Cobra in the Bath

by Miles Morland

  Ma searched around in her handbag and counted five green pound notes into the purser’s hand. ‘Well, I hope you weren’t telling him anything that will get us into trouble. We’re only going to be here a day or two till my husband comes to pick us up.’

  ‘Course. That’s just what I told him.’ The purser beckoned to Ibrahim, who waddled over to us with a big smile on his face, gave Ma what appeared to me an overly familiar wink, pocketed the five pounds, and then bent down to chub my cheek with his greasy fingers.

  ‘Hello, boy. You and madame coming Basra now?’ At which he released a burst of laughter smelling worse than Bombay harbour directly into my face.

  Ma’s passport, on which I was also entered, was taken; the customs man stamped it, looked closely at the page, spat vigorously on the inkpad and stamped it again, after which he handed it back to Ma with an exaggerated bow.

  ‘Here, madame. You good now.’

  Our destination was the Basra Airport Hotel. I was delighted to be marooned in Basra if that meant staying at an airport hotel. I had not at that time travelled in an aeroplane but I found the mere thought of planes even more intoxicating – if such a thing were possible – than boats. The hotel was part of the airport building, a three-storey whitewashed construction of modest size with a covered balcony on the third floor, which constituted the control tower.

  I knew that planes on their way out to India had to make six or seven refuelling stops. Basra was more or less on a straight line between London and Bombay. The consequence was that every three or four hours during the day a huge four-propellered beast in the colours of KLM, Pan Am, Air France or BOAC lumbered up almost to the hotel veranda to fill the air with noise and vibration before its giant piston engines coughed and spat to a stop.

  I sat on the veranda drunk with excitement; with any luck JRC would not turn up for months. But after three happy days watching the DC-4s and Dakotas thundering across the apron, a cable arrived and we were in a car to Isfahan, two days’ drive away. There in a hotel of arcades and columns, fountains and gardens, mosaics and tapestries was a joke-cracking one-legged Scotsman. Isfahan was filled with old buildings and nothing like as exciting as the Basra Airport Hotel. The three of us went sightseeing. We saw mosques, palaces, madrasas, maidans, polo fields and gardens. This was interesting for them but not much fun for me. By the end of the first day I was ready to leave. In fact I could not wait to leave because I had learned that we would be flying to Tehran.

  Flying. In an aeroplane.

  Two days later we boarded a shining silver Dakota of Iranian Airways. Dakotas, in common with most planes of that era, came to rest with their tails on the ground supported by a small wheel. It was only the mighty intercontinental planes at Basra Airport that had nose wheels and sat level to the ground; the rest rested on their tails. This meant that the body of the plane was at a distinct angle, sloping up towards the nose.

  I ran out from the airport building to the plane ahead of Ma and JRC, and scurried up the three or four steps to the door at the rear of the plane. Inside all was cool and ordered, the seats covered in crisp khaki cotton. JRC hopped up the stairs after me, and we sat across the aisle from each other with Ma in the seat in front. Soon, like an old smoker clearing his throat, the engines coughed into life, and the plane began to tremble. We taxied to the end of the runway and sat there with the two engines revving for what seemed like an unnecessarily long time.

  Then we were away, thrumming down the runway, the twin engines in full song, every rivet in the plane vibrating in sympathy; we gathered speed, the tail lifted, the plane’s fuselage came up level, the engines came to a crescendo and we were airborne. Floating.

  I looked out of the window in wonder at Isfahan, with its great squares lying between the mosques and the minarets, all so tiny as they fell away below us. The plane banked and circled, JRC shouting above the engine noise that we were circling to gain enough altitude to fly over the pass in the mountains that formed the gateway to the north and Tehran. As we circled, the plane was thrown and bumped about on the rising air currents like a dhow caught in a steamer’s wake. Each circle brought us face to face with the mountain flank, so close that we could see every bush and goat track. It did not occur to me to be frightened; this was too exciting for that.

  Finally the Dakota had enough height to dodge its way through the pass and set course for Tehran. As the mountains fell away I found myself looking down on a dry and barren nothing which stretched to every horizon, but it was not long before another great range of mountains loomed up out of the flatness ahead of the plane. On its slopes were buildings that stretched into the haze from east to west.

  Moving to Tehran seemed like coming home. It did not feel foreign. England had seemed foreign. It had seemed a mean place after India – the people with their grey, pinched, faces, not like the English people in India, who were healthy and tanned. It was not only the people that were grey in England. The weather was grey, the streets were grey, the rain was grey, the net curtains on the long lines of identical houses were grey, and the choking fog when we had been in London was the greyest thing of all. Nothing was grey in Tehran. Iran was like India. The sun shone hot in a never-ending sky; the earth was baked brown and red; the bazaars were full of noise and smell and colour; the people were paler than the Indians but they were certainly not white and pinch-faced like the English in England.

  The first thing I noticed in Tehran was that it had a different noise to India. In India cars had been a rarity, and the streets had been full of rickshaws, cows and bicycles. In Tehran everyone seemed to have a car, and what cars they were. In place of the staid black upright Austins and Morrises of India and England, the Tehranis had American cars. I had seen few American cars before. The streets of Tehran gleamed with new-model streamlined chromed cruisers unlike anything I had seen before: Oldsmobiles, De Sotos, Packards, Pontiacs, Mercurys, Buicks, Studebakers, Hudsons, Kaisers, not to mention Chevrolets, Cadillacs, Lincolns and Fords. I fell instantly in love with these creatures and before long could distinguish a Buick from an Oldsmobile half a mile away, or the difference between the 1950 and the 1951 Chevrolet. The English cars on the streets, and there were a number – Wolseleys, Rileys, Vauxhalls, Standards and the occasional majestic Humber Super Snipe in addition to the more common Morrises and Austins – seemed boring in comparison, black, upright and angular alongside the airstreamed, whitewalled, multicoloured American cruisers.

  JRC had been peegeeing in Tehran. Today, when people arrive to work in a new city, they stay in a hotel paid for by their employer. Not in the British empire and its associated parts sixty years ago. You peegeed. PG stood for paying guest. It was assumed you would always have a connection, maybe at one or two removes, with someone who would be happy to take you in for an indefinite period in return for a small amount. We joined JRC peegeeing for a few weeks, but then came the great day when we moved far up the hill towards the mountains and into our very own house.

  5

  Mahmoudieh and the Great Kanat Disaster

  Our very own house was actually a stable. The horses had, it was true, moved out by the time Ma first took me to see it. Petrossian, our driver, drove us up the long slope from Tehran through the villages of Shemran and Gulhek towards the purple-grey Elburz Mountains, and on to Mahmoudieh. Mahmoudieh was not even a village. It was an area of open scrub, hills and stony pasture dotted with walnut and mulberry trees at the foot of the mountains. South and east of Mahmoudieh were villages, towns, metalled roads, buses and Tehran. North and west of Mahmoudieh was nothing but mountains topped by the mighty volcanic form of Demavend to the north, and flat, open land running to the horizon to the west. Mahmoudieh itself was a country estate belonging to a member of the Shah’s family. In the middle of the estate was a palace, a thing of pillars and porticoes set in acres of fragrant well-watered garden. To the west and separated from it by a mud-brick wall, was a compound of perhaps four acres, the stable compound.

  This was to
be our home. The stables themselves consisted of a small L-shaped one-storey building which had once contained four stalls for horses in the long part of the L and a tack room in the short bit. The furthest of the stalls became our sitting room, with a view through its far window into the garden; next to this was a bedroom for Ma and JRC; then came my bedroom, which I would have to share with Michael when he came out for the summer holidays, and finally up a few steps to the dining room. A bathroom had been carved out of one corner of the dining room. The tack room became the kitchen. There was no passage within the block so the only way to get from the dining room or bathroom to the sitting room was to walk through both bedrooms. Or you could go outside. All the rooms, having been stables, had doors on to the huge expanse of courtyard in which horses had once been paraded and dressed. Going outside was fine for eight months of the year but out of the question between November and February, when the snow came and the wind shrieked down from the Elburz.

  Opposite the stable block stood a lean-to structure. The further bit of this was the garage. The nearer part, adjoining the gateway, consisted of the two small rooms which made up the servants’ quarters. The servants were Ali, clothed always in baggy black trousers, white shirt and little black cap set on the back of his head, and Maryam, his kind and patient wife. Maryam needed to be kind and patient because Ali was for six days of the week a man of gentleness, humour and occasional efficiency; on the seventh day Ali got drunk. This was achieved by picking the lock on JRC’s drinks cupboard and taking a bottle of his best Persian vodka.

  After draining this, Ali was no longer gentle and humorous. The first act of Ali’s vodka days consisted of him standing in the courtyard roaring at the sky and stumbling around like a drunken gunfighter in a western. The second act involved the declamation of Persian poetry; I assumed that these were poems of love and passion because they were accompanied by Ali rolling his eyes, ripping open his white shirt and beating his chest. Then followed speech-making; the Persians are great orators and Ali, after half a bottle of vodka, stood ready to measure himself against the finest of them. The speeches, which I assumed to be political in nature, were delivered to the dogs, who sat silently at his feet and listened with interest, moving only when they were in danger of being stumbled over. The final stage, after the roaring and the poetry and the speeches, was the weeping and the clasping of the head.

  The mounting noise of these various stages brought about an end to Ali’s vodka days. On his lucky ones Maryam would appear and gently lead him off, while his wails and sobs built to a crescendo of misery, to their quarters. On his unlucky days Ma would burst from the kitchen, shaking some dangerous-looking piece of kitchen equipment in her hand. ‘Pull yourself together, Ali. Go straight to your room. I’ll talk to you later. If I catch you like this again there will be trouble. Off with you unless you want a good kick up the backside.’

  A good kick up the backside was Ma’s universal remedy, although I never saw her administer one.

  ‘Yes, madame. Going, madame. Sorry, madame.’

  Ali and Maryam became my friends. Ma and JRC had a busy social life. They were out in Tehran most nights, and I would be left by myself in the stables with Ali and Maryam across the courtyard. I was terrified of the dark. I would lie awake in bed rigid with fear praying for Ma and JRC to come home. I am cursed with a vivid imagination, which had no difficulty in peopling the room and what lay outside it with an army of Persian night terrors. Sometimes the fear was too powerful. At half past nine, two hours after I had been put to bed, I would grab my torch from the bedside, put on my slippers and bolt across the open courtyard to bang on Ali and Maryam’s door.

  ‘Ah, Mr Miles, please come in,’ said Ali as if my coming to call was the most natural and welcome event. Maryam was clearing up their supper things in the background.

  ‘Oh Ali, what time will my mother be back?’

  ‘Mr Miles, it is still early and they have gone into Tehran. Madame said that they were going to a big party at the French embassy. They will not be back until later. Is there anything you need?’

  ‘Thank you, Ali. Well, no, not really. But I couldn’t just stay and talk with you and Maryam for a bit, could I?’

  ‘Of course. That would be a pleasure. Would you like a little chai?’

  I wish I could remember what we talked about. The night-time bolts across the courtyard became increasingly frequent. I worried that Ali and Maryam might get bored talking with me so I came up with an idea. ‘Ali, would you and Maryam like to play cards?’

  The Persians invented the playing card.

  ‘Yes, Mister Miles, if that is your pleasure. What would you like to play?’

  My favourites at that time, games which Michael and I used to play when he was home for the holidays, were beggar-my-neighbour, two-handed whist and Pelmanism. Neither two-handed whist nor Pelmanism was good for three people so Ali, Maryam and I sat around playing beggar-my-neighbour till the sleep finally closed my eyes, and Maryam or Ali gently carried me back across the courtyard. Ali taught me a Persian card game. I cannot remember the rules but I recall it involved banging a card down on the table and shouting. An excellent game.

  My night-time trips across the courtyard were curtailed by Ma and JRC coming home early one night and catching me running back across the courtyard as they parked the car.

  ‘Mileso, what on earth are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing, Ma. I just went to ask Ali something.’

  ‘But it’s almost midnight. You should have been asleep hours ago. What did you want to ask him?’

  ‘If he knew when you were coming home.’

  ‘Well, we’re back. Now you run along to bed.’

  Something in my manner must have made Ma curious.

  ‘Ali, how long has Miles been in your quarters?’

  ‘Oh not long time, madame.’

  Maryam had appeared in the background looking uneasy. Ma had a good nose for a cover-up.

  ‘Now, come on. What was going on?’

  ‘O madame. We were playing cards.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please, madame, bugger-neighbour.’

  ‘No, Ali, no. Not what card game, but what was Miles doing playing cards with you in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Ma, it was my idea. I was frightened by myself in the house and I came over to get some company.’

  ‘I’ve never heard anything so silly. Now off you go to bed.’

  The next day I was sat down after breakfast.

  ‘Now, Mileso, you mustn’t go disturbing the servants. Of course if there’s an emergency you know they are there, but otherwise you must leave them in peace. Poor Ali and Maryam don’t want to spend half their night playing beggar-my-neighbour with you. They work jolly hard and they want to go to bed. And you should be asleep.’

  ‘But, Ma, they enjoy it. Ali said he liked playing cards with me.’

  When the stables were separated from the estate and converted into a house, they had been left with a generous amount of garden. Trellises, walkways and pergolas heavy with grapes led from the house through paths of plums, peaches and cherries. Irrigated beds produced strawberries and melons. The strawberries were already ripe when we moved in. I loved picking them. I used to get down on my hands and knees and search under the leaves for the hidden red berries. Up some steps from the strawberry bed was a more formal garden with roses and a lawn surrounding a huge swimming pool.

  Beyond the pool the garden sloped gently up towards the mountains. A wall of slender birch trees stood between the formal garden and the wild, overgrown land beyond, a place of mystery and danger. In the depths of the wild garden, surrounded by brambles and wild roses, was the Kanat, the deep well connecting to the underwater irrigation canals.

  I was forbidden to visit the Kanat. This meant that as soon as I saw the cloud of dust that followed Ma’s Chevrolet disappear down the road to Tehran, I scampered up the steps, past the pool and through the birches to the wilderness. The Persians love gar
dens. Gardens need water, particularly in the terrible heat of a Persian summer. To provide this a system of interconnecting underground streams and canals had been built. These channels ran for hundreds of miles; they linked up with other channels; they split into two and three and formed whole tributary systems. JRC, who was fascinated by the workings of the Kanat system, said it was ten times bigger than the London Underground and worked much better.

  I never fell down the Kanat but we did have the great Kanat disaster. Amanda the Poozle, our Alsatian dog, had a litter. Ma loved animals, dogs in particular, and the Poozle above all dogs. The Persians, in common with most Muslims, do not love dogs. They regard them as unclean. It was difficult therefore when Amanda had her litter to find good homes for the puppies. Most of the Europeans in Tehran already had enough dogs, or would soon be moving on and did not want to be encumbered with one; few Persians were considered suitable owners by Ma.

  The litter was born in the night. I went to visit them first thing the next morning. I had never seen anything as lovable as the seven puppies, wet from Amanda’s constant licking. I asked Ma how many we were going to keep and where the rest were going and when they would be going. She said that we would just be keeping one and pointed to the largest of the litter, which was slightly redder than the others, and that the rest were all going to be taken good care of. The one we were going to keep would be called Brutus.

  After spending most of the morning playing with the puppies I went off to my room for my regular after-lunch rest, looking forward to playing with them again later on. Ma met me on the way to the puppies when I got up.

  ‘I’ve got bad news,’ she said. ‘The puppies all walked into the pool by mistake and drowned. Only Brutus was saved.’

  I was appalled. How were those tiny puppies, who could only crawl a few inches with difficulty, able to take themselves as a pack out into the courtyard, up six brick steps and hurl themselves as one into the pool? When I was able to speak I stuttered out, ‘But, but, how did puppies get to the pool?’