and I found ourselves spending another week in Cawnpore, this time in a brick-built bungalow not unlike an official Rest House, which stood in an almost treeless compound on a flat, dusty and featureless plain; an unattractive place after the green and picturesque charms of the Retreat. But the starkness of the Rossesâ bungalow somehow managed to fit the situation, for I remember living through the week that we spent there in a state of continuous embarrassment, from which I could not wait to escape. I had never had a very high opinion of my charms (brother Bill had seen to that!), but never before had I felt so gauche, plain and socially inadequate.
Gerry, who like my beautiful and beloved âbest friendâ from my childhood days in Simla, Marjorie (âBargieâ) Slater, was a few years my senior, had blossomed into an outstandingly attractive and sophisticatedyoung woman, though she lacked Bargieâs sweetness. Enviably sure of herself, she was the very model of a Raj débutante, a âWeek Queenâ â which was a term given to girls who were invited as though by right to the many âweeksâ of the cold weather season. Lahore Week, Meerut Week, Horse Show Week in Delhi, and the many other âweeksâ that featured racing, polo and point-to-points and included a plethora of dinners and dances as well as the usual complement of white-tie and fancy-dress balls that were graced by all the prettiest and most popular girls in India: the âWeek Queensâ, in fact.
Gerryâs poise and confidence made me feel appallingly gauche by contrast, while my sense of my own inferiority was considerably increased by the fact that each evening of my stay, though I was graciously invited to help her choose which of her many ravishing evening dresses she would wear that night, and to watch her do her hair and make up her face prior to being fetched by one or other of an enviably large number of admiring young men, it was never once suggested that, as a house guest, I might be asked to accompany her. Gerry explained that the various parties had been arranged, and invitations to them accepted, long ago, and that no hostess (or host either) could be expected to welcome an extra and partnerless girl at the last moment. I saw her point. But all the same, I felt a bit like Cinderella minus a fairy godmother.
Someone with a better figure and more self-confidence might have written this off as fear of a rival. But as one who possessed neither, I knew only too well that far from regarding me as a possible rival, Gerry considered me much too dull to inflict on her lively friends. Still, I did think she might have
tried
to include me in just one party, and I remember that week as long, dull, and sadly deflating.
But our Miss Ross had obviously decided that left to myself I would be a non-starter in the social stakes; and possibly for the sake of old times, she took it upon herself to give me a few pointers for my own good. Which considering the circumstances was very kind of her. In a lengthy lecture, delivered in the course of a long afternoon spent lying under the mosquito-net in her bedroom, she went to a lot of trouble to âput me in the pictureâ; warning me what to expect when I reached Delhi, and telling me how I should behave.
According to Gerry, India was no longer the happy hunting-ground for spinsters in search of a mate that it had once been. The 1914â18 war had killed hundreds of thousands of young men, leaving an estimated3 million âsurplusâ British women who would never find husbands; and the annual trickle of Fishing Fleet girls had, in consequence, swelled to a flood. Each year every India-bound passenger ship brought more and more unmarried young women out eastward, and where men had once outnumbered women by at least five to one, the figures were now reversed. It was, therefore, up to any girl who wanted to have a good time, let alone find a husband, to keep
Gerry, who like my beautiful and beloved âbest friendâ from my childhood days in Simla, Marjorie (âBargieâ) Slater, was a few years my senior, had blossomed into an outstandingly attractive and sophisticatedyoung woman, though she lacked Bargieâs sweetness. Enviably sure of herself, she was the very model of a Raj débutante, a âWeek Queenâ â which was a term given to girls who were invited as though by right to the many âweeksâ of the cold weather season. Lahore Week, Meerut Week, Horse Show Week in Delhi, and the many other âweeksâ that featured racing, polo and point-to-points and included a plethora of dinners and dances as well as the usual complement of white-tie and fancy-dress balls that were graced by all the prettiest and most popular girls in India: the âWeek Queensâ, in fact.
Gerryâs poise and confidence made me feel appallingly gauche by contrast, while my sense of my own inferiority was considerably increased by the fact that each evening of my stay, though I was graciously invited to help her choose which of her many ravishing evening dresses she would wear that night, and to watch her do her hair and make up her face prior to being fetched by one or other of an enviably large number of admiring young men, it was never once suggested that, as a house guest, I might be asked to accompany her. Gerry explained that the various parties had been arranged, and invitations to them accepted, long ago, and that no hostess (or host either) could be expected to welcome an extra and partnerless girl at the last moment. I saw her point. But all the same, I felt a bit like Cinderella minus a fairy godmother.
Someone with a better figure and more self-confidence might have written this off as fear of a rival. But as one who possessed neither, I knew only too well that far from regarding me as a possible rival, Gerry considered me much too dull to inflict on her lively friends. Still, I did think she might have
tried
to include me in just one party, and I remember that week as long, dull, and sadly deflating.
But our Miss Ross had obviously decided that left to myself I would be a non-starter in the social stakes; and possibly for the sake of old times, she took it upon herself to give me a few pointers for my own good. Which considering the circumstances was very kind of her. In a lengthy lecture, delivered in the course of a long afternoon spent lying under the mosquito-net in her bedroom, she went to a lot of trouble to âput me in the pictureâ; warning me what to expect when I reached Delhi, and telling me how I should behave.
According to Gerry, India was no longer the happy hunting-ground for spinsters in search of a mate that it had once been. The 1914â18 war had killed hundreds of thousands of young men, leaving an estimated3 million âsurplusâ British women who would never find husbands; and the annual trickle of Fishing Fleet girls had, in consequence, swelled to a flood. Each year every India-bound passenger ship brought more and more unmarried young women out eastward, and where men had once outnumbered women by at least five to one, the figures were now reversed. It was, therefore, up to any girl who wanted to have a good time, let alone find a husband, to keep
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