BOOBY TRAPS
Packing up the house had been an onerous task that Lily and I had found exciting even though we knew our safety was compromised, particularly by the fan room. With all the additions and subtractions to the house by past generations, the home we inhabited was an eccentric building that was heaven for adventurous, growing girls but a burden of responsibility for our parents.
In the early 1900s the advent of electricity necessitated the addition of an extra room to our summer bedroom. It was small and purpose built, with one external wall containing a circular hole large enough to accommodate an induction fan. Since the fan had four blades, each measuring about forty-six centimetres in length, the opening was also large enough for a grown man to hunch over and climb through. Beyond the fan a cement houdh formed the shell of a water tank. A wire framework covered with grass matting called kus kus made up the roof and extended the houdh’s walls.
The function was sophisticated and based on evaporative cooling principles. Had the induction fan been left to its own devices, it would have blown in a hot, dehydrating wind, worse than the blast from a furnace. Instead, water from the houdh was pumped over the kus kus matting, keeping it constantly wet and giving us delightfully cool and fragrant fresh air. We knew we lived in paradise.
Once the monsoon broke the induction fan became obsolete for that year. With much ceremony the fan was dismantled, cleaned, oiled and stored until the following year when once again it was called on to save our lives. When the kus kus matting was removed, the houdh emptied and scrubbed, the hole in the wall, an unintended entrance, became glaringly apparent.
In order to block off entry to all and sundry, whether it be of the two- or four-legged variety, or the type that slithers on its belly, a plank of polished wood was placed against the pseudo-portal and held in place by two large and heavy cabin trunks, each measuring one square metre and filled with all sorts of odds and ends. These we laid one on top of the other, completely covering the fatal spot.
Packing up our home meant the cabin trunks were called upon to perform their original duty, leaving a gaping space behind, an obvious entry portal.
With Uncle Hugh gone we were particularly vulnerable. He had a reputation as a crack shot in spite of his advanced years, and that kept a certain horde away. He also commanded enormous respect in the district so local people looked out for him. Without him we were insecure and frightened. Our other safeguard, my beloved Reg, was also permanently asleep under the laburnums.
“We can’t leave it like that.” Lily sighed. We had propped a thick mattress against the plank of wood that closed off the gap and knew it would keep the cold at bay but not an intruder of any kind. Another solution was required. Being young adults, primed to share responsibility, we knew it was up to us to invent an inspired remedy. This wasn’t time for trivia.
Famous last words. The remedy came from trivia. Initially, Lily was set for analysis.
“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” she started before I cut in sharply and sarcastically.
“We could get murdered in our beds! That’s what can happen.”
Rape, sexual assault, violation of a woman’s body were torture and crimes we had never heard of in our gently cocooned lives. Even jokes that could be construed as risqué or close to the limit of propriety were never repeated in our presence.
“What we need is an alarm that alerts us to the dacoits so we have at least a fighting chance.”
We looked at each other helplessly. I might as well have said we need to fly to the moon because an alarm simply wasn’t available. Lily returned to being analytical. “What’s the next best…” and we both shouted with glee, “Booby traps of course!”
That set us thinking.
“Remember that Laurel and Hardy cine we saw, where they use thumbtacks to immobilise the baddies?” I asked Lily. In the film the goondhas are barefoot, they break down a door and charge in, only to step heavily on sharp thumbtacks. The pain completely incapacitates them so that all they can do is hop around madly or fall over.
We surveyed our handiwork doubtfully. Both of us had the same thought that neither wanted to voice. Up-ended thumbtacks didn’t seem much of a defence. And then, like a good penny, a brilliant idea dropped into both our minds.
Traditional Indian cooking uses fine tin pots called dekshis, covered by equally thin lids referred to as dukhners. This structure promotes the even distribution of heat. Every kitchen has a plentiful supply of different size dekshis accompanied by a corresponding size dukhner.
For the first time in history, perhaps the only time, our dukhners found a new role. Bolting the doors between the fan room and our summer bedroom we jammed a row of dukhners into the crack between the doors and the framework.
Our hysterical laughter was in response to both the noise and our ingenuity as we slowly, gently pulled the door open and created an unqualified cra-s-s-s-sh as a wave of metal hit the hard mosaic floor. It was enough to frighten the living daylights out of any hardened criminal.
But our trials were incomplete. We were pulling the doors open from the summer bedroom rather than pushing them open from the fan room, from where we would expect the intruder to originate.
“We need to see if it works from the other side,” I said innocently to Lily. “Do you want to try it?”
My sweet, gentle, trusting sister did just that.
It took me a second to shoot the bolt home and skedaddle. Sometimes, for no tangible reason, sixteen-year-olds revert to ridiculously childish behaviour in spite of the stunning brilliance they have just displayed.
A week before we were due to leave, my mother straightened up from packing the final portmanteau and pronounced with relief, “Thank goodness that’s done. I’ve been having nightmares that we wouldn’t be ready to hand over to the nuns on Saturday.”
My father, Lily and I had no such misgivings. We had seen our mother in action many times before and respected her planning capabilities. But the fun and excitement of so much activity was wearing off and the stark reality of actually leaving was setting in.
“Just think,” said Lily that night as we sat huddled under our rizis, “this time next week it’ll all be over. We’ll be in the train.” The future beckoned us with bewitching fingers, exciting possibilities, and at the same time our hearts were heavy with a sense of irreparable loss. Neither of us voiced what we were both thinking. This time last month Uncle Hugh was with us.
The rooms were forlorn and deserted. With the disposal of generations of personal belongings we were now unable to remember what had gone where or to whom. All that was evident were empty shelves gathering dust that some other hands would remove, faded patches on paintwork where pictures had hung, in the same spot, on the same wall for all of our lives. Soon other people’s pictures would hang there.
The silence hung heavy in empty rooms, magnified in intensity by our movements that resonated off bare walls. Unconsciously we spoke in hushed voices, like you do when someone is dying, as indeed the life that we knew was dying around us.
The whole house had taken on the atmosphere of an unloved, deserted being, “whose lights have fled, whose garlands dead” and all but us departed. Reproach leapt out from every corner and guilt added to our burden. We were forsaking our refuge, our haven, our dear, dear friend.
At breakfast the next morning, our mother said, “Right! All the clearing and packing is done, we are organised for the last-minute things so today we take a break. Lily and I will bake a cake and we’ll have high tea in the winter garden.” Her unspoken words hung in the air. This is the last Sunday we will ever spend in the home where we belong, where our psyche is deeply embedded in the seasons and the soil.
Feasting was usually kept to special occasions like Christmas, Easter and birthdays so that afternoon, replete with our unusual bounty, we relaxed back to enjoy the last of the warm, gentle sun.
“I’ll nip over and see Claude.” My father prepared to walk the half hour or so to his brother’s house.
“I’ll come.” Sixteen-year-old girls are irrepressible, but a look from my mother changed my mind quick smart. After he’d left she explained.
“Your father needs time with his brother. They are both hurting like hell at the moment, so leave them alone.” Her unusual use of the mild expletive reminded me that though I had a lot to lose, my father had more.
He hadn’t been gone for more than ten minutes when a stealthy movement caught my peripheral vision. “Mummy,” I called softly, “there’s a man standing at the houdh. I don’t know what he’s doing.”
Before my words could register, this stranger leapt on his bicycle and raced back the way he had come, past the car standing in the porch and up the driveway to the public road.
No one moved. We were stunned. We were bemused. We were the whole dictionary of words that mean dumbfounded. My mother’s facial expression was a study in incredulity. Did what I think happen, actually happen?
It took a few moments before we rushed to crowd around the houdh that stood on the edge of the rose garden alongside the driveway and was about six metres from where we had been siting. Nothing appeared to be different. The man hadn’t urinated in the standing water or desecrated it in any way, as we were expecting.
“He probably just wanted a drink,” my mother started to say, and then we saw.
A complete stranger, in broad daylight, had the audacity to enter our private compound, cycle 90 metres up the driveway, unscrew the brass tap from the houdh and pocket it, plug the flow of water with a piece of wood and take off at the speed of knots.
The horror of his boldness frightened us. “Thank God your father wasn’t at home,” were my mother’s first words. She knew there was still a vestige of respect left for older women which prompted a singular thief to grab his loot and make off. Had a man been present, the bandit might have felt more inclined to be aggressive and instigate violence.
“Thank God it wasn’t worse,” were her second remark, knowing it could have been a gang and they could have come armed with knives and other sharp tools. There was simply nothing we could do to prevent such an attack or to protect ourselves. We were sitting ducks.
The incident hardly warranted discussion. There was nothing to say. If it was the difference between a man feeding his family for a few months compared to us having a brass tap, we all knew which one we preferred. Besides, it was also an example of what we’d been expecting all our lives. And it served a definite purpose. It validated our decision to leave.
That night my father remarked, “I’m glad the house is going to the nuns. I wouldn’t want it to be razed to make way for multi-storey flats. It’s a dear old place and such a beautiful building.”
Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. My ancestral home was unique, with a mind of its own, but one thing it never was, and that was beautiful – in any sense of the word.
“People can’t afford to live in these mausoleums anymore and I’m glad some jumped-up nouveau riche hasn’t acquired it with tainted funds and blood money. It’ll fulfil its destiny and through the years house lots of noisy, laughing, happy children from the streets. They’ll have a home and a future. A fitting bequest from my lovely daughters.” His expression was total love tinged with sadness.
We were all glad the house was to become an orphanage to be run by an order of Indian Catholic nuns. Everyone knew that our father would never partake in the counter currency that beset the country and that his honesty precluded those “jumped-up nouveau riche” from acceding to our heritage. Lily and I valued this above diamonds and gold. It was our true, treasured inheritance.
With renewed acuity Lily and I carried out our nightly ceremony of bolting the internal doors. All my life we had locked the front gate soon after dinner. Recently, once the clearing out and packing had started, we had created a ritual where, before locking the gate, Lily and I went through the house bolting off each room. Only the room we were currently working on was left accessible. Clearing and packing was done in the late evening when curtains were drawn and no prying eye could witness proceedings. Once we had finished for the night, that access was also blocked. In the morning the ritual was reversed. We needed to check that our fortifications were still intact and had not been subtly altered.
“Six nights to go,” said Lily, slamming home a bolt. “Six nights and it will all be over.”
It was ten past two in the morning of what was destined to be the last day in our home when a tremendous crash rever-berated throughout the house. Something brittle had spun against the hard floor and converted the morning silence to an eerie menace. In a split second, each of us shot up, wide awake, dragged out of slumber and completely alert.
“Girls.” We didn’t know if the fear in our mother’s voice indicated she was checking on our safety or if she was calling us to her. Lily and I didn’t pause to consider. The razis, quilts and mosquito nets were thrust back before the sound had completely died down.
Clutching my solid scalpel, which I had hidden between our two mattresses with some half-baked intention of having a weapon with which to defend myself, Lily and I raced through our dressing room into our parents’ bedroom. We turned on lights as we went, wanting to illuminate what we hoped we wouldn’t find. Our parents were already out of bed and though it was freezing cold none of us noticed. A natural chemical surge kept us warm.
We listened with bated breath, abdominal muscles taut, straining our ears to hear stealthy movement, any movement.
There was none.
We didn’t speak. There was no need. We knew what we had to do, had practised it often enough.
With studied deliberation my father withdrew the cartridges from under his pillow and loaded the gun. I watched with matching calm as his hands shook. I had no idea what he was thinking, what he was planning. I knew what he was feeling. Terror, mainly on behalf of my mother, my sister and I.
Did he plan to blast a few shots into mid-air and chance the consequences?
What if there was a mob? Where one powerful double-barrel shotgun wasn’t powerful enough?
Did he plan to shoot Lily and me first and save us from a degrading fate worse than death, followed by prolonged obliteration?
To this day I don’t know. I never asked him.
There are some things you don’t talk about.
When he was prepared we all sprang into action. There was still no noise from the adjoining room but in our fired-up state we hardly noticed. My father stood to my left with his gun at the ready and I, as silently as I could, unbolted the double doors from his bedroom into the adjoining room. First the top one, then crouching down, the floor bolt. Lily, standing to my right, firmly grasped the door handle. My mother stood beside her, hanging on to a loop of gunny rope that was rigged to be an extended door handle. Her role was to add strength to Lily. Both were poised to slam the door shut if required.
“One, two, three,” I counted softly so that we were all on the same page and then in one smooth move calculated to surprise, I flung open the door and, grasping the powerful torch that I had already switched on, immediately shone it over the booby trap set at the entrance to the fan room. It lay undisturbed. I focused the beam on the other vulnerable areas, the doors to Uncle Hugh’s rooms and the back verandah. Both were still firmly locked. Continuing in a crouched position, I swept the potent beam all around, making arching movements so that no one had a hope in hell of hiding, even in the furthermost corner of that bare room.
The silence was unnerving. Not a mouse squeaked, not a person breathed. Not even us. It was unbelievable that no one was hiding in a far corner. Continuing to watch, I turned my head slightly to the right to project my voice towards Lily and my mother and said softly with controlled precision. “I’ll turn on the lights.”
Unfortunately, the electric switch was on the adjacent wall near the passage to the dining room so I had to cross a dark room that we, hyped up as we were, found hard to believe was empty. I could easily be heading into a trap.
My father hesitated. He recognised the danger I could be courting but we had reached a stalemate. Further action was required. Remaining in a crouched position I covered the required six metres in record time, reached up to switch on the light and spun around, still squatting. I had learnt at an early age to avoid putting myself in front of a loaded gun.
As light flooded the room we gazed around in incredulous silence. It took a few moments before I finally found my voice, which came out as a high soprano. “There’s no one here. The dukhners are in place.”
Polished Italian flooring that has a sheen bright enough to reflect your image is of no comfort when you are barefoot on an icy cold February morning. As one, adrenalin deserted us and each one of us trembled from cold and reaction.
I repeated “There’s no one here. The dukhners are in place.” Waiting until my father had broken the gun and folded it over his arm, I wriggled to my feet, my back still pressed hard against the wall. I continued to be alert, poised for action.
The silence lengthened. Doubt crept in. I really did hear a crash, was in each of our minds but it was obvious the booby trap was still in place.
It seemed to take a long time before any of us could persuade ourselves that nothing was amiss. Time enough for the fan room door, along with its adornment of brightly polished dukhners to be firmly imprinted on our brains so that we’d remember the sight for many years to come. Time enough for us make the decision that nothing seemed to be amiss and that we could return to bed. We trooped back to our bedrooms in silence.
Opening our bathroom door Lily emitted a howl of surprise, frustration and a whole array of pent-up emotions. A large field rat had been happily munching on a bar of soap. It had knocked over a bakelite dish which, on smashing onto the hard floors, had sent crashing sounds reverberating throughout the house, dragging us out of deep slumber.
And there, on that last morning in our home, we did what we’d done so many times before. My father, my sister and I took to our heels, murder in our hearts, to chase that poor unfortunate rat. Old habits die hard. Or was it simply a release of emotions?
In the midst of a furious swoop I stopped myself mid-action.
“What are we doing?” I cried, exasperated with myself. “The whole place could be infested with rats and it’s hardly our concern anymore.”
We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, at both the absurdity of the situation and the poignancy of the moment.