There was no more trouble with bed-bugs, and for the remainder of that season my parents slept comfortably on the reassembled bed. But we had not finished with plagues. The Red House still had something up its sleeve. Mice.
Well, I don’t mind mice. (My nickname in the family has always been ‘Mouse’, because the first of many animals that I pretended to be for the amusement of Bets when she was small was a mouse. An unsuitable choice for someone of my size, I can’t help thinking.) But not a plague of mice; and certainly not when tangled in your hair.
I woke up one night to feel something tugging wildly at my hair, which in those days fell below my waist, and which I used to brush out and leave loose for the night. Something was pulling at it — which is not a nice way of being woken up in the small hours. I sat bolt upright and realized in the same instant that something alive and frantic was caught up in my hair. With a shriek of panic I groped wildly for the switch of my bedside light, and pressing it down, found a mouse inextricably tangled up in my hair — and a good deal more upset about it than I was.
It took me a good two minutes — shrieking all the while — to get rid of that wretched mouse. Bets and my parents all erupted into my room, demanding loudly what on earth I was yelling about. I was not pleased that they all three fell about laughing when they discovered that my assailant was a minute rodent who, complete with quite a lot of my hair which I had torn out with it, escaped and fled out of the room like a streak of light.
I took a dim view of the whole affair, and refused to go to sleep again without every light in the room being left burning which, of course, meant shutting the windows, as the light attracted a horde of night-flying moths, beetles and creatures of every size and description, including a bat or two. Next morning, though it was too early in the year for mosquito nets, Kadera unpacked one and put it up for me, and Tacklow went shopping and returned with a couple of mousetraps.
I don’t remember why we were entertaining a large party of friends on that particular weekend. But as Bill was there, I presume he and a few friends of his had driven up from Rawalpindi for a weekend and we had decided to throw a party. All I can remember is that we were putting up so many of the guests for the night that the upper verandah was turned into a dormitory for the boys, who bedded down on a long row of bistras, while Bets’s bedroom and mine, as well as the spare bedroom, were packed with camp-beds for the girls. We laid on a buffet supper on the lower verandah, and, having cleared the drawing-room of furniture, rolled back the carpet and danced to the gramophone until well after midnight.
It must have been at least two o’clock in the morning by the time the Srinagar-based guests left, and everyone was safely in bed with all the house-lights out and the first gentle snores beginning to break the night silence. Mine had been the last light to go out, because I have to read for a time before I can go to sleep, and for a few minutes afterwards, not more than three or four, I lay awake in the darkness wondering which of our guests was the one snoring. I was just beginning to get drowsy when from the other side of the room came a short, sharp bang! like the report of an airgun, and I shot up in bed, jerked out of sleepiness and suddenly wide awake again, realizing almost at once that the mousetrap Tacklow had set that evening had been sprung.
I switched on my bedside light again and confirmed this, but though the mouse had been killed instantly — it was one of those old-fashioned spring-traps that back in the twenties could be bought for ninepence and worked a treat provided you could set it without catching your fingers in it — I had no intention of letting the victim’s body lie there all night. This was not, I’m afraid, because I quailed at the idea of spending the night with a dead mouse in the room. It wasn’t a question of sensitivity, but plain sense. The place obviously swarmed with mice, and if we hoped to get rid of them with the aid of traps it seemed to me a mistake to let the intended victims have a good look at what had happened to their late comrade, and get the idea that it would be advisable to keep away from this peculiar bit of wire and wood, regardless of the alluring lump of cheese. After all, even mice must have some sense.
But I was not going to remove the corpse and re-set the trap myself, because I wasn’t all that sure how it was done, though I had watched Tacklow set it last evening, and noted the painful crack he got across his thumbnail when he set it off by mistake. I therefore rose and routed out my brother Bill — waking up most of the boys’ dormitory in the process and pin-pointing the snorer as Tony Weldon. Bill was not particularly pleased at being roused to remove a dead mouse and re-set the mousetrap, but he did it all the same, and I gave him a minute or two to get back to his camp-bed before snapping off my light. Roughly ten seconds later, bang! went the trap again. We had caught another. Bill stumbled back, yawning, removed mouse and set trap, and he had barely made it back again when there was another bang and a third mouse had handed in its dinner-pail.
This time Bill was even less pleased at being called up to deal with the departed, but his friends from Rawalpindi chose to think it was hilarious, and by the time the fourth mouse met its end, they were rolling about with laughter and making such a noise that they succeeded in waking Tacklow and Mother, as well as Bets and the girls who were the inmates of the spare bedroom. A fifth mouse bit the dust in record time, but Tacklow, viewing the bodies, declared that this had gone on quite long enough, and would have confiscated the trap if he had not been implored by the verandah dormitory to let it be set for one more time — it seemed that there had been a bit of spirited betting as to whether the trap would make it half a dozen, and money had already changed hands. ‘Oh, all right,’ said Tacklow. ‘But this is the last time tonight. If it catches a sixth, just let it lie there until morning. No more getting out of bed or turning the lights on, or none of us will ever get any sleep. That’s an order!’ With which he stumped off, turning off lights as he went, and we all went back to bed.
This time there was a long interval of silence, long enough for most people to start drifting off into sleep. Either we had caught the lot, or all the lights and the talk and laughter, and the arrival of my parents, had scared the remaining mice back to their holes. I, for one, had definitely dropped off to sleep when the now familiar bang! of the trap woke me. But this time it was followed by an appalling racket that woke everyone; a banging and a clattering that sounded as though a collection of tin cans was being kicked around the floor. Lights sprang up again, and Tacklow and everyone else in the house came charging in to see who had fallen over what, while I stood up on my bed and yelled — adding to the general clamour.
For it wasn’t a mouse. It was a rat that had been lured by the smell of cheese and, having somehow managed to get its tail caught by the trap, was tearing frantically round the room, leaping into the air, squeaking and throwing itself about in a frenzied manner as it tried to shake off this horrible thing that was holding on to its tail like grim death. This time the racket reached the servants’ quarters, and Kadera arrived at the double carrying a lathi, with which he killed the rat with speed and efficiency. We did not set the trap again that night, and I don’t remember how we eventually dealt with the showers of mice; no more traps were set in my room but I refused to sleep without my mosquito-net.
Kadera suggested that the problem would best be solved by acquiring a cat, but though this would have been the obvious thing to do, there was Pozlo to be considered. He was still no bigger than a ping-pong ball, and we kept his wings clipped so that he could flutter up from the floor to the back of an armchair, or down from a chimney-piece, but would never have escaped from a cat. We also turned down the idea of poison for the same reason. Pozlo might pick it up. And we would rather put up with any number of mice than risk losing Pozlo, who really was a most endearing creature. He and I used to spend a lot of time in the morning-room at the back of the house, where there was a window-seat from which I could look out down the slopes of the apple orchard to Gagribel Point and the lake, and write letters, or draw, or read without constant inter
ruptions.
I must have spent hours there, either writing long, frivolous letters to Helen or Bargie, or curled up with an apple and a novel. Or, when the fit took me, with a drawing-board propped up against my knees supporting a sketchbook or a painting block, industriously working away at some picture that, with luck, would prove saleable at the Srinagar Club’s next art exhibition. And while I wrote, read or drew, Pozlo would push into the neck of my dress and, taking a firm hold on one of the straps on my bra, fluff up his feathers and go to sleep; I think he preferred to sleep in the dark, and felt safer under cover. He did not always keep silent in there; sometimes, safely hidden inside my dress, he would feel chatty and we would carry on a long conversation — Pozlo in exactly the same low, gossipy, confidential tones that his fellow purple-headed parakeets used when discussing life with each other in a tree. Sleeping or waking, he hated to be disturbed, and should anyone come into the room while he was taking a nap or talking, he would start growling. It was a very small growl, but totally un-birdlike; a low, cross sound that was definitely a warning, and if the intruder stayed too long he would unhook himself from the bra strap and stick his head out to see who it was. If it was only a member of the family, or Kadera or Mahdoo, he would withdraw again. But if it was a stranger he would stay staring at them in a marked manner and continuing to growl until they left.
He really was the most intelligent and endearing bird, and a constant source of entertainment. And I still cherish the memory of his reaction on seeing me walk into my bedroom with my head tied up in a towel, having just been washing my hair. He had been promenading among the photographs and knick-knacks on the chimney-piece, and not recognizing me with this vast white turban on my head, he uttered a startled shriek and fell off backwards on to the floor.
But he was not really my bird, for like every other creature that we had ever possessed, furred or feathered, his ‘heart belonged to Daddy’. Tacklow was another Dr Doolittle where the animal kingdom was concerned, and all our pets fell for him on sight. Pozlo adored him, and if Tacklow happened to be around, he was the one whom Pozlo would go to. If you put him on the ground in a room full of people he would stand there, looking around him until he spotted Tacklow, and would then make a beeline for him and climb up him, beak-over-claw, until he reached his shoulder, where he would nibble gently at Tacklow’s ear and murmur a few loving remarks into it before fluffing himself up and settling down to stay there until removed.
No one could have resisted such enchanting declarations of affection, and Tacklow returned it in such full measure that we soon found that we could hardly ever persuade him to accept any invitation that would prevent him from taking Pozlo out for his evening constitutional, a daily outing that never varied. Tacklow, with Pozlo riding on his shoulder, would walk down to the far end of the big lawn, which ended in a grassy bank that sloped sharply down to the orchard. There was a huge and very old apple tree that grew near the top of the bank, its lower branches leaning down over the slope, and when they got there Tacklow would reach up until his fingers touched a branch and Pozlo would scuttle up his arm and on to the tree, climbing up it, in places with the aid of his stumpy wings and in others with his beak, until he reached the very top of the very highest bough, where, clinging on with those scratchy little claws, he would flap his wings madly, as though he were about to take off, and shout and cheer at the top of his voice, in the hope — so Tacklow insisted — that some of his own kind would hear him and answer. But, sadly for him, there are no parakeets in Kashmir.
Having finished his exercises, Pozlo would spend a happy half-hour exploring; fluttering from bough to bough, nibbling at fruit buds and, later on, apples, keeping up a long conversation with himself or calling down to Tacklow, who sat on the bank below and smoked his pipe. When he thought that the evening’s outing had lasted long enough, he would whistle to Pozlo, who would come tearing down at top speed, jump into Tacklow’s raised hand and so down his arm to his shoulder, where, as always, he would give a loving nibble to Tacklow’s ear as the two of them went back to the house. This performance was repeated daily, and it never varied.
* Pronounced merg. Gul rhymes with ‘pull’. The accent is on merg.
* The Nedous owned two hotels, one in Srinagar and one in Gulmarg.
* Pronounced pile-garm.
Chapter 15
That first season in Kashmir was a lot of fun. Bets got co-opted to perform in a charity song-and-dance show at Nedou’s Hotel, as a member of the chorus in several numbers and solo in another two. Nedou’s was equipped with a proper stage, complete with footlights and spotlights, heavy crimson curtains and dressing-rooms (normally the ladies’ cloakroom). The Srinagar season always included a number of cabarets and revues, and this particular song-and-dance show was put on by Helen Don, an ex-schoolmate of ours who as a child had been one of the shining lights of our dancing classes at the Lawn, with ambitions to become a professional. She had evidently not thought much of my efforts as a high kicker, or else she considered that my legs were not up to standard, for I was not invited to join her six-girl chorus-line consisting of herself and Bets, the Jenn sisters, Meg Macnamara and a girl called Noreen Bott,* all in the shortest of short skirts and wearing tap shoes (see photograph, if I can find it). The talented Miss Don designed their costumes, and Bets and I designed the ones for Bets’s solo dances.
In the days of the Raj the Sahib-log who served in India had to make their own amusements, and since there were only a handful of theatres for touring companies to appear in — and even fewer companies who were prepared to face the hazards and discomforts of touring in the East — amateur theatricals flourished like bay trees. Almost every hall in every British Club was provided with a small stage and a pair of curtains, and there was always a pool of amateur talent to call upon. Everyone seemed to think they could act, and one or two of them actually could; Sylvia Coleridge among them. We designed our own costumes, which our darzis made up for us out of the materials bought in the bazaar for the most modest of sums. Who can ever forget those piled bales of Bokhara silk? Lovely, shimmering stuff like heavy taffeta, in every conceivable shade of every colour you can think of, ‘shot’ or plain, and selling for eight annas a yard. That’s about sixpence, and I well remember the shock and lamentation when somewhere around the early thirties it rose to one rupee! I don’t know if it’s even made now; it was very much a ‘fancy-dress dance’ type of material, for if you spilt water or any liquid on it, all the colour came out, leaving you with a whitish blot surrounded by a dark ring. You couldn’t wash it, and dry-cleaning, which was in its infancy then, did it no good at all. But for anything in the nature of theatricals it was spectacular.
Simla, when Tacklow first went there in Edwardian days, had topped the list of social hill-stations in India — but, as some latter-day Mrs Hauksbee was to remark acidly, it was a place where you ‘couldn’t sleep at night for the grinding of axes’. To the British, Kashmir, as a semi-independent native state, owned and ruled by its Maharajah, was a holiday playground where you could go camping or trekking, dance every night, play tennis, golf or polo, go fishing for trout in its rivers, shoot chikor on the hillsides and bear in the forests, stalk markor in the high mountains, and ski in the winter. If you were a painter, you could sit down almost anywhere and be sure of at least four wonderful views to paint — the one in front of you, the one on your left and the one on your right, and, by turning round, the one behind you. And for the benefit of would-be artists, the Srinagar Club held two art exhibitions a year, and up in Gulmarg, the Club there held another one. British and Indians alike flocked up in their hundreds.
Mother had always dabbled in watercolours, and since the art exhibitions consisted entirely of paintings by amateurs, she decided that she, Bets and I should all send in a few pictures to one of the exhibitions that year and try our luck.
I don’t remember what my family’s entries were, or if they sold any of them, but I remember what mine were. Realizing that ninety-nine p
er cent of the entries would be sketches of Kashmir, I decided to try something different and sent in a small line-and-wash drawing that I called ‘Madonna of the Cherry Trees’, and an illustrated verse for a child’s bedroom or a guest-room, which incorporated a couple of guardian angels, neither of whom can have been keeping an eye on the job, since they were both sound asleep. The whole thing was very much in the style of Margaret Tarrant and the verse was by that well-known poet, Anon. Even after all these years I still remember every line of it; and remember, too, that I sold both those pictures within minutes of the exhibition being declared open.
Since these were the first pictures I had ever sold, I was not so much thrilled as relieved: I was a wage-earner! And if I could sell my pictures, I could make my own pocket-money and earn my own keep, and so relieve poor, darling Tacklow of some of the burden of supporting his family; something that I was aware pressed heavily on him. It would soon press even more heavily, once he had completed the task that the Government of India had called him back to do and was again living on a very small pension — now smaller than ever because he had commuted a portion of it to bring Mother, Bets and myself out with him.