“Does the railway go over it?”
“No, it goes through the engine.”
“Is it green like the other one?”
“No; well, it hasn’t really a colour. But you could call it green—a very bright bluish green. Yes, I think you could call it a green”, said my father hoping against hope, but beginning to fear that his son’s gleam of intelligence was only by way of some extraordinary accident.
For my part I began to fear that the train was going to turn out to be some ghastly misunderstanding.
“Will it go fast? Really fast I mean—faster than any trains in the world?”
“Well yes, they are very fast of course. But this is not a real train you know. It’s only a little one.”
Depression began to close in on me. I was not at all sure about a blue city even… “Is it very bright? As bright as bright?” I asked.
He was getting tired. He decided to close the discussion. “Wait and see”, he said with a hard, bright jocularity. I ended up with a wish to drop the subject for ever.
“You do want the train don’t you?”, my father asked anxiously. Electric trains for children in those days must have cost a small fortune and my parents were not wealthy.
“Yes”, I said listlessly, “can I go and play now?”
I suppose I could hardly have chosen six more devastating words. My father was a sensitive man and I could feel that something had gone terribly wrong. He was upset, though I could not imagine why. He patted me on the head with a gentle sign of dismissal. “Perhaps it is too old for him”, I heard him say to my mother later. I did not want to hear about it again. Simply City; Electric City; Green hill far away where our dear Lord was ‘crucerfied’ and died to save us all.
Perhaps some things were too old even for the grown-ups. It did not occur to me till many years later that any of those in a position of authority could be called on to solve problems that were too old for them.
One day a dignified, authoritative Indian appeared at our camp and asked for me. I understood that I was to be polite. I was in fact used to being polite to strangers; what was unusual on this occasion was that this strange Indian wanted to be polite to me. He salaamed. As I stood there he produced a silver cup, about four inches high as I remember it. This he presented to me with a decorous bow. Then he withdrew, leaving me to understand that I was to keep it. My father said he would look after it for me—and that was all.
When the Indian had gone my questions started. “Why did he want me?” “What is the cup for?” “Who was he?” “Where…?” But my parents were uncommunicative.
“Must I give it back to him?” This because I was used to the never-to-be-broken rule that neither my father, nor mother, nor sister, nor I, nor any servant of the household was ever to accept a gift of any kind—huge trays of sweetmeats, fruit and flowers were the gifts most often offered and invariably ceremoniously returned. This time, I was told, was different; the man would be deeply shocked and offended if his gifts were not accepted. The incident must have made a deep impression for I often asked about the cup and as often was met by an evasive response. To this day I have not seen it again.
I suspect that my father and mother were afraid 1 would ‘get ideas’ if I were allowed to have contact with any kind of ‘pagan superstition’ at variance with the pure, unsullied belief of our puritan and their missionary forbears. These were indeed made in a formidably robust and uncompromising mould. My Uncle Harry and my mother, as I discovered later, were not on speaking terms because he had denounced her as an “abandoned woman”. This sounded interesting and exciting; my curiosity finally produced an explanation. The quarrel had started because one Sunday my mother had worn a hat which had aroused Uncle Harry’s wrath by being too lush for the austerity proper to his church. I was on my mother’s side as I was most fond of this hat which was of wide diameter and decorated with bunches of bananas and pears and other luscious fruits rather like the trays which Indians had striven to present to my father. But the glory was a bunch of black grapes of some transparent material which made them incredibly realistic and horticultural. I longed for my mother to leave them to me in her will. Alasl Fashions change and that hat was discarded long years before I was old enough to be given those grapes.
3
ONE day there was a Big Game shoot to which my father had been invited as he was well known as a fine shot. Preparations had been going on for some time, but my sister and I knew nothing of the great day which came and went without our small world within the camp being disturbed. As we travelled about the country with my father on his tours, the camps—expertly erected and struck by a staff of Indians paid and employed by the government—were considerable affairs and housed some fifty engineers and others who like us were members of the families of the higher paid technicians. Being of the ‘Chief’s’ entourage, my mother, sister and self were like local insignificant royalty. There were no other children so one or other of the temporarily unemployed Indians was usually told to keep an eye on us so we did not stray.
The hunt was on my birthday, the day for which my electric train was designed. It was unwrapped by me and after much fumbling it stood revealed. It was a beauty—a model of one of the latest London trains, perhaps even of the first London electric train. In a fever of excitement not, I was pleased to note, shared by my sister, it was set up, the battery fixed and the motor set off with a slight push from my father’s finger.
That initial jolt was the highest speed it ever achieved. As I watched the miserable crawl I tried to see it devouring the miles in its headlong rush through space; I might even have succeeded if it had not, like my tank many years later, stopped. It just stopped.
“It’s stopped?” I said inquiringly. My father was as upset as I was. He picked it up and examined it. I watched his face, and as I watched I could see from his expression that it had indeed stopped. My sister, who was being taught to read by Mother, came to life. “Full top?”
Full top indeed. “Never mind,” said my father brightly, “we’ll soon get it going after I’ve seen to the mails”, and he went to the office tent.
I told the bearer who was a good friend of mine but no engineer. He reassured me and, mobilizing his religious beliefs, carried the train off to the kitchen supply tent. There he smeared it plentifully with ghee. “It was”, said the March Hare, “the best butter.” Then he set it down in the hot sun telling me that after an hour or so it would rush off cured.
“Will it go fast—really and truly very fast? As fast as…?” I could not think of anything fast enough, but so it would assuredly be.
An hour or so later my father found me sitting watching it. “Now”, he said, “let me have it and we shall soon get it… but, whatever is this?” He put it down suddenly to wipe the greasy mess off his fingers.
“Did you do this?”
Thank God, no. Arf Arfer with his great black wings beating had already obscured the sun. I cowered away. I feared. I wanted to tell my friend the bearer to run, run for his life before Arf Arfer got him.
“I didn’t do anything”, I said starting to weep.
My sister, who always seemed to appear at the wrong time, had already started to scream. For a wild moment I had an impulse, immediately stifled, to point at her and say she had done it.
To have two yelling brats on his hands was too much. This time my father turned and fled. I was afraid he was going to cry and indeed he must have been bitterly disappointed.
I did not care. The sky was clear; the sun shone; Arf Arfer had gone.
Ultimately even the bearer was miraculously saved because although he could not claim it was the best butter he could cite, as his authority for the treatment, the ayah. She it was who had told him about electric ‘terains’. Her head trembled as the storm beat about her, but like a reed shaken by the wind she bowed to its fury and it passed her by.
That night Arf Arfer came in terror ‘like the King of Kings’. The hunt had killed a tiger and the body had been b
rought to our camp. His mate came to claim him and for the next two nights the camp was circled by fires and torches burning bright to keep her out. With her great head and mouth directed to the ground so as to disguise her whereabouts she roared her requiem. Even my fear was swallowed up in awe as almost from inside our tent there seemed to come a great cough and then the full-throated roar of the tigress’s mourning. All that night and the next it continued while even our brave dogs shivered and snarled and cowered. No sooner had the sun set to release the orchestra of the tropical night than we were aware of the added diapason.
“She won’t eat us Daddy? You are sure she won’t?”
We slept safe in their tents for those nights. On the third night her vigil was short. She went away before midnight and came no more.
I asked my mother a few nights later if she thought Jesus loved the tigress. She seemed surprised at first, but after a little thought she said she was sure he did. I was glad because I did not want the tigress to be lonely.
“Where is she now7”
“Oh I don’t know child—far, far away I expect. Why do you ask?”
‘Remember also the humble beasts’, says the Edinburgh War Memorial.
Far, far away; where ‘Saints in Glory stand, Bright as day’. How was the tiger going to get on there? We had a beautiful picture of an assortment of animals, including a lion and a lamb; a little boy, or it may have been a little girl, wearing a nightgown stood with his arm round the lion’s neck. They stood about doing nothing in particular, like the people in Picasso’s ‘Saltimbanques’. Doing nothing in particular. Nobody ever believed I was doing nothing.
“What is he doing now?”
“Who?” asked my mother having lost track of the conversation. “Jesus—i mean the tiger”, I felt suddenly embarrassed, thinking I ought to have asked after the lamb. If the tiger, as seemed reasonable, was in heaven, it ought to be having a fine time chasing the animals as our dog Booties did; only Booties was so slow he couldn’t chase anything. Once he even let a mouse hide under the hair of one paw while he just stood there smiling because everyone was laughing so much.
“Come child,” said my mother giving me a kiss, “I can’t stay here all day talking—I’m busy”.
Through the tent flap the sun beat down on the floor draining the colour out of the grass and making everything beyond the circle of light an intense black.
Intense light; intense black; nothing between; no twilight. Harsh sun and silence; black night and violent noise. Frogs croaking, birds hammering tin boxes, striking bells, shrieking, yelling, roaring, coughing, bawling, mocking. That night, that is the real world and real noise. When the super clever monkeys with their super clever tools have blown themselves into a fit and proper state to provide delicate feeding for the coming lords and ladies of creation, super microbe sapiens, then the humans who cumber the earth will achieve their crowning glory, the gorgeous colours of putrescent flesh to rot and stink and cradle the new aristocracy.
4
TIME I went to school to knock this nonsense out of my head—I hadn’t a mind then, only a ‘head’. This stage did have a twilight. No doubt it should have been a dawn—the dawn of intelligence. It came to me this way: I was taken along a long road by my ayah together with a little box for my lunch. In this box was some guava cheese of which I was inordinately fond. So far, so good; ‘school’ was making a good start.
Woodstock turned out to be a vast barrack-like building unlike any house I was familiar with. There was a group of three children with whom my ayah left me. The largest one, who wore glasses, appeared to be unhappy; to defend herself against the other two she was repeating in a ritualistic monotone,
“Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But words—they cannot hurt me.”
She seemed peculiarly miserable but staunchly repeated the rhyme while the other two—boys I think—butted her, pushed her and mocked her. They did not tire and only stopped when a bell was rung, whereupon they, dragging me with them—”Come on!”— rushed into a large room of shrieking boys and girls.
“Here, you!” said the nearest one to me, “Do you want a box on the ears?” A box of any sort, thinking of my little lunch box with its guava cheese nestling inside, was attractive.
“Yes”, I said. Whereupon he clouted my head. Shocked, I let out a yell of dismay.
By this time a grown man was trying to restore order by hitting about freely with a ruler at any brat within ruler reach.
“You!” he said, seeing me, “What are you crying about?”
“He hit me!” I wailed.
“Well we don’t want any cry-babies here! And don’t tell tales.”
“Sneak! Sneak!” loudly whispered one or two near to me. The master’s attention, distracted by his attempts to get within ruler’s reach of another yelling ruffian, went back to restoring order. I sobbed quietly, hoping no one would notice me in the prevailing tempest. Nor did they. My little box had gone. I didn’t care because the room was becoming relatively quiet and I had no wish to ruffle the surface.
I cannot say how I came out of the room nor how I came to be walking back the same road with my ayah. My attention was distracted by two girls presumably also on their way back from Woodstock. They were putting their faces close together and sticking out their tongues, not in derision but excited and pleased. They would lick each other’s tongues, burst out in excited laughter and then repeat the game. I was fascinated—Woodstock forgotten— and would have been pleased to watch, had I been allowed. But my ayah was shocked; she clearly did not think it right for ruling-class white children to behave like that. So I was dragged off unable to see how the game ended—it must have ended though I could not imagine how.
This time I didn’t ask my father and mother questions. The Master Race did not behave like that.
“He is only four.” said my mother. “Perhaps it will be different when he goes to school in England; a lot can happen in four years.”
So now there was another problem—becoming eight and ‘England’ which was not Woodstock. I am now becoming eighty which is nicer, though I have had a long time to wait, and as my mother said, “a lot can happen in four years”.
The previous Christmas I had been asked what present I would like. I had set my heart on a Union Jack. When it came I did not know what to do with it. It seemed silly only to wave it. It was so much more exciting before christmas—like being at the siege of Lucknow where there was a brave girl who put her ear to the ground and heard the bagpipes and knew the ‘Campbells were coming’. Only no one believed her. Then they came and a wicked man called Tippa Sahib—well, perhaps it wasn’t, but he was very wicked anyhow—ran, or perhaps marched away. It did not solve my problem with the Union Jack; you can’t stand there waving it like that silly old woman, saying “Welcome home boys! Welcome home!” That was later—much later; it hadn’t happened yet. That was history. I had to learn history before I was eight; and mathematics, and Paul of Tarsus. That wasn’t history; that was Scripture. Scripture and Jesus-loves-me-this-I-know-for-the-Bible-tells-me-so. I didn’t like Scripture. Or England—that was Geography; my mother showed me how like a bear it was with a baby on its back. And another small one called the Isle of Wight coming out of its… but I knew that wasn’t Geography. It made me sad like everything else after Woodstock; growing up, being a big boy now, England…
5
A LONG two years of ‘Shadows of the evening steal across the sky’; my mother felt it; I felt it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
My mother would caress my head with what seemed a new tenderness. Even my little sister seemed to become less of a bitch and more like a wide-eyed inhuman robot. Nobody knew why. Only I understood. It was like being in front of an inscrutable, patient schoolmaster. “Well”, he seemed to say, as if waiting for me to repeat my homework. “Well, what next?” Pause. And then as if recollecting something very difficult and painful and future, “In England…” “Ye
s, well, and then?” No good. “I don’t know.” “Surely you haven’t forgotten?” I had. “Think!”
My mother just stroked my cheeks and dreamt without fear but with sadness. I couldn’t stand it.
“Moth-er! You aren’t sad are you?”
“Sad?” She would laugh. “Of course not! Why should I be sad?”
Well, why should she be sad? I couldn’t think. It was ridiculous. Sad? Of course not!
But she was.
Nicholson: Hodson of Hodson’s Horse. Nickel Sehn—the Indians had such queer names! It made you laugh—like my mother. The Indians would laugh too if they knew that one of those cowardly little white brats was frightened. An Indian came into Nicholson’s tent and he was so frightened he died of fright. Wasn’t that splendid? No; it only made me die of fright, at night time when I could hear Nickel Sehn roaring in the forest, imperatively, with authority. And Arf Arfer. And then the bird with a cruel beak and saucer-like eyes would ring a bell, for fun, because it scared the wits out of bloody little English brats. Mummy! Christ! Whoever was that screaming?
Soon I would be in England which was full of little boys, brave boys like Havelock and Outram—not like me. “Shsh…”, my mother was saying. “It’s only a dream. Go to sleep dear.”
I knew I was not brave. About a year before I had a gun, an air gun which you loaded like this—it’s quite simple really—you bend it across your knee and it breaks like this—not really breaks you know, but it looks as if it breaks in halves, only the two halves remain hinged together. Then you get a pellet and… suddenly before I could find a pellet the two halves snapped together and there it was hanging from my thumb. Christ! Whoever is that screaming? Screaming, screaming, screaming. Oh God, my throbbing hand! My mother came in. “Whatever…”, and then she saw. Over seventy years later I can guess she is releasing my thumb. My father is there; they won’t let me see, but there is blood everywhere. There! It doesn’t hurt much does it? And a real bandage, just like a real soldier!
The Long Week-End 1897-1919 Page 2
