To write your own destiny

From the wilderness and isolation of a Himalayan shack vying with naked shaman, snow leopards and poisoning attempts as a lone parent to post-war movie-making with auteur Jean Renoir, Rumer Godden's life has been one long roller-coaster ride. Thrilling but bumpy at intervals.

A child of the privileged Raj, Godden is famed for her Indian-drenched classics Black Narcissus, The River, The Greengage Summer and In This House of Brede, together with numerous award-winning poetry and children's fiction titles like the inaugural Whitbread-winning The Diddakoi. Hers is a prose hailed for its honesty, humanity, courage and joy. A compelling story-teller whose deep and lifelong love of India has informed most of her 60 volumes of work to date.

Though now living in the verdant and idyllic environs of Moniaive, Dumfriesshire, with her daughter's family - ''I haven't lived by a river since Kashmin days,'' she says gazing out into the tranquil garden - Godden's rebellious spirit appears not to have diminished. Opinionated on everyone and everything from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses - ''he must have known what he was doing'' - to the whirlwind state of nineties publishing - ''no-one stays anywhere very long these days'' - the sharp Godden intellect and tongue are in fine fettle.

Perhaps this irrepressible liveliness can be traced back to her unconventional Raj childhood. Born in Sussex in 1907, Rumer was the second of four daughters to ''Mam'' and ''Fa'' - the latter's work for the Indian Steamer Company taking the family all round the continent from Delhi to Bengal and Bombay. ''I think I partly owe my independence to Ma though,'' offers Godden in beautifully preserved RP vowels. ''We were four young girls marooned out there in India for the war and whereas any sensible parent would leave the hot plains between March and October to go and choose a hill station with nearby school - we never went to the same hill-station twice. It was a wonderful gift, wonderful experiences,'' she enthuses of her peripatetic existence. ''It meant we saw more of India than many people who spent their working lives there.''

As she writes in her autobiography, the Godden girls were hardened adventurers by the age of 12. ''We travelled the length and breadth of India, from Kashmir in the far north west to the Nilghiri hills of the south, the scorched aridness of the Scinde desert, lived in the Himalayas facing the peaks of the snows, seen cities and mud-walled villages.''

However, it was a vastness and experience that ill-prepared 12-year-old Rumer and her elder sister Jon -''we were like Siamese twins throughout our lives'' - for the strict discipline of convent school back in England. The sisters rebelled, with a spiky adolescent Rumer delivering a warning to one nun. ''When I went to school,'' she recalls, ''it was so brutal that I remember standing on a table and telling Mother Superior, 'You may be a nun but I think you are wicked and one day I shall write a book all about you!''' Despite the ill will at the time, neither of Godden's ''nun'' books, Black Narcissus or In This House Of Brede, betray the extreme ''anti-church'' feelings she harboured for many years.

By 18, Godden was back in the midst of Calcutta's colonial society. The Euro-circuit of dinners, dancing, balls, racing and picnics occupied the next three years until the enterprising young woman decided to set up as a dance teacher. ''I think I was a bit of a pioneer when I opened my ballet classes first in Darjeeling then Calcutta,'' is Godden's understatement. Young, single and a nice society girl out working - ''Absolutely outrageous'' was the Club's pronouncement. An opinion confirmed when it was discovered that the curious Rumer had invited members of the student revolutionary group, the Red Hand, over for a fact-finding meeting. ''I just wanted to know about this atmosphere of ferment that was building all over India,'' she argues, referring to the growing independence movement. ''I was very unpopular after that.''

Shunned and ignored by her set for teaching the Eurasians ballet, only spurred on the headstrong Rumer. ''I was not a shrinking violet,'' she confirms. ''So the more the Europeans said 'don't' the more determined I became. I remember they had this big debate at The Saturday Club to put me out,'' she recalls with a smile. ''Since my father was one of the founders they couldn't but I do remember some of the young men I had ridden and danced with stopped asking me.''

One young man who persevered was Lawrence Foster. Her first marriage in 1934, did nothing to dampen this independent spirit nor quell her growing curiosity for the country she was living in. ''The British in India brought Britain with them,'' she explains of her compatriots ignorance. ''They bored me. I wasn't old enough to be an Edwardian as many of them were. I wanted to explore and know the people.''

Secretly then, she haunted old Calcutta. ''I walked where most Europeans went in cars, if they went at all,'' she writes in her autobiography. ''Into narrow reeking lanes and alleyways, forced into the gutter by cars, tongas and buffalo carts, dodging rickshaws, goats, hens, sacred bulls, stepping over babies, pools of cess . . .''

Aged 35, marriage and motherhood to two daughters had done nothing to impede her writer's imagination. And despite her Fa's advice that ''No-one will read it'', Rumer's third novel, Black Narcissus, was to make her international name. But the Second World War was on the horizon and un-beknownst to Godden, she was on the cusp of the most challenging period in her life.

Her husband Lawrence had massive gambling debts which he neglected to tell her about before he upped and joined the Army. After repaying the debts with Black Narcissus monies, Rumer now officially penniless and ''abandoned'' moved her children up to a tiny house on the Himalayan foothills, Dove House. Out of any army jurisdiction, she was informed by both Kashmiri officials and missionaries of her peril. ''They told me I'd lost my mind. It really couldn't have been more cut off,'' she concedes. ''No water, no electricity, no means of heating, no glass in the windows.'' Despite these real-estate drawbacks Godden found recompense in her wild surroundings. She wrote: ''Never have I loved a house as I loved Dove House,'' and ''I want to stay here for the rest of my life.'' Life was simple: friends visited, she grew food in the garden, even setting up a herb teas and oils business and wrote while

the children slept.

Over the next 20 months she encountered a snow leopard, an avalanche, a naked shaman and double-dealing servants. But also good friends. While showing me round her house, Godden highlights a beautiful Agra rug hanging on the wall -''Profit David gave me that rug,'' she says fondly of an Arfur Daley character she encountered in the tiny village. ''I carried it all the way back from India under my arm.'' However, it was not the loneliness or the worry over her growing childrens' schooling that drove Godden from her idyll but an insane servant's poisoning attempt. ''It was terrible that poisoning business,'' she explains shaking her head in genuine worry. ''I was really frightened by that belladonna and ground glass.''

After years of shuttling back and forth between two continents, the time had come to settle back in England. When Godden arrived, aged 38, in Liverpool in 1945 with two young children in tow and no husband (they were divorced), she also held a manuscript which was to lead to her next adventure. The River, inspired by her young sister Nancy's uncanny power over animals, was to be the novel that led to her deep friendship with the cinematic auteur Jean Renoir.

Despite a negative experience of book to screen transition with Michael Powell's version of Black Narcissus - ''It does not contain one atom of truth,'' says Godden with thinly disguised distaste - The River was to change her mind. ''Ah yes Renoir was the great exception,'' she says with a smile. ''I think it was his constant search for truth that I could relate to because that is very important in my writing. I think the whole process was very good for me as it made me more concise than ever. He'd have us searching for an hour even, to find the right word.''

The enormous Renoir - ''the children called him Babar the elephant'' - was adamant that Godden should write the script in the interest of his passionate quest for authenticity. ''It was the first time he had ever worked on a script with a woman,'' explains Godden of her time collaborating with the master in Beverly Hills. ''And his very fiery Brazilian wife Dido was not pleased. She used to explode, Jean would bellow and I just kept quiet.'' Happily, when Dido realised Godden's was a purely professional relationship, she relented and the three became lifelong friends. In fact, Godden encountered a Who's Who of twentieth-century arts figures during her Beverly Hills period. ''He lived among a very charmed circle,'' she continues reeling off Gregory Peck, Lillian Gish, Charlie Chaplin, Elizabeth Taylor - ''a perfectly lovely 18-year-old who kept offering me tea,'' Stravinsky - ''a funny little

bald man'' and Charles Laughton as some of those she met. ''Jean always seemed to have a spit turning, there was continually food, wine and talk.''

The days of Beverly Hills' socialising may have passed but Godden's appetite for life and writing clearly has not. With a new adult fiction title due out in December to coincide with her 90th birthday and a TV adaptation of In This House of Brede planned, Godden is as busy as ever. As I take my leave, allowing her to finish today's chapter, (handwritten as always) ''I don't like any interference between my eye, the pen and the paper'' - she glances at the sturdy gin and tonic in hand and declares with obvious relish - ''I set a shocking example, don't I?'' Yes, deliciously shocking and inspiring.