‘I won’t say anything, I promise.’
I sat close beside him on the bank, the silver-black water of the lake shimmering before us, the dark bulk of the hills rising steep behind. Apa with rod in hand, but not fishing – thinking. Thinking back into a past before I’d been born. I could only sit.
Later – minutes, hours – I don’t know, he said slowly, ‘You may even be right, Eve. I’m not sure. If there’s a chance you are—’ his shoulders lifted again, then he gave a small, sad shake of his head before saying, ‘But perhaps it was just an impossible situation. Perhaps for me there was no right choice.’
I said stoutly, ‘Well, I think there was, and I think you made it. I mean, if you’d fought and been killed then I’d never have been born, would I?’
And at that he started to laugh, and I joined in, though it was relief I was laughing with.
My Apa held out his hand. ‘Come along Eve, we’d better get back to camp – it’s long past your bed-time.’
Chapter Seven
Next day was Sunday. We read morning service together, speaking the psalms and singing the hymns, and then we set out on the next stage of our journey.
We talked – but not about war, or fighting, or the decision Apa had made all those years ago. We talked about the trees we passed, the birds we saw; about whether Kushal’s ailing grandmother would be better by the time we got home, and if my new geography textbook would have arrived. Talking together as we always did when we walked along the steep rocky paths of Kumaon.
And yet that day wasn’t quite the same – there’d been another subtle shift in our relationship. For a little while that previous evening Apa had been the wounded child, and I, his comforter. And having once seen his vulnerability, so now there was a protectiveness in my manner, which hadn’t been there before. I think he recognised it, and was grateful.
No, I’m sure he did. We were very close, my father and I, and we were closer than ever that day, as we climbed up through the feather-leaved chir pines and on into the shade of the gnarled oak trees wearing their monsoon draperies of ferns and moss.
We rested a while at the top of the Gagar Pass, then plunged on down through the damp shade of the forest, where only the sad, gentle whistle of the hill partridge betrayed her hidden presence – but those peculiar squeaks and chuckles of a flushed kalij pheasant alerted me in time to catch a glimpse of his white crest flickering up into the leaves. But not to catch him, because it was a Sunday.
We tramped on down the rocky path to the sound of ever-running water – running down in its split-log channels to the village of Ramgarh, where we stayed the night in the Public Works Department inspection bungalow.
Next day saw us leaving at first light, because we’d decided to cover the remaining eighteen or so miles to Almora in one stage. First came the plunge down into the valley to cross the river at the bottom by the iron suspension bridge. Then we went toiling along the bare, hot side of the Pathargarhi mountain, down again to the Deodar stream and up the long and weary climb to the summit of the Laldana Binaik Pass. Only another eight miles to go now – a lengthy descent down to the bridge over the Sual, and then we were on the last steep, hot climb up to Almora.
Almora, on its ridge. Almora, with its prison, Gurkha barracks and leper asylum. But Almora too, with its temples and high schools and its mile-long stone-paved bazaar – and Jasodh and Bikram running down the hill to meet us and shouting at the tops of their voices, ‘Eve! Eve!’ Almora, our home.
Years and years ago Bishop Heber wrote a hymn which talks about, ‘Bleak Almora’s barren steep’, but Almora is neither bleak nor barren these days, thanks to the work of Apa and his forest staff. Deodar, tun, alder, horse chestnut – all grow there now, and the western end of the cantonment is green and whispering with a plantation of young pines.
In any case, you shouldn’t compare Almora with Naini Tal. Almora isn’t a hill station, it’s the ancient capital of Kumaon, and the modern administrative centre of the district called by the same name. So Almora is a place where people go to work, not play.
Each morning Apa taught me for an hour, then he went off to work at the forest offices at Sitoli, and I buckled down to my homework. As soon as that was done I was out of the bungalow and running off down to the bazaar, until it was time to meet Jasodh and Bikram and Kushal from school. Then we’d be off looking for mischief – and generally finding it!
Whenever I was in Almora, or Jasodh and Bikram came out on tour with their father, we were inseparable. We played together, laughed together, argued with each other, sometimes fought each other, always teased each other, and frequently dared each other. I might have been a girl that year in Naini Tal, but back in Almora I was a boy, as usual.
The evenings I spent with Apa. Another lesson, the marking of my homework; and then, after our curry and rice we’d sit down together on the verandah while I told him what I’d done and seen and heard that day. And my wonderful Apa sat and listened to every single, tiny, unimportant detail.
* * *
October came, and it was time to go on tour. Going on tour is a vital part of their job for officials in British India – Indian districts are so vast and many areas so remote that officers have to travel around their designated area to ensure that everything is working properly. Forest Service, Public Works Department, and especially Deputy Commissioners – who are magistrates as well – all spend a large part of the winter months touring, in camp. And so did we.
At the end of September the tents came out for inspection – we stayed in forest department or dak bungalows wherever these were available, but in some places we had to camp. So whatever else we needed to take with us had to be carefully packed. In Kumaon this was preceded by a rigorous process of selection – not so rigorous down in the foothills and terai, where forest officers travel on elephants and have a train of camels for their baggage, but in Almora, with coolies doing the carrying we had to make choices. Apa and I would indulge in the same ritual exchanges every year, ‘My maths text book is so heavy, Apa – I’m sure I can manage without it…’
‘How very thoughful of you Eve – but I really can’t accept such a sacrifice on your part…’
Beds, table, chairs – though I tended to prefer sitting cross-legged on the floor or on the top of a box – basins, bathtub, goosedown quilts sewn into warm cosy bags for sleeping in – it gets very cold up in the hills in winter – lamps and lanterns, books in their boxes, and the vital medicine chest. All the contents of which had to be checked and replenished. The medicine chest wasn’t just to supply us, for if villagers hear there’s an official on tour they turn up from miles around with abscesses to be lanced, septic wounds to be cleansed, eyes to be anointed; so into the black japanned tin chest went bandages, plasters, splints; permanganate of potash, carbolic acid crystals, Singleton’s eye ointment; scissors, tweezers, spring forceps – and a large bottle of brandy. The brandy was for Apa, not the patients. He was a bit squeamish about medical matters, just like me. In fact once, when I’d gashed my finger open whittling a throwstick and he’d had to sew me up, he’d only just managed to finish tying the final knot before staggering outside to be horribly sick. Faizullah had had to see to my bandaging before going out to administer brandy to a pallid-faced Apa. I never teased Apa about that, because I’d felt pretty queasy myself when I saw my finger bone showing through. Oh, let’s be honest, I’d been thoroughly sick too, twice – the second time all over poor old Faizullah!
But back to that October. The luggage piled up: my throwsticks, Apa’s rods for fishing, his guns – for partridge, pheasant, khakar. We lived off the land wherever possible, since Apa and I preferred eating Indian food, and it was a easier than lugging round piles of English tins like a lot of officials did – though we always found room for my favourite sardines, and we did take our own atta for making chapattis – flour ground up in the hills is so full of grit.
Despite all my efforts to help, Faizullah had everything ready on time – as
he always did – and then we were off up the steep rocky paths with the sun on our backs and the scent of pines all around us.
Yes, truly I was Eve in her Paradise those months: singing, dancing, climbing trees, and playing my favourite game, ‘leap like a leopard!’, ‘listen like a khakar!’, ‘growl like a tiger!’ and Apa was there with me, laughing in the bright sun of autumn, while far away behind him the three white peaks of Trisul floated free against the brilliant blue of the sky.
Yet that autumn I think we both knew that I was no longer wholly a child.
One afternoon, when Apa came back from a couple of hours’ fishing he said, ‘Eve, I believe now that you were right, that evening at Naukuchya Tal. Thank you, thank you so much.’
Later, as we sat by the crackling fire in the forest bungalow he told me how he’d decided to become a forest officer as a form of reparation. In other countries the British were still fighting imperial wars, but in India, now, they were putting something back – the great irrigation canals, the railways, the medical services, the careful mediation to prevent religious strife, the foundation of a fair and uniform system of justice – and the care of the forests. And in all these areas the training of the new generation which would one day enable India to rule herself, was vital. ‘We hold India in trust Eve, we are only here for a season. Jasodh and Bikram will do my job when they’re grown – so don’t tempt them to play truant from school again!’
However had he known that? But then, my Apa knew everything – people used to tell him things because he listened, just as he always listened to me. But that listening wasn’t all one way; I listened to him, too, absorbing much more than I ever realised at the time. Reserved forests and open forests; working plans and circles; blocks and beats; forest rights to fuel and fodder, grazing and timber; fire breaks, game licences… That was the language of my childhood.
I can’t remember the number of times I watched as my father squatted down beside headman or villager and patiently explained that if animals are allowed to graze wherever they choose then they will destroy all the seedlings, and no new trees will grow to replace those taken for building houses. He would be explaining, too, the need to use the selective saw instead of the indiscriminate axe, explaining how the trees keep the earth anchored to the steep slopes, and how without their roots the rains would break down the terraced field walls and send their precious topsoil sliding down the hillside to grace some other farmer’s fields.
People struggling to wrest a living from the earth today often don’t think about the effects of their actions tomorrow, so that was the responsibility of the forest officer. Deputy Conservator of Forests was Apa’s official title, and that was his job, conserving and preserving the forests for the future. And he was very good at it. He didn’t simply order and enforce – he explained. ‘The son of your son’s son,’ Apa would say to a farmer, ‘One day he will till these fields, after you – and if those trees are taken now, and the soil is swept away, how then will the son of your son’s sons feed his son?’
I used to argue with him, saying, ‘But Apa, it’s the women you should be talking to, they’re the ones who do all the work in Almora – the men only ever plough and mend the terrace walls – and even then the women and children carry the stones for them.’
To which Apa would reply, ‘It’s the men who wield those wretched axes, Eve! Besides, they make the decisions and have all the power, so it’s them I must convince…’
‘It’s not fair – men and women are equal, so they should be treated just the same…’
All men and women are equal – another lesson Apa taught me. Not an easy lesson to teach a child in India, with its rigid distinctions of caste and class, and its treatment of women as inferior creatures.
I grew up knowing I had to respect those divisions of caste and creed, as every English child in India does – and I knew how to avoid transgressing those rigid codes of behaviour, as every English child in India knows. But I knew, too, that these divisions are superficial: that in the eyes of God all men and women are equal, and of equal worth. I knew that not just because Apa told me so, but because he lived his life according to that belief. Always he judged people by their actions, not by the accident of their birth. Titles, wealth, property, status – all these were merely outward trappings. To Apa, the humblest outcaste sweeper was as worthy of respect as the Governor of the Province. That was his code, and he lived by it, and he expected me to do the same.
That was the most important lesson I learnt from my father, and I learnt it simply by being with him.
Mine was the most privileged of childhoods.
* * *
One subject on which Apa did a lot of listening that autumn was the croft at Helspie – I’d become fascinated by the whole idea of it. He explained to me that the people of Helspie had been sent to that bleak coast because of the clearances in the Highlands – so they still spoke Gaelic there, though a different dialect from the west. Then he drew me a map of the harbour, and a rough plan of the croft, together with a sketch or two the fishing boats, though Apa wasn’t very good at ships, as they hadn’t been part of field sketching exercizes at Woolwich. Then when we were back in our bungalow at Almora for a few days he suggested that I work out how exactly we would make the journey to Helspie, when we’d finally saved up enough to visit Aunt Ethel. He borrowed a Bradshaw from Mr Sherring, the Deputy Commissioner, and with that railway time table open beside the atlas I spent several combined geography and maths lessons working out alternative routes. Apa was never one to miss an opportunity for me to put my skills to practical use – just like tiger cubs do!
Christmas came, bringing with it the Benhams – and two letters with a Scottish postmark. Aunt Ethel’s was on time for once, and the other I found at the bottom of my pile of presents on Christmas morning. It was from a solicitor in Wick, informing me that I was now the owner of half a croft in Helspie. Apa had given his share to me. My wonderful Apa. All he owned in the world was that half a croft in Caithness – and he gave it to me.
Over Christmas Mrs Benham raised the question of my going to a hill boarding school, as usual. And, as usual, I listened smugly to Apa’s reply of, ‘I think that should be for Eve to choose, Moira.’ Followed by her predictable response of, ‘Surely Evelyn, it’s the prerogative of the parent to decide on such matters.’
But not as usual, because after the Benhams had left, Apa raised the question again. ‘Perhaps Moira’s right and you do need the company of other girls, now you’re older.’
I couldn’t believe I’d heard him say it. ‘But Apa, you don’t want me to go away!’
‘Of course I don’t, Eve. But maybe it’s true, that I have been selfish in always keeping you with me.’
So they’d been discussing me behind my back! Then he threw the bombshell. ‘Look, Eve, there is one circumstance under which I will have to exercize my parental prerogative. I’ve heard on the grapevine that changes are in the air – and I may be posted back down to the Terai.’ He added encouragingly, ‘You know, the Terai is a paradise during the cold weather – lots of game, riding around on elephants, tigers—’ True. I knew that. ‘And you’d be able to spend the whole of those sixth months down there with me. You’d enjoy that.’ Also true. ‘But when the hot weather arrives the Terai is far too dangerous for a girl of your age – so you would have to go to school.’
Of course, I argued. I knew about the dangers of the hot weather in the Terai; it’s not just riddled with malaria, but with a particularly virulent strain of the disease. But once the rains start it’s so risky, only the Tharus who live there, and seem to be immune, can stay – and the Terai is closed altogether to Europeans. Then Apa would have to come back to the hills himself. So we were only talking about two or three months when he’d be there, and I couldn’t be with him. Yet attending the single long term of the hill boarding schools would cost me six whole months of captivity!
I rapidly produced my solution. ‘I can stay with Mrs Benham just
over the time before the rains.’
Apa looked embarrassed. ‘I did suggest that possibility to Moira – but she said she felt she couldn’t take the responsibility of a girl as strong-willed as you are. And you know, I think she’s right in one respect – it really would be good for you to mix with other girls, Eve.’
They’d got it all worked out. I was angry, I felt betrayed. So although I knew there was no way out I fought my corner, determined not to go down without something to show for it. I bargained ferociously, and in the end Apa caved in. It was agreed that if he were posted to the Terai I would agree to go to a hill boarding school without whingeing or complaint – and in return he would let me learn to ride a horse. As I argued, everybody else rode in India, so why shouldn’t I?
He wasn’t happy about it, my poor Apa – but he knew his scruples about my riding were only grounded in superstition – as I hadn’t hesitated to point out – so he gave in. Having gained my point I was all smiles again. After all, as I said to Apa, he might never have to go to the Terai at all, and then we could carry on just as we always did. ‘I do hope so, Eve,’ he sighed.
Then early in January we got the news: Apa was to be posted to the Terai. But only to cover a sick-leave of a couple of months or so – then he’d be returning to Almora, before the hot weather started. I was thrilled. Now I had the best of all possible worlds: Paradise – but no price to be paid for it.
Faizullah began his preparations for our departure at once. Apa packed his fishing rods with special care while I practised my tiger calls – in between boasting to Jasodh and Bikram and Kushal of the miles and miles I would ride on elephants. Then we were off – but this time we travelled down, not up – down to the jungles which join the foothills to the plain, the jungles of the Bhabar country, and the Terai.