Black British (18 page)

“Move, you stupid turkey,” said Lily as she prepared to shift her chair to follow the sun.

“Goggle gobble gobble.” The turkey was happy to oblige. He moved closer.

“No you idiot! Move the other way.” And the turkey laughed ad-o-ring-ly, as though she had said something rather witty. He snuggled his warm body even closer. He had found new friends.

“That turkey is as ugly as sin.” Lily had read the expression in a book and took the opportunity to practise it. “Only a mother could love all those loose folds of skin.” As she spoke an odd note crept into her voice and she leaned forward to examine the turkey.

“Gosh, it's ugly.” She screwed up her nose, but this time her tone was gentle, reflecting awe and wonder. “But his feathers are beautiful. All sorts of greens, shiny black and deep blue.”

“Here, turkey!” From force of habit she whistled as she would to a dog. “Come over here.”

Sitting at my feet Reg heard the familiar sound, raised his head but seeing he wasn't needed, slid back into slumber. The turkey on the other hand, arched its neck in ecstasy, fluffed up its tail feathers and strutted around in an
I've-found-Heaven
dance. The more Lily whistled, the more he hopped and twirled, sending out flashes of obsidian hues as the sunlight caught his wings. When she whistled in a higher pitch he responded accordingly, happy to follow her lead.

At breakfast the next morning, unusually for her, Lily volunteered to feed the poultry. By the time we collected under the garden umbrella to work on the
mawa
the turkey was waiting for us, ready to sing and entertain us with dance and colour. With dog-like devotion, he divided his attention between Lorraine and Lily. Initially he was wary of Reg but the day came when Reg was found licking his head while the turkey made guttural sounds deep within his throat.

Tempus fugit
. The golden days were winding down. The time for murder was nigh.

“You CAN'T kill Thomas,” wailed Lily, anguish robbing her of a mature response. “We can't
eat
Thomas!”

The indecision was palpable on my mother's face as it was obvious Lorraine and I would follow Lily. All her arguments covering the sole reason the turkey had been procured, that animals were there to serve mankind, that we had to eat
something
, evolved into another Christmas dinner of roast goose.

Most years catching a goose for Christmas was no fun at all. But that year it was comparatively easy. The old gander, lulled into a false sense of security by the turkey's presence, let down his guard and Christmas dinner that year was particularly tasty.

The following year my mother tried again. Another turkey arrived so Thomas and his friend joyously danced and sang a duet in many-part harmony as we undertook the soul-destroying work of cleaning the
mawa
. There was almost an ethereal, sacred energy to their performance which was explained when Thomas-the-Turkey, actually Thomas
ina
-the-Turkey, produced a flock that had grown – exponentially – to ten.

The geese, those proud descendants of the saviour of Rome, were the losers in each of these manoeuvres.

The turkey wasn't such a turkey after all.

PART IV

Family Shenanigans

CHAPTER 12

AUNT BETTY'S PARTIES

A lady comes by, waves as she calls out, “
Pinto, deu boro dis dium. Majhe kode so tahntia asai tuka deupak. Tu ghara voita thedna majheshi yea ani vor
.”

My friend explains, “That's my sister-in-law, my wife's sister. She only speaks in Konkani. She lives in the next street and keeps chickens. She said she has six eggs for me to collect on my way home.”

Aah! extended family living close by. My sigh, though silent, is laced with longing.

I indicate that he should go. I don't want to hold him up, but he shakes his head and grins like a naughty schoolboy. “I never do as she asks. Just to annoy her I never do as she asks. I'll collect the eggs later this evening.”

Aah! family. Another sigh. This time a deep, heartfelt one.

Aunt Betty was my grandmother's youngest sister. She was exhaustingly old and at the same time, energetically young. Her thin, wispy hair sprouted unevenly from her scalp, sometimes hanging down like oily rats' tails and at other times standing on end as though craning to see what was over the horizon. She was thin with angular features, much like the popular caricature of a witch, but her personality and zest for life occupied acres and acres of space.

Born in the early 1890s, she grew up with the typical mental and physical constraints of a young lady of that era. That is, until her husband died, leaving her impoverished and with three young children to rear. “I knew it was up to me to provide for my children – and provide I jolly well would,” she often said.

Raising money by selling her jewellery and borrowing from anyone she could –
I couldn't afford pride
– she dotted her vast compound with a few small cottages hidden among trees so her privacy remained intact. Her tenants loved her but knew she wasn't available to be bullied, as were so many women of those times.

She instructed her
mali
to grow edible plants so her garden flaunted a treasure trove of fruit trees that grew in her fowl run and thrived on the natural fertiliser produced by the hens. The abundant produce was an added source of income.

Gradually Aunt Betty awoke to the freedoms brought by early widowhood. At first slowly and then in leaps and bounds, her independence and confidence grew. Her cottages and garden produce were followed by jams and pickles that cost nothing to make since the ingredients were home grown and the infrastructure was her household kitchens and domestic staff. Her profit margin was close to a hundred per cent.

The realisation grew of how limiting her married life had been, of how much she enjoyed her new entrepreneurial experiences and the price she had to pay for it. Aunt Betty's manner was a mixture of smug complacency and sporadic humility. When we admired her enterprise and wondered at her tenacity (
You are smart, Aunt Betty. A woman ahead of her times!
) she was abrupt, reminding us of her strong family support. When we mentioned that support she reared up to her full height of five-foot-nothing and claimed, in royal tones emphasising the pronoun, “WE had the strength to carry on, to cope with hard times. A lesser woman would have crumbled.” Glaring at us, she dared us to contradict.

We didn't – not to her face.

In rare moments of introspection she acknowledged that had her circumstances remained unchanged, she would never have known any better, would have thought herself fulfilled as wife and mother. She also acknowledged that an element of luck had made her success comparatively easy. “I was left with the house and compound. Mrs Hortense was destitute and had to resort to being a paid companion to her obnoxious aunt. In the old days, widowhood mostly brought penury. Women were precluded from both inheriting money as well as earning it. They were completely dependent on the generosity of a male relative. So women had to look after their husbands – whether they wanted to or not – because indirectly they were looking after themselves.”

“
Hudt!
” Scorn oozed from every pore as we listened. Surrounded as we were by strong-minded women like our mother and aunts, we were disinclined to attach undue respect to the male of the species.

By the time I was born Aunt Betty had outlived all the women of her generation of our extended family and become a force to be reckoned with. She knew it. Everyone knew it. Every man, woman and child knew it.

Except for Lorraine, Lily and I. As a single unit, we knew we were a match for her.

Aunt Betty appeared to be fond of my father. Certainly she admired his professional abilities and interacted with him with a mixture of respect, friendship and general bonhomie. It was her relationship with my mother that was truly interesting.

“You look pretty,” she said to Lorraine at a family party that she loved to host. Turning to my mother she continued, “She's a real beauty!” At eighteen Lorraine was statuesque with a smile that put the sun to shame and enviable hair that gleamed as it curled around her shoulders.

Giving my mother a few seconds to bask in maternal pride she added, “She's the image of my sister.” To Lorraine: “You look just like your grandmother. You're lucky to have inherited her genes.”

Since it was apparent from a mile off that all three of us were our mother's daughters, this was clearly absurd. But our grandmother had died when Lorraine was a tiny tot so none of us was in a position to argue.

My mother kept a straight face but the habitual smile in her eyes was replaced with irritation and resignation as she waited for the next veiled barb to arrive.

And it did.

Unlike Lorraine who brought a touch of maturity to her reactions, Lily was inclined to a defiant response. Without fully understanding the subtleties of the situation, she was determined to defend our mother. Positioning herself so that she couldn't see our mother's telegraphic eyebrows, she marshalled her forces and waited.

Looking at her dress, Aunt Betty offered, “That's a lovely dress…but expensive. You're growing up to cost your daddy a lot of money. Poor Daddy!” She laughed that light, tinkling laugh that invited us to share her joke.

Lily had finished school the previous December so had the time to indulge her passion for sewing. Her response was immediate, enunciated clearly so that Aunt Moira and others had no option but to hear. “Aunt Tilly gave me this material and Mummy helped me make it. Haven't I been clever?”

She held herself erect to show off her handiwork and graciously receive the compliments she had forced. In the background Aunt Betty's acid, genteel tone was clear: “Oh yes. Your mother's had plenty of practice at being frugal.” Somehow she made it sound disparaging, not praiseworthy.

But we knew it wasn't a matter of thrift or economics but one of values. The value of respect: respect for ourselves, for others, for material things. It was yet another principle that had never been stated but had sunk into our psyche when we were still in the womb.

Lily's explanation was not entirely true. The accurate version was that Aunt Tilly, my mother's youngest sister, had given Lily the dress but the style had been considered too sophisticated for a young girl. My enterprising sister had painstakingly unpicked the stitching, washed and ironed the material, and refashioned it into something more appropriate for a sixteen-year-old.

None of us wanted to admit the whole truth to Aunt Betty, and we all knew why.

While cleaning the
meava
the year before, a break in the games and singing had allowed me to ask as artlessly as I could, “Do you like Aunt Betty, Mummy?”

Her reply was subtle, clever enough to prevent me from realising she hadn't answered my question. “She's great fun, has tremendous energy. She's led an interesting life.”

I waited for a moment to give greater emphasis to my words. “You know she doesn't like us,” I ventured confidingly, feeling smart, as though announcing something no one else knew.

My mother looked at me speculatively. It was obvious she was thinking: What's this child talking about now? Where's this conversation going? But before she could speak, Lorraine butted in with: “No-o-o! It's you she doesn't like. No one likes
you
– no one in their right minds, that is.”

Lily added her bit and the two of them entered into banter at my expense. Soon it stopped being about me and became a competition, with each of them trying to outdo the other. I waited. I had my own agenda and wasn't going to be high-jacked. I knew if I remained disengaged the exchange would die a natural death.

It did, leaving my mother her chance to ask the question that was on the tip of her tongue. “Why do you think that? What makes you say she doesn't like us?”

I hesitated, lost for words. I couldn't explain why I sensed this antipathy towards my mother. It was something on which I couldn't
quite
put my finger. “Oh, I don't know…the things she says like…”