Black British (24 page)

“What do you mean he loved her in his own way?”

Lorraine was quiet. From her face it was obvious she was flattered at being asked and also took the responsibilities of “eldest sister” seriously.

She spoke slowly as she voiced her opinions. “Of course he loved her. She was the only woman, the only person, who understood his true self and loved him anyway. Her continued presence in his life allowed him to present a normal facade to the world.”

We were silent. This was a new idea for me. As she grew confident Lorraine added in a rush, “Think about it! Aunt Kitty could have returned to her mother's house and denounced Uncle Claude to the embarrassment of everyone, most of all himself and the family. Instead she stuck it out and put up a good front.”

“Mummy said leaving Uncle Claude wasn't an option for Aunt Kitty.”

Aunt Kitty was in a hard place. Socially it wasn't acceptable to be a divorced woman so she made the best of the cards fate had dealt her. Our uncle must have recognised this even though he couldn't bring himself to acknowledge it until it was too late. As we remembered her on the afternoon of her funeral, I knew each of us was trying to understand Uncle Claude within the context of his life as we knew it.

He was a complex character. The middle one of three sons, he was reputed to be the smartest. “He's brilliant,” my father often said, “much smarter than I am.” He was also tall, well-proportioned and had a mellifluous voice that stood him in good stead in his profession.

He had arrived in England two years after my father, with the mission to study law. From all accounts he had excelled himself and was cruising towards a promising career at the Bar when World War II interfered. By that time all three brothers were living in London.

“Why did you come home?” I'd asked my father many years earlier. His reply was accompanied with a shrug of his shoulders and both eyes on his newspaper. “Someone said it was unfair on our mother to have all three sons in England when war was imminent. So, being the eldest, I came home.” It was no decision at all. Duty to family called him home.

“Of course we were under pressure to join up,” Uncle Claude had told us, using the vernacular of the time to mean enlist in the armed forces. “But I objected, said,
No damn fear
;
it's not our war
. I had no intentions of putting my life on the line in the defence of an empire that treated us as second-class citizens, purely because of the colour of our skin. Even the lowest of them.
Sadha Chumra
,” he disclaimed with exquisite contempt, using a derogatory term to describe the inane logic of some white people.

So what happened?

“There were only elderly men around who were too old to enlist. And they were all Home Guards. Richard was always a daredevil so it was hard to dissuade him from the adventure of it all.” Both brothers enlisted, one to active service and the other to a desk job involving “intelligence” stuff.

Only one brother came home.

Did Uncle Claude carry guilt about his survival when his younger brother didn't survive? Though it was thirty odd years later, both he and my father still missed the baby of the family. Often in the midst of conversation or regaling a joke, both would suddenly go quiet and studiously avoid making eye contact with each other. All of us knew something had reminded them of Uncle Richard. The power of their feelings was so strong they couldn't bear to look at one another in case the combination of pain brought their protective wall crashing down. Each carried his sadness with him like a second skin. Something that couldn't be shed. Or shared.

Was Uncle Claude frustrated about his lost ambition at the Bar? He didn't appear to be. It was well known that he managed his family money with such genius that he could afford to treat his work as a hobby. His professional life gave him enormous satisfaction.

Being a second son he missed out on the dubious honour and responsibility accorded his elder brother. Was there something in his subconscious mind that resented this? We didn't think so. We had only ever witnessed the brothers to be on excellent terms. There was a codependency that excluded everyone else, as demonstrated to me in the reading-newspapers-at-breakfast incident.

Therefore, it must have been his proclivity that was divergent from what society saw as the norm, that made Uncle Claude hate himself when Aunt Kitty was around. Did this make him project his self-loathing onto his wife to the extent that his only relief was to be rude to her? Without realising the diminishing effect he was having on her, or recognising the constant denigration as verbal violence, did he seek to protect himself the only way he knew how?

It must be so disheartening to know that you are clever and possess an outstanding intellect, be so loved by a brother who you admire and yet be unable to love and understand a part of yourself.

To an outsider it would appear that his was a life to envy, he was a person to emulate. Only Uncle Claude knew his inner torment, the reservoir of sadness with which he lived.

PART V

... And in the End

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.