Golden Afternoon (45 page)

Chasma Shai was a favourite spot for moonlight picnics, and I have been to so many parties that have ended up here in the small hours among its fountains and flowerbeds, that to this day I never see a full moon without thinking that only a few short hours ago it would have been shining down on that dear familiar garden.

It was looking at its best that September; there were still lotus lilies in bloom on the lake, though not in the numbers there would have been in high summer, and all around the lakes the poplars and willows were beginning to turn gold, while here and there a chenar tree would show a hint of apricot or orange that would in time deepen into flaming scarlet, but at present was only a warning that once again the year was moving towards winter. Many of the holiday-makers, their leave over, had already left, and others were making preparations to leave. But since their places were taken by people moving down from Gulmarg, where the nights were getting chillier, Srinagar seemed almost as full as ever. The Nageem Bagh Navy continued to flourish, and we made plans for autumn-winter manoeuvres.

We had already decided to stick to the original crew as the only ‘life members', and anybody else who joined would do so only as Able Seamen
— ‘the crew of the
Nancy
brig'. The first three of these were Tony Weldon, that long-time friend from the days of the Red House, followed by John Sykes and Sammy Woods. I can't remember the names of any of the others, but I don't think there were more than half-a-dozen at most, for our standards were strict, and consisted, among other things, of a thoroughly silly story that was tried out, without their suspecting, on each candidate. If he or she did not laugh themselves silly over it, they were out. The joke was a simple one and squeaky clean …

An absent-minded professor attending a ‘white-tie' dinner was handed a dish of mashed potatoes by a waiter, and to the consternation of the elderly lady sitting next to him, he ignored the spoon and, dipping his finger-tips into it instead, he rubbed them into his hair. ‘Professor Bleep!' gasped the horrified lady, ‘that is
mashed potatoes
!' The professor gave it a startled glance, and said: ‘Dear me, so it is! I do apologize — I thought it was spinach!'

The members of the NBN thought this pre-Monty Python joke simply hilarious. But I am sadly aware that nowadays it would probably have fallen flat, and that any similar test set up in these enlightened times would be either crudely vulgar or cringingly blasphemous (preferably both) in order to get a laugh. But to return to the NBN, one or two otherwise excellent ‘possibles' fell at that spinach fence without knowing they had done so, which for some reason caused more amusement among us than if they had passed with honours. It was, by itself, a cause of endless amusement and gales of laughter.

The Navy, mostly
en masse
, picnicked in turn on two small islands, the Char-Chenar on the Dāl and Sonalanka on Gagribal lake; danced six nights a week either at Srinagar Club or Nedou's ballroom — finishing up on a lawn at Chasma-Shai, playing gramophone records and watching for the dawn. We paid several visits to Gulmarg, driving as far as Tanmarg, where we left the cars and rode up on
tats
on the unmetalled pony track that winds up through the forests, to have drinks at the Club and lunch in the garden of the new café that Nedou's had just opened, attached to the Gulmarg branch of the hotel. Once we rode on up through the forest to picnic on Apharwat — at Khilanmarg, the Meadow of Goats, where the tree-line stops as though drawn by a ruler, and the snow-line begins; and once we spent an entire day fishing for snow-trout in the Ferozpore Nullah, which lies a mile or so above, below the pony track.

Whenever the Navy was not manoeuvring
en masse
, Mike and I would
go off alone to drift about the lakes in a
shikarra
that he had hired for his personal use. He used to play a series of records in rotation. A favourite one, kept for moonlight picnics, was ‘You Were Meant for Me', and whenever he played it he would sing the words to me.

Mike was not yet twenty-one, and it was a measure of how seriously he had offended his family and relations that they should have sent him so far from England when he was just about to come of age. Twenty-one: would you believe it? A milestone that would, had he toed the line and behaved himself, have been commemorated with a ball at Packington and/or Aylesford, plus various other celebratory gestures of congratulation and rejoicing such as wining and dining the indoor and outdoor staffs, lighting bonfires, and similar forms of hey, nonny, nonny! As it was, he had to make do with a dinner and dance at the Peshawar Club, laid on by the NBN.

With that occasion in mind, I took out all my savings and bought a dazzling two-piece evening outfit in a sale at a dress shop on the Bund, owned and run by a Mrs Viva Fraser. It consisted of a short, shimmering, pale-pink dress sewn all over with thousands of tiny crystal beads and decorated at the neck and hem with darker pink roses and pale emerald leaves in small china beads, worn under a matching coat of the same length: the two together weighed a ton! The costume had been imported from France, and I thought it was the most beautiful outfit I had ever seen, even lovelier than Mother's opal-beaded evening dress. I could not understand why it had not been snapped up by someone else the moment it had gone on display. Well, that was obvious, if only I had used my head.

Skirts were on their way down yet again, and most evening dresses now swept the floor. And apart from being a bit
démodée
, a two-piece affair needed to be worn by someone with good legs and a slim figure — the slimmer the better. Short skirts and several million beads do not look their best on size sixteen girls with piano legs. Besides which, it had initially been too expensive for the average memsahib until, having been tried on and reluctantly discarded by women with more money and far more sense than myself, it ended up in the end-of-season sale, where, against all advice, and begobbered by the charm of those shimmering, glimmering beads and the exquisitely embroidered roses, I bought it. And wore it only twice. Once at Mike's coming-of-age party and a year later at some first night — or perhaps last night — at the Gaiety Theatre in
Simla, where, having gone back-stage to congratulate some performer, I was pounced upon by a frantic producer and begged to run like the wind to the chemist's, about two or three hundred yards further up the Mall, to get some special form of restorative that was desperately needed by one of the cast who was feeling faint and threatening to walk out.

Cotten and Morris, the chemist in question, ran an all-night emergency service, and clutching the required prescription and a few rupees, I fled from the green-room, tore down the Mall by the light of the road lamps, collected the prescription, and panted back — a bit slower this time — and was about three-quarters of the way back when I realized that I was running alongside a thin, glittery line of light — not much thicker than a dew-hung cobweb — that seemed to stretch right down the length of the Mall. I put my hand out without stopping and caught it. It was a thin length of cotton, strung with little crystal beads and, checking to look behind me, I saw that there was a second line, running back to the chemist's … I had caught a loose thread of the beaded coat on something inside the green-room (it turned out to be a basket of flowers that was waiting to be presented to the leading lady) and I had unravelled a good half of my coat and heaven knows how many crystal beads out in the Mall.

I never wore that outfit again. It did
not
suit me. But I cut off and kept the swags of roses as a souvenir of the NBN days, and because I thought I ought to be able to sew them on to something else. I never did, and I still have one of those fragile swags, tucked away in a sewing basket somewhere in the attic.

Oh, well — all good things must come to an end at last, for ‘Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust'. The Captain, the Bo'sun and the Dog-watch were the first to go. The lone chenar tree high up on the side of the Takht-i-Suliman, which was always a signal that autumn was about to take over the valley, had already turned scarlet, and Andy's honeymoon leave was over.

Colonel Henslow returned to collect his charge and fulfil various tentative arrangements that he had made for the two of them, and to hear — and hopefully approve — a number of plans for the near future that had been made in his absence by the NBN in Council. As for us Kayes, we too would be leaving Kashmir soon,
en route
for Abbottabad where Bill, now stationed there, had made arrangements for us to stay
for a week or two on our way to the plains. The Fleet therefore left its anchorage at Chota Nageem and sailed
en masse
for another, temporary one, off Gagribal Point. This was the usual practice for those who had spent their holiday at Nageem and suchlike places, since departing buses and cars left for the plains from a point near the First Bridge. And that meant leaving any distant mooring a good hour earlier, if one intended to drive as far as Murree or Abbottabad, let alone Rawalpindi, before dark. An early start was essential, and the houseboats queued up to be as near as possible to Gagribal Point or the Dāl Gate.

We arrived a day early so as give the Bo'sun a chance to do some last-minute shopping, and just after we returned, laden with parcels, Kashmir laid on a special matinee performance by way of farewell …

The boats of departing holiday-makers were packed fairly close together, and all the founding members of the Nageem Bagh Navy were about to have lunch on the roof of the flagship when the midday calm was shattered by an unseen female — English and possessing an admirable pair of lungs and an astonishing command of bad language — who was yelling abuse at the top of her voice. The yells were accompanied by loud splashes, and the uproar brought the occupants of every boat within hearing range rushing to the windows or roof of their boats, prepared to leap into the lake and rescue someone from drowning. It was not necessary.

Looking across a short stretch of water, the enthralled audience, now numbering hundreds, had an excellent view through the open windows of a nearby houseboat, and of its temporary tenant sitting at his dining-room table with his head in his hands. I don't think anyone ever saw his face, for he never said a word. He just sat there with his shoulders slumped and his head down, flinching occasionally when struck by a piece of houseboat crockery, or some other form of missile that was being hurled at him by a young virago who was raging round the room, picking up and throwing in the general direction of the open window, anything that she could lay her hands on.

Most of it, luckily for him, made it through the window, to splash into the lake, while we all watched riveted by the drama and the sheer variety of ammunition that whizzed past the victims' head to splash or plop into the lake. Plates, cups, saucers and glasses of every shape and size, gramophone records, bottles of assorted drink, jugs and sugar basins, a large china serving dish and at least two teapots, and finally — like some sort of grand
bonne bouche
— a wind-up gramophone that sailed majestically
out into the sunlight and descending, hit the water with a colossal splash.

The effort it must have taken to heave this last item out through the window must have been too much for the shot-putter, or else she had finally run out of breath and adrenalin, as well as ammunition, for she turned on her heel and vanished into the bedroom end of the houseboat, followed by the wailing
manji
who had been standing well clear of the action, wringing his hands and calling upon Allah and a variety of saints as he watched his property being destroyed. Another member of the houseboat's entourage entered cautiously and, becoming aware of the interested audience outside, hurried to the windows and closed the wire-gauze fly-screens. And that was that, as far as we were concerned. We never discovered what it had all been about, though everyone had a different theory to fit the evidence. But you see what I mean about the majority of scandals in the days of the Raj tending to verge on the farcical.

This had an even more ridiculous postscript, for an hour or so later (by which time the ex-tenants had left by a back way) the
manji
could be seen directing salvage operations from the roof of his houseboat, bustling to and fro and leaning out at dangerous angles to point and shout down instructions to his team to indicate where it might be worthwhile to dive for fish-plates or a teapot, and urging them not to tread on any unbroken bit of glass or crockery and to be careful about bringing up the gramophone. It was, for some reason, a lot funnier than the original crockery throwing — though it did not amuse the
manji
.

Andy, the Bo'sun and the Dog-watch, with Andy's bearer, left their houseboat at dawn on the following day, and the rest of us set our alarm clocks, and got up early enough to see them off with a ceremonial salute fired by Mike from his shotgun. There was a distinct nip in the air, and Mike had had to put on his army greatcoat because he was cold. And, as the sun came up behind the long range of mountains that wall the eastern side of the valley, we could see that the snows had already began to creep down towards the tree-line.

It should not have been a sad occasion, since we would all be meeting again in a few weeks' time in Peshawar for Mike's coming-of-age party; and after that Colonel Henslow and Mike were hoping to persuade Tacklow to help them lay on a trip down the Ganges — something that Mike had set his heart on. There were also various other plans afoot, including one for Christmas. But in spite of all this, it was certainly not a very cheerful occasion; I suppose because in our heart of hearts we all
knew that a very special time, an almost perfect time, had ended; and that however much fun we had in the future, it could never be quite the same as this time … Because ‘Once Upon a Time' never comes again.

Our stay in Abbottabad was, not unnaturally, something of a comedown after the heady, holiday days in Kashmir, and I don't remember much about it except that we played a lot of golf, and much to my surprise I became quite good at it. Then at last we were
en route
for Peshawar, leaving the mountains behind us and heading for the plains once more. We stopped briefly at Akbar's fort at Attock, to pay a call on the commander of the fort who was a friend of Tacklow's, and then, crossing the bridge that spans the Indus and brings you back into the North West Frontier Province, found ourselves greeted on the far side by the NBN in full fig: naval caps with
Kiwa Gabrata
cap badges all correct, the Dog-watch barking an ecstatic welcome, and the orange, brown and green NBN flag flying at the fore. It was a gorgeous surprise, and the beginning of another week of non-stop laughing and sheer, light-hearted fun.