stage whisper. ‘They’re all Jews. All of ’em. They’re as fair as lilies but they wear these brown masks to pass off as natives. They’ve been persecuting us for twenty years.’
‘Thirty years, Phyllis.’
‘Since Partition, in fact.’
‘But we’re not going to give in, are we, darling? We’re not going to cut and run.’
At this point the drizzle which had followed me to the bungalow turned into a downpour. The water dripped through the roof of the veranda and we decided to move inside. From the sitting-room I could see the half-lit bedroom. To one side of the bed was an upturned chest of drawers, on the other an inverted ironing board.
‘That’s to stop the Jewish prostitutes from coming in through the floorboards,’ said Phyllis, seeing where I was looking.
‘But they still come down the chimney,’ said Edith.
‘Oh—they’ll do anything to drive us out. They’ve even started to watch us bathe. They peer through the window as if we were some sort of ha’penny peep show.’
We arranged ourselves around a table and Phyllis poured the tea.
‘Just look at my hands shake,’ she said.
‘It’s the prostitutes’ dope,’ said Edith.
‘Makes me shake like a Quaker and dribble like a dog. I used to be hale and hearty, too.’
‘Very hale and hearty, my sister. Those prostitutes should be shot on sight.’
The two sisters fussed around with their teacups, trying to spoon in the sugar and the powdered milk before their shakes sprinkled the stuff over the table. At length, when this was achieved and they had relaxed, I turned the conversation towards their memories of Delhi in the old days.
‘Oh it was such fun. We were young and blond and had admirers. The Delhi season lasted from October until March. At night we went to dances and drank champagne—real champagne—and by day we would sit outside and watch the soldiers riding past, four abreast. Those were the days.’
‘But my God have things changed. Imagine—I now do my own sweeping …’
‘… and the cooking and the cleaning and the laundry. Us—Colonel’s daughters.’
‘Our father was the Colonel of the 23rd Punjabis. I told the grocery boy last week. The Twenty-Thirds! He couldn’t believe such people lived in such … in such …’
‘Simplicity,’ said Edith.
‘Exactly,’ said Phyllis. ‘Simplicity. You know, Mr Dalrymple, you people today can have no idea what India was like before. It was … just like England.’
‘Shut up, darling! The prostitutes—they’ll report us. They’ve got microphones. Speak softly.’
‘I will not. The wickedness! Tell them to go to the devil.’
The two sisters sipped angrily at their tea. They were silent for a second, and I again tried to turn the conversation back towards Delhi.
‘Did you ever meet Lutyens?’ I asked.
Phyllis wasn’t listening: ‘And you know the worst thing. Those Jewish prostitutes. They tried to …’
‘Don’t Phyllis.’
‘I will. You can’t gag a Haxby of Haxby. They tried to put us in a madhouse. We went out for a walk and they started to drag us down the road. And I said: "This isn’t the way home."’
‘Damn cheek. A colonel’s daughter.’
‘The warders were very nice to us. We stayed there for two weeks. Then a young police officer came and said: "Who put you here?" He went to the I.G.—the Inspector General—and by four o’clock we were back here. The I.G. ordered us to be brought home. All the other inmates were very jealous.’
‘I’ll say.’
‘Imagine putting two elderly people in a madhouse. Those prostitutes—they’re from Baghdad, you see. They were able to do it because they have a money-minting machine and were able to bribe the inspectors.’
‘They use us as a respectable cover for their operations. That’s why we’re going to leave this place—as soon as we can sell the house. We’ve had enough of Simla.’
‘More than enough. We’ve had an offer for one lakh rupees [about £2000] from this man. If we can find someone to give us two lakhs we’ll be off home.’
‘We thought we’d try Ooty first. Get a taxi to Delhi …’
‘Dear old Delhi.’
‘… then a flight to Coimbatore, then a car up to the Nilgiris.’
‘It used to be lovely in Ooty. Just like England.’
‘But if we have no luck there we thought we’d try Wales. With two lakhs you could get a nice house in Wales I’d have thought.’
Looking at my watch I saw it was time to leave: my train back was leaving in less than an hour. I got up, said my goodbyes, and promised to send them the English brassieres and stockings they had asked for—they seemed to have trouble with domestic Indian brands: ‘Indian women have the strangest shaped breasts,’ explained Edith.
Both of the sisters heaved themselves up and saw me to the door. But just as I was setting off down the garden path, Phyllis called me back. I thought that maybe she had finally remembered some forgotten snippet of Delhi gossip.
‘One last thing,’ she said, clenching my hand in her claw-like grip. ‘Just watch out.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Look after yourself,’ she said earnestly. ‘Don’t drink anything strange—or anything bitter. Watch out for the smell of bitter almonds. The Jews will all be after you now—after you’ve tried to help the Haxbys. You won’t be safe anywhere.’
I thanked her again and opened the wicket gate. As I closed it, I heard her shouting behind me.
‘Take it,’ she called, ‘from a colonel’s daughter.’
IN NOVEMBER, on the first night of the new moon of Kartika, Delhi celebrates Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights.
In the markets trestles go up selling little clay lamps and mountains of honey-soaked Bengali sweets. Postmen, telephone engineers and chowkidars tour the streets, knocking on doors and asking politely for their Diwali baksheesh. (Balvinder Singh, it must be said, opted for a more confrontational approach: ‘Mr William, tomorrow is holiday. Today you give me 200 rupees extra.’)
Every night during the week leading up to the festival the sky reverberates with a crescendo of thunderflash and fireworks. The pyrotechnics culminate in an ear-splitting, blitz-like barrage the night of Diwali itself. That evening every Hindu and Sikh house in Delhi is lit up with a blaze of candles; even the jhuggi-dwellers place one small nightlight outside their corrugated-iron doors. You can smell the thick cordite-smoke of the fireworks billowing in over the kitchen spices and the scent of dung fires.
Although it is a Hindu festival, many Muslims join in too; over centuries of co-existence the holidays of the two faiths have long become confused and mingled. On my way back from the Lodhi Gardens at dusk I saw two heavily-bearded men bowed in prayer on a small masonry dais by the roadside. Though it lay beside a path I walked along every day I had never previously noticed the tomb, hidden as it was by a thick covering of weeds and thorns.
The two men had cleared the undergrowth, covered their heads with pocket handkerchiefs, and were now busy placing a series of little oil lamps over its breadth;