To be a child of British India in the early 1930s was a hybrid existence. My father was in the Indian Civil Service, posted to Barana to run the Port and River Department. His terms of duty ran for four years, when he would disappear out of our lives completely, to return for six months’ leave that passed like a perpetual holiday.
We were typical of thousands of families in which the burden of rearing the family and running the home in England inevitably fell upon the wife, whose life was constantly bedevilled by the agonising decision of whether she should stay with her children or accompany their father out east. If she did the former, then any sort of married life went by the board. If the latter, then arrangements for the children’s welfare had to be made: boarding schools found, and kindly relatives or friends approached and invited to care for the children during the holidays. Whichever she did there were always, inevitably, heart-breaking goodbyes. There was no air service to India then. The days of Imperial Airways were to come later, and the P. & O. boats, sailing from London, took three weeks to complete their journey. It was indeed a very complete separation.
My own mother went twice to India. Once before either of us was born, and once again when we were still so small we scarcely noticed her going.
It was on her first trip, as a young and lively bride, that she met Lady Tolliver. The friendship which sprang up between them was an unusual one, for Lady Tolliver was a good generation older than my mother, and the Governor’s lady to boot, while my mother was simply the new wife of a young official.
But Lady Tolliver was both unpretentious and friendly. She found my mother refreshing and natural. To their mutual satisfaction and everybody else’s surprise, their deck chairs were placed side by side on the boat deck, and there they sat in the pleasant sunshine, with their needlework and their lively conversation to keep them amused as the great liner slid through the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal, and into the blue Indian Ocean beyond.
In England, the Tollivers lived in Cornwall, and it was because of this that my mother, on her return home from India, heavily pregnant and in need of some sort of a base, rented a little house nearby. It was a very modest house, with a tiny garden, for she could afford nothing more; and there my sister and I were born, and there, in certain austerity but total contentment, we were brought up, and there we stayed until the war came and tore us all apart forever.
It was, looking back, a very uneventful life we led, punctuated by school and holidays; by the letters that we wrote to and received from my father; by Christmas, when packages came, smelling spicy and wrapped in newspaper printed, amazingly, in Indian characters. Every three or four years came the long bright excitement of my father’s home leave. And every so often the Tollivers abandoned their Indian palace and their many servants, their garden parties and soirées, and came home too, to see their friends and open their house and live like ordinary mortals.
Daisy was their eldest daughter, unmarried and very musical. She used to play the violin at musical evenings and accompany, on the piano, any person who felt impelled to sing. Then there was Mary, married to a soldier and stationed in Quetta, and then Angus.
Angus was the family’s darling, and everybody else’s darling as well. Handsome, fair-haired, blue-eyed, he was in his last year at Oxford. He drove about at a great pace in an open Triumph with great polished headlamps, and he played dashing tennis looking like a matinée idol in his white flannels and surf-white shirt.
My sister Jassy, who was two years older than I, was madly in love with him, but she was only ten at the time, and Angus was never without some pretty girl at his side. But I could see why she was in love with him, because when we did manage to catch him in an uninvolved moment, he was always willing to play French cricket with us, or help to build huge sand-castles on the beach, with deep moats which the flood tide would fill while we splashed and screamed and dug like mad, trying, Canute-like, to shore up the embankments and keep the water out.
Angus finally left Oxford and, inevitably, accompanied his parents back to India. Not, however, as a servant of the state, but working for Ironsides, the huge shipping company which had taken over when the East India Company packed up. This meant that he did not live at Government House with his parents, but had his own establishment in the town, which he shared with a couple of other young men of similar age. A chummery, it was called.
It is hard to remember when the rumours started filtering through. Impossible to remember how Jassy and I caught on to the fact that all was not well. My mother had a letter from my father. She read it at breakfast; her mouth closed in a secret way I knew well. She folded the letter and put it away. For the rest of the meal, she was silent. A feeling of doom sank into my stomach and stayed with me for the rest of the day.
Then Mrs. Dobson came for tea with my mother. Mrs. Dobson was another Indian grass widow, who stayed in England not for her children’s sake, but because she was delicate and could not stand the fierce climate of the East. I was playing in the garden and walked in on them unexpectedly to catch the tail-end of their conversation.
“But how could he have met her?”
“You never know. He always had an eye for a pretty girl.”
“But he could have had anybody. How could he be so stupid. Why jeopardise all his chances…?”
My mother caught sight of me. She made a swift movement with her hand, and Mrs. Dobson broke off, turned, and quickly smiled as though pleased to see me. “Well, if it isn’t Laura. Aren’t you getting a tall girl?” And I was allowed to have tea with them, and eat all the cucumber sandwiches, as if, by doing this, I would forget anything I might have overheard.
It was Doris, our maid, who finally spilled the beans. Doris’s boyfriend was Arthur Penfold, who looked after the Tollivers’ garden. On Doris’s day off, Arthur would call for her on his motor bicycle, and away they would go to the bright lights of Penzance, Doris with her arms around Arthur’s waist, and her skirts blowing back from her long, shapely, artificial-silk legs.
Sometimes in the evenings, if I wanted my hair washed, or felt in need of sympathy, Doris would come upstairs and help me with my bath.
She was kneeling on the bathmat, scrubbing the day’s dirt off my knees. The damp air was filled with the smell of Pears’ soap. Doris said, “Angus Tolliver’s going to be married.”
I felt a momentary pang of pity for Jassy. She had planned on marrying him herself if only he’d wait long enough for her to grow up.
I said, “How do you know?”
“Arthur told me.”
“How does he know?”
“His mother had a letter from Agnes.” Agnes was Lady Tolliver’s personal maid, a boot-faced woman who travelled resignedly to and from India and suffered agonies of prickly heat, simply because she could not abide the thought of some black woman ironing Lady Tolliver’s underclothes. “There’s some turvy going on out there, by all accounts.”
“Why?”
“They don’t want Mr. Angus to get married.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s an Indian. That’s why. Mr. Angus is going to marry an Indian.”
“An Indian!”
“Well, half Indian.”
That was worse. Anglo-Indian. Chi-chi. I hated the nickname, because I hated the way people used it. But still, I was horror-struck. I had never been to India, but over the years I had absorbed, like a sponge, from my parents and the grown-ups who were their friends, their traditions, their slang, and most of their prejudices. I knew about India. I knew about the hot weather and the rains. I knew about going upcountry. I knew about Durbars, and ceremonial elephants, and sunshine sparkling on great, proud parades. I knew the butler was called the bearer, the gardener the mali, the groom the syce. I knew burra was big and chota was small. If my sister wanted to madden me, she called me Missy Baba.
And I knew about Anglo-Indians. Anglo-Indians were neither one thing nor the other. They worked in offices and ran the railways. They wore topis and spoke in Welsh accents a
nd (unmentionable) they did not use paper when they went to the lavatory.
And Angus Tolliver was going to marry one of them.
I could not speak about it. Angus, the pride of the Tollivers, the only son of the Governor, to marry an Anglo-Indian. Their shame was my shame, because even at eight years old, I knew that if he did this thing, he would cut himself off from everything he had ever known. He would have to step down and out of our lives. He would be lost forever.
I carried my misery around with me for three days, until my mother, unable to stand my gloom for another moment, asked me what was the matter. Painfully, not looking into her face, I told her.
“How did you know?” my mother asked.
“Doris told me. Arthur Penfold told her. His mother had a letter from Agnes.” I made myself look up at my mother and discovered that she was not looking at me. She was trying to arrange some flowers in a bowl, but her usually neat fingers were clumsy. “Is it true?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
My last hope died. I swallowed. “Is she … Anglo-Indian?”
“No. Her mother was Indian and her father French. She’s called Amita Chabrol.”
“Will it be very terrible if he marries her?”
“No. It won’t be terrible. But it’s wrong.”
“Why is it so wrong?” I knew about the chi-chi accent, the topis, the social stigma. But this was Angus. “Why is it wrong?”
My mother shook her head, almost as if she were trying to keep from crying out, or slapping me, or bursting into tears.
“It just is. Races shouldn’t mix. It’s … it’s not fair to the children.”
“You mean it’s not fair to have babies that are half one thing and half the other?”
“No, it’s not.”
“But, why?”
“Because life is hard for them.”
“Why is life hard for them?”
“Oh, Laura. Because it is. Because people look down on them. People are cruel to them.”
“But only horrid people.” I longed for her to give me some reassurance that she would not be cruel to a little Anglo-Indian child. She loved children, and babies in particular. “You wouldn’t be unkind,” I pleaded.
In the middle of stripping a rose of its leaves, she was still. Her eyes closed tightly as though she were trying to hide something away. I think at that moment her natural instincts were begging her to take my side, but she had lived with the old prejudices for too long, and the rigid cords of convention were too tightly bound for her to be able to break loose. I waited for her to defend herself, but when she opened her eyes again, and continued with her task, she only said, “It’s wrong. That’s all I can tell you. And it’s specially wrong when Angus’s father is the Governor of the province.”
“But what will the Tollivers do?”
“What can they do?”
They could do nothing. Angus and his bride were married quietly in a small, insignificant church in the least fashionable part of Barana. The Tolliver parents were not present. They went for their honeymoon to a hill station in Kashmir. When they returned, Angus resigned from Ironsides and after some casting about, found himself a modest job in a business owned by a hardworking Tamil. He and Amita moved into a little house in a district far removed from the British residencies. The long exile into the wilderness had begun.
* * *
Three years later, in 1938, they came home. By now the Tollivers had retired and taken up permanent residence in their house in Cornwall. They were older, they had lost some of their glitter. Sir Henry passed his days writing his memoirs and weeding the flowerbeds. Lady Tolliver did the shopping with a little basket and played Mah Jong in the afternoons. Daisy Tolliver immersed herself in good works and led the local orchestra with her violin.
Doris and Arthur Penfold got married, and Jassy and I were bridesmaids, dressed in white organdie with blue ribbon sashes. It was at this wedding that Lady Tolliver told us about Angus and Amita.
“He’s bringing her back to Europe for a little visit. They’re going to stay with her grandparents in Lyons and then come and visit us for a few days.” Her face, now grown so wrinkled, bunched up with pleasure at the very prospect, and I thought how wonderful for her to be able to show her happiness, without fear of offending somebody or letting her husband down. She must be, I decided, thankful to be an ordinary person again, and free of all the social restrictions of her old, grand life.
“I know he’ll want to see you and Jassy. He used to be so fond of you both. I’ll speak to your mother and see if we can arrange something.”
Jassy was fourteen now. “Are you excited,” I asked her, “about seeing Angus Tolliver again?”
“Not particularly,” said Jassy, in her most offhand way. “And I wish he wasn’t bringing her with him.”
“You mean Amita?”
“I don’t want to meet her. I don’t want to have to have anything to do with her.”
“Because she’s married to Angus, or because she’s half-Indian?”
“Half-Indian,” Jassy sneered. “She’s chi-chi. I don’t know how Lady Tolliver can bear to have her in the house.”
I was silenced. I could understand Jassy being jealous, but not spiteful. Much upset, I turned away and left her alone.
* * *
It had been arranged that Lady Tolliver and Daisy should bring Angus and Amita for tea with us, and as the appointed day drew near and Jassy’s disposition showed no signs of improvement, I found myself dreading it more and more. I imagined Angus, shabby in an ill-cut dhirzi-made suit, with his pathetic wife in tow. Perhaps she would not know how to use the butter knife. Perhaps she would cool her tea by blowing upon it. Perhaps already he was tired of her, and ashamed of her, and regretting his impetuous marriage. And his embarrassment would spread to all of us, like some agonising, paralysing illness.
After lunch, on the day of the tea party, Jassy and I went down to the beach with some friends to swim. The friends had a picnic tea with them, but at three o’clock, the two of us said goodbye and left them, walking home across the golf links, with our damp bathing things clutched to our sides, and our legs and feet encrusted with sand.
It was a day of warmth and wind. There was thyme growing underfoot, and as we walked on it and bruised it, it gave out a sweet and minty smell. We stopped by the church to put on our shoes, then hurried on. Jassy, usually loquacious, was silent. Looking at her, I realised that she probably hadn’t meant to be so disagreeable all this time. She was just as nervous and strung up as I was about meeting Angus and Amita, but it affected us in different ways.
At home, our mother was in the kitchen, buttering the freshly made scones. “Upstairs and change,” she told us. “Quickly. I’ve put everything out on your beds.”
She wore, I had time to notice, her turquoise linen, with the hemstitching, and the glue glass beads my father had given her for her birthday. Her best, in fact. For us she had laid out matching cotton dresses and knickers, butcher blue patterned in little white flowers. There were clean white socks and red shoes with straps and buttons. We washed our hands and faces, and Jassy was helpful about my hair, which was thick and curly and, that afternoon, full of sand.
While we were doing this, we heard the car arrive. It came down the road and stopped outside our gate. Downstairs the front door opened and we heard my mother going down the path to greet her visitors.
“Come on,” said Jassy. We started to go downstairs, but at the last moment, she turned back and took her gold locket out of the drawer and fastened the chain around her neck. I wished I had a locket, a talisman, something to boost my courage.
* * *
They were in the sitting room. The door to the hall stood open and we could hear soft voices, laughter. Jassy, perhaps emboldened by her locket, led the way and I followed, fearfully, behind. As I came through the door, I heard Angus say, “Why, Jassy!” and the next thing was that he had put his arms around her in a hug, just as though she were still a littl
e girl. I had time to notice that Jassy went very pink, and then I looked beyond them. Lady Tolliver was already ensconced in the best armchair. Daisy Tolliver sat on a low stool, and, on the window seat, side by side with their backs to the garden, sat my mother and … Amita.
The first thing I noticed was that she wore, like a shout of defiance, a flame-red sari. But how else to describe her? A bird of paradise, perhaps, magnificent and incongruous amidst the muted sweet pea shades of an English sitting room on a hot summer afternoon.
She was small, beautifully proportioned, her skin the smooth, dark gold of a brown egg. Her eyes were immense, dark, tip-tilted and marvellously made up. Jewels glowed in her ears, sparkled from wrists and fingers, and her bare feet were thrust into delicate gold thong sandals. All this was pure Indian, but her hair betrayed her European origins, being thick and black and curly. She wore it shoulder length and it framed her face like a child’s. She carried a little handbag of gold kid and the room was filled with the musky, subtle undertones of her scent.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I was kissed by Angus, kissed by Lady Tolliver, and all the time I stared at Amita. By the time I was introduced to her, she was laughing. Perhaps it was her brown skin, but I thought I had never seen teeth so shining white.
She said, “Am I going to kiss you, too?”
Her voice enchanted me, the pure vowels overlaid with the suggestion of a French intonation.
I said, “I don’t know.”
“Why don’t we try?”
So I kissed her. Nothing so magical had ever happened to me before, and as I did so, bewildered and bewitched by her beauty, a thought crossed my mind; gently, like the passing touch of a moth’s wing, something to be brushed aside. What was all the fuss about?
I cannot remember very much about that afternoon, except for a feeling of unaccustomed glamour, which seemed to blow through my mother’s little house like a gust of cool, bright air. Angus had changed, indeed, but I thought, for the better. He was a man now. The boyish good looks and high spirits had gone; there was a certain wariness, a reserve about him, but as well something stronger. Perhaps a pride, or a sense of achievement. I don’t know. He seemed taller, which was strange, because as I grew older, grown-ups had an odd way of becoming smaller. Perhaps I had forgotten how he held himself so erect and straight. Forgotten the width of his shoulders and the clean shape of his capable hands.
Blue Bedroom and Other Stories Page 10