Black British (27 page)

It was something we'd always known but was never articulated. My father, on the other hand, often announced to anyone within listening distance, “Daughters are a joy! Sons – we-e-e-ll, sons are a duty but daughters…” He'd trail off into silence, not because a lump in his throat made it difficult to speak, but because regardless of the numerous times he'd said it, the enchantment of a daughter couldn't be expressed in mere words.

Daughter, multiplied by three, is magic, a miracle beyond any spoken language.

“What on earth is that?” asked Lily as she reached out and picked up a glossy red-brown fur with muted tints of gold. A split second later she dropped it and jumped back with a startled “Eeeeks!” Forgetting her manners she squeaked, “In God's name, what's that!”

It was an entire fox skin, complete with face, paws and tail. The eyes looked real, as did the snout and claws.

We stared at the offending article with screwed-up noses.
Surely they didn't have a pet fox that they
… The options were repulsive but we knew better than to discount eccentricities from some of our ancestors.

“It's a collar,” our mother explained. It's what ladies wore before World War I. My mother would have loved one of these but we didn't have the money!”

Lily's skin hairs stood on end while a chill tingled down my spine. Picking up on our feelings, my mother agreed. “It is, rather, but it was the fashion of the time and that's what ladies wore.” I made a sound of contempt, thinking,
So much for fashion. You wouldn't catch me dead wearing that!

Reading my silence, my mother addressed me directly, “Oh. Yes. You. Would. Fashion has such a powerful effect on people. It takes away their thinking power. You'd do the same because it's so hard to be the odd man out.”

Though I didn't believe her I kept my counsel. I remembered Aunt Betty, the woman who was too rebellious to wear a corset herself, talking admiringly about her older sister, my grandmother. “She could even sleep in her corset. She had a lovely shape.”

I'd tried to object, insisting I'd never subject myself to such constricting garments, only to be told exactly the same thing.

“Oh. Yes. You. Would. It's so hard to be different. You get looked down on. Society rewards conforming behaviour, however stupid. That's how people the world over are controlled. In this case, that's how men control women.”

There was evidence that what she said was true. My grandmother, the placid, compliant one, who unquestioningly conformed to required behaviour, got to marry the millionaire. Her younger sister, the one who refused to confine her body to a womanly corset, had to contend with the younger son of a third nephew. Or something equally ridiculous.

I am glad I was born in the latter part of the twentieth century.

That evening I felt my father's eyes on me. “That collar was a present for my mother when Arabella was born,” he said, referring to his eldest sister. “My mother hated it, thought it was bizarre, but wore it to please my father. I'd forgotten about it until now.” I knew then, though he didn't show it, that his memories were hidden everywhere, in everything, ready to pop out at him at the most unexpected time.

“I think that's Lynx.” I looked up the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
to learn about that mountain cat. I tried on the waist-length cape in mottled brown, beige and soft white. Lined in dusky pink satin and with handmade padded shoulders, it was far too big for me. I grasped the top fastener and was left with rust-coloured powder in my hands. The cape was so old the clasp had crumbled, leaving a tiny hole with rust-coloured edges.

My question was answered before I could ask.

“There's a photograph of my mother wearing that cape at my baptism.”

Had the presents increased in value because he was the firstborn son?

To this day it doesn't matter. The poor animals and thousands more like them were slaughtered (benignly, I pray) so their fur could meet an impermanent human whim, something that lasted a few short years. Their fate was to spend a much longer time relegated to the back of a disused cupboard, merely expensive but worthless items left over from a forgotten, cruel past.

I still have that collar and cape. I still revere the fur. I never wear them. Who can blame me?

Packing continued to be enthralling as more fascinating treasures became apparent. Grateful closets creaked with relief as we removed their excess baggage, leaving them to permanently relax back to their original girth.

Another bemused
what's that
? came from Lily as with delicate touch she unfolded multiple age-old sheets of parchment paper that had been deliberately stuck together with sticky tape. On this was a hand-drawn picture of three octaves of a piano keyboard. Our mother looked both sheepish as well as wistful when we looked to her for an explanation.

“I wanted all of you to learn to play the piano but initially we had no instrument and there was no one here to teach you. So I realised it was up to me.” She had taught herself to read music from John Thompson's
Teaching Little Fingers to Play
and was determined to give us opportunities she had been denied. Watching her herculean tenacity, Uncle Hugh made her a gift of the upright piano that stood in the drawing room, that was now “all tattered and torn” from multiple years of use.

Further delving found us a roughly hewn wooden tube that had perfect spherical holes of different sizes. Loving music as much as she did, and knowing her parents couldn't afford formal lessons or a piano, my mother had fashioned a pipe and developed an impressive musical repertoire.

“Play it, Mamma, play it,” we urged, and the haunting notes of a tentative
Blue Danube
wrapped us in comfort and security as soothing memories were released from our subconscious.

She had piped us to sleep when we were infants.

“Hey, look at this.” Lily was looking at a notebook, whose yellowing page held two columns of khaki numbers. The first entry read:
3
^rd
April 1863 – 60ft
.

“It's obviously a daily recording of some sort. But what?”

Our father had the answer. “That's the level of water in the well.” In a blistering hot country, people cannot survive without water so our forebears had to be alert to the possibility of a diminishing supply. Though we had always understood the significance of our well, its importance was never more apparent than in that almanac.

Then – we – found – the – picture. “What am I going to do with that!” My mother's despair was part irritation, part frustration.

Packing up the house was simultaneously exciting and exasperating as lost treasures were uncovered but so was a whole load of junk that had simply lingered past one generation into the next…and the next. What could be salvaged was bundled, boxed or bagged to be passed on for further use elsewhere.

Fragile papers in the form of letters from unknown ancestors to unidentified God-knows-who were deposited in the external kitchen for burning at a future date. Ancient account books that dated from the previous century were filled with indecipherable, spidery writing. Most of these disintegrated at the first touch. Knitting and frock patterns collected from ladies' magazines were also added to the mound, along with recipes and handy home tips, long out of date. School certificates, records of births, marriages and deaths and obsolete passports were all consigned to the blaze.

Our own personal possessions were also discarded. Even my much-loved
Billy Bun
that my father had read to me…and re-read…and re-read, as one does with a child. “You loved your
Billy Bun
,” he remembered, “You'd pester me to read it.” But there was no room to be sentimental. The book had to go.

“Don't!” cried my mother in alarm as I raised my arm to chuck out Lorraine's teddy bear that was minus both eyes and dressed in numerous colourful patches. “I'll keep it for her. It was her very first toy.”

In that respect Lorraine got it easy. She left with the prospect of returning if she wanted, so she didn't have the wrench of discarding sentimental possessions. Potentially, she could return home and collect them at an unspecified future date. But years later when she was reunited with her toy, time and distance had done their work. She hardly remembered it.

Lily and I didn't have the luxury of time. Gut wrenching though it was, superfluous items had to go. In all we had fourteen bonfires.

That was the easy part. The bonfires, as fire often is, were mesmerising. The problem was those pointless possessions that were too valuable to be discarded but were still extraneous.

“Just what am I going to do with it?” my mother repeated, her tone indicating that exasperation had over-ridden despair.

“Burn it,” retorted my father contemptuously. “It's lasted beyond its usefulness.”

“Useful? It's done nothing but gather dust all our lives. Has it ever been useful?”

“It” was a 3 metre by 2.5 metre family portrait enclosed in its own walnut wood crate that was padded with grey felt for insulation. Neither Lily nor I had been in an art gallery before so, for the moment, neither of us appreciated the find. Besides, it had stood against the back verandah wall all our lives so habit had made it invisible. Now was our chance to see it but our father was uninterested. He had the brains to recognise the futility of possessions that belonged to a past age, and were now merely a burden, especially in an environment where civilisation (as we knew it) was crumbling.

A few hours later he re-joined us. “That portrait was painted by the resident artist to the last Tzar of Russia,” he said. “After the Revolution when the Courts were dissolved, their retainers had to find ways to support themselves. I remember the tedium of sitting for it when I was about nine or ten.”

He produced an enlarged black-and-white photograph featuring his parents and siblings gathered in front of the portrait as it hung over the mantelpiece in
Delhi House
, their home in Simla, the summer capital of British India. The building had previously been the premises of the London-Delhi Bank before my grandfather had converted it into his nineteen-bedroom private residence. Hence the name Delhi House, though it was situated in Simla.

In 1863 the then Viceroy of India decided the gruelling heat of the Indo-Gangetic Plains was too much to bear. So every year thereafter the whole caboodle of government, with no consideration for expense or inconvenience but with an omnipotent attitude, was moved the 530 kilometres north from Delhi. Anyone who was anyone, including my family, had to follow suit. From April to October my grandparents took up residence in their home on the ridge overlooking the mall, with views up into the mountains on one side and deep into the valley on the other.

That morning Lily and I pored over the family photograph fanatically trying to reconcile the image of two young lads in matching Peter Pan suits with our father and uncle as we knew them. Though our imaginations were frequently invoked to produce outlandish images, some connections were beyond even us.

Encouraged by our incredulous expressions our father jumped in for the kill. “It'll be hard work to open the crate simply to see the portrait. It's been fastened for almost thirty years – from before either of you were born. So don't harass your mother. Now you've seen the photograph you know what it is. You don't need to see the original.”

The statistic clinched all argument. A person cannot relate to an event prior to their birth, cannot say
I was such-and-such years old when that happened
, so accords the event greater status than is warranted. Distance distorts perspective, exaggerates it.

We never got to see the portrait. At least, Lily didn't. With many other things to distract us we moved on to the next item in the mammoth task of clearing out our home.

It was nine years later that I took a tangible step to lay some ghosts. As I roamed aimlessly along the cantonment street that lined my old home I was definitely out of sorts with the world. I had come home and expected to feel like I was home. Instead, the familiar stranger-in-a-strange-land feeling that I had carried since I left Kanpur possessed me. Actually, I felt worse. The anticipation, the excitement had turned flat. I felt let down, with the taste of sawdust in my mouth.

I knew then that the word home means more than a building or a place. Its people and lifestyle that count. With everyone gone, the landscape, though changed very little, had become meaningless.

I looked at the massive laburnums, remembered Reg and tried to invoke feelings of love, but there was nothing. I knew I had no legal right to share his protective shade. Looking around the deserted streets I tried to note the changes, but none were apparent. The intensity of anti-climax had numbed my brain.

“
Billie baba
,
Aap ghar aa gaye
,” meaning, “Cat baby, you've come home.” A voice beside me made me jump out of my skin. A short woman draped in a village style sari had materialised out of nowhere. Though my scant knowledge of Hindi had further diminished over the years I still understood what she'd said and from the nickname she used, knew she recognised me.

To my utter mortification my mind went blank, my breathing shallow and I forgot the world around me. I howled like an animal in agony.

Emotional stability was slow to return. As I stared into the no-man's land a person inhabits when a maelstrom subsides, I took comfort from the familiar furniture around me. From force of habit I started to play a lethargic game of Tiddly Winks in my mind, using the intricate pattern on the mattress on which I lay. So strong was the comforting feeling that crept over me that, with no thought for my safety, I relaxed back into what I felt was the familiar scenery of my childhood home. I slept.

A few moments later, catharsis effected, I woke with a clear mind, knew immediately where I was and what had happened. In the dim interior of the
mali
's hut in the old servant's quarters, I lay on a
khatya
that was covered by the Persian carpet from the drawing room of my old home.