Homesickness (13 page)

‘Hello! How's the name-wallah, what?'

Lady Pamela was smoothing her skirt.

‘Oh shut up, Reggie.' She turned to the women. ‘My husband's a bit daft, like the rest of his family. At some stage they had a touch of the sun. Notice his patronymic name indicating descent.'

Sir Reginald stood there beaming.

‘Pammy's ancestors are Flemish; she may have told you. That's why she has the runny nose all the time.'

At that Garry Atlas let out a laugh and a piece of scone dropped out of his mouth.

‘Oh, fuck off, Reggie!'

She looked at her watch. ‘I've got another busload at twelve!'

‘Lovely tea,' said Mrs Cathcart putting her cup away. It was a matter of quickly thinking of something proper to say, to fill in. The others looked surprised and suddenly unsure too.

Lady Pamela consulted a sheaf of papers and returned to her painting.

‘Two to go. Am I right?'

Violet glanced around. ‘I think three.'

God, this was an idyllic place! Swallows twittered in the trees; translucent shifting leaves superimposed on the browner green of sloping tilled fields.

Lady Pamela blew her nose, shuffled the papers.

‘I have Sheila Standish nicely mapped out. The line is strong; you find this with rural families. More conservative, slow movers. I found a surprise here somewhere. Ahem…Gloucester, Lancashire people, that's you, with some Scottish blood introduced one night early in the nineteenth century. Standish, incidentally, the name explains: strong enclosure/pasture.'

‘I know,' Sheila spoke up though perhaps missing the point. ‘We were always on the land. My father never tired of telling me.'

‘Hugh Standish pulled up his roots by the Cotswolds—marvellous rich land—and settled in New Holland in the mid-1800s. Am I right?'

Sheila nodded but looked alarmed.

‘It was a family quarrel, not unusual in those times. Hugh Standish was a blue-chip Tory, a sporting man, and so forth, with many tenants. One of the family married a Bartholomew, well-known Chartist. When the so-called “reforms” were pushed through, Hugh resisted, at least he tried to, and when he failed simply sold up. He never spoke to the family again. He left his wife. He was one of those rare men who can put pride before property.'

Garry Atlas sat up, ‘This Bartholomew…'

‘That is correct. He was one of yours from Edinburgh. That was the surprise. Perhaps you both knew?'

Garry grinned at Sheila. She had turned the other way, reddening. The others gazed at them as if they were newlyweds.

‘I'll be damned.'

Violet gave a snort. ‘Isn't that nice?'

‘Jesus. Well how about that?' Garry shook his head.

‘I don't know,' Sheila mumbled. ‘We seem poles apart…'

Garry gave a laugh; not unfriendly.

‘A little bit of incest wouldn't hurt, eh Sheil?' he cracked, rocking on his balls. Sheila became confused and could only smile all the time.

Lady Pamela wiped her mouth with a tissue. ‘Listen, that's taboo. Enough of that. It comes as a terrible shock,' she told them, ‘when one sees it on the genealogical line in black-and-white. One immediately double-checks, but then sits back stunned by the immensity of the act. A genealogical tree reads like an epic novel, occasionally relieved by slapstick and so on. With the information spread out before one, all one needs is imagination. Love and imagination. A tragedy leaps out from the page. When I was younger I used to burst into tears. Besides,' she added, ‘an incest incident only makes it more difficult for us in the trade.'

Leaning back, head to one side, she contemplated the picture. She selected a smaller brush and took up Sasha.

‘The Wicks descend or plummet from a pedigree of Picts and Celts. You are blessed with a backlog of barmaids, heavy-breathing and insistent innkeepers—I know the type. I see filial traces in your eyelashes and slightly plump fingers. I noticed as you were drinking your tea before. The Wicks then became all mixed up with Irish horse dealers and peat diggers, and one married Boardman's eldest daughter. Edward Boardman, you may know, has a footnote in history as the first man in Dublin to own a bicycle with pump-up tyres. This daughter, Joyce Boardman, one night went down Great Brunswick Street riding no hands and smoking. If I were a man I would be attracted to such a free spirit! A little Irish blood is a fine thing. Where am I now?'

As she bent down to find another page Sasha glanced at Violet. Her friend had one hand over her mouth.

‘How the present is intricately controlled by the past. The depth of your neckline this morning is a result of some action several generations ago, perhaps geared to that performance of Joyce Boardman on the bicycle. She became a mother with six children.

‘We are now in the year 1900. A group of Wicks is still alive in Rhodesia. One was mauled by a mad lion. But your side suddenly concentrated, for no rhyme or reason, on the Isle of Man: the tree surgeon, Patrick Frederick Wick. It was he who landed a contract with the Government of Queensland, sailed out, and was almost immediately bitten by a mad snake, and died.'

‘A taipan,' Kaddok interrupted, ‘the most venomous snake in the world.'

‘I thought—'

‘We've also got the deadliest spider.'

‘The black
funnel-web
?'

‘Right.'

‘Here we only read about your man-eating sharks,' Lady Pamela said primly. ‘I must say they sound fascinating.'

Now they all wanted to tell her about their distant, empty country: sudden brown and wide light, the dry sticks and undergrowth, hot rocks and straw-coloured grass. The long undulating edge of Australia is stroked by blue, exploding white at regular intervals.

‘We shouldn't be there. Do you ever feel that?' Borelli said to North. ‘I mean, notice the way the country batters our faces and arms. I don't only mean the climate. We don't belong. We feel hopeless there, doomed.'

‘The average Australian,' said North, ‘hasn't even seen a kangaroo.'

Lady Pamela picked it up. ‘A
beautiful
word… Isn't that a beautiful word?'

‘It's Aboriginal,' Kaddok told her.

Abruptly she pulled herself together. She turned to Gerald. His face seemed to ring a bell. Already he was fidgeting.

‘So you're Whitehead? Funny…' She looked down at her papers again. ‘Well you must be the last then.'

And Gerald began looking first at the floor, then up at the ceiling.

‘It seems Gerald Whitehead, you come from silent stonemason stock and the ancient art of gargoyle-carving. The gargoyle side is difficult to prove. We're talking about the sixteenth century, in Yorkshire. I don't know why such marvellous craftsmen should have been anonymous. A cousin was the Bishop of Something. I have added two and two together.'

Hence his hereditary red ears, bushy eyebrows. And the grey flecking Gerald's wiry hair in the small English room seemed like a shower of stone-dust.

‘You have a soft job but I imagine you still have the wide fingernails. This stony side, I should say, was not called Whitehead, not then. They were Bredins and Rowntrees. Out of the blue, for no apparent reason, both produced a flock of missionaries and nun-nurses. They dutifully trotted off spreading the word to the coloureds in China and Africa…some of our colonies.'

‘We were in Africa,' Sasha said, ‘a few weeks ago.'

The old woman paused and put down her brush.

‘The Victoria Falls!'

She went misty at the thought.

Gerald had to clear his throat.

‘At any rate, of the Rowntrees saving souls in China, one was a young Mary—no doubt another virgin. An atavistic quirk occurred: around 1890 outside Canton she was struck by a shocking case of leucosis. Poor girl. Imagine. She must have felt singled out by God. In that vulnerable state she succumbed to a fifty-year-old tea planter. His name was Whitehead. Nicely ironical, what?

‘I didn't know all this,' Gerald admitted.

‘Their two sons were educated in England. Harold, I discovered, was known at Oxford for his collection of bookplates and early Bibles. The other young Whitehead married a descendant of John Hunter. You remember he was the man in the eighteenth century who wanted to be frozen alive and thawed each century?'

Even Gerald laughed.

‘Is he on my side?' he asked interested.

‘Christ, we could have told you that,' Garry shouted.

But Gerald was listening to her: ‘No, you're from Harold. After Oxford he worked for a very good marmalade outfit and then a big tea company. In the early 1900s he was sent to Australia as their head taster. Whiteheads have sprouted in the Antipodes ever since. There must be a good many now.'

Like a tea-taster about to reject, Gerald twisted slightly and pulled a face.

‘I never see my relations. I go out of my way not to. I dislike everything about my uncles and their know-all children. To see them together depresses me. One of my uncles, for example, cracks his knuckles. Another pinches the girls. They all think he's terribly funny, the black sheep. We all have vaguely similar features. A roomful with the joker and the latest new baby is terrible. At least I find it so. For the same reason I hate airport departure lounges and railway platforms. People gathered together with their similar features and awkward faults: reminds me of death or something. I can't help it I'm afraid.'

A twenty-second silence. Lady Pamela sat facing the easel. Looking down at his hands Gerald reddened; so he rocked on his heels, almost violently.

‘I feel sorry for you,' said Mrs Cathcart loud and clear. ‘Families are all you've got. You wait,' she added menacingly, ‘when you get older.'

‘Fair go,' Doug shuffled. ‘He's all right.'

‘I know what you mean,' said Louisa. ‘Most of us don't like our cousins.'

Everybody turned. Now there was another speech.

Lady Pamela seemed to be engrossed in her brushes tray, poking in it and rattling. Now twisting around and still without looking at them she gave them the brush-off: ‘Are you all satisfied? I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have. You know all about each other now, the warts and all. I have supplied your backgrounds. They in turn tell you about your foregrounds. Understand? Savvy? Splendid. Marvellous then. Bye-bye. Have a safe journey. Violet? Where are you, dear? Send me a postcard.'

‘I will!'

Of the Niagara Falls.

As they waved entering the bus (‘There's a character'—Mrs Cathcart. ‘I didn't like her'—Gwen Kaddok) another pulled up and a group of tall long-jaws fell out, and stood blinking in anoraks; Kiwis, by the look. Bye!

So James Borelli visited his uncle; said to be a legendary uncle: clacketty-clack, tap-tap (footprints, swinging stick). A difference evidently exists between seeing an uncle at home and one in a distant foreign place. There is the feeling of paying homage: tourist versus knowing expatriate. Hector Vincent Frank had been trapped in the fast-moving days of 1939: now viewed in speckled black-and-white, rolling smoke of shattered oil refineries. But why remain in his Soho room, unheated, ever since? He was sixty-four, with his own teeth, was skinny, as sharp angled (in knees, elbows and nose) as the letters L and K: unfolding, he snapped and cracked like a carpenter's rule. Various rumours had reached home but Uncle Hector had never married. He shaved with a leather strap and razor: always a bad sign.

Borelli climbed some stairs above a sandwich shop.

Almost immediately he had to talk louder than normal. At about the same height across the narrow street came the throb and vibration of a strip joint, rising, falling, and another soon started up through the side wall, accompanied by foot-stamping and catcalls. If one stopped, its opposite started. As well, the uncle's face and arms in the small room were bathed in an unsavoury puce from the flickering neon opposite,
FREDDIES
—T
HIS
I
S
T
HE
S
HOW
! ‘I imagine it's what hell must be like,' was his uncle's comment.

His uncle was in bed.

Borelli hooked his walking stick over a chair.

‘I've got one of them too. Let me see. It's almost identical, if I'm not mistaken. That's interesting… But how are you now?'

Borelli sat down. ‘Not bad.'

‘I see. A stoic. Then how is my beautiful seester? When did she come here last? Six years or more. How is your mother?'

The Australian accent had remained. Words unexpectedly flattened fell away in mid-air. But to Borelli they leaped out, waving. Barely discernible, the nasal twang had remained, a wind from the desert, to blur an English clip.

Such vocal adjustments are needed to reduce the bloody velocity of words in the wide spaces and emptiness of Orstraliah. Words would otherwise travel too far. A similar speech blur evolved in the United States of America. By contrast it seems that the British enunciate clearly in order to penetrate the humidity and hedges, the moist walls and alleyways, as well as the countless words used by previous citizens…