Black British (25 page)

My mother didn't know. “When I asked him he gave me some stuff in Latin which he knew I wouldn't understand. So I reasoned,
If I ask you politely and you can't answer in the same vein
,
then I don't want to know
. He must have seen the rancour in my face because he added quite sheepishly that he had always meant them for us but hadn't realise how quickly time was passing.”

From that cryptic answer we deduced that the prospect of Lorraine's leaving had spurred Uncle Barton to put his house in order, as the saying goes, before his ultimate journey. I never discovered who the original owner was meant to be because no one knew and no one cared. It was just a possession from a previous era and was now almost a liability.

Given the times we lived in where our physical safety was constantly threatened by the local people who saw us as remnant of a harsh regime that had kept them poor, wearing expensive jewellery was asking for trouble, begging to be attacked. My mother's few valuable pieces had always been locked away in the bank vault to now be joined by Uncle Barton's gift. A blatant display of wealth was downright stupid, which is why my mother ensured we were hidden from the possibility of snooping eyes before she showed us the jewels.

In my adult years, whenever I wear the pendant which is my part of the set, I bless Uncle Barton and regret I hadn't persuaded him to tell me his stories and get to know him better. I often wonder if the jewellery was meant for a lost love...but I'll never know. It was a wasted opportunity, a small burden I'll carry all my life.

A month after Uncle Barton died Uncle Monty followed him to the grave. With sadness we remembered dodging scratchy kisses on Christmas days and his heartfelt rendering of
Danny Boy
. For many years Uncle Monty had made annual visits to his sons in Scotland and was away from mid-June to mid-September. He got the best of both worlds by avoiding our heat and at the same time enjoying temperate summers. On his return each time, Uncle Monty would insist that the tedious journey was getting beyond him so he'd soon have to stop travelling. The previous year he changed his usual plans and instead spent Christmas with his boys, intending to return by mid-March.

He never came home. A week before he was scheduled to leave, pneumonia took him within twenty-four hours.

“He shared a great friendship with his sons,” said my father. “They met on the same mental level and happily argued politics, history, world events – whatever took their fancy. They also went fishing together and were happy in each other's company. We must be glad for him, that he died surrounded by the people he loved the most.”

However philosophical they were, I knew my father and uncle missed their two cousins intensely. Their absence emphasised the attenuation of our extended family and was an acute reminder that the numbers were soon to shrink further.

Listening in to that conversation between my father and his brother that September morning I didn't need explanations. I knew they were lost down memory lane while still being aware of the shortcomings of the present.

We all knew our great-aunt was too old to move. She was born in Kanpur, would die there and be buried among her recent ancestors. Uncle Claude didn't want the burden of looking after her to fall on the sole shoulders of his cousin Iris. Being widowed and with his sons abroad, he had no encumbrances so it became his lot to stay and help.

“Besides,” he added, though he knew full well it would never happen, “this is my sons' boyhood home. It needs to be here if either of them want to return.” Though he didn't mention her, the sceptre of Aunt Kitty was a hundred-pound weight on both men and I knew that Uncle Claude was trapped by love, grief and guilt. Guilt for inclinations born in him that were beyond his control; grief for the loss of a wife who had accepted his verbal violence as the price of loving him, and love that would keep him in Kanpur for the rest of his days.

Their unstated sorrow contaminated every particle of air, making it heavy, difficult to breathe. The weight would never be acknowledged even in the privacy of their minds. Both were supremely aware that their life paths were diverging, probably forever. Though they had been apart before, it was with a hope the separation would be temporary. This time it was different. For the first time in their lives there'd be no prospect of being reunited. The chances were they'd never see one another again.

I knew why we had to go. The civil unrest and lawlessness in India had been escalating over the past few years and though I didn't know it at the time, would, the following year, be classified as “Internal Disturbance” and lead to the 21-month State of Emergency from 25 June 1975 to 21 March 1977. The signs of unrest were everywhere and multi-focused. What concerned us most were the mounting threats of violence directed specifically at us. We had always lived with danger and the possibility of kidnap or assault even before the
de Souza is Shit
incident, so had adjusted our lifestyles accordingly. Windows that opened to the exterior had always been barred with built-in, thick cast-iron rods and external doors were secured with a top and bottom bolt. Geese, parrot and dogs continued to ensure no stranger strayed too close to the house.

Gradually we had adapted our behaviour to accommodate the increased threats. Without being told, each of us recognised that our safety was compromised when we were alone. Though our house was large, during the day we collected in the same room while in the evening we lived between the drawing and dining rooms. It was a good thing we liked being together or overcrowding might have been a problem. My sisters and I were never left alone at home. It helped that Uncle Hugh lived on the premises.

In recent years when we collected under the garden umbrella to enjoy the winter sunshine, we had taken to locking the house behind us. If one of us wanted to re-enter the building, we requested the house key from our mother and two of us went in together.

It became a bargaining chip.
I'll come with you if you lend me your
Three Men in a Boat
^3
.

Our negotiating skills were honed to a high level and so was our sense of honour. We never went back on an agreement.

My mother always knew where each of us was. If I took it into my head to take a sole sojourn into the compound I never went out of earshot, even in broad daylight. None of us were ever on the streets alone. We walked as a group to school or church or to visit the aunts.

Our occasional visitors made sure they returned home before nightfall. After dark, no one was admitted to the house until their identity was guaranteed. Soon after dinner each night the front gate was padlocked with a heavy brass lock. Our father remained awake until three each morning to ensure no potential intruder was inspired with a bright idea.

He had a reputation as an honest, fair and generous man, as had his father before him, and this status went a long way to protect us. Potential thieves knew there'd be no “black” money hidden in the house – money that had been sourced from bribes and corruption and therefore couldn't be banked. In spite of it, previous years had seen two potential breakins. On both occasions, the cement render was scraped off the same part of the pantry wall and three layers of bricks chiselled away to make a hole that could become big enough for a person to enter. Further progress had been stalled by our canine protector, who had brought the house down with furious intent, frightening off the would be intruders.

Gradually, we made more changes to reduce what might have been seen as provocation. The English number plates on our cars were rewritten in the vernacular and the two marble plaques that were embedded in our gate posts, one with our family name and the other with the house name, were painted over to obliterate the English script. The gate posts (along with the embedded tablets) were older than anyone could remember, but at a time like that, heritage mattered little.

There were other matters that impacted heavily on our lives. The infrastructure around us was slowly breaking down and further diminishing our already simple lifestyles. That September morning, looking up at the drawing room ceiling that was festooned with cobwebs, I sighed dramatically. The previous evening a lump of
koora
had languidly floated down and entangled itself in my already tangled hair.

“
Mother
! This is
intolerable
. I simply cannot
live
like this.”

“I know, dear, but we have no option. And, please refrain from shouting. You know none of us is deaf.”

“I'm
embarrassed
to bring my friends home.”

The exquisite curl of her lip was not directed at me. Or at the cobwebs. Her focus was my bourgeois attitude. “Don't be silly! We're not middle class enough to be concerned.” She walked out of the conversation, leaving her meaning clear. There were bigger things at stake.

The men who usually came to clean the ceilings had retired to their villages. Their sons were employed in the mills, which paid much more than domestic service, so they could afford a better life and future for their families. No one begrudged the young men this opportunity even though it left us in the lurch.

My mother discussed the matter with us. “Some of them will come to help us on their days off. They'll do it out of respect for your father who was so good to their fathers. But I'm not going to ask them. That would be exploiting loyalty.” She considered for a moment before adding, “We'll have to pretend we have year-round Christmas decorations and use our imaginations to add sparkle.” Beyond the shadow of a doubt, she was enjoying her joke.

The drawing-room ceiling was sixteen feet away so the cobwebs weren't a particular problem. I looked up at them and wondered how long it would take for the whole room to fill up. I dreamily envisioned myself in the romantic role of a modern-day Miss Havisham, living in my ruined mansion overhung with cobwebs and trapped in time as I mourned a faithless lover.

The delusion didn't last long. The possibility of grieving over a worthless man was beyond my imagination. For far too long I had gleefully sung along with Betty Hutton, intoning that
a man may be hot but he's not when he's shot
with the obvious interpretation that it wouldn't take much to reduce a supposed hero to a spineless twit. From my parents I had learnt a healthy attitude about respectful behaviour that I would accept.

There were other problems about the house due to the lack of an available workforce. The paint on the external walls was peeling and mould squatted in the swirls and curls of the lattice above the porch. Black patches appeared haphazardly in other spots too. Again, there was nothing we could do. Our regular workmen who had colour washed the house every second year had, with love, returned to their roots forever.

“We'll have a spotty house instead of a self-coloured one.” My mother's focus was clearly above mundane appearances.

Both my parents exhibited a pragmatic approach to the growing dilapidation around us. When the fountain tap came off in my hands they shrugged it away with the remark
it was so old this was bound to happen
. The fountain sat in the middle of the rose garden and was never used for its traditional purpose. Water was a scarce commodity so, in the garden, was mainly used for growing food. The fountain was merely another remnant from a bygone era.

Some simple annoyances were simply annoying. The spring broke in the airgun and another wasn't available for purchase, reducing the firearm to a plaything. It seemed a bit excessive to use a shotgun or a rifle for the sole reason of warning a monkey away from the
maeva
, but nevertheless, that's what we had to do.

Music was particularly exasperating. Like all Goan girls, Lorraine, Lucy and I were taught to play the piano. Manuscript music had to be brought in from London via the agent in Bombay. Since it took forever and was excruciatingly expensive we all ended up playing the same pieces. The trouble was, being the youngest, by the time it was my turn, everything had been played a few trillion times before. By everyone. All my sisters, my cousins and my aunts.

From so much usage the sheets of music were often torn so I became a dab hand at repairs with transparent sticky tape. Sometimes the notes were completely obliterated, necessitating creativity on my part. For piano recitals I was always the first scheduled to perform and never – ever – understood why the concert hall filled up only for the second act.

Through utter necessity we learnt to accommodate, with varying degrees of humour, both major and minor irritants. The hardest to cope with were the random power outages that were increasingly commonplace throughout the year. In summer it was agonising. We were left to swelter helplessly as ceiling and induction fans came to a standstill. From a tolerably warm day we were plunged into the pits of hell.

“We are worse off than servants,” fumed our father. “Worse off than our ancestors who lived before the days of Edison. We've got used to these luxuries so feel the difference.”

There wasn't much we could do except keep hydrated. In that respect we were lucky. Having our own well technically meant we had an endless supply of water. The problem was, the lack of power rendered the electric pump useless and our urban lives became primitive.

Our drinking water was stored in
suris
, unglazed earthenware jars similar to the vessels used in ancient Rome. The technique of evaporation produces crisp, mountain-stream-like water, far superior to artificially cooled refrigerated water. Six
suris
were filled each day in high summer, for it wasn't unknown for a pitcher to be carried into the bedrooms for everyone to be given a drink during the night.

Regular electricity failures were simply evidence of an infrastructure that had been built to serve the elite few and now couldn't cope with the demands from many more. Most of the shortages that plagued our lives were generated from the same source. It wasn't unknown for petrol to “go underground' which was a local term that meant petrol was only available on the black market. Cooking fuel and batteries were often in short supply.