Rusty Goes to London Read online

  Ruskin Bond

  RUSTY GOES TO LONDON

  Illustrations by Archana Sreenivasan

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Contents

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  A Far Cry from India

  Six Pounds of Savings

  Days of Wine and Roses

  Calypso Christmas

  The Stolen Daffodils

  My Limehouse Adventure

  The Man Who Was Kipling

  Tribute to a Dead Friend

  The Girl from Copenhagen

  Return to Dehra

  The Garlands on His Brow

  Time Stops at Shamli

  My Most Important Day

  A Handful of Nuts

  Author’s Note

  Read More in Puffin

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  RUSTY GOES TO LONDON

  Ruskin Bond’s first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written a number of novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley, A Flight of Pigeons and Mr Oliver’s Diary) essays, poems and children’s books, many of which have been published in Puffin Books. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.

  Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, and grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Simla. As a young man, he spent four years in the Channel Islands and London. He returned to India in 1955. He now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family.

  Also in Puffin by Ruskin Bond

  Puffin Classics: The Room on the Roof

  The Room of Many Colours: Ruskin Bond’s Treasury of Stories for Children

  Panther’s Moon and Other Stories

  The Hidden Pool

  The Parrot Who Wouldn’t Talk and Other Stories

  Mr Oliver’s Diary

  Escape from Java and Other Tales of Danger

  Crazy Times with Uncle Ken

  Rusty the Boy from the Hills

  Rusty Runs Away

  Rusty and the Leopard

  Rusty Goes to London

  Rusty Comes Home

  The Puffin Book of Classic School Stories

  The Puffin Good Reading Guide for Children

  The Kashmiri Storyteller

  Hip-Hop Nature Boy and Other Poems

  The Adventures of Rusty: Collected Stories

  The Cherry Tree

  Getting Granny’s Glasses

  The Eyes of the Eagle

  Thick as Thieves: Tales of Friendship

  Uncles, Aunts and Elephants: Tales from Your Favourite Storyteller

  A Far Cry from India

  IT WAS WHILE I was living in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, that I really missed India.

  Jersey was a very pretty island, with wide sandy bays and rocky inlets, but it was worlds away from the land in which I had grown up. You did not see an Indian or Eastern face anywhere. It was not really an English place either, except in parts of the capital, St Helier, where some of the business houses, hotels and law firms were British-owned. The majority of the population—farmers, fishermen, councillors—spoke a French patois which even a Frenchman would have disowned. The island, originally French, and then for a century British, had been briefly occupied by the Germans. Now it was British again, although it had its own legislative council and made its own laws. It exported tomatoes, shrimps and Jersey cows, and imported people looking for a tax haven.

  During the summer months the island was flooded with English holidaymakers. During the long, cold winter, gale-force winds swept across the Channel and the island’s waterfront had a forlorn look. I knew I did not belong there and I disliked the place intensely. Within days of my arrival I was longing for the languid, easy-going, mango-scented air of small-town India: the gulmohur trees in their fiery summer splendour; barefoot boys riding buffaloes and chewing on sticks of sugar cane; a hoopoe on the grass, blue jays performing aerial acrobatics; a girl’s pink dupatta flying in the breeze; the scent of wet earth after the first rain; and most of all my Dehra friends.

  So what on earth was I doing on an island, twelve by five miles in size, in the cold seas off Europe? Islands always sound as though they are romantic places, but take my advice, don’t live on one—you’ll feel deeply frustrated after a week.

  I had come here to try my luck at getting my first novel published. There really wasn’t much scope for struggling young English authors in India at my time. And I was certainly not going to pursue any other profession.

  I had finished school, and then for a couple of years I had been loafing around in Dehra, convinced that my vagrancy in the company of a few friends would give me the right outlook, material and environment to write my first novel.

  I’d always wanted to be a writer, for nothing made me happier than being surrounded by books, reading them and then writing. Books had been my sole companions during the many lonely periods of my life. My parents had separated when I was just four and my mother had remarried. I had stayed mostly with Father (wherever his job took us) or with my paternal grandparents in Dehra sometimes. But when I was just eleven, I lost my father to malaria. I stayed for a while with Grandmother, but she too passed away. I was then shunted around for some time—first I stayed with my mother and stepfather, then I was put under the care of my father’s cousin Mr John Harrison. I finished my schooling but was at a loose end when circumstances forced me to leave Mr Harrison’s house. I became a tutor to Kishen (who was not much younger than me), and lived in a tiny room on the roof of the Kapoors’ house, thus making my first serious attempt at defining my own identity.

  But life, as usual, had other things in store for me. I was soon without a stable shelter over my head or any means to make a living. I learnt to live each day as it came and to take the tough in my stride. All this only helped to fuel my ambition of becoming a writer someday soon. One day, quite out of the blue, I happened to meet an old acquaintance of my father—Mr Pettigrew, and through him chanced upon a few books left to me by Father.

  One of them was a first edition of Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I followed Mr Pettigrew’s advice to sell this rare find to a book collector in London. This fetched me a few hundred pounds with which I planned to buy myself a passage to England. Somehow Aunt Emily (my father’s cousin) got to know of my future plans and wrote saying that her family (which had settled in Jersey) would be happy to accommodate me with them until I found a job in London. This settled the matter for me, and soon enough I found myself on Ballard Pier and there followed the long sea voyage on the P&O liner, Strathnaver. (Built in the 1920s, it had been used as a troopship during the War and was now a passenger liner again.) In the early 1950s, the big passenger ships were still the chief mode of international travel. A leisurely cruise through the Red Sea, with a call at Aden; then through Suez, stopping at Port Said (you had a choice between visiting the pyramids or having a sexual adventure in the port’s back alleys); then across the Mediterranean, with a view of Vesuvius (or was it Stromboli?) erupting at night; a look-in at Marseilles, where you could try out your school French and buy naughty postcards; finally docking at Tilbury, on the Thames estuary, just a short train ride away from the heart of London.

  At Bombay, waiting for the ship’s departure, I had spent two nights in a very seedy hotel on Lamington Road, and probably picked up the hepatitis virus there, although I did not break out in jaundice until I was in Jersey. Bombay never did agree with me. (Now that it has been renamed Mumbai, maybe I’ll be luckier.)

  I liked A
den. It was unsophisticated. And although I am a lover of trees and forests, there is something about the desert (a natural desert, not a man-made one) that appeals to my solitary instincts. I am not sure that I could take up an abode permanently surrounded by sand, date palms and camels, but it would be preferable to living in a concrete jungle—or in Jersey, for that matter!

  And camels do have character.

  Have I told you the story of the camel fair in Rajasthan? Well, there was a brisk sale in camels and the best ones fetched good prices. An elderly dealer was having some difficulty in selling a camel which, like its owner, had seen better days. It was lean, scraggy, half-blind, and moved with such a heavy roll that people were thrown off before they had gone very far.

  ‘Who’ll buy your scruffy, lame old camel?’ asked a rival dealer. ‘Tell me just one advantage it has over other camels.’

  The elderly camel owner drew himself up with great dignity and with true Rajput pride, replied: ‘There is something to be said for character, isn’t there?’

  Did I have ‘character’ as a boy? Probably more than I have now. I was prepared to put up with discomfort, frugal meals and even the occasional nine-to-five job provided I could stay up at night in order to complete my book or write a new story. Almost fifty years on, I am still leading a simple life—a good, strong bed, a desk of reasonable proportions, a coat hanger for my one suit and a comfortable chair by the window. The rest is superstition.

  When that ship sailed out of Aden, my ambitions were tempered by the stirrings of hepatitis within my system. That common toilet in the Lamington Road hotel, with its ever-growing uncleared mountain of human excreta, probably had something to do with it. The day after arriving at my uncle’s house in Jersey, I went down with jaundice and had to spend two or three weeks in bed. But rest and the right diet brought about a good recovery. And as soon as I was back on my feet, I began looking for a job.

  I had only three or four pounds left from my travel money, and I did not like the idea of being totally dependent on my relatives. They were a little disapproving of my writing ambitions. Besides, they were sorry for me in the way one feels sorry for an unfortunate or poor relative—simply because he or she is a relative. They were doing their duty by me, and this was noble of them; but it made me uneasy.

  St Helier, the capital town and port of Jersey, was full of solicitors’ offices, and I am not sure what prompted me to do the rounds of all of them, asking for a job; I think I was under the impression that solicitors were always in need of clerical assistants. But I had no luck. At twenty, I was too young and inexperienced. One firm offered me the job of tea-boy, but as I never could brew a decent cup of tea, I felt obliged to decline the offer. Finally I ended up working for a pittance in a large grocery store, Le Riche’s, where I found myself sitting on a high stool at a high desk (like Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations), alongside a row of similarly positioned clerks, making up bills for despatch to the firm’s regular clients.

  By then it was midwinter, and I found myself walking to work in the dark (7.30 a.m.) and walking home when it was darker still (6 p.m.)—they gave you long working hours in those days! So I did not get to see much of St Helier except on weekends.

  Saturdays were half-holidays. Strolling home via a circuitous route through the old part of the town, I discovered a little cinema which ran reruns of old British comedies. And here, for a couple of bob, I made the acquaintance of performers who had come of age in the era of the music halls, and who brought to their work a broad, farcical humour that appealed to me. At school in Simla, some of them had been familiar through the pages of a favourite comic, Film Fun—George Formby, Sidney Howard, Max Miller (‘The Cheeky Chappie’, known for his double entendres), Tommy Trinder, Old Mother Riley (really a man dressed up as a woman), Laurel and Hardy and many others.

  I disliked Le Riche’s store. My fellow junior clerk was an egregious fellow who never stopped picking his nose. The senior clerk was interested only in the racing results from England. There were a couple of girls who drooled over the latest pop stars. I don’t remember much about this period except that when King George VI died, we observed a minute’s silence. Then back to our ledgers.

  George VI was a popular monarch, a quiet self-effacing man, and much respected because he had stayed in London through the Blitz when, every night for months, bombs had rained on the city. I thought he deserved more than a minute’s silence. In India we observed whole holidays when almost any sort of dignitary or potentate passed away. But here it was ‘The King is dead. Long live the Queen!’ And then, ‘Stop dreaming, Bond. Get on with bills.’

  The sea itself was always comforting and on holidays or summer evenings I would walk along the seafront, watching familiar rocks being submerged or exposed, depending on whether the tide was coming in or going out. On Sundays I would occasionally go down to the beach (St Helier’s was probably the least attractive of Jersey’s beaches, but it was only a short walk from my aunt’s house) and sometimes I’d walk out with the tide until I came to a group of prominent rocks, and there I’d sunbathe in solitary and naked splendour. Not since the year of my father’s death had I been such a loner.

  I could swim a little but I was no Johnny Weissmuller and I took care to wade back to dry land once the tide started turning. Once a couple had been trapped on those rocks; their bodies had been washed ashore the next day. At high tide I loved to watch the sea rushing against the sea wall, sending sprays of salt water into my face. Winter gales were frequent and I liked walking into the wind, just leaning against it. Sometimes it was strong enough to support me and I fell into its arms. It wasn’t as much fun with the wind behind you, for then it propelled you along the road in a most undignified fashion, so that you looked like Charlie Chaplin in full flight.

  Back in the little attic room which I had to myself, I kept working on my novel, based on the diaries I had kept during my last years in Dehra. It remained a journal but I began to fill in details, trying to capture the sights, sounds and smells of that little corner of India which I had known so well. And I tried to recreate the nature and character of some of my friends—Somi, Ranbir, Kishen—and the essence of that calf love I’d felt for Kishen’s mother. I could have left it as a journal, but in that case it would not have found a publisher. In the 1950s, no publisher would have been interested in the sentimental diaries of an unknown twenty-two-year-old. So it had to be turned into a novel.

  Six Pounds of Savings

  I WAS FORTUNATE to discover the Jersey Library, and at this time I went through almost everything of Tagore’s that had been published in those early Macmillan editions—The Crescent Moon, The Gardener and most of the plays—as well as Rumer Godden’s Indian novels—The River, Black Narcissus, Breakfast at the Nickolides. And there was a Bengali writer, Sudhin Ghosh, who’d written a couple of enchanting memoirs of his childhood in rural Bengal—And Gazelles Leaping and Cradle in the Clouds; it’s hard to find them now.

  Jean Renoir’s film of The River was released in 1952, and as I sat watching it in a St Helier cinema, waves of nostalgia flowed over me. I went to see it about five times. After three months with Le Riche’s I found a job as an assistant to a travel agent, a single woman in her mid-thirties, who was opening an office in Jersey for Thomas Cook and Sons, the famous travel agency for whom she had been working in London. She was an efficient woman but jumpy, and she smoked a lot to calm her nerves. Although I abhorred the smoking habit, I was often finding myself in the company of heavy smokers—first my mother and stepfather, and now Miss Fielding.

  Miss Fielding did not remove the cigarette from her lips even when she was on the phone to her London office. Her end of the conversation went something like this: ‘Puff-puff—A double-room at the Seaview, did you say?—puff, suck—Separate beds or twin beds?—draw, suck, puff—Separate. They’ve always had separate beds you say. Okay, puff—They’re from South Africa?—puff—This hotel has a colour bar. Oh, they’re white—puff—white-white or off-wh
ite?’

  Colour-conscious Jersey did not encourage dark-skinned tourists from the Asian, African or American continents. I don’t think Thomas Cook had any policy on this matter, but we were constantly being told by Jersey hotels that they did not take people of ‘colour’. Multi-cultural Britain was still some twenty-five years away.

  Miss Fielding wasn’t bothered by these (to her) trifles. She was having an affair with a man who sold renovated fire extinguishers. But he could not do anything to reduce her smoking. He came to the office on one or two occasions and tried to talk me into investing twenty-five pounds in his business. I’d be part-owner of ten fire extinguishers, he told me. He was quite persuasive, but as my savings did not exceed six pounds at the time, I could not take up his offer. He bought discarded fire extinguishers and put new life into them, he told me. They were as good as new. So was Miss Fielding, after several afternoon sessions in his rooms.

  But Thomas Cook weren’t happy. For several hours every day I was left in sole charge of the office, taking calls from London and booking people into the island’s hotels. I couldn’t help but confuse twin beds with double beds, and was frequently putting elderly couples who hadn’t slept together for years into double beds, while forcibly separating those who couldn’t have enough of each other. Miss Fielding did her best to educate me in this matter of beds but I was a slow learner.

  Beds could be changed around, but when I booked a group of Brazilian samba dancers into a hotel meant for ‘whites only’, I was fired. Later I heard that Miss Fielding had been recalled to London. And her gentleman friend ran foul of the local authorities for passing off his re-charged extinguishers under his own brand name.

  My next job was a more congenial one. This was in the public health department. Situated near the St Helier docks, it was a twenty-minute walk from my aunt’s house—over the brow of a sometimes gale-swept hill, and down to a broad esplanade in the port area. My fellow clerks, all older than me, were a friendly, good-humoured lot, and I was to work under them as a junior clerk for more than a year.

  Working at nights in an attic room provided by my aunt, I soon completed my novel. I hadn’t been away from India for too long, but I was very homesick, and writing the book helped to take me back to the people and places I had known and loved.