Golden Afternoon (47 page)

Her Excellency, recognizing us, waved her parasol in an affable salute, and in doing so managed to dislodge one of the pack — a Peke, if memory serves — which fell into the road, landed, fortunately, on its feet, and chased after the car, shrieking at the top of its yap. Apprised of its fall by the helpful yells of sundry pedestrians, Her Ex. ordered the car to stop, and the beautifully uniformed equerry, still managing to look dignified, ran back and collected the creature. Her Ex. waved a gracious hand at the crowd (which in India can be counted upon to collect on the instant to stare at the slightest deviation from the normal) and, the Peke having been restored to its fellows, the car moved on in a cloud of dust and a shrill chorus of yapping. Mike subsided abruptly on the edge of the pavement, put his head in his hands and laughed himself silly, explaining, between hiccups, that now he had seen everything!

Back in Delhi we settled into Number eighty-over-one, The Mall, a small, white, flat-roofed house which had been built as a more permanent shelter than the sea of tents set up on the plain outside Old Delhi for the guests attending the Great Durbar of 1903. Tacklow, who had work to do in Delhi on behalf of Tonk, had hired 80/1 for a few weeks. Then, to the inexpressible joy of Bets and myself, we would be setting off on a trip down the Ganges by river-boat from Gurrmuktasa, to that dearly loved haunt of our childhood, Narora, at the head of the Ganges Canal.

It was Mike who had been responsible for this. He had been leafing one day through one of Mother's enormous collection of photograph albums (she was a compulsive album keeper) and had come across one that contained photographs of one of the Ganges trips that she and Tacklow and some of their friends used to take every year — camping each night at a different spot, and shooting for the pot. The photographs had fascinated Mike, and after seeing them he had badgered Colonel Henslow to persuade Tacklow into arranging a similar trip, and taking
them with him. The Colonel had done his best, but Tacklow had been evasive, and I don't think he would have agreed if I hadn't gone to him with my problems the day after Mike's coming-of-age party and asked for his advice.

He listened to me thoughtfully, and when I had finished he looked at me over the top of his spectacles with what I used to think of as his ‘Mr Bennet' look and said, ‘You seem to have thought it all out fairly clearly for yourself, darling. So what do you want me to say? Socially and financially, young Mike would be what my generation would have called a “catch”, and your mother would probably be the envy of all her friends who have marriageable daughters. He is also a very nice child and he has charming manners. I like him. But he's a Peter Pan. He hasn't really grown up yet, and I'd say that he's still too young to be thinking seriously of marrying and settling down — because one can't even make a guess yet at what sort of person he will become when he does grow up. I'm not going to make up your mind for you, because that is something you've got to do for yourself. But give it time, darling. And until you have made up your mind, one way or the other, my advice to you is to say nothing of all this to anyone else: not to your sister, or any of your girlfriends. Not even to your mother — in fact specially not to your mother, because she's going to be so disappointed if nothing comes of this, and I won't have her upset. Remember your
Uncle Remus
'
^*
— ‘Tar-baby ain't sayin' nuthin' and Br'er Fox he lay low'. You do both, my Mouse!'

That last was good advice, and I took it to heart. I also saw exactly what he meant by saying Mike was still Peter Pan. But then that was one of the things that made him so lovable, and the less sensible half of me decided obstinately that until he chose to grow out of it, I would be Wendy to his Peter — and to heck with being too old for the role! All the same, I still wavered, and the next time he brought up the subject of marriage — and I have to admit that he did not exactly ply me with proposals (merely mentioning the subject now and again and not appearing unduly disappointed when I continued to prevaricate) — I told him that since arrangements for the Ganges trip had now been fixed up, and we would be seeing each other daily and hourly for over ten days on end, I could safely promise that he would have an answer on the last day of the
trip. To which he replied lightly, ‘Oh, good! I shall keep you to it …' and went on to talk cheerfully about something else.

I remember thinking that he seemed very sure of the answer, that perhaps he knew, though he had never shown the smallest sign of it, that he was a ‘catch', and that therefore the very idea of being turned down had never even crossed his mind. The thought was a disturbing one and I am sure quite untrue. But it worried me a bit at the time, because that stay in Delhi, during which Mike and I saw as much of each other as we had in Kashmir, had also shown me a couple of disturbing things about my lovable Peter Pan that had never once shown up, even faintly, in all the Nageem Bagh Navy days or during the festivities in Peshawar. He drank too much and he could not hold his drink. Nor did he know how to choose friends: anyone who flattered him and laughed at his jokes was ‘a terribly good bod! — we must enlist him as an Able Seaman!'

He collected a crowd of hangers-on from the bars at Maiden's Hotel, the Cecil, the Old Delhi Club and New Delhi's IDG, and they sponged on him mercilessly. A typical example was a night on which Bets and I were dining with him at Maiden's. There were only four of us to begin with, Mike and a friend of ours, one John Gardner of the Central India Horse, whom we had introduced to Mike, and whom he had invited to make a fourth. Unfortunately we had started the evening with a few drinks in the bar, and someone — probably the barman, or a waiter (Mike was staying at the hotel) — had addressed him as ‘M' Lord'.

There were not all that many peers of the realm skating about India in those days, and one or two young men, who were already a bit tipsy, caught the name and turned to stare, as did several grizzled topers with very fruity-looking noses. I saw one of the latter lean over and speak to one of the barmen in an undertone, and presently he came across to Mike with an outstretched hand and said, ‘You're Aylesford, aren't you? Thought I recognized you. My old man used to be a friend of your father's. I rather think we met shootin' somewhere. Don't suppose you'd remember. Name's Bloggs (or whatever). Jimmy Bloggs —' Mike gazed at him a bit woozily. It was obvious that neither the name nor the face meant anything to him. But then he was always a friendly creature who attracted people as fly-paper attracts flies, so he smiled vaguely and shook the outstretched hand, and within five minutes he was being introduced to a whole clutch of total strangers, and was standing them drinks.

They did not leave us when a waiter touched Mike's arm and said that
the dinner he had ordered was ready, they merely followed us to our table and suggested in hearty tones that we and they put our tables together and make a party of it. They were all pretty merry by now, and Mike could see no objection to this: he liked parties. And when dinner was over and one of them suggested that we all go off to dance at the IDG in New Delhi, Mike was all for it. But I noticed that when the bills for the dinner were discreetly produced not one of the freeloaders who had gatecrashed our party stayed to pick one up. They all with one accord faded rapidly away in the direction of the men's cloakroom on the excuse of ‘spending a penny' or collecting their coats and hats, leaving Mike to sign for the lot of them. Nor did any of them suggest paying for themselves when they returned. The bills were forgotten as we all piled into cars and set off for the Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club, which in those days lay on the far side of New Delhi, near the racecourse and the lovely little tomb of Saftar Jung. Nowadays, worse luck — so fast and so swiftly has the city grown — there is no open country beyond Saftar Jung's Tomb, only an ocean of new suburbs, wave after wave of them as far as the eye can see.

We arrived at the IDG and swept into the hall in a mob. There must have been at least fifteen of us, all told; and here, once again, the pattern was repeated. While Bets and I retired to the ladies' room to primp and preen, Mike's new-found friends vanished into the Gentlemen, and from there into the ballroom, leaving Mike and John Gardner landed with signing for the entire party. John, who was later to become a good friend of Mike's, had no feelings of
noblesse oblige
towards that crowd of parasites and thought Mike was an ass to allow himself to be sponged on in this manner; nor, as a subaltern, could he afford to pay for half of them. He signed for himself, which as the invited guest he need not have done, and since none of the hangers-on returned to the hall, Mike signed for the rest. ‘I like this friend of yours; he's a good chap,' approved John, telling me what had happened, ‘but he doesn't seem to have cut his milk teeth yet. He oughtn't to let himself be conned into footing the bill for that lot of freeloaders, and you should tell him so. What that boy needs is a keeper!'

He did of course. And his charm was such that when he really needed one, there always seemed to be one there to step into the breach and give him a helping hand. John was to become one of these, but though I tried to be one, I made a botch of it; I suppose because I was still too callow
and inexperienced to cope. And trying to cope with Mike on the loose in Delhi, no longer as a minor but officially and legally grown-up and master of his fate, was a little like having to control that proverbial cannon that has broken loose on board ship during a storm at sea. The example I have just given, of how we began an evening in Old Delhi as a decorous foursome dining at Maiden's Hotel, and ended up in a riotous party in the Gymkhana Club in New Delhi, was merely one of many similar evenings. On one occasion the night's entertainment ended in my helping one of the hotel bearers put Mike to bed in the small hours. I thought he was dead — or anyway, dying — and, being scared to death, I insisted on waking up a doctor (presumably the hotel's resident medic), who was not pleased. Nor was Mike when he heard about it. He wanted to know how I could have made such a silly fuss about it, when I should have helped hush it up!

The trouble was that almost every evening, when the day's work was over and shops and offices shut, the British gathered on the lawns of their Clubs to ‘eat the air' as the delightful Indian phrase puts it, listen to a band, and drink gimlets and whisky sours, gin slings, pink gins and a variety of other short drinks with fearsome names. Later on (probably driven in by mosquitoes) they would gather in hotel bars and places where they could drink, by this time suitably dressed in dinner-jackets for dining or dancing, or whatever entertainment they had planned for the evening. (Yes, they
did
always ‘dress for dinner', even when dining alone in their own bungalow, and even when camping in the jungle! That at least is truth and not legend.) And in these places they might occasionally be accompanied by one of the lawful owners of the land. Not very often, because caste Hindus, although not totally forbidden all forms of alcohol, as Muslims are, prefer to do their drinking in decent privacy behind closed doors.

This ‘sundowner' drinking was a long-established habit among the Empire Builders, and Mike took to it like a duck to water. He had never once been drunk during our unsophisticated Nageem Bagh Navy days, only, at most (and then only very occasionally), getting what in those days we would probably have called ‘tightly slight' or ‘slightly sozzled'. Which to my mind proves that drink was something he could take or leave. He didn't need it in the euphoric days of the NBN when we were all riding high on clouds of laughter and silliness and sheer high spirits. There wasn't all that much drinking in the NBN because none
of us could afford it. Not even Mike, while Colonel Henslow held the purse-strings. But the partying in Delhi was on a different level from the youthful fun-and-games in Kashmir. There was a lot more drinking, for one thing, and far too many parties finished with Mike getting well and truly plastered.

I couldn't handle it. And for a rather silly reason: when he was sober he was in love with me, and he could be so very sweet. But when he was drunk, I ceased to be special and became someone of no importance at all — a faceless stranger who merely happened to be a member of the party he was in that night. Well, there is that old saying:
in vino veritas
, isn't there — ‘In wine is truth'. I was reminded of that too often in those Delhi days. Particularly on those occasions when I realized that it was high time that Bets and I went home and, saying goodnight to him, realized that he had not the faintest idea who I was.

I had tried, on the first occasion that I realized he had too much to drink, to persuade him that he had had enough. But that had been a hopeless failure — as anyone who has ever tried that will know! All I got was a degrading row, beginning with Mike drawing himself up to his full height and staring at me like some pompous Peter the Great who has been insulted by one of his
moujiks
, and demanding, in a voice that could be heard from one end of the room to another, if I was ‘
daring
to shuggess that he had had too mush to drink. Because if sho …' Anyone who has ever been silly enough to argue with someone who is well and truly plastered can take it on from there. I don't suppose the scenario varies very much.

I retired in tears, and Mike, waking next morning with a terrible hangover (serve him right!), couldn't remember the details. Only that he had been drunk and exchanged a good few wingèd words with someone — he wasn't even sure with whom, but as soon as he could see straight, he swallowed a couple of Maiden's Hotel's special blend of prairie oysters
^*
and, I imagine, a lot of black coffee, and came rushing round to 80/
I
The Mall. When finally admitted, he went down on his knees and apologized in dust and ashes, promising faithfully that if only I would forgive him, ‘just this once', such a thing would never happen again — never, never,
never
. After a tearful scene in which I seem to remember we both wept buckets,
peace was restored and for a day or two, everything came up roses. Then
bingo
— we went back to the same routine.