Black British (3 page)

If I stand on tiptoes I thought, I'll be able to reach the door handle. Then I'll know what's in the cupboard. The loud crash accompanied by my screams, more of fright than pain, brought my mother, who found me submerged beneath the paraphernalia of earlier generations.

“That'll teach you to go poking your nose where it's not wanted.” Her lack of sympathy soon taught me which door I could open with impunity and when it was advisable to hop out of the way as a grateful closet disgorged its excess baggage and, with multiple creaks of relief, settled back to enjoy its original girth.

There were an inordinate number of hiding places – useful hiding places.

“It's bad manners to eavesdrop,” reproved my mother, but since she looked down from a great height it was easy to ensure she spoke only to the top of my head. I knew it was rude to secretly listen to other people's conversations, but what option did I have? There was no other way to learn those delicious, adult secrets.

The rooms we lived in were so large we had to shout to be heard from one end to the other.

“Cake,” shrieked Lily one day as she raced from the pantry room, beside herself at an unexpected treat. “Come quickly! There's
cake
for afternoon tea.”

“
Snake
,” I heard from my allocated seat at the dining table almost three metres away. Jumping up onto my chair I set up a wail designed to capture adult attention.

“Don't make so much noise,” my mother admonished. “Do you want your neighbours to hear?” But there were no neighbours as I looked out of the dining room window, through the verandah and porch to a velvet lawn that was surrounded by an acre of garden bounded by mature trees, their size evidence of the many years my family had been anchored in Kanpur.

“What neighbours, Mummy?

There's no one there.” “That's because you're a very lucky little girl. Now finish your tea and go outside to play. And stay this side of the trees where I can see you.”

In the distance 6-metre Indian Laburnum trees glowed with vitality and life. It was early May, the start of summer, so they were in full bloom with pendulous gold blossoms. Alongside them neem trees spread their leafy branches up and out, helping the laburnums to give us much-needed shade that was five degrees cooler than the adjacent sunshine.

It wasn't possible to survive in Kanpur without respecting the great heat of summer, heat that could melt your muscle and boil your brain in a few seconds flat. The year before I started school the heat killed Mrs Farelli who we knew in that arms-length way we knew most of the Catholic community who attended our church. She had made the fatal mistake of making “a quick dash” to deliver lunch to her son's workplace when the only way she could see was to screw her eyes up against the glare of that pitiless ball of fire in the sky.

She returned home trembling, her skin dry and head throbbing. It wasn't long before she became delirious and fell into a coma.

Being one of the few families to own a fridge, it was my mother's task to supply ice to cool her body. “She's lucky she didn't collapse on the street where no one would have found her for hours,” my mother muttered to herself as she feverishly filled cones of newspaper with ice. It was so hot the landscape had emptied. Birds, animals, humans, had all sought shelter from the unforgiving sun.

Efforts to cool Mrs Farelli by wrapping her stick-thin body in soaking wet sheets and laying ice on her forehead were of no avail. She died later that night. At her funeral the following morning even the horse-drawn hearse paid tribute to the heat.

“I couldn't have done that.” The admiration in my father's voice was at odds with his bemused expression as he shook his head in disbelief after he and my mother had attended the funeral. “That young
chokra
, Eric Mullins who is rumoured to be growing up as a wastrel, showed fortitude and compassion. He and his friends carried rubber bags of water and jogged alongside the hearse, ladling water onto the tyres.” No one wanted the rubber tyres to expand, fall off, knock the coffin around and further distress an already bereaved family. “The sweat poured off them but they kept going all the way to the cemetery. I couldn't have done it.” Bemusement made him shake his head again.

The shock of Mrs Farelli's death was a reminder that worse was to come.

June was hotter – stinking hot, even at 9pm, a good three hours after sunset when the tar on the roads was still molten. The hot dry air was made worse by the
loo
winds that felt like a blast from a furnace. It exhausted the earth, reducing her to a dry, dejected brown. No amount of water helped. Lawns everywhere curled up their collective toes and became crunchy. Dust reigned supreme and with malicious intent invaded our minds and took possession of our eyes, noses, ears and skin.

The wooden soundboard in the piano writhed in pain, making ominous sounds, threatening to warp – or worse, crack.

I watched in wordless dismay, though I knew it was inevitable, as my mother and ayah filled my favourite hiding place behind the piano with
chattis
of water. These unglazed earthenware containers would
sumjhour
the wood, soothing it with cool and moist air. Pots of fishbone ferns were added to keep the
chattis
company and to help pacify the soundboard.

“I helped, Daddy,” I boasted to my father. “I used the watering can you gave me for my birthday to water the fishbones.”

But my father wasn't interested in ferns. “You mustn't go outdoors during the day. Remember Mrs Farelli! You must stay with Mummy.” I wasn't too young to learn the connection between death and the summer sun.

While the weather in June was murderous we knew that one day, abruptly, the loo winds would vanish, leaving behind a greater horror – humidity, as well as heat. People got small pimply rashes called prickly-heat, in the folds of their elbows, in wrinkles of skin around their necks and in other unmentionable areas where sweat collected. The itch was unbearable.

“Offer it up,” Lorraine and Lily mimicked the nuns at school. “Offer your itch to God to atone for your sins.”

It was the only consolation the nuns gave their students but at home our mother dusted rose-scented powder to alleviate the chafing and for this small luxury we said Thank you, God, knowing it was more than most people received.

At church, silent as church mice, we watched people. I heard Lorraine whisper to Lily, their heads together as they shared a prayer book, “Mr Jachu's got bum rash. See the way he's wriggling his bottom. He's trying to scratch without actually scratching.”

They giggled in naughty helplessness until my mother's stern eye pulled them into line. She knew the congregation wasn't interested in their opinion of Mr Jachu's discomfort and perhaps Mr Jachu wouldn't appreciate a broadcast on his posterior movements.

We needed the monsoons to break this awful stalemate, heavy downpours that would saturate our parched land and resurrect life. So we waited patiently for the torrential rains that would bring instant, luscious, green magic; that would fill ravines and gullies; that would join our river to rush into floodplains and lay a thick layer of humus where we would plant crops the following year.

We knew if the monsoons failed it would be a catastrophe for everyone; it meant crops withered, animals died, people starved and life was heart-breaking. Our dependence on the monsoons was innate. It lay deep in our souls, at the absolute core of our being, making us who we were.

With hope in our hearts, as though the combined strength of our longing would bring rain, we focused on the darkening sky. But time and again promises were broken and, like people the world over who live in searing hot climates, we were left shattered and hotter than before.

In July, when the monsoons arrived, all was forgiven. With the first downpour the local people rushed into the streets, fully dressed, to immerse themselves in celebration of this annual miracle. We were no different. Stripped down to thick cotton petticoats that allowed freedom of movement and at the same time satisfied society's requirement to preserve our female modesty, (even though we were only eight, six and four years old), we dashed out.

Our house had no guttering as in modern houses. Instead, strategically placed tin spouts channelled rain to the ground, making forceful, fast flowing waterfalls, ideal places for a rain bath.

“I'm singing in the rain,” carolled Lorraine as she cavorted around trying to emulate Gene Kelly. It wasn't long before all of us were splattered with mud. But that didn't matter as ready-made showers of warm, therapeutic water were part of the magic.

The monsoons also encouraged earthworms to make their annual journey to the surface – large, luxurious, soil-enhancing earthworms. For many years Lily and I collected them, Lorraine having outgrown this childish game. We competed over who found the largest.

“Mine's bigger than yours,” and it was an earthworm I was talking about.

“How big is it?” my mother asked and so started my first lesson in feet and inches. I had already learnt colours from our daily walks around the winter garden.

The abundance of earthworms was evidence of a fertile soil that could, and did, work wonders. The first shower of the monsoon exerted an emerald green charm on trees and grass alike. Succeeding showers saw the grass grow in leaps and bounds until, in no time at all, it was knee height. At night a chorus of frogs and toads sang contralto to the joyful chirp of crickets while fireflies danced in and out of happy shadows.

“Catch it! Catch it!” squealed Lily as we pranced about the verandah after dark, chasing fireflies that were too quick for our young, uncoordinated limbs. Watching us miss them time and again our father came to the rescue, as fathers of lucky little girls do the world over. Daddy is so clever, I thought as he matched his steps to mine and reaching high above my head caught the flickering beetles in a fold of his thick white handkerchief, the ubiquitous garment that lived in his trouser pocket.

“Don't touch,” as he brought the glowing handkerchief down to my eye level. “Look with your eyes but don't touch with your hands.” And he unfolded the linen to expose a flickering beetle.

“It's pretty!”

“It's beautiful!”

“It's gor-gee-ous.” the superlatives came fast, matching our gasps, each of us trying to outdo the other to show appreciation of our father for joining our game.

These were also dangerous months. The lush grass sheltered all sorts of creepy-crawlies. Snakes that had gone to ground to stay cool during the hot summer months now came to the surface as their homes flooded. By day they hid in the long grass, protected from the burning sun, but at dusk they emerged, foraging for food. Centipedes, millipedes, scorpions, multi-legged, crawling
lily-ghoras
, and red, velvet-backed
lalboochies
all made their presence known. Mosquitoes, myriads of them, tormented us with gleeful, high-pitched eeee-ing.

The year before I started school August was a month of dark nights and darker deeds. The heat and humidity appeared to be particularly severe and the mosquitoes seemed more active than ever before.

One evening we were collected under the ceiling fan on the verandah. It was after dinner and Lorraine was demonstrating the art of complaining. “This is intolerable! I can't live like this!” She swotted hard, killing one of the offending bugs. The unacknowledged aim of the game, as with most games my sisters played with each other, was one-upmanship. If Lorraine used a multisyllabic word that Lily couldn't match, her response would be dramatic.

“I'll kill myself.”

I, not wanting to be left out but with no understanding of what I was enunciating, added eagerly, “Me. Too. I'll
till
myself too.”

Our parents usually ignored our interactions but that year the weather must have been particularly trying so nerves were taut and tempers frayed. Speaking gently but with obvious sarcasm my mother said, “You can live here with the comparative luxury of electric fans and lights or you can join your friends down the road and swelter in darkness. The choice, definitely, is yours.”

It was almost as though she had a direct line to providence because she had hardly finished speaking when the electricity failed. We were plunged into the blackest of blackness while a choir of mosquitoes warned us of an impending attack. Protected as we were, nose to toes in loose white clothing, we were still vulnerable as mosquitoes are adept, even in blinding darkness, at locating the one and only square millimetre of bare skin.

We were used to this onslaught because the municipal electricity often failed. The infrastructure was old and lacked adequate maintenance. It had been built for an elite minority and now struggled to cope with larger demands. It was nothing for a generator to overheat and break down.

The darkness added to our discomfort and brought on boredom. It wasn't long before one bright spark thought up some mischief, directed at her younger sister.

“Hutd,” said Lily as she hit out wildly to swat a mosquito on her forehead. With hardly a pause, she leaned over and fetched me a smack on the side of my head – not to inflict pain, purely to annoy.

“I've killed your mosquito,” she said in a magnanimous tone, though she couldn't possibly see enough to make this claim. “I've saved you from being bitten. I've killed twenty-three and with yours, I've got twenty four.” As she spoke the electricity came back on, bringing the magic of light to a dark place. And with it came a new torment – flying ants called
eechuls
.

“Quick!” My mother knew our only reprieve was to switch off the overhead lights so that the
eechuls
would cluster around the one remaining glow, which was in the porch.

It's a normal human response the world over. A single speck of light in a dark world will attract all eyes. Sitting on that black verandah we all looked towards the porch, never dreaming for a moment that a single, usual, everyday action would trigger a string of bizarre events.