Enchanted Evening (23 page)

Tacklow was due to take up his new appointment at the end of October, which was one of the best times of year on the plains. September could be not only hot with the left-over heat-waves and dust-storms of the summer months, but intolerably damp and muggy from the remnants of the monsoon. The cold weather proper started at the beginning of November.

Bets's birthday being on 13 October, we used to celebrate the occasion by a picnic up to Gulmarg, returning to Srinagar in time to dine and dance at Nedou's that evening, festivities which also served to mark, for us, the end of the Kashmir season. After that all hot-weather visitors got down to packing up, paying their bills and saying goodbye to friends, many of whom would be leaving for widely separated sections of the map and whom we would therefore not see again until the hot weather drove them up to the hills once more. I would certainly have returned to the ‘Sunflower' in time to help deal with this last stage of the annual sarabande, so I can only suppose that the letter cancelling Tacklow's job must have arrived while I was away and that they had had time to get used to it, and to accept it, and saw no point in writing to tell me about it, let alone sending for me.

If they could have got out of telling me about it, I am sure that they would have done so. But there was no way of hiding it, since all the plans for our removal from Kashmir, our stop-over in New Delhi to see Bets and her husband, and all the arrangements for the long journey south, had to be cancelled. Until we could make alternative ones we would have to retain the ‘Sunflower' and its crew and stay where we were.

It was Tacklow who told me what had happened. I don't think he trusted Mother not to get too upset about it again. She had been so angry. He had received a most regretful and apologetic letter from the Diwan of his would-be employer, who was obviously deeply embarrassed by having to write it, to say that when (as was customary among the princely states) the Foreign and Political Department had been informed of the employment of Sir Cecil Kaye, they had been ‘advised' against it on the grounds that Sir Cecil was
persona non grata
among the Department, and ‘regarded as a trouble-maker' –
Tacklow
. Of all people! ‘It's like being black-balled from my Club,' said Tacklow bitterly, ‘and never being able to enter it again.'

The head of the state which had wished to employ him could, of course, have ignored the ‘advice' and insisted on taking him on. Some most undesirable characters had, in the past, been employed by princes who had been strongly advised by the Government not to touch them with a bargepole, yet had insisted on their right to do so. Such appointments had frequently led to scandal and disaster and to the Department saying ‘We
told
you so, didn't we!' And even when they didn't, a refusal to take advice went down in the books as a black mark, and was something to be avoided.

Nonetheless, there was a strong hint in the Diwan's letter that if Tacklow desired it, His Highness was prepared to tell the F and P to jump in the lake, and go ahead with employing him; and, speaking for myself, I was so furious that I was all for that. But I might have known that Tacklow wouldn't dream of agreeing – because to do so would only mean trouble for the state in the future. Besides, he simply did not know how to do nasty, sneaky, underhand things, any more than he knew how to tell lies.

He had been badly hit by the Tonk débâcle, so badly that he had wanted to have no more to do with India and its lies and intrigues, and had escaped from it to the China of his happiest memories. There had been no resting place there, and no option but to return to India, for his son was there and his wife and daughters couldn't wait to get back there – Bets to be married and Moll because she regarded it as home, and his darling Daisy because it was the country to which he had brought her as a teenage bride over a quarter of a century ago.

The pressure to return had been too great. But so had the expenses. The visit to Japan. A winter season in Delhi. Bets's trousseau and her wedding. It had all cost a good deal more than he had budgeted for, and if there was one thing that Tacklow was scared of it was getting into debt. He had had no desire to take another job, however well paid, in an Indian state. Not after the horrors of that last one. But when the offer came he could not afford to turn it down. And now this death blow …

I suppose he should have realized that in the Government of India the Departments stuck together in the manner of the mafiosi. According to Mother, there had been quite a lot of dismay when Tacklow, a soldier by profession, had been appointed Director of Central Intelligence – a post which until then had always been one of the plum jobs of the ‘Heaven-born'. Mother had once told me that some of them ‘hadn't liked it at all' and had been ‘excessively catty about it' – their wives, I presume (though when it comes to cattiness no one can be as catty as a tom cat) – but that ‘fortunately', that sort of thing ‘slid off Tacklow's back and he never even noticed it'. He had
had
to notice it in Tonk because his nose had been rubbed in it. And he was noticing this time! Both of them were. The only thing I remember with painful clarity is how angry Mother was and how
old
Tacklow looked … how frighteningly old.

*   *   *

Everything had been discussed and decided upon while I was still away. I wasn't asked to give my views on my parents' future, or my own. This time Tacklow was going to do what he wanted to do. He had been a roving correspondent for the
Near East and India
ever since he had left England in the autumn of 1927, and now he had cabled them to ask if he could take over again as editor, a post that was due to fall vacant in a year's time. The reply being ‘yes', he had written to book passages for Mother, himself and me on a passenger ship sailing from Bombay on the last day of March. Mother had already written off to a number of her special friends, asking if she could come and stay with them for a week or ten days, because Tacklow planned to stay with his sister, Aunt Molly, up with whom she would not put, while they went house-hunting. Since I was no fonder of Aunt Molly than Mother was, I also made arrangements to stay with friends until such a time as my parents found a house they liked and could afford. And in the meantime I went on what I thought was going to be a last, lovely spree in Kashmir.

There being no longer any reason for giving up the boat, we kept it on, moored at the Club
ghat
; and Mother and I went out painting every day, with a view to giving a last exhibition of our work in Delhi when the time came to pack up and leave for good. The valley put on its best party-dress for us and blazed with red and gold, and my brother Bill and my cousin Dick Hamblyn came up together to spend a short leave on the ‘Sunflower'.

Aud Wrench had invited me to stay with her for Christmas. And now, since her father, Sir Evelyn, was due to retire in the spring and her family too would be sailing home at the end of the season, they invited me to come down again to Delhi ahead of my family, and spend ten days with them so that I could join in all the goodbye parties that they were planning. Bets, too, was in Delhi in a minute ‘married-quarter' that had no room for guests, so she could not put me up. But we saw a good deal of each other during that Christmas visit to the Wrenches, and again when I came down at the end of February.

Tacklow and Mother were going to spend a few days in Old Delhi with a long-time friend of theirs, an Indian doctor who, years later, I used as the model for Gobind Dass, Kaka-ji's doctor in
The Far Pavilions.
He had a lovely house in Old Delhi, one of the old nineteenth-century bungalows, and I think he must have been the man who lent us the house in Gupkar Road in which we stayed when we first came up to Kashmir in that dismal March of 1927. He had been a friend and neighbour of my parents when Tacklow was the Director of Central Intelligence, and he and my parents had houses in Rajpore Road.

Bets drove me over from the Wrenches' house in New Delhi to meet them, and I was shocked to see how tired and depressed they both seemed, and that Mother's eyes were red as though she had been crying. I put that down to tiredness and the long, dusty journey down from the Grand Trunk Road from Lahore, which was their last stopping place. But it wasn't that. It was Angelina Sugar-peas …

They had both realized that they could not take Angie to England with them. There were no quarantine restrictions in those days, but they could not expect friends in England, or hotels either, to put up with a monkey – and an extremely destructive one too! – as a house guest. Nor was there any chance of their coming back again, as they had come back from China. For one thing, they couldn't afford to. And Mahdoo and Kadera had both been found well-paid jobs in which they felt happy and comfortable, but their new employers would not take on Kadera plus Angie. Tacklow had arranged to take the Lizel Kaz to England with him. But Mother could not possibly take Angie. In the end Tacklow had made a special journey down to Lahore earlier that winter, in order to discuss the matter with the sympathetic head of the Lahore Zoo, who out of the kindness of his heart eventually agreed to accept Angie and do his best to make her happy. It was good of him, since brown monkeys are as common as locusts throughout the sub-continent and the last thing any zoo wanted was yet
another
of them. Tacklow had been so grateful that he had made the zoo a donation of a thousand rupees (which he could ill afford) in Angie's name.

Mother had taken a lot of comfort from the fact that Angie would have others of her own kind to play with, and when the time came for them to leave Kashmir, Angie spent most of the long journey sitting on Mother's lap, both paws on the wheel, pretending that she was driving, only retiring to Kadera on the back seat for the occasional nap. Mahdoo, as usual, had gone down ahead of them by bus and train to Delhi, to keep an eye on the heavy luggage, and Kaz travelled on Tacklow's knee.

The boss of the Lahore Zoo had been there to meet them, and be introduced to Angie so that she would know he was a friend and must not on
any
account be bitten, and she sat on his knee, sniffed at his coat and tweaked his ear-lobes, and decided that he was OK.

He took them to see the new addition that had been attached to the monkey cage, in which she would spend a few days, making the acquaintance of the other monkeys through the wire in case they might attack the stranger. Once they got used to her and she to them, she would be allowed to join the group, and with luck she would mate with the dominant male and have a baby to fuss over and keep her occupied and happy. Mother had taken her into the cage and let her look at it all, and touch noses with an inquisitive monkey in the main cage, and all seemed to be going well until Mother tried to leave. Angie leapt on her and hung on to her like a limpet, and it took a long time before she could be detached to let Mother get outside the cage. It was painfully clear that she knew she was being abandoned. She had leapt and howled and shrieked, clutching at the bars and trying to squeeze out between them – pushing her skinny little arms out and begging Mother to rescue her. Tacklow said it was a most harrowing performance, and in the end, he said: ‘I had to
drag
your Mother away – she was in floods of tears.'

They were staying the night at Faletti's Hotel, so that they could pay another visit to the zoo the next day to see how Angie was settling in and make her feel that they were still around. But it had been a grave mistake. They had both expected her to greet them with rapture. But instinct had told her that this time she was being left for good, and monkeys can be horribly human. She was sitting on the ground staring out between the bars, and when she saw them she turned her back on them quite deliberately and refused to look at them or speak to them. She knew. Kadera, telling me about it, said, ‘She knew that this was not like the last time. That this time the Lady-Sahib would never come back.'

Apparently they stayed there for quite a time, trying to persuade Angie to speak to them or look at them. But it was no good. They had sentenced her to prison for life, and she knew it. And when they gave up and left, they were all in tears. Tacklow said that it would probably have been far kinder to have a vet put her down, but that the ‘zoo man' had been so
sure
that once she got friendly with the other monkeys, and could be allowed to have the run of the big cage with its trees and shrubs, she would enjoy life among her own kind and get herself a husband. Sadly, the zoo man was wrong. Angie went on hunger strike and starved herself to death.

A few days later Bets rang me up around breakfast time to say that Mother had rung her to say that Tacklow had just had a mild heart-attack and would she get in touch with me at once, and both of us come round as soon as we could. He and Kaz had been taking their customary pre-
chota-hazri
stroll in the garden and he was still in his dressing-gown, when he suddenly doubled up and collapsed on the lawn. Fortunately both the doctor and Kadera were on the verandah at the time, and seeing him fall they ran out and carried him back to bed, and the doctor, who must have been only too familiar with heart-attacks, had given him something that had brought him round. But he would have to stay in bed for some days, and he must be kept quite quiet if he was going to be fit enough for the train journey to Bombay.

It didn't sound too terrifying, and by the time Bets had dropped William Henry at his office, picked me up at the Wrenches' and brought us to the
Hakim-Sahib
's house in Old Delhi, my heart had stopped flopping and twitching like a newly-caught trout, and I was almost able to breathe properly again. We found Tacklow sitting propped up on pillows in his bed, looking a bit pallid, but otherwise in fairly good shape, and were reassured to see the doctor sitting on the edge of the bed, issuing instructions to Mother about what she was to give him, and when, and how often and so on …