Bleach: Keen to clear name

London, July 27: Believe it or not but Peter Bleach is missing Calcutta — and he intends applying for an Indian visa to return later this year “to clear my name”.

“If the weather does not improve here in Yorkshire, I’m bloody going back to jail,” he joked today, in an interview with The Telegraph.

He is living with his elderly mother, Oceana, in windswept Yorkshire in the village of Brompton-by-Sawdon. This Wuthering Heights-type country could not be further from Calcutta.

“I have had to put on a thermal vest and this morning I had a pullover on,” he complained.

The 53-year-old former arms dealer is also more than a little miffed at reports that he is marrying an Elizabeth “Day”.

He is marrying an Elizabeth all right — “Liz” for short — but his fiancée is an Elizabeth Boyle, a friend he has known for 20 years and who is nursing him back to health.

“It’s very embarrassing,” said Bleach. “I have known Elizabeth Day, who is a close friend, for 30 years and she is happily married to her husband, Mel...”

The confusion between Elizabeth Boyle and Elizabeth Day had arisen because one of Bleach’s friends had absent-mindedly got the surnames mixed up.

“Mistakes do occur,” acknowledged Bleach with a return to good humour. Elizabeth Day used to work for the Conservative Association in Southend, where Bleach first met her. He was for a while the association’s chairman. Elizabeth Day is now secretary at the House of Commons to Sir Teddy Taylor, the Tory MP who championed Bleach’s cause while he languished in a Calcutta jail for eight years after being convicted of terrorist-related offences.

Both Bleach and Elizabeth Boyle (nee Holdstock) have been married before — her two sons, aged 30 and 28, used to play on his farm when they were children, he recalls.

He is unsure how their long-standing platonic friendship turned to romance but it did when he returned from Calcutta earlier this year. “I am officially disabled,” said Bleach. “Only half my lungs are functional — the effect of TB. Life has been very, very difficult.”

He added that he was trying to pick up the pieces of his life. “Liz (Boyle) has been helping me to do that. We do have similar interests.”

The couple is to marry on October 1 at Wrea Head, a small country hotel near Scalby not far from Scarborough, Yorkshire.

The Bishop of York will not officiate, as reported earlier, partly because Bleach and his fiancée have both been married before. “But the guests will include Bishop Steven, the Orthodox Bishop of England, which is very different.”

Whether Bleach really does return to India remains to be seen but he says, at least, he is determined to fly back to Calcutta to prove his innocence.

“There’s no chance I shall let it slide, though sometimes it is tempting to do so,” he said. “There are a lot of unanswered questions — and the people of India deserve an answer.”

“My appeal is with the Calcutta High Court,” he said. “Later this year, I shall apply for a visa when I have sorted out my personal situation. If I don’t get a visa, I shall ask the court to instruct the government to give me a visa.”

Bleach made it clear he was not judging the people of India or of Calcutta based on his eight years in prison. “I’m disappointed I did not get to see much of Calcutta — it’s a wonderful city.”

He said he hoped to put this right next time.