by M. M. Kaye
But it was no good. If marriages were expected to last for only a couple of years (as, worse luck, they seem to now), I wouldn’t have hesitated, since a couple of years with Neil would be the greatest fun. But a lifetime of ‘What ho, chaps! watch and pray!’ until death did us part? No, no and no! Darling Neil, I was so sorry. So very sorry. But the answer had to be ‘No’.
‘I was afraid of that,’ said Neil gloomily. He kissed me again, regardless of the scandalized ethnic majority on the platform, and as the train guard forced his way through the crowd and indicated that he was about to blow his whistle or wave his flag, or both, Bets got an equally fervent farewell embrace from W. H. P. and was pushed up the step into the carriage, followed by Mother and Tacklow. Glasses were raised to us by the revellers on the platform, someone started to sing: ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot’ and everyone else took it up. I didn’t hear the whistle blown, but I saw the guard waving his flag and as the train began to move Neil ran alongside it and yelled, ‘You will write, won’t you?’ and I yelled back, ‘Of course I will!’ And then those members of the goodbye party who had started their drinking before we arrived at the station, or perhaps were just naturally high-spirited, started to run with the train too, while Bets and I leant out waving and calling goodbyes, and several members of the party pelted us with the streamers that are thrown around at New Year’s parties. It was quite a send-off.
When we could see our well-wishers no more, Bets and I turned our attention to the view outside the windows, and I think both of us sent a silent farewell to places we had known since childhood, and had said goodbye to once before when we were leaving India to go to boarding-school in England, not knowing whether we would ever come back. Well, we had done so. And now we were leaving again for another unknown land. But at least we had both Tacklow and Mother with us this time, and were not going to be abandoned for years on end. But would I come back a second time? That was the question … Oh, please God, let me come back!
When we woke the next morning we were in a different world. The south. The train wound through the long, breathtakingly beautiful canyon that is called the Ghats, and which nowadays few visitors and no tourists ever see, because it is easier and quicker to fly. A few hours later we were being shown to our rooms in the hotel where we would spend the night before boarding the SS Conte Rosso, bound for the ‘dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea’ to that legendary land of Far Cathay, whose borders had only recently been forcibly broken down by western merchants greedy for trade, and which Tacklow loved as I loved India. Well, it was only fair that he should get the chance to go back there, and I hoped that China would be as kind to her prodigal son as India had been to me, her prodigal daughter. But as I looked out of my bedroom at the twinkling lights of the fishing boats, along the islands and the shoreline of the bay that some Portuguese adventurer, centuries ago, had named ‘Bom-baya’ — ‘Beautiful Bay’ — and that Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard Kipling’s father, had described as ‘this blazing beauty of a city’ — I knew that however enchanting China turned out to be, I would return to India as surely as a homing pigeon, or a pin to a magnet.
Bets, secure in the knowledge that there was no doubt about her return, was already sound asleep, but I stayed by the window, watching the lights and the stars reflected in the water, listening to the crowd around the romanesque gateway to India, and the mixture of Indian and European night-noises — the faint strains of a dance band playing ‘The music goes round and around’ — tom-toms and tablas, and ‘conches in a temple, oil-lamps in a dome/and a low moon out of Africa says “This way home”…’
I leant out over the windowsill at a dangerous angle and repeated in an undertone, so as not to wake Bets: ‘I’m coming back — main wapas ana … zarur! We both are. I promise! Tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow — Some day, anyway!’
And we did, of course.
* Offley, more often called ‘Offley Boffley’, married an enchanting little American, whose letters to him over a period of many years soldiering in the Empire have recently been published under the title An Enchanted Journey.
Glossary
abdar butler
Angrezi English
Angrezi-log English folk
barra-durri open-sided outdoor pavilion
bhat talk, speech
Bibi-ghur women’s house
bistra bedding-roll
burra large, e.g. Burra-Sahib, great man
butti lamp
charpoy Indian bedstead
chupprassi peon
chatti large earthenware water-jug
chokra small boy
chota-hazri small breakfast
chowkidar watchman, caretaker
dâk-bungalow resthouse for travellers; originally for postmen (dâk means post)
darzi tailor
dekchi metal cooking-pot
dhobi washerman, or woman
Diwan Prime Minister
ferengi foreigner
galeri the little striped Indian tree-squirrel
ghari vehicle; usually horse-drawn
gudee throne
gussel bath (gussel-khana: bathroom)
halwa sweets
Jungi-Lat-Sahib Commander-in-Chief
kutcha rough, unfinished
khansama cook
khitmatgar waiter
Kaiser-i-Hind the King (or Queen)
lathi stout, iron-tipped and bound bamboo staff
Lal Khila Red Fort
log (pronounced low’g) people, folk
mahout elephant rider
mali gardener
manji boatman
masalchi washer-up, kitchen boy
maulvi religious teacher
mufussal countryside (‘the sticks’)
murgi chicken
namaste the Indian gesture of respect, greeting or farewell: hands pressed palm to palm and lifted to the forehead
noker servant (noker-log: servant folk)
powinders tribe of gypsies who are always on the move
shikari hunter
shikarra canopied punt that is the water-taxi of the Kashmir lakes
tonga two-wheeled, horse-drawn taxi of the Indian plains
topi pith hat — almost a uniform in the days of the Raj
vakil lawyer
ALSO BY M. M. KAYE
The Far Pavilions
Shadow of the Moon
Trade Wind
Death in Kenya
Death in Zanzibar
Death in Cyprus
Death in Kashmir
Death in Berlin
Death in the Andamans
The Ordinary Princess (for children)
The Sun in the Morning (autobiography)
About the Author
M.M. Kaye (1908-2004) was born in India and spent much of her childhood and adult life there. She became world famous with the publication of her monumental bestseller, The Far Pavilions. She is also the author of the bestselling Trade Wind and Shadow of the Moon. She lived in England. You can sign up for author updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Foreword
1. ‘Exemption from oblivion’
2. ‘Me and my shadow’
3. ‘My blue heaven’
4. ‘Charmaine’
5. ‘Tales of far Kashmir’
6. ‘Song of India’
7. ‘Life is just a bowl of cherries’
Glossary
ALSO BY M. M. KAYE
About the Author
Copyright
GOLDEN AFTERNOON. Copyr
ight © 1997 by M. M. Kaye. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension. 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kaye, M. M. (Mary Margaret), 1911—
Golden afternoon: vol II of the autobiography of M. M. Kaye.
p. cm.
Continues: The sun in the morning.
eISBN: 978-1-250-09078-2
1. Kaye, M. M. (Mary Margaret), 1911— —Childhood and youth.
2. Women novelists, English—20th century—Biography. 3. India—Social life and customs—20th century. 4. British—India—Biography. I. Kaye, M. M. (Mary Margaret), 1911— Sun in the morning.
II. Title.
PR6061.A945Z476 1998
828’.914—dc21
[B]
98-46404
CIP
First published in the United Kingdom by Viking/Penguin
First U.S. Edition: December 1998
P1