Black British (21 page)

But public memory is short so juicer scandals soon replaced me in the gossip columns. With the passage of time my deeds didn't seem so dire after all.

Lawlessness in a big city is always worse than in a small town and must be related to the size of the population. The second India–Pakistan skirmish seemed to increase the threat to everyday living and brought our holidays in Calcutta to an end. Thereafter our connection to the place was through Mr Mukherjee and the parcels he carried back and forth between us and our Aunt Tilly.

Aunt Tilly was a secretary in one of the big firms in the City and in her own words “made good money”. She was attractive, vivacious, lived in the moment and loved life. Her boss and colleagues respected her intelligence and efficiency, giving her a reputation that made her sought after and head hunted.

Though she was happy with her work and successful, her capabilities were underutilised. By its very nature the scope of her job was limited and restricted her options. There was no opportunity for advancement and no career structure. However, with the narrow vision that was prevalent at the time, secretaries were seen as the elite occupation open to women, “a lady's job”, and far superior to teaching and nursing, the other main contenders.

They were also better paid, as commercial ventures generate more money than the altruistic ones of public education and health. It would be a pity if society saw commercial ventures as better value too.

As part of her job Aunt Tilly was always elegantly dressed in the latest fashion. Her shoes, dress and handbag matched in colour and style. As soon as she tired of an outfit or it showed signs of wear, she packed it away and sent it to us. Mr Mukherjee was the courier.

Lorraine loved Aunt Tilly's parcels. At eighteen she was a true beauty and this was her chance to acquire fashionable clothes in good quality fabric. Being of roughly the same height and build, the dresses, skirts and blouses needed no alteration. Wearing them gave her added confidence.

Lily loved Aunt Tilly's parcels too. There was always something she could alter to suit herself, something she could change into something else and satisfy her creative urge. Full gathered skirts were reborn as a pleated skirt and bolero, with the leftovers added to a patchwork quilt. A table runner that bore a remarkable resemblance to a head scarf would mysteriously appear and so would a two-tone duchess set with matching edges.

I hated Aunt Tilly's parcels. “There's nothing for me,” I wailed, outraged at missing out and at the same time relieved because the clothes were far too old for me in style and comfort. I hadn't Lily's skill or inclination to alter something to suit my wants. I wanted everything handed to me on a platter. I had a princess inclination.

“Wait,” said my mother with no sympathy. “Your time will come. You'll soon grow and then it'll be your turn.” Never before were such visionary words uttered. Never was my discontent turned to such stinky, smelly, sludgy mud.

By fourteen years old I had shot up, far outstripping Lorraine and Lily to be the tallest in the family. Though I was skinny as active adolescents often are, I was filling out in all the appropriate places.
Now
!
NOW it's my turn
.

What I didn't realise, what I hadn't bargained for, was that mental maturity does not always correspond with physical development.

“Try this one and see what you think.” My mother handed me a dream in white-and-yellow froth.

The fabric was soft and slinky – sensuously so, a joy to touch. The fabric pattern was a subtle suggestion of yellow flowers on a white background. The whole image was delicate, elusive, tantalisingly feminine.

I spun around to look at my reflection in the mirror and screamed with horror. “I can't breathe. It's too tight.” The dress fitted like a glove, the slinky material clung to my body, accentuating all my newly acquired, self-conscious protuberances. My nipples stood erect and with a will of their own, my eyes were drawn to them. I could feel the blood run up the back of my neck as I hunched my shoulders.

“Stand up straight,” commanded my mother. “Since when have you had round shoulders?” But how could I tell her that if I straightened my shoulders my annoying breast buds would be embarrassingly prominent? How could I confess I didn't like these changes to my body, that I wanted to remain my loose-limbed self without the restrictive garments that came with adolescence? How could I admit that after all the previous years of complaining, I now didn't want these stupid, ladylike clothes!

The operative word was ladylike. Second-hand didn't bother me. Being the youngest, I was accustomed to inheriting my sisters' clothes while my dresses were often turned into something else or given to neighbourhood children. The concept of waste was alien to us. Aunt Tilly's dresses were used one way or another. If we didn't want them other people in town would benefit.

There was one big difference, though. We also got new clothes. Every birthday, Christmas and Easter saw us with an outfit of our own choosing. We had the dignity of choice. Some people were not so lucky. They had to put up with what came their way – other people's discards, however luxurious, are still other people's discards.

Luckily for us, our mother had instilled in us the value of use and reuse. A lot of items in our house had begun life as one thing, only to morph into something completely different, sometimes unrecognisably different. Cracked or broken pottery jars became drainage for pot plants, discarded kerosene oil tins were transformed into skilfully crafted doll's houses, empty
dalda
tins were made over into expertly constructed, highly polished
peg
tables and all the time, imagination and the will to reuse were given full range.

This value (use and re-use) could be carried to absurd lengths with sometimes interesting outcomes, like when a cement road sign became part of a dry stone wall. During British times a number of placenames were anglicised in deference to vocal cords that couldn't or wouldn't pronounce local names. With independence some of those names were returned to their original forms, making a lot of road signs obsolete. Somehow one of them found their way to become part of the dry stone wall that surrounded our well.

The extraordinary part was that as the rest of the wall was maintained so was the sign, so it still looked as new as the day it had left the manufacturer's workshop. I asked my father about this and his obscure answer was, “Why worry, it serves its purpose. Besides, it breaks the monotony of the fence.” And with this I had to be satisfied.

What I think happened was in previous years, when my father requested the wall be repainted, he didn't expect his words to be taken so literally. Once it was done, he didn't have the heart to object as he valued his workers' obvious dedication to detail.

He also recognised that it was his responsibility to make himself clear and not assume what was obvious to him would also be obvious to anyone else. Since the wall, as it was, was fully functional and on our property rather than part of the boundary, he figured it was no one's business except our own. There are bigger things in life.

My mother often remarked that Lorraine, Lily and I were comfortable with the idea of second and third lives – as she called it. “Why wouldn't we be, Mum?” Lily laughed. “It makes sense.” And to show her wit, “There's life in the old rag yet.”

“Just be prepared,” my mother continued, “that as you go through life people will see it as cheap. In this world of conspicuous consumption people use possessions to buy themselves a status that's not intrinsic to them. They need props to counter their feelings of inferiority. So they'll laugh at you and make disparaging remarks that will be difficult to answer. They'll try and explain it away by ‘understanding' that you come from a poor family, as though that's a crime or something to be ashamed of. They'll try and use it against you.” She shook her head in disbelief and disdain.

Her facial expression told us she had something or someone particular in mind. Whenever Lorraine or Lily appeared at a family occasion in the latest fashion everyone knew we'd received a parcel from Aunt Tilly. On occasion there'd been
sotto voce
remarks about dressing her daughters in hand-me-downs as though their father was a poor provider.

It was clearly an absurd statement but one, as my mother said, that was difficult to answer. “During the war,” she continued, “the government distributed a pamphlet that advised housewives to
make do and mend
. But now it's our choice – to use and reuse. Remember that. We are confident about who we are. We don't need to indulge in pretentious bourgeoisie swagger.” Ignoring disparaging remarks, my mother stuck to her principles and none of us were the worse for it.

CHAPTER 14

UNCLE CLAUDE'S TENSIONS

My methods of surveillance were both covert and overt. And very successful. I knew everything that happened in the house.

Or so I thought.

It was a weekday morning in June when I bounced into the drawing room at seven o'clock, intent on the wholly useless task of decorating the mantelpiece with vases of prickly stemmed sunflowers – the only blossoms to brave the summer heat. I wasn't surprised to see Uncle Claude standing with his back to me as he studied the photographs on the mantel above the fireplace. He often popped in after early morning Mass.

“Hello Uncle Claude,” I sang. “Mummy's in the pantry and Daddy's in his rooms.” I was certain of their whereabouts because the rhythm and regularity of our lives marched inexorably on, regardless of season, sun or tide.

“Then you'd better go and join your mother.” There was a smile in Uncle Claude's voice as he turned to face me but I froze in mid-movement. No one but my mother ever told me what to do, however pleasant their tone. Even my father worded his commands as polite requests – unless he was furious. I was both astounded and outraged but something in Uncle Claude's voice brooked no argument. That didn't stop me. Contracting my abdominal muscles to support an indrawn column of air, I was ready for confrontation when, from the corner of my eye, I spotted a man standing by the bay window, concentrating on the view of the garden.

Tomas Savio, an Indian Christian from Kerala in South India, was a pilot in the air force base a few miles out of town. I knew him by sight as I had often seen him at church. Being in his mid- to late-thirties his age group wasn't compatible with my parents or sisters so he didn't visit us. To my knowledge he had never been in our house before so I was astonished to see him in the drawing room that summer morning.

Though both men were standing at opposite ends of the room and appeared to be intent on what each was looking at, my spine tingled. As I looked uncertainly from one to the other, the meaning of Uncle Claude's suggestion came home to me so to cover my confusion I called a greeting to Tomas and flew back to the verandah, en route to the pantry. I knew I wasn't allowed to be alone with a man outside my immediate family – even if that man was my uncle. I certainly wasn't allowed to be alone in a room with two men – regardless of who they were.

This social rule was for all our protection. If a man was never, ever, alone with a young girl there was less chance he could be accused of untoward behaviour or improper inclination. The responsibility was with him to ensure he was never caught in circumstances that could be open to misinterpretation.

The exact same standard applied to us girls. I knew I had to protect myself from scandalous rumours to maintain an unsullied reputation. All of us knew that, my parents included. On the rare occasion my father offered a lady a lift in his car, the only acceptable practice was for her to ride in the back seat. Gossip mongers in Kanpur maliciously enjoyed any opportunity to make two even numbers add up to five.

“Mu-um. Uncle Claude is in the drawing room with Tomas Savio,” I called out as I burst into the pantry. “Do you know what he wants?” My mother's facial expression reminded me she never bought into inane conversations so I knew I had to relay the message to the appropriate person.

The shortcut to my parents' rooms ensued going through the drawing room so instead I ran the long way around the house to call out loudly, “Da-ad, Uncle Claude's here,” and not stopping for an answer, raced back to the pantry. Fourteen-year-old girls can have boundless energy, even at seven in the morning on a hot summer's day.

It was sufficiently unusual for Tomas Savio to accompany our uncle to our house so I knew something odd was afoot. My dilemma was deciding on the method I'd use to discover what was happening. On the pretext of helping my mother cook porridge I broached the subject. “Mummy, can I ask you something?”

“No! It will do you good to think things out for yourself instead of constantly badgering me.” The unusual sharpness of her words should have alerted me but my hunger to know was too strong. Since asking my mother hadn't worked, Lorraine was my next best bet.