M M Kaye

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty three.

Speaker 10:11

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:29

Our castaway this week is a novelist.

Presenter0:32

The author of, apart from other novels, The Far Pavilions, MMK. MM standing for Mary Margaret. That's right. But everybody calls you Molly.

M M Kaye0:42

Yes, I've never once been called anything with Molly. I'm a bit surprised. I'm told that it's a shortening for Margaret.

Presenter0:49

When I were sending you back to the tropics, but to a tropical island, all on your own, could you endure solitude?

M M Kaye0:55

Oh, very much, yes.

Presenter0:57

And we're giving you some music to make it better. Is music important to you?

M M Kaye1:02

Yes. I can't say I'm musical. I wish I could have played some form of instrument, but I haven't got a good enough.

M M Kaye1:09

Yeah, I think for that, but I liked listening to it. Do you play discs? An enormous amount, especially my ancient collection of seventy eights.

Presenter1:13

Uh

Presenter1:18

We're going to hear one or two of them on this occasion.

M M Kaye1:20

Yeah.

Presenter1:21

Or what's the first one you've chosen?

M M Kaye1:23

Well, the first one is Volce Bleu, and that I don't ever remember hearing before on a record, and I'm enchanted to find that you've dug it up for me.

M M Kaye1:32

But my mother used to play it. All Victorians learnt to play the piano.

M M Kaye1:36

And this was one of her piano pieces, and I remember it from

M M Kaye1:41

Well years of the First World War.

M M Kaye1:44

and I heard it again and again, and I finally had taught myself, at the age of about nine, I think, to play it.

M M Kaye1:51

from a bit of sheet music she had.

M M Kaye1:53

And though that's so long ago, even now if I shut my eyes and attack it very quickly and don't look, I can play a little bit of it. Once I start thinking, I forget where my fingers ought to go and I'm done.

Presenter2:03

We've failed to find a piano version, but here's one by the Orchestra Mascot.

Presenter3:09

THE VALS BLEU BY THE ORCHAST MASCOT. Molly, I know you have an abiding love for India. I mean, this fact shines out of the four pavilions. Were you born there?

M M Kaye3:20

Yes, I was born there. I was born in Simla, and I don't think you can get much more raj than that.

Presenter3:26

You are, in fact, the third generation of the Raj.

Presenter3:29

Tell me about your father and grandfather.

M M Kaye3:32

Well, my grandfather was one of the very last people who went to the East India Company's College of Addiscombe. I've got his passing out papers.

M M Kaye3:42

And it is now Heilbre, I think I'm right in saying.

M M Kaye3:47

Because it was abolished at the time of the mutiny and the East India Company was thrown out, their charter was not handed to them again, it was cancelled.

M M Kaye3:55

and the Crown took over, so that the time that we speak of as the Raj only lasted really from about

M M Kaye4:03

fifty eight or fifty nine, somewhere about that.

Presenter4:07

And your father?

M M Kaye4:08

Daddy, he went out in turn because it had then become a sort of thing that you followed on, and then my brother came out after him.

M M Kaye4:17

Then, of course, during my brother's time, Indo was handed back. Indo was given her freedom, and we went out.

Presenter4:23

You've written that you spoke Hindustani before English.

M M Kaye4:26

Oh, yes, we all did, all the Indebaughn children, because you had an eye, if you had any sense.

M M Kaye4:31

who had an eye on serpents and lots of other children if he wanted to play around with other kids.

Speaker 24:36

Yeah.

M M Kaye4:37

You spoke much more of it before you spoke English, and you were always warned by your servants.

Speaker 24:37

You speak my

M M Kaye4:42

As I noticed with interest, Kipling said he was. You are now going to speak to mamma and papa

Presenter4:47

speak English.

M M Kaye4:47

English

Presenter4:48

You had to remember to do that.

M M Kaye4:49

You had to remember, you thought in well, we called it Hindustani, and you translated it into English.

Presenter4:56

Did you go to an English school?

M M Kaye4:58

Well, I don't think there were such things at that time. We went to a governess who taught us. But I think I was largely self taught,'cause Daddy used to read to me from a very early age, and he never read me rubbish.

M M Kaye5:11

and I couldn't get enough people to read to me, so I had to learn, and I could read pretty well by the time I was four.

Presenter5:19

How old were you when you came back to school in England?

M M Kaye5:21

I was ten, I was lucky boys were always sent home very early.

M M Kaye5:26

because it was considered they would be spoiled by Indian servants, and that they must have a decent education. Apparently it didn't matter if girls were spoiled and rude and had no education.

M M Kaye5:36

My unfortunate brother was sent home when he was six and didn't see his father again until he was nearly fourteen, I think.

Presenter5:44

Did you find it very strange coming back here?

M M Kaye5:46

So why?

Presenter5:47

Or coming here for the first time.

M M Kaye5:47

I chated England. It was the first time I'd realized that India wasn't my country.

M M Kaye5:52

I never thought.

M M Kaye5:53

like my character and the pavilions that I was in, never for a moment.

M M Kaye5:58

But this was my country, and my friends, and my place, and it was only when I was yanked out of it and sent home that it really dawned on me that it was going to be very lucky if I ever came back.

Presenter6:09

You went to school here. You also went to art college. What was your art training for? What had you in mind?

M M Kaye6:16

I wanted to be an illustrator of children's books. I was going to be the new Dulac or Arthur Rackham or something like that. I was absolutely determined on it.

M M Kaye6:26

and I did quite a bit of illustration.

M M Kaye6:29

But I never made any money out of it, and I turned to writing merely because I simply had to make some money.

M M Kaye6:35

And I thought I'd have a bash and I had a bash. And if my book had been thrown back at me I never, never, never would have written another word.

Presenter6:38

Oops.

Presenter6:42

Well, we'll talk about your writing presently. Let's have your second record. What's that?

M M Kaye6:47

My second record is one called Russell of Spring, and this is again a childhood memory.

M M Kaye6:54

We had to make our own entertainments in India.

M M Kaye6:58

You hear occasionally of travelling companies that went around, especially since Sir Shakespeare Waller, that film.

M M Kaye7:04

But in actual fact there were very, very few of them, and therefore practically every station had its own amateur dramatic society, and Simla had a particularly good one, and it built and owned I think it was the first amateur dramatic society to own its own theatre. It built and owned its own theatre.

M M Kaye7:22

And the performances were really very good for very high standard.

M M Kaye7:26

And there was a nasty rumour around Simra in fact the whole of India that if you had a wife who was not only really pretty but could sing,

M M Kaye7:34

She didn't even have to be pretty, provided she could sing. You were absolutely certain of a job on the staff.

Presenter7:42

And this brings us to what?

M M Kaye7:44

Well, the children too had their own shows, and there was a children's play called The Lost Colour.

M M Kaye7:51

That was supposed to be one of the colours Tainy Tint, I remember, the pink, who was stolen away by some demon or some bad hat.

M M Kaye7:59

Out of the rainbow.

M M Kaye8:01

and the curtain went up on the rainbow, and we were all the children of the dancing class were lying in a rainbow asleep. My colour was yellow. My sister was

M M Kaye8:11

Tiny yellow.

M M Kaye8:12

At the other end of the line.

M M Kaye8:14

And to this tune, the rustle of spring, we gradually woke up, and I whenever I hear it, I can not only see the similar theatre, but almost smell it. Theatres have a particular smell.

M M Kaye8:26

And

M M Kaye8:27

I know most of the steps still, because it goes in my head having been dinned into one when young. We had great fun with The Lost Colour.

M M Kaye8:35

And this is music to which we danced.

Presenter9:35

Sendings Russell of Spring played by John Ogden.

Presenter9:40

Now fully educated, you went back to India. But you weren't there very long.

M M Kaye9:45

No, we weren't there for very long to start with.

M M Kaye9:48

We went back again, I'm happy to say.

Presenter9:50

You looked on India as your home, didn't you?

M M Kaye9:50

Yeah.

M M Kaye9:52

Oh yes it was like coming home. I go there as often as I can now. Fortunately I can at last afford to do it.

M M Kaye10:00

But every time I arrive, even though it's changed enormously, my immediate feeling is

Presenter10:06

At home. Were you married in India?

M M Kaye10:08

I was married in Indar, I met my husband in India, I married there, I had both my children in India.

Presenter10:13

Your husband, an army man.

M M Kaye10:15

Also an Indo family, he was the third Hamilton to serve in the guides.

M M Kaye10:20

That's the Queen Victoria's Corps of Guides, which is a very famous frontier regiment.

M M Kaye10:24

And the first of them is Wally Hamilton, who I put in the far pavilions. All that is true.

Presenter10:31

Were you in India throughout most of the war?

M M Kaye10:33

All the more.

Presenter10:33

Yeah.

M M Kaye10:34

I was in the WVS and I was also working on a propaganda paper called, if I remember rightly, Ella Khram. But I used to do all the drawings for that. I didn't write. I did drawings for that. And in the WVS I used to paint murals on the walls of these prefabs that they used to put up for troops, for rest places and um recreation and

M M Kaye10:56

hospitals and things like that.

Presenter10:58

And you had your two daughters.

Presenter11:01

With a certain amount of difficulty the facilities were very primitive, were they not?

M M Kaye11:05

Well, the first one was very primitive indeed very. It was in a place called Mount Arbu, and at least it was a cool place to go to,'cause I was in Rajputana at the time.

M M Kaye11:15

And I did wire up and say, was there a proper hospital? because I proposed to have a baby in it and they wired back and said yes, excellent British Army hospital with British doctor and British matron. Well, the British doctor was

M M Kaye11:29

I think a medical sergeant.

M M Kaye11:31

or possibly even a medical corporal.

M M Kaye11:34

And he did nothing. He got fed up with his place and he merely took to drink. And I never saw him once, not even once. He remained in his quarters tight as Newt, I think.

M M Kaye11:43

The um matron was also just an ayah in a British uniform, also tied to newt.

M M Kaye11:50

And I remember when I was taken in by my own doctor, who thank heavens was a refugee from an expensive hospital in Singapore.

M M Kaye11:58

They'd whisked him out to relieve another doctor, and he walked in and took a look at this place, and then he said

M M Kaye12:05

Any chloroform?

M M Kaye12:06

And the matron said, Oh, yes, we have chloroform.

M M Kaye12:10

and went and fetched a box and opened it and a couple of moths flew out. I can still remember that. I can remember the face of horror on the face.

Speaker 212:14

Yeah.

M M Kaye12:18

On the face of our Doctor Haver, we got through somehow. She took five days to arrive, and during this dreadful performance

M M Kaye12:24

A tiger took the hospital water buffalo outside my window. I mean, it was real Mark's brother.

Speaker 212:30

Yes.

M M Kaye12:31

The doctor, I'm happy to say, sat up for the tiger.

M M Kaye12:34

About a week later, over a kill, I got him. However, we with that water buffalo it had me hauled up by hand for the rest of my time there.

Presenter12:42

Oh, nevertheless, mother and daughter are now doing well.

M M Kaye12:45

Do very well indeed it was a most stirring performance.

Presenter12:49

Let us have your third record, please.

M M Kaye12:52

My third record is Me and My Shadow.

M M Kaye12:57

And this to me is coming back from school.

M M Kaye13:01

I was always terrified that after school we wouldn't go back to Indor again, that daddy would decide to retire before we could go back. Fortunately didn't.

M M Kaye13:10

And we went back to Indar, and when we arrived back in Delhi, we'd always been in Old Delhi before, but now there was a place called New Delhi, which was completely new to us.

M M Kaye13:20

and it had a large and opulent club.

M M Kaye13:23

At the first dance I went to it was a cabra was being put on in aid of something or other, Red Cross or something.

M M Kaye13:30

and some amateur, with a very pretty voice, danced and sang Me and My Shadow in a spotlight, a single spotlight, in this darkened ballroom, with her own shadow moving round, and whenever I hear that tune,

M M Kaye13:44

I am back again in the club, and I can remember all the people I danced with, and all the people I saw, as if it was yesterday. It's most curious how music brings.

M M Kaye13:53

back instantly, not only the look of a place, but the people you knew.

M M Kaye13:59

And the smell of it, the scent of it.

Presenter14:00

Shades of night are falling and I'm lonely

Presenter14:04

Standing on the corner

Presenter14:07

Soul Blue?

Presenter14:10

Sweethearts having fun

Presenter14:12

Pass me one by one.

Presenter14:15

Guess I'll wind up.

Presenter14:17

Like I always do.

Presenter14:20

With all league

Presenter14:24

Okay.

Presenter14:26

And my shall

Presenter14:30

Rolling down the air

Speaker 214:32

Mm-hmm.

Presenter14:32

Uh

Presenter14:34

Me and My Shadow by Whispering Jack Smith.

Presenter14:38

When the war was over, Molly, your troubles weren't over, because there were the difficulties, to put it mildly, of partition.

M M Kaye14:46

Yes, that was a terrible time. It really was. I had known with my head for years that we were going to have to go.

M M Kaye14:54

But one's heart wouldn't take it in.

M M Kaye14:56

This was my country. This was the place I loved. This was the place I had been born in. This was the place where I had most of my friends.

M M Kaye15:04

And I really couldn't take it in, and one was suddenly faced with this.

M M Kaye15:11

and we literally refugeed out of it because we were supposed to be leaving from Bombay.

M M Kaye15:17

and we couldn't get over the border.

M M Kaye15:20

Because it had suddenly been divided into two countries. It has all been India to me before, and now suddenly there was Pakistan.

M M Kaye15:28

And there was tremendous fighting across the border.

M M Kaye15:31

So we were put into a train at Rollpindir.

M M Kaye15:35

There was a gap of about twenty one days with no train at all, because the last train had been

M M Kaye15:40

held up in the sun, with no water, no food, no anything, and with a whole lot of British in it.

M M Kaye15:45

Oh, they didn't harm anybody, British. I think it's absolutely remarkable that there was nobody killed or turned on, they just turned on each other.

M M Kaye15:54

But we were sent down.

M M Kaye15:56

Karachi instead, and we were sort of put into a train, and they just said, Well, God be with you, and shoved us off, having given us lots of water and stuff.

M M Kaye16:03

I had two very small children with me.

M M Kaye16:06

and my elderly mamma, not so elderly then.

M M Kaye16:11

And if it hadn't been for them I think I would have jumped out of their train at any one of these dreadful stations and stayed behind'cause one was felt one was deserting.

M M Kaye16:20

No idea what it was like. I mean no food, no nothing, and refugees in both directions, and you could smell the whore from about two miles away.

Speaker 216:21

Yeah.

M M Kaye16:28

That bad.

Presenter16:30

Your husband transferred from the Indian Army to a British regiment. Did that mean a lot of moving about?

M M Kaye16:36

Yes, we went to a selection of the most magical places. We stayed in Egypt.

M M Kaye16:42

In the Suez Canal zone.

M M Kaye16:45

We went to Kenia I went to Cyprus and stayed there for weeks and I was painting at the time too. I did a lot of painting, more than writing really.

M M Kaye16:55

And I wrote a Whodone It about each of these curious places we'd been to, including Zanzibar.

M M Kaye17:01

Places that'll never look the same again. It really was an extraordinary bit of luck.

M M Kaye17:06

And a thing that I have left out which I should have told you was that at the beginning of the thirties we went to China because when Derry did retire in India he suddenly decided that he'd like to go and retire in China because he'd been out there in the Er Dot with his regiment clearing up after the boxer rising and he'd fallen in love with China. He spoke nine languages.

M M Kaye17:28

and something like eighteen dialects. He collected languages. I wish I did.

M M Kaye17:32

Without any trouble, and he spoke Manchu and Cantonese, which he had learnt just for fun.

M M Kaye17:38

And we went out there and we stayed for about two years in Peking, with a summer house in Petaho, where you looked across the bay to Shanghai Kwan, where the great wall runs down. And then fortunately there was a thing called the China Incident. The Japanese came in.

M M Kaye17:53

and um advanced on Peking and made a pretty good mess of it.

M M Kaye17:58

And so we left and we went across and stayed for Japan for a bit, at the time when if you saw a Japanese woman in Western dress, you'd turn round and look.

M M Kaye18:06

So we had the best of both worlds, really. It was

M M Kaye18:10

Absolutely en enchanting thing to have done. And then after the war and after the handover, I had all these bonus places.

M M Kaye18:18

Naxanzbaug.

Presenter18:20

Now, you wrote thrillers wherever you went.

Presenter18:23

Your first book about the East, Shadow of the Moon, about the Indian Mutiny. You had the idea of that book from some letters you came across.

M M Kaye18:33

Yes, I'd always wanted to write a book about the Indian mutineer. I'd been shown a letter that was in the archives of Government House in Lucknow, where I'd been staying with the Governor, who was an old friend of my papa's, in the middle of the hot weather when nobody else was there.

M M Kaye18:50

And the whole government house was full of mutiny books because it was a great centre of Lac Nauve.

M M Kaye18:57

He walked in one day and found me reading one of these. He said, You're always reading something about the mutiny. And I said, But I'm a K.

M M Kaye19:04

Because Sir John Kaye had done the only contemporary history of the mutiny. He said, Gosh, I'd forgotten that.

M M Kaye19:10

And he not only took me to all the places where I had sort of VIP treatment because I was with him, I saw all sorts of places that are not open to the public.

M M Kaye19:18

But he said I have an unpublished letter in the archives. You'd like to read it?

M M Kaye19:24

And he handed this over to a copy only.

M M Kaye19:26

But it was a girl who had gone through exactly what I just pinched the whole thing, I lifted it.

M M Kaye19:33

I then got my hands on the Hansard of the Indian Mutiny in one of the old residences, and I read that.

M M Kaye19:40

and the whole thing was given me on a plate.

M M Kaye19:42

There's nothing in that book there's nothing in Shadow of the Moon which is invented.

M M Kaye19:46

And there's jolly little in Far Pavilions that is invented too. It's nearly all true. And I've nearly finched the stories and used them, and there's so many more lying around to be collected, it isn't true.

Presenter19:56

You've got a lot of work ahead if you haven't.

M M Kaye19:58

I have got enough time, that's right, ever at my back I hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near.

Presenter20:04

Let's have your fourth record.

M M Kaye20:06

Lucien Boaz parlemoire de moi.

M M Kaye20:10

It came out at the beginning of the thirties, I suppose.

M M Kaye20:14

And we went to Japan.

M M Kaye20:17

on one of those very small little boats that used to do the trip across the China Sea to Japan.

M M Kaye20:23

And the captain had got hold of this record, and they had a sort of tannoy system, a very primitive one in those days, but he used to play this record, and you heard it all over the ship.

M M Kaye20:33

And we had Lucian Boyer singing this thing the whole way through.

M M Kaye20:36

And we all thought it was fascinating.

M M Kaye20:39

And we stayed in Japan for quite a bit, and when we left Japan and went down to Hong Kong, it was the same captain, same ship.

M M Kaye20:48

We just managed to catch him on that particular line. And here was the old record again. So we had it the whole way from Japan right through the Inland Sea, right down to Hong Kong.

M M Kaye20:57

And when we got back to Calcutta, we went back to India.

M M Kaye21:01

Daddy rather missed it, I think, and he said there was a bit in it. He spoke French among other languages, and he spoke em all very well, but there was one word or line or something he couldn't get.

M M Kaye21:11

So he rushed into the first shop in Calcutta, bought the record everybody was buying it then.

M M Kaye21:16

And played it very, very slowly until you got the line you wanted. So this is China and Japan to me.

Speaker 221:23

Holy Muada Lo.

Speaker 221:43

O mi cor, foris bét quiet sa mons fouai.

Speaker 221:52

That's all.

Presenter21:56

Lucien Boyer, Speak to Me of Love. Now you had written this good long book about the Indian mutiny, Shadow of the Moon, but there was a much bigger canvas you wanted to write on.

Presenter22:08

There was in fact an interruption before you could really get down to it.

M M Kaye22:13

There was a tremendous interruption, largely, I think, because

M M Kaye22:17

Well, to start off with, I'd wanted to do it after Shadow of the Moon, and the Americans said no. They said we just don't like anything about India, and we don't believe a word that anybody British says about India.

M M Kaye22:27

And we got Jack Masters already, and that's quite enough. And write about some other place. So I wrote another one. I wrote Trade Wind about my stay in Zanzibar.

M M Kaye22:39

as a historical novel before I got to that and when I got back and at last got down to this one I went out to India and had a lovely time looking around and getting the feel of the frontier again.

M M Kaye22:51

Got back again and I'd been back about three months and I got cancer, which was infuriating, and I got it pretty bad then. And I'm happy to say, touching wood, that I defeated it.

Presenter22:57

And I'm happy to say

Presenter23:00

Good.

M M Kaye23:01

And it took about four years out of the that's why it took me fifteen years to write this, because about four years were knocked out by this beastly cancer, but it worked.

Presenter23:09

After that four years, did you go right back to the beginning again, or did you pick the book up where you'd left it?

M M Kaye23:14

No, I read through what I'd written, and I thought, Well, that's all right, this is more or less as I want it.

M M Kaye23:20

I took it on from there. But, um

M M Kaye23:23

I didn't have time after that. By the time I was over the cancer my husband had retired, and I was all the things. When you were abroad you could generally get a cook or a housekeeper or a maid or something,'cause you had quite a lot of jobs to do yourself.

M M Kaye23:38

But once you were Todd, I was a one man band.

M M Kaye23:41

And also the children were growing up, getting married, going on stage, one thing and another, and Mummy, will you look after the house till I have a baby? Mummy will you look after my husband and the baby while I have another baby? and that sort of thing. So I wrote when I could, and that's why that was such an enormous book,'cause I had no idea it was going to end out so big.

Presenter23:58

We're talking of course about it, but the farmer's not the same.

M M Kaye24:00

But that was the pavilions.

Presenter24:01

How many words are there in it? Has anybody ever estimated?

M M Kaye24:04

I think but I should think about uh half a million or something.

M M Kaye24:10

In the book it's nine

Presenter24:11

Nine hundred and fifty something.

M M Kaye24:13

Something like that.

Presenter24:14

In the copy that I've got, yeah.

M M Kaye24:15

Yeah, I know. It's absolutely terrifying. I'll tell you, I I never read back. I didn't have time to. I pushed it in a cupboard as I finished it, and at the end of this awful stretch, when I finally opened the door of the cupboard, the whole thing sort of fell out on me.

Presenter24:17

Leopard is aware of the money.

Presenter24:29

Terrifying.

Presenter24:30

Let's have uh your fifth record now.

M M Kaye24:33

My fifth record is Nola. Again, this dates from Delhi days, and reminds me so much of Delhi. But I don't think anybody could be depressed on a desert island with a tune like this. Very cheerful, jumpy.

M M Kaye24:47

Fetty thirty June.

Presenter25:47

Billy Mayle playing Nola

Presenter25:49

So the Far Pavilions, all nine hundred and fifty-something pages of it was published. What period does the story cover?

M M Kaye25:56

The story covers from the mutiny. It starts where the other one sort of finished off.

M M Kaye26:02

It starts from the mutiny and it goes right to the end of the Second Afghan War.

Presenter26:07

What do they think of it in India?

M M Kaye26:09

They absolutely ate it, and that is the biggest compliment I ever received in my life, because I went out to do a sort of um promotional thing on shadow and pavilions, sitting rather on the edge of my chair.

Presenter26:11

And

M M Kaye26:22

Because even my dearest friends, you never quite know how they're going to take something that somebody else writes about them, and they went straight overboard about it.

Presenter26:30

It went.

Presenter26:32

How many copies have been sold? Have you any idea?

M M Kaye26:32

Bye.

M M Kaye26:34

Well, the last time I heard, I was told that overall, that's everywhere, it had topped fifteen million.

Presenter26:39

in various languages.

M M Kaye26:40

in various languages.

Presenter26:42

Now there's a film version which we're hearing a lot about at the moment. It's on television first. Two hours a night is that.

M M Kaye26:48

Two hours a night. I hope it doesn't prove too indigestible.

Presenter26:51

And then there's to be a feature film for the cinemas.

M M Kaye26:54

Yes, they're doing a much shorter one. They're cutting it down into a little romance. It's only about two hours and twenty minutes. There can't be much left.

Presenter27:01

Won't get the whole 950 pages in there.

M M Kaye27:04

No, no, no way.

Presenter27:06

Regard No. Six.

M M Kaye27:08

Record number six it's merely a remembrance of the fact, again, we used to make our own entertainment.

M M Kaye27:15

And this was a charity, I think, cabaret, I'm not quite sure.

M M Kaye27:21

In Kashmir, said Onaga.

M M Kaye27:23

And I sang the song with a man who was a a gay young subaltern with rather a nice voice.

M M Kaye27:30

And I did put it in one of my Whodone It's. I made one of the characters say.

M M Kaye27:35

Yes, I remember this place. I remember singing a song with a girl called Molly someone, either about a bench in the park or possibly tiptoeing through the tulips.

M M Kaye27:45

As a matter of fact, it was both.

M M Kaye27:47

But I sang Bench in the Park with a young man in Cashmere, and it went down there well, and years and years afterwards.

M M Kaye27:57

I turned up signing books in San Francisco.

M M Kaye28:01

And somebody walked in and said, Remember me, Mole. Well, I didn't, and he said, Bingle and I suddenly said, Good heavens, Bingle Ingle He was the young man who sang a bench and fog. So we

M M Kaye28:12

favoured a fascinated audience of people who had lined up for books and the staff with a verse.

Speaker 228:17

Yeah.

Presenter28:19

Well, here it is, a bench in the park from the film King of Jazz.

Presenter28:23

Romeo and Juliet, I'm quite sure, didn't have to pet, Upon a hardwood bench in a park like this is.

Presenter28:32

They had moonlight up above, and all the scenery of love, and things like that. So helpful to hugs and kisses.

Speaker 228:41

But you and I, my dear, need no such atmosphere.

Presenter28:55

A bench in the park by the Rhythm Boys, including Bing Crosbie.

Presenter28:59

What's the next book, Molly? Have you got one in mind?

M M Kaye29:02

My autobiography definitely final. Nothing is going to induce me to work any more after that. It's all becoming too much like work.

Presenter29:09

A long autobiography?

M M Kaye29:11

Well, I have an autobiography. There's a bit of argument over this because some my British publishers want it in three.

M M Kaye29:19

And my American publisher wants it in one. He says that autobiographies don't really sell.

M M Kaye29:25

After the first one. The first one everybody says this is absolutely fine. When they see another one they say, Autobiography by her yes, I've read her autobiography They don't sort of take it that it's the next one on.

M M Kaye29:36

And they prefer one, so well, they'll have to compromise. What I propose to do is just go on writing in my usual cheerful fashion.

M M Kaye29:43

anything I want to write about, and then they can fight over it when it's finished.

Presenter29:47

Another nine hundred and fifty page book.

M M Kaye29:49

I should think so. I've already done about nineteen thousand and I haven't got to me yet.

Presenter29:55

Some more music. We've got to record number seven.

M M Kaye29:58

Jean Sablanc, Je tière ma reverence.

M M Kaye30:01

I'm again a tremendous Chance Aublanc fan and I'm delighted to hear that he's still going strong and still singing.

Presenter30:09

Oh, indeed.

M M Kaye30:09

But this was a great favorite of the old days. I I had em all, and I've got this one.

Presenter30:15

Who may that me?

Presenter30:17

Ma souvenir.

Presenter30:20

Si vous la voi yeron voni.

Presenter30:25

Ditel vice motor law.

Presenter30:30

Viader pravé le passi.

Presenter30:38

Je tire marénces.

Presenter30:41

Imalves Waza.

Presenter30:44

Jean Sablanche etière reverence. Now you're on this desert island, Molly. You know the tropics well. Could you look after yourself in a physical way? Could you cook and build a hut and do all the other essentials?

M M Kaye30:57

Oh, I'm sure, because if you really put your mind to it you can invent. I think Hash would be very good at inventing things that were labor saving, like windmills and things which make things move instead of having to move them yourself.

Presenter31:08

That sounds very ambitious.

M M Kaye31:09

We are going to do it, sir.

Presenter31:11

Are you a good fisherwoman?

M M Kaye31:13

Well, I don't think I would go fishing if I could possibly avoid it, because there's one awful snag about me being on a desert island. I don't eat fish. It doesn't like me.

Speaker 231:22

I

M M Kaye31:22

I should think I'd probably end up

M M Kaye31:24

I having to eat the darn stuff because there wouldn't be anything else, but I'm hoping for cocoanuts and things like that.

Presenter31:29

Would you try to escape?

M M Kaye31:31

Well, in the present state of the world, no. If my husband was still round somewhere and try and get back to him, but then I know perfectly well that he'd be rescuing me before I escaped, so that'd be all right.

Presenter31:40

That's very comforting.

M M Kaye31:41

And he'd probably stay when he got there too. In fact, anybody who rescued me, if they had any sense, would stay where we were.

Presenter31:47

We've got your last record.

M M Kaye31:50

My last record is called Julia's Theme, and it was written by somebody who read the Far Pavilions and liked them very much.

M M Kaye31:58

called Jerry Lanning, and it's how he sees the heroine of the Palf Villain. It's how I see her too.

Presenter33:07

Julie's theme, inspired by The Fire Pavilions. If you could take only one disc out of the H you've played us, which would it be?

M M Kaye33:15

I hadn't sort of thought about that before, but I think if I just wanted sound, just music, I think I would take Julie's theme.

Presenter33:22

And one luxury to take with you, one object of no practical use.

M M Kaye33:27

I don't think there's anything I want that isn't of m practical use. The only thing I would like was the tools of my trade, so that I could sketch or write

Presenter33:36

We'll give you a full writer's kit.

M M Kaye33:38

That would be lovely.

Presenter33:38

That would be lovely. One book apart from the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

M M Kaye33:44

Well, Kipling's Indian Tales. It's in two volumes.

Presenter33:48

That is one word.

Presenter33:51

Mm-hmm.

M M Kaye33:52

And you can read Kim again and again and again and again and you're back in India.

Presenter33:55

Kipling's Indian Tales

Presenter33:58

And thank you, MMK. Thank you, Molly, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

M M Kaye34:03

Well, thank you, Roy, for asking me. I had the greatest possible fun.

Presenter34:04

Yeah.

Presenter34:07

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 134:34

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.