Black British

by Hebe de Souza

  In that moment the parent–child relationship altered forever. For the first time in my life I recognised that my parents’ omnipotence was limited, they were powerless within a force greater than their principles. I understood that my father couldn’t change the way his brother was, that all he could do was ignore it and thereby protect himself from an unpalatable truth.

  Unknown to us, that night Lorraine, Lily and I shifted a little up the spectrum of maturity. It was our turn to shield our parents and, as one, we rose to the occasion. Without words we tacitly agreed to refrain from discussing Uncle Claude with anyone. For Lorraine that meant Bistie Gupta, while my role was to keep my big mouth shut, however difficult that might be.

  The conversation that night, among the three sisters, about the first blot on our near-perfect lives, served to consolidate our friendship. In that moment I knew that however much we quarrelled the connection between us was strong and that forever we’d be there for each other.

  Many years later when time hadn’t delivered even a teaspoon of maturity, I was in the throes of yet another disintegrating love affair. It was then I understood the electricity in the atmosphere on that summer morning in Kanpur. Uncle Claude and Tomas Savio had stood the length of a room apart, because they couldn’t trust themselves to be any closer. The strength of feeling between them, unexpressed in word or deed, rendered them vulnerable.

  That desperate longing, the aching unsatisfied need, for a deep connection to another human being, another warm, breathing, heart-beating person, was denied them. The intense yearning to share every aspect of a life, emotional, mental, physical and everything else in between, with another person, goes much deeper than mere carnal desire. I realised then that to reduce Uncle Claude’s need to nothing but sexual gratification was to diminish the miracle, the beauty, the complexity, of all human relationships.

  I never discovered why Uncle Claude committed the cardinal sin of calling on my father while he was in the company of Tomas Savio, but I did learn about the brutal tensions caused by social taboos of the times that paled everything else into insignificance.

  CHAPTER 15

  AUNT KITTY’S EXIT

  November mornings in Kanpur are magic. The air’s like champagne. September mornings come a close second with the promise of glorious days ahead. People relax, knowing the scalding months of May and June are behind them for the year. In September the early morning air sparkles with energy, nerve endings tingle, senses come alive. Cassia Spectabilis bloom, a sure sign the weather has cooled. Their golden blossoms above the canopy of leaves create a bicolour picture. The sun shines liquid gold and casts long, soft shadows.

  September mornings saw us laugh for no apparent reason – intoxicated by the sheer joy of being alive. On such a morning Aunt Kitty died. Exhausted from the constant struggle to maintain her self-respect in a tart environment, she gave up the ghost as she had lived, with a minimum of fuss, slipping away peacefully in her sleep.

  We received the news in typical Kanpur style – by a hand-delivered message.

  Deep grief is beyond words. No language is comprehensive enough, no person sufficiently eloquent to describe the feelings that invaded our household that September morning, the intensity of which carried the potential for operatic expression. The magic had fled.

  My mother’s hands shook as she poured tea at breakfast, the clink of china as teapot bumped teacup was testimony to a grief that could not, would not, be assuaged by cathartic tears. Her every movement was slow and deliberate, as though she needed to concentrate hard to get through the motions of life; as if one tiny slip meant she’d come to a standstill forever. Frozen in time.

  When the clinking became embarrassingly loud, too loud to ignore, Lorraine silently took over. By deeds and not words did she demonstrate support for her mother.

  “Too young,” she kept repeating. “Too young to die. Far too young.”

  And another time, “Fifty-six! Too young to die.”

  My normally efficient, sensible mother became a different person. A person incapable of getting past one indelible fact. Aunt Kitty was dead.

  “Where’s Daddy?” I spoke slightly above a hush, as though speaking in my normal voice was sacrilege, that would somehow further injure the people around me.

  She looked at me as though she didn’t understand what I’d said and, more frightening for me, as though she didn’t know who I was. That look propelled me a step further into maturity. In a split second I realised that the planet didn’t spin around just me.

  It was many weeks before she was able to mention Aunt Kitty without that frozen marble look enveloping her entire frame so that it appeared that even the involuntary action of breathing was difficult.

  “Regardless of what the autopsy report says, she died of a broken heart,” my mother insisted. “She had nothing to live for. Endless years of solitary confinement is not an attractive future.”

  Without elucidation, Lorraine, Lily and I knew exactly who and what my mother was talking about. Aunt Kitty’s sons, Bennie and George, had followed in the footsteps of a myriad of our cousins and migrated abroad. Bitter experience had taught them there was no employment for them in India. Aunt Kitty had visited them in Canada the previous year and witnessed first-hand their settled lives and exciting, unrecognisable futures.

  She knew with a blinding clarity that those futures didn’t include her. Even with regular, maybe annual visits, her children’s lives would diverge from hers, take a path she didn’t understand. There was a real chance her sons would become strangers, people she would hardly recognise. Even worse, she suspected she’d become superfluous to them, a permanent outsider within their family circle, someone loved in a vague, distant way but not understood or appreciated, just someone to be included and tolerated because of blood ties.

  The prospect of lonely years ahead, living through day after empty day waiting for letters that didn’t arrive, wasn’t appealing. A silent future, pointless evenings alone in the drawing room listening to the wireless or reading novels she’d read so many times before, while her husband, the person society designated her companion, sat in the next room – and was an entire universe away, wasn’t to be contemplated. Perhaps she arrived at the inevitable conclusion: there was only one escape from the prison that had become her life.

  The bleak, empty expression in my mother’s eyes told a story beyond grief at the death of a friend. She knew that potentially she was in the same boat as Kitty. At twenty years old Lorraine had visions of an adventurous future that was not to be found in Kanpur and it wouldn’t be long before Lily followed suit. I had a couple of years of school to complete and we all knew my mind was already bursting out of the confines of my home town.

  But what could we say to console our mother? We’d been told often enough that Kanpur held no future for us, that our ambition would be stunted if we stayed, that the inevitable consequence of being who we were meant we’d have to seek a living elsewhere. At that moment there was nothing we could say, nothing we could do, to ease our mother’s anguish. A burden of guilt sat heavily on our shoulders.

  I looked at my mother to silently offer solace, to tell her I understood her fear, when a surprising impression popped into my mind: You’re feeling guilty. You’re also feeling guilty.

  Guilt and regret were compounding her grief. I knew that futile questions were revolving around her confused mind. Could she have done something more to support Aunt Kitty? Could she have used our father to intervene? Along with her sadness, she knew she’d carry this fragile load of guilt for the rest of her life.

  I knew my mother would miss Aunt Kitty, the afternoon sessions singing around the piano, comparing dress patterns, asking after Aunt Kitty’s sons and vicariously living through their adventures. She’d miss her as a friend – my mother didn’t have many in Kanpur – and most of all, she’d miss a fellow conspirator, a partner-in-crime, two friends who had married two much-cherished brothers.

  “Your father feels dreadfu
l,” she said. “Apart from the shock, he hurts for his brother. So please be good and don’t make too much noise.”

  Be good, Mother? How old do you think I am? Five?

  And then I realised that she was deliberately bluffing herself, deliberately putting the clock back to a time when the inevitable decision, the heart-breaking action that we’d all have to take, was a substantial number of years away.

  “Did you hear me, Lucy? Did you hear what I said?” She stared hard at me.

  For a few seconds I fought a mental battle until my better self prevailed and looking at her with as much empathy as I could muster, hoping she would receive the support I wanted to give, I replied meekly, “Yes, Mummy. I’ll be good. And quiet. I know Dad’s upset.”

  My father had become a grey marble effigy. “I let him down,” he muttered, more to himself than to anyone. “I let my brother down.” Not Claude but my brother. It was his choice of words that was poignant.

  “It wasn’t your fault. There’s nothing you could have done.” My mother tried to soothe him.

  “You don’t understand,” he almost shouted, finding it easier, as most people do, to alleviate some of his pain by transferring the cause to his nearest and dearest. “You don’t understand,” he repeated wearily on a long sigh, his pleading eyes begging forgiveness for a lapse in manners as he entreated her to use a magic wand and lessen his sorrow. “I’ve always been there for him. When he was seven and sent to boarding school, I was there to dull the bewilderment of separation from family. I was already in England when he was sent to college. It was easier for him to settle into that cold, miserable society because he had me. The only time we’ve been apart was during the war when he enlisted and I had to come home.”

  I wondered if my father was also carrying guilt. When it was too late, when the finality of death had removed Aunt Kitty from the humiliating effects of Uncle Claude’s poison, did both my parents regret not doing more to ease her situation when they had the chance?

  Was my father also secretly embarrassed by his cowardice? Ashamed of it? Cowardice at not confronting his brother’s public behaviour with Aunt Kitty, choosing instead to ignore it rather than chance what could become an acrimonious interaction, one that might lead to hot words that could never be retracted? Did my father avoid a situation where secrets might be revealed that he’d prefer never to acknowledge and have to act upon? Had dishonourable leanings been revealed, my father, in the interest of duty to family and society (of that time), would have felt compelled to ostracise his brother. However much it might break his heart he knew he would have recourse to no other action.

  Compounding the horror was the loathing and lack of respect he believed would be his duty to feel towards his much-loved brother. Feelings he knew he couldn’t cope with. So did my father protect himself at Aunt Kitty’s expense?

  We saw little of him during the days following her death. While it was usual for him to come down to breakfast after we were seated, his place at table now sat empty, the silence more eloquent than words.

  He had taken to rising before dawn and instead of driving to the golf course to await the sun, walked the half hour or so that took him to his brother’s house. They breakfasted together in silence, as each read his own newspaper, and then went their separate ways to prepare for work.

  “It’s absurd!” I said one morning after returning from delivering a message. “They just read their papers and don’t say a word to one another.” I had been witness to, intimidated by and excluded from that unspoken bond between brothers and was torn between bewilderment and outrage. I didn’t understand their reserve and had never been so patently ignored before.

  “Companionable silence,” said my mother. “It helps to lessen Claude’s feelings of isolation. It keeps him company without the burden of conversation on either side.” Seeing that I remained unconvinced, my mother added, “You saw how Claude was at the funeral. He’s hurting very much and missing Kitty.”

  At the Requiem Mass Uncle Claude had been a pitiable sight. Though he showed no emotion, stood poker straight and held his head high, his suffering was alive, a palpable, touchable thing. He looked as though he would crumble into a worthless bundle of rags so often seen discarded in the gutter, something not worth salvaging.

  “He’s bought his suit in a charity shop.” I was aghast before I understood that Uncle Claude had lost so much weight in the previous few days that his tailor-made suit hung on him. He looked like some of the men I’d seen in church who always wore the same shapeless, ill-fitting suit, where the sleeves hung down to their knuckles. They were poor so had no choice but to accept second-hand handouts. Aunt Kitty’s death had diminished Uncle Claude to poverty – a poverty beyond the lack of money.

  Standing beside him, my father tried to help. Apart from shaking hands as a formal sign of condolence, they didn’t touch but stood so close together their shoulders brushed one another’s. From above them in the choir stalls Lorraine, Lily and I felt the strength flow from one to the other, the elder to the younger.

  Uncle Claude wasn’t allowed to show emotion. He was brainwashed as we all were, by a former regime who condemned all shows of feeling, insisting they were a sign of weakness. The implication, never stated so yet again difficult to refute, was that we were inferior beings if we displayed tears. The internal cost of such unnatural behaviour was never considered. That strong feelings will find release one way or another – usually in destructive actions – was ignored. Uncle Claude had to maintain his stoic appearance without external aid, his face exposed for all to see.

  The women got it easier. Convention, indeed fashion, dictated they wear head and face coverings to a funeral.

  “For God’s sake! What’s that she’s got on her head?” The monstrosity that was perched on Aunt Moira’s head made me forget the solemn occasion. It was rich purple silk adorned with feathers, laces and ribbons. She was kneeling below us, next to her cousin Iris.

  “It’s her hat, you idiot.” Lorraine spoke behind her hands folded in prayer so that only Lily and I could hear her. She used a derogatory term but it was one we often bandied about and wasn’t offensive. “She must’ve got it when she was young and her hair much thicker. It keeps slipping forward cos it’s too big for her head.”

  Lily craned her neck to get a better view. “The elastic’s gone. That’s why she has to tilt her head like that. The net that’s supposed to cover her face is hanging over her left ear.”

  And then it happened.

  Unconsciously straightening her head, probably to relieve a crick in her neck, Aunt Moira’s hat started on a downward spiral, dislodging one of the feathers. Caught on a current of air from the overhead fan the feather floated towards Iris and flicked against her nose.

  Iris sneezed. Once. Twice. Thrice. More – starting with little ladylike sounds that rapidly grew in desperation, while she scrabbled around in handbag and pocket looking for a handkerchief. Aunt Moira made a wild grab for her hat but her elbow caught Iris a glancing blow beneath the jaw. Iris gasped and sneezed at the same time, staggered backwards and subsided into a seated position.

  Turning to assist her, Aunt Moira realised she was hampered by her errant hat. It took a split second for her to realise the absurdity of the situation and calmly unpinning her head gear she placed it on the floor beside her. Having paid her respects to convention, strong minded, confident person that she was, she had no intention of indulging it.

  Leaving the funeral, she got her revenge. Delicately stepping on her hat she completely disfigured it, ensuring it could never embarrass her again.

  Iris, on the other hand, wore a quiet, unassuming cloche that could never be an embarrassment anywhere. I wondered if she wished Aunt Moira had worn a cloche too!

  Perhaps Aunt Moira also wished she’d worn a cloche.

  The whole performance was over in a few seconds. In different circumstances we would have been full of wisecracks at our aunt’s and cousin’s expense. But this time each of us w
as grappling with a new sensation – being left alone to manage our own feelings. The adults around us had enough on their respective plates and didn’t have time to indulge us.

  It was only later, in the privacy of our rooms, discussing the funeral, that someone scornfully personified the hats. “One’s anti-gravity, the other antediluvian. Says something about the wearers!” We were secure in our arrogance that each of us had complied with decorum and worn a black veil in Old Spanish Lace, something that couldn’t be criticised.

  “I don’t understand,” I cried. “I don’t understand Uncle Claude. I thought he hated Aunt Kitty. He’s always so rude to her.”

  The weight of Aunt Kitty’s death inspired Lorraine to be gentle. “Don’t be silly. He loved her in his own way.”

  “But you told me he didn’t like women, didn’t like her.” My voice was a wail. I was afraid Lorraine and Lily had been pulling my leg by telling me an impossible lie.

  Lorraine must have seen something on my face as her gentle manner vanished. “Don’t be an idiot and go blabbing to Mum about this. Just leave the subject alone.” She was a mixture of angry, irritated and scared.

  It was this last emotion that made me hesitate.

  Is this something I can leverage off? I asked myself, recognising that my strong position came from Lorraine’s obvious concern that I would talk to my mother about a subject that wasn’t open for discussion. Aunt Kitty’s death hadn’t diminished our ability to manipulate one another.

  Lily, who was accustomed to our skirmishes, recognising them as simple tools that helped sharpen our wit, interjected to focus on a more interesting, more salacious subject.

  “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.”