by Sharon Maas
I could not, of course, let on how little I knew of my own grandmother and whatever grand things she had accomplished in her heyday. They assumed I knew. So I smiled and nodded and agreed about her amazingness. I played the game as well I could, while all the time I longed to ask, but why?
But then again, I reasoned, all this was only in Guyana. It's easy to make a mark in a small insignificant country. They make mountains out of molehills there. Gran would have been a big fish in a small pond. Still, I was curious to know what had given her this marvellous reputation. I’d have to ask Mum. Later.
Mum, meanwhile, had disappeared into her own little bevy of middle-aged ladies, contemporaries, apparently, from her schooldays. People mentioned her, too, to me, but more with a twinkle in their eye and an amused shake of the head, rather like parents recalling past antics of their children that were frightening when they happened but now, in retrospect, could be safely laughed at.
A twinge of compassion for Mum went through me, immediately followed by a wave of protectiveness. Poor Mum. It can’t be easy, living in the shadow of such a mother, and then having a daughter so much more successful than herself. I vowed to be nicer to her, kind and loving and more understanding in future. I’d never mention her silly novel writing. Let her do it, if it made her happy. Now that I knew about it I could maybe cushion the disappointment of her rejections, make it easier for her. Yes, I realised, that was my role in Mum’s life. I loved her to bits, and in future I’d show it more. And I’d make her even more proud of me. Mothers identify with their children. I would make up for her own lack of achievement.
All of this occurred to me while I stuffed myself with a delicious dish of ‘curry and roti’. By now I was sitting at one of several long tables, still surrounded by chattering women, all peppering me with questions. I told them what I was studying and other details of my life, and reaped their ‘ah’s’ and ‘oh’s’. I realised that as Dorothea van Dam’s granddaughter they expected great things of me; in our case, as so often, success had skipped one generation. I looked around for Mum, and saw her further down the table. She seemed happy enough, chatting with a skinny middle-aged woman. Mum looked up at that moment and caught my eye; she whispered a word to her companion who looked up too, smiled and waved at me, then blew me a kiss. I smiled back. Mum signed to me that she wanted to speak to me and that I should not run off; to come to her after the meal, which I did.
* * *
‘Inky, I’d like you to meet Trixie MacDonald. She used to be a good friend of mine, back in the day, though we went to different schools.’
Trixie and I smiled at each other again and shook hands. I noticed two perfect rows of teeth, huge, dark limpid eyes.
‘We lost sight of each other way back in – when was it, Rika, when you ran off to Brazil? 1969?’
‘’67,’ Mum corrected.
I looked at Mum.
‘You ran off to Brazil?’
I always thought it was Peru. That was the legend; that’s how I got my name. Mum and Dad on a bus to Huancayo, climbing Machu Picchu, back-packing along the Inca Trail.
Mum nodded. Trixie laughed. ‘And how! It was a case of now-you-see-her-now-you-don’t. Poof. She just disappeared. Not a word of goodbye. We didn’t even know where she’d gone until …’
‘Rika, Rika! How wonderful to see you again! Remember me?’
A rather corpulent woman, light skinned and with plainly dyed blonde hair, butted in, all smiles; she grabbed Mum in a huge hug. Mum seemed somewhat disoriented.
‘Um … yes well … Inky, this is …’ She stopped, it was plain that she either didn’t remember the lady in question, didn’t recognise her, or had forgotten her name.
‘Jen! Jennifer Goveia! From St Rose’s – though I’m now Jenny Baker. I heard you were coming so I had to be here to say hello … and this is your daughter?’
She turned, gushing, to me, and was obviously about to sweep me, too, into a generous embrace when, thank goodness, a hush descended on the hall, and we all turned to the front. Somebody was tapping a fork to a glass. The buzz of conversation dwindled into silence. Myrtle Patterson stood at the edge of the crowd on a podium. Most people sat down so we could all see her.
‘Ladies,’ she said, ‘we have the great pleasure and honour of having among us today a legend in her own time. Let’s give another round of applause to the unforgettable … Dorothea Quint!’
Applause, cheers, knives drumming on tables.
Myrtle launched into a never-ending homily, a homage to Gran, and after Myrtle a woman called a Darleen spoke and then a Kathleen and then a Maureen, grey-haired women, creaking up to the podium with the help of walking sticks and daughters’ arms. Each one had stories to tell of my grandmother. Each delivered anecdotes and accolades, honeyed words in honour of my dragon of a grandmother, interspersed by outbreaks of chuckling or clapping or open laughter. Sometimes, a single keyword was enough to propel the audience into a roar of laughter. There were groans and there were sighs, and none of it I understood. I was an outsider in a secret society.
Finally, Gran herself rolled up to the podium. A chair was pushed up for her to sit on; and then she gave her own little speech. She was unrecognisable. Gracious and humble, she thanked them for their kind words and pronounced that the praise was undeserved.
Another crash of applause brought the day to an end.
Through it all, not one person had mentioned the Quint.
* * *
As for Mum: she had obviously been well-loved, if not as triumphantly victorious as Gran. And she needed to be well-loved again. Deep inside she must be lonely, and drastically lacking in self-esteem. I could help her. I could encourage her and strengthen her. I positively soaked in all these kind and loving thoughts, lolling around in them like in a warm bubbly bath. It made me feel so good.
We were on the way home when her mobile rang. In typical Mum fashion she answered it. While driving.
* * *
In my upside-down relationship with Mum, she was the child most often and I the parent. I’d strictly forbidden her from answering the phone while driving. But Mum considered herself a multi-tasker and repeatedly disobeyed; she thought nothing of holding the phone to her ear with one hand and the steering wheel with the other. She’d been doing it for years.
When the law confirmed my authority and made it illegal I’d been jubilant with smug, ‘I told you so’s’.
Since then, she’d been slightly more compliant. She never got used to using the hands-free – even though she, of all people, should know about the risk of electro smog – but she did allow me to answer the phone for her when we were in the car together. Usually she kept her phone in her handbag, either on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, or on the back seat.
Today it lay in the console under the handbrake, between herself and Gran. When the happy little ringtone sounded we reached for it at the same time – me from the back seat, she from the driver’s seat. Her hand got there first; I was too far away, and restrained by the belt.
‘Mum, let me,’ I said, holding out my hand for it.
She ignored me. She flipped it open with one hand and put it to her ear.
‘Hello?’
‘Mum, I’ll take it. Give it here!’ I insisted. I unlocked my belt and slid to the edge of the back seat so as to be flush against the driver’s seat. With my left hand I grasped her wrist and tried to wrest the phone from her fingers. She gently pulled it away by leaning to the right, her ear glued to the handset. She listened for a few seconds, then said,
‘Yes, that’s me … listen, I’m on the road right now, could you call back in …’
‘MUM! WATCH OUT!’
Too late. Even as the words left my lips the car slammed into the vehicle in front and the world exploded in the deafening clank of metal crunching against metal, a grating clatter that went on forever. Make it stop, I cried into myself, make it stop, make it stop. The impact tossed me against the back seat like a lifeless rag
doll and then it did stop, and the silence was more deafening than the noise that went before; the world had come to an end. My body felt broken into bits. I groaned and turned slightly to free a trapped arm. The fact that I could move, that I felt pain, reminded me that I was alive. Vaguely I registered a yelling voice as Mum’s. Then I passed out.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the roadside on a woollen blanket, covered with another blanket. A man in a green fluorescent jacket was bent over me. It was dark; lights flashing above me, somewhere a siren whining. People everywhere, milling around, aimlessly, it seemed to me; shrill voices. And pain. My body a single bundle of pain.
‘How are you?’ the paramedic asked. I ignored him as memory came rushing in.
‘Mum? Mum!’ I cried. I moved my legs, and all was pain. I didn’t care. I struggled to sit up. The paramedic put out a restraining hand.
‘Try to keep still, Miss. Your Mum’s all right. She’s fine.’
‘Where is she? I have to get to her. And … and Gran. Where’s Gran?’
‘Your Granny’s being looked after by the ambulance crew,’ said the paramedic. ‘She’s in good hands. Don’t worry, just keep quiet.’ But I had no intention of keeping quiet. Something in his voice told me that something was terribly, awfully wrong. Immediately my pain vanished. I scrambled into a sitting position, and attempted to rise. My knee buckled with an excruciating pain; I couldn’t help crying out, yet finished the action. The moment I was on my feet I limped off. There were people everywhere; onlookers behind a police barrier, policemen and women striding around in fluorescent jackets with notepads and walkie-talkies in their hands, and, outside a looming ambulance, a cluster of paramedics. That’s where I headed.
Mum was standing outside the ambulance, talking to one of the paramedics.
‘Mum!’ I cried and folded her into my arms. She was as stiff as a statue, her arms refusing to return the embrace.
‘Inky! Oh Inky! Thank God you’re all right! I … I had to leave you lying there because, because …’
I broke in.
‘Where’s Gran? How is she?’
Mum’s face crunched up. She raised a hand and pointed to the interior of the ambulance. I could see nothing beyond the backs of two paramedics.
‘In there. They’re still trying to save her. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Her head … her head crashed against the windscreen. I … I tried to help her, but, but …’
She held up her hands; they were both covered in blood. Her sleeves were bloody right up to the elbow, and beyond. Mum’s face filled with agony, and tears spilled from her eyes.
‘Inky … she might not make it! And it’s all my fault!’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
RIKA: THE SIXTIES
Rajan came with his bicycle, and she wheeled hers out to meet him. They rode in silence to the Astor, and he helped her park hers in the crowded stand and lock it.
‘I’ve got tickets for the balcony,’ he said, smiling at her, and led the way up the stairs at the front of the building. Rika felt guilty; Rajan was saving up for England; he didn’t earn much. Could he really afford this? And then she felt grateful. Obviously he thought he could; obviously, he thought her worth the expense; and a swelling of contentment made her take a deep, audible breath.
‘You OK?’ asked Rajan, as he gestured for her to sidle down the row of threadbare velvet seats.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, and she was. She had never been finer. This was just so – right. No fizz, no bubbles, just a deep sense of the perfection of the moment.
The film began and very soon Rika was swept up in the magic of Eliza Doolittle and her struggle to become a ‘lie-dy’; wasn’t she, Rika, just like Eliza, in a way? Looking at life from the sidelines, lost in a sense of unworthiness, deeply aware of being beneath value? But no longer. Somehow, all that had changed, practically overnight.
When Freddy sang ‘On the Street Where you Live’ Rajan reached over and took her hand, and held it firmly all the way through to the end, slowly stroking the back of it with his thumb. And it was just the way it was when her hands were in the earth; from those clasped hands came a solid sense of unity, of being an entity, strong and real and secure. Tears gathered in her eyes and she turned to look at him, and he must have felt her movement for he turned too and they gazed at each other in the dark. All she could see of him was the faint outline of his head and his eyes, bright and shining and overflowing with tenderness. Rajan changed hands so that now his right hand held hers; his left arm he stretched out behind her and laid on her shoulder. She leaned in towards him and laid her head on his shoulder and all was well with the world. Rika let out a sigh of deep contentment. At last, she was at home. All else would follow on from this moment.
‘How did you like the film?’ Rajan asked, as they unlocked their bicycles.
‘Wonderful! Magical!’ said Rika. ‘But I didn’t like the end. She should have married Freddy.’
‘Freddy was the nice one … they say the nice ones always get left behind. That women like bad men.’
‘Stupid women, maybe. That Henry Higgins isn’t going to change. Once a selfish bastard, always a selfish bastard. She’ll live to regret that choice. She should have married Freddy.’
* * *
They cycled home in silence and Rajan took her in his arms outside her gate.
‘It was a wonderful night,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming with me.’ He held her close and kissed her forehead. She shuddered in contentment.
‘Oh Rajan,’ she sighed, because she had no words.
Weightless with bliss, she floated up the stairs and in through the front door. And into bedlam. Her mother was waiting for her; and so, it seemed, was the whole family – Granny and Daddy and Uncle Matt and Marion, eyes wide open in trepidation, and Norbert and Neville, enjoying the show.
Her mother, in vintage Ol’ Meanie style, flew at her the moment she walked in the door, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her into the middle of the gallery.
‘Who you think you gallivanting around with, eh? Who? Who?’ she screamed.
‘I – I just went to the pictures, with Rajan. He lives at Granma’s!’
‘The servant’s son? The gardener? Basmati’s son?’
‘Mummy, I …’
Rika couldn’t believe her ears. Why was Mummy so upset? Mummy did not look down on the poor. Mummy’s whole fight, her whole philosophy, her whole raison d’être, was that the underclass should have the same opportunities, the same rights, as the middle class in which they themselves were so solidly placed. Equality was Mummy’s watchword. Was it all hot air? Did equality come to a stop when it touched her own family?
‘Mummy, we’re friends! We’ve been good friends for years, and …’
‘… and what in the name of all that’s wrong with the world is this!’
Mum dumped a cardboard box at Rika’s feet. Rika gasped, and sank to her knees. There in the box was her whole life, the secret life she’d hidden beneath the floorboards of the Cupola. Pale blue exercise books, some of them swollen from moisture and age, some still new and slim, all of them filled from front to back with Rika’s spidery, almost illegible writing. Her whole life was in those books. Her many attempted and later abandoned novels.
But worst of all: her diary. The diary that sometimes had been the only friend she’d had through the years. She emptied her soul into that diary. It was completely, utterly secret. Not even Rajan had ever so much as glanced at a page. But Rajan was in there. In the newest editions over the past year, every encounter with Rajan, every discussion on matters of the soul, and the meaning of it all, and God, she had captured in words and written into her diary. The confessions she made to herself alone. Most of all, her newfound discovery that Rajan was the love of her life, added only this morning. Heat rushed to her cheeks as she remembered what she’d last written, just last night:
‘He is the other half of my soul. I feel myself swept up as if on wings of rapture, and he is the
re with me, at my side; our souls are joined in a bliss sublime, a bliss that passes all understanding.’
‘Who encouraged this? Ma, did you know about this?’
Mum turned to Granny with such venom Rika trembled. Granny, all this time, had been trying to get a word in, trying to intervene, but Mum’s wrath was like a wild writhing dragon, filling the room; all the others, Uncle Matt and the rest, stood around wringing their hands or furrowing their brows or enjoying the show according to their disposition. But Mum was beside herself with hysterics.
‘Mum, I …’ but Mum wasn’t listening.
‘Never again, you hear me, never again! You never go near that boy again! Never, never, never! I gave you far too much freedom; far too much! That boy! Never! Never! Never!’
‘I love him, Mummy, I do! Please!’ Rika, confused and despairing, began to blubber, to plead, to beg.
‘Dorothea, he’s a good boy. He’s a good steady student, works hard, and …’
That was Granny. At the same time, Uncle Matt was speaking:
‘I met him. A very fine young man, Dorothea. Rika’s in good hands and …’
But Mum wasn’t listening. She had worked herself into a blind rage by now: blind and deaf and spitting expletives. Rika had never, in all her life, seen her like this. It was as if a volcano that had lain dormant for centuries suddenly erupted, red hot lava spitting and pouring from its crater. Such was Mum’s wrath. Rika’s knees gave way and she sank to the floor in a hopeless helpless heap, sobbing Rajan’s name. Still Mum raged on.
‘Ruined my life! Ruined everything! Destroyed everything! Never again! And you!’ she swung around and pointed an accusing finger at Granny. ‘You! You knew! You knew everything and still you installed them in that house! You put them there! I could overlook that but now we have this!’
‘Dorothea! Snap out of it! Be sensible! You’re talking nonsense! Basmati was innocent and Rajan was little more than a baby!’