by M. M. Kaye
Well, for two of us that day had actually arrived. And having just said that Japan had lived up to all my expectations, it sounds a bit silly to say, ‘Except in the case of Nikko.’ But that was true. And for a rather foolish reason. The fact was that not all that long after I had read Stacpoole’s novel, I came across an article on Nikko which was lavishly illustrated with really beautiful photographs. Since these were in tones of black, white and grey, I imagined those elaborate carvings to be in wood and stone, and my reaction to the first sight of that brilliant colour and blaze of gold was shock. I thought it was cheap and garish.
It took me some time to get rid of my original idea of the Nikko tombs and realize that the builders and the artists who were responsible for it knew exactly what they were doing. For the entire complex – gateways, reception halls, courtyards, pavilions and tombs – stands on the side of a steep hill among a forest of cryptomeria trees (huge dark green pines that shut out the sky), rhododendrons, camellias, wild cherry and innumerable azaleas … It must look wonderful in the spring. But once the flowering trees have shed their petals and the forest returns to sombre green, the whole complex of the tombs would have been lost among the shadowed ranks had it not been for their colour. As it was, the vermilion and gold – and, strangely enough, the dense, glittering black of the lacquered roof-tiles on a five-storeyed pagoda – seemed to be heightened by the sombreness of the surrounding forest.
‘Nikko the beautiful, where the Shoguns sleep’ is like an exquisite piece of jewellery. The detail, and the delicacy and charm, are beyond praise. The Three Wise Monkeys made their first appearance here – the ones who ‘see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil’. There is also a rather boring cat, which looks as though it was modelled on the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.
There are scores of carved lanterns, some stone and others bronze, the stone ones green with moss and the bronze ones green with age, and enormous bronze incense burners and dragons and storks, each one a masterpiece. The mausoleums stand on terraces on the steep hillside, each with its own fantastically decorated gateway and courtyard, and reached by stone steps cut out of the mountainside. When you think you have reached the last one you find there is one more still. A very modest one this time, but I only just made it. If anyone had told me before I started up that there were two hundred steps to go before this one, I would have given it a miss. I never was much good at heights. The other members of our party simply bounded up, and when I finally got to the top and collapsed, panting, Tacklow, very unkindly, murmured the lines of a nonsense poem that he kept for this sort of occasion:
There was an old man who said ‘What
A remarkably beautiful spot!
Now really this view is too good to be true.
I had rather have seen it, than not.’
Well, yes: I suppose so.
* * *
The little town of Nikko, which has sprung up near the tombs and their attendant complex of buildings, lies in a narrow valley through which the main road from Nikko to Lake Chuzenje winds upward through steep-sided gorges, thick with trees and laced with waterfalls that pour down in veils of silver over huge moss-grown rocks to join the narrow rushing torrent that runs along one side of the road. Nowadays, I am told, there is a railway through the gorges. But we were lucky enough to be able to drive up to Chuzenje, taking our time about it and stopping half-way at a little tea-house high above the road to refresh ourselves with tea and cakes.
There was a local fair being held on the shores of the lake, where we stopped to wander among little booths kept by women wearing entrancing kimonos, and bought paper fans and matchboxes full of tiny coloured discs, no bigger than a fingernail, that took Bets and me straight back to our childhood in Simla. We hadn’t seen them since then. But when we were small we used to buy them from a Japanese shop on the Mall. You dropped one of these little discs on to the surface of water, and lo and behold, after a moment or two it began to unwind, until suddenly, like magic, there was a pink-tinted lotus complete with lotus leaves, stem and buds lying on the water!
It was wonderful to find them again after so many years. The stallholder’s children gathered around to watch and applaud, enjoying the water-toys as much as we did. Almost all the women carried a baby on their backs, solemn, adorable little cherubs who never seemed to cry. One of the mothers – using Teddy Bear armed with a pencil and block as an interpreter – asked Bets if she saw nothing she wanted to buy, and Bets replied: ‘Yes, I do. How much do you want for the baby?’ – an enormously popular answer that produced a roar of laughter from every stallholder within earshot, and was even a success with our official guide, not the jolliest of humans.
Having loafed round much of Japan and fallen in love with it, we were sorry that we had not arranged to stay there longer. But since we had arranged to spend two or three weeks in Hong Kong with Aunt Lil and Uncle David – whose guest-rooms were seldom if ever empty – before boarding a ship that would take us via Penang to Calcutta, we could not extend our stay in Japan by so much as a day.
After a final orgy of sight-seeing and shopping in Yokohama, where whom should we meet but the First Officer of the Nageem Bagh Navy, Mike Aylesford,1 of all people, we were seen on board for a last party by Mike and our escort of ‘stupid interruptors’ (who were returning to China by a different ship) and given a moving goodbye from the official guide – who actually seemed desolated to see the last of us; in particular of ‘Honourable Sir Kay’, for whom he had obviously developed an enormous admiration. He assured Tacklow that our company had given him immense enjoyment and the best time of his life, and we parted in a haze of compliments, and with sincere regrets, since we had all become quite fond of him.
Chapter 14
This time the ship we sailed on was owned by some European line (presumably British, if the nationality of her Captain and First Officer was anything to go by). But since we sailed on an evening tide, we were once again to pass through most of the Inland Sea and the Thousand Islands by night. Watching our friends wave goodbye as we drew away from the docks, I did not realize that I was among the privileged number of foreign tourists who had seen Japan when that country still looked, in many ways, like a scene from The Mikado or Madame Butterfly.
Our voyage to Hong Kong was a peaceful interlude after that orgy of sight-seeing in Japan. The sea was as smooth as glass and the skies were cloudless, and we lay around in the shade of an awning or leant on the deck rails to watch the many different kinds of sea-creatures that floated past us – the same squadrons of jellyfish of every colour, size and description; the same flying fish, porpoises, and Portuguese men-of-war; and, fathoms down, the same vast silvery shoals of unidentified fish, glimmering and flashing in those clear blue-green depths.
It was a halcyon period, made the more memorable by the fact that it was accompanied throughout by its own theme song. Our Wireless Officer liked to broadcast the more popular seventy-eights on the tannoy throughout the day. His favourite record, which he played at least once or twice an hour, was a world-wide best-seller at that time, ‘Parlez-moi d’amour’, sung by Lucian Boyer, a French chanteuse as famous in her day as the ‘Little Sparrow’ would be a decade or two later: ‘Parlez-moi d’amour, et dites-moi des choses bien tendres’… ‘Speak to me of love – repeat to me tender things…’
That charming melody and enchanting, husky voice accompanied us all through those lazy days down the Pacific coast of Japan to the East China Sea, past a peaceful island called Okinawa – a name that meant nothing to us in those days – and on through the Straits of Formosa to Hong Kong. It met us again in the ballrooms of Hong Kong’s hotels: ‘Parlez-moi toujours, mon coeur n’est pas las de l’entendre’…
Uncle David was still at that time Number One in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, and we had a wonderful time as house guests of him and Aunt Lil in the Bank House on the Peak. The China Fleet was in dock, and we already knew most of the officers because the ships that had called in at Pei-tai-ho
one by one were now all collected here in the naval dockyards, and busy throwing parties in the intervals of playing Navy war-games and steaming off on manoeuvres.
Tacklow was immediately scooped in by the Admiral and taken off for several days on one of the exercises, and Mother was taken under the wing of an old family friend, one ‘Tam’ Pierce, who had entertained us when we stopped at Hong Kong on our way out. Old Mr Pierce, who appeared to be President of the consortium that ran the racecourse, had a box there, and threw large parties for all the race-meetings, either there or at his magnificent house. There seemed to be no one he did not know or who did not know him, in all of China; and he saw to it that Mother had a splendid time while she was there.
Looking back on those days, it seems to me as if the inhabitants knew that time was running out for them, and were having one last, glorious fling. There were race-meetings and polo matches, dinners and dances, bathing and lunch-partying at the Repulse Bay Hotel – which at that time was still the only building on that lovely curve of beach. There were sailing parties and picnic parties among the sweet-scented scrub that covered the hills surrounding the bay, and every night, on returning after midnight from dancing somewhere or other, the first thing you did was take off your shoes and throw them into the hot-room; followed by your evening dress, which you hung up on a rail that stretched from one side of the room to the other. This was because although the weather might be delightfully warm, in the dark hours or the early morning mists would descend on the Peak; and unless you remembered to stash away shoes and anything made of leather (and, to be on the safe side, your best dresses and hats) you would find them coated with mildew by morning. A hot-room was an essential part of living for a dweller on the Peak, for there was a rainy season (which we fortunately missed) when they lived in the clouds and never saw the harbour or the hills of China for weeks on end.
We would breakfast every morning in the terraced garden of the Bank House, looking out across the harbour, with the naval dockyard far below us; if you dropped a cherry-stone over the balustrade at the edge of the terrace, the chances are that it would land in the dockyard.
It was a lovely house with a heavenly view, and I believe it is one of the few that date back to the last days of the nineteenth century and is still standing; it certainly was in the 1980s when my publishers included it in a publicity tour of Australia and the Far East. Old ‘Tam’ Pierce’s beautiful house had been looted and destroyed by the Japanese, and Tam himself had died fighting them in defence of that indefensible outpost of a now vanished Empire.
Mike Aylesford, having almost missed us in Japan, had decided to follow us to Hong Kong. It was good to see him; and better still to discover that we could greet and embrace and laugh together with the affection of dear friends, and without a hint of regret for anything more. We had a great deal of fun together, and while we were about it did not forget to send telegrams of loyal greeting to the Captain, Bosun and one or two senior members of the Nageem Bagh Navy. Roger, too, was in port with his ship; and since he usually formed one of the party at dinner dances at the Hong Kong Hotel, or bathing picnics at Repulse Bay, we made him an Honorary Member of the NBN. Able Seaman 1st class.
All in all, it was a splendid interval, and we came to the conclusion that this was largely because, if one lived on the Peak as a lot of people did, all parties and dances had to stop by 11.45 p.m. at the latest. For that was when the dance-bands closed down, because the last train on the little Peak Railway stopped at midnight on the dot, and if you failed to catch it you must walk home or get a taxi. And taxis were not only in short supply in those balmy days, but very expensive. So with one eye on the clock, the dancers and merry-makers would invariably end up racing through the streets to catch the last train.
This meant that every party finished while you were still enjoying it to the hilt and wishing it would go on for ever, which probably accounts for the impression I have that those few weeks in Hong Kong equalled the most marvellous non-stop party of a lifetime. Masses of lovely men, an enchanting house with a marvellous view and run like clockwork by lots of wonderful silent-footed Chinese servants (you couldn’t put a scarf or handkerchief down for one minute without finding it whipped away to be washed and ironed and returned to you, within seconds, in pristine condition, by an enchanting little amah). And a garden full of flowers high up on a hillside overgrown by bushes of hibiscus and heliotrope, looking out above the harbour towards the miles of fields and open country, towards the green acres of the golf-course at Fan-Ling and the wooded hills of China.
Only once during our stay did we wake to a sky dark with threatening clouds and a high wind that roared in from the South China Sea, making the junks and the small boats furl their sails and huddle together along the shore in tossing confusion, and sweeping the wide stretch of the harbour free of all but the largest ships. Aunt Lil’s Chinese staff had already made sure that every door and window was secured against the gale, the more vulnerable ones being reinforced with shutters. Uncle David pointed out a tall flagstaff, and told me that the balloon that had been hoisted to the top of it could be seen by every boat in the harbour and almost every building in the port, and that it was a signal that warned sailor and citizen alike of the approach of a typhoon.
According to Uncle David, it was only when a black balloon was hoisted that everyone knew what they were really in for, and took cover – and prayed hard. During the course of the morning the balloon’s colour went from bad to worse, but stopped short of the black. Much to my disappointment, I regret to say, since if the typhoon had hit us, there would inevitably have been casualties among the Chinese who lived in the dhows – there always were, I was told. But I still hankered to see what it would be like to be caught by a typhoon, for even when the last-but-one signal went up, the spectacle was pretty exciting. Trees, branches, leaves, palms, flowers and roof-tiles, anything that hadn’t been nailed down or otherwise secured, whirled through the air, while the sea below us was a wild white froth of flying foam that almost obliterated the packed mass of tossing junks anchored in the harbour. The rain lashed down like steel bullets, driven by a wind that screeched past with the din of a hundred trains blowing their warning whistles, and the noise was so deafening that you almost couldn’t hear yourself think. What on earth must it be like to be caught out at sea in this sort of weather?
Fortunately for us, the typhoon missed us, though not by very much, and a day or two later the sun was shining down from a cloudless sky. You would never have believed that there had been anything more than a passing rainstorm.
Tacklow and I went for an evening stroll on the Peak on one of our last evenings, and as we were returning to the Bank House, he suddenly said to me – breaking a long interval of silence during which we had been admiring the sunset and sniffing the lovely scent of heliotrope and hibiscus and new-washed greenstuff – ‘Why won’t you marry Roger, Moll? I think he’d make you a very good husband.’
The question was so unexpected that I tried to laugh it off and make a joke of it. I said: ‘But darling, he’s such a little man.’
‘Speaking as another little man,’ said Tacklow severely, ‘I resent that! And don’t beg the question. You’d make an excellent Navy wife. You like moving around and seeing new countries and strange places, and you don’t mind living in rented rooms and boarding houses. Besides, he’s a reliable type; a good man. I like him.’
‘So do I,’ I said. ‘But I don’t love him. I wish I did.’
‘So do I,’ sighed Tacklow – and changed the subject.
Poor Tacklow. I only realized later what a weight it would have taken off his mind if he could have seen both his daughters safely married to men he liked and considered reliable. China, that charmed country that he had looked back on with such affection, had proved to be a sad disappointment. He had been forced to leave it and, worse still, to return to India, to see his younger daughter married to a man of whom he knew next to nothing, and at the same time try to find a job for h
imself that would allow him to remain in that country until his elder daughter found a husband for herself, or proved that she really could make a reasonably good living with her paintbrush. It must have seemed a bleak outlook for him.
Mike threw a terrific farewell party for us at the Majestic Hotel, and we sailed next day for Calcutta, stopping briefly at Singapore, and for a night and the best part of two days at Penang. There we spent most of our time at one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen, a small secluded horseshoe of white sand, shaded by coconut palms and bushes of scarlet hibiscus, and sheltered by a high, thickly wooded hill. There was no one else there but ourselves, a few birds and any number of butterflies. The sea was like silk and here too it was clear as crystal. Enormous sea-worn rocks formed a natural breakwater on each side of the beach, and it was one of the most perfect spots you can imagine.
I had an old friend in Calcutta, one I had made while I was staying in Simla with the Birdwoods.1 He was theatre-mad and had written several short one-act comedies in which Judy and I had appeared. When not on leave, he was head of the Customs Department, with headquarters in Calcutta; he sent down one of his young men to get our luggage off in time to catch the mail train.
I had imagined that with the help of one of the Customs Department we could sail through the barriers. But I had reckoned without my darling Tacklow. The trouble was that Mother, enchanted by the charm and cheapness of the trinkets and pretty things for sale in Peking’s Chinese City – particularly in Flower Street and Bead Street – had had what she regarded as a brainwave. She had decided to spend her picture-money on buying a large selection of this enchanting junk, to see if she could set up shop with it in one room of the house we had rented for the cold weather in Old Delhi.
