How to Disappear (7 page)

‘Come again?'

‘The daughter of a Zoroastrian high priest.'

‘Oh. There are so many high priests around. Maybe my wife knows something.'

‘You've got a wife?' asked Rita. She was surprised – and obscurely annoyed that he'd suddenly become less available.

‘Yes, I have.' But he didn't elaborate.

Sarah asked him if he'd ever seen any UFOs. He hadn't. ‘But I've seen an EFFO.' I think this was another colonial joke. (Am I being mean? I shouldn't be. Lin was so good to us. Dead now of course. God bless you, Lin.)

At Doddabetta Peak the view was rich with meadows and moorland, woods and plantations. One gasped. But Rita's rat-bite had swollen badly and was now filled with pus. Lin examined it. ‘Not very nice,' he said. Rita whimpered and looked about with nervous eyes while Lin, muttering, searched in the undergrowth. Eventually he grunted with satisfaction, tore at a bunch of leaves, crushed them slightly and, applying them to Rita's calf, bound them in place with a strip of bandage from his first aid kit. ‘You'll be fine now. Where would you like to go next?'

‘To the Ooty Club. I need a cup of tea,' she implored.

‘I'll drop you off. It's only a short distance from your hotel. You'll be able to walk back.'

‘Aren't you joining us?' asked Rita.

‘I'm not exactly welcome there.'

Fortunately we were. At the jumble sale we'd met its president, Jack Lawrence, who said ‘Do come up'. The Ooty Club – snooker was invented there – occupies a low cream villa, with a portico of fluted ionic columns, at the top of a hillside covered with white lilies. It was very quiet. In the season it fills up, which pays for the rest of the year when it is almost empty. The regulars hate the season when the ‘spivs' arrive. We met a spiv on the terrace, an early swallow, about twenty-five years old. He was dressed in a yellow polyester shirt and black drainpipe trousers, with a narrow silver tie and winkle-picker shoes. His head shone with coconut oil and above his lip was an ink-line moustache, and hair grew out of his ears in wispy untended clouds.

Inside, squeaky-clean boys in gallooned ducks padded barefoot over the polished floors of teak beneath the smiles of many a martyred beast. Doors opened in all directions to other rooms revealing portions of chintz, pale Indian rugs, brass and sparkling glass. And the smell – oh, heavenly – of beeswax and flowers. Mrs Hill supervised the housekeeping, a chain-smoking drum majorette, short and plump. Despite her efficiency, or perhaps because of it, there was something slightly unhinged about her which wasn't dispelled when she told us her son worked in Aylesbury. Perhaps she was what a later age would call obsessive-compulsive.

‘I live in Aylesbury!' exclaimed Rita, happy to have made this connection (she'd been looking for connections and not finding them).

A dark boy entered and asked me ‘Will you take tea on the terrace, Master?'

Somewhat surprised by the mode of address, I pushed back my long curls and said ‘Very nice, yes, thank-you.'

The only other person in the sitting-room was an ancient birdlike lady in the far corner. She lowered a copy of
The Financial Times,
combined a quick smile with arching eyebrows, and raised the
FT
again, shaking it into a papery roar. Her eyes, even across the room, were sea-green and her outfit drew on several civilisations in a manner we associate with the Ballets Russes: plum jacket and knickerbockers fastened below the knee, a blouse of oyster silk, a cream turban with a green toque held by a diadem, and patent shoes with silver buckles. Sleeping Beauty or Scheherazade?

The glassed verandah was alight with flame-coloured cushions inside and the profuse scarlet of geraniums outside. An English soldier and his wife, on leave from the Persian Gulf, were bewickered among the full panoply of tea. I asked the soldier ‘Do you know who that extraordinary woman is inside?'

‘Which extraordinary woman?'

‘The one with buckles and feathers.'

‘I think,' he ventured, ‘it's someone called Queenie Wapshare.'

‘I bet she knows Bapsy Pavry.'

‘They say she knows everybody.'

‘No, they say she's met everybody,' corrected his wife. ‘It's not the same.'

‘
Apparently
,' the soldier continued, ‘the day India went off parity with Sterling she took up smoking again after thirty-six years. They say she met Queen Victoria as a child and that's why she puts on a German accent – in deference.'

‘Does she have a German accent?'

‘Didn't you speak to her?'

‘No.'

‘The BBC were filming here and she shot a coolie out of a fruit tree to show off.'

Something about the soldier – he didn't look absolutely solid. His thin, smart wife nibbled on a dry biscuit. ‘I'm responsible for bringing Mervyn Peake to Muscat & Oman,' she said. ‘They're all madly reading
Gormenghast
now in the desert. Would you like a sandwich?'

‘This place is awfully good,' said the soldier.

‘But I must say, I'd love a drink,' said his wife. We all agreed we'd love a drink but the bar wasn't open. I can't recall exactly how the liquor-allowance system applied to bars and hotels but I do know it wasn't straightforward. As for
Gormenghast
I can see how it might chime with readers who live in the Gulf, a region where, intellectually, the future is knocking ever more loudly on a worm-eaten door. A note preserved from this occasion says ‘Sarah lit a cigarette and fixed her eyes upon a tureen of lilies'. Odd the things one sometimes jots down.

A couple of days afterwards we were provided with an even more copious tea at Dolores and Richard's. What I put in my notebook later was: -

‘Collected by their good-looking driver in black Ford Zephyr. They live in a house called St Mary's at Fernhill, a little way past the mothballed Mysore Summer Palace. We were served three varieties of bread, five of jam, two of fruitcake, two of Madeira Cake, plus biscuits, on English china, with French silver, all heaving on a table of Kashmir walnut, and served by a relaxed and charming Indian footman. But the atmosphere in the house was disjointed. Richard was polite but in low spirits and did not join us at the table. He slunk out to the ferns of the greenhouse and played 78 rpm. records on his gramophone. One was Does the Chewing-Gum Lose its Flavour on the Bedpost Overnight. A mild, quiet man who must feel beached by history. The British ruled India but they did not colonise it. After independence virtually all the British left. Indians and Pakistanis subsequently came to Britain which they did not rule but which they colonised.'

Dolores flapped her hands expressively and said she was trying to write something about Sir David Ochterlony. ‘I can't get going, I can't get going!'

I said what a wonderful name it was – presumably one of those Parsi names, or Sephardic Jewish names like Sas-soon, but it turned out to be Scottish. Dolores said ‘Spinach is a Parsi word.'

I thought Dolores could be Parsi but she didn't let anything slip. She said the name ‘Bapsy Pavry' rang a bell.

‘Ask Lin Townsend's wife – she's a Parsi.'

‘Is she?'

‘We've not met his wife,' said Sarah.

‘No, she's kept in the background!' and Dolores laughed raucously.

‘But my leg healed completely,' said Rita, rooting for him.

‘Why isn't Lin welcome at the Club?'

‘Because he sticks up our names in public for nonpayment of library subscriptions. He stuck my name up! I was furious! Oh, let's have a wonderful dinner at the Club before you leave. I've been trying to persuade Richard to buy a house in Scotland. I think it's important for a man to have property in his own country, don't you?'

The driver dropped us back in the Zephyr. He was charming in a slightly cocky way and Lin told us afterwards that Dolores was in love with him. Inkie ran past us in the drive but stopped, jogging on the spot to say hullo. Rita said she'd heard there was a dance at the Military Academy at Wellington and Inkie, already out of breath, said ‘I'll have to come back at you, dear lady, on that one.' Rita gave him a little wave as he lolloped past the lodge and into the lane for his exercise run. In that lodge lived a defunct Maharajah and his Welsh wife but we never saw them, not once. As for the Ratan Tata Holiday Home itself, it had originally been called Harrow-on-the-Hill and the property of a lady called Miss Cunliffe. You see how the lines of life branch out all over the place. But I shall have to resist going in quest of this long-dead Miss Cunliffe. I really would like to know who she was, how she came to live here, and what happened to her. Perhaps she was nobody and nothing happened to her, though instinct – or is it wishful thinking? – tells me that there is a curious story there too. Ah, yes, she gave birth to a mixed-race child who was sent to school in Singapore and Miss Cunliffe sought out her relations in Torquay but they didn't click and the mixed-race child, having become a wealthy businessman in Australia, bought a seaside flat for his mother in Sydney where she ended her days as the bridge partner of Lord Beauchamp, a man lately exiled from England in a homosexual scandal…

Booze chits became essential after all and Rita and I invested many hours in pursuit of the Liquor Permit for Temporary Residents and the various signatures and stamps it required. At last the final stamp and signature came down upon it and we were able to proceed. The only place where alcohol could be bought was Uttam's, the local department store. Excitedly clutching our permits, we passed through its menswear department – Suitings.
A Gay Selection in Terylene, Terycot, Terywool, and Nylon Bell-Bots. Modern Novelties of Woollen and All Kinds of Hosiery
- and upstairs through the women's department –
Sarees Exciting Wide and Fascinating Variety of Fabrics from All Over Indian Parts
- to where in the distance a glass altar supported a pyramid of coloured bottles scintillant in the blood-red shafts of sunset. It was ten to six. We'd made it with only moments to spare. Rita and I collapsed into laughter at the relief and absurdity of it all, breaking at the knees, howling into walls, holding each other. The assistant was not in the leastly disconcerted – obviously this is a common reaction – and waited patiently with his head on one side, looking at us with shining eyes, smiling.

‘What was that stuff you mentioned? Madras brandy, was it?'

‘Yes, but it had a special name. I might recognise the bottle.'

She turned to the assistant. ‘How much can we have?'

‘One month's supply. Six bottles of spirits. Each.'

They were all Indian cognacs, whiskies, gins, etc. but turned out to be very tasty. As we left the counter bent by four carrier bags of alcohol, the assistant said ‘Enjoy the party' with a modest wave. On the way back we diverted to St Stephen's churchyard, opened a bottle of plum brandy and had a slug beneath Indian oaks. Rita rapidly grew sentimental. ‘Oh, darling, we should've invited that assistant to our party.'

‘We're not having a party.'

‘We should've invited him anyway,' she said. ‘I'm sure he wanted to come.'

‘I think he was just being nice.'

‘Did you fancy him?'

‘Yes, I did actually.'

‘Oh lover of the Nile.' And she pulled my head into her comforting breasts, which was quite a habit of hers.

When we arrived back, Sarah said ‘You're late' but we fixed her a brandy & soda and she softened up.

Dolores made good her intention and on our last night we did dine with the Maclaine-Clarkes at the Club, bequeathing them our remaining bottles. Consequently we all got very drunk. But I do retain some faded notes and can piece it together.

The rendezvous was in Colonel Jago's Room, technically out of bounds to women but rules tumbled before the wild and sooty laughter of Dolores and the gentle chuckles of her husband – yes, Richard was almost lively. My toreador jacket and yellow bell-bots, which had gone down well at the Delhi Film Festival, went down well here too. Dolores introduced us to Brigadier Abkar (‘an Armenian of the Calcutta shipping family' she explained sotto voce; I wondered later if the name was ‘Akbar' but was told ‘Definitely it's Abkar') whose own get-up was also quite snazzy. His bowtie bobbed, monocle flashed, and pale-blue eyes sparkled – he gave off such a terrific air of pleasure and screwed up his nose relishing our piquant use of language which was very modern to his ears. ‘Order a dry martini. They're the best outside the Tollygunge,' he advised with a touch of self-mockery. His wife was adorable too – her gutturals rolled into laughter as she said ‘We don't know Bapsy Pavry but we know about her!'

‘You do? She looked very beautiful in her photograph.'

The Brigadier asked ‘Would she choose an ugly photograph for
The Indian Yearbook
?' and he burst into laughter like a puppy.

I mentioned that my father had given me the address of a business contact of his who was a Parsi in Bombay and Richard said yes, that's where they were based and generally they were successful middle-class types. ‘Originally the Parsis came from Persia,' he said, ‘and had preserved their religion, Zoroastrianism, in pure form for three and a half thousand years. They worship fire and do not bury their dead but expose them on platforms for vultures to eat in a special place known as the Towers of Silence.' Richard could be very informative when encouraged.

‘This special place is on Malabar Hill,' added the Brigadier, ‘and quite near a small reservoir. After a while people got fed up with the vultures as they flew away dropping putrid human meat into the reservoir. Complaints were made and now I believe some sort of chicken wire has been placed over the reservoir to catch the bits.'

‘But some would still fall through,' commented Sarah.

‘Yes, I expect it would,' twinkled the Brigadier, ‘but not so much.'