Golden Afternoon (33 page)

‘So be warned by his fate,' said Tacklow severely, ‘for who knows but that one day one of the gods may overhear the cries of these poor beasts of yours, and deal with you as Banaspati Mâî and Hanuman dealt with the cruel master? And even if they do not, you may be very certain that when your time comes to die, the gods will see to it that you are reborn as a bear who will be captured by someone who will treat you exactly as you have been treating this one. Now take the
dewai
(medicine) and use it as I have done until the
baloo
's
^*
nose is no longer sore. And if I hear that you have not done so, I will petition the Nawab-Sahib to have you thrown into jail.'

The bear's owner grovelled in the dust, promising faithfully to look after his
baloo
in future like the doting father and mother of an only child, and backed away down the drive, salaaming at every step and looking scared out of his wits. Tacklow, forestalling what he knew I was about to say, got in first and said, a shade testily, ‘No, we
can't
buy his bear. What would we do with it? Do have some sense, Mouse!' And, of course, he was right: it wasn't feasible. But oh, the tragedy of those bears! There are more of them now than ever, and the last time I was in Agra and drove out to take yet another nostalgic look at Fatehpur-Sîkrî, there seemed to be one of the wretched creatures — taken from their cool Himalayan forests to spend the rest of their lives in the dust and the terrible, glaring heat of the Indian sun — every 200 yards of the way. It hurts one just to
think
of it.

I told Tacklow that I couldn't remember hearing that story of the cruel owner and the performing animals before, and he laughed and said that he was not surprised, since he had invented it on the spur of the moment, there being nothing like a parable for putting across a message, and he thought it might even stick in the mind of that bear's owner with more effect than any threat, and make him watch his step. I do pray that it did.

There were several shooting parties that Christmas, consisting of the Heir the Sahibzada Saadat, and half a dozen of his friends, the Meades and ourselves, and Bill and his friends. We would drive out of an evening into the open country, stopping off at a spot selected by the local
shikari
, who would meet us there accompanied by the headman of the nearest village and several villagers, leave the cars and, having spread out into a thin line across the plain, walk forward in the warm evening light that drew long blue shadows on the stony ground from the thorn scrub and datura bushes and the tall, dry clumps of pampas grass, while above us the setting sun freckled the sky with bright gold or peach-pink shreds of cloud, and the partridges began to call from the cover of the scrub.

Those ‘rough shoots' were among the pleasantest things about Tonk, for they reminded me of the shooting camps of my childhood years when Bets and I, one each side of Kashmera, would follow behind the guns as they walked up game-birds across the scrublands on the far side of the river at Okhla. Here, as there, the line would walk forward, the guns separated from each other by about fifty yards, while the rest of us — Mother, Mrs Meade, Bets and myself, the
shikari
and the villagers — walked either alongside one of them or somewhere in between. The line would put up partridge and quail, pigeons, pea-fowl and snipe and the occasional duck or guinea-fowl. Sometimes a hare, and once or twice a leopard — though these last were allowed to lope away unharmed, as was the occasional porcupine. At the end of the evening, when the sun had set and the first stars began to glimmer in the sky, we would walk back to the cars and distribute the bag between the guns, the
shikari
and the villagers.

Tacklow seldom took a gun out with him on these rough shoots, for as I have said elsewhere he was an indifferent shot; except, oddly enough, when it came to snipe, which are supposed to be among the most difficult
of birds to shoot. But he would miss far more of the slower birds than he hit, and instead took the opportunity of walking alongside Bill, of whom he had seen very little of late. Bill, seizing the first chance he had had of having a private word with his father, confessed that he had become involved in what he described as ‘rather a sticky situation' and was badly in need of help and advice.

Bill had arrived in Tonk in such an unusually subdued frame of mind that even the prospect of bagging a leopard had done little to cheer him, and when I inquired as to the reason for this gloom, he admitted that he had got himself into an ‘awful jam', but that talking about it wasn't going to help, so would I just shut up. I remember leaping to the conclusion that he had got himself embroiled with some unsuitable cutie (1920s slang for ‘bimbo') and was wondering how to get rid of her — Bill was always falling in love with some girl or other. He had been doing so ever since his preparatory school days, but they never lasted long. However, he said crossly that this was serious. It was, too.

I no longer remember the details of the drama. But it seems that a friend of Bill's, a fellow subaltern, who had been living beyond his means and got himself badly into debt, had taken to writing cheques that he knew would bounce. He had come to an arrangement with his bank (or, more likely, a money-lender) to lend him enough money to pay off his debts, with the proviso that the sum must be repaid, plus a fairly exorbitant interest, within a stated time, but since he appeared to be a bad risk he had to get some friend to stand surety for the loan and repay it if he himself failed to do so. He had asked Bill to stand surety, assuring him that there was not the
slightest
risk involved — all that he would have to do was sign a bit of paper to this effect, and long before the date on which it must be repaid came round he, the friend, would have paid it in full, for he had already cabled his father and followed it up with an express letter explaining the whole situation. So Bill need have no anxiety about the money not being repaid, and he would have saved his friend from getting into serious trouble with his regiment, who might well cashier him. Bill, of course, signed. ‘I couldn't possibly have done anything else, could I?' protested Bill, defensively, telling me all. ‘How
could
I have said “no”, when poor old — Phil or Tim or Jim or whoever — was in such a hole? And how could I
possibly
have known that his old skinflint of a father would let him down by sending him a “let this be a lesson to you” lecture instead of the money?'

I remember inquiring priggishly if it had not crossed his tiny mind that it was not only stupid, but downright dishonest to put his signature to a solemn promise that he
must
have known he couldn't possibly keep, if he were called upon to do so. Whereupon Bill bit my head off, but had the grace to confess that it never occurred to him for a moment that it would come to that. Now that it had, the only thing he could think of was to tell the whole sad story to Tacklow — which was, he admitted, the main reason why he had suggested that he plus a couple of friends should spend their Christmas leave in Tonk — in the hope that Tacklow would be able to think of some solution to the problem; in other words lend him enough money to pay off the money-lender. But now he had begun to wonder what would happen to him if
his
father, too, should prove as flinty-hearted as his friend's had been, and had spent sleepless nights trying to summon up the courage to break the news. I assured him that Tacklow would never behave like that, and urged him to ‘tell all' and get it over with, instead of trailing around with a face like the chief mourner at a funeral. But poor Bill hardly knew Tacklow, and since his confidence in fathers had been badly shaken by the behaviour of his friend's parent, it took him some little time to screw up his courage and come out with the whole sad story.

Poor Tacklow. He had so hoped to be able to save some of the money that the Government of India had paid him for his work on the Treaties, but the extra expense of bringing his family out to India with him, and paying for their keep and expenses in Delhi and Kashmir, and buying the Hudson, had absorbed every anna of it; and now the ‘rainy day' money he hoped to put aside from his salary as President of the Council of State in Tonk, plus anything else he could raise, was going to have to go towards paying off this outrageous debt contracted by his son. For he paid it, of course. There was nothing else he could do, since Bill was of age and could not plead that he did not understand what he was letting himself in for. I don't remember, after all these years, what the actual sum was; it would, in any case, probably seem laughably modest these days. But at that time it seemed to me enormous. I couldn't see
how
he was going to raise it, and had visions of him getting caught in the same sort of trap that Bill was in. But Mother said that he had arranged for an overdraft, something he had previously always steered clear of, and that with the help of that and his savings, it would be managed. But we would all have to try to economize for some time to come.
An unnecessary warning, since I don't remember a time when we didn't!

The incident was never mentioned again, and now that he knew he was off the hook Bill's spirits rose as dramatically as though a tangible weight had been lifted off his shoulders, and the rest of that Christmas holiday was a great success.

I never heard if Bill's friend ever repaid the money or not; if he did, it would only have been in dribs and drabs and over a long interval, for a subaltern's pay was far from lavish, and since the young man in question was one of those breezy and ebullient types with a fondness for horses and gambling, and a tendency to ‘play it off the cuff', it is my guess (without wishing to be uncharitable) that he quite genuinely forgot all about it after a few months, and left Tacklow holding the baby. Bill certainly never paid it.

The Raj, as I have already mentioned, had formed a habit of holding ‘Weeks' during the cold weather — ‘Lahore Week', ‘Calcutta Week', ‘Lucknow Week' and so on. These ‘Weeks' consisted of several days of non-stop socializing and festivity which included gymkhanas, racing, polo tournaments, a military tournament and any number of parties and dances attended by all the prettiest members of the Fishing Fleet — the ‘Week Queens' who had a beau in every Cavalry Cantonment in India. The greatest of these Weeks' was the ‘Horse Show Week' in Delhi, which, apart from the Horse Show itself, was crammed with entertainment that included a huge Viceregal garden party, dances, a ball at Viceroy House and another, always a lavish fancy-dress affair, at the IDG — the Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club.

Tacklow had already arranged for Mother, Bets and me to spend three weeks in Delhi, which included the Horse Show, but following Bill's disclosure it seemed highly unlikely that we would be able to attend. However, after an anxious interval in which a great deal of calculation and much scribbling of sums on the back of envelopes went on, Tacklow took a deep breath, increased his overdraft to danger-point, and decided that we could just manage it. Mother had already written to ‘Aunt Bee' Lewis — the combative spinster who had had charge of us during our years of exile in an English boarding-school, and now lived in Southampton — sending my measurements and asking her to buy me a really pretty dress for the Viceregal Ball. It would be the first ‘ready-made' dress that
I had ever possessed, since all the previous ones had been run up by some ‘little woman round the corner'.

This extravagant garment (I believe it cost all of £15 including the postage) would certainly have been countermanded if it had not already been bought and posted, and Mother fell back on the verandah
darzi
for the rest of our dresses, for the materials for which we went shopping in the cloth shops in Tonk's bazaar.

I remember I designed a ball dress for myself in a very cheap green satin and yards of mosquito netting that the proprietor of the shop had dyed exactly to match. Skirts were still short and waists still ignored, so it had a long bodice, with a full skirt that started about mid-hip and consisted of short ‘handkerchief points'. But in order to conceal as much as possible of those piano legs, I had a wide hem of the green-dyed net edging the green satin points. It was a great success, and I cherished for years a newspaper cutting from the society gossip column of the
Civil and Military Gazette
, which reported both the Viceregal Ball and the Horse Show Ball that year, and included a reference to Miss M. Kaye: ‘looking very pretty in a ravishing green satin and net confection, which was quite the prettiest dress at the ball'.
Did
I preen myself next morning! I kept that cutting until it literally fell to pieces. It was the high spot of the year for me.

I bought yards of shimmering pale blue Bokhara silk, shot with lavender, which the enthusiastic
darzi
made up into a Louis Quinze-style ballgown on the lines of the one that Madame de Pompadour wears in the pastel portrait of her by Maurice Quentin de la Tour, with the difference that in place of embroidery, I painted a design of garlands and flowers in oil paint. The material took it wonderfully, and the
darzi
contrived a magnificent Louis Quinze crinoline out of whippy slivers of bamboo and two-anna-a-yard muslin, which we dipped in rice-water starch. It made the most gorgeous, though ephemeral, fancy dress, and was as great a success at the IDG's big fancy-dress ball as that green satin and mosquito-net confection had been at the Viceregal Ball. The only disaster was Aunt Bee's expensive off-the-peg model. But that story comes later.