Golden Afternoon (24 page)

I was to dine and dance at the Residency on many other occasions, and Bets would be married from there and hold her wedding reception in its garden. But the memory of that first dance remains in my mind as a small black stain on the green and gold and the almond and apple-blossom pink of that first spring in Kashmir, and it is one of the things that makes me doubt if I would really like to live the whole of my life over again, given the chance. ‘If we could have it all again, would we? Could we?' Well, yes. I would, of course. For though the black patches were bad enough in all conscience, they were very far outweighed by the good ones.

We made a good many friends in Kashmir, among them Ken Hadow, whose father (or perhaps his grandfather) had, back in the nineteenth century, been so impressed by the artistry and industry of the Kashmiris that he had decided to settle there and set up a carpet factory. The charm of the Hadows' hand-woven carpets had made them a great success, and as far as I remember the Hadows also had something to do with the lumber trade and the making and carving of beautiful furniture. Ken had introduced us to one of the state's forest officers, Bruce Bakewell, and his wife, Edna, who spent most of their time in a forest bungalow in the Lolab Valley but would come in occasionally to spend a few days in Srinagar. That year Ken would often drive us out to the Lolab for an all-day picnic, or for a long weekend with the Bakewells.

The Hadows owned a large, two-storeyed house on the outskirts of Srinagar, and another one in Gulmarg, to which they would retreat in the summer months when the weather in the valley grew uncomfortably hot and muggy. And since Mother rather fancied the idea of renting a hut in Gulmarg, Ken drove us up for our first sight of that glorified golf-course-cum-American-western cow-town, which is what Gulmarg looked like at first sight — great sweeps of close-cropped grassy meadowland (
marg
^*
means meadow, and Gulmarg, meadow of roses) lying in a green cup in the hills, with scattered all around and across it huts built of pine-logs and roofed with the same shell-shaped pine-wood tiles as the houses throughout the valley. Some of them were out in the open, others half hidden by the forest trees that clothed the sides of the bowl and swept steeply up behind it, to meet the snow-line on the slopes of Apharwat, the long ridge of mountain that overlooked it.

I was enchanted by the place, largely because it reminded me of Simla,
the town in which I had been born and spent the first ten summers of my childhood. It smelled the same, of woodsmoke and pine-needles and moss; and there were the same forests and the same enormous panorama of mountains and snow-peaks. Patches of snow still lingered between the great tree-trunks and alongside the little streams that wandered across the
marg
, and though here there were no lilies of the valley there was something even more spectacular: primulas. Thousands and thousands of them,
Primula reticulata
, spreading pale pinky-mauve carpets across the Meadow of Roses. It was one of the most beautiful sights you could wish to see, and to the non-resident visitor one of the rarest, because they evidently need exactly the right conditions before they flower. If spring is too late or too early or too cold, or the snow lies for too long — or the previous summer's rains have been too scanty — they either stay underground and sulk or there is nothing to see but acres of withering leaves and dead flower-heads. They are, or were (for I am told that like other endangered species they have vanished from modern Gulmarg) very difficult to catch at just the right time; and the many times I visited Kashmir, I was only to see them once again.

Nowadays one can, unfortunately, drive up to Gulmarg, and most people do. But in those days, and certainly as late as the early sixties, the road would only take you as far as Tangmarg, a little village at the foot of the hills, and from there one rode up to Gulmarg on one of the hill ponies known as
tats.
I have always taken a dim view of horses, and the creatures obviously know this and treat me accordingly. But since the only alternative to riding one of the wretched animals was to walk, I chose the lesser of two evils and, selecting the smallest and least dashing-looking
tat
of the scores that were on offer — their owners all extolling the merits of their nominee at the tops of their voices — I managed to ride up the steep hill track without falling off, or allowing my mount to break into a gallop wherever there was a flattish bit of ground.

The Hadow hut was still closed and shuttered for the winter, but we ate a picnic lunch on the verandah and spent most of the day looking at the few huts that had not already been booked for the season. There were not many of these, but we soon realized that we could not possibly afford any of them. And certainly could not afford to take rooms in any of the hotels or boarding-houses. So it would have to be Srinagar. A decision that I, for one, received with some relief, partly because to me Kashmir was lakes and lotuses and not forests and golf, and largely
because
tats
were the only form of locomotion in Gulmarg apart from one's own two feet, and summer visitors, other than those who took rooms in Nedou's Hotel,
^*
would ride across the
marg
to attend dances in Nedou's ballroom, wearing Wellington boots under evening dresses that were kilted up over the knees and shrouded by dust-coats or mackintoshes, and — if it was raining — carrying an umbrella, their high-heeled slippers accompanying them in paper bags carried by an attendant
tat-wallah.
All in all, a daunting prospect for someone who, apart from having a deep-seated distrust of horses, found it difficult enough to remain seated on one even when suitably dressed and shod, and able to use both hands.

Mother had set her heart on a house. And a house she got. Ken Hadow put her in touch with a Kashmiri agent, Ahamdoo Siraj, who was to prove a tower of strength and a personal friend during the many years that she would spend in Kashmir. It was Ahamdoo who found us the Red House and persuaded its owner to let us rent it, furnished, for the season, with an option to take it on again for the following year.

The Red House was a large, comfortable two-storeyed building with wide verandahs, that stood in an orchard on the sloping ground beyond the gap, where Gupkar Road stopped and became that unnamed and unmetalled road that continued on, through a froth of blossoming trees, to circle the lake. Unlike the old Kashmiri houses, its roof was of red-painted corrugated tin — hence the name that we gave it. For until we moved in it had no name; merely going by the name of its owner, a merchant who had another house in the city in which he apparently preferred to live, leaving this one empty.

Ahamdoo, who had made all the arrangements, also made himself responsible for engaging a
masalchi
(dish-washer and kitchen assistant), a sweeper, a
mali
(gardener), a competent verandah
darzi
, and last, but most important of all, a
khansama
(cook) named Mahdoo, who turned out to be the find of a lifetime. He was a tiny little man, a Kashmiri, who had once been cook to a Frenchman who had spent several years in Kashmir, apparently studying the fauna and flora of the valley with a view to writing a book. Since, like the majority of his countrymen, he was interested in what he ate, he had taken the young Mahdoo in hand and turned him into a superb cook; hence Mahdoo's claim to being a ‘Flench cook'. He himself never ate the dishes he made so superbly, preferring the food of
his own land — chapattis and the red-hot curries and dishes made from green chillies and lentils. So how was it that he knew so exactly how some complicated
cordon bleu
dish should taste? I suppose his ‘Flench Sahib' had taught him to keep the details of ingredients, mixing and timing so clear in his head that he could not go wrong. Like Karen Blixen's Kenyan cook in
Out of Africa
, he was a superlative cook in any language.

In appearance, Mahdoo and Kadera could not have been less like each other, Kadera being tall and thin and clean-shaven and Mahdoo small and dumpy, with a neat round beard that was already showing traces of grey. But they took to each other on sight, remaining friends for life, and were a part of Mother's life for almost forty years. When, sixty-two years later, she was beginning to fail, and was still hankering to get back to Kashmir, I used to think that if only I could take her back there and install her on a houseboat on the Dāl, with Mahdoo and Kadera to look after her, I would do so without hesitation; in the sure knowledge that those two old gentlemen would see that she was safe, and care for her like a couple of Norland nannies. But, alas, by that time both of them were dead. Kadera has appeared in several of my books, and I put Mahdoo into
The Far Pavilions
by name, just exactly as he was. In the words of the
Du'a
, ‘May the mercy of God be fixed upon them for ever'.

Ahamdoo must have mentioned the name of the merchant who owned the Red House, but if so I forgot it long ago. We certainly never met him, and did not realize until after our first night in the house that during the winter months it was occupied, five or six to a room, by a horde of his relatives and friends who made their living out of the tourist industry and the summer visitors to Gulmarg, Pahlgam
^*
and Sonamarg, and other more distant parts of the state that were snowbound and deserted during the winter months.

Mother was the first to discover this. The master bedroom boasted an enormous double bedstead decorated with beautifully carved swags of flowers, fruit and ribbons
à la
Gibbons, in some pale-coloured wood. Mother had a brand-new mattress made to her own specification to fit it (the one provided being a gaily coloured and somewhat lumpy
resai
— the thin, cotton-padded coverlet that normally does duty for either a blanket or a mattress, from one end of India to another). The new mattress proved very comfortable, and though her own double-bed-sized sheets
and blankets were barely large enough to tuck in, she turned out the light on that first night, happily convinced that she was in for a good night's rest. It was not to be.

Tacklow, tired out by all the activity, had, after his usual fashion, fallen asleep at once, though his duties had not been exactly arduous. He had outlined them as: ‘Your Mother can decide where the furniture is to go, you and Bets can carry all the lighter pieces between you, Kadera and his henchman can cope with heavier ones, and I shall exercise a general supervision.' But Mother had lain awake for a while, and presently she began to scratch.

Five minutes later she was still scratching. And five minutes later still Tacklow woke up and inquired, a shade testily, how she expected him to get to sleep if she kept fidgeting. Mother said she was not fidgeting, she was scratching, and that it felt as though she had come out in a rash, and when Tacklow suggested that she try dabbing on some witch-hazel or calamine lotion, she turned on the bedside light, turned back the sheets — and with a shriek that woke Bets and myself, in our bedrooms at the far side of the landing, so suddenly that we nearly bit our tongues in half, she leapt out of bed. Followed, with an equally loud yell, by Tacklow.

The sheets were literally alive with bed-bugs. Dozens of them, crawling all over the place. Mother tore off her nightgown and rushed, starkers, into the bathroom for her dressing-gown; frantically brushing herself all over with her hands as though she could still feel the insects crawling over her. They hadn't touched Tacklow — I suppose he didn't taste so nice, or else his skin was tougher. But they had certainly made a meal of Mother. By the time Bets and I arrived, panting, to help repel or capture a burglar, Tacklow had ripped off his pyjamas and was wearing a towel tied round his waist, the sheets had been stripped back and, apart from a couple of corpses that Mother must have squashed as she scratched, there wasn't a single bed-bug to be seen anywhere. They had vanished like the morning dew, leaving nothing but a nasty smell of squashed bed-bug from the two casualties.

We spent the next twenty minutes or so laying out two of the
bistras
that in those days no one ever travelled without — long canvas holdalls on which one's bedding was laid out as though on a bed, plus pillows and night-wear, and then rolled up in a tight roll and fastened with straps, ready to be unrolled and slept upon when needed, laid out either on the seat of a railway carriage, or on the floor, or on the bare ground if
necessary. They made very adequate beds, and Mother and Tacklow took them downstairs to the drawing-room, where Mother's was spread out on a sofa and Tacklow's on the floor.

Bets and I, whose beds were ordinary country-style
narwar
ones, were untroubled by bugs, but a very apologetic Ahamdoo explained to us next morning that the magnificent double bed had been slept in that winter by an entire Kashmiri family, father, mother, grandmother, at least half a dozen small children — and probably an aunt or two as well — all huddled together in order to keep warm. The bugs had obviously moved in with them, and spent a happy and well-fed cold weather, being fruitful and multiplying like crazy.

The bed was carried out to the front drive, where Kadera and Ahamdoo took it to pieces; it was beautifully made and solid enough to have held up under a platoon of soldiery, let alone a family of Kashmiris. It was in excellent shape, but literally
crammed
with bed-bugs. Wherever one could squash itself in and raise a family, it had done so, and though we massacred as many as we could reach, there always seemed to be more of them. We tried flushing them out with Jeyes fluid, which seemed to work fairly well on the more active bugs, but Tacklow doubted that it would have any effect on their eggs, of which there were a horrifying number, promising a population explosion capable of taking over the entire house.