Golden Afternoon (53 page)

Tony said he jumped at it: ‘Well, who wouldn't?' And the two of them disappeared for the next couple of months into Hudson Bay and the
enormous, trackless forests of Northern Canada. The wedding was called off, and, naturally, the reception; and by the time the fugitives returned to civilization, if there were any bits of broken hearts lying around, they had all been thrown away with the bathwater. In the event Amber married an Italian Marchese, thus becoming a Marchesa and châtelaine of one of those fairy-tale villas on the shores of one of the Italian lakes. But she must have been one of ‘those whom the gods love', for she died, still young and beautiful, from cancer.

As for me, I continued to think that I still had a choice in the matter of Mike's hand and heart until I received a long and chatty letter from one of the Delhi debs (who had never been a particular friend of mine) telling me in great detail all I didn't want to know about Mike's new girlfriend. She said she ‘thought I ought to know'. (Oh yeah?) Well, I suppose she was right, at that. But I remember glooming around the camp that Christmas, feeling lower than an earthworm and unable to enter into the Christmas spirit.

The camp was one of those lavish ones that the princes of Rajputana went in for in a big way. Wooden floors covered with
durries
— druggets — and strewn with Persian rugs. Proper beds ornamented with brass knobs and curlicues, dressing-tables fitted with cheval-glasses; tin baths; sitting-rooms complete with cretonne-covered sofas and chairs, and elegant writing tables provided with writing paper embossed with the state's crest in gold. In those days princes liked to do things properly.

On Christmas morning there was a long line of camp servants standing ready to present my parents with the customary festival‘
dollies
', flat, rush platters piled with fruit and all kinds of
metai
— sweetmeats. After Tacklow had distributed largesse, the guns — Tacklow and Bill, Campbell Harris, and the heir, Saadat, together with three or four of his friends and several courtiers — went off to walk up partridge or shoot snipe on a nearby
jheel
. I didn't go with them, and spent the afternoon sulking in the company of the lone elephant which had been brought along to act as a stop for the beat that was scheduled for Boxing Day.

The elephant was as bored as I was, and I began to have a fellow-feeling for her as she rocked restlessly to and fro in her pickets, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and inventing various ways of passing the time. I've always liked elephants, and I owe this one a debt of gratitude, because I ended up watching her silly games and being amused by them instead of brooding about the end of my love affair with Mike. One of the many ploys that got her — and me — through the long, hot, drowsy hours of that last Christmas Day of the restless twenties was a very simple one, but fascinating to watch. She would pick up a handful of dust from the sandy soil to one side of her and, having placed it carefully on a small pile on the top of her head, swing her trunk down to the opposite side and blow it off, repeating the operation with neatness and elegance, and never once failing to blow off the little pile that she had placed on her
head. She had a whole repertoire of these silly games, and when she got bored with one, she would turn and look at me, before producing the next, to make sure that I was paying proper attention to her.

Thanks to that silly young elephant and to the tiger-hunt, I forgot to brood on my personal affairs, and I can't even remember now on what day the beat was held, only that we had to wait until we received proof that the tiger was in that area. Bait, in the form of some hapless (and very vocal) goat or young buffalo calf, had been staked out at various points in the landscape to which it was hoped to lure the tiger, and only when the local
shikari
arrived hot-foot with news that the tiger had killed one of these unfortunate creatures on the previous night, was the beat laid on. By which time it was far too late for Bill to take part in it, since he had to leave in time to be present for the New Year's Day parade in Kohat. The beat consisted of as many men as could be raised in the nearby villages, reinforced by some of the Nawab's token army, and every man who cared to arm himself with a
lathi
or ancient shotgun, firecrackers, drums and anything that could make a noise. The country around the camp was true ‘tiger-country' — which meant that it in no way resembled the jungle as depicted by Hollywood in films such as
The Jungle Book
and
Kim
. Here the land was largely open plain, liberally scattered with low, scrub-and-tree-covered hills. And almost everything that grew there was the colour of gold or sun-bleached grass. A tawny country where the thin lines and criss-cross black shadows might have been specially designed as cover for tigers.

Tacklow and the others had been taken on the previous day to see the
machans
we would occupy for the shoot — half a dozen small wood and string platforms about the size of a child's bed, fixed high up in the tallest of the sheshum trees, and each capable of holding at least two to three people. Tacklow, for whom the shoot had been laid on, and the head
shikari
were to occupy the one in the most favoured position, on the level ground of a narrow valley between two steep little hills, with the longer of the two hills at his back. Mother and I, who were ‘onlookers only', were given the next
machan
in line. And at the foot of the same hill, at intervals of roughly 100 to 200 yards, were Saadat's and the best shot among his equerries; then the one that should have been Bill's, and was now occupied instead by Bets and Campbell Harris, and finally one containing two more of Saadat's suite.

As soon as news was received that the tiger had killed, a runner went
out with the news to the waiting beaters, who had presumably been camping out on the plain well beyond that hilly tract where the
machans
had been built, while extra beaters and the elephant were hurried out to the spot. We left as soon as we had finished breakfast, and followed in cars (the Land Rover had not been invented in those days), bumping over the open plain and raising clouds of dust in the process, stopping when we came up with the advance guard. This was as far as we could go by car, explained the head
shikari
, for where the little hills began there was too much thorn-scrub and tall grass, and too many trees to allow for the passage of cars.

Saadat had been anxious that one of us should make use of the Tonk elephant as a sort of moving
machan
, and urged me to ride on it. But I had not spent a couple of afternoons in that creature's company without coming to the conclusion that she was still too young, and far too imaginative, to be trusted with a tiger beat. I therefore refused the offer as politely as I could, to the obvious relief of the
mahout
(its handler), who showed no enthusiasm for taking his ponderous charge into the fray, and withdrew her, thankfully, behind the cars and the small group of drivers, onlookers and gawpers who seem to materialize out of thin air anywhere one stops in India, even in the middle of what had seemed to be an unpopulated desert.

We started off on foot and in single file along a narrow beaten track that had been made by those who had built the
machans
only a day or two earlier, while the head
shikari
talked in an undertone, explaining where the beaters were and the signal that would tell them that the guns had taken up position and they could begin to move forward. The tiger, he said, was a particularly splendid specimen, and a good many of the minor princes whose states touched the borders of Tonk had tried and failed to shoot it. It was also possible, he added carelessly, that its mate might be in that area, since there had been reports of a tigress which had been preying on the herds of the villagers not far from Pirawa, some months ago. Tacklow inquired where the tiger had taken the kill, and the
shikari
, like the young Mark Twain, was happy to be able to answer promptly: he said he didn't know. Well, we were all to know within a minute.

The direction in which we were going took us in a half circle about a clump of pampas grass, and turning to the right, we came in sight of the tall sheshum tree in which the first of the
machans
had been built. Tacklow and the
shikari
came to a sudden halt, and so did I, a mere pace behind
them. For of all places to choose, the tiger had carried his kill to the patch of open ground that had been thoughtfully beaten flat for him by the feet of the men who had built those elaborate
machans
. What's more, he had brought his entire family with him, so that they could share the weekend joint.

Fortunately, they had finished eating. Which was lucky for us, because if we had arrived in the middle of their lunch things might not have turned out so well. As it was, the entire family was taking its ease after stuffing itself with food. They were all there, father, mother and two three-parts grown cubs, lounging in the thin shadows of the sheshum tree and lazily licking the blood from their paws. They had seen us in the same moment that we saw them. But only the father of the family moved. He stood up and stared at us over the top of a low thorn-bush, and I saw for myself, for the first and thank heaven the last time, a tiger make use of those two whiter-than-white patches above his eyes. He dropped his head, so that the two patches, topped by a jet-black bar, looked exactly like a second pair of eyes: enormous eyes that glared at you with far more effect than the staring yellow ones below. Mother, behind me, said in a whisper, ‘What's the matter? What are you stopping for?' and the
shikari
hissed, ‘Chup' (be quiet!) and gestured forcibly with his left hand, urging us to go back — slowly — slowly! We obeyed, for by that time even those who could not see what we were retreating from realized why we must move as carefully as though we were playing a deadly game of Grandmother's Steps. Both the
shikari
and Tacklow brought their rifles up, inch by inch, into the firing position, and when they eased off the safety catches the double click sounded terrifyingly loud in that petrified silence and drew an ominous growl from the tiger. And then at last we were round a spur of the hillside, and out of sight, and the
shikari
said, ‘
Bargo!
' — (run). And
did
we
bargo
!

The whole terrifying incident couldn't have taken more than two or three minutes. But it felt like hours. No. Not hours: it felt as though everything had stopped and that a clock that had always been ticking away somewhere wasn't ticking any more. I can't describe it better than that. Nor can I at this distance make an accurate guess at how near or how far we were to the tigers, because my long sight has always been much better than my short sight — which for many years now has been almost useless. But if I
had
to make a statement, and stick to it, I would say the distance between the tigers — the tiger, rather, because once I
looked at him I never looked away — and myself, was not more than ten paces. I could even have counted his whiskers! He was
that
close! And I have often wondered if a maddening recurring nightmare that centred upon a tiger, and which afflicted me for close on twelve years after my father's death, could be traced back to those few minutes of total terror in which I had time to notice every single detail of the Pirawa tiger's face, including the way in which his lips twitched back from his teeth in something that was not so much a snarl as irritation at being interrupted at an inconvenient moment.

Once safely out of sight and range, the
shikaris
held a hasty conference, as a result of which another four excessively makeshift
machans
were hurriedly constructed and strung up in the trees on the far side of the hill from the original ones. There were fewer trees on this side, and Mother and I were finally helped to scramble up into a rickety arrangement of rope and branches of dead wood that strongly resembled a crow's nest, and was not all that far off the ground. But then, as the
shikari
explained (not very comfortingly), since neither of us would be carrying a gun, we could use our hands to hold on to the main trunk of our spindly young dâk tree.

We couldn't see Tacklow, for although there were many more trees on this side of the hill few of them were of any great size, and their foliage, which had seemed so scanty below, was at its thickest at eye level. As for the other guns, they too were out of sight; and when the sounds of their departure could no longer be heard, the heat and silence of midday descended upon the jungle, and we had nothing to do but wait for the signal that would tell the beaters that everyone was in place. It seemed to go on for ever, and Mother and I, getting bored and more and more uncomfortable, began to talk in whispers. I for one was quite sure that if the tigers had any sense at all, they would have walked out at one end or the other of the line of
machans
long ago and vanished into the open country. I couldn't believe that the creatures would hang around after being disturbed at their lunch. But Mother said that all tigers must be so used to seeing the odd villager or two walking through their territory, that the sight of us wouldn't have bothered them in the least, especially as we had turned tail and retreated as soon as we saw them. Only if the cubs had been a lot younger would we have been in trouble, for then the tigress would probably have charged us on sight.

We had begun to wonder if my first guess had been right, and the
tigers had cleared off and the beat been cancelled, when someone not so far away fired a shot. It was evidently a signal, for immediately, from somewhere very far away — so far that if it had not been for the windless silence of that torpid afternoon we would never have heard it — came a faint noise that in these days could have been the throb of an aeroplane's engines or a tractor reaping and cutting in a distant hayfield, but at that time and place could only mean that the beat had begun and that a mile or more away a long line of men and boys had begun walking towards us, shouting and hallooing as they beat the grass and the scrub with their
lathis
, banged enthusiastically on drums and tin cans, blew on cow-horns and occasionally fired off some antiquated fowling-piece lent for the occasion by a village headman or
shikari
.