Golden Afternoon (14 page)

This information, which might have been expected to add to my depression, in fact cheered me up considerably; it was only Mother being dotingly maternal about her ‘baby', and not, as I had feared, me being hopelessly dull and boring. The relief that this information brought was enormous and considerably increased by the discovery that even so dashing and popular a ‘Week Queen' as Gerry could have her setbacks. For I had learned in Cawnpore that she (in company with any number of other women, both young and not so young) had fallen for the charms of one of Delhi's most attractive bachelors, a Flying Officer Stephens, whom everyone knew as ‘Steve', and who during the previous season had apparently given Gerry reason to believe that he was one of her conquests — in fact practically her personal property.

However, that was last year; and now, arriving in Delhi expecting to carry on where they had left off, she was outraged to discover that she had been cut out by a grass widow — and one who was several years her senior at that! ‘She's twenty-five if she's a day!' I remember her rushing into my tent like an infuriated whirlwind to tell me all about it: ‘And they are going to the dance here tonight — together,' finished Gerry through gritted teeth. ‘Well, if she thinks she's going to get him away from me, she's wrong —
lend me a pair of gunmetal stockings!
'

Sadly, I can't remember if the gunmetal stockings were a success or not. But I have never forgotten Steve, for he was, in addition to his other talents, an excellent dancer, and one of the very few men I was ever to dance with (and that was only once!) who gave me the illusion that I too was an expert. Had he given me the
faintest
encouragement I am quite
sure that I too would have fallen hopelessly in love with him. But apart from that single dance, he was never more than pleasantly polite to me. So I fell in love instead with Olive's brother, Bob Targett, who was nothing much to look at, but possessed more than his fair share of charm.

Bob must have been pushing forty (roughly the same age as Tacklow had been when he fell in love with my mother, whom he still quite obviously adored), and he was not what you would call ‘handsome'. But it was an attractive face, and in spite of the fact that he wore hornrimmed spectacles he had the reputation of being a ‘ladies' man'; though to date, his liaisons had always been with married women. He was strictly a bachelor type, who had no intention of getting involved in matrimony if he could help it.

I don't know what he saw in me, for I wasn't his type at all. He preferred married women, who knew the rules of the game and didn't embarrass him by making claims on him; and his favourite pastime was bridge, a game at which he was in the championship class. When Lord Willingdon took over as Viceroy, Bob became the Vicereine's favourite partner — she being a notable bridge-addict with a well-known fondness for winning. In fact it was rumoured that when Bob was eventually knighted, the honour was more for his skill at cards than for any particularly good work in the Stores Department! I, however, have always detested bridge or any form of card games: they bore me rigid and Bob knew it. Luckily for me, though, it amused him to take me to dances and parties, so that for the duration of that season we became a recognized ‘twosome' and were invited to parties together, though I always lost out when bridge was the alternative. His partiality for my company saved my first season in Delhi from being a dire disappointment, for as an eligible bachelor who had become an experienced avoider of matrimony, it had amused him to flirt with me, and I decided that here at last must be True Love.

The remainder of that season was, in consequence, a magic time for me. I floated on air — all ten stone of me — and envied no one, not even the ‘Week Queens' with their troops of admirers. I had never wanted half-a-dozen rivals for my affections. I only wanted one.

The most memorable event of that Delhi season, though for all the wrong reasons, was the last Viceregal garden party to be held in the grounds of Viceregal Lodge in Old Delhi, since next cold weather, Lord and Lady Irwin would move into Lutyens's magnificent marble and
sandstone palace, which, for only a brief spell — less than twenty years (and what are twenty years to India?) — would be known as ‘Viceroy's House' before becoming the official residence of future Presidents of India.

The occasion was made truly memorable by the sudden death on the brink of the garden party of the Queen of somewhere-or-other — I think she must have been a Scandinavian crowned head connected in some way with the British royal family (which, via Victoria, most crowned heads were). I don't imagine that more than twenty people in Delhi had ever heard of her, but a cable from London announced to the Viceroy that Court Mourning would be observed for a stated number of days. Well, you would have thought that in the circumstances the easiest thing to do would be to cancel the garden party, wouldn't you? But no. Someone in authority decided that it was far too late for that; either because there was no way of ensuring that every guest was warned of the cancellation in time to prevent a good many of them turning up on the dot, or because of the more obvious What on earth are we going to do with about a million assorted buns, sandwiches and all the rest of the food and drink and flowers that have been clogging up the kitchens for the past week?' (No fridges in those days) Or perhaps it was just the good old showbiz motto, ‘The show must go on' that carried the day. Whatever it was, the verdict went out that the party was on —
but
that ‘mourning would be worn'.

Well, that was fine by the men, since most of the civilian British possessed a dark suit, while the Indians, who wear white for mourning, could wear either that or black. But not many memsahibs possessed black dresses that were suitable for a garden party. All those who didn't tried borrowing from those who did, or, if that failed, hastily dyed something of their own. Every
dhobi
and dyer in both Delhis was pressed into service, and the place reeked with the smell of freshly dyed dresses — most of which were a total disaster, for in those days garden party dresses were for the most part ankle-length, frilly, pretty and floating confections, in pale-coloured chiffons and muslins, worn with wide-brimmed matching hats.

But though many tried it, dyeing those wretched hats proved impracticable; while as for that frivolous, ruffled dress in apple-green voile, in which you thought you were going to look so charming, it proved to be incredibly dreary when dyed a rusty black and worn with the only black hat you possessed, which happened to be a felt pudding-basin.

You have no idea — unless you happen to be one of those who were there yourself — how
incredibly
dowdy we Brits looked. Like a vast flock of bedraggled crows. By contrast, all the wives of the Indian guests who, lucky things, did not have to wear hats, looked elegant and enchanting in black, white or grey saris, shimmering with touches of embroidery. As did a solitary English girl who had refused to toe the line and join the crows.

It was the custom in those days for the bachelor ‘chummeries' in Delhi to host parties for Horse Show Week and invite their girlfriends, suitably chaperoned, to stay. And since Eileen Clinton-Thomas was one of the prettiest and most popular of the Raj girls, you could be sure of meeting her at almost every ‘Week' in India. Arriving in Delhi on the day before the Viceregal garden party, she had been informed by her hosts of the Court Mourning bombshell, but had refused to believe it, being firmly convinced that her high-spirited admirers were pulling her leg and probably had a bet on whether they could con her into making an exhibition of herself by turning up at a Viceregal garden party wearing hastily dyed black.

Still convinced that the whole thing was a hoax, she turned up at the party in a ravishing primrose yellow confection with matching gloves and shoes, and a cartwheel hat composed of layers of pale yellow organdie. The total effect was stunning. Particularly when contrasted with a sea of disgruntled memsahibs wearing extremely tatty black dresses.

Among other visiting VIPs in Delhi that year was — unless I have got my dates mixed — a temporarily deposed monarch, George of Greece. An attractive man, he was one of those convivial, party-loving types who can be found dancing on a table at around three o'clock in the morning on almost any night of the week, and during his prolonged stay in India's capital city he managed to steal the affections of a Mrs Britten-Jones,
^*
whose husband (also a well-known charmer) was at that time acting as Controller of the Viceroy's Household — or something equally impressive.

I rather think that he was himself more than slightly embroiled in a clandestine love affair with a great friend of mine at the time, so perhaps, what with that and managing Lord Irwin's household, he was too occupied with his own affairs of the heart to realize what his wife was up to. Either that or he thought that as the ex-King was a married man there was
nothing to worry about. But in the event his wife ran away with the ex-King, and when, shortly afterwards, he managed to regain his throne, she became his
maîtresse-en-titre
and later still accompanied him into exile in Portugal when he succeeded in losing it for a second time. As one of my friends remarked cheerfully: ‘Well, we don't have much money, but we do see life!'

In the days when Bets and I were children, we would not have considered any cold weather season in Delhi to be complete without at least two visits to Agra and the Taj, and one to our friends the Perrins at Narora, the head of the Ganges Canal. But though the Perrins had left some years ago, and the new Canal Officer was a stranger to us, we still revisited Agra whenever we could, travelling there by car along the Grand Trunk Road, instead of in a sleeper on the night-train as we used to do when I was a child. The Age of the Car, as far as India was concerned, was still in its infancy, and the 120-odd miles of road that separated Delhi from Agra had not changed very much since the days of the Great Moguls. It ran for the most part between a double avenue of shade trees and the open countryside that stretched away on either side of it, sparsely dotted by palms and kikar-trees, feathery clumps of pampas and the occasional field of sugar cane, and seemingly largely untenanted, since of the five towns that one drove through — Mahrauli, Faridabad, little Palwal, Hodal and Muttra — only the last could be classed as a city.

The branches of the trees that lined the unmetalled road met overhead to make a tunnel of shade that was pleasant relief from the blazing sunlight, but had one major drawback: it was impossible for a car or lorry to drive through it without raising a dense, choking cloud of dust through which, as you passed (and for a full minute afterwards) you must drive blind. Fortunately, in those days most of the traffic to be met with on that particular stretch of the Grand Trunk was (when not pedestrian or cyclist) either bullock-drawn carts or horse-drawn vehicles such as
tongas
, and when one saw another car, or worse still, a bus or lorry approaching, one slowed down, frantically wound up the windows, and burying one's face in a scarf or handkerchief, kept handy for that purpose, plunged into the inevitable wall of white dust, hoping not to hit anything or anybody while engulfed in the blinding smother.

But dust or no dust, I loved that Agra road, and the favoured places, where we used to stop
en route
and picnic, still stay in my mind as leafy
and enchanting, even though the last time I was driven along part of it, well over thirty years after India had become independent, I did not recognize anything at all. The long, quiet, tree-shaded road and the vast, sun-baked and seemingly empty countryside through which it had run had vanished completely, victims of a population explosion that had forced the hasty construction of thousands upon thousands of jerry-built houses, ranging from high-rise concrete office blocks to the mud-and-wattle
bustees
of the poor.

In the first year of our return to India and during subsequent cold weather seasons there, we visited Agra whenever we could; and despite the many occasions on which I saw the Taj, it never failed to make me catch my breath and feel my heart contract. Every time it was as though it was the first time. The shock of surprise and delight, and the sense of wonder, were always there, always fresh. And once again, as when Bets and I were children, the Taj became our own special and private possession.

By chance, our first return visit had coincided with a full moon, and we had been afraid that we would find the place crowded with fellow sightseers. But apparently the tourist trade was still reeling from the First World War, for despite the fact that the moon was at the full, there was no one there but ourselves. The silent, scented gardens were ours to wander through, and so also was every part of the Taj itself. For in those long-ago days you were allowed to climb the inner stairway leading up to the flat square of roof that supports the four graceful pavilions and the great central dome, and to sit, if you so wished, high atop the enormous cliff of marble above the great arch which gives entrance to the tomb. From this dizzying vantage-point you could look down on the wide, white marble platform below, with its four slender minarets, one at each corner; on the lawns and on the dark, sentinel avenue of cypresses that lines the fountain-filled water-channels. Or, from the
chattris
on the opposite side, on the silver sandbanks and the gleaming levels of the Jumna, which flows past the outer wall of the river terrace towards the distant line of Agra's fort, and the Jasmine Tower, in which the Emperor Shah Jehan, who built the Taj as a tomb for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb for the last seven years of his life.

At no time during many visits to the Taj did I ever see anyone forbidden from entering. There used to be a solitary individual in a shabby khaki
coat — presumably an old soldier or a retired police constable — who dozed among the shadows of the great marble and red granite entrance gate, or leant against one of the doorposts, chewing
paan
and brooding on life. Plus the odd
mali
or two and an elderly white-robed, white-turbaned character who presided over a small stall on which were displayed postcards and guidebooks for sale. No one else. No tickets. No charge for entering. No rows of shops and stalls selling souvenirs, or gangs of clamorous guides, full of inaccurate information, to badger the occasional visitor. No whining beggars either. And, astonishingly, almost no Indian sightseers.