‘My mother loved Nehru ... They were soul mates,' says Lady Pamela Hicks

Ensconced in the sitting room of her splendid Georgian home, Lady Pamela Hicks is recalling a recent visit from Hugh Bonneville. The actor is playing her father Lord Mountbatten in the forthcoming film Viceroy’s House, which depicts the finals months of British rule in India.

“I took him secretly into the study as I wanted to see his salute,” she says. “Another actor, who played my father years ago, was a terrible slouch — but Hugh held himself beautifully.

“He didn’t look like my father of course,” she adds. “He was chosen because of the success of Downton Abbey.”

Lady Pamela, now 87, was 17 when her father was entrusted with overseeing the transfer of power to an independent India in 1947.

She was used to privilege: her mother, Edwina, was a glamorous heiress and her father, ‘Dickie’, a third cousin to the Queen and Prince Philip’s uncle. Nothing however, could have prepared her for the extravagance of life at Viceroy’s House in Delhi. With 340 rooms, marble walls and 12 indoor courtyards, the Lutyens masterpiece had come to symbolise the splendour of the Raj.

Seeing it recreated on the big screen — 70 years to the month since her parents were sworn in as the new Viceroy and Vicereine on ornate thrones — was, says Lady Pamela, enormously enjoyable. Although she admits to nit-picking all the way through the film, which stars Gillian Anderson, Michael Gambon, Simon Callow and Om Puri.

“In the film, Viceroy’s House is swarming with pretty girls but there wasn’t a woman in sight when I was there,” she says of the 500 Hindu, Muslim and Sikh servants that pandered to the lavish lifestyle of the Raj in its dying days.

“The grandeur was alarming,” she continues. “There were twenty-five gardeners to attend to flower arrangements alone, and there was one man who did nothing but prepare chickens. The house was so vast that one had to allow ten minutes to arrive at dinner on time

“My father, of course, was quite unimpressed because he spent his youth with his Russian aunt and uncle in much grander buildings,” she adds.

Sharp memory

Today, Lady Pamela lives in The Grove, an elegant country house in Oxfordshire, decorated by her husband, the celebrated society interior designer David Hicks who died of lung cancer in 1998. The couple have two daughters, Edwina and India, a bridesmaid at the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and a son, the architect and designer Ashley.

As probably the only living witness to events within the Viceroy’s walls during that tumultuous time, Lady Pamela proved an indispensable source of information to director Gurinder Chadha, the filmmaker behind Bend it Like Beckham.

“We spoke for hours and she even sent one of her people to check the costumes while I was at the hairdresser. There I was, an array of fantastic scarlet uniforms laid out at my feet, with ladies under dryers either side of me,” Chadha says.

Despite her protestations to the contrary, the youngest daughter of Lord Mountbatten has a sharp memory. In one of the early scenes of the film, Lady Pamela’s mother, Edwina, is seen dismissing a racist maid who had accompanied the family from England.

“That was Mrs Hudson,” she recalls. “My mother heard her say some unpleasant things and got rid of her. That was typical of the time. From the outset my father insisted that half the guests at garden parties and lunches should be Indian. I was staggered during one of them, when I inadvertently overheard someone say: ‘What are all these filthy Indians doing here?’

“My parents were quite enlightened and brought us up so that we had no prejudice.”

Lady Pamela’s mother, Edwina, is played by Gillian Anderson. “I thought she did a splendid job,” she says, “although she tried so hard to get my mother’s walk right, that she ended up giving her a little hump.”

Viceroy’s House does not touch on Lady Mountbatten’s rumoured affair with India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, but Lady Pamela insists, “there was no way they could have had a sexual thing at the time because they were never alone. They were permanently surrounded by police and ADCs.

“Besides, Jawaharlal was a very honourable man. The idea of betraying my father, who was a friend, by sleeping with his wife in his own house? No. It would have made it sordid.”

Despite her mother’s tireless efforts in refugee camps in the bloody aftermath of partition — as well as her work with St John’s Ambulance until she died in Borneo in 1960 aged 58 — it is her extra-marital dalliances that are most often discussed.

Soul mates

“The world is only interested in sex,” says Lady Pamela. “I remember, years after her death, sitting next to her former lover Bunny Phillips, who told me: ‘Your mother has this reputation of being some sort of nymphomaniac, but actually she hated sex. She just couldn’t live without admiration’.

“Jawaharlal and my mother undoubtedly loved one another. They were soul mates,” she continues. “But my father was never jealous. He could see that the relationship made her happier and easier to be around.”

Lord Mountbatten is portrayed in the film as a well-meaning but powerless figure, whose determination to keep India united proves futile when secret Westminster politicking is revealed and partition proves inevitable.

Partition — the dividing line drawn through the nation to create India and Pakistan — brought about the largest mass migration in human history, with 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims displaced and many lives lost in the massacres that followed.

As the split dawned, Viceroy’s House and its contents were divided up between the new states — even down to the individual library books. Lord Mountbatten was asked by Nehru to stay on for ten months as governor-general of India, meaning his family witnessed every struggle.

“The staff were given the choice to stay or go,” Lady Pamela remembers. “And my father said there had to be a fair division of the items in Viceroy’s House. But when they were splitting up the orchestra, they didn’t know what to do with the cymbals. How do you divide cymbals? I think India got them in the end.”

Returning to England with her parents in June 1948, Lady Pamela mourned the colour and intensity of her adopted country. “My mother and I thought of ourselves as Indian,” she says. Distractions quickly presented themselves however, first as an invitation to attend the 1948 Olympics in London alongside the Royal family and later when her family moved to Malta, where her father resumed his Navy career. (He was eventually murdered by the IRA in 1979.)

Lady Pamela accompanied Princess Elizabeth on her 1952 Commonwealth Tour, as a lady-in-waiting. It was during the trip that the future Queen learnt of her father, King George VI’s death. “I gave her a hug and a kiss, but suddenly thought, ‘Hang on. She is the Queen now.’ So I did a deep curtsy.”

It is her memories of India however, that Lady Pamela holds most dear — and with the 70th anniversary of independence on August 15, her recollections of that day in New Delhi remain vivid.

“A tsunami of people filled every possible space as far as the eye could see, euphoria etched on their faces,” she says. Making her way through the surging crowds, she was encouraged by Nehru to remove her high-heeled shoes and quite literally walk on the laps and shoulders of the people. “Everyone laughed and cheered us on,” she says. “It was the most important day of my life. I had witnessed the birth of two new nations and been present while history was in the making

source : gulfnews