by M. M. Kaye
It was an odd-shaped room; in outline rather like one of those old-fashioned square ink-bottles. The neck of the bottle had windows on three sides and a peaked roof overhead which jutted out from the main expanse of corrugated tin (a material that roofed ninety per cent of Simla’s houses). Two beds were placed on either side of this neck below the long side windows, and a small dressing-table stood in front of the end one. The rest of the room, the bottle part, was large and square and had been hastily furnished with an almirah, a chest of drawers and a chair or two, in addition to the other three beds. There was a fireplace in the wall facing the windowed neck, and on the two side walls to the left and right of this there were two doors, one opening inwards off a wide landing while the opposite one on the far side of the room opened into a bathroom and loo.
The outer wall of the bathroom was part of the outer wall of the house. And since the house itself stood on a flat piece of ground that had been hacked out of the steep hillside, there was on that side a vertical cut, some fifteen feet deep and roughly eight wide, between the outer wall and the hillside above. This was spanned by a stout wooden bridge onto which the outer bathroom door opened and across which the bheesti would carry water for the baths, and the sweeper come with his basket to clean the loo. No one crossing the bridge could do so without advertising their presence, for the planks creaked loudly when trodden on, and every footstep echoed hollowly in the cut below — I remember that because we children preferred to reach the hillside by way of the bathroom and the bridge rather than downstairs and out by the front door.
Sybil, Bets and Tony had the beds in the main part of the room, while Bargie and I, as the two eldest, bagged the beds in the neck of the bottle. And this being a festive occasion, we decided to celebrate it with a super-special Chunkychaddle. So on the Saturday we raided the larder and acquired the usual scraps off the lunch table or during tea — fortunately there was a ‘nursery table’ in the dining-room where the children ate, so no beady-eyed grown-ups spotted us slipping pudding or whatever off our plates and into the waiting handkerchiefs.
We had a lovely day. I can still remember the scent and the sound of it: the smell of pine needles and flowers, the feel of the hot sun on our backs, the huge iridescent red and green and blue dragonflies that swooped and hovered over the lily-pond in the garden, and, towards dusk, the flying-foxes waking up and sailing down the hillsides from the tops of the tall deodars, dark against a green and gold sky. There was a full moon that night and not a cloud in the sky, and after our respective mothers had heard our prayers and kissed us good-night, Sybil’s ayah locked and bolted the outer bathroom door giving onto the bridge, turned out the oil lamps and went away, shutting the door behind her. No sooner had she gone than Bargie and I drew back the curtains she had earlier drawn across the windows, and sat bathed in brilliant moonlight which made the rest of the room seem so dead black by contrast that we could not see Bets, Sybil and Tony, who lay in their beds only a few feet away and talked to each other in whispers for fear that someone in authority would hear them and come in and tell them to shut up and go to sleep.
There was not a breath of wind that warm night, and with no soothing surf-sound of the breeze through pine needles, we could hear the grown-ups talking and laughing below and, later, the sound of a piano and someone singing. As the moon moved up the sky and the shadows of the pine trees shortened, we became sleepier and sleepier and began to wonder if the grown-ups were ever going to stop talking and go to bed; but after what seemed an age we heard the drawing-room door open and the sounds of the house-party dispersing to their own rooms. We gave them the best part of another hour in which to fall asleep, and then, when the house was still as a pond in a hard frost, Bargie stopped yawning and announced that the Chunkychaddle would commence. And immediately Tony, Sybil and Bets roused themselves, and having scuffled around under their beds and pillows for the provender that they had collected earlier in the day, brought it over to our beds and settled down there to enjoy the feast.
By now the moon no longer shone directly into our windows, but the five of us sat pyjama-clad in the clear light that was reflected off the roof outside, as we ate (with relish I have no doubt) an assortment of food that almost certainly included cold rice-pudding, squashed blancmange and some very crumbly cake and broken biscuits, washed down with orange juice and water drunk out of tooth-mugs. Our spirits were high and I remember that there was a great deal of giggling and the occasional burst of laughter, hurriedly suppressed.
The Chunkychaddle was going great guns when suddenly we heard someone walking up the hall stairs, and froze where we sat; realizing with horror that we must have been making enough noise to wake up one of the grown-ups. Now we’d catch it! Our only hope lay in making no sound, so that whoever we had awakened would think that we must be asleep and that they had made a mistake. We therefore stayed perfectly still, holding our breath, while the footsteps advanced. But there was something strange about them. They didn’t sound right. And when suddenly Bets said in a strained whisper: ‘It isn’t a person … it’s a thing!’ we all knew what she meant, for it was as though something — a flying-fox perhaps? — was flumping up the stairs. Something that was having to jump painfully for every step, landing each time with a muffled thud. Not a human but a creature. Some kind of animal…
Bets and Sybil began to whimper and I remember saying as firmly as I could: ‘Don’t be silly! It won’t be able to open the door.’ And immediately everyone, myself included, relaxed. The door-handles and catches were all good and solid, handmade by craftsmen who knew their job; and once a door was shut (and we all knew it was shut, for Sybil’s ayah, impatient to be off, had closed it behind her with considerable emphasis) no draught however strong could open it: only a firm human hand could do that! The peculiar flumping footsteps came nearer and nearer, and now they were on the landing outside. We stayed very still; listening and for the moment no longer afraid because of that closed door. But the strange-sounding steps came on, and ignoring the door advanced steadily until whatever it was that was making them was in the room with us. It came on as far, I suppose, as the fireplace; where it stopped abruptly as though it had suddenly seen us and had checked, staring at us.
We stared back into that impenetrable blackness for perhaps half a minute … which is a very long time if you are scared to death. And then Sybil’s nerve broke, and she snatched up my pillow and hurled it into the darkness at the spot where the thing had stopped. There was a sudden, scuttling rush and it had gone. Not back the way it had come, but across the room and into the dark bathroom and out again, without pausing, through the far door and onto the bridge. In the next second we heard the familiar creak and clatter of the planks as it ran over them; and on the heels of that sound something — either the same thing or something else that was startled by it — sprang onto the roof, making a hellish clatter on the corrugated tin, and a black formless shadow flicked swiftly across the moonlight outside the windows.
After that there were no more sounds from the night. Or if there were you couldn’t have heard them, because all five of us were screaming at the top of our voices. We sat there shrieking our heads off and I have no idea how long we kept it up; for several minutes at least I expect, since in those days few houses in Simla, and none outside it, had electricity, and kerosene lamps take quite a time to light.
Sybil’s mother was the first to get one lit and appear on the scene. We heard her shouting out to us to stop that noise (we stopped!) as she ran to our rescue; and though scared stiff I wasn’t really frightened — not really, truly frightened — until I heard her turn the handle of the door and push it open. Until then I was convinced that whatever it was that had flumped up the stairs and into our room was an animal: a flying-fox for choice, or a monkey; an old or injured monkey … the door must have been ajar and our visitor had simply pushed it open. But no wild creature could have turned that handle and opened a closed door. And hearing her open it, all at once I was frightened r
igid, right down to my fingers and toes.
Lady Mickey did not improve matters by informing us roundly that we were a bunch of hysterical little ninnies who must have been telling each other ghost stories and imagined it all, because not only had the landing door and the door into the bathroom been tight shut — she had opened them herself! — but the outside door of the bathroom was both locked and bolted and nothing — but nothing. — could have entered the room or got out again! Why, even the fire-screen was still in position in front of the fireplace, so let us have no more of this nonsense!
We had been far too shocked and scared to think of hiding the remains of our ill-fated Chunkychaddle, and as other grown-ups in various forms of night attire arrived panting, clutching oil lamps, candles or torches, the resulting blaze of light illuminated the evidence and drew everyone’s attention to the sticky collection of debris on the beds and the floor. Our elders and betters then proceeded to relieve their feelings by tearing an imperial strip off us, and oddly enough, this telling-off returned us to normal as nothing else could have done. Guilty and subdued, we eventually allowed ourselves to be settled down to sleep again, though we refused to close an eye unless a lamp was left burning on the chest of drawers and Sybil’s ayah brought her mattress and bedded down on the floor of our room to protect us. She seemed oddly reluctant to do so, but was overruled.
By breakfast time the next morning the adult members of the house-party had had time to discuss the happenings of the night which, I now realize must have shaken them considerably — if only because we could hardly have invented the whole thing, since all five of us had told exactly the same story. Had it been some silly, juvenile practical joke, we would have been bound to contradict each other, even with the most careful rehearsing. And anyway Sybil, Bets and Tony were far too young to have been coached to say half the things they had blurted out between sobs — even if Bargie and I had been sufficiently steeped in sin to put them up to it, one of them would surely have cracked under questioning. All that must have been in the minds of the grown-ups when they lectured us next morning, for we were startled to discover that Lady Mickey had changed her mind and her story overnight — presumably as the result of anxious discussion as to how best to deal with the situation.
She can’t have known much about psychology. Or about children either, for she now said that the door into our room was in fact open and so was the door into the bathroom, while ayah had merely forgotten to fasten the outer one leading onto the bridge, which must have been blown open by the wind. What we had heard was only a flying-fox or a frightened monkey; probably a langur that had somehow become trapped in the house during the day and been trying to get out. It was all quite simple, and the fright that it had given us was no less than we deserved for being awake at that hour in the first place, and engaged in gorging stolen food!
Well, it was just possible that it might be simple to the three youngest Chunkychaddlers. But not to Bargie and myself! We were not that green. There must, we decided, be something very peculiar indeed about The Bower if, in order to cover it up, the grown-ups had actually to descend to the cardinal sin of telling lies. For of course they were lying! We were none of us babies, and if the door had been open we would have seen the light of Lady Mickey’s lamp long before she reached it instead of only when she opened the door. And we’d all heard her open it — and seen her open the one into the bathroom too, because by that time there was a lamp in the room; hers! We’d also heard her try the outer door before she came back and assured us crossly that it was locked and bolted and that nothing could have got out that way. It was no good altering her story now because it only made matters worse; in addition to shocking us deeply. (Surely English people, Sahib-log, shouldn’t tell lies? If they did, who could one rely on?)
We turned instead to our faithful allies the servants for enlightenment; but they too failed us. They avoided our eyes and would only say shortly that we were too young to understand and would we please run away and play because they were too busy to waste time talking to us. They had, of course, received instructions from our parents not to do so. But their refusal to discuss the matter added the final touch to our terror, and both Bets and I refused flatly and tearfully to spend another night at The Bower. We were so adamant about this that in the end all five of us were sent off to Oaklands for the rest of that long weekend; departing thankfully on foot along the mule-track under the eagle eye of Sybil’s ayah and Alum Din, our own (or rather Tacklow’s) bearer, to walk the scant mile that separated The Bower from Oaklands where a telephone message had warned our servants of a sudden influx of baba-log, and a delicious picnic lunch was eaten in the summer-house on the upper lawn.
Mother and Tacklow returned to spend the night with us, and on Monday morning Sybil returned to The Bower and Bargie and Tony left with their mother for Simla. We were sorry for Sybil, having to go back to that creepy house. But we consoled ourselves with the thought that now the guests had departed she would be able to move back into her own safe little nursery on the opposite side of it, where her ayah would sleep across the threshold of her door and Lady Mickey would almost certainly let her have a nightlight. For our own part we were deeply grateful that we did not have to stay on in The Bower.
Children’s memories are apt to be very short, and life was so full in those days, and such fun, that there were plenty of other things to think about. All the same, none of us ever forgot that night; and only a few years ago, while on a visit to Australia, I — a grandmother — had dinner with Sybil, who had settled near Perth to be near her children and grandchildren (and I’m not sure there wasn’t the odd great-grandchild too!). We talked, among other things, of that night at The Bower and discovered that we both remembered every detail of it. Bets and Bargie, also grandmothers, certainly do. As did Tony when I last saw him: though sadly both he and Guy have been dead for many years.
None of us had ever previously heard that The Bower was haunted, and no one would speak to us about it afterwards. Sybil’s mother stuck firmly to her flying-fox theory, and the other grown-ups, Indian and British alike, supported it; so recognizing defeat, we gave up asking questions and pushed the whole episode into some dusty attic at the back of our minds. It was only years later, when I returned to India and to Simla, after having thankfully finished with school, completed a year as an art student and officially ‘Come Out’, that I asked various old acquaintances about the story behind the haunting of The Bower.
Buckie, who was still very much alive and had recently published a revised and updated version of his Simla Past and Present, would only repeat the rather pointless and distinctly silly one that he had put into the old version; which was that for more than forty years after Alice’s death some Kangra woman or women of her family had played the part of her ghost. He was rather cross with me when I pointed out that since Hindu Alice had died in or about 1880 and ‘Alice’s Bower’ had become The Bower from then on, surely the phoney ghost must have been a bit long in the tooth by then! And as the house had been occupied by several different sets of tenants since the alleged haunting began, some forty years previously, where did this geriatric hide during the daytime? If she was flesh and blood, she presumably had to eat! As for the ungallant young subalterns who, according to Buckie’s account, caught the ‘ghost’ of Alice and roughed her up so badly that she never haunted the house again, I didn’t believe a word of it, for Buckie couldn’t recall who had told him that tale or the year in which it was supposed to have happened — which must have been later than 1917 since the house was certainly still on the ‘haunted’ list at that date. Nor could he even remember the name of a single one of the four subalterns who reportedly caught and ill-treated the by now ancient (and dotty?) old dame who was supposedly impersonating poor Alice. It seemed to me that someone had either been pulling Buckie’s leg or else had got hold of another story, tacked it on to The Bower, and repeated it to him at a late hour of night after the port had been circulating too freely.
&
nbsp; I applied instead to old Khundun, Buckie’s head gardener at Dukani; and also to the proprietor of the grain shop in Mahasu, the chowkidar of The Bower, and a number of other local inhabitants whose forebears had lived in those parts for generations and who had known me when I was a child. Their individual stories about ‘Alice’s Bower’ were not only far more entertaining but, bar the odd embellishment here and there, to a great extent actually tallied with each other. So here, for what it is worth, is their version…
When Colonel Colyear died and his will was read, his widow found herself in possession of a house and a fortune; both of which, in the eyes of her Kangra Valley relatives, appeared so dazzlingly large and impressive that they lost no time in descending upon her en masse to demand a share of the loot. Alice at first proved tractable, but after a few months of having her house overrun by this horde of locusts, her patience began to wear thin and there were tremendous rows. Fearing that she might wash her hands of them they turned on her in a body; locking her up in her own room and keeping her a prisoner there. And when she attempted to escape, they cut off her feet to prevent her running away.
In another version of this story her relatives decided to make sure of the house and the money by forcing her to marry an ill-favoured and much older cousin, and it was this man who cut off her feet after catching her in the act of eloping with an Englishman who had become her lover. But both versions, and all the stories, included the hacking off of poor Hindu Alice’s feet. Also that after she died from the effects of that brutal amputation, her greedy relatives were forced out of her Bower by her ghost, which took to haunting the room in which she had been imprisoned; and that she could often be heard clumping painfully on those bandaged, footless stumps up the stairs that led to it…
