Out of India (16 page)

After an unpleasant expanse of time I was allowed off. I never did get used to it. On every occasion I fell trembling from the high horse-back into tough Indian hands.

Afterwards, the ground once more stable under foot, our instructor used to take us to his quarters for light refreshment. Gravely, the risaldar-major ushered us under a low lintel into a small compound surrounded by a mud wall. His wife was waiting to greet us, smiling and salaaming. She was in Punjabi dress, a long tunic and light silky pantaloons nipped in at the ankles. Her hair, raven-black with a few streaks of grey, was loosely gathered at the nape of her neck, and she had a little gold stud in the side of her nose. As she moved her hands, bangles tinkled. She spoke not a word of English, but the lean of the shoulders and the spread of the arms expressed welcome and conviviality. We all settled on the cloth placed on the ground, my brother and I awkwardly, the risaldar-major and his wife with graceful ease. Between us were plates with small eats and titbits, and thick glass tumblers. We nibbled flaky pastries and small soggy balls so sweet that they made the teeth ache. We were offered weak tea without milk, or fresh fruit juice.

There was much gesturing towards food but not much was said, we being almost silent out of nerves and embarrassment, the soldier out of dignity, and his wife for lack of English. I looked at her covertly, as much as I dared without open rudeness. In the midst of a winning smile was a mouthful of bad teeth. But taking note of her from her neat toes to her thick luxuriant hair, sensing the warmth from the tawny brown skin, losing myself with blushes in the impenetrable deep of her dark eyes, hearing the small music of her bangles and the slithery rustle of her clothes, I thought I had never come across anything so beautiful.

*

The dog took up most of the space on the narrow seat. It was a muscular bull-terrier, brindle in colour, with the eerie pinkish eyes of the breed and an affection for humans. It liked to nuzzle up close, even to strangers,
shoving a powerful shoulder into the back of the nearest leg, and any unoccupied lap soon found itself a pillow for a blunt head with a look of loopy devotion. At this moment, the head was in my lap and the compact body was lolling at ease along the seat, cramping me into a corner, against the shudders of the window. A thin dribble from between a set of wicked teeth was making a damp sticky patch on my shorts.

The dog, which belonged to one of my father’s fellow officers in Ferozepore, had been pining in the heat of the plains. For this reason it was seconded into our family and was travelling with my mother, my brother and myself on the narrow-gauge railway between Kalka and Simla. We were all promised the relief of the hill station, the luxury of a Himalayan view together with warm days and cool nights at 7,000 feet.

A visit to Simla was almost as good as a passage home. For the members of the Raj it was a refuge, a settled place for the heart amid the ravages and indignities of their responsibility in this perplexing conquered land. Simla was entirely a British invention. In 1819 the Political Agent for the Hill States took a virgin tract of mountain and put up the first dwelling, no more than a little thatched cottage. His successor, a certain Lieutenant Kennedy, built the first permanent house. Ten years later there were still only thirty houses. But by the end of the century Simla was a sizeable town of great importance, the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, the summer seat of the Governor-General, and the summer capital of the Government of India. There, if anywhere in India, the members of the Raj could feel physically and spiritually safe.

At that altitude it was a pleasure to breathe the air. But first we had to struggle through the throng to the air. My mother, as usual, was making a meal of the complications – the dog, her children, the luggage, our destination. She
was both stern and flustered, going from frown to dither in a moment. My brother had charge of the dog, straining at its lead, its claws skittering on the floor. In the native maul that enveloped the arrival of the train, even the most hardened hustler or beggar backed away from the panting bull-terrier, with its fierce rictus of a grin, its head like an inquisitive python, and its over-friendly tail whipping bare legs. Not until we were outside, with the rickshaws arranged, did my mother relax the stiff set of her head and try a few sniffs of the mountain air. A piece of her burden, some of the eternal ambiguity of India, slipped away. Even the over-excited dog, sprinkling spittle over our shoes, received a consoling pat.

I know now that she was trying to put behind her the recent shocks of her marriage, the loss of her baby, and my father’s too enthusiastic militarism. Where better to re-compose herself than in Simla? She could begin immediately. How pleasant it was to bowl along streets that had some clear, assignable purpose, leading to shops and hotels and banks and government offices. Too much of Indian life had been a muddle to her, indescribable routes that merged into a labyrinthine maze without exits. A little mysterious exoticism did not go amiss in the East (but like spices in the native curries it could be over-done for the English palate), but at bottom she wanted clearer signposts stamped with messages from her race and place and society.

Now, here we were in the Mall, heading in the direction of Viceregal Lodge, going to an hotel that lay under Observatory Hill. What could be more reassuring than that? Behind, to the east, the tall green peak of Jakko rose up at the end of the spur, sweet-smelling with a pervasive scent of deodar cedars and pine resin. Westward from Jakko, the town rambled half a dozen lazy miles along the ridge to the bald lump of Prospect Hill. Slipping down from the ridge, on the southern slope towards the
plains, bungalows, buildings and low government blocks peeped from the trees, lying like contented beasts in the greenery. Rhododendron and hydrangea cascaded out of the woods, waiting to threaten the paths with a seasonal flood of blossom.

If you half-closed your eyes, and dreamed a little, discounting the bazaar and the evidence of humanity on the streets, you could imagine yourself in some pleasant Alpine town temporarily occupied by a transient oriental circus.

*

We had other business in Simla. My brother and I were to be put to school, to receive a proper, British education, the sort that the little cantonment school in Ferozepore could not provide. We would go to Bishop Cotton School, an institution for European boys founded in 1866 in thanks giving for the deliverance of the British from the horrors of the Mutiny in 1857. It was accepted that this school taught the real virtues appropriate to imperial responsibility.

For some reason we did not go there at once. We had an initial period, perhaps a time of trial or cramming for a level that might be beyond us, of private tuition with Miss Smythe. She seemed rather ancient to me, a relic of a departed gentility. But despite her age this kindly lady was almost too lively for her maiden dignity, in tweed skirts and cashmere knitwear, with an optimistic cast on life.

Her view of what constituted adequate knowledge in the young was rather quirky.

‘Now, boys,’ she said, sizing us up on the first visit, ‘what do you know about Harry Lauder?’

I knew nothing about the Scottish comedian, but it hardly mattered because she was already hurrying on, gesturing with a thin vivacious hand around the Victorian gloom of her little parlour. From then on she usually had a surprise question, a little time-bomb left to tick in the
wastes of our ignorance. Did we prefer rickshaws to tongas? Had we heard of trade unions? Where and what was the Taj Mahal? What was the maiden name of King George’s queen? Did we know what a
juggernaut
was? What countries did we pass on our journey from England to Bombay? What was seven times nine, and nine times twelve? Would we like some
kulfi
? Should she show us her collection of small porcelain dolls?

These and another thousand sprightly hares sprang up in her lively mind, flushed out by an invincible curiosity, and once she had raised an attractive quarry she chased it up hill and down dale, hardly caring where her investigations might lead. It was an approach to learning that enchanted me. I began to see the world as a vast kaleidoscope of iridescent facts that could be fitted into any number of patterns. With a mere turn of the head and a rearrangement of the eye the pattern changed. It was the cast of mind that was important.

It amazed me that she made no invidious distinction between British and Indian. The intertwined histories shifted unpredictably between heroes and villains, who were not quite those you would expect. Her imagination was at ease in both England and India, and she did not hesitate to draw lessons for British children from the daily life of the Indian streets. I stood in her window, my head in a whirl, trying to apply her principle of inclusiveness. From that window I looked on a large natural bowl into which was stirred pell-mell the mixture of our lives. Cars and donkeys, turbans and topees, a large church and a small
gurdwara
, scuffed earth and tarmac, banks and go-downs, a cold-water standpipe by a runnel of raw sewage, imperial soldiers and Nepalese porters, pretty dogs on leads and pariah dogs with sores. But looking at the faces in the street, white and brown and every shade in between, I could not perceive from the buzz and the activity the essential colour of the soul.

We did not stay long with Miss Smythe. I missed her, though I left more dizzy than enlightened, somewhere between sunlight and fog.

*

I had been ill with bronchitis. The cool and the damp of the hills had some disadvantages. I was confined to bed and shared my seclusion with the bull-terrier who volunteered to divide the bed with me. Growling playfully it contested my pillows and sheets, and when my mother came to read me a daily helping of Kipling (Simla and the world of Mrs Hauksbee were becoming real to me) she had to squeeze herself on the edge of the bed between sprawling paws. I grew fond of that dog.

So we were friends, the dog and I, and when the time came, after I was recovered, to take the dog for a good walk I pleaded with my brother – who was in charge – to let the dog off the lead. A fit young dog on a lead is a sorry beast. The day was warm, calm, without a sign of trouble, with few people about, so my brother agreed. We strolled with the dog at our heels – it was well-trained, up to a point – until we approached a crossroads where a smart Indian man in European clothes stood talking to a companion. Sitting at their feet was a small spaniel. As we came up the spaniel became excited, yapping and jumping, starting towards the bull-terrier but still wagging its tail. It was only a puppy and no doubt had something inquisitive and civil in mind.

But the bull-terrier, for all its fawning on humans, could not abide other dogs. If it thought itself challenged, it went for the other dog at once. The short hair between the shoulder-blades bristled, the ears went back, the brutal muzzle slit into a snarl. A low rumble reverberated in the deep chest, the thick muscles bunched. Without any preliminary, no testing or probing, it launched itself straight at the throat of the spaniel. The jaws closed and locked, the bulging legs braced, the fearful head twisted
and turned, shaking the poor spaniel like a cornered rat. There was an appalling, dangerous contentment in the growl. The bull-terrier was set for the kill.

The smart-looking Indian bawled at us to control our dog. But horrified though we were, my brother and I were helpless. No orders could penetrate that concentrated lust to kill. Then the owner of the spaniel took the chain for his own dog, which was lying uselessly over his arm, doubled it into a short length and taking both hands began to whip the bull-terrier with all his strength. The links of the chain bit into the brindled coat but to no purpose. The deadly jaws clamped the windpipe of the little dog until the life was crushed out of it and the limp body trailed like a half-discarded coat. Then the bullterrier was satisfied. It let go and lay quietly panting, registering no ill-effect from the blows of the chain. But we, the human spectators, stared at each other without comprehension, our blankness being an apology for our helplessness. After a moment or two I burst into sudden, racking sobs.

Two days later, in a soft and darkening evening, an Indian lady in a sari came into the courtyard of our hotel and called repeatedly for my mother in a voice rising hysterically. My mother came out onto the first-floor gallery that ran around the courtyard and stood clutching the rail, looking down at the lady below. My mother’s knuckles were white and she would go no further. ‘Yes, what do you want?’ she asked tentatively, though she surely knew the answer. Then into the lengthening shadows the elegant lady spewed a torrent of invective in which reasoned complaint in English for the murder of her dog was flooded out from time to time with spurts in Hindi and a confusion of barrack-room swear words. My mother was transfixed. The complaint she could understand. She had sympathy for the lady in the sari and would give her compensation. But the degree of passion
seemed crazy, excessive. It betrayed her breeding. No dog was worth such a ridiculous show. My mother had no words to reply. The naked grief and hatred left her rooted with both embarrassment and fear. Her face was ghostly pale. Hardly ever had I seen her so bereft. After a while she turned her back and went to her room, gently closing her door on cries still wailing into a darkening world.

*

Then our schooling began at Bishop Cotton, and we were not spared the full British treatment. Deprivation, sparse rations, knees raw from compulsory games, the cold sneer of authority, learning driven by the ruler or cane. In shirts and shorts of tough cotton we submitted to a discipline dutifully preserved for us by generations of God-fearing mercantilists and soldiers. It was education by duress in the old hearty manner, fruition through blood and tears. Meekly, we accepted it and even gave thanks in chapel for the privilege of our pain. Our teachers promised us that it instilled what they called ‘backbone’.

This method, laying each boy under the burden of an oppressive group-psychology, tended to make us vulgar and coarse. Under instruction we were sullen, sly, ganging together for solidarity. ‘Please, sir, it was Mullins. We saw him. Jimmy gave him a whack and then Mullins threw the ball at him. It missed and broke the window.’ Collectively we hid behind circumstantial sneaking, giving time and place. Imbued with this herd instinct we found it easier to learn by rote. Every morning a sour-faced bachelor with a persistent cough took our junior class through the multiplication tables. We stood in a small bare room ringing with voices, and the chanted repetition had something like the effect of a mantra. Eyes almost closed we swayed slightly to the simple arithmetic. In a similar manner I could catalogue, in a sing-song voice and without mistakes, all the dates of the reigns of the kings of England. Now, I still remember most of that farrago (with
some lapses), such is the force of heavy-handed imprint on a young mind. But what did I know of Chandragupta or Ashoka, of Akbar or Aurangzeb? Those names and their deeds were a blank to me. And Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh were labels without content, no more. Our God inhabited an austere Anglican chapel, though my brother and I, as Catholics, were conscientiously sent by car each Sunday to the RC Cathedral. That far was enough. Beyond that, the school washed its hands of us. To go whoring after the Scarlet Woman of Rome was a personal matter, a lapse in moral taste not very far from the worship of Shiva or Vishnu or Buddha. A superstition, a blot.