Friends In Small Places

by Ruskin Bond

  ‘But I saw him go this way,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense! He doesn’t live in this part of the garden. He lives in the roots of the banyan tree.’

  ‘But that’s where the snake lives,’ I said.

  ‘You mean the snake who was a prince. Well, that’s who I’m looking for!’

  ‘A snake who was a prince!’ I gaped at the Rani.

  She made a gesture of impatience with her butterfly hands, and said, ‘Tut, you’re only a child, you can’t understand. The prince lives in the roots of the banyan tree, but he comes out early every morning. Have you seen him?’

  ‘No. But I saw a mongoose.’

  The Rani became frightened. ‘Oh dear, is there a mongoose in the garden? He might kill the prince!’

  ‘How can a mongoose kill a prince?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t understand, Master Bond. Princes, when they die, are born again as snakes.’

  ‘All princes?’

  ‘No, only those who die before they can marry.’ ‘Did your prince die before he could marry you?’

  ‘Yes. And he returned to this garden in the form of a beautiful snake.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I hope it wasn’t the snake the water-carrier killed last week.’

  ‘He killed a snake!’ The Rani looked horrified. She was quivering all over. ‘It might have been the prince!’

  ‘It was a brown snake,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, then it wasn’t him.’ She looked very relieved. ‘Brown snakes are only ministers and people like that. It has to be a green snake to be a prince.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any green snakes here.’

  ‘There’s one living in the roots of the banyan tree. You won’t kill it, will you?’

  ‘Not if it’s really a prince.’

  ‘And you won’t let others kill it?’

  ‘I’ll tell Ayah.’

  ‘Good. You’re on my side. But be careful of the gardener. Keep him away from the banyan tree. He’s always killing snakes. I don’t trust him at all.’

  She came nearer and, leaning forward a little, looked into my eyes.

  ‘Blue eyes—I trust them. But don’t trust green eyes. And yellow eyes are evil.’

  ‘I’ve never seen yellow eyes.’

  ‘That’s because you’re pure,’ she said, and turned away and hurried across the lawn as though she had just remembered a very urgent appointment.

  The sun was up, slanting through the branches of the banyan tree, and Ayah’s voice could be heard calling me for breakfast.

  ‘Dukhi,’ I said, when I found him in the garden later that day, ‘Dukhi, don’t kill the snake in the banyan tree.’

  ‘A snake in the banyan tree!’ he exclaimed, seizing his hose.

  ‘No, no!’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen it. But the Rani says there’s one. She says it was a prince in its former life, and that we shouldn’t kill it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Dukhi, smiling to himself. ‘The Rani says so. All right, you tell her we won’t kill it.’

  ‘Is it true that she was in love with a prince but that he died before she could marry him?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Dukhi. ‘It was a long time ago—before I came here.’

  ‘My father says it wasn’t a prince, but a commoner. Are you a commoner, Dukhi?’

  ‘A commoner? What’s that, chhota sahib?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Someone very poor, I suppose.’

  ‘Then I must be a commoner,’ said Dukhi.

  ‘Were you in love with the Rani?’ I asked.

  Dukhi was so startled that he dropped his hose and lost his balance; the first time I’d seen him lose his poise while squatting on his haunches.

  ‘Don’t say such things, chhota sahib!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’ll get me into trouble.’

  ‘Then it must be true.’

  Dukhi threw up his hands in mock despair and started collecting his implements.

  ‘It’s true, it’s true!’ I cried, dancing round him, and then I ran indoors to Ayah and said, ‘Ayah, Dukhi was in love with the Rani!’

  Ayah gave a shriek of laughter, then looked very serious and put her finger against my lips.

  ‘Don’t say such things,’ she said. ‘Dukhi is of a very low caste. People won’t like it if they hear what you say. And besides, the Rani told you her prince died and turned into a snake. Well, Dukhi hasn’t become a snake as yet, has he?’

  True, Dukhi didn’t look as though he could be anything but a gardener; but I wasn’t satisfied with his denials or with Ayah’s attempts to still my tongue. Hadn’t Dukhi sent the Rani a nosegay? . . .

  A few days before we left, I went to say goodbye to the Rani.

  ‘I’m going away,’ I said.

  ‘How lovely!’ said the Rani. ‘I wish I could go away!’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘They won’t let me. They’re afraid to let me out of the palace.’

  ‘What are they afraid of, Your Highness?’

  ‘That I might run away. Run away, far far away, to the land where the leopards are learning to pray.’

  Gosh, I thought, she’s really quite crazy . . . But then she was silent, and started smoking a small hookah.

  She drew on the hookah, looked at me, and asked, ‘Where is your mother?’

  ‘I haven’t one.’

  ‘Everyone has a mother. Did yours die?’

  ‘No. She went away.’

  She drew on her hookah again and then said, very sweetly, ‘Don’t go away . . .’

  ‘I must,’ I said. ‘It’s because of the war.’

  ‘What war? Is there a war on? You see, no one tells me anything.’

  ‘It’s between us and Hitler,’ I said.

  ‘And who is Hitler?’

  ‘He’s a German.’

  ‘I knew a German once, Dr Schreinherr, he had beautiful hands.’

  ‘Was he an artist?’

  ‘He was a dentist.’

  The Rani got up from her couch and accompanied me out on to the balcony. When we looked down at the garden, we could see Dukhi weeding a flower bed. Both of us gazed down at him in silence, and I wondered what the Rani would say if I asked her if she had ever been in love with the palace gardener. Ayah had told me it would be an insulting question, so I held my peace. But as I walked slowly down the spiral staircase, the Rani’s voice came after me.

  ‘Thank him,’ she said. ‘Thank him for the beautiful rose.’

  My Father and I

  The two years I spent with my father were probably the happiest of my childhood—although, for him, they must have been a period of trial and tribulation. Frequent bouts of malaria had undermined his constitution; the separation from my mother weighed heavily on him, and it could not be reversed; and at the age of eight I was self-willed and demanding.

  He did his best for me, dear man. He gave me his time, his companionship, his complete attention.

  A year was to pass before I was readmitted to a boarding school, and I would have been quite happy never to have gone to school again. My year in the convent had been sufficient punishment for uncommitted sins. I felt that I had earned a year’s holiday.

  This was in 1943, during World War II. The real war was being fought in Burma and the Far East, but Delhi was full of men in uniform. It was a glorious year, during which we changed our residence at least four times—from a tent on a flat treeless plain outside Delhi, to a hutment near Humayun’s tomb; to a couple of rooms on Atul Grove Road; to a small flat on Hailey Road and, finally, to an apartment in Scindia House, facing the Connaught Circus.

  We were not very long in the tent and hutment—but long enough for me to remember the scorching winds of June, and the bhisti’s hourly visit to douse the khas-khas matting with water. This turned a hot breeze into a refreshing, fragrant zephyr—for about half an hour. And then the dust and the prickly heat took over again. A small table fan was the only luxury.

  Except for Sundays, I was alone du
ring most of the day; my father’s office in Air Headquarters was somewhere near India Gate. He’d return at about six, tired but happy to find me in good spirits. For although I had no friends during that period, I found plenty to keep me occupied—my father’s books, stamps, the old gramophone, hundreds of postcards which he’d collected during his years in England, a scrapbook, albums of photographs . . . And sometimes I’d explore the jungle behind the tents.

  I would have my lunch with a family living in a neighbouring tent, but at night my father and I would eat together. I forget who did the cooking. But Father made the breakfast himself, getting up early to whip up some fresh butter (he loved doing this) and then laying the table with cornflakes or grapenuts, and eggs poached or fried.

  The gramophone was a great companion when my father was away. He had kept all the records he had collected in Jamnagar, and these were added to from time to time. There were operatic arias and duets from La Bohème and Madame Butterfly; ballads and traditional airs rendered by Paul Robeson, Peter Dawson, Richard Crooks, Webster Booth, Nelson Eddy and other tenors and baritones, and of course the great Russian bass, Chaliapin. And there were lighter, music-hall songs and comic relief provided by Gracie Fields (the ‘Lancashire Lass’), George Formby with his ukelele, Arthur Askey, Flanagan and Allan, and a host of other recording artistes.

  After a few torrid months in the tent-house and then in a brick hutment, which was even hotter, my father was permitted to rent rooms of his own on Atul Grove Road, a tree-lined lane not far from Connaught Place, which was then the hub and business centre of New Delhi. Keeping me with him had been quite unofficial; his superiors were always wanting to know why my mother wasn’t around to look after me. He was really hoping that the war would end soon, so that he could take me to England and put me in a good school there. He had been selling some of his more valuable stamps and had put quite a bit in the bank.

  One evening he came home with a bottle of Scotch whisky. This was most unusual, because I had never seen him drinking—not even beer. Had he suddenly decided to hit the bottle? The mystery was solved when an American officer dropped in to have dinner with us (having a guest for dinner was a very rare event). Our guest polished off several pegs of whisky (my father had a drink too), and after dinner, they sat down to go through some of my father’s stamp albums. The American collector bought several stamps, and we went to bed richer by a couple of thousand rupees.

  That it was possible to make money out of one’s hobby was something I was to remember when writing became my passion.

  When winter came, my father’s khakis were changed for dark blue RAF caps and uniforms, which suited him nicely. He was a good-looking man, always neatly dressed; on the short side but quite sturdy. He was over forty when he had joined up—hence the office job, deciphering (or helping to create) codes and ciphers. He was quite secretive about it all (as indeed he was supposed to be), and as he confided in me on almost every subject but his work, he was obviously a reliable Intelligence officer.

  He did not have many friends in Delhi. There was the occasional visit to Uncle Fred near the railway station, and sometimes he’d spend a half hour with Mr Rankin, who owned a large drapery shop at Connaught Circus, where officers’ uniforms were tailored. Mr Rankin was another enthusiastic stamp collector, and the two of them would get together in Mr Rankin’s back office and exchange stamps or discuss new issues.

  Some Sundays, my father and I explored old tombs and monuments, but going to the pictures was what we did most. Connaught Place was well served with cinemas—the Regal, Rivoli, Odeon and Plaza, all very new and shiny—and they exhibited the latest Hollywood and British productions. It was in these cinemas that I discovered the beautiful Sonja Henie; making love on skates and even getting married on ice; Nelson and Jeanette making love in duets; Errol Flynn making love on the high seas; and Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert making love in the bedroom.

  When my father broached the subject of sending me to a boarding school, I used every argument I could think of to dissuade him. The convent school was still fresh in my memory and I had no wish to return to any institution remotely resembling it—certainly not after almost a year of untrammelled freedom and my father’s companionship.

  ‘Why do you want to send me to school again?’ I asked. ‘I can learn more at home. I can read books, I can write letters, I can even do sums!’

  ‘Not bad for a boy of nine,’ said my father. ‘But I can’t teach you algebra, physics and chemistry.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a chemist.’

  ‘Well, what would you like to be when you grow up?’

  ‘A tap-dancer.’

  ‘We’ve been seeing too many pictures. Everyone says I spoil you.’

  I tried another argument. ‘You’ll have to live on your own again. You’ll feel lonely.’

  ‘That can’t be helped, son. But I’ll come to see you as often as I can. You see, they’re posting me to Karachi for some time, and then I’ll be moved again—they won’t allow me to keep you with me at some of these places. Would you like to stay with your mother?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘With Calcutta Granny?’

  ‘I don’t know her.’

  ‘When the War’s over, I’ll take you with me to England. But for the next year or two we must stay here. I’ve found a nice school for you.’

  ‘Another convent?’

  ‘No, it’s a prep school for boys in Simla. And I may be able to get posted there during the summer.’

  ‘I want to see it first,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll go up to Simla together. Not now—in April or May, before it gets too hot. It doesn’t matter if you join school a bit later—I know you’ll soon catch up with the others.’

  There was a brief trip to Dehra Dun. I think my father felt that there was still a chance of a reconciliation with my mother. But her affair with the businessman was far gone. His own wife had been practically abandoned and left to look after the photography shop she’d brought along with her dowry. She was a stout lady with high blood pressure, who once went in search of my mother and stepfather with an axe. Fortunately, they were not at home that day and she had to vent her fury on the furniture.

  In later years, when I got to know her quite well, she told me that my father was a very decent man, who treated her with great courtesy and kindness on the occasion they met.

  I remember we stayed in a little hotel or boarding house just off the Eastern Canal Road.

  Dehra was a green and leafy place. The houses were separated by hedges, not walls, and the residential areas were criss-crossed by little lanes bordered by hibiscus or oleander shrubs.

  We were soon back in Delhi.

  My parents’ separation was final and it was to be almost two years before I saw my mother again.

  1944. The war dragged on. No sooner was I back in prep school than my father was transferred to Calcutta. In some ways this was a good thing because my sister Elllen was there, living with ‘Calcutta Granny,’ and my father could live in his own home for a change. Granny had been living on Park Lane ever since Grandfather had died.

  It meant, of course, that my father couldn’t come to see me in Simla during my mid-term holidays. But he wrote regularly—once a week, on an average.

  The War was coming to an end, peace was in the air, but there was also talk of the British leaving India as soon as the war was over. In his letters my father spoke of the preparations he was making towards that end. Obviously, he saw no future for us in a free India. He was not an advocate of the Empire but he took a pragmatic approach to the problems of the day.

  There would be a new school for me in England, he said, and meanwhile he was selling off large segments of his stamp collection so that we’d have some money to start life afresh when he left the RAF.

  My father’s last letter to me was the only one that I was able to retain (apart from some of the postcards). It is a good example of the sort of letters he wrote to me, and you can see
why I hung on to it.

  AA Bond 108485 (RAF)

  c/o 231 Group

  Rafpost

  Calcutta 20/8/44

  My dear Ruskin,

  Thank you very much for your letter received a few days ago. I was pleased to hear that you were quite well and learning hard. We are all quite okay here, but I am still not strong enough to go to work after the recent attack of malaria I had. I was in hospital for a long time and that is the reason why you did not get a letter from me for several weeks.

  I have now to wear glasses for reading, but I do not use them for ordinary wear—but only when I read or do book work. Ellen does not wear glasses at all now.

  Do you need any new warm clothes? Your warm suits must be getting too small. I am glad to hear the rains are practically over in the hills where you are. It will be nice to have sunny days in September when your holidays are on. Do the holidays begin from the 9th of Sept? What will you do? Is there to be a Scouts Camp at Taradevi? Or will you catch butterflies on sunny days on the school Cricket Ground? I am glad to hear you have lots of friends. Next year you will be in the top class of the Prep. School. You only have 3½ months more for the Xmas holidays to come round, when you will be glad to come home, I am sure, to do more Stamp work and Library Study. The New Market is full of bookshops here. Ellen loves the market.

  I wanted to write before about your writing Ruskin, but forgot. Sometimes I get letters from you written in very small handwriting, as if you wanted to squeeze a lot of news into one sheet of letter paper. It is not good for you or for your eyes, to get into the habit of writing small: I know your handwriting is good and that you came 1st in class for handwriting, but try and form a larger style of writing and do not worry if you can’t get all your news into one sheet of paper—but stick to big letters.

  We have had a very wet month just passed. It is still cloudy, at night we have to use fans, but during the cold weather it is nice—not too cold like Delhi and not too warm either—but just moderate. Granny is quite well. She and Ellen send you their fond love. The last I heard a week ago, that William and all at Dehra were well also.

  We have been without a cook for the past few days. I hope we find a good one before long. There are not many. I wish I could get our Delhi cook, the old man now famous for his ‘Black Puddings’ which Ellen hasn’t seen since we arrived in Calcutta 4 months ago.