Golden Afternoon (27 page)

The Resident asked for the names of the erring couple first mentioned,
and on being told, exploded into laughter. Controlling himself with difficulty, he pointed out that, since that particular connection had been countenanced by at least three Viceroys, he thought it was a bit late in the day to start criticizing it. Smiler was a born bachelor, and his devotion to Lady Micky had been accepted for years by everyone (including Micky) as just that. As for the ‘goings-on' at Nageem, he suggested that he might be willing to do something about that in exchange for a good long look through the telescope. The League, aware that they were being trifled with, were furious and stamped out without further words. Lady Micky and Smiler continued placidly to live on the same houseboat; the ‘goings-on' at Nageem presumably continued uninterrupted, and the summer visitors laughed their heads off.

One of the visitors that year was the young Duke of Northumberland, a tall, thin-faced, lanky young man who was taking a look at the Empire under the wing of an elderly ex-Indian Army officer, Colonel Henslow, who was to become a great friend of ours. The two spent some time in Srinagar, as guests of the Resident, and I saw quite a lot of young George, who, I discovered, was enormously interested in ghosts. I remember spending an entire morning in the foyer of Nedou's Hotel discussing the subject, in the course of which I told him about the Bower ghost and the grateful one who used to put in an appearance in my grandfather's house in times of crisis. George was intrigued by both, especially by the latter, for he too had never heard of a grateful ghost before. But what really interested him about ghosts is why there should be any. What made a ghost decide to haunt a given spot? A favourite theory was that if someone died a violent or a terrible death, the sum of their terror and agony must leave an impression on the spot where they died — on the atmosphere and the very place itself, like a picture registering itself on photographic plate or a piece of film. This, however, according to George, couldn't possibly be true, because as far as he knew his own castle of Alnwick was not haunted, though once, in fairly recent times, doing a survey of the dungeons below the castle, a hitherto unknown one was discovered which, when opened, was found to contain the skeletons of prisoners taken after some Border raid, who had plainly been locked in there and forgotten. ‘Just imagine what they went through before they died,' said George. ‘If a terrible death could leave any impression on the atmosphere, then at least one of the poor brutes must have left behind his ghost to haunt the place. Yet they haven't. So
that
can't be the reason.'

Well, he had a point there. And I wasn't surprised at his fascination for ghosts, for his family name was Percy and throughout history almost any form of mayhem or conspiracy that cropped up seems to have ended with a Percy having his head chopped off on Tower Hill. George himself was destined to die on a battlefield early on in the Second World War.

Several times that year, once for a long weekend but more often for the day, Ken Hadow would drive us all out to have a picnic with the Bakewells in the Lolab Valley, which is one of the most beautiful of the many side valleys in Kashmir. Ken had a passion for sea-shanties, and it became a habit with us to sing them with him in chorus as he drove. His favourite was ‘Shenandoah' and, as with most of my clearest memories, there is an accompanying tune that immediately invokes those long drives through glittering sunlight and the lovely Kashmir scenery to the Lolab: ‘Oh Shenandoah, I'm bound to leave you … away, you rolling river'.

Bruce and Edna Bakewell lived in an enchanting forest lodge, a log house on a hillside overlooking the valley and the Lolab river, a rushing mountain stream that was one of the tributaries of the Jhelum river. The deodar forest rose up protectively on three sides of it, dwarfing and sheltering it, while its front windows faced the level sweep of the valley with its orchards and walnut groves and the forests that swept up again on the far side. The air smelled deliciously of pine-needles, herbs and woodsmoke, of the little yellow climbing roses that grow wild in the Himalayas, and of the flowers that Edna Bakewell grew in the garden below the verandah. Bruce would tell us stories about his adventures as a forest officer, and he had a fund of tales about the wildlife in woods and forests and uplands.

He and Edna had twice played foster-parents to bear-cubs found abandoned and starving in the forest and brought in by one of his rangers. They made, he said, wonderfully entertaining and affectionate pets, but were very hard on the furniture, on which they liked to sharpen their claws. Both had eventually, and successfully, been returned to the wild. On bright, blazing summer days we would bathe in an arm of the little river just below the house, and ride the logs that were carried down from the logging camps higher up the valley. The logs floated majestically down, turning lazily to the current on their way to the Jhelum, and from there down the gorges to the great timber-yards on the plains. Even on the hottest day the water was ice-cold, for it came straight from the
glaciers and the snow-peaks of the mountains. Sometimes we would walk up to one of the logging camps, or climb up through the shadowy forest by paths made by deer and bear and other forest creatures — to come out on bare, grassy uplands, where the deodars stopped and the only trees were silver birches and rhododendron scrub, and one could look back and down on the valley, and up towards belts of scree and a waste of rocks where patches of melting snow still lingered, with behind and above that a dazzle of snow-peaks.

I find it curious that although I lost my sense of smell almost thirty years ago, the
memory
of a scent can still come back to me, and I imagine I can smell the pines and the wild climbing roses, the special smell of the sun-baked grass on the uplands, and even — as happened once, when in a hollow on a bare ridge above the forest we came across the remains of a leopard's kill being disposed of by half-a-dozen hill crows — a scent that is not an unfamiliar one in the plains: the nauseating, sickly-sweet smell of corruption.

In those days, as a favourite holiday resort of innumerable carefree girls, grass widows and single men on leave, Kashmir must have been one of the most romantic places in the world. Coming on top of that enchanted spring, my sense of this was heightened by two weddings; one of them the wedding of Peggy Spence, a girl we had known in the days of our Simla childhood.

Peggy was marrying a handsome young man in the Foreign and Political Service,
^*
and since her parents had been friends of ours for many years, her mother asked if Bets and I would make the bouquets for Peggy and her bridesmaids; though I can't think why we were selected for this task since neither of us had any skill in flower-arranging.

Possibly it was because we were reputed to be ‘artistic', and ‘If you can draw and paint then surely you can cope with bunching up a few flowers?' Anyway, we accepted gaily and Peggy's mother told us that she had arranged with an elderly and prominent member of the Kashmir Old Guard, one Mrs Hart, to provide the flowers for us. This ancient autocrat lived almost next door to us, in a large, ramshackle house surrounded by an equally large garden in which you could scarcely move for flowerbeds.

Peggy's mother took us over to meet her and Mrs Hart led us round, so that we could get an idea of what flowers were available (frankly, I'd never seen so many; the Chelsea Flower Show wasn't in it), and afterwards asked us in to tea. The interior of her house proved to be a riot of Reckitt's blue — blue walls, doors and paintwork — and as crammed with occasional tables loaded with assorted bric-à-brac as her garden was with flowers. The overall effect was dark and gloomy, and one hardly dared stir for fear of knocking over some dusty piece of Chelsea or Meissen china. Very unnerving.

It was arranged that we should come over to pick what flowers we needed not earlier than five o'clock in the evening on the day before the wedding, so that we could carry them back to the Red House and stand them overnight up to their heads in water on our back verandah. White flowers for Peggy, roses, lilies, pinks and carnations, plus various silvery-grey foliage plants and sweet peas for the bridesmaids. The Kashmiri head
mali
(gardener) would be warned to expect us: ‘He is going to be simply furious,' said Mrs Hart. ‘He seems to think the garden is his, and always makes a terrible scene whenever I want flowers for the house. This is really going to upset him! Silly old fool!'

She tittered maliciously, and I remember smiling weakly because I thought she meant to be funny. Alas, no. It was no joke, and had I realized what we had let ourselves in for, I would have wriggled out of the assignment then and there, however unpopular the move. For though we had received fair warning about the
mali
, no one had thought of warning us that Mrs Hart, who was well known to be an outstandingly tough baby, was also the possessor of a totally unreliable memory. Or that her house guest, a companion or niece or whatever, who happened to be out that day, was equally quick on the draw and had the lowest flashpoint on record. These omissions were to let us in for one of the most embarrassing half-hours of our lives.

In the cool of the evening on the appointed day, Bets and I, armed with baskets, scissors and secateurs, trundled dutifully over to Mrs Hart's garden like a couple of lambs to the slaughter, and set about selecting sufficient flowers to kit out one bride and three attendant bridesmaids. But we had barely been at work for five minutes when a human typhoon came charging down between the flowerbeds, breathing fire and slaughter. It was the
mali
, and Mrs Hart had not exaggerated. He obviously regarded the garden as his personal property and every flower in it as a favourite son.

With yells of fury, he fell upon us, snatching away such flowers as we had already picked, and screaming that he would set the police on us and we were nothing more than common
badmashes
who had come sneaking into Hart Memsahib's garden to steal her flowers. At this point, alerted by the uproar, one of the nearest windows in the house was flung open and an unknown memsahib of uncertain age — the niece, or companion, or whatever — leant out and added a particularly carrying voice to the uproar, demanding to know what the hell we thought we
were up to, trespassing on other people's property and stealing their flowers.

We stood there under her window endeavouring to explain, but she wouldn't let us get a word in edgeways. And when she paused to draw breath, the
mali
filled the gap with yells of rage. Eventually, dumbfounded by all the uproar, I turned on the
mali
and yelled in his own tongue a furious command, ordering him to shut up or else! — accompanied by several exceedingly crude epithets learned in childhood from bad little bazaar boys, which five minutes before I would have sworn that I'd forgotten. Sheer rage had dredged them up from me, and they worked wonders on the
mali
, who stopped in mid-flow and stood gaping at me open-mouthed. The harridan in the window, deprived of her back-up team, stopped shouting for just long enough for me to explain that Mrs Hart had given us permission to collect flowers for the Spence-Allington wedding, and told us when to come. It cut no ice. I was flatly disbelieved and we were ordered to leave immediately.

It was my first experience of outrageous and totally uncalled-for rudeness from a grown-up of my own kind, and of abuse and bad language from an Indian — or rather a Kashmiri. Nor had I ever been accused of lying and theft. It was all too much, and instead of marching off in search of the owner of this madhouse, I threw out the few flowers that the
mali
had not already snatched from me, and grabbing Bets — who by this time was in tears — by one arm, turned about and stormed out of the garden.

I think we were both in tears from shock and sheer fury by the time we got back to the Red House, and at first Mother had some difficulty in understanding what had occurred. When she did, she immediately got into the car and drove off to fetch the Hon. Mrs Spence, and the two of them went round to see Mrs Hart, who was not in. They seem to have interviewed the harridan while waiting for her and demanded — and got — an apology. Mrs Hart finally turned up. She was the kind of woman who boasts that they have never apologized for anything or to anyone in all their lives, and ‘doesn't mean to start doing so now'.

Regardless of the fact that she had been out at the hour at which we had been told to turn up, she said that Bets and myself were at fault for not coming to see her first and ask her permission to start picking, and added that she had more important things to think of than warning her
mali
that we would be coming round to pick flowers, or remembering
what day or hour we would be coming. Mother and the Hon. Mrs S. wasted no further time on her, or the old horror of a companion, but came back to fetch us, and we drove over at top speed to Ken Hadow's to ask him if he could let us have enough white flowers for Peggy's bouquet (he could — a lot of lilies) and then broke the speed limit to the Residency to ask them if we could raid their sweet peas. We could, and we did it by lantern light as by now it was dark. Judging from my snapshots our first and harrowing attempts at making up bouquets looked pretty good, though a bit untidy. Probably the effect of stress!

Apart from being guests, we had nothing to do with Molly and ‘Bolshie' Tatham's wedding, except enjoy it and admire Molly's dress — handkerchief points were new to me and I liked the effect. At each of these weddings I remember sitting in the flower-decorated church in a daze of romance, smelling the orange-blossom and listening to the organ, and praying fervently that I would soon be able to trail up that aisle in yards of tulle and white satin to be married to the man of my dreams.