Snakes and Ladders

by Dirk Bogarde

  Up on the ridge the first whisper of a breeze riffled the pink and silver sari of the fat Princess, billows of white dust swirled and eddied about our sweaty ranks. I could see the sunlight glinting on the three great cameras on their separate rocks, smoke drifting still from the wrecked car, the shimmering plain ahead. I looked, briefly behind me, and our trail seemed endless, a thousand people is a great many … sheep, goats, women in torn cotton prints, children dragging along, men taut-faced, sweating, some bandaged … an old woman with a white parasol being jostled along on a creaking cart surrounded with bundles and kettles and a clock. This had all once happened, not so long ago … a few years before I had signed my virgin Contract … this had all been real. Today we were merely re-enacting what had gone before, and what unhappily would come again one day. An exodus. And I was at the head of the column of marching souls. I was the leader, broken foot or not; I had to prove only that I could do it; and in doing that I would be showing them, even as a cinema actor with a limp, what they could do as well. Setting a good example. An absolute essential, which brooked no despairing argument.

  Of course one had to go on proving: that was what one was there for. I felt a great deal better, and threw my arm round the cotton print shoulders of a hot, dusty woman. She looked up at me with flat, tired eyes and smiled; she shook her head and straightened up, and calling across the straggle to a small boy of seven or eight, she told him that it wouldn’t be so far, not to dawdle, and to give Felicity a hand because she probably had a blister on her heel. We marched on, and someone not far behind, started to whistle in the blazing sun. It spread gently through the column, raggedly but clearly on the morning air, the marching became less of a straggle, more of a determined walk. Felicity’s mother said, “Do you know the words?”

  The rocky walls of the gorge swelled with the sound of our voices, it drifted up to the fading cluster of Royals on the ridge; almost triumphant, pride regained, courage retrieved; a joining had taken place.

  “I’ve got sixpence,

  Jolly jolly sixpence,

  I’ve got sixpence,

  To last me all my life …”

  Proving. Showing what one could do. That’s all.

  Chapter 6

  Number 44 sagged dejectedly two or three houses along from a wide and deep bombsite where some pleasant artisans’ cottages once had stood in neat Georgian modesty, until a land mine had hit them and scattered their yellow bricks and fragile timbers into rubble and my back garden. No. 44 had suffered from this cruel thrust of German might; cracks ran about it like inverted varicose veins, the top floor bulged heavily over the area railings, a brick pot-belly, the black and white tiled steps were badly chipped by falling debris, and the front door only closed after two good bangs. But it had a roof, and it had the garden. From the top windows you looked down on to the E. Box luxuriance of bramble, buddleia and bracken in the bomb site, and then the garden, scraggly, unkempt, cluttered with slate-shards and half bricks, a laburnum on oneside, a red May on the other, and at the end, where the brick wall fended off the gardens of Cliveden Place, two giant limes which shed flowers, pollen, leaves and a thick sticky muck all through the summer. But to left and right, as well as below, one saw green; and above the green a couple of spires and the roof of the Royal Court Theatre. Not bad.

  Inside, not so good; margarine yellow paint, faded cretonnes, scuffed once-elegant, neo-Georgian furniture. Curtains staccato with parrots rioting in writhing yards of peony trees. No paintings. A small engraving of Salisbury Cathedral, a black silhouette of two ladies in lacy caps taking tea. The kitchen, in the dark basement had a table covered in stained American cloth, a stove, electric wires trailing along every wall, a sink, a geyser, and a door to the area on one side and the coal cellar which ran right under Chester Row itself. There were four knives, four forks, four spoons, three saucepans and a frying-pan petrified in years of egg and bacon grease. The beds, all five in the house, had horse hair mattresses. And the lavatory was cracked and creamy with rime. But it was the first real home of my own, even though I rattled about in it like the pea in a whistle.

  Millie at the Express Dairies had a sister called Rose who would “take on another gentleman” for two hours a day starting Monday. Rose came. Small, nervous, glasses, with a floral pinny and a voice which rang through the empty house with all the melody of a gull at a fishing-port. But she washed and scrubbed, wiped-down and told me what to buy from Vim to soda, lavatory paper to extra plates, and a mat for in front of the sink. When I got back from the theatre in those long spring evenings which seem so particular to London, I took my Weetabix and cheese and a glass of beer into the ragged garden, and under the May tree, with Cliff for company and a cod’s head for him, bought from Macfisheries on the way, I sat and ate and felt well content with my lot. As indeed I should have been. But what, I wondered with a twist of alarm, would happen when the cinema part of my life began in the middle of the summer? It was easy while I was in the play—a few hours per day away from my new house, patching cracks, washing walls, heaving furniture about to suit my scheme. If scheme I had. But what then? Who to look after me, run the house, tend the garden, buy the cods’ heads. Sort the laundry, go to Millie for the rations?

  Who but Nan?

  Calcutta. She was older than I by about six years, tall, grey eyes, good hands, a generous figure. “Ample”, she used to call it, or, in a kinder manner, “my Edwardian body”. Which it was. She wore her hair in a plait bound round her head, and had an ever ready capacity for tremendous laughter and a surge for living. She was like a crested wave, always about to tumble, full of excitement, cool, grey-green, poised, crest tilted towards whatever shore. Never quite breaking.

  I first saw her in the Mess the evening I arrived after five days of travel on wooden seats from Bombay. Tagore’s Palace, a low, crumbling elegant house with pillared veranda, standing in a cool wilderness of zinnias and pale lawns watered daily by unseen gardeners. In the centre of the lawns a long shallow pool skimmed by kingfishers, thrusting with the lilac lances of water hyacinth. The Mess was a high, white room; a long table in the centre, small bamboo bar in one corner, two or three rattan chairs, old copies of the air-mail edition of The Times, Lilliput, and battered Country Life, fans clickety-clacking slowly in the ceiling, blades wobbling, gentle air riffling the papers as they lay. She arrived suddenly through the doors flowing in long white chiffon, her hair tonight tumbling about her shoulders, in one hand a slim cigarette holder, in the other a book; the only completely unfeminine thing about her was the big Service watch on her wrist. She came straight to the bar and slid on to the stool beside me and ordered a Gin Sling.

  “Are you van den Thingummy … or are you Wallace?” Eyes grave, mouth smiling.

  “Van den Thingummy.”

  “There were two of you on the Posting Order. I didn’t know.” She took her glass and prodded the ice cubes with a straw.

  “What is Thingummy?”

  “Bogaerde.”

  “Goodness! All of it? How grand. What are you called for short?”

  “Pip.”

  “Better. For Philip?”

  “No. For ‘you give me the pip’ … my first Commanding Officer’s groan every time he saw my face.”

  She laughed, and bent her head, placing the book beside her on the bar. “Were you so awful then?”

  “Pretty.”

  “I’m Nanette Baildon. Squadron Officer.”

  “Goodness! All of it? How grand. What are you called for short?”

  She snorted a laugh, choked on smoke. “Touché! Nan.”

  “Is it all right, to call you that?”

  “Nan is perfect.”

  I liked her very much. A large gecko ran up the wall and slid behind a picture of Their Majesties.

  “I don’t really know what I’m doing here actually.”

  “You are Photographic? An interpreter, I mean?”

  “Yes … ex Second Army.”

  “I saw the little ribbons. J
olly. Come at the wrong time, haven’t you?

  “The monsoon started as the train pulled out of Bombay Central.”

  “Always the way. They want you in a hurry and then nothing. No sorties now, no flying possible for weeks in this.” She indicated the rain thudding down into the sodden Elephant Ears at the door.

  “Still, the planning goes on, doesn’t it? From the sorties flown?”

  Her eyes widened slightly, she took the butt from her holder and squashed it out in a puddle on the bar. It hissed.

  “What planning do you mean?”

  “Singapore, the fall of, all that … I’m supposed to be working on the defences.”

  “Defences! We are up to our eyes in defences, been at them for months and months; you really are late! I don’t know what we’ll do now. You know it’s unconditional surrender for the Japs, or else, don’t you? A matter of time I’d say, really. Otherwise God only knows.” She sipped her Gin Sling, clinking ice.

  “It’s so marvellous to see a woman in evening dress again.”

  “We always wear it for dinner. Evelyn and I are the only two girls in the Mess so it rather falls on us to keep up standards, don’t you think? And it’s nicer.”

  “Much; and you are wearing a scent?”

  She looked at me steadily, grey eyes smiling.

  “Clever old you. The last dregs of ‘Je Reviens’ … almost squeezed the bottle dry. Do you want another drink? On me …”

  People started to wander into the room, gruff exchanges, hand shakes, drinks all round; then hands in pockets, rocking gently on heels, laughter too loud, conversation bored and falsely jolly, straight from the showers, all of them, talcumed, scrubbed; crisp uniforms already starting to sweat slowly down the backs, under the arms; foreheads beaded. Evelyn (apparently) came in, a flutter of green silk, a white flower in her hair. Scattered applause, she bobbed a curtsey, someone handed her a drink and she waved to Nan.

  “What’s the book?” I turned it up on the bar, covered in coarse brown paper, the word “Poetry” in big ink letters.

  She shrugged, and her shoulder strap slid down; pulling it up gently she took the book and opened it. “An anthology … poetry, prose … this was a poet’s house so it seems appropriate … do you know Tagore?”

  My blank face betrayed me. She hurried on, amused, confused, finding a place marked by a dead leaf.

  “Do you like this?

  ‘The yellow bird sings in their tree and makes my heart dance with gladness.

  We both live in the same village, and that is our one piece of joy …’ ”

  She stopped and looked up. “Perhaps not. It’s from the Bengali, of course; perhaps not your cup of tea.”

  “No! No … No … I did like it. It was just suddenly so odd. Poetry, evening dress, scent … civilised; I didn’t expect it. I’ve had six weeks on a troop ship and five days and nights on a train … I rather expected the Japs to be hissing from every bush and tree, and that I’d have taken my cyanide pill by now.”

  She closed the book gently, replacing the dried leaf to mark her place with Tagore.

  “We are an awfully long way from Kohima or Rangoon here … Calcutta is hardly front line stuff.” There was gentle reproof in the voice: “I think you can breathe freely, at least for the moment. And if you like, I’ll start teaching you how to enjoy Poetry. We’ll try simple things, Belloc and so on … then Yeats, Pound … unless of course you have other things to do during the monsoon?”

  At dinner, she at one end, Evelyn at the other, she placed me on her left in someone’s place who had gone to the Hills on leave. She rang little silver bells and Bearers flitted about with tinned tomato soup and a mild curry …

  “What did you do before?”

  The usual question.

  “Don’t, for God’s sake, ask me at dinner.”

  “Why ever not? Was it something dreadful?”

  “No, not dreadful. Embarrassing, that’s all.”

  “How curious. You must have been about ten. Can I guess?” She handed me grated coconut. “You sold yo-yo’s in Oxford Street? Trained performing fleas?”

  “You’re getting hot.”

  “Really? In a circus? No? Something on a trapeze … a trainee clown?”

  “You are an idiot! I was an actor.”

  She laughed. “Well, that’s not so awful, is it? Owen Nares, Godfrey Tearle, Ralph Richardson, all rather respectable, I should think. Were you any good?”

  “Hard to tell, they got me for this job before I could do much. Out of the cradle.”

  “Well, you have plenty of time now; you can start on your Shaw and Shakespeare. And the poetry would be invaluable, stretching the mind, the Learning Mind, don’t you think? Do you want cucumber? Marvellously refreshing with that …”

  We read to each other on the cool of her veranda, and I learned blocks of Poetry and we discussed and argued while Evelyn, our chaperone, did lazy daisy stitches on cushion covers for her bottom drawer. Later I wrote a play, which had been struggling about in my mind on the journey out, miles and miles of it, which she bravely typed during the long, steamy days of rain. Sometimes there was a gentle flutter of work, but very little; and our lives started along a gentle, pleasant road together. We drove to the city and explored every market, bazaar, street and alley; joined the Saturday Club, an impossibly snobbish club, one hot morning by saying that I was Baron van den Bogaerde and that she was the Comptesse de la Vache. Improbably, but with sickening ease, we jumped a two-year waiting list and lunched in cool splendour. The Club became our Place, even though we detested most of the white clientele … Indians were not admitted. Apart from my Literary Education, Nan was determined that I should try to understand India and the Indian mind, and I was dragged from temple to temple, shrine to shrine and festival to festival, and in the evenings, when we rested up from MacNeice, Dorothy Wellesley, Spender and Wilde we talked about Gandhi and Congress and the Raj. It was a crammer’s course. Her unashamed passion for this vast country was infectious, and I began to look about me now with clearer eyes and compassion, trying to understand as much as I could, before they threw us out.

  One day, returning from the city alone (she had stayed behind to wash her hair, a tedious process because of its length), I came bearing gifts. A small bottle of “Je Reviens” which I had discovered by chance on Chowringhee, and a pair of lovebirds in a bamboo cage.

  She was not on her veranda; no one was. The mosquito nets were down, the lights on; wild dogs barked across the compound. I went over to the Mess. It was full. Silent. Only the fans clickety-clacking and a faint voice through heavy static from the bakelite radio behind the bar. I saw her standing motionless, hair in a towel, hand to her face. Evelyn in a chair, head bowed. The faces round the bar taut. There were no cheers in our Mess at the news of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

  It was still raining on V.J. Night. We drove into the Club and dined and danced to celebrate the end, for ever we all thought, of our war. There was great euphoria in the dining room, people cheered and sang as if it was New Year’s Eve. At the next table to ours a party of six wore funny hats, and a mem-sahib in a crepe paper wimple hit a silver salver, offered by a bearer, high into the air. “I said mashed potatoes! Not boiled!” she shouted. The little white balls scattered about our feet. “Christ!” she said. “But you do grow to loathe Them, don’t you!”

  We drove home in torrential rain and struck a group of soldiers somewhere along the Barrackpore road. We turned over twice I seem to recall: Nan had a cut head, I was unhurt. There were two or three men sprawled in the muddy, roaring waters of the street. People came and took Nan back to barracks. I knew that two must be dead; but remembered, and remember now, very little. They were members of a gang of American GI deserters, known in the area, who high-jacked cars at nights. We spent weeks of misery in Court, and finally were exonerated, because witnesses had seen them link arms across the road and form a line to halt us. I had not seen them in the dark and the rain. I have never driven s
ince.

  It was decided that we should both go away on leave. To clear our minds. Whatever that meant. We took the train to Darjeeling and then up into Sikkim on stubborn mules, across the high plateau towards Tibet, which reminded us both forcibly of the Yorkshire moors and which was just as cold and uninviting. We saw dawn rise on Everest … the sun set slowly on the shimmering height of Kanchenjunga. In Tindzhe Dzong women hid behind the pillars in the market place horrified because Nan was wearing trousers; and somewhere else, which I have forgotten, she traded a tin of American bacon for two black agate rings, from an old man with a fluttering prayer wheel. We were hopelessly unprepared for such a trip but, like most idiots, Fortune cared for us, and we arrived back in Calcutta a month later, calm, brown, rather pompous, happy, to be welcomed in the Mess with cheers and tall John Collins’s—and the news of my immediate posting to another war, in Java.