The Best of Ruskin Bond Part 31

You can explore them, my son, when the trees

Take over again and the thorn-apple grows

In empty windows. There were seven cities before. . . .

Nothing my father said could bring my mother home;

She had gone with another. He took me to the hills

In a small train, the engine having palpitations

As it toiled up the steep slopes peopled

With pines and rhododendrons. Through tunnels

To Simla. Boarding-school. He came to see me

In the holidays. We caught b.u.t.terflies together.

'Next year,' he said, 'when the War is over,

We'll go to England.' But wars are never over

And I have yet to go to England with my father.

He died that year

And I was dispatched to my mother and stepfather-

A long journey through a dark tunnel.

No one met me at the station. So I wandered

Round Dehra in a tonga, looking for a house

With lichi trees. She'd written to say there were lichis

In the garden.

But in Dehra all the houses had lichi trees,

The tonga-driver charged five rupees

for taking me back to the station.

They were looking for me on the platform:

'We thought the train would be late as usual.'

It had arrived on time, upsetting everyone's schedule.

In my new home I found a new baby in a new pram.

Your little brother, they said; which made me a hundred.

But he too was left behind with the servants

When my mother and Mr H went hunting

Or danced late at the casino, our only wartime night-club.

Tommies and Yanks scuffled drunk and disorderly

In a private war for the favours of stale women.

Lonely in the house with the servants and the child