Enchanted Evening (22 page)

What with all the pre-wedding flap, followed by that spell in Shadipore, and one thing and another, I had, again, been too preoccupied with my own affairs to keep track of Kitten's. I now discovered that she had written off the young man who had been in hot pursuit when I had last been paying attention, and that he had been replaced in her affections by not one but
three
ardent suitors, all in the Indian Cavalry, though in different regiments, and all equally tall and charming. Her trouble at the moment was that she could not choose between them. I insisted on remaining strictly neutral and refused to advise.

Kitten was, when I first knew her, the most attractive creature: small and slim and green-eyed, with the most lovely red-gold hair, the sort of girl that chaps fall for on sight. The fact that the three she had acquired were all friends helped a lot; and since Kitten made it clear to them that wherever she went, I went too, I had a lot of fun, for I had met all three before and their manners were far too good to allow me to feel that I was the odd one out. Which would certainly have happened if there had been a single suitor. As it was, I was never allowed to feel
de trop,
and while Kitten was a house guest on the ‘Sunflower', the days were filled with luncheons at Nedou's, picnics on the lakes or in a Mogul garden, expeditions to Vernarg, whose secret springs are the source of the Jhelum, and to the lovely little garden of Achabal that was planted by Shah Jehan and said to be his favourite among the Mogul gardens.

Some nights Mahdoo provided dinner for the five of us, but very rarely on dance nights, in other words every night but Sunday, for when there wasn't a dance in Nedou's Ballroom, there was one at the Srinagar Club, with the attraction of a ‘gramophone hop' at the Nageem Bagh Club – an attractive option, since it entailed a half-hour
shikarra
trip by starlight or moonlight through the romantic waterways that link the D
ā
l Gate to the main lakes.

The
shikarra
rides presented a problem, for since none of the three boys would allow Kitten to be rowed
tête-à-tête
with only one of the others, she either had to go with me and one of her suitors, or with two of them while I went with the third. I got a lot of fun out of watching the manoeuvring of the boys, each of them keeping a wary eye on his friends for fear that one of them would outsmart the other and get her to himself. I lent an interested ear to all of them in turn, while they confided their hopes and fears to me, secure in the knowledge that Kitten was in the company of both the others. And because they were nice young men, and afraid that I might feel like the mother-of-all-gooseberries, and resent it, they put themselves out to be nice to me, so that although lacking a cavalier of my own, I was looked after and entertained royally.

By the end of her stay with me, my parents due to return ‘any day now', not one of Kitten's three beaux had been able to get her alone (the other two always made sure of that!) and she herself had still not made up her mind which one she preferred. Asked for my advice for the umpteenth time, I said rather crossly that if she really was unable to choose between them, then she obviously wasn't in love with any of them. In which case I suggested that she kissed the boys goodbye and started again from scratch with somebody else …

On the other hand, if she was set on being cold-blooded about it, then why not play ‘eeny-meeny-miney-mo' with them, or just toss a coin? Kitten said that I didn't understand, burst into tears and rushed out of the room. Well, she was right there. I didn't understand. But of one thing I was sure. The boys' leave was almost up, and they had already hired a car between them to take them down to Rawalpindi and the railway, and booked a table at Nedou's for a farewell dinner party and dance on their last but one night. One never knew when those dances would end until the band broke into ‘J'attendrai'. That melody spelt ‘Goodnight all, we're packing it in', and it had become a custom for couples with a sentimental interest in each other, if they were dancing together when the band launched into that tune, to make for the nearest door to the garden when it ended, instead of rejoining the members of their party on the stage or the sitting-out area around the ballroom floor.

I don't think Claud, Dick or Andrew had recalled this habit until the dancing began, but I was aware of their increasing anxiety as the evening wore on, for it was fairly obvious that whichever of the three happened to be dancing with Kitten when that tune began would whisk her away into the garden the moment that it ended. And though they continued to behave beautifully to me, and I danced every dance, they began to watch Kitten over my shoulder, and to lose the thread of any conversation. I was enthralled!

The floor was still cluttered with dancers and the time well past one o'clock when the band began that fateful melody. Kitten had been dancing with Dick, and they must have been near the door at the far end of the room, because we didn't see them leave. The band played ‘God Save the King' and we all dutifully stood to attention. But when it stopped there was no sign of them; and though Claud and Andrew and I stayed on, talking and sipping our drinks long after the other dancers had dispersed and the big ballroom was empty except for ourselves and the hotel
khitmagars
, who were clearing away the usual debris of a dance night, they did not return. In the end, Claud took me home in a tonga, and came in and drank cups and cups of hot coffee (prepared by Mahdoo, who had been waiting up for me) and poured out all his woes. He seemed convinced (they all were) that the first one of them to get Kitten alone would be able to talk her into marrying him. I attempted to comfort the out-smarted suitor, but without much success, and finally, at about three o'clock, managed to persuade him to leave. Kitten returned shortly afterwards with the information that she was engaged to Dick, and I said: ‘Oh, good-o,' and went back to sleep.

She told me next morning that he was the only man in the world for her, and that she couldn't understand why she hadn't realized it before; she must have been mad not to know it at once, and she was deliriously happy.

The boys left for their respective regiments; my parents returned from South India and received the usual delirious welcome from Angelina and the Lizel Kaz. Kitten left for Delhi, where Dick had arranged for some friends of his to put her up, and I received a distracted letter from her telling me that Dick had been sent off on some military business and had asked his brother to meet her at Delhi and look after her until he could get back to Delhi himself. ‘But, oh Moll, I'm in such a muddle,' wrote Kitten. ‘I don't know what to do. What would you do if you were me?'

It took me some time to sort out what she was in a muddle about, but in the course of several more distracted letters it became clear that Dick and his brother were twins. Well, we all knew that, and it had been mentioned to her again and again, but what with being too busy playing ‘eeny-meeny-miney-mo' with her three suitors she hadn't bothered to pay much attention to it. The trouble was that they were very nearly identical twins. When I say ‘very nearly', I mean that when they were together one could tell at once which was which. But if one of them walked into a room alone I never had the least idea which one it was. Kitten hadn't given the ‘twins' angle a thought, and stepping off the train on to Delhi station platform, she had seen what she supposed to be Dick, who must have wriggled out of his Army chore after all, and had flung herself into his arms with cries of joy. Only to discover that she was embracing the wrong brother.

‘The awful thing about it is that he's better looking than Dick,' wrote Kitten. ‘And I
know
you won't understand, you never do, but what would
you
do if you'd just fallen madly in love with a man, and hadn't seen him for a week or two, and then met him again, and thought he was even better and handsomer and nicer than you'd thought, and having hugged and kissed him, found that it wasn't him at all, but his twin brother! What
would
you do? It isn't fair –!'

Well, I see her point. That's a
very
tricky one. The trouble was, of course, that Gerald
was
better looking and nicer than Dick, and she hadn't really had the time as yet to get to know Dick really well. If she'd met the two together, or Gerald first, there is no doubt at all which she would have gone after. I don't know how they sorted it out between them, but I was told by several chums who were at their wedding (which I missed by being incarcerated at the time in the Islington Isolation Hospital for Infectious Diseases, having acquired two kinds of measles, German and common-or-garden, at the same time) that Kitten looked ravishing in her wedding dress, but when she came up the aisle to where the groom and his twin, the best man, awaited her, no one was quite sure until the last possible moment which one she would marry.

She sent me her wedding bouquet, a lovely mixture of lilies and white orchids that sent the nurses in the hospital into raptures; the matron told me that normally the only time they saw that sort of bouquet was in connection with a funeral. But a bride's bouquet! – that really was something
romantic
. I handed it on to the Sisters' sitting-room. The marriage seems to have been a success.

*   *   *

Tacklow had finally decided to take the job that had been offered to him, provided it was cleared with the F and P. Mother had approved of the house and been charmed by the royal women, one of whom, with attendant ladies of the
zennana
, came up to Srinagar with her husband for a ‘Princes' Polo Week' hosted by HH of Kashmir. Mother and I were both invited to a
purdah
-party, a women-only tea party in the upper room of one of HH's guest-houses, and I have never in my life seen so many truly beautiful women in one room. They were truly dazzling; even the older ones. Their saris were of the kind that were woven in Benares only for the wives and daughters of India's princely houses or, very occasionally, for the women-folk of her millionaires. But never for lesser mortals. Their jewels had been re-cut in Amsterdam and re-designed in Paris, and their shoes were made in Italy. And apart from their outstanding beauty and charm, on which no price could have been set, each one, as she stood there, must have been worth at least a million sterling, which in present terms would be thirty to forty million.

It was a privilege to see them; and we shall never see their like again. For after Independence and Partition, when the Princes were abolished and their revenues were subject to punitive taxes, it became too dangerous to flaunt fabulous jewels, since to own great riches brought the tax gatherers down. The legendary jewels of the ‘Kings' went into hiding, and though men must still know where they are it is possible that in time their hiding places may be forgotten and they will lie hidden for centuries.

Chapter 17

You would have thought that the location of Tacklow's new job, and the identity of his employer, would have been of sufficient importance to me to ensure that I remembered all about it. After all, I too would be making my home there for the next three years, and that alone must have been a matter of considerable interest to me. Instead, there is a complete blank in my mind concerning that job, what it was, where it was, with whom it was.

The blank remains to this day. I remember them coming back and Kitten leaving; and I must have received the impression that all had gone well and the future looked rosy. Because if it were not so, I feel sure that I would have remembered that. I certainly remember a feeling of aimlessness and of being at a loose end without Bets around to talk things over with; and of flatness and nothing-to-do, without Kitten and her adorers to fill every minute of the day with interest and amusement. Now, with both Bets and Kitten gone, my days would have been dull indeed if it had not been for that box of miniature poster paints. I fell back on them for my entertainment and worked hard at improving the technique.

Mother and I went out painting almost every day, sometimes in a
shikarra
and sometimes in the car. We were never short of subjects, for there were pictures wherever one looked, and Kashmir spoiled me for ever for sketching in the West, particularly in the land that all Anglo-Indians invariably referred to as ‘home'.

Srinagar began to fill up again for the brief autumn season, as up in Gulmarg the nights became too chilly and frost glittered on the
marg
every morning. One by one the huts emptied as their occupants left for the warmer temperatures in the valley below, leaving the
chowkidars
to roll up carpets, mattresses and curtains and stow them away among the shrouded furniture stacked for greater protection in one of the innermost rooms, before locking the doors and boarding every window with stout wooden shutters that would not be taken down until the following spring.

In the valley the willows and poplars, walnuts, chestnuts and fruit trees began to change colour, and high up on the side of the Takt-i-Suliman a single chenar tree that had somehow managed to take root and survive on what was then a completely barren slope signalled the coming of the cold weather by turning a brilliant scarlet. And one by one the holiday-makers began to leave for British India and the plains.

Houseboats, hotels and guest-houses emptied, and I started on a round of visits, spending a few days and nights with kind friends with whom I had danced and acted in a number of charity cabaret shows during the past year, and who in the kindness of their hearts decided that I must be cheered up and entertained to keep me from moping over the departure of my sister from the fold. It was very sweet of them and much appreciated, since it was also in a way a goodbye from the Punjab: the people I would meet down south would be different from the ones I had known in the north.