Black British

by Hebe de Souza

  Raising money by selling her jewellery and borrowing from anyone she could – I couldn’t afford pride – she dotted her vast compound with a few small cottages hidden among trees so her privacy remained intact. Her tenants loved her but knew she wasn’t available to be bullied, as were so many women of those times.

  She instructed her mali to grow edible plants so her garden flaunted a treasure trove of fruit trees that grew in her fowl run and thrived on the natural fertiliser produced by the hens. The abundant produce was an added source of income.

  Gradually Aunt Betty awoke to the freedoms brought by early widowhood. At first slowly and then in leaps and bounds, her independence and confidence grew. Her cottages and garden produce were followed by jams and pickles that cost nothing to make since the ingredients were home grown and the infrastructure was her household kitchens and domestic staff. Her profit margin was close to a hundred per cent.

  The realisation grew of how limiting her married life had been, of how much she enjoyed her new entrepreneurial experiences and the price she had to pay for it. Aunt Betty’s manner was a mixture of smug complacency and sporadic humility. When we admired her enterprise and wondered at her tenacity (You are smart, Aunt Betty. A woman ahead of her times!) she was abrupt, reminding us of her strong family support. When we mentioned that support she reared up to her full height of five-foot-nothing and claimed, in royal tones emphasising the pronoun, “WE had the strength to carry on, to cope with hard times. A lesser woman would have crumbled.” Glaring at us, she dared us to contradict.

  We didn’t – not to her face.

  In rare moments of introspection she acknowledged that had her circumstances remained unchanged, she would never have known any better, would have thought herself fulfilled as wife and mother. She also acknowledged that an element of luck had made her success comparatively easy. “I was left with the house and compound. Mrs Hortense was destitute and had to resort to being a paid companion to her obnoxious aunt. In the old days, widowhood mostly brought penury. Women were precluded from both inheriting money as well as earning it. They were completely dependent on the generosity of a male relative. So women had to look after their husbands – whether they wanted to or not – because indirectly they were looking after themselves.”

  “Hudt!” Scorn oozed from every pore as we listened. Surrounded as we were by strong-minded women like our mother and aunts, we were disinclined to attach undue respect to the male of the species.

  By the time I was born Aunt Betty had outlived all the women of her generation of our extended family and become a force to be reckoned with. She knew it. Everyone knew it. Every man, woman and child knew it.

  Except for Lorraine, Lily and I. As a single unit, we knew we were a match for her.

  Aunt Betty appeared to be fond of my father. Certainly she admired his professional abilities and interacted with him with a mixture of respect, friendship and general bonhomie. It was her relationship with my mother that was truly interesting.

  “You look pretty,” she said to Lorraine at a family party that she loved to host. Turning to my mother she continued, “She’s a real beauty!” At eighteen Lorraine was statuesque with a smile that put the sun to shame and enviable hair that gleamed as it curled around her shoulders.

  Giving my mother a few seconds to bask in maternal pride she added, “She’s the image of my sister.” To Lorraine: “You look just like your grandmother. You’re lucky to have inherited her genes.”

  Since it was apparent from a mile off that all three of us were our mother’s daughters, this was clearly absurd. But our grandmother had died when Lorraine was a tiny tot so none of us was in a position to argue.

  My mother kept a straight face but the habitual smile in her eyes was replaced with irritation and resignation as she waited for the next veiled barb to arrive.

  And it did.

  Unlike Lorraine who brought a touch of maturity to her reactions, Lily was inclined to a defiant response. Without fully understanding the subtleties of the situation, she was determined to defend our mother. Positioning herself so that she couldn’t see our mother’s telegraphic eyebrows, she marshalled her forces and waited.

  Looking at her dress, Aunt Betty offered, “That’s a lovely dress…but expensive. You’re growing up to cost your daddy a lot of money. Poor Daddy!” She laughed that light, tinkling laugh that invited us to share her joke.

  Lily had finished school the previous December so had the time to indulge her passion for sewing. Her response was immediate, enunciated clearly so that Aunt Moira and others had no option but to hear. “Aunt Tilly gave me this material and Mummy helped me make it. Haven’t I been clever?”

  She held herself erect to show off her handiwork and graciously receive the compliments she had forced. In the background Aunt Betty’s acid, genteel tone was clear: “Oh yes. Your mother’s had plenty of practice at being frugal.” Somehow she made it sound disparaging, not praiseworthy.

  But we knew it wasn’t a matter of thrift or economics but one of values. The value of respect: respect for ourselves, for others, for material things. It was yet another principle that had never been stated but had sunk into our psyche when we were still in the womb.

  Lily’s explanation was not entirely true. The accurate version was that Aunt Tilly, my mother’s youngest sister, had given Lily the dress but the style had been considered too sophisticated for a young girl. My enterprising sister had painstakingly unpicked the stitching, washed and ironed the material, and refashioned it into something more appropriate for a sixteen-year-old.

  None of us wanted to admit the whole truth to Aunt Betty, and we all knew why.

  While cleaning the meava the year before, a break in the games and singing had allowed me to ask as artlessly as I could, “Do you like Aunt Betty, Mummy?”

  Her reply was subtle, clever enough to prevent me from realising she hadn’t answered my question. “She’s great fun, has tremendous energy. She’s led an interesting life.”

  I waited for a moment to give greater emphasis to my words. “You know she doesn’t like us,” I ventured confidingly, feeling smart, as though announcing something no one else knew.

  My mother looked at me speculatively. It was obvious she was thinking: What’s this child talking about now? Where’s this conversation going? But before she could speak, Lorraine butted in with: “No-o-o! It’s you she doesn’t like. No one likes you – no one in their right minds, that is.”

  Lily added her bit and the two of them entered into banter at my expense. Soon it stopped being about me and became a competition, with each of them trying to outdo the other. I waited. I had my own agenda and wasn’t going to be high-jacked. I knew if I remained disengaged the exchange would die a natural death.

  It did, leaving my mother her chance to ask the question that was on the tip of her tongue. “Why do you think that? What makes you say she doesn’t like us?”

  I hesitated, lost for words. I couldn’t explain why I sensed this antipathy towards my mother. It was something on which I couldn’t quite put my finger. “Oh, I don’t know…the things she says like…”

  Allowing enough silence to fill the air so she was sure of our full attention, my mother explained. “Look,” she said, “all your father’s female relations behave the same way towards me. His mother was no different. They like to remind me of my humble origins. They want me to know that they know my father was not as wealthy as they are. That’s all. Nothing else.”

  When none of us commented she added with irritation not bitterness: “So I let them. If it keeps them happy I let them remind me. But that’s all it is. Nothing more. Nothing less.” She shrugged her shoulders. She was indifferent to their intent.

  “But don’t you find it hard?”

  “Look,” she said again, exasperated at our slow uptake. “My parents had seven children. It takes money to rear seven children so there were no superfluous funds. I would’ve liked piano lessons but there wasn’t the money. I’d lik
ed to have finished school but they couldn’t afford the exam fees. So I learnt shorthand and went to work. So did Elsie and Tilly. We were lucky to get secretarial jobs and didn’t have to work in a factory as many girls did during the War. My brothers went into the Services like lots of other young men.”

  Giving us a few moments to digest her words she continued: “We were better off than many but not as well off as a few. We lived in big houses but not as big as this,” nodding towards our dear old home. “The real difference was that my father worked for the Telegraphs and the company supplied accommodation. I had six dresses when I married your father. I had never seen silk stockings. But many people were in the same boat so I had lots of friends and plenty of fun. I led teams of Girl Guides. I played hockey. I had a wonderful life. I don’t feel deprived. It’s other people who want to believe that I was!”

  We had always known about our mother’s origins and weren’t concerned so why was it an issue for our aunts?

  “Aunt Betty, Moira, Iris – they’re all the same. Actually, it’s Moira who makes the bullets and gets her aunt and cousin to fire them. But – and this is a big ‘but’ – they’re your father’s family and therefore your family too. If they want to have digs at me, I let them. I could retaliate but I’m damned if I’ll lower my standards. I remain the outsider. I cope.”

  Then seeing the bewilderment in our faces she went further. “It was hard at first. As a young bride I was intimidated and humiliated.” She paused, looking into the distance and we knew her focus was on the lost years.

  “I was already overwhelmed by this pile of bricks.” She made a disparaging movement of her head to indicate the manor house behind her. “Who wouldn’t be? And they did nothing to help. My confidence took a real battering so I tried harder and harder to run an efficient home. I was trying to prove myself worthy of your father. Of course the harder I tried, the more they criticised. Withholding approval is an effective way of controlling someone.”

  Lorraine, Lily and I looked at each other. It made sense to our maturing minds. The best way to control someone is to constantly criticise them, constantly put them down and make them feel bad about themselves, make them feel inferior. The key word here is constantly; occasional jibes run the risk of minimal impact.

  The more subtle the criticism the better. It’s unanswerable. It attacks the way a person feels. It sits in the subconscious and forms part of an overhanging black cloud, one that obliterates light and impedes coherent thought; it hinders positive action; it maintains the status quo. People in powerful positions have been using this tactic for centuries. It preserves their power.

  “I was lonely,” our mother continued. “I had no friends. Your father was away at the mill all day.”

  In my mind’s eye I saw a young girl a few years older than I, dressed in the fashions of the early fifties, those belted frocks with a shaped skirt that fell to just below the knee. She wandered aimlessly through room after room of our house, rooms that I recognised well – oh-so well – but I knew were unfamiliar to her; rooms that were filled to overflowing with other people’s histories, other people’s memories.

  I saw her lift her head as though listening for something, but all she heard was the echo of emptiness, the resonant sound of silence. I heard her sing a few lines from a popular song and knew she was trying out her voice. She hadn’t spoken to anyone all day and wondered if disuse would lose her the gift of speech altogether.

  “Who is that girl?” I asked myself, terrified of the answer. She felt like an older version of myself.

  She was my mother.

  “The other way to diminish someone is to ignore them,” my mother went on. “To ignore someone while they’re in the same room as you makes them feel invisible, as though they no longer exist. Soon they’ll believe they’re not worth existing.” Long-forgotten memories were obviously flooding back.

  “But by then I had a little ally, and two years later another and then, yet another. You were such funny children that I learnt to laugh again. And truly, what more can a woman want?” Her expression was bathed in love, her eyes filled with pictures that had nothing to do with the present.

  We had always known our mother didn’t like living in Kanpur. She missed the opportunities and entertainment available in a big city. She was lonely without her sisters and friends and loneliness will often exacerbate despondency into desperation.

  We also knew our mother had been ill before Lorraine was born. We had seen the black-and-white photographs where she had deep hollows under her eyes and her face was thin, all angles and shadows. There had always been something mysterious about that illness, but with the selfishness of youth where we remained convinced that the universe revolved solely for our benefit, we had never spared the matter an idle thought.

  We had never before understood how hard it had been for my mother during her early years in Kanpur. She was labelled neurotic, nervous, highly strung, because it’s easier to blame the victim than look unpalatable truths in the eye and make necessary changes.

  “They leave Kitty alone because she’s a teacher,” she continued. “If I’d had an education or money they’d respect me.” But we knew they left Aunt Kitty alone because Uncle Claude did their dirty work for them. Looking at our mother that winter’s day, it was difficult to believe what she had been through. She was all matter-of-fact common sense, brisk efficiency.

  “Let’s play a game,” she suggested to distract us and lighten the mood. “Who can tell me how many Shirley’s we know?” Our games had no winners or losers but were designed to make us think, not to induce competition that is so often rife among siblings the world over. There is no point, often no need, to encourage sibling rivalry.

  But Lorraine hadn’t finished. “Why doesn’t Dad say something? Why don’t you ask him to do something.”

  Her eyes flashed with indignation, her tone was tart as she leapt in to reply. “No Thank You! I don’t need anyone to fight my battles.” Her response made us laugh inwardly as the source of our tough spirit was evident. “Besides,” she added, “the malice is directed at me so I feel it. It’s not directed at your father so he doesn’t notice.”

  She paused to reflect so that her choice of words would clearly illustrate her point. “If I talked to your father he either wouldn’t understand, or would feel he had to take up cudgels on my behalf. Either way there’d be friction. It’s not worth it. Instead I prepare myself. They have their dig at me. I ignore them and it all blows over.”

  Giving a weary sigh of resignation that she had to continue to discuss a subject she had put behind her a long time before, she continued, “It’s much easier now. It was worse when they’d gang up on me. At least that’s stopped.”

  After a moment she went on. “It’s not only your aunts. People the world over behave like this. Sooner or later it will happen to you when you venture out into the world. The point is to be resilient and not let it trouble you. Think it through and choose your reaction.” Leaning towards us she emphasised, “What a person says, what a person does, is a reflection of that person – not of you.”

  What she didn’t say but left us to work out for ourselves was why strong-minded women who had attitudes and philosophies way ahead of their times, who had made their mark on their own society and were now securely placed, still needed that boost to their self-esteem that comes from bully behaviour. Neither did she tell us how hard it is to cope. However much a person rationalises insults and chooses a reaction, it never gets easier to manage the hostile, subtle, underhand malevolence.

  I realised later, when maturity and life experience were on my side, that my mother took a many-pronged approach. Minimising contact to reduce the injections of poison, she also developed selective hearing. It wasn’t a case of in-one-ear-out-the-other, but a matter of hitting her eardrum and refracting off. She paid herself the ultimate compliment of mentally removing herself which gave her the power of absence.

  Following this conversation with our mother,
my sisters and I reacted to our aunts in various ways, depending on age and personality. Lorraine appeared bored; probably was bored. The monotony was boring, originality would have been a pleasant change.

  Lily actively defended our mother with clever answers and I made myself scarce. I couldn’t be trusted to keep my mouth shut. I’d been known to say out loud, “Tuam cognoscere loco et erit gratus, woman,” which translates into Know thy place and be grateful, and effect a painfully obvious wink at my mother.

  “Why can’t you cope?” she asked in exasperation, refusing to see my point of view, that it was unfair and wrong for grownups to hide behind their adult, supposedly mature status while they indulged in behaviour I wasn’t allowed. “Your sisters cope. I do. So why not you? Besides, it’s about me so why let it upset you?”

  I gave her an impatient look that said don’t try and con me and with maturity well beyond my fourteen years, something I usually kept hidden from everyone, even myself, I replied: “If it’s about you, Mother, it’s about me. I hate to state the obvious,” and here I grinned with the wickedest look I could muster, “but I am your daughter. You can’t disown me. It’s not believable!”

  I felt smug. I was still at the age when I believed arguments were about winning and losing, about the dominance of one person’s opinion over another’s and therefore the dominance of one person over another. My flash of maturity had indeed been brief.

  My mother continued to ignore the rights and wrongs of the situation and with her usual perspicacity focused on the crux of the matter. “You still need to show good manners. Just present yourself to your aunts, smile when you shake hands and bite your tongue. Then you can enjoy the party like everyone else.”

  We all enjoyed Aunt Betty’s parties. She had a vast supply of intriguing party games that induced ridiculous adult antics. It appeared to be an opportunity for the grownups to step out of their stiff, contained lives and caper around like skittish teenagers. It was as though they had to fit a whole year’s worth of craziness into a few, short, acceptable moments.