Maharani Read online

  It served only to make her more feverish. She sighed and moaned as his beautiful but rough fingers caressed her forehead, her temples, the lobes of her ears. His hands went to her breasts, his lips to her welcoming mouth. Five minutes of frantic kissing, and then they flung aside their garments, embraced, thrust at each other like gladiators lusting for love rather than blood.

  Hers was a thirst that could not be quenched. The Maharaja had given her a son but little else. Years of loveless lovemaking had made her vulnerable to the first real lover who had come her way. Gafoor fitted the role perfectly. Well endowed, considerate, willing to give as much pleasure as he took, he was the ideal foil for this neglected but passionate princess. While His Highness hunted elusive tigers, his chauffeur tamed a real tigress in his master’s very own den.

  In Corbett, the Maharaja found the ideal companion. Neither was interested in sex. Corbett lived with his spinster sister. He was a man of the forests, well versed in jungle lore. Women were a distraction. He was a role model for the young Maharaja who aspired to a comparable reputation as big-game hunter.

  But royalty is proud of its possessions, and his queen was one of his possessions. There were spies in the palace and it wasn’t long before word reached him that there was more to the Maharani’s outings with the driver than a desire for fresh air. Their intimacy had not gone unnoticed. It is hard for lovers to conceal their passion for each other. Little things gave them away—a glance, a gesture, a familiarity not usually found between mistress and servant.

  The first to notice this increasing familiarity was a nun.

  What was a nun doing in the Maharaja’s palace? No one knew where she came from or where she went, but twice a year she turned up at the palace, stayed a few weeks and then disappeared again. The Maharaja’s mother had been part Hungarian, and the nun was a relative, or so it was assumed. A tall woman with full lips, hollowed-out eyes, and very big hands for a woman. The palace servants were convinced she was a man, or partly a man. One young scamp claimed to have peeped into her room from a skylight, when ‘Sister’ was removing her white habit, and had seen hairy legs and something peeping out from between them. ‘You’re just making it up,’ said the cook, giving the boy a cuff over the ears. But speculation continued.

  The good ‘Sister’ had noticed and observed the clandestine affair between Gafoor and Her Highness. So had everyone else, although they had chosen to ignore it. Why create trouble in a household that was otherwise running smoothly? But the nun was a confidante of the Maharaja. He would often turn to her for advice. Although far from being religious, he stood in awe of all those who had renounced the carnal pleasures of this world. A suggestion from Sister that he keep an eye on his queen’s comings and goings—more frequent when he was away, chasing big cats—made him suspicious, deeply offended.

  No king will tolerate a queen’s infidelity, especially if her lover turns out to be one of his servants.

  The Maharani and Gafoor had discovered a shady, fern-covered bank near a stream that came down from the hills. They would leave the car on a by-lane and walk down to the stream. The ferns provided a soft, inviting bed. Dragonflies hovered over their naked, thrusting bodies.

  A magpie in a nearby tree gave an alarm call. Too late. The lovers were still entwined when a shadow fell across them. Someone held a 12-gauge shotgun to Gafoor’s head and pulled the trigger. The young man’s blood and brains splattered over the shrieking Maharani.

  As the sound of the explosion died away, the queen’s shrieks gave way to hysterical sobbing. She was dragged away. Gafoor’s body was thrown into a nullah, to be feasted upon that night by jackals and other scavengers.

  The birds kept up a racket for some time before silence returned to the forest.

  ‘And what happened to the Maharani?’ asked Doreen, who felt a certain empathy with the tragic young queen, for she (Doreen) had been quite a beauty when young and had taken many young men as lovers.

  ‘She died a few months later,’ said my mother. ‘Some say she died of a broken heart; others say she was poisoned. Slow poison, probably. The Maharaja had many doctors among his friends, and one of them provided the death certificate. All it said was heart failure.’

  ‘But why slow poisoning? He could have had her shot at the same time that the driver was dispatched.’

  ‘Maybe he wanted to prolong her misery, see her suffer. Some of those princes had sadistic natures. There was one who modelled himself on the emperor Nero. Created an arena where young men from his prisons were thrown into a ring of tigers. He loved watching them being torn apart.’

  ‘So he wanted to watch his young queen dying. And taunted her too, I expect,’ said Doreen. ‘He must have known something about poisons.’

  ‘He left that to the nun,’ said my mother. ‘Sister Clarissa. Apparently she’d been a trained nurse before she went into a nunnery.’

  ‘And how did she get out of the nunnery?’

  ‘God knows. I suppose they get leave from time to time.’

  ‘Sounds fishy to me,’ said Doreen. ‘I doubt if she was really a nun. And when the Maharani died, how did he take it?’

  ‘Started looking for another,’ said my mother. ‘Only this time, he wanted someone who could shoot tigers.’

  Which was where Neena came in.

  Neena the jungle princess, Neena of the nine lives.

  She was only sixteen, just out of school, when she was married to His Highness, some twenty years her senior; but she was a willing partner on his shikar trips, and even cosied up to Jim Corbett when the great man wasn’t tracking man-eating tigers. But Corbett seemed immune to the lures of beautiful women.

  ‘Couldn’t get it up,’ she told me, years later. ‘He lived with his sister, no sex life at all. I think he was impotent. Instead of having sex, he shot tigers. Once, in camp, my hand brushed against his trousers—quite inadvertently, of course—but there was nothing there! He pushed my hand away and gave me his gun to hold instead!’

  ‘Lucky you,’ I remember saying. ‘His fans would have given anything to hold his gun.’

  ‘Well, there was nothing else to hold. And yet, there was a story going around that he was in love with me.’

  ‘Platonic, no doubt. Everyone was in love with you.’

  3

  A week or two later, in the first week of May, I paid another visit to H.H. at her Mussoorie home. The walk from my cottage to the ‘palace’—a distance of three miles—was rather more arduous than it used to be. Our schooldays were long behind us and age had caught up.

  She was sitting in the sun, under a garden umbrella, a gin and tonic on the table beside her.

  ‘I think I’ll die this year, Ruskin,’ she said. This was her usual mid-morning greeting.

  ‘You’re Neena of the nine lives,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve used them all up. There aren’t any left. Sit down and have a gin.’

  Seema had seen me arrive and, assuming that I was going to join Neena in some gin and gossip, came over with a glass and a decanter of water. A bottle of Gilbey’s dry gin was already conveniently placed near Neena’s easy chair. H.H. poured me a stiff one.

  ‘I’m not really a heavy drinker,’ she said. ‘I drink till late afternoon, then I have an early supper and go to bed.’

  ‘Were you drinking when you were married? Did you drink with His Highness?’

  ‘Never. He did enough drinking for the two of us—or more. Without a drink he was like a fish out of water. Kartik takes after him. Karan has other vices.’ She was referring to her sons, both middle-aged layabouts, surviving on the modest allowance she allowed them. Kartik was now a hopeless alcoholic. Karan was still experimenting with various drugs. I did not want to talk about them.

  ‘His Highness, your husband—had he no other interests apart from hunting and drinking?’

  ‘Hobbies, you mean? Well, he kept white rats. You knew about that, I suppose.’

  ‘No, never heard of them. White rats! As pets? When I was a boy
, there were one or two boys who kept them.’

  ‘Well, my husband was always a boy. He never did grow up. His favourite reading was Billy Bunter.’

  ‘The Fat Boy of the Remove. Forever eating. I read Billy Bunter too.’

  ‘Yes, but you went on to Virginia Woolf. Or didn’t you?’

  ‘I did, but I can still enjoy Bunter. And William. All the bad boys. And speaking of Bunter, I’m hungry. Is your diet entirely liquid?’

  As though on cue, Seema appeared with a dish of pakoras. She was now Neena’s slave. She gave me a radiant smile. I basked in its glow. When a seventy-year-old receives a ravishing smile from a twenty-year-old, the years simply fall away. On a spring morning too. A couple of bulbuls had been twittering away, without getting my attention. Now they began to sound like tender songsters. Ah, the sweet mystery of life!

  Neena brought me back to earth.

  ‘Stop looking at her, and look at me for a change,’ she snapped. ‘You’re far too old and useless to be ogling pretty tribal girls.’

  ‘No harm in ogling,’ I said. ‘But we were on the subject of Virginia Woolf.’

  ‘White rats.’

  ‘Your husband’s hobby. How many did he have—five or six?’

  ‘Five or six? Hundreds! There were hundreds of them. Well, he started with three or four. But rats are oversexed little devils, forever fornicating. They multiply like—like rats! Within a couple of years there were over a hundred rats. All over the place!’

  ‘All over the palace?’

  ‘They had a wing of this mansion to themselves,’ said Neena pointing to a large empty space between one wing of the building and the servants’ quarters. ‘I had it pulled down after my husband died. I suppose it could have been of use, but it stank to high heaven—the boards were well pickled in rat urine.’

  ‘What happened to the rats? You let them all loose, I suppose.’

  ‘Had to hunt them down. They didn’t want to leave the grounds. Not after the last grand meal they’d enjoyed. Don’t you know about it? I thought everyone knew, although we did try to hush it up. It did not seem appropriate, somehow, for a maharaja of the realm to be consumed by his pets. Yes, the rats made a meal of him. I wasn’t here, thank god; I was overseeing repairs to our palace in Mastipur—it was in a dreadful condition. And His Highness, being on his own without anyone to control his excesses, went on a binge, drank his way through all the whisky and brandy in the house—and then decided he would say goodnight to his pets, see that they had been fed and given water and lots of cotton-wool to nest in. There was a boy who did the chores, but it was his day off, and His Highness decided he’d look in on them, make sure they were comfortable. He’d installed a toy train for them, and sometimes he’d give them train rides around the room, placing his favourites in open carriages, winding up the engine, and watching it carry a trainful of squeaking rats going around in circles while he sat on a stool, watching them and chuckling with delight.

  ‘Well, that night he’d had too much to drink—far too much—and he fell off his stool and passed out. Completely blotto—and there was no one around to pick him up and carry him to his bedroom. It was well past midnight. The rats were hungry. Hundreds of hungry, angry rats! Soon they were all over him, exploring his clothes, wriggling into his underwear, nibbling here and there. Nibble, nibble, snap! Word soon got around. Their affectionate master was tasty. And he didn’t seem to mind being nibbled and bitten and chewed. Had he been conscious he would have struggled, cried out, attempted to crawl out of the room. But he was completely anaesthetized—paralysed—mercifully unaware of what was happening to him.

  ‘The rats were delighted. This was better than biscuits and bread. Sweet, juicy steaks! A delicious rump! A belly to feast on and thighs dripping blood. No part of his anatomy went to waste. Even his eyes were gouged out. They gnawed at his heart, burrowed into his brain. By morning the rats were satiated, most of them asleep, a few still looking for pickings.

  ‘When the boy came in, he found a skeleton and a bundle of clothes. At first he did not know whose bones lay scattered about the room—then he recognized His Highness’s embroidered slippers and he went screaming from the room and woke up the rest of the household.

  ‘I arrived next day, and a funeral was arranged. We cremated what was left of him down in Rajpur. Dr Gupta was very helpful, as always. I gave him a bottle of Scotch and he made out the death certificate. Heart failure, of course, what else? And it was perfectly true. His heart must have stopped long before the rats got to it.

  ‘So now you know the true story, my dear. Aren’t you going to stay for lunch? Hans is making mutton cutlets today. But you’re not hungry. Well, have another gin, and then we’ll go inside and I’ll give you something.’

  It was seldom that Neena gave anything away, and I was intrigued by her offer. And after hearing her account of the Maharaja’s gruesome end, I needed another drink. But I excused myself from lunch, promising to feast on Hans’s mutton cutlets another time.

  Before I left, Neena led me into a small dressing room which was attached to her bedroom.

  ‘This is what I wanted to give you,’ she said, giving me an affectionate peck on the cheeks. ‘I think it will fit. You’re about His Highness’s size.’

  She opened a cupboard to reveal an elegant sherwani draped over a coat hanger.

  ‘You’ve looked after it so carefully,’ I said. ‘Why do you want to give it away?’

  ‘Because you’re such a dear friend. I wouldn’t give it to anyone. That ragged old overcoat you wear every winter makes you look like a tramp.’

  ‘It’s too grand for me,’ I said, turning away and still thinking of rats. ‘Keep it for someone special.’

  4

  Men friends?

  She’d had a few. A professor, a surgeon, a brigadier … But the most charming of them all had been the diplomat from Bolivia (or was it Chile? or Peru?). And since he’s still around somewhere (and probably carrying a gun) we’ll just call him Ricardo. One can always fall back on Hollywood for a colourful, swashbuckling name.

  After leaving school I saw nothing of Neena for a number of years—just heard about her from time to time—and when I did meet her, just briefly, she was the mother of two spoilt little brats and the owner of a posh little seafront hotel in Pondicherry.

  I had been commissioned by a travel magazine to write an article on three former French enclaves in India—Chandernagore, Mahé, Pondicherry—and that was my reason for being on the Beach Road in Pondicherry on a breezy, late monsoon evening, wending my way through a colourful and fairly conservative crowd of locals and Tamilian holiday-makers. The sea was calm, the seagulls preoccupied, the seafront given over to children with ice cream cones, when a commotion at one end of the esplanade caught my attention.

  Promenaders scattered as a goat came charging through them, followed by a yapping Pekinese on a leash. The owner of the dog and the leash was nowhere in sight. A goat in full flight, followed by a furious peke, is a sight to behold. A Pekinese gone berserk will take on a tiger, and no one was going near it. Having grown up among my mother’s dogs, yapping Poms and snapping dachshunds, I had some idea of how to handle them; and grabbing the leash, I managed to halt the advance of the canine terrorist—so suddenly that it sprang into the air and almost throttled itself. I picked it up, holding it at arm’s length to prevent it from biting my nose off, and looked around for its owner. A few spectators were clapping. I was a hero at last.

  But not for long. A young woman in a billowing skirt advanced on me, accompanied by a large, unfriendly looking boxer. I had not grown up with these larger breeds. Fortunately it was on a leash, and the leash was in the hands of its owner, who looked slightly familiar.

  ‘You can put it down now,’ she said, indicating the wriggling peke. ‘And give me the leash. Betsy is a good little dog, but she doesn’t like goats. They get into our compound and eat all the petunias.’

  ‘Betsy,’ I said. ‘Like Aunt Betsy Trotwo
od. She didn’t like donkeys. They kept getting into her garden.’

  ‘You had an aunt called Betsy?’

  ‘No. Betsy Trotwood in David Copperfield.’

  ‘Is that a film?’

  ‘No, ma’am, it’s a book. But you’re right, it was a film too.’

  ‘I don’t read many books. Only bestsellers. Like Forever Amber. Have you read Forever Amber?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘She was a whore.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  She looked hard at me, then said, ‘I think I’ve seen you before.’

  ‘I think I’ve seen you too,’ I said. ‘Can’t forget a pretty face.’

  ‘You’re that boy who danced with me at the school social!’ she exclaimed, dropping both leashes and giving me a great hug and a kiss. ‘My dream lover!’

  We were attracting a certain amount of attention and I was feeling terribly embarrassed. Unlike Goa, the Pondicherry beach is on the conservative side.

  ‘You’re blushing,’ she observed.

  ‘You’re Neena,’ I said. ‘Weren’t you a princess?’

  ‘I’m still a princess. Better still, I’m a queen—married to H.H. the Maharaja of Mastipur. Not that he’s anything to boast about. But come back with me and have a coffee. Here, you hold Betsy and I’ll hold the boxer. You’re a dog lover, aren’t you?’

  ‘Actually, I prefer goldfish. They don’t bark. Or bite.’

  ‘Silly,’ she said, and taking me by the hand, led me across the Beach Road and up the steps of a gaily painted seafront hotel. The dogs were let loose and settled down in the veranda. It was hot outside. I was dripping like an ice cream cone.

  ‘This hotel is yours?’ I asked.

  ‘A present from my dear husband. So that I don’t get too bored in his absence. Actually, I rather enjoy running it. One meets interesting people—like you, for instance.’

  ‘I’m staying somewhere more modest. Can’t afford this place.’