Golden Afternoon

 

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Well, no. Or not as far as I am concerned anyway, for I've had a wonderful life, and if I had to answer the question put to the music in popular song: ‘If we could have it all again, would we — could we?' I could honestly say, ‘Yes.' Even though it would mean reliving some truly agonizing black patches. For among the many unhappy lessons that life teaches us is that hearts don't break; even though they may crack so badly that however well the years mend them, the cracks are always there.

I used to think that I should never get over the loss of my father, ‘Tacklow'. And I didn't, until a few years ago when something very odd, but reassuring, happened to me, and made me realize that I might not have to wait too long before I saw him again.

I was undergoing a five-week stretch in hospital, getting hell from angina, and there came a night when I thought I was dying (so, incidentally, did the nurses, one of whom telephoned my darling daughters at a hideous hour of the night to tell them to get there quickly if they wanted to see Mum alive). I've no idea how this transition was made, but quite suddenly I found myself standing in the dusk on one side of a wide, stony valley on the far side of which lay a long line of barren hills, rather like the Khyber hills on India's North West Frontier. It was getting very dark, but though the valley and the hills were in shadow, the sky still held the dregs of a yellow and gold sunset, and the whole scene was a study in sepia, as though it had been drawn on a sheet of brown packing-paper with a Conté pencil.

I looked down at my dress and saw that I wasn't wearing my long-sleeved granny-style nightgown any more. I was wearing a full-skirted cotton dress of the 1930s and 40s. And I knew in the same moment that I was young again. And not only young, but feeling incredibly happy and exhilarated as well.
Wonderfully
well! I could have danced my way across that desolate waste of broken ground and skipped over the boulders. It would soon be too dark to see, but there was still enough light to show me that there was a pass in those hills, and I knew without any doubt whatever that if I could reach it, I would be home and safe.

I had taken the first step when it occurred to me that perhaps I ought to check on the ‘me' who was lying on her back in the blackness, behind me, being badgered by nurses. A nurse was holding each of her hands and one of them kept shouting, ‘Can you
hear me
?' and telling her to press her hand, or make a movement — any movement — to show that she could hear her.

Well, of
course
I could hear her! But all I wanted was for everyone to leave me alone to get on with getting up to that pass. However, I thought that I'd get back into ‘me' for a moment, just to see how things were with her, so I did — but ‘me' was feeling truly awful, so I hastily abandoned her and started off, young and gay and supremely confident, to cross that shadowy valley and scramble up to the pass. But I hadn't gone far when, without warning, I was jerked out of it like a trout on a line and found myself in a brightly lit hospital room, full of people, and feeling far from well. It was a distinct shock … because I'd so nearly made it.

I learned later that my heart had stopped twice (hence that brief return into ‘me' and back again, perhaps). Also that, as the heart unit that night had been pretty busy, and its electrical gadgets were in use, the doctors had restarted mine with the aid of one of those rubber plungers that you use to unblock kitchen sinks. Very
infra dig
!

I'm sure that the medical profession will be able to explain away that ‘out-of-body' experience, but I don't have to believe them. I was there and they weren't, and the best thing about it was that wonderful feeling of happiness and well-being which by itself was enormously reassuring. I know now that when my number comes up I shall only have to cross the valley and find my nearest and dearest waiting to give me a hand if there are any tricky bits to be negotiated in the pass. And in the nature of things it can't be too long now before I meet them again.

I have told this story here partly because it explains why there was such a long gap between the first volume of my autobiography and this one. My apologies to the many readers who have been writing in during the past nine years, demanding to know when Vol. II will be coming up, and would I please get a move on with it? I'm truly sorry for the delay. I really did try, but it was ill-health and not idleness that caused the hold-up: cross my heart.

The other part was because not long after I'd had the curious experience, I described it to a dear friend, one Stanley Hall — who had more friends to the square inch than you would have thought possible. Stanley made me promise that I would write it down somewhere in my autobiography — ‘And don't go leaving it too late,' he said. Well, this seems as good a place as any, though, alas, it's too late for Stan to read it here, for he crossed his own valley not long afterwards. I rather think his would have been a Mediterranean one within sight of the sea and with a heavenly palazzo somewhere in the offing. I wouldn't have chosen the one I landed up in, but I'm not complaining, since I reckon one gets what one deserves. And now, while I'm about it, I would like to give my special thanks to three people without whose help this book would never have got off the ground. My sister Bets for all the help and support she has given me; Carole Pengelly Parrish for her unfailing encouragement — not to say nagging — and for introducing me to Margaret Samuel, who has actually been able to translate endless pages of scruffy pencilled longhand and not only made sense of it but managed to turn it into type. My warmest thanks to you all. Especially Bets.

Northbrook, 1991–7

M. M. Kaye

How does one describe Memory? The
Shorter Oxford Dictionary
, which weighs around six and a half pounds and ought to know, goes into it at some length. According to its compilers, Memory is ‘the faculty by which things are remembered'; ‘recollection'; ‘the fact or condition of being remembered'; ‘exemption from oblivion' (I rather fancy that one); and, among other things, ‘a memorial writing'; ‘a record'; ‘a history'; ‘a tomb, shrine, chapel, or the like'. And by way of illustration, this information is followed up by a flurry of quotations; notably one from Chaucer (he of
The Canterbury Tales, circa
AD
1340–1400), which states briefly that he was ‘yet in memorie and alyve'.

Well, so for the present, am I. And so much for the
Shorter Oxford Dictionary
.

I have not consulted the long one, which runs to an incredible number of volumes, but I doubt if it supplies much more information on this head, and I am quite sure that it fails to mention that Memory (mine, at all events) is a chancy thing with a mind of its own. It picks and chooses at random, rejecting any number of names, dates and incidents of (possibly) world-wide importance, which you would have thought it might have had the sense to retain, while preserving instead a whole rag-bag of odds and ends: a few lines of verse read long ago in an old pre-war copy of an American magazine, an almond tree in bloom in the garden of a shabby little Dâk-bungalow above the Kashmir road, and a full moon rising behind the enormous lateen sails of a fleet of Chinese junks setting out at dusk to fish in the Yellow Sea …

I am not criticizing my memory for its quirkiness in this matter of choice, because I have come to realize that, as memories go, it is Grade A and I am very fortunate in possessing it, since a majority of my friends (and both my daughters) seem unable to remember in any detail anything that happened more than a few years ago. I, on the other hand, have the
pleasing illusion that I remember
everything
. Though I know very well that this cannot possibly be true, and that a great deal must have fallen through the net and been washed away by time; some of it, I suspect, of some importance — or historical importance, anyway. Yet, as I look back along the long road of my life, which in retrospect seems so astonishingly short, I don't regret the choices my memory has made. For even if I remember nothing else, that almond tree, and the autumn moon lighting the fishing junks out into the Yellow Sea, will surely serve as acceptable coin to pay the Ferryman for taking me across that last river. While as for those few lines of verse, they should furnish me with a password on the other side.

But, while I am ‘yet in memorie and alyve', I find that remembering stands so high in my list of favourite things that I am astonished by the number of people who say, ‘Oh, I
never
look back! The past is over and done with, and since it can't be altered one should throw it out with the bathwater and forget it. “Always look forward” is my motto!'

Well, all right. But why not do
both
? What's wrong with looking back? Apart from anything else, I should have thought that some of our more truculent nations and their governments, and/or dictators, might even begin to learn a thing or two by doing so. (Such as, for instance, that taking over Afghanistan isn't really quite as easy as you may think.)