Golden Afternoon (66 page)

It is strange to think that of all the boys and girls in our party who came out to play on that moonlight night, only Bets and myself still survive. And also that no one will ever again see the tomb and its gardens as we saw it then, and as it was to remain for the best part of another three decades. The plain beyond its guardian wall was empty space, dotted with kikar-trees and camel thorn and the romantic traces of other cities of the plain — the ‘Seven Cities of Delhi' that had been built long centuries ago, and had each in turn crumbled into ruins and been forgotten. That was half the charm of Humayun's tomb. Its loneliness. But it is lonely no longer. The last time I saw it it stood against a background of tall modern buildings, the beginnings of factories, a railway station — that, admittedly
had
been there in the old days, but only the lines and a signal box and a small, unobtrusive platform at which the mail trains did not stop. Now another suburb of Delhi has grown up about it, and there was telegraph and telephone wires with the usual untidy tangle of electric-light wires, illegally looped from the mains and fed into numerous jerry-built sheds, shops and
bustees
(slums).

But on that last moonlight picnic of the dying season the plain seemed to stretch away emptily to the horizon, and at intervals, from somewhere far out on that moonlit waste, the inevitable jackal-pack would wail in the silence. I still have a clear mental picture of the tomb, and of Neil and myself strolling arm-in-arm around the wide, white marble platform, on which the central building and the dome stand, while he tried to persuade me to become engaged to him. He admitted that he hadn't thought of proposing to me until W. H. P. and Bets announced their engagement, because he knew that he couldn't afford to marry me for several years, and I was about to leave for China — possibly indefinitely. But W. H. P.'s argument had been that he had more chance of marrying Bets if she was known to be engaged to him, and their engagement had been announced in two newspapers in India and another two in England, than if they merely ‘had an understanding'. Bets was bound to meet a lot of other men in China, and before she left he wanted to stick a label on her announcing that she was already spoken for — so hands off!

Well, he was to be proved right there. But I was not persuaded. My argument was that since we would have to wait a minimum of two years — possibly more — it was much better to leave the question open. If we were still in love in two years' time, well, obviously we were
really
in love, not merely in love with love. So in the end we left it like that. For which I have always been grateful, though Bets couldn't understand it. She had seen what she wanted, and she wanted to make sure of it. How
could
I take such chances? Neil was so good-looking, and such fun, and even if, as Tacklow insisted, India was
bound
to become independent in the foreseeable future, if we were both married to
box-wallahs
— whose pay and prospects were, incidentally, a good deal better than those of the armed forces! — we should still be able to stay in India; for although the British would have to leave, lock, stock and barrel, including the ‘Heaven-born', men ‘in trade' would still be expected to stay and represent their firms, and compete with other countries to sell their products.

I admit I hadn't thought of that, and it was a powerful argument in Neil's favour. Especially with China looming up ahead. And I did waver slightly when, on the following night, we all went down to the Old Delhi station to see Neil off to Rawalpindi on the Frontier Mail. I wept a bit after he'd gone, and missed him dreadfully during the week or two that was left before we ourselves took the same train in the opposite direction.

Earlier in the season, Mother had paid a last visit to Tonk, leaving
Tacklow to keep a parental eye on Bets and me. She went to collect all the luggage that had been left there in storage after Tacklow's abrupt departure, and was put up in the State Guest House where it seems they all came to see her, the Begum and several minor begums (all of whom hugged her and wept all over her), poor Nunni-mia, who also would soon lose that tide, and a number of state officials and their wives who had been our friends. Even Saadat came, alone except for the driver of his car, and after dark on the night she was leaving; looking incredibly sheepish and mumbling incoherent apologies — it was all a mistake! A terrible mistake — he had never intended, etc., etc. He too had eventually wept genuine tears before hurrying away. Tacklow would probably have melted, but not Mother. She never forgave him.

The notice of Bets's engagement duly appeared in the appropriate columns of the
Civil and Military Gazette
and the
Statesman
, and the days got hotter and dustier and there were no more ‘group' parties or picnics. Our few remaining ‘pairs', such as W. H. P. and Bets, still patronized the Club dances and the cinema, but nowadays when they went out on the town of an evening, they went strictly
à deux
. And now that Neil had left, I spent most of my time packing up for the approaching move, and wondering if I hadn't made a dire mistake in refusing to commit myself to marrying Neil. I missed him badly. He was a darling, loaded with good temper and charm, and with none of his friend W. H. P.'s complexes and chip-on-shoulder moods. I never saw him in a bad temper, and if he had a fault, it was that he was almost too cheerful and light-hearted. Life was a terrific joke to him, and he could always find something in any situation to laugh at. You could not see him as a successful tycoon in embryo, and I don't imagine that he had much in the way of brain or any ambition to become a captain of industry. His ambition (if any) was to have fun, and his motto was ‘Watch and Pray, and it'll come right one day!' A cheerful youth. But not quite what I was looking for. What
was
I looking for? I didn't really know, and all that I was certain of was that I would know when my love came along.

Our packing was finished, the back verandah was piled with trunks, suitcases and assorted boxes, each one sewn tightly into a covering of
tart
, which is India's name for sacking, on which Mother had painted our name and destination in white oil paint. She always insisted on this, on the grounds that she had seen too many pieces of luggage dropped while
being unloaded on to stone docks, to explode like a bomb as every lock and hinge broke, scattering the contents among the crowd of dock coolies who considered these bits and pieces as a gift from heaven, and immediately swiped the lot. Mother's boxes might be dropped, but they never exploded, because
tart
is the toughest of tough material; and though the box it was sewn around might be reduced to the consistency of porridge, it was still all there, and practically unlootable.

The packing had been finished just in time, for Delhi put on one of its most tiresome tricks by the way of wishing us farewell — a dust-storm that seemed to lift up every grain of sand in the sandy wilderness in which our little house stood, whirling it away in a howling smother in which one could neither see nor breathe, only to drop it down some ten or twenty miles away, when it grew tired of carrying it. We spent our last morning sitting indoors with every door and window closed — not that this ever kept much of the stuff out, and our last afternoon was spent sweeping as much of the debris as we could out of the empty rooms.

The Bombay Mail left Delhi in the evening, and Kadera and Mahdoo helped load the luggage on to a fleet of
tongas
which they accompanied to the station ahead of us. Mother said a sad goodbye to Angie, whom she was leaving in the care of Kadera — he being the only one of the servants whom she consented to be nice to — and we were off. To be met by a pleasant surprise, for when we reached the station we found various friends of ours had got together and planned a terrific farewell party for us on the departure platform, complete with a bar loaded with glasses and bottles of assorted drinks, soft for the Indians and alcoholic for the British, and attended by several uniformed
khitmatgars
.

All our Indian friends had brought garlands of flowers and tinsel with them which they put round our necks, and the party had obviously started without us, for in spite of the sadness of the occasion, everyone seemed to be in the best of spirits, and the only person missing from the scene was W. H. P. Not to worry, said a member of the chummery bracingly; he'd be along any moment now. He was only meeting a friend on the Frontier Mail which pulled in at another platform on another side of the station just before we arrived. Ah, here he was — ! And with him was a wild-eyed young man who broke into a run at the sight of me, caught me into his arms and kissed me with considerable fervour.

It was Neil of course. And no wonder he looked dishevelled, for he
had spent a night and day in an overcrowded carriage on the Frontier Mail. And, what's more, he would have to catch the return Mail train that evening in order to get back to Rawalpindi in time to turn up at his office on the next day but one. I still regard this gesture as the greatest compliment I have ever been paid. For it was not only the discomfort of that long and dusty journey, and the fact that almost as soon as our train left he would have to board one that took him back to ‘Pindi, but the fact that he had laid his job on the line by taking two days' leave ‘off the record', and, on top of everything else, had kissed a girl in public, before a pop-eyed audience of scores of his friends and acquaintances, and a vast crowd of interested third-class travellers whose code of morals outlawed kissing except in strict privacy.

That gesture of Neil's must have taken considerable courage, for, extrovert as he was, he was also very much a young man of his time and class, and Englishmen did not make an exhibition of themselves in front of all their friends, let alone a shocked crowd of strangers. Embarrassed as I was, I had the sense to realize that I had been paid an enormous compliment.

I don't remember what I or anyone else said or did after that. It was all a confused memory of garlands of flowers and prickly tinsel around my neck, and the ranks closing in, laughing and fooling, turning it all into a joke. I remember saying goodbye to Kadera and Mahdoo and finding that I had tears in my eyes, and Kadera, who missed nothing, telling me not to worry because I would surely be back — ‘for if not, why should the Lady-Sahib have left the
chota bandar
(little monkey) with him, instead of letting her loose?' The Burra-Sahib, said Kadera, did not wish to return; and who could blame him? And because he did not, he had made arrangements that each month he and Mahdoo would call at the bank in Srinagar where they would receive pension money from the head sahib there, which would enable them to live comfortably. But he, Kadera, and Mahdoo also, did not believe that they would draw it for very long, because it was said in the bazaar by the
Chinni-wallahs
(the Chinese merchants from beyond the passes who traded between India and China by the old Silk Road that Marco Polo had used) that the Chinni folk, having abolished their King and overthrown their rulers, were now fighting each other as to who should rule. The Burra-Sahib would see for himself when he got there; and since no man with a family to care for would wish to live for long in a country torn by war, he would come back to
Kashmir, where he, Kadera, and Mahdoo and Angi-
bandar
, would be waiting.

I didn't read the newspapers in those days. There were too many other far more pleasant things to do; and anyway headlines were always either alarming or depressing. So Kadera's information about trouble in China was news to me and, far from being daunted by it, I could only hope it was true; provided that it led to our speedy return to Kashmir. Cheered by Kadera's confident predictions, and with my self-esteem considerably boosted by Neil's spectacular 3,000-mile dash from ‘Pindi to Delhi and back again, just to say goodbye and ‘bon voyage', I boarded the train in far better spirits than I had expected.

Neil, who had stuck as close as he could to me for the short time that remained, jumped up into the carriage and managed to ask me briefly if I had changed my mind. And once again, for about a minute, I admit I wavered, remembering that my parents liked him — he was exactly the type of blond, clean-living, rugger-playing, ‘What-ho, chaps!' young Englishman that mothers feel their daughters would be safe with — and I would be able to stay on in India, as Bets, too, would eventually be doing. Better still, with both of us married and settled for life, Tacklow and Mother would be free to retire whenever they liked — in England, China or Kashmir … They wouldn't have to worry about us any more.

But it was no good. If marriages were expected to last for only a couple of years (as, worse luck, they seem to now), I wouldn't have hesitated, since a couple of years with Neil would be the greatest fun. But a lifetime of ‘What ho, chaps! watch and pray!' until death did us part? No, no and
no
!
Darling
Neil, I was so sorry. So
very sorry
. But the answer had to be ‘No'.

‘I was afraid of that,' said Neil gloomily. He kissed me again, regardless of the scandalized ethnic majority on the platform, and as the train guard forced his way through the crowd and indicated that he was about to blow his whistle or wave his flag, or both, Bets got an equally fervent farewell embrace from W. H. P. and was pushed up the step into the carriage, followed by Mother and Tacklow. Glasses were raised to us by the revellers on the platform, someone started to sing: ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot' and everyone else took it up. I didn't hear the whistle blown, but I saw the guard waving his flag and as the train began to move Neil ran alongside it and yelled, ‘You will write, won't you?' and I yelled back, ‘Of course I will!' And then those members of the goodbye
party who had started their drinking before we arrived at the station, or perhaps were just naturally high-spirited, started to run with the train too, while Bets and I leant out waving and calling goodbyes, and several members of the party pelted us with the streamers that are thrown around at New Year's parties. It was quite a send-off.