The Sun in the Morning (28 page)

She might have got away with it if she had not insisted on keeping up a non-stop flow of exceedingly genteel chat throughout the meal, which almost succeeded in driving poor Tacklow round the bend. It was more than he could bear, and when she again swept haughtily into the dining-room on the following night (this time in a mass of violet-tinted organdie frills and even more violets in her hair and at her waist) and never drew breath except to do a bit of chewing, he insisted on Mother taking a stand. Mother, deeply embarrassed, took one, and Miss Violets, losing her gentility and her temper, took offence, packed her two trunks, three suitcases and a couple of hatboxes, and
flounced out. She made quite a procession of it, according to Mother, who says she had to hire an extra rickshaw and two coolies to convey Miss Violets and her belongings back to Simla only two days after paying for two rickshaws and two coolies to bring her out. I remember that Bets and I hung out of a window in the top verandah and, like the ranks of Tuscany, ‘could scarce forbear to cheer'! We hadn't liked what little — very little — we had seen of Miss Violets.

The next governess was a good deal older and lasted a good deal longer, but I can't recall her teaching us anything. In fact if it had not been for Tacklow reading us books at bedtime and giving us such an appetite for stories that we could both read from an early age, I imagine that we would have acquired no education at all. Presumably Governess Number 2 taught us a smattering of arithmetic, geography, history and scripture (though of the two last, I owe my interest in the former to Tacklow and had already received a sound grounding in the latter from Mother). But whatever else she did or did not teach us, she was certainly a disciplinarian and the time-table she drew up for us was strictly adhered to. She kept our noses firmly to the grindstone, which was no doubt very good for us; but her chief drawback in our eyes was that she was continually losing her voice. Not completely, worse luck, since she could always manage to talk to us in a perfectly audible whisper, but enough to prevent her calling out to us to come in from the garden. We were therefore restricted during our leisure hours to playing on the small lawn onto which the nursery window looked, and nowhere else. She could keep an eye on us there, and when play-time was up she would lean out and clap her hands to summon us inside. We were never allowed to move out of earshot of that sound. Or out of eyeshot either!

I don't know how long she stayed with us, but it seemed like years, while to her it must have seemed like centuries, since the poor woman must have been bored rigid. There was no social life for her at all, so far outside Simla. No friends, no one to talk to but a couple of kids who until her arrival had been allowed to run wild and resented their lack of freedom under her rule. The thing I remember most about her reign is the sheer bliss of being able to race about the garden again after she left — down to the pond and the orchard and the tennis court, and up to the mule track and across the hillsides and along the forest paths. We had been barred from all of them for so long that we
had almost forgotten what they looked like.

One of the high-spots of that year occurred while Sir Charles Cleveland was spending a long weekend with us. He told us that a very august personage, the Rajah of Bhong, would be calling at Oaklands in order to take tea with him and our parents, and that if we were
very
good we might even be allowed to meet him! But he was a very shy person who disliked crowds and large parties and hated to be stared at by strangers, because he happened to be a dwarf. However, he was very nice and with luck he might agree to see us. We were thrilled to bits, and when we came in from our walk that afternoon we went straight up to our bedroom to change into our best clothes and listen excitedly for the sound of his arrival — we had been warned against being seen peering out of the windows.

Mother hurried upstairs to tell us that Tacklow and Sir Charles had left to meet His Highness on the road and escort him to the house, but that unfortunately he had come by the upper road and missed them, and that as he could not stay long and they were still waiting for him somewhere on the lower road, he would be pleased to see us now. So down we went — and sure enough, there he was! A tiny little man with an enormous head and a long beard, wearing a huge turban and lots of jewellery, and standing on the velvet-draped table in front of the curtained door that led out of the drawing-room into Tacklow's office; which put him more on the level with an ordinary grown-up.

He was the greatest fun! Mother told us to curtsey to him and be on our best behaviour, and he could not have been more friendly and amusing. He cracked jokes that made us double up with laughter, kept on pulling his ear or scratching his head, which nearly made his turban fall off, sang a song for us in a high falsetto voice and actually did a little dance for us, rather like a clog dance except that he was wearing gold-embroidered shoes with long, curled-up toes. He gave us a box of Turkish Delight, and then suddenly said he was feeling tired and would like to take a little nap. We
begged
him not to go before our father and Sir Charles came back, and told him how much we had enjoyed meeting him, and after we had said goodbye and curtsied to him again Mother shoved us out of the room and up to the nursery. Later on we heard Tacklow's and Sir Charles's voices talking to him in the drawing-room and a lot of laughter, and were delighted to know that they had not missed seeing the enchanting little Rajah.

We talked about him for days afterwards, and it was not until we had both reached the dignity of double figures that we learnt — even then with almost total disbelief! — that the Rajah had been Sir Charles using his hands for feet in those golden, curl-toed shoes, while the animated arms and those restless, expressive hands that kept on almost knocking his turban off and rescuing it just in time, belonged to Tacklow who was standing behind him, hidden by the curtain … To tell you the truth, we would both have preferred not to know, for they had worked the trick so well that we would have been prepared to swear that we had seen a real person who was self-conscious about being a dwarf and did not like people to come too near him or stare too closely — an attitude we had every sympathy with. But that half-hour still remains like a bright scrap of gold tinsel in my mental rag-bag.

I can only suppose that the beautiful and indefatigable Mrs Strettle of the children's dancing-classes was responsible for dreaming up and producing the patriotic piece of flag-waving-cum-fund-raising that was known as ‘The Pageant'. Because her entire flock seems to have taken part in it.

This oddly named mixture of mime and dance had originally been intended as a Grand Finale to a day-long Garden Fěte in aid of the war effort. The Fěte was to be held in the grounds of Viceregal Lodge, where there were several lawns (three of them, on different levels, providing an ideal setting for The Pageant), and I believe it was a great success. But shortly before our show was due to begin, the weather went back on us and rain stopped play, forcing us to do our stuff in the State Ballroom instead, with only the inadequate help of a platform on which the Viceroy and his more high-ranking guests were expected to sit in overstuffed chairs and sofas during the intervals between dances at Viceregal balls.

The entire performance must have been incomprehensible to the paying customers, because there should by rights have been two stages; an upper and a lower one (Earth below and a sort of other-worldly Elysium on the upper). But since there had been no time to construct a split-level platform, Earth, the audience and the Viceroy's band were all on the same level, and so inextricably mixed up that I doubt if even those who managed to get seats in the front row caught more than an
occasional glimpse of the action — just enough, I imagine, to make them wonder what the heck was going on. However, despite this initial setback (or possibly because of it?) The Pageant was considered good enough to be repeated and was subsequently put on for a proper run, complete with matinées, at Simla's Gaiety Theatre. A double stage was built for the occasion, and
Hi! diddle-de-dee!
— we were off!

The upper stage, which was small and narrow, had a net curtain stretched tightly across it so that the characters inhabiting this cloud-cuckoo-land appeared faintly hazy and unreal. As well they might, considering that they were representing such abstractions as Peace, Plenty, Love, Courage, and so on, played by grown-ups draped like Greek goddesses in yards of white cheesecloth, who, when the curtain rose, were discovered lolling around on grassy banks apparently sound asleep. The lower and much larger stage, minus any net screens, was supposed to represent a portion of the world; and bang in the middle of it, leaning negligently on a plaster pillar that supported a model of a battleship, stood Britannia in the person of Mrs Brocas-Howell, holding a trident in one hand and a large shield painted with a Union Jack in the other.

This sharp-tongued and short-tempered lady was draped in yet another seven yards of cheesecloth topped, if memory serves, by a brassiere made of overlapping tin scales and a helmet that looked distressingly like a brass coal-scuttle. Other grown-ups, representing France (another coal-scuttle), Belgium, the Netherlands, Egypt, Greece and Serbia (hands up who remembers Serbia
^*
) and possibly a few more countries, stood dotted about the stage, each with a group of children wearing the appropriate national costume sitting at their feet. Bets and I were little Belgians (not, as one would suppose from the photographs, little Netherlanders). Bargie was a junior Greek, while a kid called Barbara Jacomb-Hood, who was the star pupil of our dancing-class, was little Egypt; solo. The rest of us were in groups of four or more.

The curtain rose on a scene of sweetness and light; Britannia beaming at her battleship and everyone smiling from ear to ear as one after another the little Britons, French, Belgians
et al.
, got up and performed their national dances before exiting L. or R. to great applause —
leaving the mother-countries in possession of the stage. I don't know why we all detested ‘Britannia'. I only remember that we did and that she started it. But by the time The Pageant had run its course she must have detested us with equal fervour, for it became a point of honour with us that as each set of child dancers pranced off into the wings, gaily waving to the audience, they would do their best to knock against her shield or upset her column and boat. The trick was to do it so that it looked like an accident; which in the circumstances was not difficult, since we merely pretended that we couldn't wave at the paying customers and watch where we were going at the same time. So poor Britannia had a rough ride, and in retrospect, serve her right! It never pays to be rude to children.

During all this jolly national-dancery the upper stage remained in darkness. But no sooner had the last of the kindergarten element gone waving off into the wings than the lights came slowly up on the Elysian Fields, and, to the strains of the Viceroy's band playing Mendelssohn, the cheesecloth goddesses awoke from their slumbers and began to wander gracefully around with their arms about each other's waists, smiling down approvingly on the lower deck, where Britannia had laid down her trident and shield and was idly tinkering with her ship, while France (or was it Belgium?) operated a spinning-wheel — and so on. Then suddenly, accompanied by a crashing chord from the orchestra, on rushed an enormous uniformed Hun, spiked helmet, grey uniform, jackboots and all, who grasped poor Serbia by her flowing locks (her own hair too, not a wig, so one can safely say that the amateur actress representing that unhappy country really did ‘suffer for her Art') and dragged her screaming off the stage. Reappearing in two ticks he weighed in on Belgium and the Netherlands (one in each hand) and, throwing them to the ground, took a slash or two at them with his sabre before turning his attentions to France.

At this point Peace, Plenty, Justice, etc., becoming aware of the fracas, started to run to and fro behind their mosquito net and make gestures indicative of alarm and disapproval. Peace flung herself on her knees before an angel who I think must have been St Michael (a Mr Someone; wings, white butter-muslin and tinfoil armour), who was finally persuaded to unsheath the sword that he wore hanging from a belt, and wave it threateningly at the lower orders, who were instantly blacked out; thus allowing the various countries, prone as
well as upright, to scurry off unseen into the wings with their props (battleship, spinning-wheel, and so on) leaving the stage clear for four small girls, Sybil Roberts, Iris Mant, Iris Gillian and one other whose name escapes me, to do the Dance of the Four Winds to the tune of Schubert's ‘Moment Musicale'. Even now I never hear that played without getting an instant mental vision of four small, bare-footed figures, wearing minute ragged tunics of pale green, grey and blue chiffon, cross-strapped in the Greek manner with silver ribbon, pretending to play on silver pan-pipes as they skip to and fro in a sort of square dance. I can even remember some of the steps, though I don't remember a single step, or the tune either, of the dance that Bets and I did as ‘baby Belgians'. Nor had I, then or now, any idea how the Four Winds got into the act. Could they perhaps have been summoning help from the Empire?

I don't remember how The Pageant ended. The real war was still going strong at the time, so Peace, Plenty and the rest of the cheesecloth brigade, not to mention poor Serbia, could only keep their fingers crossed. I suppose that the real St Michael, who was presumably in the confidence of the Almighty, must have known what was going to happen. But everyone else could only hope and pray; and would go on doing so for at least another year. I do remember that the villain of the piece, the Hun, was still on his feet in the final tableau — tottering, no doubt, but still upright and able to take his bows. This unpopular character had been played with considerable zing by Sir Charles Cleveland's younger brother, after Sir Charles himself had backed out. It had been hoped that he would play the Hun, for not only did he possess the physique of a champion heavyweight boxer in his prime, plus a strong resemblance to a truculent bulldog, but he was judged to be ‘the ugliest man in Simla' — or it may have been ‘in India'? Unfortunately Sir Charles, who had originally been in favour of playing the part, overheard a fellow member of the United Services Club repeating that last observation, and took umbrage and cried off. A great pity, as he would have played it to perfection and he cannot possibly have had any illusions about his looks. Or his charms either! His mistresses were legion — Britannia being the most notorious, though naturally I did not learn this until years later: together with the story of how that particular and carefully concealed liaison was discovered…