Enchanted Evening

by M. M. Kaye

  I have told the story of how I came to write a ‘whodunnit’ about the islands in the foreword to a book called Death in the Andamans, so I won’t tell it here again. But the hurricane that gave rise to it really happened, and it was an enthralling experience. It was not one that I would like to repeat though, since it was also terrifying. One minute we were in brilliant sunlight and driving as fast as we could make an ancient Ford car move, in an attempt to keep ahead of a great wall of blackness that had swept down on to the island and appeared to be chasing us. And the next second it had caught us, and we were being carried along with it as though we weighed no more than a dead leaf, by a shrieking gale and what seemed to be a tidal wave full of broken branches and other assorted debris.

  I still don’t know how we managed to make it to the jetty on Aberdeen, the only town in the islands, or how, or why, anyone in authority, let alone the skipper of the ferry, could have given the order to try and get it across to Ross. At a guess, it was probably because no one wanted to be stuck in a hurricane with the Chief Commissioner’s daughter, in case she came to any harm. And in the event, we made it. Though I shall never know how, for we kept on being hurled back by a furious sea and alternately swept by that shrieking wind towards the harbour mouth and out to sea. I’ve never been so scared in my life. We all were. The crossing seemed to take hours, and we were all soaked to the skin by the time we crashed into the Ross jetty, and were able to scramble on to it and be taken up to Government House in the official wet-weather rickshaws.

  To cap everything, it was Christmas Eve, and we were giving a dinner-party that night and another the next day. But only one or two guests who lived on Ross had managed to get aboard the ferry with us, and everyone else was stranded on Aberdeen for the duration. We were cut off from all communication with the outside world for the best part of a week, during which Fudge and I amused ourselves by inventing and perfecting the plot of a whodunnit, using the only characters who had remained on Ross during the storm. We needed something to entertain us, because the storm had ruined all of the planned Christmas festivities. We did manage, during a lull that proved to be only temporary, to struggle up to the little church and attend a Christmas service, at which the wind and the rain, and the roar and thunder of the sea, effectively drowned out the strains of ‘Hark the Herald’ and ‘Away in a Manger’ and made the spoken part of the service completely inaudible.

  The thing that sticks in my mind most clearly is the sheer volume of noise that Mother Nature can produce when she puts her mind to it, and the feeling that not only the house, but Ross itself, was only a stuffed toy that was being picked up and shaken by the jaws of some giant puppy-dog, every time a particularly vicious blast of wind hit us. In the occasional lulls which fooled us into thinking it was all over, it would suddenly became quiet enough for us to hear the drips: plink, tink, bonk, SPLOSH; splosh, bunk, tink, plink, plinkety-tink – and on and on and on. Like a child playing a xylophone. For the hot days had dried out the house and left a myriad little chinks that the rain did not miss, and with the first ‘plink’, the Government House servants rushed into the breach with tin plates, pots and pans to catch the leaks.

  * * *

  In spite of mackintoshes, wellies, umbrellas and wet-weather rickshaws, we had all ended up soaked to the skin after our dash to the church and back on Christmas Day, and it was several days before we were able to leave the house and take a walk round the island. And several more before the jetty could be mended, and we were once again in possession of fresh milk and eggs, letters and telegrams and news of the outside world. Ross and Aberdeen, and the shores of Port Blair, had received a tremendous battering, and the sea was still doing its best to smash the enormous rocks that reared up on either side of the small sandy beach I could look down on from my bedroom window, and from where, in calm weather, Fudge and I would bathe. No one would have dared try bathing from it now, but we went down and clambered out on to the tallest rocks to watch the enormous hills of foam-streaked water that drove in from the open sea, rearing up higher and higher as they neared the island, and curling over and crashing down in a welter of foam and flying spindrift. It was a most awesome sight, and one which kept me riveted for hours.

  I did a lot of painting in the Andamans. One in particular was a large picture of medieval carol-singers in the snow – ‘Frost and carol, silver bell, high men, yeomen, sing Noel’. It took me days to finish, and it ended up on a Christmas card which I sold to one of the companies that specialized in such things.

  Apart from the hurricane, the weather during the rest of the stay was idyllic. Day after blue-and-gold day. Nothing to do but bathe and laze and admire. The hurricane had ripped away the steel wire underwater fence that made a swimming-pool out of a section of sea between the jetty and the long, stone-built sea wall that protected the Club lawn, but no one noticed it. Not until Fudge and I resumed our habit of walking down the long drive to the gates of Government House, under an avenue of flowering gold-mohur trees, and from there down to the steep road that led past the guest house and eventually to the Club, where we would change into our swimsuits and spend the rest of the morning swimming and sunbathing.

  I went in first, off the diving board, and was idly dog-paddling back when something like a red-hot whip lashed my bare thigh, and I yelled at the top of my voice and made for the ladder that was fixed to the wall. Fudge, who had been about to follow me into the pool, helped me up the last bit of the ladder, and we both turned and stared down into the clear, gently heaving pool. Fudge said, ‘Wow! – look there!’ and pointed at something about the size of a bridge table made out of a square of black mackintosh that undulated across the sandy bottom of the pool below us and, slithering under the torn fence which was supposed to protect us from sharks, vanished into deep water. It was a ‘devil-fish’ that had taken refuge there in the storm. I had a sore thigh for several days.

  Fudge and I used to bathe twice a day, except when we went deep-sea fishing: once in the morning and once at night. The night bathes were the best, because there was nearly always phosphorus in the water. Sometimes the whole sea would be milky-white with it. But the best times were when it only showed where the waves broke, since if you dived off the wall or off the diving board, the moment you hit the water you were outlined in fire. And when you climbed out again, diamonds by the millions dripped from your arms and your fingers. Those were magic nights.

  I used to wonder why such ugly things as dugongs had been mistaken for mermaids. But walking down to the Club one morning Fudge and I both saw what we took to be one of the British troops bathing in the sea outside the stone wall, and breaking into a run we fled down the road, waving and shrieking at him to get back on the right side of the wire because there were plenty of sharks in the bay. I remember yelling: ‘Get back! Sharks … Sharks!’ and running as fast as I could. But all the silly ass did was to swim lazily away from us, further out into the bay. It was only when we tore across the lawn and out on to the sea wall that the rash bather turned to see what the fuss was about, and, deciding he didn’t like the look of these shouting hooligans, withdrew in a dignified manner. It was a dugong, and I still can’t explain why it looked so exactly like the upper half of a rather red and sunburnt swimmer. But it did. It never occurred to either Fudge or myself that it wasn’t. Not until it turned upside down and you saw its arms were flippers and its bottom was grey, and it had fins.

  * * *

  We fished a lot in the Andamans. Sir William would lend us the Government House launch, the Jarawa, and we would go off down the coast and around the other islands. The method was quite simple. The seamen in charge would change gear and the Jarawa would stop loitering along the placid sea and, exploding into life, shoot off at speed, while the fishers would throw their baited hooks into the water and hope for the best. The first person to get a bite would yell ‘Strike!’ and at once the engine would stop and we would remain drifting while whoever had shouted played his or her fish.

  Someti
mes two or three people would get a bite at the same time and the lines would get tangled up like a bit of knitting. I remember one time when Fudge and I and the young Scotsman in charge of the police all got a bite at the same time. Shamus lost his after a few moments, and Fudge and I, having at last untangled ourselves, continued to play our fish, until suddenly Fudge said: ‘Damn! I’ve lost mine. Go on, Moll, the field is yours and it looks like a big one.’ It was indeed. But it wasn’t a fish. It took me ages to reel it in, and when at last it gave up and I reeled it in to the side of the boat, it turned out to be a huge turtle! I was all for letting the poor fellow go, but the Jarawa’s crew were outraged. What, throw away good food? Was the Miss-Sahib mad? They hooked it in and killed it, and were all as pleased as punch at its capture. When that was out of the way, Fudge reeled in her line, and as it came nearer, she said: ‘There seems to be something on it after all … When it stopped fighting so suddenly I thought it had broken free … But there is definitely something there and it’s heavy.’ It was indeed. Goodness knows what it would have weighed if it had been a whole fish. As it was, it was the head only. The head of a whopper of a fish that had been cut cleanly from its body, just behind the gills, by another and very much larger fish. A fish that must have had jaws like razors. Shark? Or possibly the grandfather of all barracudas.

  We used to take parties of the soldiery out fishing sometimes, because they one and all hated being cooped up on Port Blair with sweet Fanny Adams to do. They got no kick out of bathing, sunbathing, or snorkelling, and their officers were kept busy inventing ‘Exercises’ to keep them occupied. But it was difficult. On one occasion, two private soldiers stole the company pay-chest and a fishing boat, and set out for what they imagined was the coast of Burma. They were scooped in, somewhat naturally, in double quick time. Their exasperated Company Commander asked them what on earth they were thinking of, did they really think they could get away with the pay-chest and live the life of Riley in Mandalay or Singapore, when there were thousands of miles of empty sea between them and the nearest coast? No, of course they didn’t, said the culprits crossly. They only did it to stir things up a bit. And they explained what fun it had been, planning how they could swipe the pay-chest. They’d planned it down to the last detail and it had worked a treat! But neither of them even knew how to sail a boat, and they’d just wanted to see how far they could get. They’d had a lot of fun – and so, they hoped, had everyone else. The Captain, who’d had enough of the Andamans by then, let them off with a caution. (He said it had been the only enlivening happening during the hot weather months!)

  For myself, with Fudge to gossip with, plenty of paints and paper, bathing, lazing, and picnicking, the islands were Paradise itself. There was one special place, Foster Bay, where we picnicked whenever we could borrow the Jarawa. It had the most beautiful beach, miles and miles of silver sand, backed by forests of coconut palms, padouk and bushes of wild lemon that smelt wonderful. These attracted hordes and hordes of butterflies – gorgeous butterflies as big as sparrows: some with black and gold wings, and others with pale blue ‘window-panes’; enormous, swallow-tailed iridescent green ones; monarch butterflies by the score, and any number of common white ones patterned with red and yellow spots. We used to drop anchor as soon as the water grew too shallow to cope with the Jarawa’s hull, and, carrying all the picnic gear on our heads, wade the last fifty or sixty yards to the beach.

  The beaches were all beautifully lonely, and deserted except for the occasional sea bird and any number of busy hermit crabs; all of them, it seemed, hurrying around in search of a slightly bigger flat, house or mansion than the one they were occupying at the moment. Just watching them moving in or out of their shells – and oh, how lovely some of those shells were! – gave me hours of amusement. But though the beaches might be deserted, there were always ships plying to and fro across that enormous expanse of sea. All of them – so they said – trawling for pearl-shell. And all of them Japanese. You wouldn’t have thought it worth the while of so many ships to travel so many miles from their native shores in search of the pearl-shell from which they manufactured the small, gleaming buttons that fasten shirts and other European garments all over the world (buttons which in those days one could buy for sixpence a card of twelve, at any haberdashery anywhere). And you would be right of course.

  Sir William, who kept a watchful eye on his fascinating kingdom, was suspicious of the numbers of Japanese ships that claimed to be fishing for such a very common commodity, and spent a lot of his time, paper, and ink in drawing the attention of the Government of India to this curious activity. He also mentioned the fact that among the shops that lined the single, short main street of Aberdeen there were no less than seven photographers, all of them Japanese-owned. This seemed a little excessive to say the least of it, considering that the convicts and their families were not likely to buy cameras and take expensive snapshots, which left only two possible customers per photographer’s shop.

  But the Government of India had far too many other things on its plate to pay the least attention to the numbers of Japanese who were taking an interest in the Andamans, and all they did about it was to decide to make use of the only flat bit of land in Port Blair, which until now had provided the residents with a golf-course, to make an aerodrome. This they did, but in such a leisurely manner that Sir William’s term of office had ended and the Cosgraves and myself had left the islands quite some time before it was finished. But it was finished in time for the first plane to land upon it to be a Japanese fighter, when Japan took the islands, killed the inhabitants they had no use for, and tortured and finally beheaded the unfortunate Englishman who was the original of the man Fudge and I had decided to make the murderer in our whodunnit – because he was such a meek little man that no one could possibly suspect him of killing a fly!

  And the pearl-shell fleet? Well, they had been prospecting for any suitable deep-water bays, however small, where cans of petrol could be hidden for the future refuelling of Japanese submarines. Ah well, ‘those whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad’. And blind too, it would seem. Seven photographers’ shops!

  Among the other atrocities the Japanese committed on the islands was the wiping out of the Jarawas2 – the only truly stone-age tribe left on earth. No one knows anything about them, because no one ever had the chance to study them. They lived in the almost impenetrable Andamans jungle, and they had no permanent lairs. They would pull down branches to serve as shelters, but that was as far as they went. When their temporary camping ground became too messy, they moved on and made another somewhere else. Their housekeeping was as simple as that. They wore no clothes, unless one can call a tiny square of coconut shell with its hairy fringe still attached worn in place of a fig-leaf by the women clothes. Not the men.

  Both sexes used bows and arrows, the arrows being half a circle of coconut shell, its outer edge sharpened until you could have shaved with it. As they would seem to have done. They obviously did not know how to make fire, or use metal, and would kill for both, raiding a forest camp and killing its sleeping inhabitants in order to steal a bucket or a dekchi,3 or the glowing coals of some forest-guard’s fire.

  Mount Harriet, the highest point in the islands, was in Jarawa country, and we never went up there without a platoon of forest guards, who ringed the house for fear of an attack by the little people. And not long before I came there, the men of whatever regiment had provided the company of British troops stationed on Ross had tried to avenge a Jarawa killing by tracking down and attacking the group who had done the deed. A pure waste of time, as the Jarawas merely faded away into the jungle, and all the troops got were about fifty to sixty leeches apiece. (The jungle dripped with the beastly things!) They found and broke up one of the camping places, and actually caught a Jarawa, an elderly lady who was probably not spry enough to escape in time.

  This little creature was taken back to Ross in triumph, and it was decided to treat her as though she were an honoured guest, so
that she would be able to tell her people that ‘the natives are friendly’. They kept her for about a week, I gather, giving her food that she didn’t like, and taking her for a car drive out to Corbyn’s Cove on the main island, which nearly scared her to death. Finally they took her back to the place where they had caught her, loaded her with gifts and, as a final gesture of goodwill gave her back her bow and arrow. This proved a great mistake, for the old lady, clutching her loot, scuttled away and, suddenly stopping, dropped all her presents, strung her bow and if she’d been a slightly better shot would have scored a bullseye on the Assistant Commissioner – it was touch and go. So much for teaching her what a kind, friendly lot we were!

  Efforts had obviously been made before to catch a Jarawa and try to learn their language, because one day, when Sir William had allowed us to look through the Government House archives, Fudge and I came across a letter from some nineteenth-century official, complaining to the Commissioner that while he, the writer, had been dining out, ‘that cad Tewson let my Jarawas out’. (As though they were rabbits, or white mice or something of the sort! – Fudge and I were fascinated.) The writer had apparently managed to catch a few, and had kept them shut up in his bungalow while he tried to make sense out of their language. He might even have done so, and had already made a start when he was foiled by that possibly well-meaning ‘cad Tewson’. And no one ever did learn it, because the Japanese, thinking that there were spies hiding out there in those jungles (there were too), bombed them very thoroughly.

  Almost half a century later, at a drinks party held in the garden of a large house in Eastbourne on the Sussex coast, my hostess, towing a middle-aged stranger, crossed the lawn to where I was standing and said, ‘I don’t think you two have ever met before. May I introduce you to Mr Tewson…’