Golden Afternoon

by M. M. Kaye

  But though many tried it, dyeing those wretched hats proved impracticable; while as for that frivolous, ruffled dress in apple-green voile, in which you thought you were going to look so charming, it proved to be incredibly dreary when dyed a rusty black and worn with the only black hat you possessed, which happened to be a felt pudding-basin.

  You have no idea — unless you happen to be one of those who were there yourself — how incredibly dowdy we Brits looked. Like a vast flock of bedraggled crows. By contrast, all the wives of the Indian guests who, lucky things, did not have to wear hats, looked elegant and enchanting in black, white or grey saris, shimmering with touches of embroidery. As did a solitary English girl who had refused to toe the line and join the crows.

  It was the custom in those days for the bachelor ‘chummeries’ in Delhi to host parties for Horse Show Week and invite their girlfriends, suitably chaperoned, to stay. And since Eileen Clinton-Thomas was one of the prettiest and most popular of the Raj girls, you could be sure of meeting her at almost every ‘Week’ in India. Arriving in Delhi on the day before the Viceregal garden party, she had been informed by her hosts of the Court Mourning bombshell, but had refused to believe it, being firmly convinced that her high-spirited admirers were pulling her leg and probably had a bet on whether they could con her into making an exhibition of herself by turning up at a Viceregal garden party wearing hastily dyed black.

  Still convinced that the whole thing was a hoax, she turned up at the party in a ravishing primrose yellow confection with matching gloves and shoes, and a cartwheel hat composed of layers of pale yellow organdie. The total effect was stunning. Particularly when contrasted with a sea of disgruntled memsahibs wearing extremely tatty black dresses.

  Among other visiting VIPs in Delhi that year was — unless I have got my dates mixed — a temporarily deposed monarch, George of Greece. An attractive man, he was one of those convivial, party-loving types who can be found dancing on a table at around three o’clock in the morning on almost any night of the week, and during his prolonged stay in India’s capital city he managed to steal the affections of a Mrs Britten-Jones,* whose husband (also a well-known charmer) was at that time acting as Controller of the Viceroy’s Household — or something equally impressive.

  I rather think that he was himself more than slightly embroiled in a clandestine love affair with a great friend of mine at the time, so perhaps, what with that and managing Lord Irwin’s household, he was too occupied with his own affairs of the heart to realize what his wife was up to. Either that or he thought that as the ex-King was a married man there was nothing to worry about. But in the event his wife ran away with the ex-King, and when, shortly afterwards, he managed to regain his throne, she became his maîtresse-en-titre and later still accompanied him into exile in Portugal when he succeeded in losing it for a second time. As one of my friends remarked cheerfully: ‘Well, we don’t have much money, but we do see life!’

  In the days when Bets and I were children, we would not have considered any cold weather season in Delhi to be complete without at least two visits to Agra and the Taj, and one to our friends the Perrins at Narora, the head of the Ganges Canal. But though the Perrins had left some years ago, and the new Canal Officer was a stranger to us, we still revisited Agra whenever we could, travelling there by car along the Grand Trunk Road, instead of in a sleeper on the night-train as we used to do when I was a child. The Age of the Car, as far as India was concerned, was still in its infancy, and the 120-odd miles of road that separated Delhi from Agra had not changed very much since the days of the Great Moguls. It ran for the most part between a double avenue of shade trees and the open countryside that stretched away on either side of it, sparsely dotted by palms and kikar-trees, feathery clumps of pampas and the occasional field of sugar cane, and seemingly largely untenanted, since of the five towns that one drove through — Mahrauli, Faridabad, little Palwal, Hodal and Muttra — only the last could be classed as a city.

  The branches of the trees that lined the unmetalled road met overhead to make a tunnel of shade that was pleasant relief from the blazing sunlight, but had one major drawback: it was impossible for a car or lorry to drive through it without raising a dense, choking cloud of dust through which, as you passed (and for a full minute afterwards) you must drive blind. Fortunately, in those days most of the traffic to be met with on that particular stretch of the Grand Trunk was (when not pedestrian or cyclist) either bullock-drawn carts or horse-drawn vehicles such as tongas, and when one saw another car, or worse still, a bus or lorry approaching, one slowed down, frantically wound up the windows, and burying one’s face in a scarf or handkerchief, kept handy for that purpose, plunged into the inevitable wall of white dust, hoping not to hit anything or anybody while engulfed in the blinding smother.

  But dust or no dust, I loved that Agra road, and the favoured places, where we used to stop en route and picnic, still stay in my mind as leafy and enchanting, even though the last time I was driven along part of it, well over thirty years after India had become independent, I did not recognize anything at all. The long, quiet, tree-shaded road and the vast, sun-baked and seemingly empty countryside through which it had run had vanished completely, victims of a population explosion that had forced the hasty construction of thousands upon thousands of jerry-built houses, ranging from high-rise concrete office blocks to the mud-and-wattle bustees of the poor.

  In the first year of our return to India and during subsequent cold weather seasons there, we visited Agra whenever we could; and despite the many occasions on which I saw the Taj, it never failed to make me catch my breath and feel my heart contract. Every time it was as though it was the first time. The shock of surprise and delight, and the sense of wonder, were always there, always fresh. And once again, as when Bets and I were children, the Taj became our own special and private possession.

  By chance, our first return visit had coincided with a full moon, and we had been afraid that we would find the place crowded with fellow sightseers. But apparently the tourist trade was still reeling from the First World War, for despite the fact that the moon was at the full, there was no one there but ourselves. The silent, scented gardens were ours to wander through, and so also was every part of the Taj itself. For in those long-ago days you were allowed to climb the inner stairway leading up to the flat square of roof that supports the four graceful pavilions and the great central dome, and to sit, if you so wished, high atop the enormous cliff of marble above the great arch which gives entrance to the tomb. From this dizzying vantage-point you could look down on the wide, white marble platform below, with its four slender minarets, one at each corner; on the lawns and on the dark, sentinel avenue of cypresses that lines the fountain-filled water-channels. Or, from the chattris on the opposite side, on the silver sandbanks and the gleaming levels of the Jumna, which flows past the outer wall of the river terrace towards the distant line of Agra’s fort, and the Jasmine Tower, in which the Emperor Shah Jehan, who built the Taj as a tomb for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb for the last seven years of his life.

  At no time during many visits to the Taj did I ever see anyone forbidden from entering. There used to be a solitary individual in a shabby khaki coat — presumably an old soldier or a retired police constable — who dozed among the shadows of the great marble and red granite entrance gate, or leant against one of the doorposts, chewing paan and brooding on life. Plus the odd mali or two and an elderly white-robed, white-turbaned character who presided over a small stall on which were displayed postcards and guidebooks for sale. No one else. No tickets. No charge for entering. No rows of shops and stalls selling souvenirs, or gangs of clamorous guides, full of inaccurate information, to badger the occasional visitor. No whining beggars either. And, astonishingly, almost no Indian sightseers.

  The Taj is, of course, a monument raised by a Muslim Emperor to the memory of his Muslim Queen; and I have heard that it reminds some Hindus of the Muslim conquest,
and revolts the bigoted among them.* But I will not believe that even the most intolerant Hindu can be so petty and small-minded. It belongs, after all, to all Asia.

  India obviously took the Taj for granted, and could not be bothered to visit it. Her people had never shown much interest in their ancient cities and monuments, especially those that were deserted or ruined. To them the past was the past and they saw no reason to be sentimental about it, let alone take steps to preserve it. An attitude that, but for tourism, would, I suspect, still prevail today: since except for the really spectacular relics of her magnificent past — the ‘money-spinners’ which lure millions of tourists to India, where they yearly spend incredibly large sums of money on accommodation, entrance fees, and souvenirs (in addition to providing employment to many more millions of the populace) — many other fabulous palaces and forts that lie off the beaten track have been allowed to crumble into ruins and become the home of squatters, dacoits and beggars, and the haunt of bats, owls, pigeons and the monkey-folk.

  Agra retained all its old magic for us. But after spending a long weekend at Sikandar, in the walled park which surrounds the tomb of the Emperor Akbar, I was never quite sure which tomb I loved best: the Taj, or Akbar’s tomb at Sikandar. This was largely because the Archaeological Department owned a small bungalow† inside the park, and that year they lent it to Tacklow for a weekend. It was an enchanting little house, built on a wide platform of red sandstone and shaded by the branches of a tree that grew out of a hole in its thatched roof. Flights of stone steps led up to it from each side, and the carved stone balustrades that edged the platform dripped with flowering creepers.

  We had been careful to pick a weekend when the moon was full for our visit to Sikandar, and accompanied by Abdul Karim, with Mother driving the Hudson, we had arrived there on a Friday evening, intending to spend the best part of that night at the Taj, and the following one in the Dâk-bungalow at Fatehpur-Sîkrî — the wonderful, deserted city that Akbar built on a ridge of high ground to the west of Agra and which he was eventually forced to abandon when several successive monsoons failed, the tanks and wells dried up and there was not enough water for the people’s needs.

  But in the event we spent both nights at Sikandar, because we had not realized that the four great gates in the massive battlemented wall enclosing the tomb and its surrounding park were closed each day at sunset and would not be opened again until nine o’clock on the following morning. This put paid to any idea of visiting the Taj and getting back before the gates were shut. But it also meant that while they remained closed we could make-believe that we were the undisputed Lords of Sikandar. It was an alluring prospect, and as we had arrived there a good hour and a half before sunset, we were able to do a good deal of sightseeing by daylight.

  The tomb of the greatest of the Great Moguls was not in the least like any of the other famous tombs that I had seen, and if I had not known whose it was, I would have taken it to be a memorial chattri raised above the spot on which some Hindu ruler had been cremated. But then Akbar’s views on religion were surprisingly liberal, so perhaps his mausoleum — on which work had begun during his lifetime — had been intended to convey this. Built of red sandstone and white marble, it is made up of four decorative pavilions set one above the other, and the topmost, which is mostly of white marble, consists of a great marble-paved floor as big as a ballroom, left open to the sky and surrounded by a pillared cloister, the outer arches of which are filled in by exquisite marble filigree, so fine that you can see through them as easily as if they had been made from lace instead of carved from slabs of polished stone. In the centre of the courtyard, standing on a raised platform and cut from a single block of white marble, stands a copy of the true tomb, which can be found in a dark vault below ground level. The mock tomb is decorated with carved flowers and texts and, in addition to Akbar’s name, the ninety-nine names of God — the hundredth, according to legend, is known only to the camels, which accounts for those animals’ haughtily held heads and insufferably superior expressions.

  We lingered on the top storey that first evening at Sikandar, watching the other visitors leaving as the sun sank down towards the horizon and the sky above us turned from blue to a duck-egg green scribbled all over by the innumerable dark dots and thin, wavering lines of birds flying home from the city to roost in the park. As the light faded, leaving the tomb and the park in shadow, and bats flittered out to meet the night, we heard the great doors in the main gate clang shut and saw the full moon rise in the last wash of the sunset; and by the time we reached the garden the shrubs and flowerbeds were spangled with fireflies.

  The raised platform on which the Archaeological bungalow stood formed a wide stone terrace on which we dined under the stars, and afterwards we explored the great tomb again and wandered about the gardens and the park and along the dry stone water-courses along which once — but no longer — lines of fountains had played. The moon was so bright that you could have read a newspaper, and there was a ring round it. I had heard of such a thing, but this was the first time I had ever seen it — and to this day, I have never seen anything quite like it again. For this was no hazy or rainbow-like halo, but an enormous circle, as thin and sharp as though it had been drawn on that cloudless sky by a gigantic mapping-pen dipped in gold ink.

  Even Tacklow, who had given me my first lesson in astronomy (thereby hooking me on it for life) could not remember ever having seen anything quite like that before, though he added that a ring around the moon was supposed to warn of bad weather to come. But, looking at this one, I refused to believe that anything so beautiful could be ill-omened. For me, it added an extra touch of magic to a magical night, and writing about it after all these years I can remember it as clearly as though I was back again at Sikandar, standing once more by Akbar’s mock tomb with the heady scent of Rhat-ki-Rani drifting up from the garden below, and that incredible gold-ringed moon in the sky overhead.

  The night had been so quiet that in order not to disturb that silence, we had taken off our shoes and walked up the dark stone stairways and across the marble floors in our stockinged feet. Perhaps because of this, when we left the building and were on our way back to the bungalow, we suddenly became aware that there was a herd of black-buck in the park. We never saw them by day. But by night they emerged by ones and twos to graze on the lawns and flowerbeds of the formal garden surrounding the tomb, and if you stood quite still in a patch of shadow they would come close enough for you to catch the glint of their eyes and see the moonlight gleam on their long, twisted, backward-sloping horns. To watch them, and to walk shoeless across the lawn and along the stone pavements that bordered the ornamental water-courses, listening to all the many small noises which added together make up the sum total of silence, was so fascinating that it was difficult to tear ourselves away and go tamely to bed, even after the ghostly black-buck had vanished and the shadow of the tomb had begun to stretch out across the moon-flooded spaces. Yet Sikandar in the early morning turned out to be even more entrancing than it had been by the light of that haloed full moon.

  The sun was still well below the horizon and the sky a pale lemon yellow, as clear as glass, when we were woken by what sounded like every bird in India saluting the dawn. Dew spangled and glittered on every leaf and blade of grass, a light belt of mist lay like a gauzy scarf above the awakening land and everywhere one looked there were birds twittering, screeching, chirruping, warbling. Abdul Karim and the chowkidar served us with chota-hazri on the verandah, and afterwards, since the gates would not be opened for another two hours and the park was still ours alone, we walked across the lawns and around the tomb in our dressing-gowns, smelling the morning and listening to the birds. Every dome, every pillar and every carved screen of the four-storeyed tomb was alive with parakeets, gossiping to each other and peering down at us with bright inquisitive eyes. The gardens were full of butterflies and from behind the high surrounding walls we could hear the sounds of India waking: the creaking of well-wheel
s and bullock-carts, a donkey braying, the twanging bell of a passing tonga, and the occasional toot of a car-horn or rumble of a lorry as traffic began to flow along the Muttra road. But inside there were only the birds and squirrels and ourselves — and the memory of a great Emperor.

  It was many years later that I heard for the first time the hymn ‘Morning has Broken’, written by novelist Eleanor Farjeon, and was instantly reminded of that long-ago morning at Sikandar. I have often heard it since then, but whenever I do I am always back in that glittering morning. And at the beginning of my days, not the end.

  * I don’t know how they spelt the ‘Britten’.

  * See James Cameron, Indian Summer, Penguin, 1987.

  † Sadly, it was destroyed by a fire in the early 1980s.

  Chapter 9

  By the time we returned again to Delhi, the cold weather season was drawing to a close and the tents were becoming uncomfortably hot. Olive Targett was already packing up to leave for Bombay and England, to be married and become Lady Something-or-other to do with biscuits, and since she had not yet seen the Taj, Bob arranged a Last Weekend Visit to Agra as a farewell party for her.

  I’ve forgotten which of her many swains she chose to accompany her, but I remember that there were four car-loads of us, one driven by Mother, who had been asked to chaperon the party, and that we all put up at Lowry’s Hotel. Our visit coincided with the last full moon before the annual exodus to the hills began, and in addition to doing the rounds of all the obligatory Agra sights, such as the Fort, Akbar’s tomb at Sikandar, the tomb of Itima-ud-Daula and the deserted city of Fatehpur-Sîkrî, we spent an entire night, from sunset to sunrise, in the garden of the Taj. After wandering hand-in-hand with Bob through those romantic flower-scented and moon-drenched spaces, I received, in the shadow of the great dome, what I was to discover later was a remarkably chaste kiss (it was in fact the first I had received as a ‘grown-up’) and, somewhat naturally, I leapt to the conclusion that this must be Love.