The Best of Ruskin Bond

by Bond, Ruskin

  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?

  *

  When my father came home, he looked quite pleased with himself.

  ‘What have you brought for me?’ was the first question I asked.

  He had brought me some new books, a dart-board, and a train set; and in my excitement over examining these gifts, I forgot to ask about the result of his trip.

  It was during tiffin that he told me what had happened—and what was going to happen.

  ‘We’ll be going away soon,’ he said. ‘I’ve joined the Royal Air Force. I’ll have to work in Delhi.’

  ‘Oh! Will you be in the war, Dad? Will you fly a plane?’

  ‘No, I’m too old to be flying planes. I’ll be forty years old in July. The RAF, will be giving me what they call intelligence work—decoding secret messages and things like that and I don’t suppose I’ll be able to tell you much about it.’

  This didn’t sound as exciting as flying planes; but it sounded important and rather mysterious.

  ‘Well, I hope it’s interesting,’ I said. ‘Is Delhi a good place to live in?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It will be very hot by the middle of April. And you won’t be able to stay with me, Ruskin—not at first, anyway, not until I can get married quarters and then, only if your mother returns. . . . Meanwhile, you’ll stay with your grandmother in Dehra.’ He must have seen the disappointment in my face because he quickly added: ‘Of course I’ll come to see you often. Dehra isn’t far from Delhi—only a night’s train journey.’

  But I was dismayed. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to stay with my grandmother, but I had grown so used to sharing my father’s life and even watching him at work, that the thought of being separated from him was unbearable.

  ‘Not as bad as going to boarding-school,’ he said. ‘And that’s the only alternative.’

  ‘Not boarding-school,’ I said quickly, ‘I’ll run away from boarding-school.’

  ‘Well, you won’t want to run away from your grandmother. She’s very fond of you. And if you come with me to Delhi, you’ll be alone all day in a stuffy little hut, while I’m away at work. Sometimes I may have to go on tour—then what happens?’

  ‘I don’t mind being on my own.’ And this was true: I had already grown accustomed to having my own room and my own trunk and my own bookshelf and I felt as though I was about to lose these things.

  ‘Will Ayah come too?’ I asked.

  My father looked thoughtful. ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘Ayah must come,’ I said firmly. ‘Otherwise I’ll run away.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask her,’ said my father.

  Ayah, it turned out, was quite ready to come with us: in fact, she was indignant that Father should have considered leaving her behind. She had brought me up since my mother went away, and she wasn’t going to hand over charge to any upstart aunt or governess. She was pleased and excited at the prospect of the move, and this helped to raise my spirits.

  ‘What is Dehra like?’ I asked my father.

  ‘It’s a green place,’ he said. ‘It lies in a valley in the foothills of the Himalayas, and it’s surrounded by forests. There are lots of trees in Dehra.’

  ‘Does Grandmother’s house have trees?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a big jackfruit tree in the garden. Your grandmother planted it when I was a boy. And there’s an old banyan tree, which is good to climb. And there are fruit trees, lichis, mangoes, papayas.’

  ‘Are there any books?’

  ‘Grandmother’s books won’t interest you. But I’ll be bringing you books from Delhi, whenever I come to see you.’

  I was beginning to look forward to the move. Changing houses had always been fun. Changing towns ought to be fun, too.

  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.’

  The Girl From Copenhagen

  This is not a love story; but it is a story about love. You will know what I mean.

  When I was living and working in London I knew a Vietnamese girl called Phuong. She studied at the Polytechnic. During the summer vacations she joined a group of students—some of them English, most of them French, German, Indian and African—picking raspberries for a few pounds a week, and drinking in some real English country air. Late one summer, on her return from a farm, she introduced me to Ulla, a sixteen-year-old Danish girl who had come over to England for a similar holiday.

  ‘Please look after Ulla for a few days,’ said Phuong. ‘She doesn’t know anyone in London.’

  ‘But I want to look after you,’ I protested. I had been infatuated with Phuong for some time; but, though she was rather fond of me, she did not reciprocate my advances, and it was possible that she had conceived of Ulla as a device to get rid of me for a little while.

  ‘This is Ulla,’ said Phuong, thrusting a blonde child into my arms. ‘Bye, and don’t get up to any mischief!’

  Phuong disappeared, and I was left alone with Ulla at the entrance to the Charing Cross Underground Station. She grinned at me, and I smiled back rather nervously. She had blue eyes and a smooth, tanned skin. She was small for a Scandinavian girl, reaching only to my shoulders, and her figure was slim and boyish. She was carrying a small travelling-bag. It gave me an excuse to do something.

  ‘We’d better leave your bag somewhere,’ I said, taking it from her.

  And after depositing it in the left-luggage office, we were back on the pavement, grinning at each other.

  ‘Well, Ulla,’ I said. ‘How many days do you have in London.’

  ‘Only two. Then I go back to Copenhagen.’

  ‘Good. Well, what would you like to do?’

  ‘Eat. I’m hungry.’

  I wasn’t hungry; but there’s nothing like a meal to hel
p two strangers grow acquainted. We went to a small and not very expensive Indian restaurant off Fitzroy Square, and burnt our tongues on an orange-coloured Hyderabad chicken curry. We had to cool off with a Tamil Koykotay before we could talk.

  ‘What do you do in Copenhagen?’ I asked.

  ‘I go to school. I’m joining the University next year.’

  ‘And your parents?’

  ‘They have a bookshop.’

  ‘Then you must have done a lot of reading.’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t read much. I can’t sit in one place for long. I like swimming and tennis and going to the theatre.’

  ‘But you have to sit in a theatre.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s different.’

  ‘It’s not sitting that you mind, but sitting and reading.’

  ‘Yes, you are right. But most Danish girls like reading—they read more books than English girls.’

  ‘You are probably right,’ I said.

  As I was out of a job just then, and had time on my hands, we were able to feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and while away the afternoon in a coffee-bar, before going on to a theatre. Ulla was wearing tight jeans and an abbreviated duffle coat, and as she had brought little else with her, she wore this outfit to the theatre. It created quite a stir in the foyer, but Ulla was completely unconscious of the stares she received. She enjoyed the play, laughed loudly in all the wrong places, and clapped her hands when no one else did.

  The lunch and the theatre had lightened my wallet, and dinner consisted of baked beans on toast in a small snack-bar. After picking up Ulla’s bag, I offered to take her back to Phuong’s place.

  ‘Why there?’ she said. ‘Phuong must have gone to bed.’

  ‘Yes, but aren’t you staying with her?’

  ‘Oh, no. She did not ask me.’

  ‘Then where are you staying? Where have you kept the rest of your things?’

  ‘Nowhere. This is all I brought with me,’ she said, indicating the travel-bag.

  ‘Well, you can’t sleep on a park bench,’ I said. ‘Shall I get you a room in a hotel?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I have only the money to return to Copenhagen.’ She looked crestfallen for a few moments; then she brightened, and slipped her arm through mine. ‘I know, I’ll stay with you. Don’t mind?’

  ‘No, but my landlady—’ I began; then stopped; it would have been a lie. My landlady, a generous, broad-minded soul, would not have minded in the least.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’

  When we reached my room in Swiss Cottage, Ulla threw off her coat and opened the window wide. It was a warm summer’s night, and the scent of honeysuckle came through the open window. She kicked her shoes off, and walked about the room barefooted. Her toenails were painted a bright pink. She slipped out of her blouse and jeans, and stood before the mirror in her lace pants. A lot of sunbathing had made her quite brown, but her small breasts were white.

  She slipped into bed and said, ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  I crept in beside her and lay very still, while she chattered on about the play and the friends she made in the country. I switched off the bed-lamp and she fell silent. Then she said, ‘Well, I’m sleepy. Goodnight!’ And turning over, she immediately fell asleep.

  I lay awake beside her, conscious of the growing warmth of her body. She was breathing easily and quietly. Her long, golden hair touched my cheek. I kissed her gently on the lobe of the ear, but she was fast asleep. So I counted eight hundred and sixty-two Scandinavian sheep, and managed to fall asleep.

  Ulla woke fresh and frolicsome. The sun streamed in through the window, and she stood naked in its warmth, performing calisthenics. I busied myself with the breakfast. Ulla ate three eggs and a lot of bacon, and drank two cups of coffee. I couldn’t help admiring her appetite.

  ‘And what shall we do today?’ she asked, her blue eyes shining. They were the bright blue eyes of a Siamese kitten.

  ‘I’m supposed to visit the Employment Exchange,’ I said.

  ‘But that is bad. Can’t you go tomorrow—after I have left?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I like.’

  And she gave me a swift, unsettling kiss on the lips.

  We climbed Primrose Hill and watched boys flying kites. We lay in the sun and chewed blades of grass, and then we visited the Zoo, where Ulla fed the monkeys. She consumed innumerable ices. We lunched at a small Greek restaurant, and I forgot to phone Phuong, and in the evening we walked all the way home through scruffy Camden Town, drank beer, ate a fine, greasy dinner of fish and chips, and went to bed early—Ulla had to catch the boat-train next morning.

  ‘It has been a good day,’ she said.

  ‘I’d like to do it again tomorrow.’

  ‘But I must go tomorrow.’

  ‘But you must go.’

  She turned her head on the pillow and looked wonderingly into my eyes, as though she were searching for something. I don’t know if she found what she was looking for; but she smiled, and kissed me softly on the lips.

  ‘Thanks for everything,’ she said.

  She was fresh and clean, like the earth after spring rain.

  I took her fingers and kissed them, one by one. I kissed her breasts, her throat, her forehead; and, making her close her eyes, I kissed her eyelids.

  We lay in each other’s arms for a long time, savouring the warmth and texture of each other’s bodies. Though we were both very young and inexperienced, we found ourselves imbued with a tender patience, as though there lay before us not just this one passing night, but all the nights of a lifetime, all eternity.

  There was a great joy in our loving, and afterwards we fell asleep in each other’s arms like two children who have been playing in the open all day.

  The sun woke me next morning. I opened my eyes to see Ulla’s slim, bare leg dangling over the side of the bed. I smiled at her painted toes. Her hair pressed against my face, and the sunshine fell on it, making each hair a strand of burnished gold.

  The station and the train were crowded, and we held hands and grinned at each other, too shy to kiss.

  ‘Give my love to Phuong,’ she said.

  ‘I will.’

  We made no promises—of writing, or of meeting again. Somehow our relationship seemed complete and whole, as though it had been destined to blossom for those two days. A courting and a marriage and a living together had been compressed, perfectly, into one summer night. . . .

  I passed the day in a glow of happiness; I thought Ulla was still with me; and it was only at night, when I put my hand out for hers, and did not find it, that I knew she had gone.

  But I kept the window open all through the summer, and the scent of the honeysuckle was with me every night.

  Tribute To A Dead Friend

  Now that Thanh is dead, I suppose it is not too treacherous of me to write about him. He was only a year older than I. He died in Paris, in his twenty-second year, and Pravin wrote to me from London and told me about it. I will get more details from Pravin when he returns to India next month; just now I only know that Thanh is dead.

  It is supposed to be in very bad taste to discuss a person behind his back; and to discuss a dead person behind his back is most unfair, for he cannot even retaliate. But Thanh had this very weakness of criticizing absent people, and it cannot hurt him now if I do a little to expose his colossal Ego.

  Thanh was a fraud all right, but no one knew it. He had beautiful round eyes, a flashing smile, and a sweet voice, and everyone said he was a charming person. He was certainly charming, but I have found that charming people are seldom sincere. I think I was the only person who came anywhere near to being his friend, for he had cultivated a special loneliness of his own, and it was difficult to intrude on it.

  I met him in London in the summer of ‘54. I was trying to become a writer, while I worked part-time at a number of different jobs. I had been two years in London, and was longing for the hills and rivers of India. Thanh was
Vietnamese. His family was well-to-do, and though the Communists had taken their home-town of Hanoi, most of the family was in France, well-established in the restaurant business. Thanh did not suffer from the same financial distress as other students whose homes were in Northern Vietnam. He wasn’t studying anything in particular, but practised assiduously on the piano, though the only thing he could play fairly well was Chopin’s Funeral March.

  My friend Pravin, a happy-go-lucky, very friendly Gujarati boy, introduced me to Thanh. Pravin, like a good Indian, thought all Asians were superior people, but he didn’t know Thanh well enough to know that Thanh didn’t like being an Asian.

  At first, Thanh was glad to meet me. He said he had for a long time been wanting to make friends with an Englishman, a real Englishman, not one who was a Pole or a Cockney or a Jew; he was most anxious to improve his English and talk like Mr Glendenning of the BBC. Pravin, knowing that I had been born and bred in India, that my parents had been born and bred in India, suppressed his laughter with some difficulty. But Thanh was soon disillusioned. My accent was anything but English. It was a pronounced chi-chi accent.

  ‘You speak like an Indian!’ exclaimed Thanh, horrified. ‘Are you an Indian?’

  ‘He’s Welsh,’ said Pravin with a wink.

  Thanh was slightly mollified. Being Welsh was the next best thing to being English. Only he disapproved of the Welsh for speaking with an Indian accent.

  Later, when Pravin had gone, and I was sitting in Thanh’s room, drinking Chinese tea, he confided in me that he disliked Indians.

  ‘Isn’t Pravin your friend?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t trust him,’ he said. ‘I have to be friendly, but I don’t trust him at all. I don’t trust any Indians.’

  ‘What’s wrong with them?’

  ‘They are too inquisitive,’ complained Thanh. ‘No sooner have you met one of them than he is asking you who your father is, and what your job is, and how much money have you got in the Bank?’

  I laughed, and tried to explain that in India inquisitiveness is a sign of a desire for friendship, and that he should feel flattered when asked such personal questions. I protested that I was an Indian myself, and he said if that was so, he wouldn’t trust me either.