The Sun in the Morning (27 page)

Years later I was to see a duplicate of that lovely sight thousands of miles to the eastward, off the coast of North China; and once again ‘it hit me where I lived' — to use an expressive phrase of my father's. Yet it is the earlier sight, that butterfly flight of sails setting out into the Indian Ocean from Bombay, seen from Malabar Hill when I was not yet five years old, that is still the clearer of the two. The other is just an echo of something that had happened before — the memory of a memory.

Right up to the end of the Second World War and the Chinese invasion of Tibet, the mule-track behind Oaklands was in constant use by Tibetan traders bringing their wares to Simla. Enchanting wares, the product of a race of artists and craftsmen who worked in wood and metal and precious stones; men and women who carved, wove cloth, painted fabulous pictures on vellum, made prayer-wheels and devil-masks, sticks of incense and endless other odds and ends for which there was always a ready market in the shops and bazaars of India's summer capital. There is a marvellous description of such artefacts in
Kim
, where they form the bulk of the objects for sale in
Lurgan-Sahib's shop on the Mall. These goods were brought over the passes and along the wandering tracks through the forests and across the bare hillsides in bulging panniers slung over the backs of mules and pack-ponies; and whenever we heard the jingle of the mule-bells, Bets and I would rush out of the house and up to the crest of the ridge, and sitting on top of the dry, grass-grown bank that overlooked the track, watch the mule-train pass and call out greetings to the smiling, slant-eyed Tibetans.

The men wore long, loose robes of hand-woven wool that smelt of wood-smoke and asafoetida, thick-soled felt boots and curious duffle hats with ear-flaps that could be tied down to protect them from the cold. Their women, who walked with them (only very small children rode on the mules, while infants in arms were invariably carried on their mother's backs), were more colourful, for they wore great necklaces of silver set with coral and lumps of raw turquoise, enchanting head-dresses of black felt sewn with flat plaques of turquoise, and a species of hand-woven apron bordered with a multitude of gaily coloured stripes. They were smiling, friendly and gentle people who, being traders, spoke a certain amount of Hindustani, so that we could pass the time of day with them. And sometimes they would throw us small gifts such as a stick of incense, a tiny filigree betelnut box set with uncut garnets, or a little lump of turquoise matrix with a hole in it which one could wear on a string round one's neck, like a charm. In return we would give them whatever fruit happened to be ripe or, when there was no fruit, a flower or two from the garden, which they would sniff delightedly before tucking it behind their ear. Running up the hill to exchange pleasantries and wave to them as they went by was always a favourite pastime of ours. But it was only one of many.

There being no TV and no radio either when I was young, we had to invent our own amusements; and we were, of course, lucky enough to have a fantastically beautiful playground in which to carry out our various ploys. But when we were finally sent back to England and dispatched to a boarding-school, our holidays were spent in any number of different and very ordinary places; among them Aunt Lizzie's house in Bedford, where the garden was no more than a narrow strip of ground separated from its neighbours by a high brick wall, and backed on to a railway siding which ensured that the few horse-chestnut trees, a scattering of gloomy-looking laurel bushes and
the even fewer flowers that struggled to survive in that cramped space, were all liberally coated with soot from the steam-driven trains that huffed and puffed past less than a hundred yards away. Yet this far from alluring back garden — together with a derelict house on the abandoned lot next door — provided us with endless ploys, and of all our holiday homes in England, Aunt Lizzie's was our favourite one by far.

Out at Mahasu we had no artificial, ready-made entertainment. We devised our own; which included stalking the bands of brown rhesus monkeys (we never took similar liberties with the langurs), chasing butterflies, constructing and furnishing houses for elves among the roots of pine trees, inventing stories, building tree-houses in which to play Swiss Family Robinson, weaving baskets out of dry grass stems and filling them with moss and flowers, and a hundred other activities. At least twice a week we would climb the hill path (it was little more than a goat-track) to Buckie's house, Dukani, and help — or more likely hinder — his head
mali
, Khundun, a particular friend of ours, in picking up windfalls in the orchard, sweeping the narrow gravel paths or, squatting happily on the warm, sun-baked planks that covered the water-tank, we would listen to tales of his youth and stories of the gods and demons and creatures of the hills.

Khundun's
bibi
^*
would let us play with her latest baby or try our hand at milking the cow, and Khundun would give us handfuls of the brittle-shelled
kargassy
walnuts when they were in season. And if Buckie were in residence and not too busy, he would come out of his office and call down to us over the verandah rail to come up to have a glass of lemonade and a biscuit with him. The lower verandah was wide and shady, and all along the inner wall were narrow wooden shelves on which Khundun ranged pots of cinerarias — those heat-loving hot-house flowers which prefer the shade to direct sunlight — so that one wall of the verandah was always a blaze of colour; blue and cerise, purple and crimson. Bets and I admired them enormously, particularly the blue ones; and to this day cinerarias mean the lower verandah of Dukani to us. Just as maidenhair ferns will always mean the lower road to The Retreat; though it is the smell of maidenhair fern rather than the sight of it that is such a vivid reminder of the
paths through the forests. With the cinerarias, which are scentless, it is the child's-paintbox colours that remind me of the hot, shadowed verandah that looked out across the orchard towards Simla and smelt of pine wood, as did all the Mashobra houses.

Poor Buckie! He attracted children in much the same way as Tacklow attracted cats. We all loved him, and though he could be endlessly patient and good-tempered he never for a moment allowed us to impose upon him or become a nuisance. When he had had enough of us we were firmly dismissed; and we accepted dismissal without argument and with no trace of rancour; ‘The King has spoken'! I did not realize at that time how unhappy his private life must have been. His first child, a son, had died in infancy and there is a moving reference to his death in one of Lady Curzon's letters to her mother, Mrs Leiter of Washington and Chicago. Writing in the autumn of 1900, she says:

Tell the girls that Mrs Buck's baby of three months — my godchild — died suddenly on Sunday through neglect of the nurse & I went down to poor Mrs Buck & actually buried the baby. There was no one but another woman & me to put the dead baby in its coffin & Captain Baker-Carr carried it downstairs. We went to the cemetery — the coffin in a rickshaw — & the Mother & Father & I & Mr Kruber a friend behind & it was the saddest, baldest, most miserable funeral.

There had been two other children; another boy, and a girl who had been crippled by polio while still a child. Both, with their mother, had been in England when Buckie first saw Dukani perched on its lonely hilltop some half-dozen miles outside Simla, fell in love with it and bought it from the Maharajah of Alwar. He was sure his wife would be as captivated by it as he was, and because he wanted to surprise her with this charming home he did not tell her about it, but spent months improving and rebuilding it, choosing furniture and curtains, having it painted and wallpapered in the colours she liked best, and setting Khundun and his assistants to work making a superb lawn and garden, planting fruit trees, digging a tank and cutting winding paths through the woods that clothed the northern slope of his hilltop. Everything was in apple-pie order by the time Annie Buck arrived and he brought her up to Simla and took her out along the Mashobra Road to surprise her with the home he had made for her.

She was surprised all right. But unpleasantly so. She hated it on
sight. Not because she had any fault to find with the house or the gardens, the wonderful views from every window or the way in which the rooms had been furnished. In all those aspects it was near perfect. But if Buckie thought she was going to live in such an isolated, back-of-beyond spot as Mashobra, miles from the social life and gaiety of Simla, he could think again! Nothing would
induce
her to live stranded out here on the edge of nowhere, so the sooner he sold Dukani and acquired a house in Simla the better. It was a bitter blow to Buckie, but since ‘Annie B' (the name she was known by throughout half India) stood firm, there was nothing for it but to rent another house; which he did, though he was never to sell Dukani for he had become too fond of it. He continued to spend as much time as possible there, and the weekend parties he held at Dukani became famous; though they hardly ever included his wife, whom he kept from going there. I don't remember meeting either of his two children during the war years, or even knowing that they existed, so I presume they had both been left behind in England; the boy at a public school and little crippled Lorna in the care of relatives.

Since Annie B was crazy about horses and had no time to bother about anything else, the crippled child was brought up to think that horses were the most important thing in life, and though almost immobile on the ground, once lifted onto a horse's back and settled into a side-saddle, she learnt to ride by balance alone and became an accomplished horsewoman and a ‘bruising rider to hounds'. I don't think Buckie saw much of her when she was little, or of his much-loved second son either, since his work tied him to India. But when the war broke out his boy, barely old enough to enlist, joined up, and like so many youthful Second-Lieutenants was killed almost at once on the Western Front. Perhaps that was why Buckie was so good with children, though at the time I had no idea that he had lost two sons and had a sorely crippled daughter.

Whenever I think of Mashobra, which is often, I see it basking in bright sunlight. But in fact for at least half of the time, if not more, it was smothered in clouds and hidden under a pall of rain. Delhi, in those pre-fridge and air-conditioning days, became too hot for comfort by the middle of April, so it was then that the Government of India made its stately and cumbersome trek up to Simla. Spring in Simla, with the cuckoos calling and the hillsides awash with wild balsam and
lily-of-the-valley, was marvellously cool after the hot winds and dust-storms of the plains, while the pine-scented breezes that blew off the snows seemed like heaven to the parched refugees from the heat. May and June were wonderful months; but towards the end of June all India waited for the arrival of the monsoon, and when at last it swept in from the sea, telegrams would go out to carry the news to every part of the Indian subcontinent, for it was easy to calculate how long it would take to travel northward.

Once it hit Bombay we could be fairly certain when it would reach Simla. And after the first downpour we knew more or less where we were and how long it would last, for there was a pattern to the monsoon; it was not all swirling mist and drenching rain. The initial tidal wave of water would be followed by a long period when the sun would rise every day in a cloudless sky above a thoroughly washed world in which every leaf and twig and blade of grass glittered with raindrops and the far snows looked so near and so clear that it almost seemed as though you could spit a cherry-stone at them and score a hit. On those days Bets and I would walk down Oaklands' long drive as far as the Mahasu bazaar with Tacklow, the rickshaw following behind in case we should wish to ride back (a ridiculous idea, as who, at that age, would not prefer to walk?), and having seen him off on his five-mile hike to his office, we would spend half-an-hour or so chatting to various friends in the bazaar before making our way home in the full blaze of the morning sunlight. And every day without fail we would see, as we walked back up the drive, a little cloud no bigger than a dandelion clock in the waste of blue. It grew with incredible speed until by the time we reached the house it would have covered a third of the sky. Half an hour later the orchard trees would have been swallowed up by the encroaching mist, and within minutes the whole world would be grey and even the tubs of blue agapanthus lilies, that stood a bare eight feet from the verandah's edge, would have vanished. Then the rain would come down again and for the rest of the day we lived with the sound of water drumming steadily on the corrugated tin of the roof.

There were many breaks during the rains. Sometimes for as long as a week and sometimes for only a day or two. The rain-washed air was as clear and as brilliant as a table-cut diamond and the world was full of birds and butterflies, and the scent of flowers and pines and wet
grass, and one could see every ridge and wrinkle and glacier among the high snows. Not until the first tree fern died did one know that the monsoon was nearly over. But although there were never enough breaks, and in general the monsoon lasted from the end of June until mid-September, Oaklands and Mashobra stay for ever in my mind in sunlight. Hot, bright, glorious sunlight…

Mother became worried about our lack of schooling and imported a governess. Two, in fact. One after the other. The first one was young and the second middle-aged. The young one, who was always remembered in the family as ‘Miss Violets' because she had a passion for the colour, wore no other shade, drenched herself in cheap violet scent and stunned my poor parents on her first night at Oaklands by sailing down to dinner (which was never more than a light supper) in full evening dress with bunches of artificial violets tucked into the brass-gold waves of her hair. My parents had not expected her to join them, for she had her own sitting-room and was well aware that arrangements had been made for her to take her evening meal there; and they themselves never dressed for supper unless there were guests. Mother explained, for the second time, that although as our governess she would take her breakfast, lunch and tea with us in the dining-room, once the children were in bed there was no need for her to join her employers at dinner, which was a meal that Tacklow, after a hard day at the office, liked to eat
těte-à-těte
with his wife whenever he got the chance. Miss Violets retorted haughtily that she was accustomed to being treated as one of the family and had never before been asked to eat alone in her sitting-room. And telling the
khidmatgar
to lay another place for her, she plumped herself firmly down at the table.