Enchanted Evening (24 page)

He had, he told us, phoned the Walker Hospital on the Ridge, who were sending along a nurse to keep an eye on the invalid for the next few days, ‘just in case', and he would make arrangements for a night-nurse to take over from the day one. At which both my parents had protested, insisting that he wasn't nearly ill enough to warrant the valuable time of two nurses, and Mother, who like most women who had lived through the 1914–18 war had taken a course of nursing under the Red Cross, protested that she could do anything that needed to be done for Cecil; the doctor only had to tell her. The doctor, however, stuck to his guns, and a nurse duly turned up, though there didn't seem to be much for her to do.

For the next few days I spent most of my time in or near Tacklow's room, Bets fetching me from the Wrenches' every morning and taking me back every night. I didn't know anything about heart-attacks, and nor did Mother. But it worried me that Tacklow should insist on finishing an article he had been writing for the
Near East and India
. We did try to stop him, but he insisted that it must be done in time to catch the next mail boat, and seemed so upset at the prospect of missing it that even the doctor agreed that he had better be allowed to do it. So he sat propped up in bed with the ceiling fan sweeping round above him, and wrote and wrote, with Kaz lying curled up against him, occasionally making a dab at the moving pencil with one black paw.

I had cancelled all my daytime engagements, including one that Aud had arranged long ago, to drive over with a party of friends to Meerut to watch the final of the Inter-Regimental Polo Tournament. This was something Aud had avoided doing for several seasons past, because the last time she went she had seen Tony Greenaway, the young cavalry officer to whom she had only recently become engaged, killed on the polo-ground by a ball that struck him between the eyes. But one cannot wear the willow for ever; and since she and her family would shortly be leaving India for good, she had decided to take this last chance of seeing some of the best and most exciting polo in India, and made up another goodbye party of her friends, which included myself and about half-a-dozen others.

Tacklow had known about it well before he had had that heart-attack, and I hoped that he would forget. But he hadn't; and when, on inquiring, he learned this was one of the invitations I had cancelled, he put his foot down and insisted it be kept. He would, he said, have liked to have seen the finals himself, but since he couldn't, I must describe it for him. In the end I agreed, provided the doctor gave me the OK. Though in the event I very nearly cancelled it, and I shall always regret that I didn't.

One hot, still afternoon, when he had finished that article at last, and Bets had driven Mother to the Post Office with it because they wanted to be absolutely certain that it had the proper stamps on it and see that it went off safely; when the doctor was on duty in the hospital and the day-nurse was sound asleep on a cot on the back of the verandah, and Tacklow and I had the house to ourselves except for Kaz, who had tucked herself under Tacklow's chin and was purring gently, Tacklow suddenly said: ‘This is the end of the road for me, Moll. I'm finished – my number's up.'

I don't remember what we had been talking about – nothing of much importance. But there had been a pause in the conversation, and without any warning at all, he suddenly came out with that terrifying sentence. It was as if he had thrown a great lump of rock into a quiet pool, and I couldn't speak. I've never been so frightened in my life. I'd been frightened in Peking when he came out with that verse from
Show Boat
– about being tired of living and afraid of dying. But this was pure terror and I was Lot's wife freezing into a pillar of salt, or one of Polydectes' guests turning into stone at the sight of Medusa's head.

Tacklow said: ‘I've tried to warn your Mother … to make it a little easier for her. But she doesn't understand. It only upsets her…'

And because I was terrified, I leapt from terror into anger; it was a sort of escape from fear, I suppose. I remember shouting at him: ‘Don't be so silly! You've only had a mild heart-attack, and you're getting on fine. You oughtn't to scare the daylights out of us by saying such stupid things! I'm not surprised Mother's upset!'

‘She's no mathematician,' said Tacklow. And when I asked what on earth mathematics had to do with it, he said he'd worked it all out years ago: the ages at which four or five generations of his family in the direct line had died. ‘That's why I know that my time is up,' he said.

Why, I wonder, should one find an escape from fear in anger? I couldn't
breathe
because I was so frightened. I wanted to throw my arms round him and hold him tight and beg him not to leave me because I could not cope with life without him. Instead I merely lost my temper, and if he had lost his we'd have had a blazing row. But then Tacklow wasn't that sort of person; he had always been a quiet man and now he only looked at me a little sadly as I flung a lot of angry words at him before running out of the room to bring up my lunch behind the bougainvillaea bushes in the garden. After which I didn't have a chance to see him alone and apologize, for by the time I was fit to be seen again, Mother and Bets had come back, and then Kadera arrived with the tea-tray and everything steadied down a bit.

The day-nurse reappeared, and when the doctor came back and seemed pleased with Tacklow's condition, I felt enormously reassured. Nothing really bad could happen to him while he had a doctor and a nurse all to himself, and when I said goodnight to him that evening I hugged him very tightly in a silent apology, and he said: ‘Poor Mouse! Don't worry darling – I could have got my sums wrong. Have a nice time in Meerut, and you can tell me all about it when you get back.' And then Bets drove me back to New Delhi and dropped me off at the Wrenches' house. I know now why he invented that nonsense about mathematics. Because he didn't want me to blame anyone.
1
Darling Tacklow …

I rang Mother early next morning to find out how he was doing, and she put me on to the doctor, and since both reports were reassuring, I went off with Aud's party to Meerut to watch the finals of the Inter-Regimentals. I don't remember anything about them, except that there was a good game and we were all invited by mutual friends in the teams to have drinks in the Club afterwards; and that the celebrations went on until they turned into a supper party, so that by the time we got back to New Delhi it was far too late to call in at the doctor's house, or even ring up, as that would only have woken everyone in it.

Anyway, I knew that if Tacklow's condition had worsened, Bets would have contacted me in Meerut; and if she missed me there, a message would certainly have been left for me at the Wrenches'. Comforted by the absence of either, and tired out by the doings of the day and the two long and dusty drives to Meerut and back, I fell into bed and must have been asleep almost before my head reached the pillow – only to be awakened in the small hours of the morning by the headlights of a car flaring on my window and my brother-in-law's voice shouting my name.

I knew at once that this was disaster. It was like a knife being driven into one's chest. A terrible physical pain. I didn't seem to be able to think, and I remember tearing at my mosquito net in senseless panic, because I couldn't free myself from it, and when I did, I raced around my room like a rat in a trap, trying to find the door, while all the time those blazing headlights lit up the room and a man's voice kept shouting ‘Moll! Mollie! Moll –!' I don't know how I managed to get out of the house, but the next thing I remember is that I was sitting huddled up on the back seat of the car and someone – Bets I suppose – had made me put on a dressing-gown over my nightdress and slippers on my feet, and that William Henry was breaking the speed-limit through the dark, empty streets.

Tacklow had had a second heart-attack, and this one had not been mild. It had been so bad that either the doctor or the night-nurse had rung William Henry's number and told him to bring his wife and her sister along as quickly as possible. Bets kept on saying: ‘Hurry! Hurry!' while I just sat there and prayed and prayed; probably making all sorts of wild promises if God would only … only … Well, most of us have done this or will do it at one time or another, and too many have turned their backs on God because He hasn't granted them what, in most cases, would have to be a miracle.

I can't remember what promises I made in return for Tacklow being allowed to live into his eighties – he was only sixty-six, not even man's promised span of ‘three-score and ten' – but I think if it had been granted I would have kept them. I kept at least one: from that night until this one, I have never once neglected to say my prayers, except when I have been ill enough to be sedated and unaware of time. Nor have I ever failed to say ‘goodnight' to Tacklow, just in
case
he may be allowed to keep an occasional eye on me. I like to think that he may be allowed to do that; and I have always been certain that if anyone can get me through the Pearly Gates, it will be Tacklow.

I was still praying desperately when the car reached the gates of the doctor's house and I saw that they were shut, and jumped out and opened them enough to get through, and ran up the drive. There were no street lamps in that quiet road, but the bungalow was brightly lit. There were lights on in every room and I raced up the drive and made straight for Tacklow's room. There was no one else in it. Just Tacklow, lying on his back with his eyes shut, as I had seen him so often during the last few days, and I checked, looking at him, unwilling to wake him and thinking, ‘Oh, thank God, he's still alive.' I tiptoed forward and bent down and kissed him. And only then knew, with an agonizing shock, that he was dead. That it wasn't Tacklow lying there any more.

Tacklow had gone, and this was just the old overcoat to which he had once compared his body when, for some forgotten reason, a party of us had embarked on a macabre discussion as to where, if we had the choice, would we prefer to be buried? When the question came round to Tacklow, he had replied that personally, he couldn't care less where he was buried, since he would regard his body as an old overcoat that had done him good service and could now be discarded as too worn and shabby for further use. Why should he care what happened to it? ‘But if you
had
to choose?' insisted one of the party. Tacklow thought for a moment and then said that if he died in England, he would like to be buried in the churchyard at Sandy near Tetworth,
2
the house that his grandparents used to live in, and where he had spent many of his school holidays. But since it was far more likely that he would die in India, the place he would choose was a little British cemetery at Sanour, overlooking the Kalkar-Simla road and the cantonment of Dugshai,
3
the first hill station to which he was sent when he arrived in India as a teenage ‘Griffen'.

If I had only kissed him on the forehead or the top of his head, or his hand, it would not have been so bad. But I had kissed him on his lips, and their total slackness and lack of warmth or response spelt death in a way nothing else could have done. I have never forgotten the feel of it, and nothing else in my life has ever been as bad as that was.

Someone was crying in the next room, and I realized that it must be Mother and that I ought to go to her. The next-door room seemed over-bright, and she was sitting at a table in the middle of it in an attitude of utter despair, her head on her outstretched arms and her beautiful hair all loose and tangled, spread out across her arms and the table-top. She was still dressed, as I was, in a thin cotton nightdress and kimono, and when I put my arms around her and hugged her, she lifted her head. Her face was so puffed up and smudgy with crying that it was almost unrecognizable, and I don't think she can have had the least idea who I was, because her eyes were too red and swollen to see out of, and tears were pouring helplessly out of them in an unstoppable stream, soaking the front of a kimono that Tacklow had bought her barely a year ago. I tried to say something comforting, but I was too badly in need of comfort myself, and all that Mother could whisper between sobs was, ‘What's to become of me? What's to become of me?'

What indeed? She had only been in her sixteenth year when Tacklow had seen her on the platform of the Tientsin railway station and fallen instantly and forever in love with her. He had spoilt and petted and cherished her, treating her as though she was still that attractive tomboyish ‘Gibson-Girl' with whom he had fallen in love in North China, and she had about as much idea of looking after herself as a goldfish. Tacklow had done everything for her. She hadn't known, until her first voyage home alone in 1919, how to write out or cash a cheque, because he had always paid all the bills and dealt with any household problems. And now she was on her own, with no one to do the sums for her or cope with things like rates and taxes, or teach her how to make ends meet on a drastically reduced widow's pension.

The doctor and the night-nurse were both in the room with her, watching her with the silent sympathy of those who are only too used to death, and Bets took over comforting her with a good deal more success than I had had – she had always been Mother's darling – while William Henry dealt with things like telegrams and announcements to the Press and, presumably, to Bill. Bets and the night-nurse managed to get Mother into her bed, which had been moved into another room after Tacklow's first heart-attack, and the doctor gave her an injection of something to help her sleep. When at last that worked, Bets and I went back to Tacklow and I carefully cut off a curl of his grey hair – one of the two that we used to twist into a pair of little horns, one each side of his head, in imitation of a cartoon character called ‘Pop' who bore a marked resemblance to Tacklow. I kept that little curl for years, despite being told by Kadera, and later by several of my Indian friends, that to keep the hair of a dead person is not a good thing to do, for it ties them to the earth, which is something they may not desire.