by M. M. Kaye
Goff had come up to Kashmir in a thoroughly angry, embittered and disillusioned frame of mind. He would, I imagine, have been only too ready to fall into the arms of almost any unattached woman who happened to be passing. And I can only be profoundly and eternally grateful that she happened to be me.
* * *
He still had a little more than two weeks of his leave, and he spent five days with me and then suddenly said that he would be going up to Gulmarg for the next week to stay with his CO’s wife and to ‘think things over’. I still remember those days as the longest in my life. Every hour of each one of those interminable days dragged by as slowly as a wet weekend in January. I didn’t even know if he meant to see me again, and I found that I couldn’t do any more work on There’s a Moon Tonight, because my mind was a blank. Then, unannounced and unexpected, two days before I thought he might, he walked into the hall of the Walls’ house and took me off to the Club.
There was never anyone in the Club ballroom at that hour of the morning, and we were crossing it side by side when he suddenly stopped and, turning to me, said, ‘If I can get a divorce, would you marry me?’
I think I must have said ‘Yes’ almost before he’d stopped speaking, for fear he might change his mind. (‘I’ll be ready in five minutes – no, make it three!’) … ‘No – one!’
* * *
It would be nice to finish this book with the four words with which Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre ended her story: ‘Reader, I married him.’ Well, I did marry him. But it wasn’t as simple as all that. Jane Eyre’s story came to a full stop with that statement. But ours, Goff’s and mine, had only just begun. And so, too – though I had hoped against hope, and despite all Tacklow’s warnings tried to make myself believe that it would never happen – began the slow, inexorable march towards the end of Empire and the tearing apart of the enchanted and enchanting land that I so loved.
Notes
Foreword
1. Family nickname for my father.
Chapter 1
1. See dedication and Foreword.
2. Bets also had the nickname ‘T’ for Trainer. We had a game when young that I was a performing mouse and she my trainer. My family always called me Mouse from then on, and I always called her ‘T’ for Trainer. I still do.
3. The other three (and this is despite the fact that I once met Marlene Dietrich!) were Indian: Sita of Kaputhala; an unknown Parsee lady seen one evening dancing in the crowded ballroom of Bombay’s Taj Mahal Hotel; and a Kashmiri girl paddling a shikarra near the Dāl Gate.
4. See The Sun in the Morning.
5. I hate to admit it, but a reader tells me that we sank the Conte Rosso in the Second World War. Not, I do hope, with our Captain and crew aboard.
6. A British Indian Army regiment that had been drafted out to North China to help clear up the havoc created by the Boxer Rising (see The Sun in the Morning).
Chapter 2
1. See here.
2. See The Sun in the Morning.
3. A well-known English interior decorator of the time, ex-wife of the writer Somerset Maugham.
Chapter 3
1. The Chinese name for Jardine Matheson. Uncle ‘Cam’ (Cameron Taylor) was the representative of JM in Tientsin.
2. See The Sun in the Morning.
3. The ‘Keeper of the Doors’. Or ‘of the Gate’, if you prefer.
4. She pronounced it ‘Floor-ease’.
5. See Leland’s Pidgin English Sing Song.
6. A handsome, high spirited and very endearing young man who had proposed to me at frequent intervals during the last Delhi ‘Season’. See Golden Afternoon.
Chapter 4
1. A beach shelter consisting of four poles supporting a square of matting – which was supposed to provide shade for those who needed it, but was in fact a meeting place for friends.
Chapter 6
1. Alleyways.
Chapter 7
1. Child Life in Chinese Homes by Mrs Bryson. Isabella gives a detailed description and two illustrations of this peculiar and appallingly painful fashion.
2. Mistress, Lady of the House.
Chapter 8
1. See Chapter 11 of The Sun in the Morning.
Chapter 9
1. The words ‘student interpreter’ had once been mistranslated by a Chinese member of the Embassy as ‘stupid interrupters’. It stuck. As did ‘Teddy Bear’.
2. Chinese saints.
Chapter 10
1. China was not alone in this sort of behaviour, for I was told that an entire British regiment was once sent to Tientsin in thin hot-weather dress, because someone in Whitehall thought Tientsin was in the Tropics.
2. Or fourteen? I am not 100 per cent sure which. The crackers were probably the kind you threw, not those you pulled.
Chapter 11
1. See Chapter 25 of The Sun in the Morning.
2. This is obviously a famous ‘packer’s’ trick, for the writer Norah Wall saw it performed when she too was moving house in China.
Chapter 12
1. No relation to Subas Chandra Bose.
Chapter 13
1. See Golden Afternoon.
Chapter 14
1. See Golden Afternoon.
2. Kadera was our bearer and Mahdoo our cook. See Golden Afternoon.
Chapter 15
1. Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club.
2. See Golden Afternoon.
3. Mooring.
4. A lake a few miles outside Srinagar, normally spelt ‘Nagim’, but always pronounced ‘Nageem’. So I have used ‘geem’ instead of ‘gim’.
5. I can’t remember her real name, but I had painted her for ‘Ashoo at Her Lattice’ and always thought of her as ‘Ashoo’.
6. Forest Officer. See Golden Afternoon.
Chapter 16
1. Country boats.
Chapter 17
1. He knew very well whom I would blame, and hoped to stop me getting into trouble.
2. See The Sun in the Morning.
3. See above note.
4. See The Sun in the Morning.
5. Crore = 10 million rupees.
Chapter 18
1. Queen of the Night.
Chapter 19
1. We had been known collectively as ‘Pish and Tush’ in our schooldays, but both of us answered impartially to ‘Tish’, ‘Tishy’ or ‘Tishwig’.
2. Five shillings was the equivalent of twenty-five pence today.
3. The Chinese spell that ‘Shao-di’, but pronounce it ‘Shao-dee’.
4. Quarantine.
5. Andy and Enid Anderson: Captain and Bosun of the Nageem Bagh Navy. See Golden Afternoon.
6. ‘The Motleys’, who were among the best stage designers of their time.
Chapter 20
1. See The Sun in the Morning.
Chapter 21
1. Two old pennies.
2. Plus a bathing cap!
Chapter 22
1. It is on record that an astrologer warned that the King of Delhi (i.e. the Viceroy) was dead five days before the news reached India.
2. I am obviously wrong there. I have just read a newspaper article which says there are still Jarawas on the Andamans. And they are still killers!
3. Cooking-pot.
Chapter 23
1. ‘His Excellency’. The Viceroy, and all Governors, are Excellencies.
2. Water-carrier.
Chapter 24
1. ‘Sit, Mem-sahib, sit. There is plenty of room.’
Chapter 25
1. Ootacamund.
2. See Golden Afternoon.
Chapter 26
1. 1939.
2. Tacklow’s first cousin, Sir John Kaye, wrote a contemporary history of the Mutiny which he called a History of the Sepoy Rising, and his Kaye and Malleson’s History of the Indian Mutiny is still one of the best accounts of that bloodstained event.
Chapter 27
1. In aid of Indian Servicemen blinded during the war.
2. S
hadow of the Moon, published by Longmans Green, and republished by Viking.
3. Indian.
4. Dancing partner – the word has now acquired another meaning.
5. Marquee.
Chapter 28
1. Indian Army Officers.
Chapter 30
1. A’ba-darn. Khour-ram-shah.
2. Mother did a lovely ‘Peter Scott’ on the wall above the fireplace in her bedroom.
Chapter 31
1. Spiced courgette and potatoes with yoghurt.
Chapter 32
1. JB’s wife disliked living in places like Calcutta, Delhi and Bombay. She much preferred their home in England, and had gone on strike and stayed there. Which probably accounts for his tendency to chase women around tables.
Chapter 33
1. Walter de la Mare.
2. British Expeditionary Force.
3. Disciples.
Chapter 34
1. See The Sun in the Morning.
Chapter 35
1. Women’s Voluntary Service.
Chapter 36
1. I wish I knew who wrote that, but I don’t. The lines have stayed in my mind all these years, but not the name of the poet. Perhaps someone will recognize them and tell me. I think the poem was called ‘Guinevere’.
2. When he was very young he had a German governess who could not pronounce ‘Godfrey’. She called him ‘Goffrey’ or ‘Goff’; and the latter stuck to him for life.
3. Ma’-darn.
4. Queen Victoria’s Own.
Glossary
abdar
butler
Angrezi
English
Angrezi-log
English folk
barra-durri
open-sided outdoor pavilion
bhat
talk, speech
Bibi-ghur
women’s house
bistra
bedding-roll
burra
large, e.g. Burra-Sahib, great man
butti
lamp
charpoy
Indian bedstead
chupprassi
peon
chatti
large earthenware water-jug
chokra
small boy
chota-bazri
small breakfast
chowkidar
watchman, caretaker
dâk-bungalow
resthouse for travellers; orginally for postmen (dâk means post)
darzi
tailor
dekchi
metal cooking-pot
dhobi
washerman, or woman
Diwan
Prime Minister
ferengi
foreigner
galeri
the little striped Indian tree-squirrel
ghari
vehicle; usually horse-drawn
gudee
throne
gussel
bath (gussel-khana: bathroom)
halwa
sweets
Jungi-Lat-Sahib
Commander-in-Chief
kutcha
rough, unfinished
khansama
cook
khitmatgar
waiter
Kaiser-i-Hind
the King (or Queen)
lathi
stout, iron-tipped and bound bamboo staff
Lal Khila
Red Fort
log (pronounced low’g)
people, folk
mahout
elephant rider
mali
gardener
manji
boatman
masalchi
washer-up, kitchen boy
maulvi
religious teacher
mufussal
countryside (‘the sticks’)
murgi
chicken
namaste
the Indian gesture of respect, greeting or farewell: hand-pressed palm to palm and lifted to the forehead
noker
servant (noker-log: servant folk)
powinders
tribe of gypsies who are always on the move
shikari
hunter
shikarra
canopied punt that is the water-taxi of the Kashmir lake
tonga
two-wheeled, horse-drawn taxi of the Indian plains
topi
pith hat – almost a uniform in the days of the Raj
vakil
lawyer
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Far Pavilions
Trade Wind
Shadow of the Moon
Death in Berlin
Death in Cyprus
Death in Kashmir
Death in Kenya
Death in the Andamans
Death in Zanzibar
The Ordinary Princess
Murder Abroad
House of Shade
The Sun in the Morning
Golden Afternoon
ENCHANTED EVENING. Copyright © 1999 by M. M. Kaye. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
ISBN 0-312-26581-6
First published in Great Britain by the Penguin Group, Penguin Books Ltd
First U.S. Edition: December 2000
eISBN 9781466842755
First eBook edition: March 2013
