CHAPTER 16

COBWEBS ON THE DRAWING ROOM CEILING

“You know I’ll probably have to go. The daughters…”

“Yes, yes of course. Understand completely.”

“It’s their future…”

“Of course. It’s your duty to look to their future.”

“And there’s no future for them in this blasted country,” was the bitter denunciation. Sad, angry feelings like destructive storm clouds weighed down on my father and his brother that warm September morning when I was a few months short of sixteen and in my last year in school. It robbed them of the ability to articulate words that were tumbling around in their mind, words that couldn’t be subdued into complete sentences or forced out of cardboard lips.

They sat on the front verandah overlooking what used to be lawn. The term was now a euphemism, used from force of habit. What should have been a verdant sea, soothing to the eye, was a tangle of weeds and grass.

I was perched on the drawing-room window seat, pretending to study for my final school exams. In reality, though I sat stock-still to attract no attention, my ears were flapping on the nearby conversation, which was far more interesting than my textbook. I knew without being told what the brothers were discussing. The threat that had been hanging over us all my life was close to fruition.

“With Lorraine gone, Lily’s restless, though she tries hard to hide it.” I knew my father’s mind had slid back seven months to the previous February when Lorraine had left Kanpur for good. Having finished school and completed a two-year teacher training course – there was no other option open to her – she was faced with employment that brought an inadequate salary to support herself. She also had to contend with endless, long, empty evenings and no social life when she was hungry for the adventure that a wider world could bring.

“There’s nothing to do. I’ll rot to death if I stay here.” With tears in her eyes, pleading in her voice and desperation in her heart she added, “I’ll never see the Beatles or the Stones,” forgetting the former group had disbanded almost five years earlier. Then realising that was hardly a persuasive argument for our parents, she removed the drama from her voice and clinched what was never in dispute. “If I stay I’ll never have a career that can support me.” She knew, as we all did, that the main thing our parents wanted for us was self-sufficiency so that we’d never be trapped in a destructive marriage. Lorraine’s hair reflected ebony tints as she swung around to gaze over the vast wasteland that had once been a garden.

Our parents understood. It’s what they were encouraging, expecting and dreading for many years and yet now the time had come, it was something they didn’t want to acknowledge. Understandably, they tried to stall. At first it was a short bout to taste freedom and quasi-independence, followed by lengthier times away until after a year teaching full time in a local school she finally escaped for good.

I was astonished at the loneliness that accompanied the absence of just one person. Accustomed to being a family of five, adjusting to five minus one brought unexpected challenges. It was evident in all the small things. One fifth less noise and the atmosphere was redolent of a morgue; one fifth less banter also meant one less person with whom to share secrets. Four voices continued to sing around the piano, one voice conspicuous by its absence. Four around the dining table unexpectedly produced so much more elbow room, space we had squabbled over – that we now didn’t need or want.

“Lily is restless,” my father repeated, “and Lucy…” he uttered my name with no emphasis or flection of any kind and yet surprised me with the magnitude of implication that can be packed into one tiny, four-letter word. Uncle Claude’s laughter resembled a dog’s bark. “Lucy! Lucy will set the Thames on fire if she stays cooped up here and then God help the lot of us!” This time both brothers laughed – that same short, sharp sound that had nothing to do with mirth.

I squirmed, still without moving. I wasn’t quite sure what they meant but I knew it wasn’t flattering.

“Come with us.” My father sat up straighter as hope struck him. “The daughters love you. It’ll work well and I’ll be glad to share responsibilities.” But as he spoke the timbre in his voice dulled, his shoulders slumped. He realised the infeasibility of his idea.

In my mind’s eye I could see the wry, sad smile on Uncle Claude’s face as he shook his head slightly. “This country’s becoming impossible for people like us so it won’t be long before Moira and Woody join their children. With Barton and Monty gone Aunt Betty and Iris will be alone.”

Both Uncle Barton and Uncle Monty died in the early months of my last year in school, within a few months of each other. Both were old men so their deaths, though sad and severely impacting on the extended family, weren’t remarkable. Uncle Barton who had made us laugh with his depiction of Gone with the Wind, was the first to go.

It never rains in Kanpur in winter, but that January an unseasonably wet day drove people indoors to shiver under heavy overcoats and blankets. Uncle Barton lived alone and was more involved in his interests than in self-care. He was found by his bearer in the early evening, sitting in his planter’s chair with a book of Latin verse in his lap, a glass of gin and tonic on the adjacent peg table and a smile on his face. He didn’t stay around to watch the complete ruination of his home town. Instead, he looked as though he’d chosen to move to a happier place.

His workers were bereft at his death, more so when his last will and testament revealed he had bequeathed his bicycle shops to each of the Indian Christian men who managed them. They had always known Uncle Barton as a fair and honest boss and were grateful for the opportunities he gave them. Their appreciation of him grew with his posthumous generosity. They recognised their world, indeed the world, was a lesser place without him.

Knowing that a girl’s education is often compromised in favour of her brother’s, Uncle Barton left his family money – what was left of it – in a trust for the education of his workers’ daughters. He gave the girls an unparalleled gift – the opportunity for a better life. My uncle was a far-sighted man, his last gesture an altruistic one.

“I wonder if he knew his time was nigh,” my mother mused the evening after his funeral. We were gathered as always on a winter’s evening, in the comparative warmth of the drawing room. The roaring fire did what roaring fires of those times always did – warmed the chimney and one-tenth of the room. All the doors were shut, including those leading to adjacent rooms, and heavy curtains were drawn across all external windows and doors. This was our puny attempt to combat the falling external temperatures.

Enclosed as we were, hidden from prying eyes, my mother produced a trinket box that had obviously seen better days. It was lacquered papier-mâché of the art deco era and contained three pieces of jewellery that had snuggled affectionately into their dusky-pink velvet bed.

“What’s that?” I breathed. “Where’d they come from?”

Recognising my first question as an exclamation of awe, my mother ignored it. “Your Uncle Barton gave them to me at Christmas so they now belong to us.” She waited a few moments for us to absorb the magnificence before adding, “Be very careful and you can wear them.”

My reflection glowed with fire from a deep, molten-purple, pear-shaped amethyst augmented by European cut diamonds that hung from my ears, my neck, my cardigan.

I glowed, with a fire of my own. I knew Lily and my mother were speaking. Through a mist I could see their lips moving but there was a buzzing in my ears, my mouth was dry, my heart pounding.

And thus began an everlasting love affair.

That’s how quickly one can catch the plague.

“Why did he give them to us? Where’d he get them from?” Husky questions shot out of me.

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.

The time came when the telephone was switched off. It was an ugly, heavy contraption housed in my father’s library and was either out of order or menaced us at the terrible hour of two in the morning, calling out in strident tones that demanded immediate obsequence.

At first my father rushed to answer, believing, like anyone would, that a telephone call at an ungodly hour would convey urgent news. But it was either a wrong number or a person seeking information about a night train. Our telephone number must have been similar to that of the railway station.

Answering the telephone in our home in the middle of the night was never easy. Multiple dark rooms had to be negotiated because the general idiosyncrasies of the house meant light switches were never in convenient places. Furniture that was familiar during daylight hours acquired a Mr Hyde personality by night, and moved around to effect vicious attacks on unsuspecting shinbones.

After the seventh time in one night of outmanoeuvring this treacherous path, my father put all his frustrations into the single action of snatching up the receiver. Expecting to hear the usual koun hi or “who’s there”, followed by questions about train arrivals, he was floored instead by King’s English with Received Pronunciation.

“My dear fellow,” it said, “If you insist on taking quite so long to answer the telephone, it’s reasonable to suppose my train will come and go while I await your pleasure. I really must ask you to smarten up your act.” Whether my father maintained his cool or his manners, we never discovered.

The following day there was another telephone incident.

“A man telephoned for you today,” Lily informed my father.

The atmosphere said, Elucidate. What else? Obviously a little prompting was required.

“What was his name?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t catch it.” Said earnestly to ensure my father got an accurate picture.

“So what did you say?”

“I said nothing.”

“You didn’t ask him to repeat it?”

“No, I said nothing.”

“I see. Did he say anything else?”

“Yes. He asked if he could speak to you.”

“A-a-and?…?”

“I said nothing.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Yes. He asked if he could leave a message for you.”

“And…?”

“I said nothing.”

“Did he leave the message?’

“Yes.”

“And…? What was the message?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

The vagaries of the Indian telephone system combined with the taciturnity of my sister meant that the phone was either out of order, not in use or unknown callers left forgettable messages.

“You know,” my father was in one of his occasional lofty moods, “I can probably afford to hire a spacecraft and join the Apollo missions to the moon but I cannot get the Indian telephone exchange to give me an instrument that consistently works. I cannot persuade them. I cannot cajole them. I can’t even bribe them.” The last part was said with mock, deep distress and sorrowful shakes of his head. Civilisation as we knew it was breaking down around us and there wasn’t a dashed thing we could do to halt or slow the destruction.

These were facts of life for us and we adjusted with ingenuity bordering on the fatalistic.

But in spite of all our efforts, a frightening situation had occurred the previous May when a little before seven in the morning my father was driving us along Canal Road to drop Lily at her city college. Without warning, a rickshaw turned in front of our car, causing my father to come to a screaming halt.

Without the dramatic entertainment of injury to life or limb, or damage to either vehicle, a crowd collected. As anyone who has been in a foreign country knows, the lack of appropriate language skills is a distinct disadvantage, especially in times of trouble. That it was the land of his birth was of no help to my father. He was outnumbered by a babbling, hassling horde.

In an attempt to help I turned to a young man standing near my car window. “Tell him –” I got no further.

“Understand me, I am not your friend,” was spat back at me in a harsh, unyielding tone accompanied by hatred in obsidian black eyes.

My heart thumped with shock and fear.

I’ve never seen you before, done you no harm so why would you hate me?

It was my first inkling that the situation was turning sour, the crowd aggressive. I looked at Lily who had lost all colour, her eyebrows a startling contrast to her face. My father remained outwardly calm but I knew he was frightened for us.

Having first-hand experience of the massacres of the India–Pakistan partition, his first act was to remove Lily and me, two young girls, from a potentially dangerous zone. Reluctant though we were to leave him to face the throng alone, we both realised the inadvisability of arguing at such an inopportune moment. Hailing rickshaws, the only mode of public transport, Lily and I deserted our father. She left for her college and I for home.

As good luck would have it, there was a tame end to the matter. Once Lily and I were out of the picture, a Mr George who lived nearby recognised my father in the midst of the angry mob and came along to help. He paid off the rickshaw man with Rs30, more money than the poor man had ever seen in his life, and with that the crowd was satisfied.

I hadn’t been so fortunate. Trembling internally and sweating like a pig, I sat rigid as I was pedalled towards home in the cool morning air. Suddenly I felt a strong tug on the back seat and a voice I had heard before, saying in broken English, “I love you, darling. Marry me,” and making insulting, kissing sounds towards me – pwoch pwoch. A second voice joined him in a high-pitched mocking laugh.

I knew who it was but before I could react two bicycles sped past the rickshaw, turned and swooped back, all the time hollering loudly about my face, my breasts and more that I didn’t hear, as the fear-based thudding of my heart obliterated all sound.

Their performance continued with calls to the driver to stop “Rickshaw wallah rokho,” while singing love songs from a Hindi movie.

My belief in Guardian Angels was vindicated that morning as the puny old man, who was no match for two youngsters, ignored them and kept his pace steady. Though I could feel my armpits were soaking wet and my palms were clammy I made sure I looked straight ahead and pointedly ignored the capers around me.

Even a pea-sized brain has a threshold for monotony. Fed up with getting no reaction, my tormentors turned off at an intersection close to home, calling out, Chinta muth karo – don’t worry, no more tuklief, trouble for you.

My hands were shaking as I paid off the rickshaw man.

I had never tasted brandy before but as its reviving properties burnt my throat I resorted to pointless, incoherent fury.

“How dare they!” I spluttered. “How dare they!”

But my parents were uninterested. Instead they wanted to ascertain that I hadn’t been followed home, asking repeatedly, worriedly, “Are you sure they turned off before you reached the house?” They were afraid a gang of thugs would return at a later stage intent on causing mayhem.

A few days later, when feelings had subsided, I asked my parents, “Why do they hate us so much? What have we ever done to them?”

“They don’t hate you personally,” was the tart reply. “Don’t flatter yourself that they even notice you. Their lives are so hard and their prospects so poor that they hate, and rightly so, the oppressive regime that kept them subjugated for so long. They see you as a representative of that regime.”

My father looked me straight in the eye and without rancour, without mirth, in fact with a deadpan expression, he made his profound statement:

“That’s what happens when you are left over from an Empire gone to pot.”