I don’t remember where Mike and Colonel Henslow stayed — probably in Deane’s Hotel or else in a chummery with Sammy Woods and John Sykes. But we were put up by the Captain and the Bo’sun in their palatial bungalow, and the code-name of the operation was given out as ‘Let Battle Commence!’ Andy steered us up the Khyber, where our first stop was, very suitably, at something that from a distance looks surprisingly like a battleship that has come to rest on a hilltop. This is in fact Shaghai fort, which stands guard at the mouth of the pass. Its garrison stood us cold drinks and showed us all over it, pointing out the ‘Anderson Loophole’, which was the invention of our Captain, who was called upon to explain how it worked.
From there we drove up the long winding road of the historic pass, ending up at its far end at Landi Kotel, where we were stood lunch by the Khyber Rifles who were on garrison duty there. We signed our names in the guest-book in order of NBN rank, adding our rank under each name, and including a verse of the Walloping Window-blind; and I drew the crest of the NBN, that puzzled beetle, at the head of the column. And thirty-four years later — long after the North West Frontier Province had become part of a new country called Pakistan — Bets and I were invited to go up the Khyber again, and to have lunch in the mess, which happened to be garrisoned again by a detachment of the Khyber Rifles. And there, looking back in the guest-book, were the names of the NBN of joyous memory. Though, sadly, when I went there again almost two decades later, the book had gone, and every officer in the mess, including the CO, had not even been born when our light-hearted Navy wrote nonsense in the mess-book at the top of the Khyber on a day half a century earlier.
The rest of our stay in Peshawar was as much fun as the first Nageem Bagh Navy days had been. We all lunched together whenever we could, sometimes at the Club, sometimes at Deane’s Hotel or at one of the chummeries, and sometimes at Andy and Enid’s, and we spent several hilarious hours deciding on the tunes the dance band would play at Mike’s party. I still have a grubby sheet of Peshawar Club paper on which a list was scribbled down in various different hands; it includes ‘The Music Goes Round and Around’, ‘Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries’, ‘You Were Meant for Me’ and ‘I’m Looking Over a Four-leafed Clover’. Anyone remember any of these? Alas, I doubt it!
Mike struck twenty-one on the last day of October, and his party to celebrate the occasion was a wild success, though I went close to ruining it for myself by insisting on wearing that pink beaded shift and coat. Apart from weighing a ton and being much too hot, it must have made me look exactly like Miss Piggy in one of her flashier outfits, something that I only realized when I caught sight of myself in one of the long looking-glasses in the ladies’ cloakroom of the Peshawar Club. I had entered the room among a group of girls, and was not aware of the glass until, turning suddenly, I caught a glimpse of myself and thought, ‘Golly! That woman looks exactly like a raw sausage that’s been rolled in the Christmas tree glitter!’ And then suddenly realized that it was me! That was one of life’s darker moments. But even that salutary shock did not spoil my evening for me. For I had been the guest of honour at the dinner party before the ball, and Mike, who by that time had drunk a good deal of champagne, danced more dances with me than he should have done. We sat out several of them, and it was while we were sitting arm-in-arm in a secluded corner of that shadowy, lantern-lit garden that he suddenly asked me if I would consider marrying him. He had, he said, hinted at this on several occasions, but hadn’t had a positive reaction from me, and he hadn’t spoken out because he was still only a minor who could be ordered about and told what he could or couldn’t do. But tonight he was his own man, and he could do exactly what he wanted to. No one could dictate to him any longer: ‘So how about it, darling — could you bear having me around for the rest of your life?’
Well, that was the rub. I was very fond of Mike and of course those hints he had made had not been unnoticed. On the contrary, I had thought about them, and him, a great deal, and though I did not want to admit it, even to myself, I could not make up my mind if I would have cared for him as much as I did if he’d been plain Mike Smith or Green or Brown. Because I had to admit that the idea of becoming a countess, and the châtelaine of two great houses, was enormously alluring. Far too alluring, for it got in the way of deciding whether the answer to his question was ‘yes’ or ‘no’. And then there was always that famous Gerald du Maurier reply: ‘I’ll be ready in five minutes — no, make it three!’
Did I feel that I could say that, without hesitation, to darling Mike? No, I couldn’t. Because I would love to be a countess! — not because I would love to be his wife. And then there was still the matter of age: I was older than he was. I don’t know why that pressed so hard on my conscience, because after all, it was only a matter of weeks. But a girl of twenty-one feels well and truly adult, while a boy of the same age is still only a boy … I would be regarded not only as a gold-digger, but as a cradle-snatcher. It was all very difficult, because if he had been the ‘Mr Right’ — that legendary knight-on-a-white-horse whom too many girls in my generation had been brought up to believe in, surely I would recognize him as the only man in the world for me, instead of dithering like this?
Half of me — no, let’s be honest, three-quarters of me wanted to shout: ‘Yippee! I’ve pulled it off! The glass slipper fits me, and I’m going to be a countess — a countess — a countess … Wow!’ But the remaining quarter of me was the daughter of that painfully honest man Tacklow — who I don’t believe ever told a lie in his life — and a granddaughter of the Dadski who, happily launched on a successful career as an Edinburgh architect, had given it all up and gone off to become an impecunious missionary in China, because he believed that God had spoken to him ordering him to do so.
Lastly, but it counted for a lot, I knew very well that Mike had had too much to drink, and I was not going to land him in the sort of mess that Bill had only just escaped from. So, adding it all up, I fell back on the reply that seems to have been popular with Victorian misses who weren’t sure of their own minds: the ‘Oh, but Mr Lambswool, this is so sudden!’ gambit. I asked for a bit more time to think it over, because ‘such an idea had never entered my mind’ — which was a black lie if there ever was one! Whereupon Mike suggested that I start thinking about it at once, and we exchanged a fervent embrace, which left a sprinkling of beads on the breast of his dinner-jacket and did no good at all to my lipstick, and went back arm-in-arm into the ballroom singing ‘Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries’ at the tops of our voices.
* Our crest was a water-beetle.
* The exception being Nasim Bagh — the Garden of the Breezes — one of the most imaginative gardens ever made, which was destroyed by the Indian Army, who replaced it with a barracks and a few tatty flowerbeds and gravel paths encircling a small, tin-roofed bandstand. Ugh!
Chapter 25
The party ended with bacon and eggs and black coffee around four o’clock, and a day or two after that we left Peshawar in the dawn, bound for Sialkot, where we all had breakfast in the Sialkot Dâk-bungalow and, after an affecting farewell and a lot of uproarious NBN-ing, parted with the Andersons and a couple of Able Seamen, who had accompanied us as far as Sialkot in order to give us a really good send-off. That done, we drove on to Lahore taking Mike and Colonel Henslow with us. These two were unexpected eleventh-hour additions to our party, for they had meant to stay on in Peshawar until the end of the month. But as Mike said, ‘We’ve had a lovely run for our money, but we’ll only spoil it if we try and keep it up too long. Besides, Andy and the rest of them up here have got to stop playing and get back to work, and Sir Cecil and you lot have to leave for Delhi. The Colonel and I are the only ones who haven’t got to go to any given part of the country, and I’d like to see Delhi. Would you mind very much if we came with you?’
Put like that, Tacklow could hardly refuse, but there was one snag. We had been invited by a long-time friend of my father’s, Sir Geoffrey de Montmorency, then Governor of the Pun
jab, to break our journey from Peshawar to Delhi by spending a few days with him at Government House. The idea of having to drop off Mike and the Colonel in some hotel in Lahore while we swanned off to spend the next few days in gilded comfort at Government House seemed a bit unfriendly, and when that sudden request to go south with us was made on our last-but-one day in Peshawar, Andy had suggested that we ring up G-H Lahore and ask if we could bring a couple of guests with us.
After all, argued Andy, those gilded caravanserais were large enough to put up an army, and more than half their job consisted of putting up VIPs by the dozen, at short notice. So why not offer them these two? So we did. We rang up Government House and asked for the ADCs’ room, where the phone was answered by that long-time friend of our family’s, Sandy Napier. Sandy replied with the greatest cordiality that of course we could bring Lord Aylesford and Colonel Henslow with us. Plus the entire House of Lords as well if we so wished; the more the merrier, and he would fix it. What did we think that ADCs did for a living? — Or words to that effect.
So thanks to Andy we set off gaily for the capital city of the Punjab, where we received a rapturous welcome from Sandy and Jimmy Maynard, the other ADC. Later on, when he was free to greet us (since despite all the flippancy from Andy and the ADCs, Governors of Provinces worked hard and long), there was a distinctly less enthusiastic one from Sir Geoffrey when he realized that the elderly man whose hand he was shaking was not the unknown VIP he had automatically agreed to put up, but the youth beside him, who looked young enough to be this Colonel fellow’s grandson! For we had entirely forgotten, in that exchange of light-hearted badinage on the telephone, to give Sandy any idea of the age of the prospective VIP, and either he, or Jimmy Maynard, had picked up an ancient and long out-of-date copy of Burke’s Peerage when checking on Mike’s name, and decided in consequence that Mike would be an elderly greybeard with at least one bedsock in the grave.
Well, you wouldn’t have thought that mattered very much, would you? Neither would I. Though I was to learn better; because it seemed to have offended against that Great Panjandrum, St Protocol, who in the days of the Raj was a very Big Pot indeed. Even Indian princes who ruled over vast tracts of country and possessed riches beyond the dreams of western avarice bowed to it; scheming and plotting to get a greater number of ‘guns’ to add to the total of those fired in their honour when they went visiting the Viceroy or some Governor of a Province, or on various state occasions. An extra gun, which was in the gift of the Government, could be used as a bribe or a reward, and its power was enormous, while deadly feuds between memsahibs who considered they ought to have been placed higher at a dinner table than some other memsahib whose husband’s rank was lower than her own were all too common. Even elderly women were not above jostling each other in order to pass through a door first — or merely go ahead of someone else. It was unbelievable. Yet it happened. This was the first time I had seen it in action. But not, unfortunately, the last.
Since Government House never used handwritten or typed lists of guests, the order in which diners would be seated, and the daily bulletins that chronicled the arrival and departure of guests, were always printed; and as there happened to be a fairly large dinner party on the night of our arrival, and it was now too late to alter the guest list, the name of the Earl of Aylesford, who outranked every other guest apart from H. E. the Governor (who represented the Viceroy, who represented the King — I hope you are still with me?) had been partnered at the table by Her Excellency the Lady Governess, with the next most senior lady — a stout and bespectacled dame who had the misfortune to be slightly deaf — on his other side.
I don’t know which of the two was the more surprised to find themselves seated next to a stripling who could not possibly have been less than half a century younger than either of them. Mike, however, took the situation in his stride, behaving as though he were a favourite nephew talking to a couple of elderly aunts with whom he was on the best of terms. I remember thinking that he must have learned how to chat up old ladies from having to cope with a difficult grandmother (he had!). But it did not occur to me until some time later that his old dragon of a grandmother must, in her prime, have been the notoriously flighty Lady Aylesford, who had caught the roving eye and, for a time, the heart of that portly, naughty old rip, King Edward the Seventh of rollicking memory. No wonder Mike was good at chatting up old ladies!
Our host, on the other hand, was deeply disapproving. Though I don’t see why, because, after all, the sacred rules of Protocol had not been broken. But for some reason Sir Geoffrey thought that he ought to have been informed earlier that this VIP whom he had been landed with was a young thing only just turned twenty-one. He was extremely starched and stuffy about it, and Sandy and James were hauled up before him next morning and told off in the crispest terms.
I don’t remember anything much more about that particular stay at Government House, except the sight of Lady de M. sweeping into breakfast on what appeared to be a tidal wave of dogs. It seems that Her Excellency had a passion for small dogs, not shared, I gather, with her husband or the staff, and regarded with horror by her unwary guests, who having sprung to their feet on the arrival of the Lady and her pack, frequently found themselves treading on small bits of hair and fur that barked shrilly and nipped at their defenceless ankles. We were also privileged to snatch a glimpse of Her Ex. and the pack driving through the Mall one morning in what looked like a very elderly Daimler, with its hood down. Her Ex. was seated regally on the back seat, literally surrounded by her canine friends: dogs to the left of her, dogs to the right of her, plus an overflow of dogs on the folded roof of the car; all of them yapping in chorus. A dignified Indian equerry sat in front beside the driver, both in the household uniform, and there was also an ayah somewhere; which means that the Daimler must have had a couple of extra flap seats, as in London taxis.
Her Excellency, recognizing us, waved her parasol in an affable salute, and in doing so managed to dislodge one of the pack — a Peke, if memory serves — which fell into the road, landed, fortunately, on its feet, and chased after the car, shrieking at the top of its yap. Apprised of its fall by the helpful yells of sundry pedestrians, Her Ex. ordered the car to stop, and the beautifully uniformed equerry, still managing to look dignified, ran back and collected the creature. Her Ex. waved a gracious hand at the crowd (which in India can be counted upon to collect on the instant to stare at the slightest deviation from the normal) and, the Peke having been restored to its fellows, the car moved on in a cloud of dust and a shrill chorus of yapping. Mike subsided abruptly on the edge of the pavement, put his head in his hands and laughed himself silly, explaining, between hiccups, that now he had seen everything!
Back in Delhi we settled into Number eighty-over-one, The Mall, a small, white, flat-roofed house which had been built as a more permanent shelter than the sea of tents set up on the plain outside Old Delhi for the guests attending the Great Durbar of 1903. Tacklow, who had work to do in Delhi on behalf of Tonk, had hired 80/1 for a few weeks. Then, to the inexpressible joy of Bets and myself, we would be setting off on a trip down the Ganges by river-boat from Gurrmuktasa, to that dearly loved haunt of our childhood, Narora, at the head of the Ganges Canal.
It was Mike who had been responsible for this. He had been leafing one day through one of Mother’s enormous collection of photograph albums (she was a compulsive album keeper) and had come across one that contained photographs of one of the Ganges trips that she and Tacklow and some of their friends used to take every year — camping each night at a different spot, and shooting for the pot. The photographs had fascinated Mike, and after seeing them he had badgered Colonel Henslow to persuade Tacklow into arranging a similar trip, and taking them with him. The Colonel had done his best, but Tacklow had been evasive, and I don’t think he would have agreed if I hadn’t gone to him with my problems the day after Mike’s coming-of-age party and asked for his advice.
He listened to me thoughtfully, and when I ha
d finished he looked at me over the top of his spectacles with what I used to think of as his ‘Mr Bennet’ look and said, ‘You seem to have thought it all out fairly clearly for yourself, darling. So what do you want me to say? Socially and financially, young Mike would be what my generation would have called a “catch”, and your mother would probably be the envy of all her friends who have marriageable daughters. He is also a very nice child and he has charming manners. I like him. But he’s a Peter Pan. He hasn’t really grown up yet, and I’d say that he’s still too young to be thinking seriously of marrying and settling down — because one can’t even make a guess yet at what sort of person he will become when he does grow up. I’m not going to make up your mind for you, because that is something you’ve got to do for yourself. But give it time, darling. And until you have made up your mind, one way or the other, my advice to you is to say nothing of all this to anyone else: not to your sister, or any of your girlfriends. Not even to your mother — in fact specially not to your mother, because she’s going to be so disappointed if nothing comes of this, and I won’t have her upset. Remember your Uncle Remus’* — ‘Tar-baby ain’t sayin’ nuthin’ and Br’er Fox he lay low’. You do both, my Mouse!’
That last was good advice, and I took it to heart. I also saw exactly what he meant by saying Mike was still Peter Pan. But then that was one of the things that made him so lovable, and the less sensible half of me decided obstinately that until he chose to grow out of it, I would be Wendy to his Peter — and to heck with being too old for the role! All the same, I still wavered, and the next time he brought up the subject of marriage — and I have to admit that he did not exactly ply me with proposals (merely mentioning the subject now and again and not appearing unduly disappointed when I continued to prevaricate) — I told him that since arrangements for the Ganges trip had now been fixed up, and we would be seeing each other daily and hourly for over ten days on end, I could safely promise that he would have an answer on the last day of the trip. To which he replied lightly, ‘Oh, good! I shall keep you to it …’ and went on to talk cheerfully about something else.