by Ann Bennett
I shook my head, remembering how as a child, I’d pleaded with Mother and Father for a pony.
‘No. I never learned. And it’s very kind of you Colonel... I mean Donald, but I don’t think I should come. I’m afraid Auntie Nora’s going to keep me rather busy over the next few days.’
I couldn’t look at his face and I felt high spots of colour in my cheeks. The driver was holding the door open.
‘Oh. That’s a great shame,’ the Colonel said, and I could hear the disappointment in his voice. ‘Well. it’s been an honour spending time with you, Miss Baker. If you do happen to find yourself at a loose end, please don’t hesitate to call me at my hotel.’ He handed me a card.
‘Thank you,’ I said as I got out of the car. I managed to flash him a guilt-filled smile. ‘You’ve been very kind,’ I muttered, ‘Very kind indeed.’
Once inside the house I slipped silently through the hallway and started up the stairs. It was the time for Aunt and Uncle’s cocktails and I knew that guests were expected this evening. I could hear the hubbub of voices and chink of glasses from the drawing room. The door was slightly ajar, and I paused halfway up the stairs, gripping the bannister. I could hear Aunt Nora’s penetrating voice.
‘It’s simply awful for the poor girl back home you know. The family had to move countless times over the years. All the businesses that dreadful man dabbled in turned out to be dismal failures. And now! Well, now that he’s in the clink, she can hardly show her face in her home town. He’s diddled that many people out of their life savings she’d probably be lynched on the street. She got some very unpleasant letters; death threats some of them.
‘Her mother left him several years ago now, of course. She’s got someone else in tow. A much younger man. Now she’s a selfish one, my little sister. She’s got no time for the girl either.’
‘I’d never have guessed, Nora, darling! She seems such a quiet little thing. How long will she be staying with you?’
‘As short a time as possible, to tell you the truth, Martha. It’s a dreadful bind having her here. She’s not much company. I put it down to her frightful childhood. It’s made her very withdrawn. Always has her nose in a book, not interested in socialising at all. Not really one of us. But I do feel an obligation towards her, all the same.’
I felt tears springing to my eyes as I dashed up to my room and threw myself on the bed. Humiliation swept over me in waves as I buried my face in the pillow and sobbed. What Auntie said is all true, of course, but hearing the words spoken out loud like that hit me like a physical blow. And alongside the humiliation, that dreadful hollow loneliness I’d often experienced, descended on me with renewed vigour. I had thought that Auntie Nora, for all her matchmaking and gossiping tendencies, was at least caring and kind. I had not suspected that I was here on sufferance and that Aunt was desperate to get rid of me. Where can I possibly go if I’m not welcome here?
Panic started to set in. Aunt Nora was right. Life is untenable for me at home. Mother is so wrapped up in her drinking and her new relationship with that dreadful foppish boy Cedric (hardly older than I am) that she has no time for me. And it is true that because of the collapse of Father’s latest business venture we had to sell the house in Buckinghamshire to pay the debts. My friends all drifted away one by one. Coming out to India was my last and only option.
I thought about Mother, her thoughtlessness and self-indulgence and how she’d hardly been a mother to me at all. She seemed to see me as an unwelcome encumbrance, or at best as an accoutrement to show off to her empty-headed friends. Her affair with Cedric, an out of work actor, was the last straw and when he moved in with her I knew I had to get away. It was then that Aunt Nora’s letter arrived inviting me to stay with her in Bombay. At the time it seemed the perfect escape.
The only thing that might have kept me in England was the thought of poor Father. We’d always been close. I still feel shivers or horror remembering the day when he was convicted of fraud and sent to Pentonville Prison. Poor Father. I knew he wasn’t guilty of anything other than naivety, allowing dishonest men he shouldn’t have trusted to lead him into a carefully constructed trap while they walked away unscathed. I went to see him as often as I could until I left for India. It tore my heart out to see him growing thinner, greyer and more haggard by the day. Conversation was always difficult during those visits. He seemed to have very little to tell me and I knew he was keeping the worst aspects of his imprisonment from me. So, I kept up a steady stream of trivial news, and he was content just to listen, taking my hand and smiling into my eyes. When I told him about India he encouraged me to accept Aunt Nora’s invitation.
‘How exotic and exciting! What an opportunity for you. You must go, Anna. Make a new start. Get away from all this.’
‘But you won’t have anyone to visit you, Pa,’ I said, trying to hold back the tears.
He looked into my eyes. ‘You mustn’t worry about that my darling girl. We can write. You can tell me all about it. It will give me something to distract me. And after all, I won’t be in here for long. The time will soon pass, you’ll see.’
I wrote to him every week, telling him every morsel of news, but he could only write back once a month and his letters were short. I knew it wasn’t his fault and that his letters were censored, there were restrictions on what he could say, but I would have loved to have longer, warmer letters.
A knock on the door broke into my thoughts. Aunt Nora appeared, holding a glass in one hand and a cigarette in a long silver holder in the other.
‘Oh, there you are,’ she said, her face flushed. She sounded a little rattled as if she suspected I’d overheard her unkind words.
‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you join us for cocktails? You could have brought Donald in too.’
She came closer to the bed and peered at me, her makeup smudged, her eyes unnaturally bright. ‘You haven’t been crying, have you?’ I could smell gin on her breath.
‘No Auntie. I’m perfectly fine.’
‘Did something happen with Donald?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Are you quite sure?’
I looked away from her inquisitive gaze.
‘Well, whatever it is, never mind,’ she said finally. ‘Pop and freshen up, there’s a good girl. Martha and Teddy Bancroft are here. Their son Gerald’s going to join us for dinner later. Frightfully wealthy they are. Gerald’s not what you’d call handsome, but he’s working his way up in his father’s trading company. I think you’ll like him.’
As I sat at the dressing table and mechanically reapplied my powder and lipstick, the dread of the evening to come descended on me. I could feel it in my drooping shoulders and as a dull ache in my chest.
Something made me feel for the Colonel’s card in the pocket of my dress. I pulled it out and stared at it.
Lt. Colonel Donald Foster.
Ist Battalion Kandaipur Rifles, Indian Army.
c/o the Royal Majestic Hotel, Victoria Crescent, Bombay.
I thought about his crestfallen expression as he said goodbye and felt a fresh pang of guilt.
I don’t know how I endured that painful dinner with Gerald Bancroft sitting next to me, his bulging eyes fixed on the neckline of my blouse. He asked me question after question about Mother and Father, all of them insinuating, all of them designed to humiliate me.
I made a decision during that dinner. I realised that I simply could not bear it here any longer. Especially now I know how Aunt Nora feels about me. I need to do something to get away from her and her match-making. There’s only one choice. In the morning I will call the Colonel and accept his invitation to Matheran.
January 25th, 1932
The Colonel wrote back within hours of receiving my letter. His driver brought his letter to the door. He said he was delighted to hear from me, and asked me again if I’d care to accompany him to the hill-station, Matheran, for the weekend.
When I asked Aunt Nora if I could go, I c
ould see she was torn between being scandalised and wanting to encourage me to accept the invitation. In the end her match-making side won out and she agreed. I think she was glad to be relieved of the burden of my company for a weekend. But before I set off this morning with my little weekend bag she ushered me into her back parlour and made a point of shutting the door so the servants couldn’t hear.
She leaned towards me and said, her cheeks getting very red, ‘I hope… well, I hope, Anna dear that you and Donald… Well, I just hope that you’ll be sleeping in separate rooms.’
I couldn’t help blushing myself. The suggestion was so humiliating.
‘Of course, Auntie,’ I said, not able to meet her eye. ‘Donald has booked two separate bungalows in the same guesthouse. He was very clear about that in his letter.’
‘Well, that’s a relief. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if… But I’m sure Donald’s a gentleman.’
‘Of course he is,’ I said looking at her coldly, knowing she didn’t give a fig about my well-being, it was just her own reputation that bothered her; maintaining her status in that narrow-minded, insular little community of busybodies she calls her friends.
‘Well, do enjoy yourself my darling. Is it Tuesday or Wednesday you’re coming back?’
‘Monday,’ I said, biting back the urge to apologise that I’d be back earlier than she’d hoped.
So here I am in Matheran at last, a hundred miles or so from Bombay, in a little wooden house, one of the bungalows in the grounds of a guesthouse, perched on the side of a great precipice. The whole of the valley is spread out beneath me, thousands of feet below. You can see for miles in this vast landscape, and if you stretch your eyes and look far enough, the brown Indian plain eventually melds into the smoky, hazy sky. It’s so beautiful.
Matheran is an enchanting place. Much cooler than Bombay, and so quiet and relaxing in comparison to that huge pulsating city. It’s basically a range of round red-earth hilltops covered in pine trees amongst which nestles a community of quaint English-style bungalows.
The Colonel’s driver dropped us at the station at Nerlal at the foot of the mountains yesterday and we caught the tiny toy train that puffed and strained its way up the mountain for an hour or two, whistling at every bend. There were disconcerting notices in the carriage saying: Do not lean out of the window or bogies will fall. The views of the valley below as we climbed were breath-taking, but I was afraid to lean out to look at the view in case the train tipped sideways!
The Colonel didn’t say much on the journey. He seemed a little preoccupied, but content to watch my pleasure at seeing the landscape unfold beneath us. When we got off the train he quickly found two rickshaws – here, they’re each pulled by two men between the shafts of a cart. I felt very imperious being pulled up the dirt road and along the little main street like that, my case perched on the seat beside me, but I was relieved to be away from the city and from the suffocating atmosphere of Aunt Nora’s house.
At the end of the main road the rickshaws turned into the drive of a white clapperboard bungalow. That turned out to be the main building of the guesthouse, where we went to register. The place is called Lord’s Central Hotel and is run by a large English lady called Mabel Stokes. She greeted Donald like a long-lost friend. Then she noticed me, lingering behind him in the lobby.
‘Well, goodness me, Donald,’ she said with astonishment in her voice, ‘You’ve finally brought a lady friend to meet us. What a turn of events!’
‘Yes. This is Miss Baker, Mabel,’ he said awkwardly, and I felt a rush of sympathy for him, thinking the woman very rude and tactless.
Our suites are side by side. Mine consists of a large room, a big brass bedstead, dark wooden furniture and a sofa and chairs with chintz loose covers. Outside is another hut; a bathroom, to which the butler brings hot water three times a day. When we arrived, after drinking tea, freshening up and changing, Donald knocked at my door.
‘Are you ready?’
‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ I said, feeling strange in tight trousers and low leather shoes.
He led me out to the front of the hotel where two horses were waiting, with their Indian grooms. It was difficult hoisting myself up into the saddle and the groom had to give me a leg up. Donald mounted his horse, the groom handed him the lead rein to my horse and we set off down the road.
‘Keep your back straight and move with the horse,’ he said over his shoulder. That was all the instruction he gave me.
The nerves I had felt as we first set off soon left me, and I began to enjoy the rhythm of the horse, the cool mountain air and the beauty of the surroundings. At the end of the road Donald turned his horse onto a narrow path where we had to ride in single file. The path led out of the trees and along a precipice around the edge of the mountain. There were those views of the endless dusty plain again, this time even more stunning as the mist had cleared and the sky was blue and cloudless.
We stopped at a lookout point that marked the end of the mountain range, where the land dropped down steeply to the valley floor.
‘This is Monkey Point,’ Donald said, turning in his saddle. ‘Would you like to get down for a moment, Anna?’
I laughed. ‘I don’t think I’d be able to get back up again if I did that,’ I said.
‘That’s a shame,’ he said, and I saw his crestfallen expression. ‘There was something I wanted to ask you.’
‘Oh,’ I said, my nerves rushing back. Was he about to ask me to marry him? I knew it was on the cards, didn’t I? It was what I had tacitly acknowledged when I’d written to him. But we’d only just arrived here, and now it came down to it, I felt dread stealing over me. Could I really tie myself to this stiff, awkward, buttoned-up man for the rest of my life? There were times when he’d surprised me during our brief acquaintance; his knowledge of the language, his feel for India, the fact that he was so different from Aunt Nora and her narrow-minded circle. But still. He is a good twenty years older than me. Do I really want to give up my youth so soon?
But then I thought about home, about Father in disgrace in prison and how the whole town and all our ‘friends’ have turned against us, about Mother, making a fool of herself with a much younger man. Life had become impossible for me there, and I couldn’t bear the thought of living with Aunt Nora, even if she had actually wanted me there.
I swallowed my misgivings and looked up and smiled at him. ‘I’ll get down, Donald. What was it you wanted to ask me?’
At that moment, something, a fox-like creature emerged from behind a bush in front of us. It flew out in a flash and Donald’s horse reared and mine lifted its head, whinnying in shock and fear, gathering its haunches as if to charge off. I could feel it quivering beneath me.
‘Hold on tight,’ Donald said, trying to calm his horse. The animal had now disappeared into the scrub below the path, and the horses gradually settled.
‘Why don’t we go back to the guesthouse,’ he said. ‘You look as white as a sheet.’
I nodded gratefully, my jaw clamped together with fear, my heart hammering. I could hardly utter a word, but all the way back to the guesthouse I kept thinking about the situation I’d got myself into. I’d invited it, I knew, but now I came face to face with it, I wasn’t sure I could go through with it.
January 30th, 1932
I was quite shaken by the incident with the horses on the mountain path, so we went straight back to the guesthouse and I took a long hot bath in the tub. The old butler brought jug after jug of hot water and I gave him a hefty tip. I felt better after my soak, and I dressed in the blue cotton dress that Father bought me the last time we went to London together. I’ve always loved that dress, and I felt revived and fresh in it.
Then I went out onto the terrace and got my sketch book out. I tried to capture the beauty of the landscape, but it is elusive. I realised then that India’s beauty is not just visual. Everything about it is captivating. The smell of wood smoke on the evening air, the huge burnished sun shimm
ering above the milky landscape as it slips lower and lower in the sky, the cries of the wildlife in the scrub, the chatter of crickets, and the lizards on the wall of my bathroom. Donald had at least shown me a different India from the one Aunt Nora and Uncle John occupy. He had opened my eyes to its wonders. As I sketched I realised that I was grateful to him for that.
Supper was a stiff affair in the communal dining room of the guesthouse. We were waited on by three very old bearers, dressed in uniform. They brought us dish after dish of tasteless English fare. The other guests were middle-aged British couples on a weekend break from Bombay. From the way they looked at me, and whispered, I could tell that they were wondering whether I was Donald’s daughter or his mistress. But Donald seemed oblivious to their prying eyes.
‘Come on. Let’s go for a nightcap outside,’ he said as we drained our bitter coffees.
Our bearer brought us brandy and we sat in the cool night air watching the stars twinkling in the clear sky and the pinpricks of light from a thousand tiny villages in the vast dark valley below.
After we’d sat in silence for a few minutes, Donald cleared his throat.
‘Anna, my dear,’ he said, ‘It can’t have escaped your notice that you have made a great impression on me over the past couple of weeks.’
I smiled. I tried to look him in the eye, but his formality made it difficult to do that. His awkwardness was such that I just wanted him to get it over and done with. I hung my head while he went on.
‘It would be a great honour if you’d consent to marry me, Anna. I have a very comfortable bungalow on the cantonment at Kandaipur, being a Lt. Colonel in the First Kandaipur rifles. Of course, I have been living in the officers’ mess and not using it, but I am entitled to it through my rank, particularly if I marry. You would have a very high status amongst the memsahibs, the only higher wife being Mrs Smethurst, the Colonel’s wife. Of course, one day, I hope…’
