the Briton. 'Thank you for saving me. Is there something I can give you?'

The Nepal hillman wanted no money, he said; nothing at all. But... yes, there was one thing. 'If something hap- pens to me, take care of my son. If I die... my son... no father... no home. You promise?'

'I promised,' explains Morley. 'He had my hand in both of his and asked me again, and I looked into his eyes and said: "Yes, I promise." At the time, I just thought of it as a strange experience; touching, in a way. I didn't think a lot more of it.'

Khadka was not quite forgotten, but it's fair to say he was hardly at the forefront of Morley's mind over the next few years as he hauled his company, Grand Bois, to success. Some of his money went on Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean, the first Gothic revivalist mansion in England, the atmospheric site of Raleigh's disastrous proposal to Bess (which landed him in the Tower) and, a quarter- millennium later, the only slightly less disastrous cutting of the last Led Zeppelin album.

There was, however, some sparse communication between Gloucestershire and Nepal; Morley sent IGladka a few letters and a photograph of himself, knowing, he says, it would be highly prized there. He received, over the years, two or three very short notes in hopeless English in return. Then they stopped.

It had taken about a year for each one to arrive, so it was 1990 before Morley realised they had completely stopped; contact was lost.

Basu Khadka died in December 1988. He had, in fact, suffered from a serious heart condition for years. He knew this when he ran down the mountains five years earlier; quite why he made the journey remains a mystery even to Morley. 'It is one of the great enigmas of life. I would hope the answer is a simple one called humanity.'

AND so, in July 1990, Morley went once more to Nepal, mainly to walk but with a faint nagging curiosity as to his rescuer's fate. He found himself in the same area and tried to find the village. It had been all but destroyed by a road- widening scheme, the inhabitants scattered. Finally, after traipsing through half a dozen other villages, he found someone who had known Khadka and was able to pass on the news: 'Khadka? He died.'

'My first concern was about the boy, ' says Morley. 'I felt I had to go to find him. I had made a promise, and I remembered clasping the man's hand.'

It was a near-impossible task. He didn't even know the child's name or age. He assumed - wrongly, as it turned out - he had been one of the children playing in the yard all those years before. He began to ask, to beg, to cajole, through village after village, heading eastwards all the time, spreading an ever widening net for the son of Khadka of the vanished village, landing nothing but shrugs and grunts and shaken heads. Further and further he travelled, lugging his pack through fat, wet, swollen paddies on one gossamer rumour, turning back and lifting sullen knees through two days of rice fields chasing another.

It took a month.

One day, pursuing yet another hopeless hint, he stag- gered off the bus to Baghdaphur, the furthest he had travelled east. He was exhausted, had-tempered, filthy and unshaven, and close to giving up. He loped into the first cafe he saw and demanded tea.

Jayaram Khadka was scrubbing floors inside. He had spent the intervening six years waiting for the arrival of Richard Morley. It was the one gift his father had given him before he died; he took him aside on one rare occasion, passed him the photograph and said: 'This man from the West will come and make you rich and take care of you, and he has promised this.' Jayaram, who was 14 that day in 1990, had been shunted for years between various parts of his extended family throughout that part of Nepal, working since the day he was physically able: down mines, in a stone quarry infamous for its cruelty, in all the dirty and cramped and inhuman places where he and other children could find the necessary misery of work. He had hardly known his father, who was something of a 'rogue', had more than one wife and kept separate lives in separate Blages unth his death. Jayaramwas on his knees, in rags, sweating, a loner with much to be lonely about, when Morley came through the door.

Jayaram Khadka was scrubbing floors. He had spent six years waiting for the arrival of Richard Morley. It was the one gift his father had given him before he died: he took him aside on one rare occasion, passed him the photograph and said: This man from the West will come and make you rich and take care of you, and he has promised this'

The man was in such a bad mood that, at first, he wouldn't even look at him: he practically swept Jayaram aside, seeing him for just another urchin, ignoring the stare that locked and held. 'Are you the man that's come to rescue me?' Morley shook his head, preoccupied, having heard the question more than once on his travels. 'I'm in trouble, sir ... will you take me out of here?'

'Maybe, maybe,' muttered Morley. 'Go away... Just go away.' Finally, glacially resigned to making conversation, he asked the boy his name. Jayaram answered.

'What did you say? What did you say?'

And Jayaram Khadka pulled out a photograph.

THAT WAS MORE than five years ago. Today, Jayaram Morley sits in the reception hall at Clearwell, sipping tea with the man he regards as his only father. Outside, late winter sunshine streams cold across the lawns, up the stone flags, glinting pale off those strange and tiny balls that serve as nature's accidental signpost to the stately homes of England: peacock crap.

Jay, as he is now known, is a shy, trusting and handsome young man, moved eashy to laughter, some of it Bashingly wicked. He is more fluent in English than his early diffidence would suggest. Schooled in Britain for the past five years, he is a dramatically different creature from the terrified wretch who arrived in Britain after Morley had freed him from his work in Nepal and brought him home. He had stood, transfixed, at Gatwick, staring in numb, scared awe before the automatic doors, which he still remembers as his transforming first sight of the West. He had to be taught how to use a knife and fork - and when to ignore them, as for toast. He had to be taught how to use toilet paper. He had to be taught English. He had to be taught everything, and he was, by Morley and his girl-friend. With finesse and careful love, he was transformed. He learned Latin, heard Mozart, travelled widely around Britain and pored over the art and literature of Europe. He made friends all over. He has, he grins shyly as soft yellow lights spring on in Clearwell's dusk, found a girlfriend.

He is, most simply and finally, at home. But he cannot stay. Within the next few weeks, unless the Home Office has reversed its decision, Jayaram Morley will be deported back to Nepal.

THIS TIME, he will not be alone. Richard Morley, who made the boy his son and heir and had determined that he should inherit Clearwell, is preparing to leave this country in disgust. Since the BBC's Here And Now documentary, screened last December - in which perhaps inevitable questions were asked about the precise nature of the relationship between himself and Jayaram - the castle's hotel function has closed and the building is on the market. Twenty jobs have been lost. He will take his money and his anger wherever he has to: Nepal at first, perhaps, but then to other countries where he can look after Jay and continue his education. But, for a long whle, there will be no home.

The BBC questioned some of-the facts in Morley's story. That, for example, he claims to be a widower, although they were unable to find a record of his marriage to a woman called Susan. Morley has refuted their doubts: saying his marriage was a common-law relationship and stating unequivocally: 'I am not gay or bisexual... and I am certainly not a child molester. My relationship with Jay is one of father and son. It is entirely wholesome...'

Last autumn, Morley was almost optimistic. 'I fondly hope that Jayaram will be able to remain. I live in hope that one day we will have a Government capable of showing compassion.' Today, the last hope has fled, and so, soon, will Richard and Jay Morley

In many ways the problem has been as simple as it is surmountable. When Jay first arrived, Morley had filled out the visitor's passport wrongly, under the mistaken impression Jay was about 18 years old (he had, in fact, been lied to about his age by his own family, who needed him to work). The first night Jay had a bath, Morley explains succinctly, he saw that he was a boy of 14, if that. Accordingly, formal adoption procedures proved impossi- ble, thanks to our bureaucracy ('The Government refuses to accept Jayaram's real age. They have said they must accept the age given on his passport, despite all the evidence that this was wrong'). Anywhere else in Europe, Jayaram would by now have been granted citizenship through having lived in the household of an indigenous family; here, because there are no formal adoption documents, the Government insists Jayaram is not a part of the Morley family and remains in the country illegally. Appeal after appeal has failed, and now he must go. The problem, insists Morley, is not actually a rigid enforcement of the law but 'ironically, the Government's refusal to implement the law.'

The 1971 Immigration Act was specifically drawn up to allow 'exceptional circumstances of a compassionate nature' to be brought into play. But, because successive Home Secretaries have refused to give even the vaguest definition of what such compassionate circumstances might be, or even hint at guideline parameters, similar appeals against deportation always fail. No comeback, no guidance as to how to rephrase the next appeal or alter the appellant's circumstances in order to make the bracket. It flies in the face of natural justice, of course.

'To me,' says an angry Morley, 'compassionate means when deportation would result in a human tragedy. I think being separated from the family you've been brought up with amounts to tragedy. It would be dispassionate to deport. There are many cases under current consideration where compassionate circumstances are disputed by the Home Office. Obviously, a principle has to be set, and the Government is concerned at the possibility of opening the floodgates and allowing distant relatives to remain. My concern is that when someone lives within the household, that is immediate family. And what relationship can be more immediate than that between the parent and child, especially when the child is still young and needs parental support?' Last autumn, Morley was almost optimistic. 'I fondly hope that Jayaram will be able to remain. I live in hope that one day we will have a Government in this country capable of showing compassion.'

Richard Morley made a promise. But an even more powerful promise came later - the quiet, unspoken trust between two people growing up as family.

The promise is made.

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