They stepped out of the car and at once the khansama came forward bowing and salaaming and offered a note on a silver tray. He was known to Nancy who greeted him as an old friend.
‘A note from Uncle,’ said Nancy in surprise and slit it open with her thumb. She read aloud: ‘ “Was so looking forward to our evening together and now, instead of spending the evening with you, I’m spending the night in a train on my way back from Delhi. Unable to get away any sooner. See you, therefore, tomorrow morning (my train gets in at half-past ten).
‘ “I’ve told them to put a bottle of Niersteiner 1916 on ice for you and there’s a good Chateau Lafite to go with it. I even made bold to order your dinner but as Bobagee seldom takes any notice of what I say, I won’t attempt to prophesy what will actually appear on the table. But, anyway, have a good evening and I’m sorry I can’t share it with you. Your affect. Uncle.” ’
They looked at each other… There was no question but that the same thoughts had occurred to both.
A liveried khitmutgar stood attentively at the head of the stairs and, salaaming from the shadows, the ayah emerged to take Nancy under her wing and bustle her off with much clucking sympathy while the khitmutgar led Joe up a flight of stairs. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nancy disappear up a second flight of stairs and, with ironic amusement, wondered whether Uncle had deliberately sited them a decent distance apart.
To one accustomed to the dak bungalow at Panikhat, the room into which he was shown was a miracle of luxury. Marble floor, marble walls, fretted screen opening on to a wide balcony, a bed that would have slept four, a bath with actual running water and, in place of the top hat-like contrivance he had become used to, a genuine and unmistakable water closet with ‘John Bolding, London’ inscribed on it. The whole set within a mahogany seat in which was recessed an ivory handle inscribed with the words ‘Lift to flush’. On his dressing-table he found a further note which said in a slightly uncertain hand, ‘Dinner will be served at seven hours. This man will show you the way.’ Joe bowed to ‘this man’ who stood in attendance and allowed him to run a bath.
In preparation for his dinner with the Governor, Joe had on his way back up the Chowringhee called into the Army and Navy Stores and bought himself a white mess jacket and a dark blue cummerbund. He hadn’t the faintest idea what the appropriate colour for the Metropolitan Police would be but didn’t think dark blue could be wrong.
Shaved and bathed, dressed with the assistance of his appointed bearer, he surveyed himself in the long cheval glass. He was alarmingly agitated and excited at the thought of an evening alone with Nancy. Alone, that is, apart from the attendance of six or more khitmutgars. To collect his thoughts he stepped out on to the balcony, enjoying the sudden descent of the dusk and the evening wind setting in from the Hooghly River in the south. And, from long habit tucking a handkerchief up his sleeve and putting his cigarette case in his pocket, he followed his guide through the labyrinth of the big house. Down a flight of stairs, across a broad landing, up a further small flight of stairs and to a verandah with a wide view of the city. Through this and on to a balcony, lamp-lit and cool, a table laid with starched white linen and silver at which candles were being lit.
Joe put his hands on the balustrade and gazed down into the dark garden, breathing the teasing night-time scents. Scents to which, suddenly, there was a sharper focus. He spun about and Nancy was standing in the door. She was wearing a silvery grey silk dinner dress which managed, to Joe’s mystification, both to cling intriguingly to her top half and float flirtatiously around her knees. Slim and straight and eager, she had the grace and immediacy of a moonbeam, he thought fancifully. Forgetting the soft-footed servants, he held out his hands and when she approached he gathered her closer and kissed her cheek.
‘Mmm… I’m holding the spirit of the garden in my arms,’ he murmured, breathing deeply.
‘Nonsense!’ said Nancy, pulling away. ‘It’s as Parisian as you can get! Mademoiselle Chanel would be miffed if she could hear you describe her new scent as something out of an Eastern garden. It’s meant to revive memories of Paris in the springtime and all that!’
‘Well, I won’t say you look wonderful,’ said Joe, ‘because I assume you know that already but, all the same, you enchant me. I notice that Uncle has put us at extreme ends of the palace. Just as well, I believe.’
Nancy laughed. ‘If I’ve got it right, you went up a flight of stairs and turned right. You walked through an audience hall and turned left. Here you found your bedroom. What you don’t realise is that I was doing the same thing in reverse and although it appears that we are at opposite ends and miles apart our rooms are actually very close together.’
‘I’m overwhelmed!’ said Joe.
‘Well, get underwhelmed,’ said Nancy, ‘and let’s sample Uncle’s Niersteiner while we’re waiting for dinner. And look – wouldn’t you know – Uncle would never do anything so common as to serve wine in its bottle – the Niersteiner has been decanted as befits a gentleman’s dining-table. Very old-fashioned man, Uncle!’
The wine was excellent, the dinner that followed was outstanding, comprising tinned (but delicious) turtle soup from Lusty of Covent Garden, hilsa fish in tamarind sauce, chicken served with many vegetable dishes and a platter of rice, and a towering sugary model of the Taj Mahal accompanied by a mango water ice.
‘Say something appreciative on my behalf,’ said Joe as this fabulous meal drew to its conclusion and Nancy turned to the waiters and spoke at length. Her praise was received with beaming smiles and many salaams from all present.
‘God! I envy you,’ said, Joe. ‘What I miss by not being able to speak and understand. How long would it take me, do you think?’
‘I can’t tell. When I was a child – when I was a baby – my parents were busy most of the time and I spoke more to the servants than I did to them. I spoke more Hindustani than I did English for the first five years of my life. When I was in England at school and even more when I was in France in the war I found myself dreaming in Hindustani. And I think I could say that for the first seven years of my life I was entirely happy all the time and when I was cut off from it I had only one thought in my head – “When can I get back to India?” I used to whisper “ India ” to myself when things got bad. I swore an infantile vow that it was only a matter of time before I’d be home again.’
‘And they snatched you away from all that and sent you back to school in England? That’s terrible!’
‘Well, I certainly thought it was terrible. It happened to everybody. It never crossed anybody’s mind to complain. And it still goes on. I was lucky though. I was sent home eventually to school in Cheltenham. To a school that specialised in Anglo-Indian exiles like myself. I travelled with two friends in exactly the same situation. Minnie da Souza and Kate Bromhead. I don’t know where I’d have been in an English boarding school if it hadn’t been for them. We must have been a pain in the neck! We were all in our different ways exiled and bereft. We got over it by making a little enclave. We spoke Hindustani to each other and, to the limited extent that we could, we wrote notes to each other in Hindustani. Sometimes one of us would pretend we couldn’t understand what the teacher was saying and then another would translate it. It’s a wonder we had any friends at all!’
‘I should think they thought you were very exotic,’ said Joe. In his mind a picture had formed of three sallow little girls, spindly legs and big eyes, doing their best in alien surroundings to set themselves apart under an Indian flag.
Nancy resumed, as coffee was put on the table beside them, ‘I even made myself a tick-off calendar counting the months, weeks and days until I might be able to come home. But as the number of days to tick off diminished to manageable proportions a terrible blow struck us. The war. Everything suddenly was thrown into the melting pot. My parents were in England at the time on a year’s long leave. My father scuttled back to India where his regiment awaited him. We – the three witches as we called ourselves – had a serious conference, I remember it so well, in the box room at school. We decided to train as nurses. You can’t imagine the complications of that decision! But we persisted and we got our way and finally we became the three most innocent Red Cross nurses in the world.