Golden Afternoon (13 page)

Then there was the Viceroy's bedroom, where the main feature was a single, giant-sized bed set against a high and equally vast piece of carving designed, explained Sir Edwin, to be useful as well as ornamental. He demonstrated by seating himself in a recumbent position in the centre of the bed and pressing a button, whereupon the outer section of the carving instantly detached itself from the main block and descended unnervingly on to the bed, capturing its occupant in an open space surrounded by a waste of polished wood. ‘Neat, isn't it?' demanded its designer proudly, obviously expecting applause.

‘Very,' agreed Tacklow. ‘But what's the point?'

Sir Edwin requested him not to be silly. Surely
anyone
could see that it provided the Viceroy with an instant surface to support his
chota-hazri
or his breakfast tray, as well as a work-table if he should happen to be bed-bound? And what, inquired Tacklow, would happen if His Excellency should, in a careless moment, neglect to return to a position of dead centre after pressing the button? A bonk on the head from that ton-and-a-half of elaborately carved teak, and the Council would either be indenting for a new Viceroy or laying on a State funeral for his wife — should the poor woman happen to be sharing his bed and board that morning.

Sir Edwin looked a bit taken aback, and admitted that he hadn't thought of that, adding that it had looked all right on paper: apparently this was the first time he had seen it in action. He replaced it and brought it down again several times, and finally remarked cheerfully that at least it would teach the occupant to be careful. I believe (though I cannot vouch for the truth of the story) that a subsequent occupant, awaking with a hang-over which made him less than careful, missed being whanged on the head by the narrowest of margins. After which the movable section of the carving was firmly nailed to the wall and the early-morning tea-tray-cum-work-surface was no more.

The ‘Lutyens conducted tour' of the still unfinished Viceroy's House stays in my memory as one of the landmarks of my first cold weather season as an adult in New Delhi. As does my introduction to a girl called Audrey Wrench, who was to become a lifelong friend.

Aud's father, Sir Evelyn Wrench, as the head of India's railways, had been allotted one of the larger and more attractive of New Delhi's Baker's Ovens, number 12 King George's Avenue, and I painted a large pastel-coloured mural on the wall above the fireplace in Aud's bedroom, a decorative affair of Harlequin serenading Columbine, painted directly on to the whitewashed wall in poster paint. Mother took a snapshot of it, and many years later I did a copy of it on another whitewashed wall, this time in a bedroom in the British Consulate at Khorramshar in Persia.
^*
This copy survived into the 1950s, only to be blown to bits when Khorramshar was reduced to rubble during the ferocious battles between Iran and Iraq. Some time during the Second World War years, the house on King George's Avenue was briefly occupied by the Mountbattens,
and I was told that when the officials of the Public Works Department, or whatever, gave orders for the entire house to be repainted before the ‘Supremo' moved in, Lady Louis had asked that the mural should not be touched. So, for all I know, it may still be there.

Aud designed me a spectacular evening dress and helped me choose the material at the Tree-Shop, which still flourished in the Chandri Chowk in the shadow of the Clock Tower. She also stood over our verandah
darzi
(tailor), who made it up, and when it was finished to her satisfaction she embroidered the cunningly draped top with a spatter of small square, cerise-coloured sequins. The end result was a triumph that would not have disgraced the great Stiebel
^*
himself and I fancied myself in it no end.

With the bazaars and shopping centres of New and Old Delhi crammed with fantastically beautiful materials that cost only a few annas a yard, plus the astonishing skill of the verandah
darzis
who, it seemed, could copy
anything
— you only had to show them a picture — it was no wonder that one of the most popular pastimes of the Raj years was the fancy-dress dance. The Horse Show Ball was always a fancy-dress affair and so was the Bachelors' Ball which by tradition wound up the season. I attended the first dressed as the young Queen Victoria, wearing a black velvet crinoline that I bought for the enormous sum of ten rupees from a friend of the Wrenches who had had it made by some purveyor of fancy dresses in London. I kept it for years. With additions or subtractions and with or without the crinoline (which was a real one, constructed out of grey alpaca and whalebone), it did yeoman service at any number of fancy-dress dances. It featured again at that year's Bachelors' Ball (this time minus its black velvet sleeves, which had been removed and replaced by long medieval ones of lilac satin sewn with large artificial pearls). On this occasion, I seized the chance of showing off my hair, which by now reached below my waist. And very fetching it looked, flowing down my back from under a cap made from a network of pearls. The chaps loved it, and it created quite a sensation: the ‘shingle' had been all the rage throughout the Roaring Twenties, and by now people were beginning to forget what long hair looked like. Well, it looked pretty good on me, and I regret to say that I traded on its novelty-value shamelessly, letting it down on every possible occasion from fancy-dress affairs to bathing
picnics, until a year or so later a girl called Leila Apcar appeared upon the scene and trumped my modest ace with a Rapunzel-like supply of the most gorgeous pale gold hair you ever saw.

Since Leila was also an outstandingly pretty girl, I gave up appearing at fancy-dress dances as Queen Guinevere or Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair or whoever, and a year later succeeded in badgering my reluctant parents into letting me join the ranks of the shingle-brigade: a great improvement on those two hideous coils of tightly plaited hair exactly like a pair of earphones, that gave me the appearance of a schoolmarm. There were not all
that
many fancy-dress revels and bathing picnics!

Mother still had a great many friends in Delhi, among them the parents of Aunt Bee's niece, Maxine Mitchell, the small girl who had spent a summer holiday with us in a rented house in the Isle of Wight and used to drive us nuts by following us around wherever we went, like an adoring puppy. Mrs Mitchell was a particular friend of Mother's, and I admired her enormously. She was not only very pretty, but she dressed beautifully and in the sort of clothes that even at that age I realized, with awe and admiration, no verandah
darzi
, however skilful, could possibly have copied. Here at last was someone who wore models designed, cut and sewn by experts, the sort of dresses that ordinary women could never aspire to and that would for ever be out of my reach. So you can imagine my rapture when, one afternoon, she presented me with one of those fabulous outfits — the only Paris model I have ever owned, and certainly one of the most exciting presents I have ever received.

It had been designed to be worn at cocktail parties and consisted of a slip of a dress in pale, pinky-beige
crěpe de Chine
, short and sleeveless, and worn under a finger-length, satin-lined coat of the same material, embroidered all over with a shimmering web of matching pearls, beads and sequins.

Mrs Mitchell had apologized for the fact that the outfit would soon be terribly dated, since hems were already beginning to descend while waists, which had vanished a decade earlier, were returning to favour. She was, she said, afraid that every line of the enchanting confection she had just given me would soon be old hat. As if I cared! The mere possession of that glamorous outfit was enough to lift my spirits into the stratosphere, although Mrs Mitchell was right about the changing fashion; for in no time at all out went the boyish flat-as-a-board figure, and bosoms were in again. And with them, after an absence of many years, were waists.
Belts and sashes returned there after a prolonged sojourn around the hip, and down went hems once more, so that the skimpy dress of my lovely Chanel model was soon to look as dated as an Edwardian bustle.

The dampness and humidity of another monsoon (added to the fact that it was too tight for me) helped to split the material, and I was forced to abandon it. But the Tree-Shop provided me with
crěpe de Chine
, and the skill of the India dyers, who, for a modest sum, will match the exact tone and colour of any pattern you choose to give them, meant that I was able to have a new
darzi
-made dress to go under that beautiful coat. I wore the coat for years, and would probably still have it if only the material had been able to stand up to the climate. It got frailer and frailer; the silk frayed and split and began to shed its beads and sequins and develop bald patches, and I was forced to abandon it, though I can't remember how or when it passed out of my life.

I still possess a fragment of another dress that I acquired that year. This one, too, was worn until it disintegrated, but I cut a piece off the remains and kept it as a souvenir. (I have these silly ideas about some inanimate objects.) It is now in one of our many scrapbook-cum-photograph albums, and I hope to be able to include myself wearing it in this book.

Back once more in our tents behind the Club, I discovered that more of our childhood friends and acquaintances had returned to Delhi — among them Peggy Spence, Sybil Roberts and Phyllis Moncrieff-Smith, plus their parents. I also made a new friend, one Olive Targett, the occupant of a tent just behind my own. Olive, who was a few years older than me, had come out to India to spend a season in Delhi under the chaperonage of her bachelor brother, Robert, who was one of the Club's resident members and had a fairly senior job in the Stores Department.

Olive told me in strict confidence that she was unofficially engaged to a young man in England, and that these few months in India were in the nature of a final fling before settling down to be a model wife and mother. But since she did not wear an engagement ring, and was pretty and very popular, none of the swains whose hearts she collected that season were aware that they were wasting their time on a girl who was already ‘bespoke'.

There was never an evening when Olive was not booked to go out dining or dancing (usually both), and I still remember the shock I received on discovering, between awe and admiration, that, except for a minute pair of ‘bafflers' (twenties slang for panties), she wore nothing under her dress. I remember sitting in her tent one evening, chatting while she got ready to go out to a dance and watching her put on a pair of silk stockings, ensuring that they stayed up above the knee by rolling them and tucking in a
pi
, that smallest of Indian coins, as an anchor. (Your grandmother can probably show you how this was done.) I knew that she had nothing else on under the loose silk kimono she was wearing, so when my eye fell on the clock as she dealt with her hair and her make-up, I said anxiously, ‘For goodness sake, Olive. Do you know what the time is? You're being called for in exactly two minutes.'

‘That's all I need,' said Olive, blithely. And, flinging off the kimono,
she donned the obligatory pair of
crěpe de Chine
bafflers, wriggled into a tube of something gold and sparkly that was supported by the thinnest of shoulder-straps, stepped into a pair of matching high-heeled shoes, and, picking up a beaded bag and her evening cloak, announced that she was ready — ‘On the dot! And here comes Reggie,' or Tom or Dick or Harry, or whoever was taking her out that night. ‘Goodnight, darling.' And she was off and away.

I was astounded. The idea that a girl could go gaily off to a party wearing practically nothing under one of the skimpy dance dresses of the twenties struck me as incredibly daring, and more than a little shocking. Even if I had had a dress like hers I would still have considered myself undressed unless I put on layers of underclothes: a vest, a bra, silk stockings and a suspender-belt to keep them up, a pair of camiknickers that combined wide-legged panties and a camisole top, and finally a petticoat. All this before I topped it off with a dress! Olive's evening dresses were exquisite, and not one of them could possibly have been run up by some ‘little woman around the corner', let alone a verandah
darzi
. I admired everything about her, her assurance most of all — probably because I myself had none. This circumstance was not improved, on the social side, by the fact that Tacklow's pension, now gravely reduced due to his commuting some of it in order to pay for our passages out to India, was not sufficient, even with the payment he received for the work that he had returned to do, to pay for parties for us that better-off parents, who lived in style in the Baker-built houses of New Delhi, gave for their daughters prior to every dance at Maiden's Hotel or at the Club, or a ball at Viceroy's House.

Poor Tacklow simply could not afford to entertain for us, except on a very modest scale, and I was soon to discover that Gerry's disclosures as to the prevailing social pitfalls were correct. Unattached men, who were very much in the minority, had become so spoilt that like the ‘Deb's Delights' of the London season, they would never accept the first invitation they received, but would wait until they received several, and then choose the one that offered the best prospect of a good dinner before the dance and the most lavish supply of drinks during the evening. And as if this situation by itself was not guaranteed to give a bad headache to any mother of two unmarried daughters and a very lean purse, mine made it even more difficult for herself by doing her best to see that if I were invited to a party, Bets would go too. Yes, she
had
promised once that
Bets would not ‘come out' until she was seventeen. But as she told her friends, she couldn't
bear
to see ‘poor little Bets' left out of anything. It was soon known to every hostess in Delhi that if you invited Daisy Kaye's elder daughter to a party you had to have the younger one as well. And that meant another two men instead of one: four guests straight off! So as you can imagine, I didn't get many invitations. I decided, sadly, that this was due to my lack of charm and social small-talk, allied to the fact that I didn't play bridge, couldn't talk ‘horse', did not ride or play golf, was a useless partner at tennis and a pretty indifferent one on a ballroom floor. In short, I had nothing whatever to offer by way of ‘singing for my supper'. I have seldom felt so inadequate, and it was not until Gerry Ross arrived in Delhi that I learned from that seasoned campaigner the real reason for the sudden dearth of Invitations to the Ball.