Black British (31 page)

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.

CHAPTER 20

THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO SAY

My home town was a small one of a million people or so. The night we left, workers from my father's mill, recognising they were losing an extraordinary boss, gathered at the railway station to farewell us. They brought garlands of perfumed red roses and bright yellow
gayndhas
, or marigolds. Out of respect for my father's rule of not accepting gifts of any kind, only a few brought fruit or Indian sweets. Breaking with the tradition of presenting them to my father, the food was shared around instead. The atmosphere was almost festive, the moment momentous.

As the train crawled slowly out of the station a resounding cheer went up from the crowd. Tears flowed openly as people called out
Salaam, Hazoor
– “I salute you, Sir.” My father stood stock still in the compartment doorway looking straight ahead, neither smiling nor waving, his usual stoic self. My mother stood half a breath behind him, her usual supportive
self.

It felt like the end of an era.

Listening to the chugging of the train as it gathered speed through the night I was caught between a mixture of excitement and trepidation when unbidden feelings for my great-grandfather (plus or minus one or two) popped into my mind. He, who had started it all, moving far away from the land of his birth, those lush green fields of Goa, to the dry arid plains of the north, who had built a life for himself and laid enduring foundations for his family and descendants, whose bones now lay peacefully in Simla, many miles from where he belonged.

With no understanding of my own mortality – young people the world over know they are invincible – I wondered idly where I would end, where my body would be interred. And with that thought, lightning struck, making me limp like a rag doll whose face is painted on by another's hand, who has no control of her movements or her destiny.

In that moment I knew that though my future belonged to me it would be influenced by other hands, by people who had role-modelled ethics and ideals and values that had soaked through my skin to become an intrinsic part of me.

My heart thudded, my chest hurt, so I inhaled deeply to imbibe the rose perfume that filled the compartment. Trying to relax, telling myself all the decisions, the drama, the anguish of leaving were behind us, I pushed down into the cushions of my berth. It was then another realisation overpowered me.

I couldn't leave.

Not forever.

Not totally.

I knew for the rest of my life I'd be incomplete; that just a
breath below my consciousness I was with Uncle Hugh in that silent, serene graveyard, where together we would watch the laburnum sapling grow to maturity. Another part of me would grow old alongside Reg, under the already mature laburnums where each May we would glory in the bright, yellow blossom and each June we'd be protected from the searing heat.

Nihil enim est, ut dicunt
. There is nothing more to say.

EPILOGUE

TWENTY-ONE YEARS LATER

GOA DECEMBER 1995

I'm so engrossed in my soliloquy that I've forgotten my companion seated beside me. The noonday sun is fierce overhead and I'm grateful for the shade that I know is at least five degrees cooler.

But it's lunch time and he must leave. For the first time that morning he looks at me – really looks at me – full in the face.

“You've answered your question,” he says.

I have? What question is that
? And then I remember.

I stare at him.

His valediction smile is placid as he moves away with gentle, unhurried steps.

BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

Who do you recognise as the strongest character in the book?

Which member of the de Souza family do you like the most – or the least – and why?

What is identity? Where does a sense of identity come from?

How much do you think the Kanpur setting influences the novel? Could the same story be told in another setting?

Identify the social constraints of 1960's India. How were these different for the local Indians and Lucy's family, the ‘Black British'?

Do you think Lucy and her family made the right decision to leave their home? Should they have left sooner?

Why do you think Lucy went back to Goa twenty-one years later?

What aspects of the story resonated with you most - and why?

What question would you like to ask the author?

What were you left wondering after you turned the last page?

ENDNOTES

1
   Heinrich Hoffman 1809–1894

2
   WB Rands 1823–1882

3
   Jerome K Jerome 1859–1927