The Raj Quartet, Volume 1: The Jewel in the Crown: The Jewel in the Crown Vol 1 (Phoenix Fiction) (16 page)

The MacGregor House,
MacGregor Road,
Mayapore, 1.

26th February, 1942

Dear Auntie Ethel,

Please forgive me for not having written sooner. I hope you got Lili’s telegram saying we’d arrived here safely. I’m sure you did. I can hardly believe it’s a week since we said good-bye to you in Rawalpindi. It was
sweet of you to let me come. The days have flown and looking back on them there scarcely seem to have been enough of them for us to have packed in everything we’ve done. I’ve just come back from my
second
day on the wards in the hospital which will show you no time has been wasted!

After Lahore the journey down was very interesting, much nicer than the one I did alone last year from Bombay to ’Pindi, which rather scared me because it was all so new and strange. I suppose I enjoyed this one because I’ve learned some of the ropes and anyway had Lili with me. She really
is
extraordinary, isn’t she? Those awful Englishwomen in the carriage got out the next morning in Lahore. They were utterly beastly and never said a civil word to either of us. And those mounds of luggage they had that took up more than half the space! They hogged the little we cubicle for over an hour after the train pulled out, and then sat up for ages drinking and smoking and talking as if neither of us was there while Lili and I were trying to get to sleep. (We had the upper and lower berth on one side of the carriage and they had the upper and lower on the other side.) I was so fagged I didn’t wake up until the train had stopped at Lahore and there was all the fuss of them getting out. There was a chap to meet them, the husband of the one with her brains tied up in a scarf, I think. He came into the carriage at one point to look for something the one with the scarf was complaining had either been lost or
stolen.
They’d been out on the platform for some time while the coolies collected the luggage and he came in prepared to be rude. The poor chap looked awfully embarrassed when he saw
me.
They’d only complained to him about Lili, I expect. I was sitting up on the top bunk keeping an eye on
our
bags, with my hair all over the place. Lili had been up and dressed since five (so she told me afterwards) and was sitting there below me looking marvelous and cool as a cucumber, reading a book and pretending to be quite unaware of what was going on. Anyway he begged our pardon and thrashed about for a time, and the coolies thrashed about, searching under the seat and everywhere that didn’t make it look too pointed that these women had suggested
we
might have pinched whatever it was one of them had lost. Then one of them called through the doorway, “It’s all right, Reggie, luckily it’s been found.” I liked that “luckily”! Reggie was as red as a beetroot by now and went out with his tail between his legs, and I think there was a row when he got back on the platform. The last thing we heard was the harpy saying very loudly, “I don’t care. The whole thing is a disgrace. I
don’t know what the country’s coming to. After all first class
is
first class.” That word of Lili’s is awfully apt, isn’t it? Harpy.

It was marvelous from then on though. We had the whole compartment to ourselves and a lovely breakfast brought in. You know, until now I never did quite believe that story you told me about the time Sir Nello was turned out of a first class compartment by a couple of boxwallah Englishmen. It seemed to me that if the railways allow an Indian to make a first class booking then no one should be able to stop them using what they’ve paid for. I think if you hadn’t been at ’Pindi station to see us off, though, there’d have been trouble with these two women about Lili and me actually getting in. Me only because I was with Lili. Was that why you got into the carriage first and condescended to them in that marvelous nineteenth century way, before they had a chance of seeing her and realizing they were going to have to travel with an Indian woman?

When I remember how awful it is traveling at home in the blackout, with no heating in the trains, just a dim blue light, and the stations in darkness, people jampacked in the corridors as well as in the compartments, but on the whole everyone helping everyone else and trying to be cheerful, I get really angry about the kind of thing that happens over here. Honestly Auntie, a lot of the white people in India don’t know they’re born. Of course I never traveled first class at home, and there was sometimes bad feeling among the noncommissioned boys in the services when they were packed like sardines and the pinkest young subaltern fresh out of Octu traveled in comparative comfort, but that’s service life.
This
is to do with civilians. Well, I mustn’t go on about it.

It’s much warmer here in Mayapore than ’Pindi. I only need a sheet at night and it won’t be long before I have to have a fan going all the time. Lili’s given me a marvelous room all to myself, and a super bathroom (although the seat’s a bit wonky on the wc! and there’s an inhibiting paper holder guarded by lions). The MacGregor House is fascinating. I have to keep reminding myself that you never actually visited it because Uncle Henry had retired and left the province before Nello bought the place. But of course you remember Mayapore itself, although Lili says there have been lots of changes since then. The Technical College, for instance, the one Nello built and endowed and got his knighthood for, and the new buildings put up by the British-Indian Electrical. They’re building an aerodrome out at Banyaganj which the English people say has ruined the duckshooting! How Hitler would
laugh! (There are some lakes out there which Lili says were a favourite European picnic spot.) A couple of evenings ago we went to dinner with the Deputy Commissioner and his wife, Robin and Constance White, who said they met you and Uncle Henry years ago, but didn’t think you’d remember them because they were very junior. Mr. White was under a Mr. Cranston at the time, and they said you’d remember
him
all right if only because of the occasion when he was in camp, touring his district, and you and Uncle Henry, who were also touring, called in unexpectedly and found him bathing in a pool. Apparently you both stood on the bank talking for ages and he stood there doing his best to answer sensibly and be polite, standing very straight as if at attention, up to his waist in rather muddy water, and not daring to move because he had no bathing drawers on. He thought afterwards that you and Uncle Henry
knew,
and were just keeping him in that awkward situation for the fun of it. I promised Mr. White I’d mention this when I wrote to you, and ask if you really did know, because he’s always wondered. It seems Mr. Cranston never was certain. But it is one of the funny stories about the Governor and his Lady that went around for years and years—as you can judge, since it came up only the other night here in Mayapore, after all that time.

I liked Mr. White, and his wife, although like all pukka mems
she
is a bit frightening at first. (I used to be frightened of
you.
) But they both seem to admire and respect Lili. It was a very private and friendly sort of party, with just two other men to balance Lili and myself at the table—Mr. Macintosh the Civil Surgeon, who is a widower and another old friend of Lili’s, and Judge Menen. He’s married, but his wife is in the local nursing home at the moment. I liked the judge. He has a wonderful sense of humour, or so I realized later in the evening. At first I thought him a bit snooty and critical, and put it down to an inferiority complex about being the only male Indian present. He’s much older than Mr. White, but then of course it takes an Indian longer to rise to a position of authority, doesn’t it? Anyway, after a bit I saw that he was pulling my leg in a way I’d have cottoned on to at once if he’d been English. It reminded me of when I first met Lili. Those dry amusing things she sometimes comes out with. If she were English, you’d laugh at once, but because she’s not, then until you get to know her you think (as I used to think) What is she getting at? What’s behind that remark? How am I supposed to reply or react without giving offense or appearing to have taken offense?

From what Lili tells me a lot of the English here are rather critical of the DC. They think of him as a man who does more than is absolutely necessary to show friendly to the Indians. They say he’ll find himself taken advantage of, eventually. They talk about the “good old days” of his predecessor, a Mr. Stead, who kept “a firm hand” and made it quite clear in the district “who was boss.” This kind of attitude has been brought home to me in the two days I’ve worked at the hospital and I realize how lucky I’ve been so far, living with you, and not getting mixed up with average English people. Matron, a marvelous woman who’s been out here for years and knows the score, said one particularly interesting thing when she interviewed me. The interview was fixed up by Lili through the Civil Surgeon who is medical overlord of everything that goes on in the district—but you know that! Matron said, “You have three sponsors, Mr. Macintosh, myself, and your own surname which is one people in this area remember as distinguished even if at the time there were a lot who disagreed with your uncle’s progressive policies. If you’re wise you’ll trade on all three but avoid too obvious an association with the fourth.” Well, I knew what she meant by the “the fourth” and I must say I got my hackles up, and said, “My
real
sponsor is Lady Chatterjee.” She said, “I know. It’s mainly why I’m taking you on. Even voluntary workers have to pass my personal test of worthwhileness. But this is a
British
general hospital, and I am its matron, and have long ago learned the lesson I had to learn if I were ever to do my job properly, and that lesson was to understand the necessity of excluding as extraneous any considerations other than those of the patients’ well-being and the staff’s efficiency” (she talks like that, rather officially, as if she has learned a speech). “There’s a lot” (she went on) “that you may instinctively dislike about the atmosphere in which you’ll be working. I don’t ask you to learn to like it. I only ask, indeed demand, that your work won’t be affected
by
the atmosphere.” “Perhaps the atmosphere should be changed,” I said. At that moment, you know, I couldn’t have cared less whether I was allowed to work at the hospital or not. After all, I wasn’t going to be
paid.
She said, quick as a flash, “I’m sure it should. I hope one day it will. If you’d prefer to delay working here until it does, and let someone else do the rewarding job of making sick people as comfortable as you can you only have to tell me. I shall quite understand. Although I’m sure that when you were driving an ambulance at home in the Blitz you never stopped to worry about what the wounded people you were taking to hospital felt about life or what their
prejudices were. I imagine you were more concerned to try and stop them dying.” Well of course it was true, what she said. I stared at her through these awful glasses I have to wear if I’m to feel absolutely confident and I wished I was driving an ambulance still. I did get a kind of kick out of it, even if I was terrified a lot of the time. 1940. How long ago it seems! Only eighteen months, but an age and a world away, as they say. Here the war has only just begun—and sometimes I’m not sure a lot of people realize that it has. Back home it seemed in a curious way to be already over, or to be settled down to go on for centuries. In Mayapore I think more than ever of poor Daddy and poor David. The war that killed them has only just caught up with Mayapore. At times it’s like waiting for them to be killed all over again, at other times like thinking of people who lived and died on another planet. I’m glad Mummy went before it all started. I can’t, as most of the English here do, blame the Indians for resisting the idea of war, a war they have no proper say in. After all I’ve seen the real thing, in a minor civilian way, but most of the people who lay down the law here about beating the Jap and the Hun (those
awful
old-fashioned expressions that seem to give
them
heart but always depress
me
) haven’t even heard a rifle fired in anger. British India is still living in the nineteenth century. To them Hitler is only a
joke,
because “he was a house painter and still looks like one even in uniform.” Three cheers for the Cavalry. Up the Navy! Sorry! I guess I’ve had one too many of Auntie Lili’s gimlets. I’ve got to get the old glad rags on soon, because we’re having a party to which no less a person than the District Superintendent of Police is coming. Lili says he’s a bachelor. I hope a dedicated one! I can’t bear the type of man who tries not to look as if he’s noticed I’m not really attractive. Remember Mr. Swinson?!! Auntie dear, I love you and think often of you and of us together in ’Pindi. I long really to be going up to Srinagar with you in May, but Auntie Lili seems determined to keep me here, and of course I’m now committed to the hospital. And I am seeing more of India this way. There are a couple of other local voluntary bodies like me in the civilian wing, but the rulers of the roost are the official VADs and the QAs. You should see the airs some of the QAs give themselves. At home they’d simply be ordinary ward nurses, or staff nurses at most. Here they rank as sisters. Neither they nor the voluntary bods are supposed to do anything menial. That’s all left to the poor little Anglo-Indian girls. Today, for the war effort, I rolled miles of bandages—I mean rolling bandages is
clean.
But I stood on my feet to do it, and
they’re killing me! Well, the boy has just come in to draw my bath. More presently. I’m loving it but finding it strange all over again, as I did when I came out last year. Mayapore is a bit off-putting in a way dear old ’Pindi isn’t. Is it something to do with the fact that that part of the world is predominantly Muslim, and here it is Hindu? Please look after yourself and think often of your loving niece,

Daphne.

The MacGregor House,
MacGregor Road,
Mayapore, 1.

Friday, 17th July 1942

Dear Auntie Ethel,

Many thanks for your letter and news of the goings on in Srinagar. Glad you got the photograph safely and in time for your birthday, but gladder still that you liked the dress length. The photograph seemed to me so awful that I had to send something else as well to make up for it, and then wondered choosing that colour whether I hadn’t made everything worse! Not much clothes sense, I’m afraid, although I did feel that particular piece would suit you. Relieved you think so too! Hope old Hussein doesn’t make a mess of it. Actually he’s a better tailor than the man we have here. Lili and I had an iced cake in honour of your birthday, and a few people in to share it who stayed on afterwards for drinks (which I felt you would approve of!).