CHAPTER 10

THE WRITING ON THE WALL

The Christmas season was the same for us each year and each Christmas day began with magic. It was everywhere – in the subdued lighting of the drawing room where silver candelabras on the mantelpiece, excited about their annual outing, whispered encouragingly to the fading embers in the fireplace. On the other side of the room a healthy imli branch that served as a Christmas tree was covered with twinkling lights that sang carols in muted xylophone tones.

Unlike the spring cleaning, putting up decorations was just a fun thing to do. The same carefully preserved ones were dug out year after year and lovingly hung in place. “This streamer is on its last legs.” Lorraine carefully unpacked tissue paper that crackled with age, that housed even older tinsel, now gossamer thin. “Be careful how you handle it, Lucy. It’s so worn it might break at any moment.”

As I picked up the silver ribbon, it protested at being woken from its peaceful slumber and silently separated into a few strands, leaving us in real anguish. Our Christmas decorations were antiquated family heirlooms and, like many things in our lives, were used over and over again. In monetary terms they were worthless but to us they were irreplaceable, much-loved friends. Taking care not to catch anyone’s eye so that blame was not apportioned anywhere, Lorraine took charge. “We can still use it if we are gentle. Just tuck the frayed ends behind some leaves and it won’t be noticeable.”

The end result was a spectacular tree, probably more so because we’d invested so much of ourselves in the process and therefore the awe was as much in our eyes as in reality. Standing in the semi-dark of the early morning, the tree was testimony to our efforts and we were profoundly happy with ourselves. And unusually, with each other.

But not for long.

“How can you find warm skirts exciting?” I asked, wriggling in discomfort. “They poke and scratch. I’d much rather wear my birthday dress,” which had been a young girl’s dream in blue silk. Most years we got a new woollen skirt for Christmas. The material was bought in bulk but each of us was allowed to express our personal preference in the pattern.

Lorraine was strutting around the drawing room, parading her new suit and high heel shoes, prouder than Punch. “It looks just like the model in the November issue of Woman and Home,” she crowed, deliberately using an impersonal preposition when it was obvious she meant the personal pronoun. Equally obviously, as she swayed and moved, she was likening herself to the model who featured regularly in the English magazine that was sent out to us monthly, that she pored over with intense concentration. “I love it!” she exulted.

Usually our mother made our clothes with assistance from Lorraine and Lily. Occasionally I could be coerced into doing simple stuff like the hems. Because Lorraine at seventeen was now a “young lady” her skirt and jacket were made at the local tailor’s shop. Though the dressmakers were illiterate, with only primitive tools to assist them, they were skilled beyond measure.

“I like the collar in that picture,” Lorraine pointed to clothes featured in a coloured magazine, “and the sleeves of this green dress.” She chose a skirt from another pattern and maybe a bodice from yet another and without paper patterns, with no training in individual features, with only a good eye, tape measures, scissors they sharpened themselves and old-fashioned, basic sewing-machines, the clothes would appear with the combination of all that was chosen. And the quality was equal, or even superior, to clothes bought in fashionable shops in big cities.

That Christmas morning I brushed fashion aside. Ranting was much more satisfying. As I inhaled loudly in a mockadenoidal manner, Lorraine rounded on me, sounding like an angry snake. “Quit carrying on about warm skirts. Do you want the You’re So Lucky spiel again? Any more from you and Mummy will make you wear the twinset!”

Those hated twinsets.

A few years earlier Aunt Moira had unexpectedly presented each of us with a Christmas gift of a twinset, bought from our very own Lal Imli woollen mill. They were grey with coloured Fair Isle work and obviously expensive – much more expensive than our usual clothes. Being machine-knitted with a close weave, they were extremely warm. The pullover was close fitting with a crew neck, had tiny cap sleeves and extended down to just above the hips. The cardigan was just as close-fitting, had half sleeves and was an inch longer than the pullover. Together they made up an exceptionally warm ensemble and presented a smart, stylish picture.

The problem was they were totally impractical. And inappropriate. Restrictive clothing is not for active, growing girls. The short sleeves meant our torsos were toasty while our arms froze. The short length made them creep up every time we stretched our arms thus letting in a draught of cold air and worse, exposing a bare midriff. Twinsets were fashionable in an era long before our time and were currently considered to be conservative, frumpish and the worst attribute for young girls – spinsterish!

Besides, we were not young ladies living in the English countryside; neither were we, nor did we want to be, first-cousins to the Queen.

So what was she thinking, our aunt, when she chose twinsets for her three young nieces? Was she trying to tell us something? Did she have a message for our mother?

“Go and thank her,” my mother instructed, almost commanded. “Shake hands, wish her for Christmas and thank her for her generous gift. And Smile! Make sure you smile. I’ll be watching.”

Her injunctions were partly to insist on good manners at all times and partly because she knew she was an “out-law” and would be criticised if our behaviour didn’t come up to scratch.

We dutifully thanked Aunt Moira and suffered the twinsets for two further occasions so that our aunt could believe they were appreciated. Then mercifully, the seasons changed and the awful clothes were packed away for the summer months while Lorraine triumphantly smirked to herself, insufferably superior about her age.

We knew what she was thinking. Her “time” with the twinsets was limited. The following winter she would have outgrown them and would be in a position to generously bequeath them to her younger sisters.

My position was dire. I had two sets of twinsets to inherit.

My mother, that dear, sweet, noble person, came to the rescue. The following winter she discreetly donated the offending clothes to neighbourhood children, thereby squashing forever their dreaded spectre.

Thus the mere mention of twinsets was enough to subdue me into silence.

As we did every year we were assembled in the drawing room waiting to leave the house for the parochial Mass of the day. The midnight service was the more important religious event that people attended but somehow I never did. Though I did try. On more than one occasion.

“Why can’t I come to Midnight Mass with you?” I wailed. And was ignored. I knew that thirteen was the magical age but that didn’t stop me from protesting when I was younger. When Lily became a teenager my remonstrations must have been extra enthusiastic because, uncharacteristically, my mother relented with a deal.

“You go to bed at eight and I’ll wake you at eleven thirty. You’ll have twenty minutes to get ready before we leave. If you get some sleep you won’t be so cranky and embarrassing.”

She was referring to the instance when, as an insignificant little girl, I had slept through most of the Mass only to wake at the Consecration, the most holy part of the service when the church was pin-drop silent. With the intense concentration of a child I quietly watched proceedings before enunciating in loud, clear, severely censorious tones, “Mummy! Padre drank wine and he never said Cheers.”

My mother didn’t want a repeat of that performance.

“She’s cranky all the time, so what’s the difference?” Lorraine’s remarks, and similar ones from Lily, suggested to me that I accept the bargain. As the clock chimed the hour I duly took myself off to bed.

The next thing I knew the creamy fingers of a cold dawn were reaching into our bedroom and Christmas morning was well on its way. “I called you twice,” I was told when I complained, “but you wouldn’t budge.”

The following year I refused to go to bed and curled up in an armchair in front of the fire in the drawing room with my nose buried in a novel. The next morning I found myself stretched out on the sofa under an assortment of crocheted blankets, with a crick in my neck. Not only had I missed Midnight Mass but had also slept through the celebratory drinks, cake and singing that followed.

By the time I was legitimately allowed to attend the midnight service I had lost interest. Isn’t that always the case? The proximity of a desired object tarnishes its magical allure; distance does indeed lend enchantment to the view. Since the novelty of being awake at midnight had worn off, my sisters joined me at the parochial Mass.

That year, when the drama of hanging decorations had been accomplished, the threat of twinsets nullified and the preferred Mass agreed and attended, we were finishing a late breakfast when a commotion among the servants at the pantry door attracted our attention.

Not being a family for superfluous amounts of help in the house, at that time we had only two servants. The mali who was an old family retainer, had been around as long as I could remember and lived with his extended family in the servant’s quarters at the bottom of the compound out of sight of the house. It was he who kept the garden in a respectable shape and managed the well and overhead tank, keeping us in running water twenty-four hours a day.

Like most cantonments houses our property had a well that was fed by a water table 20 metres below. While the concept may sound primitive, the reality was sophisticated and efficient. An electric pump drew water into an overhead tank and gravity fed the house pipes. Importantly, we owned control of this essential resource, without which survival in the stinking hot months of summer was questionable. While the mali was dependent on us for a job we were totally dependent on him for this precious commodity.

The ayha was another aged family retainer who helped my mother around the house. I was never sure of her role but she was always present. Other than that, an assortment of daily women came in and out to do dishes, clean the house – no negligible feat, given the obscure corners and corridors left by previous generations – attend to the laundry and other necessary tasks. Though it was their labour that ensured I went out into the world clean and polished, I never noticed them. With the arrogance of youth, they were extraneous to my interests.

That Christmas morning, the excited chatter among the servants surprised us. It was customary for all members of the mali’s family to collect on Christmas morning with a boutonniere or garland for each of us. It was a sign of their respect and acknowledgement of our religious festival. In return they received bakshi which was our way of saying thank you for wishing us well on our special day.

As a general rule male servants didn’t enter the house so it was unexpected when an agitated mali approached the dining room door, obviously wanting to talk to my father and surprisingly, not my mother, who usually managed the household.

He walked back into the drawing room with the stiff, unsteady gait of an old man. It was as though he had aged twenty years in half an hour. His tone, when he spoke, was as usual but the giveaway was his choice of extra-formal language when he thanked us for waiting before we opened our presents. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to explain I organised my mind to voice one of the questions that was jumping around in my head. But before I could speak I caught Lorraine’s eye and received a telepathic message that said SHUT. UP.

Confused, I looked back towards my father and saw that mentally he was way beyond our puny world of Christmas. He was looking back to safer times.

Bit by bit I pieced the story together.

In the dead of night, an unknown hand had braved the arctic temperatures to adorn our boundary wall with a bright yellow, unambiguous message:

“de Souza is shit”.

In numb silence, staring uncomprehendingly at the words, I read them over and over again as though repeated reading would expose the joke.

“But Mummy, why didn’t he tell us? Doesn’t he know it’s worse not to know?” Not knowing allows one’s imagination to play nasty tricks and conjure up the worst of horrors. Knowing your enemy means a person can organise a defence.

“He didn’t want to spoil your Christmas,” she replied. “Give your father credit. He was happy to shoulder the burden alone so you could enjoy Christmas.” Forestalling my sulky response, she added with emphasis on the pronoun, “He didn’t spoil your presents. The people who scribbled on the wall did. With intent. They didn’t chose Christmas at random.” Both the timing and the wording made it impossible to bluff ourselves – the message was personal.

“It’s hard on your father,” my mother continued as though she were thinking aloud. “This is the only home he’s ever known. He belongs here, has come home to this house all his life. All his children have been born here. Yes I know,” almost glaring at me, “It’s your home too but it’s been his a lot longer.”

That Christmas morning our father had been thinking about his boyhood, his parents and siblings, all his home-comings and the other highlights in his life that were centred around this wonderful place. We also knew he was deeply hurt by the overt display of aggression and worried about what the future would hold for all.

A small sound of protest makes me turn to look enquiringly at my companion. “You must have been badly frightened,” he says.

I turn back but instead of seeing the church in front of me, my mind sees a low boundary wall adorned with a nasty message. Yes, we’d been frightened – badly frightened! Bewildered and frightened; panicked and frightened; a whole array of feelings, but the predominant one was fear.

As the days passed and there was no exacerbation of the malicious intent, the shock dulled, and such was our confidence in life that we took to mocking the event. Watch it, missy, Lorraine, Lily or I would say, Any more cheek from you and I’ll write rude words on your mirror / bed / wardrobe. And together we laughed, entertained by the implication of language we would never actually use. If our father heard us he didn’t remark until a few months later.

“It could have been worse,” he said, “I was worried and didn’t know what to do.” He used the word “worried” but we knew he meant “frightened”. Being young girls we were obvious targets for degrading physical violence so had every reason to be terrified. But it was his responsibility to protect us; the weight of our safety lay squarely in his hands, he was the one who carried the burden of duty loaded with love.

“I wasn’t sure what to do,” he repeated. “I didn’t know if it was some chokra being an over-smart idiot or a gang of gundas intent on worse. I didn’t know how to react.” He paused before continuing. “I didn’t want to do anything that would spark an incident, lead to a riot or cause any sort of ruction.” With the killings of the India–Pakistan partition still fresh in his mind, as they will always be for anyone who witnessed the senseless massacre of brother against brother, lifelong friends against each other, he was right in not knowing what to expect, what it all meant.

“I tried to remain calm but it’s hard to think straight when one is so worried.”

“He also didn’t want to involve us,” my mother chimed in. “He didn’t want to terrify us so he carried the load alone.” She was affectionate and at the same time mildly admonishing, not one to shield her daughters from the nastier aspects of life. From her tone we knew she had said as much to our father in a private moment.

“What did you do, Dad?”

He replied with careful precision. “I talked it over with Claude and Barton,” he replied, referring to his brother and cousin. “When we were at Aunt Betty’s house later that morning I discussed it with them.

Uncle Claude was a barrister and was on friendly terms with the local Chief of Police. In his own interests as much as ours, he would sound out any suspected civil unrest. In the frenzy of riots every one of the extended family would be vulnerable.

Uncle Barton was my father’s first cousin. He was a bachelor, lived a simple, unassuming life mainly on family money and owned a series of bicycle shops around the city. He spent his mornings drifting from one shop to another chatting with the local Indian-Christian families that he employed, always one of the boys and never “the boss”. He knew everybody and everyone knew him. He liked knowing what was “going on”.

Under this facade he had a brilliant esoteric brain that was wasted in the backwaters of Kanpur. He liked nothing better than to indulge his hobby of collecting first editions and quoting lengthy passages of Latin that no one but he understood. I often suspected he was telling us dirty stories that he would never, could never, given my parents standards, translate into English.

“And of course, we alerted Uncle Hugh who didn’t say much. He was of the opinion that if anything was brewing we’d never know. No forewarning would prepare us!” Though Uncle Hugh was old and not as strong as he had been in his prime, the local people respected him. There was a network of men who honoured him for the good boss he’d been to their fathers in the local leather factory so they covertly looked out for him. Uncle Hugh also had a lot of experience of unrest so his opinion on the situation was highly respected.

The consensus of opinion had been to do nothing, to wait and watch, be on high alert.

“But Daddy, why did they do it?” As always, the effort to keep my mouth shut was beyond me. “Why did they write dirty words on our wall?”

That afternoon I listened to silence for a few minutes while the air tingled with pathos and my father struggled to explain. With heartfelt compassion he continued. “People around us are pathetically poor. They have been kept poor for generations so they don’t have enough food for their children. Their growth is stunted, their mental capacity arrested. They haven’t the energy to rebel. They’re so poor they’re little better than animals. Can you imagine how a mother feels watching her child be hungry and having no power to alleviate the suffering? Or seeing her child sick and not being able to afford medical help!”

We knew we received the best health care available. Every year we were immunised against the prevailing contagious diseases that were a death sentence for many. The first Saturday in February saw Lorraine, Lily and me inoculated against typhoid and cholera and vaccinated against smallpox. In the early years we were admonished about the undue expression of pain. “How do you think the nurse will feel if all of you howl like jackasses when she’s performing a precise movement? Don’t you think it’s rough on her when all she’s doing is helping you?”

“I’m kuttcha roti, Mummy, so only I’ll cry.” My precocious implication was that as the youngest I was “the baby” and legitimately allowed to throw tantrums over something as small as an injection.

But I never did. We lined up with Lorraine leading the way, set our sights in the opposite direction, got jabbed in our left arm, winced, mentally used strong language and moved forward for the smallpox scratches. It was over in five minutes.

Such is the power of role models. We took pride in being stoical and for the rest of my life I insisted on upholding a contemptuous attitude towards anyone – man, woman or adolescent – who screams in protest against health-saving injections.

We knew other people weren’t so lucky. The poverty outside our gates was dreadful. Many people lived a hand-to-mouth existence, totally dependent on the benevolence of their employers, if they were lucky enough to have jobs. For countless years development had been stunted and the country’s wealth pilfered to support multiple palatial lifestyles in a distant island, lifestyles that had no foundation other than in the blood sweated by their colonies. Power had been held in the hands of an elite few with the masses duboured, held down under someone’s thumb and used for the sole purpose of propping up the Empire.

The country was suffering from years of oppression. The current regime had a mammoth task to pull up the standard of living by its bootstraps. It didn’t help that corruption was endemic. The worst part was that poverty was seen as inevitable, almost a God-given decree that had to be accepted and endured. People born poor had but one choice: stay and remain poor or go back to God. It’s only by the grace of that same God that a small percentage of us are born free of that harsh decision.

“I’m offended when you turn your noses up at food,” my father continued. “Your mother agrees with me.” Our mother never allowed us to complain about food or waste it. Three small cooked meals a day were served in a formal setting in the dining room and at each we emptied our plates. If something wasn’t to our taste we were served less, but eat it we did. Since all our food was grown locally we ate only what was in season so never cooling mangoes in winter or heavy, stodgy, fatty victuals in summer. In a twelve-month period we were fed a healthy variety of food. Hunger was beyond our experience.

“People get angry when they suffer and see their children suffering while other people live on the fat of the land. We have more than most people, much more than we need; empty rooms in this house while people swelter or freeze on the streets. The local people have cause to be angry with us! We have no right to live like this.”

My father’s reflections helped us understand the justifiable rage behind that Christmas message. We realised that the entrapment of poverty can lead to fury and resentment, railings against an unjust fate, one that condemns some people to a life of great disadvantage, hunger and illness while others live with riches superfluous to their needs.

However, in spite of his compassion there was little my father could do for the local people. The problem was so big it was beyond us. The offending words were never washed away but the blistering heat of the following summers faded the script until it was almost indecipherable. But however much we understood the reasons, the malicious intent remained forever fresh in our minds. The dark monsoon cloud had grown more tentacles.