The Sun in the Morning (40 page)

If I have given the impression that our parents always took us with them when they went out camping, let me hasten to say that the only camps we could be certain of being taken to were the Christmas ones. Any others were a bonus. Not all shooting-parties liked children tagging along, and on the many occasions when they went without us, or when Tacklow had to go on tour and Mother went with him, we were left behind in the care of family friends — and Punj-ayah, of course.

On one such occasion, when they both were away for a longer time than usual, Tacklow being on tour — this time, I think, in Burma — and Mother having been invited to join some lengthy celebration in one of the Princely States of Rajputana (a combined birthday-cum-wedding party as far as I remember), Bets and I and Punj-ayah went off to spend two weeks with a middle-aged couple who lived in an isolated, old-fashioned bungalow on the outskirts of Delhi, where the Grand Trunk Road leaves the city behind and drives straight as an arrow across open, scrub-covered country.

None of our friends lived anywhere near here and there was nothing for us to do once we had finished with our morning lessons, to which we were driven in our host's trap accompanied by Punj-ayah. In those car-less days all our old haunts were suddenly as far out of reach as the moon, and the Grand Trunk Road, where every vehicle that passed raised a smothering cloud of dust, was hardly a suitable place for morning or evening walks. We missed the Kudsia Bagh and the sands of the Jumna sorely. But the flat scrub-covered plain was new territory
and we set off to explore it and see what it offered in the way of entertainment.

At first it seemed as though there were no landmarks and nothing of interest, and Punj-ayah, satisfied that no danger was likely to befall us in such open and obviously uninhabited country (and unwilling to tear her sari to shreds on the thorn bushes or the dry, knife-edged grass), gave up accompanying us and let us go where we wished. But during the first day or two, extending our explorations to the unknown territory behind the bungalow, we came on an enormous sandpit which, until we were practically on its rim, was completely hidden by the tall grass and the usual sprinkling of kikar trees. It must have been gouged out by water many years before, during a flash-flood in some bygone monsoon when the rain had formed a temporary river that washed away the soft, sandy soil, leaving a deep depression about half an acre in size, whose sides fell steeply away like cliffs below us as we peered cautiously over the edge.

The hooves of black-buck, chinkarra and wandering goats or grazing cattle had worn a track down one side of the enormous sandpit and out at the other; probably in search of water, for there would have been a pool there in the rainy season, though now there was only hard, baked earth and withered grass. But the cliffs below us were pockmarked with holes and the air swirled with the wings of myriads of tiny sand-martins who were nesting in the sides of the sandy cliffs.

The birds took no notice of us and we watched, fascinated, as they swooped and swerved like a swarm of bees; snatching flies on the wing and flashing into their holes in the cliff with a swiftness and accuracy of aim that was almost unbelievable. We watched them for hours, and later, having returned thoughtfully to the bungalow, we set about making ourselves a pair of butterfly-nets; using bamboos for the poles and the ring — a thin, whippy sliver for the latter; you can do all sorts of things with bamboos! That done, we coaxed Punj-ayah into buying us a yard of thin cotton net from the bazaar during the time that she and the driver of the trap had to wait while we sat at our lessons. Our pocket-money, which we were careful to save up for such emergencies, was at that time a lordly one anna a week, so I can only suppose that the price of cotton net was not more than a few
pice
a yard.

Punj-ayah obliged, and we made ourselves two admirably serviceable butterfly-nets, much admired by our hosts, who commended us
for our enterprise and industry. Little did they know! For the truth is that it had occurred to me that we could easily catch one of those sand-martins. All we had to do was to watch until one went into its hole in the cliffs, and then put a net over the hole and wait, for when it came out it was bound to fly into the net. And I was right. It did. Unfortunately, after we had caught one or two, held them carefully in one hand, stroked their tiny heads with the tip of a finger and let them go again, I had another idea. What about taking one or two of them back to the bungalow and letting them loose inside our mosquito-nets? Then we could sit inside with them and watch them fly around, and perhaps they would become so used to us that when we released them they would come to our hands of their own accord?

I'm afraid our success with the squirrels in the Kudsia Bagh must have gone to my head, for we instantly put this outrageous plan into action. We brought the sand-martins back two at a time and turned them loose inside my mosquito-net, and when we had made several trips and had at least six sand-martins flying around under the net, got in with them ourselves. But here the plan hit a serious snag. Our captives thought nothing of the idea. They were plainly terrified of being boxed in with a couple of human beings and they streaked to and fro in a frenzy of panic, flinging themselves against the netting and clinging to it until their tiny claws became hopelessly entangled as they struggled to free themselves. Our efforts to help them only made matters worse, and by the time we managed to get them all out, the mosquito-net was in tatters and the bed-clothes, pillows and ourselves were liberally spattered with bird-droppings and feathers.

The faithful Punj-ayah would have hushed up the whole affair and mended the mosquito-net had that been possible. But it was so badly torn that it would have taken hours to make good the damage, and it was already tea-time. There was nothing for it but to own up and ask my hostess if I could please have another mosquito-net. She was not pleased, and I don't blame her. She and her husband had never had any children of their own, and though they frequently said how sad this made them and how they doted on children, they did not understand them as our beloved Colonel and Mrs Ponson and Buckie did, and were totally incapable of coping with this sort of thing; or understanding it. They were both frankly horrified (more by the mess and destruction, I think, than by the cruelty of trapping birds for fun)
and I received a tremendous scolding on that account; and another because I had ‘deliberately deceived them in that I had failed to tell them what the butterfly-nets were for'. This was quite true, of course, and I don't remember feeling in the least guilty about that, for if they chose to think the nets were for catching butterflies that was their lookout. In any case, why was it all right to catch butterflies and kill them, and wrong to catch birds and let them go? I simply couldn't follow their reasoning.

In the end I was informed that it would be necessary, as a matter of painful duty, for them to write and tell the whole distressing story to my dear parents; and then sent to bed supperless and in floods of tears. (Bets, it seemed, was too young to know any better and had plainly been led astray by her older sister! Too true.)

Well, at least I had clean bedding and a new mosquito-net. And when I told Tacklow the whole story he laughed and said that it served them right for continually telling Mother how devoted they were to all children, what a pleasure and a privilege it was to have ‘young people' about them, and how happy they would be to look after her little darlings if ever she wanted to take a holiday without us. He had, he said, warned them that entertaining a handful of children wearing party frocks and accompanied by nannies, ayahs or parents to tea followed by decorous games was not at all the same thing as having a couple of them as house-guests for close on ten days. They had refused to believe him, and Mother, much touched by their offer, had been rash enough to accept it. (Largely, I suspect, because she herself had very little idea of what we got up to while in the nominal charge of Punj-ayah.)

Mother, to tell the truth, saw even less of us than our hard-worked father did. Her mornings were occupied by Red Cross work, her afternoons taken up by various committees arranging balls, bazaars, cabarets, floor-shows and other entertainments in aid of this or that war effort or charity, and her evenings spent at the Club playing tennis or chatting with friends on the lawn while the Club band played selections from popular musical comedies of the day —
The Merry Widow, The Dollar Princess, Miss Hook of Holland, The Belle of New York, The Quaker Girl
and
The Arcadians
… Bets and I used to go up to the flat roof of Curzon House to listen to those lovely, lilting melodies drifting through the intervening trees in the dusk, and you've no idea
how sweet and gay and romantic they sounded. At half-past seven, just as we were getting to bed, Mother would hurry home to bath and change before going out again to dine and dance. She had a lovely war! The only thorns in her bed of roses were her fears for the safety of her twin brother, Ken, and her two elder brothers, Tom and Arnold, all of whom were with the Expeditionary Force in France and all of whom came safely through the war years; though Tom, her favourite, was destined to be tragically killed in an accident at Singapore while on his way home to North China to join his wife and baby son in Tientsin.

Tacklow still accompanied her to these dinner-parties and, after seeing that her dance programme was full, came home and went to bed. He spoilt her outrageously. Even on his own birthday his presents always included one from himself to himself which invariably turned out to be something for which he found (with surprise) he had no use, and therefore passed on to Mother: such things as silk stockings, scent, some small piece of jewellery or a box of chocolates tied up with a satin ribbon. My chief memory of her during my childhood in India was of her rushing in to say good-night to us before going out to a party, looking perfectly beautiful in a shimmering ball-dress and smelling divinely of a special scent that was Tacklow's favourite and that I never came across on anyone else. It was called
Le Trefel Incarnat
by L. T. Piver of Paris, and everything she possessed smelt of it: her clothes, her furs, her gloves and her evening bags, her luggage, every drawer in her dressing-table and chest of drawers, her cupboards and her bedroom. In later years I had only to close my eyes and sniff a handkerchief or a glove of hers and she was there in person, sparkling and laughing, conjured up like the genie of Aladdin's lamp by the ghost of a scent that L. T. Piver, if they still exist, stopped making a very long time ago.

I used to think how beautiful she was. And how full of laughter. Tacklow, unfamiliar in a dinner-jacket or looking uncomfortable in a stiff shirt, white tie and tails, would escort her to those parties if he came back from the office early enough to do so. And when he didn't, some mutual friend would stand in for him: Buckie or Bunting; Sir Charles or Ronnie Graham-Murray; Harley Alec-Tweedie; Lord Clow or Monty Ashley-Phillips … Nowadays their names seem to read like a roster of P. G. Wodehouse's famous Club, ‘The Drones'! There was
never any shortage of escorts and we liked them all — with one exception. The exception was Lord Clow; the ‘Lord' being a nickname that someone had bestowed upon him and that had stuck. I don't know how he came by it, for as far as I can remember he was a mere Captain — and not ‘Captain the Lord Clow' either! A lordly sort of fellow, perhaps? He was certainly a devastatingly handsome one, and he put himself out to be pleasant to Bets and myself. But neither of us could stand him, and I can only suppose that of all Mother's beaux he may have been the only one she was in danger of taking seriously, and that we sensed this and were jealous — or even afraid? I don't know. I only know that he was far too attractive and good-looking to be true, and that we could not endure him.

We liked all the others though, even the good-looking ones like Bunting and Harley, and some whose names I have forgotten and whom even Mother no longer remembers when I show her snapshots of them. She only frowns and looks on the back to see if there is a name there and then shakes her head and says: ‘Yes, I do remember him; he used to make me laugh; but I've no idea who he was … Henry someone? Or was it Peter: no, Peter had a moustache — or am I thinking of Alan?' She gives up. Tacklow took all her admirers in his stride, and appears to have had no qualms about leaving her to dance the nights away and be brought home in the small hours by one or other of them. He probably trusted to her mission upbringing to keep her from straying; and in any case he needed his sleep and could not lie in as late as she could of a morning. As, for instance, she did on a certain January night when she stayed dancing into the small hours at the Bachelors' Ball — a yearly fancy-dress affair held by custom at the Old Delhi Club — and, returning to her sleeping husband at around 4.30 a.m., crawled thankfully into bed and thrust her toes down into an ice-cold and sopping wet patch instead of the warm hot-water bottle she had expected. Throwing back her bedclothes with a shriek she leapt out; to find that her hot-water bottle having developed a leak, our faithful Punj-ayah, discovering this, had carefully sewn up the slit in the rubber with a needle and cotton before stowing it away in the bed.

Apart from the weekend picnics and expeditions with our parents, there were always other parents who took their children and their
children's friends out for picnics. Buckie, for one, could be counted upon to take a party of us out to Okhla at least once a month. His parties were regarded as great treats because he had three hard-and-fast rules: no parents, no nannies, no ayahs. Just himself and his driver (there were few owner-drivers in those days, Mother being a rare exception) and a selected band of children. He stood no nonsense from any of us, and any child who misbehaved or made a nuisance of itself was never asked again.