I woke the chowkidar (who naturally had slept throughout) and he took the trap and its captive away and went off to rouse some of his friends to patrol the approaches to the lower wing of the hotel. A day or two later a dog belonging to one of the hotel guests was taken by a leopard – presumably the one I had seen – and the bereaved owner organized a beat and succeeded in shooting the creature. But though I saw its body lying dead in a clearing on the edge of the forest, I never again slept with my windows wide and my door open while I was in Ranikhet. For an old shikari, who had helped set up the beat, told me a hair-raising story about a man-eating leopard which, in the years immediately following the end of the Great War, had terrorized a large part of the Gharwal and Kumaon districts, and according to Government records had been responsible for the deaths of a hundred and twenty-five people.
According to the shikari, the correct total was far larger than that, a verdict that was supported some years later when ‘Carpet-Sahib’, Colonel J. E. Corbett – the Jim Corbett who wrote a marvellous series of tiger books and gave the entire proceeds of the first one, Man-eaters of Kumaon, to St Dunstan’s1 – came up with a riveting book called The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag. That book was first published in India in 1947, and I assure you that although at the time I read it I was nowhere near the hill-country in which that leopard had operated, when night fell I looked under the bed and in the cupboard and behind the curtains of my bedroom, to make sure that there were no leopards lurking there before I went to bed! It’s that sort of book.
I remembered that night in Ranikhet when, a year later, I began to write a whodunnit set in Kashmir, eventually published as Death Walks in Kashmir and republished a long while later as Death in Kashmir. I started it with a girl being woken up on a moonlit night by a small monotonous sound that gets her out of bed to investigate. And when I finally came to write a Mutiny novel2 I remembered the way that leopard’s eyes had caught the moonlight and gleamed like a pair of green moons, and I put that in too – together with a host of other memories.
* * *
I don’t remember when, in the course of that summer, Lady Haigh wrote to invite me over to Naini Tal to spend a week at Government House, and whether it was before or after I became a blonde. I think it was probably after, and that I must have been a bit worried about her writing to Mother to break the news, because I wasn’t all that anxious to accept, and might even have invented some excuse if Jess hadn’t told me I was behaving like a fourth-former with an inferiority complex. If she was in my shoes, she’d jump at it! Bets agreed, so I refurbished my distinctly scanty wardrobe and accepted.
An ADC arrived in one of the Government House cars to fetch me, and in spite of my qualms I had a truly enjoyable stay. Naini Tal, with its lake and its yacht-club and sailing boats, was the prettiest sight, and I was charmed by the entrance to Government House with its long, winding drive through woods, banked up high on either side of the drive with masses of hydrangeas in full bloom, not the shrieking ‘deysi3-pink’ colour, but every shade of blue and mauve and lilac and that soft pinky-mauve like the best opals. And all of them with unbelievably large flower-heads – I’ve never seen such enormous ones before or since. The woods were full of them: and so was half the garden. The effect against the massed green of the trees that clothed the hillsides – for the Tal (lake) lies in a cup of the hills that rise up steeply on all but the side that looks towards the plains – was stunningly beautiful, and I fell out of the car, babbling with admiration.
I couldn’t have done anything that pleased my hostess more, for it seemed that Lady Haigh had a passion for the multi-shaded hydrangeas (she, like me, disliked the shocking-pink ones) and was responsible for those in the garden and along the drive. She had even had a small notice pinned up in all the guest-bathrooms asking male guests to give her their discarded razor blades. These, when collected, were dug in around the roots of the hydrangeas in order to put iron into the soil, since iron helps turn the flowers blue. Too much iron and they are only blue. And no iron at all produces only deysi-pink ones. Lady Haigh had obviously struck the happy medium – with the help of all those razor blades which must have provided a terrible hazard in later years to unwary gardeners.
The week I spent in ‘Naini’ was a terrific success, at least from my point of view, and I was driven back to Ranikhet in the largest of the Government House cars, with the boot and the back seat stuffed full and overflowing with hydrangeas. Dozens of them. I filled every jar and pot and even a tin tub borrowed off the proprietor, with them. And the next day I photographed them with Jess and her lovely ash-blonde hair posing in the foreground to give them point. My Box-Brownie (I think it was still the Box-Brownie) came up trumps, and the result was so good that I had a really big enlargement done of it which I tinted with special photographic paint and will include in the book so that you can see both Jess and the size of the flower heads. But not, unfortunately, the lovely opal colours.
* * *
According to the latest films of the 1930s, and such magazines as John Bull, Britannia and Eve, the Saturday Evening Post and all that lot (now long defunct), the very latest way in which women were doing their hair was to pull it all up on top of their heads and, having first curled the ends into a handful of plump sausage rolls, skewer the lot on top with half a dozen bobby-pins. This fashion apparently only worked with blondes, for though research on thirties films and magazines showed scores of starlets balancing bunches of pallid-coloured sausages on their heads, I didn’t find any girl sporting black or brown ones. Well, I was now a blonde, so why not have a stab at it?
The next time there was a Club dance to which I had been invited, I pressed Bets into service as a hairdresser’s assistant, and spent the afternoon in strict seclusion and metal hair curlers. In those days you dressed up for dances and there was never any question of ‘come as you are’. Women wore long dresses and men wore dinner-jackets and black ties, and that was that. I wore the two-piece grey evening dress that I had bought at Bourne & Hollingsworth and kept for ‘best’, and off I went to the ball.
That top-knot of bleached sausages (which I have to admit I thought was pretty hideous and would have combed out and restyled if only I had had the time) proved a wild success and gave me some of the greatest fun I had had since Tacklow died. There was never a shortage of personable young men up on leave in Ranikhet, and though the feminine section of the British holiday-makers remained more or less static, the male ranks were constantly changing, as those whose allowance of leave had run out left to go back to their regiments or their various jobs in the plains, and newcomers came up to replace them.
This turnover meant that there was always a selection of new faces to add interest to the season. But though August was more than half-way over, I had seen no one who caught my eye or caused me the slightest pang when we said goodbye. Tonight, though, when our party left the dining-room and joined the dancers in the ballroom, my attention was immediately caught by a newcomer who was standing at the far end of the room, hands in his pockets, idly surveying the dancers. He wasn’t particularly tall, though that was probably because he was standing next to a man who was tall enough to make him look short, and I don’t suppose I would have given him a second look if he hadn’t happened to be the dead-spit of Brian Aherne, a British film star whom I much admired.
Intrigued by the likeness and wondering if anyone else had noticed it, I can’t have been paying much attention to what my dancing partner was saying, for I didn’t fail to note when Jess either introduced herself or was introduced to the Aherne double, and they started chatting to each other. I did hear when my partner informed me, somewhat sulkily, that one of my curls was about to fall down: instantly abandoning the poor fellow in the middle of the ballroom floor, I fled to the ladies’ room in search of a comb and more bobby-pins. I was followed by Jess, who, seeing me leave, had hastily jettisoned her own partner4 and ran after me to tell me that a new arrival who had joined the party she was with had asked who
I was and did she know me? – if so would she please introduce me? ‘Do you know what he said about you?’ demanded Jess. ‘He said, “I’ve been watching that girl, and I have to meet her. She’s got everything!”’
Well, it may seem idiotic, but that extravagant compliment is one that I have always treasured, together with something that Roger wrote in the letter he sent me accepting the fact that I would never marry him: ‘I have always thought of you,’ he wrote, ‘as a sort of Fairy Princess…’
Only a rather podgy girl whose brother persisted in calling her ‘Fatty’ or ‘Old Piano-legs’ can truly appreciate the value of such compliments as those. Pink with pleasure, I leapt to the conclusion that it was the Brian Aherne double who wanted Jess to introduce him to me and, dealing hastily with the recalcitrant sausage, I hurried back to the ballroom walking almost visibly on air. I was brought down to earth with a dull thump when Jess walked over to me, towing a man who bore no resemblance to Brian Aherne, and announced that she would like to introduce me to a newcomer to Ranikhet: George Something-or-other, who was up on a month’s leave. It was, of course, the tall man who had been standing next to the Aherne look-alike, and they turned out to be great friends who had ‘manoeuvred together’ for some considerable time.
This was their first evening in Ranikhet.
Andrew ‘Aherne’, who was a bachelor, had fallen like a load of bricks for that ash-blonde charmer, Mrs Jess Binnie, and George, who had left his wife behind in England (or, more probably, Scotland) and was only interested in finding a temporary party and dance-partner to have fun with for the duration of his leave, found one in me. Together the four of us enjoyed an enormous amount of fun.
In the middle of all this fun and games, Jess fell ill and was removed to hospital for a few days. Andrew was inconsolable. George and I did our best to cheer him up, but he refused to be comforted and took to drink instead. I had the rest of this story from Jess, who regaled me with it when she was discharged. Andrew had visited her in hospital, bearing flowers and fruit, as did most of her friends. But this was not enough for him. Having refused to go partying with George and me, he had retired to his hotel room and got quietly sozzled, and at a late hour of night had been seized with the idea that he must say good-night to Jess.
If there hadn’t been a full moon that night he would probably have come to grief long before he reached the hospital. But it was another white night, and since among India’s many gods and godlings there is one, Bairon, who takes special care of drunks, Andrew, though sloshed to the eyebrows, arrived safely at his goal. Navigating down the long verandah on to which the doors and windows of a line of single-bed hospital rooms opened, he managed to end up outside the correct one, and our Mrs Binnie, abruptly jerked out of a healing sleep by the repetition of her name coupled with bangs on her door, realized with fury who was responsible for it, and called out to this sozzled and unwelcome Romeo, demanding that he leave at once.
‘Can you believe it?’ said Jess indignantly, recounting the scenario to me the next day. To make matters worse, her face had been plastered in cold cream and her hair had been in curlers: ‘Not the condition in which one would wish to appear before a devoted admirer – even one who’s completely plastered,’ said Jess. ‘One has one’s pride!’ I saw her point. I wouldn’t have liked the idea myself if I’d been in her shoes. However, since the lovelorn idiot continued banging on her door and yowling that he ‘only wanner shay goo-nigh to you, Jessie; only shay goo-nigh,’ and it was only a question of time before one of the hospital staff arrived hot-foot to inquire into the cause of this unseemly caterwauling, Jess nipped out of bed and, reaching the door, urged her admirer to go away at once! – ‘Well, shay goo-nigh then.’ ‘Good-night, Andrew! And now for goodness sake shut up and go away before you wake the entire hospital: please, Andrew…’
But Andrew, having decided that he wanted to say goodnight to her, was not prepared to say it to a closed door. ‘Wanna shee you Jessie … only wan’ ter shee you so I can shay goo-ni…’
Jess, by this time getting desperate, realized that unless he saw her he was probably capable of maundering on for the rest of the night – or until he was taken away and locked up. So turning the key, she opened the door a crack and said: ‘Well, you’ve seen me now. Good-night, Andrew! Now for pity’s sake shove off!’ But it was too late. The firm steps of an irate matron could be heard entering the verandah from the far end, and the next second a starched figure mounted the steps and became all too visible in the bright moonlight. Andrew waited not upon the order of his going. Giving the barely open door a violent shove, he pushed past Jess and shot across the room and under her bed with the speed of a startled rabbit, followed with equal celerity by Jess, who leapt into bed, pulled up the bedclothes and pretended to be asleep.
She had shut the door as Andrew shot past her, but had not had time to lock it, and the matron, opening it, stood in the doorway and, having allowed her steely gaze to travel over every inch of it that was visible to her (I presume she switched on the light or had a torch), asked Jess if everything was all right with her. Whereupon Jess gave up the pretence of being asleep, and sat up and said that everything was fine, thank you.
She told me that since a black bar of shadow covered that portion of the verandah on which Andrew had been standing, she thought it was just possible that the matron hadn’t seen him vanish into her room, though she was obviously highly suspicious, for she stayed in the doorway making conversation. Jess said that she thought the woman was never going to leave, and that she could willingly have strangled Andrew, who passed the time by thumping the underside of her mattress, making it very difficult for her not to jump and say ‘Ow’ every time he did it.
At long last, after raking the room with yet another searching glance, the matron left and Jess said she sat there in the darkness, holding her breath as she listened to the brisk receding footsteps. Not until she was quite sure that the coast was clear did she bang on her mattress and order Andrew, in a furious whisper, to come out at once, and get going while the going was good. Only to discover that the wretched man had fallen into a drunken slumber and was now beginning to snore. At which point she really could have murdered him and pleaded justifiable homicide. No jury, insisted Jess, would have convicted her. I don’t think she knows how she managed to drag the dear boy out from under the bed and get him on his feet again. But she managed it at last (powered, I imagine, by sheer fury) and, with a parting shove, pushed him out of the room and into the verandah – straight into the arms of the matron, who was clearly a good deal more clued-up than she had appeared to be.
Jess’s version of the episode, acted out for us later, was hilarious, though she kept on assuring us that it was all very well for us to laugh, but it hadn’t been in the least funny at the time! Possibly not. But it had us shrieking at second-hand.
* * *
The four of us would picnic in the woods, and sometimes, lying out on the warm sunny hillsides, we would discuss the latest world news and the possibility of war. Jess and I were still inclined to be reassured by that ‘peace in our time’ speech, but George and Andrew were pessimistic. They took a poor view of all these ‘scraps of paper’ that were continually being signed by diplomats and heads of state. The British had signed a defensive agreement with Turkey – and Italy had responded by signing up with Germany. Yet another Anglo-Polish pact had been signed in London by von Ribbentrop; Prime Minister Chamberlain had reaffirmed our pledge to Poland, and Germany had appalled everyone by signing one with Russia (Nazism and Communism cosying up in the same bed? It was impossible!). ‘Bits of paper,’ said George scornfully. ‘They’ll tear them up in less time than it took to write them. You’ll see!’
We celebrated my birthday with a picnic lunch in the woods and that night, with the addition of six or eight mutual friends, a dinner followed by a dance at the Club. A day or two later, invited by friends of George’s, we left Ranikhet to spend a few days at Almora as guests of the Gurkhas stationed the
re, who were celebrating a yearly Week’ in commemoration of some regimental triumph.
Almora was a small station roughly thirty miles from Ranikhet, along a narrow mountain road that winds and twists along the steep slopes of largely treeless hillsides that the sun has bleached to the uniform tint of a digestive biscuit. We were met by a Gurkha officer and put up in a large, two-storeyed wooden house that would have accommodated a far larger party and must have been the equivalent of a State guest-house. This makes me think that Almora and its surroundings must once have belonged to some small Hill Rajah, since the house was certainly far too large and rambling to be a Dâk bungalow.
The officer, having shown us to our room and told us that someone would collect us after we had had time to wash and unpack, hurried off to greet other arrivals who were apparently being put up in the houses of British officers which lay out of sight behind a curve of the hillside. Either Andrew or George (possibly both) had brought a bearer along, and this Admirable Crichton dealt with the unpacking, and chased up the skeleton staff that went with our outsize guest-house to see that cans of hot water were produced. And presently the young man who had greeted us reappeared and took us along to the cantonment proper, where we were introduced to the Colonel and his officers and their wives and the rest of their guests.
The whole cantonment was en fête and there were strings of flags and a large shamiana,5 in the shade of which the guests sat down to a resplendent tea and were given a list of all the entertainments in store. These started with a large cocktail party that evening, for which we were allowed to disperse so that we could change into evening dress. No sooner was the cocktail party over than we were all ushered in to dinner. And when that was over, there was a dance, and I’m not too sure that there wasn’t a ‘Beating the Retreat’ somewhere, for I have a fleeting memory of bagpipes playing ‘The Road to the Isles’. But my recollections of that visit to Almora are very muddled and hazy, for it had been a very long day. The four of us gave up around one o’clock, and retreated, unobserved, to our commodious guest-house.