Enchanted Evening (35 page)

Sir William, who kept a watchful eye on his fascinating kingdom, was suspicious of the numbers of Japanese ships that claimed to be fishing for such a very common commodity, and spent a lot of his time, paper, and ink in drawing the attention of the Government of India to this curious activity. He also mentioned the fact that among the shops that lined the single, short main street of Aberdeen there were no less than seven photographers, all of them Japanese-owned. This seemed a little excessive to say the least of it, considering that the convicts and their families were not likely to buy cameras and take expensive snapshots, which left only two possible customers per photographer's shop.

But the Government of India had far too many other things on its plate to pay the least attention to the numbers of Japanese who were taking an interest in the Andamans, and all they did about it was to decide to make use of the only flat bit of land in Port Blair, which until now had provided the residents with a golf-course, to make an aerodrome. This they did, but in such a leisurely manner that Sir William's term of office had ended and the Cosgraves and myself had left the islands quite some time before it was finished. But it was finished in time for the first plane to land upon it to be a Japanese fighter, when Japan took the islands, killed the inhabitants they had no use for, and tortured and finally beheaded the unfortunate Englishman who was the original of the man Fudge and I had decided to make the murderer in our whodunnit – because he was such a meek little man that no one could
possibly
suspect him of killing a fly!

And the pearl-shell fleet? Well, they had been prospecting for any suitable deep-water bays, however small, where cans of petrol could be hidden for the future refuelling of Japanese submarines. Ah well, ‘those whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad'. And blind too, it would seem.
Seven photographers' shops!

Among the other atrocities the Japanese committed on the islands was the wiping out of the Jarawas
2
– the only truly stone-age tribe left on earth. No one knows anything about them, because no one ever had the chance to study them. They lived in the almost impenetrable Andamans jungle, and they had no permanent lairs. They would pull down branches to serve as shelters, but that was as far as they went. When their temporary camping ground became too messy, they moved on and made another somewhere else. Their housekeeping was as simple as that. They wore no clothes, unless one can call a tiny square of coconut shell with its hairy fringe still attached worn in place of a fig-leaf by the women clothes. Not the men.

Both sexes used bows and arrows, the arrows being half a circle of coconut shell, its outer edge sharpened until you could have shaved with it. As they would seem to have done. They obviously did not know how to make fire, or use metal, and would kill for both, raiding a forest camp and killing its sleeping inhabitants in order to steal a bucket or a
dekchi
,
3
or the glowing coals of some forest-guard's fire.

Mount Harriet, the highest point in the islands, was in Jarawa country, and we never went up there without a platoon of forest guards, who ringed the house for fear of an attack by the little people. And not long before I came there, the men of whatever regiment had provided the company of British troops stationed on Ross had tried to avenge a Jarawa killing by tracking down and attacking the group who had done the deed. A pure waste of time, as the Jarawas merely faded away into the jungle, and all the troops got were about fifty to sixty leeches apiece. (The jungle dripped with the beastly things!) They found and broke up one of the camping places, and actually caught a Jarawa, an elderly lady who was probably not spry enough to escape in time.

This little creature was taken back to Ross in triumph, and it was decided to treat her as though she were an honoured guest, so that she would be able to tell her people that ‘the natives are friendly'. They kept her for about a week, I gather, giving her food that she didn't like, and taking her for a car drive out to Corbyn's Cove on the main island, which nearly scared her to death. Finally they took her back to the place where they had caught her, loaded her with gifts and, as a final gesture of goodwill gave her back her bow and arrow. This proved a great mistake, for the old lady, clutching her loot, scuttled away and, suddenly stopping, dropped all her presents, strung her bow and if she'd been a slightly better shot would have scored a bullseye on the Assistant Commissioner – it was touch and go. So much for teaching her what a kind, friendly lot we were!

Efforts had obviously been made before to catch a Jarawa and try to learn their language, because one day, when Sir William had allowed us to look through the Government House archives, Fudge and I came across a letter from some nineteenth-century official, complaining to the Commissioner that while he, the writer, had been dining out, ‘that cad Tewson let my Jarawas out'. (As though they were rabbits, or white mice or something of the sort! – Fudge and I were fascinated.) The writer had apparently managed to catch a few, and had kept them shut up in his bungalow while he tried to make sense out of their language. He might even have done so, and had already made a start when he was foiled by that possibly well-meaning ‘cad Tewson'. And no one ever did learn it, because the Japanese, thinking that there were spies hiding out there in those jungles (there were too), bombed them very thoroughly.

Almost half a century later, at a drinks party held in the garden of a large house in Eastbourne on the Sussex coast, my hostess, towing a middle-aged stranger, crossed the lawn to where I was standing and said, ‘I don't think you two have ever met before. May I introduce you to Mr Tewson…'

I had never come across anyone of that name either before or since the evening in Sir William's office on Ross, and I said without thinking: ‘Good heavens! – that cad Tewson!' and started to laugh my head off. My hostess looked shocked to pieces and the wretched man looked terribly taken aback. But when I explained hastily why the phrase had jumped into my mind, he said: ‘This is
fantastic
– that must have been my grandfather!' And it
was
. Or rather had been. I rang up Fudge that evening and we both laughed ourselves silly. Oh, how lucky we were to have lived on an unspoiled coral island.

6

GOLCONDA

The old name for Hyderabad

Chapter 23

I left the Andamans in a worse condition than I was in when I arrived. Not, I hasten to say, the result of Pimm's No.1 this time, but because the islands had given me a vicious parting present in the form of an insect bite on my top lip. I got bitten at the very last moment, probably by something peculiar and nervous that had been lurking among the garlands of orchids that well-wishers had draped around my neck as parting presents.

Few people have penetrated very far into the Andaman forests, and all sorts of strange flowers and trees, insects and animals, could have been lurking there alongside those stone-age people the Jarawas. I didn't even see the insect that bit me. I only felt it, and yowled and slapped the place, thinking it was only a mosquito or a thorn among the flowers. But within seconds my lip had started to swell up, and by the time our little steamer upped anchor and was heading out of the harbour, with me hanging over the bows and waving wildly at Fudge and various friends in the launch and assorted sailing-ships around it, I could barely see them, or Ross; or Harriet either, because my entire face had swollen up into a rainbow-coloured suet pudding. I nearly had a fit when I saw my reflection in my cabin looking-glass. So did the Captain and the ship's doctor. They tried dabbing various disinfectants on to it, but nothing worked. In fact it got worse.

Three days later, having discovered that my eyes and forehead were comparatively unblotched, I landed at Calcutta wearing a very fetching yashmak (fashioned from a chiffon scarf that fortunately matched the dress I was wearing), and looking every inch like ‘Olga Petloffski the Beautiful Spy'. It was the only thing I could do, and it was an
enormous
success. It is on record that gentlemen prefer blondes, but I soon discovered that they are also suckers for anything in a yashmak. Fortunately I have (or had) a fairly good pair of eyes, and this was instantly accepted by those who had not previously met me as evidence of other features to match. Yashmaked, I was credited with being a raving beauty, while underneath those layers of chiffon my face was an unholy mess.

This time the Governor himself (he had been a friend of Tacklow's) came down to meet me, accompanied by his private sec. HE
1
was fascinated by the yashmak. However, he refused to believe it was necessary – ‘all this fuss about a mosquito bite that has gone bad on you!' – until back in Government House he sent for the Residency doctor who, prepared for a slightly unsightly red blotch (and also taking a lofty ‘What's all this fuss about, young woman?' approach), took a hasty step backwards when I removed the yashmak, much as though I had unveiled a Dr Jekyll in the process of turning into Mr Hyde – either that or an advanced case of leprosy or the plague.

He rang up a colleague who was supposed to specialize in weird skin diseases, and the two of them wrangled over it for what seemed like hours. After this it was agreed that I could have all my meals by myself. They would have to be near-liquid ones because it was difficult to get anything into my mouth, since I could only ladle very soft things in at one corner. They also tried a variety of drugs and lotions (none of which did any good and most of the latter only stung), and finally wrote a joint letter explaining their views to the Residency doctor in Hyderabad, where I was heading to stay with Sandy, who had invited Mother and me to visit for a few weeks.

I only spent two nights in Calcutta, and those ADCs – only two of them, one had returned to his regiment and not yet been replaced – insisted on taking me out to a dance at the Saturday Club, solely on account of that yashmak which, as they prophesied, proved a spectacular success. Moving on to Hyderabad, Deccan (there is another Hyderabad in Sind), I found Mother and Sandy on the platform to meet me – Sandy established in a huge, white, two-storey house standing among lush flower gardens – and had my customary success with the yashmak. Believe it or not, that beastly Andamans-sting and/or bite took well over a month to subside, and I have a sad feeling that when I was eventually able to remove the yashmak I disappointed a lot of people who had obviously been expecting something like Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich to emerge from behind it.

It was while I was in Hyderabad that Somerset Maugham and his secretary descended upon the State during one of that excellent but acidulated writer's many Eastern tours, and the Resident pushed him off on to Sandy to entertain him. I was enthralled to meet him, but disappointed to find him a sour and unfriendly old gentleman who stumped off fairly early to bed. It was after he had taken himself off that I told his secretary that I hadn't mentioned his books, because I thought the Great Man must be sick to death of people saying: ‘Oh, Mr Maugham, I simply adored this or that book, and/or short story.' To which his secretary replied: ‘You were wrong. It's the only thing he likes to talk about!'

So next morning we got on like a house on fire, and in the end I became brave enough to mention that I had just written a very light-hearted novel, but that I was afraid I would never make a writer. He asked why, in a distinctly bored voice, and I said because I wrote much too slowly and would stick for hours on end over a sentence that I couldn't get right, and though advised by any number of friends to leave it and press on, and come back and fix it later, I found myself totally unable to do so. I
had
to get it right before I could go on, and sometimes I got held up for hours on end.

The old boy peered at me over the top of his spectacles exactly like an elderly tortoise, and said: ‘My dear young woman, that is the
only
thing I have heard you say that makes me think you may be a writer one day:
I
do that!' He also told me that Colette did it too, so I was enormously cheered. I asked him if it was true that the plots of all his stories were ones he had overheard or been told by people who had been involved in them in some way or another, and that they were all based on fact, and he replied that of course they were: ‘Why should I cudgel my brains to invent stories when people keep giving me excellent real-life ones on a plate? If they ever stop handing me interesting stories I may have to start inventing. But not until then!'

He also gave me what he said was an invaluable tip: ‘If a word is just what you want, don't try hunting for a similar one because you've already used that one several times. Even if you've used it six times in a row, if it's right, leave it.' I've tried following that advice, but it's no good. I hate repetition, and I fly to Roget for an alternative. Though I apologize to old Somerset's ghost whenever I do it!

*   *   *

Mother and I painted a lot in Hyderabad. I muralled two walls in the hall of Sandy's house, and met a lot of interesting people. Hyderabad was supposed to have the grandest Residency in all India, and was also one of the states that tourists visited because of the polo – there was hardly a day when some first-class polo-match was not being played there – and because of the legendary diamond mines of Golconda. The then Resident was not a social-minded man, so if he had to put passing VIPs up in the Residency (which was certainly the most lavish piece of showing-off to be met with in the days of the Raj – a palace, no less) he would send them over to Sandy to wine and dine them and arrange expeditions and picnics, and take them shopping. Among them that year we had Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress, and her current husband, Count Reventlow. She wanted to go shopping for jewellery, so instead of taking her and her entourage to one of the glittering jewellers' shops in the flashiest and more Europeanized part of town, we took her down to the old city, where the
real
trade goes on in the houses of the jewel merchants.