Golden Afternoon

by M. M. Kaye

  Well, it wasn’t exactly a surprise, considering that she had spent almost every available moment in his company during the past two or three months, but Tacklow, who had only seen us en masse, so to speak, and hadn’t really noticed which young man out of the half-dozen or so in our particular set was attached to whom, was distinctly taken aback. Not that he had anything against W. H. P., or had ever considered him as a possible husband for his younger daughter. For me, perhaps: but not for Bets. I think he must have tried to discuss her choice of chap with Bets. But she was so tremendously happy that it wouldn’t have been the least use trying to get her feet back on to solid ground. So he discussed it with me instead, because he presumed that I must have seen almost as much of W. H. P. recently as Bets had.

  Well, I had, of course — though only superficially. So I assured my anxious parent that W. H. P. would make an excellent husband for Bets, for they had so many things in common. Bets liked parties and ballroom dancing. So did W. H. P. She liked playing tennis and golf, and going to the cinema; she liked to paint pictures and do pastel portraits, and she liked to play the piano and accompany W. H. P., who had rather a good voice. He admired her artistic talent, her skill on the piano and the tennis court; and as for Bets, she not only thought him fantastically good-looking, but on top of having all their tastes in common, she was wildly in love with him. What more could an anxious father want in a prospective son-in-law?

  Tacklow said that he was glad to hear all that, and if I had been W. H. P.’s choice it wouldn’t have worried him so much. When I wanted to know why, he said that I was a lot tougher than Bets, that Bets was too gentle, and that he suspected that young Pardey was a bully. I remember laughing at that and explaining that he had been taken in by W. H. P.’s expression, which was inclined to be slightly sneering and superior, as though he were permanently looking down his nose at people. It had put me off him too when I first met him, but he had always been nice to me — and so obviously devoted to Bets — that I came to the conclusion (which I still think is true) that he suffered from an inferiority complex, probably acquired from discovering, on his arrival in India, that he was a box-wallah, and that except in such centres of trade as Calcutta and Madras, where the box-wallah is king, occupied one of the lowest rungs of the social ladder. That superior sneer was, I thought, a reaction to this discovery that had become a form of nervous tic.

  I did my best to reassure Tacklow and, I have to admit it, myself. Because that sneer had worried me too. Somehow it didn’t fit in with all the rest. But when you have partied and danced and picnicked, laughed and had fun, discussed politics, life, art and theology, books and all the ‘isms’ of the age, day after day for weeks on end with the same group of people, you accept them all as ‘us’ — friends, in fact. Even when they don’t agree with you. And anyway, I was half-way in love with Neil Pierce, and wondering what I was going to do about it.

  The day didn’t end so well, for as soon as his office closed that evening W. H. P. arrived to break the news that Bets had already given us at breakfast, and to ask Tacklow for permission to marry his younger daughter. The two of them, father and suitor, disappeared into Tacklow’s study to discuss the position, and emerged after a shortish interval with Tacklow looking rather taken aback, to tell us what had been decided. To begin with, there was no question of a wedding taking place for at least another two years, by which time W. H. P.’s salary would be enough to support a wife, and his seniority enable him to qualify for a married quarter. This meant, since we would be sailing for China in the spring, that he and Bets would not be able to see each other for a considerable time. But at the end of it, he would come to China for the wedding, and they could return to India together on honeymoon. In the meantime, they would like the announcement of their engagement to be sent to the Civil and Military Gazette and the Statesman, to make it official. There was the usual party on that evening — I rather think it was a supper party at the Underhill Lane Chummery, followed by a visit to the Kashmir Gate Cinema (known to all as the Flea Pit). All I can be sure of is that on arrival at the chummery, Bets and W. H. P., full of the joys of spring, announced their engagement to the assembled company, and that at some time that evening, Neil, caught up in the general euphoria of the occasion, proposed that he and I should follow their example and announce ours.

  Had he put the idea to me a few days earlier — or even a few days later — I might have agreed. But as it was, I felt sure that marriage hadn’t even crossed Neil’s mind until that evening, and that he was, in effect, only copy-catting his friend Cecil’s behaviour, the ‘if Cecil can do this, cheered on by one and all, then why not me?’ reaction. I may be maligning him, but I still don’t think so. Anyway, the thought made me step back from the brink, and demand more time to think it over.

  I was not given it, for the very next day Neil rang me up from his office to give me the dire news that Head Office was transferring him to Rawalpindi, to take the place of one of their men who had to be sent away on sick-leave. He had been given only two days in which to pack and make arrangements to leave Delhi and that was that. I have forgotten who laid on the party we attended that night, but I do remember that it was another moonlight picnic, this time at Humayun’s tomb. Also that our numbers had already begun to shrink drastically with the coming of the hot weather. Pairs were being split up. Bill, for instance, had returned to his battery on the Frontier and Pam had left with her parents for, I think, Assam; and now Neil too would be leaving us. The boys and girls who had joined forces to ‘come out to play’ at the beginning of the Delhi season would soon be scattered. But tonight ‘the moon was shining bright as day’ for them, and Humayun’s tomb had never looked more entrancing.

  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 bette
r 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-wal
lahs (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.