Staunch

by Eleanor Wood

  What I do know for a fact is that the body I have now will be one I think of wistfully when I am eighty-seven. I think back to me at nineteen, sad and skinny and so, so neurotic. I want to give that girl a hug and tell her to eat a burger and drink some wine and maybe do a yoga class and have sex with more people and generally have a lot more fun. I don’t want to look back in another twenty years and feel like that about my comparatively hot thirty-something self.

  Now, when I’m feeling old and tired, maybe a bit hungover, holding up my tits in the mirror and marvelling that they ever used to be that high up and I want to cry a little bit, I try my best to think of Nan and Auntie Rose.

  Although a level of vanity remains, you can’t be self-conscious by the time you reach your late eighties. There’s a big difference between the two, an important one.

  Auntie Rose sometimes needs help getting into a bra due to her bad shoulder. Nan calls me in to escort her across the fancy wet room floor when she’s finishing up in the shower as she’s worried she might slip.

  This casual senior nudity is not only practical, but also the mark of women who no longer give a fuck, in the best possible way. They want to look as nice as they can, hence the endless outfit debates, but they’re mostly just pleased about the things they can still do with their bodies. My nan often tells me, while she’s doing her morning exercises, that she can still touch her toes, as if I might have forgotten since yesterday. But if I were her I’d probably mention it a lot too. It’s awesome.

  They take delight in my young(er) body, constantly telling me I’ve got a great figure and to make the most of it. Their eyesight isn’t what it once was, so that might be why, but I choose to believe them.

  ‘Ooh, do you think I could get away with one of those?’ Rose asks one evening, as I’m putting on a vintage jumpsuit to wear out for dinner.

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ I tell her. ‘Do it. Just don’t wait until you’re desperate before you go to the loo when you’re wearing one. That’s my only advice.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Especially at my age. Good point.’

  I’m pleased on the rare occasions when the advice can go both ways, and I think they are too.

  Present Day

  Once I’ve done my yoga and everyone else manages to get dressed, breakfast becomes the cornerstone of our routine. Not just the most important meal of the day, but a daily highlight in all sorts of ways.

  Heading down to the hotel restaurant, our favourite tables are the ones outside – set up on the lawn, with cane furniture and billowing white umbrellas. The outside tables are limited and hotly sought after, but we soon get the breakfast staff onside to save one for us every day, even though we never surface before ten o’clock.

  This is the power of my grandmother and her sisters. Nan quickly becomes legendary around the hotel and the entire surrounding area; it’s like being in a celebrity’s entourage – the celebrity being the white woman who speaks Urdu. People can scarcely believe it when she starts chatting away, particularly as she is very fair-skinned and blonde. It’s incredibly cool to watch.

  I must admit, at first I was worried. After all, it doesn’t take a great deal of knowledge to put it all together: a woman of her age, visibly Western but speaking Urdu. Surely that’s got to be the product of some problematic history. Whenever people ask her how she possibly speaks the language, she explains that she lived here until she was sixteen and went to school here. It can’t be too difficult to do the maths. However, people are without exception friendly and enthusiastic. I don’t think they are hiding any animosity, or if they are, they’re doing a brilliant job. This may be due to my nan’s personality. Especially, but not exclusively, when she’s speaking Urdu, she delights people.

  In no time, everybody knows Dot and Rose. It takes an age to get as far as the breakfast table every day, because they have to do their rounds and chat to everyone. Ann and I are just supporting characters, while they are like a couple of minor Royals in Capri pants and floral blouses, waving regally and addressing their public. This is a combination of fellow residents and the staff – our favourite breakfast waiter is Jai, who came to my rescue on my first dizzying trip into Benaulim. We learn that he has recently got married and is apparently a state champion wrestler. He is also very patient with us, which is fortunate, because we have a lot of very specific requirements.

  Nan is obsessed with her coffee being very hot – garam – and Rose invariably requests so much extra butter (the butter is served in individual curlicued pats in tiny frozen dishes so that it doesn’t melt), that they nickname her Memsaab Makani, literally Madame Butter. Very Last Tango in Paris.

  I am extremely bad at asking for what I want, even in places such as a restaurant, where it is their function to bring me what I want. If my food is cold and disgusting, I will say it’s fine. If the waiter looks busy, I will eat dry toast rather than cause the hassle of asking for extra butter. As I watch Rose politely beckon the waiter over again and then accessorise her thanks with a wink, I try my best to take note.

  Although I would be hard-pressed to put this into action, because the food is so delicious it’s bordering on ridiculous. Without fail, I keep up my routine of curry for every single meal, mostly dosa and puri, which involve excellent combinations of heavy fried pancake and spicy curry. I also develop an unexpected taste for upma, a thick, dry savoury porridge, which is worryingly easy to eat by the enormous repeated bowlful.

  Between all the fetching and carrying I’ve been doing, plus the daily morning yoga routine, I always eat my breakfast with an air of smug serenity in the knowledge that I have truly earned it.

  Sitting outside in the morning to eat our breakfast is a treat; the grounds are beautiful and the glimpses of wildlife never fail to delight us. While we eat out in the sunshine, we always see a few white egrets, which seem to be everywhere. They have long twiggy legs and pretty faces, basically like a load of teenage models dotted around the gardens. My nan loves them, callling them chotur moti (‘little pearl’). However, not enough to get close to them – she has a horror of proximity with Indian wildlife of any kind. If even these ridiculous birds flap too close, she reminds me that I haven’t had my rabies shots and to be careful.

  So, most days I get told off for feeding the skinny cats that appear out of the bushes every day at breakfast time. There’s one white and ginger puss that comes and sits on my lap some days. An English woman about my age who is on holiday with her mother has a slightly passive-aggressive go at me one morning – apparently she has been coming to this hotel every year for ten years and the cat always sits on her lap at breakfast. I’d be annoyed too if I were her – everyone wants to be a cat’s favourite – but I don’t feel bad enough to give up the cat, and I continue to sneak it bits of bacon every morning while it purrs on my knee in the sunshine.

  In fact, I should probably try and make friends with this woman – I guess we’re a similar age and we appear to be the only people here who are in a slightly similar boat. However, she’s a bit scary, so I just smile vaguely and escape as quickly as possible. We overhear her and her mother arguing most mornings (‘you’re always criticising me, why do you have to look at me like that all the time?’). Well, I say ‘arguing’, but it mostly seems to be just her shouting while her mother sits and eats her cornflakes in silence. Then the daughter goes outside to stomp about and angrily smoke fags for a while. I comfort myself with the knowledge that at least somebody is even more of an overgrown teenager than I am.

  Our very favourite person at breakfast is The Crow Man. We envy The Crow Man. Ann and I both agree that we would like to have his life. His entire job involves patrolling slowly up and down the upper balcony of the restaurant, waving a flag to scare away the crows. He is a walking scarecrow. His job function is, in fact, vital. The crows here are savage, much more intimidating than the wild dogs. You can’t leave a scrap of food lying around, or a huge gang of crows (literally, a murder of crows!) will descend instantaneously and decimate it, l
ike evil creatures out of The Wizard of Oz or something. Oh, or that Alfred Hitchcock film, I guess.

  The Crow Man never, ever looks stressed. I become slightly obsessed with him. I would love to know what’s going on in his head while he patrols up and down that balcony for three and a half hours every morning, always at the exact same slow, steady pace. I wonder if the flag is heavy.

  His face is impassive. I wave to him every morning and he does not react. I imagine he must have a rich inner life. He must be thinking very, very deep thoughts while he is in this slow, repetitive perpetual motion. It’s almost biblical. Perhaps he is engaged is some form of transcendental meditation, or even a Jedi mind trick.

  I’ve decided we all definitely have something to learn from The Crow Man.

  January 1948

  The Empire Halladale arrived in Glasgow on 4 January. I asked Nan how she felt, arriving in this brand-new country with no idea of what to expect there.

  ‘Cold,’ she says. ‘It was so cold. I could not believe it. None of us had coats, stockings, winter shoes … Nothing. I cried when we arrived and it wasn’t just because I was homesick and confused – I think I was also crying because I was bloody freezing. I’d never experienced anything like it.’

  She remembers clearly that she was wearing a little red cotton jacket, pleated skirt, short-sleeved blouse and sandals with ankle socks. It was 3.30 p.m.; it was already dark, as well as cold and foggy. There was a Pathé film crew waiting for their arrival in Scotland, recording the return of the Black Watch regiment. However, the excitement was short-lived.

  The plan had been to take a train directly from Glasgow to Manchester, where Chum’s father owned a big house. However, they received a telegram on arrival to let them know that Chum’s stepmother had in fact sold the house and there was no room for them anywhere else. In one fell swoop, they were homeless refugees. And, along with the five children of varying ages, let’s not forget that Dolly was eight months pregnant at the time.

  I had no idea of any of this when Dolly and Chum were still alive. I wish I could talk to them about it. My nan is very positive and optimistic by nature, and remembers it through the eyes of a very sheltered sixteen-year-old. Rose, more the realist, just remembers thinking Glasgow was shit. (Sorry, Glasgow. You’re one of my favourite cities. I think it was just the culture shock.) She wanted to go home. However, there was no home to go to. There was – somewhat understandably – not much sympathy for them, either. The feeling at home for the ‘returnees’ from India was less than friendly. The perception was that they had been living it up, while those back home had endured the Blitz and rationing. And it was true.

  ‘We’d been over there living off the fat of the land,’ as my nan put it.

  However justified this perception may have been, it did not help with the fact that the family were now homeless, with all of their worldly possessions left behind on a different faraway continent.

  Fortunately, as Chum had been in the army, they were able to receive help with temporary accommodation, and they were put up in a hostel outside Glasgow, in Bridge of Weir. They would end up living there for the next eight months. Not only was it grey, cold and drab compared to India, but rationing was still in force – which they hadn’t had to think about while they’d been living it up in the last days of the British Raj.

  Samuel, the youngest child, was born in Scotland in February, delivered by Clara. She found work using her nursing training and Chum found a job working in a children’s home. Like many newcomers to the country today, they found that their skills and experience weren’t much use and jobs were hard to come by. They had to do whatever they could.

  Nan and Rose, both being of working age, were put to work at the local cotton mill. They all had to muck in.

  They stood out a mile when they turned up in their best dresses for their first day at work. It was as if they had come from a different planet, not just a different continent. Fortunately, they were so different that everyone there took pity on them. The girls there, who Rose describes diplomatically as ‘a little bit rough’, found them funny and stuck up for them. Nan and Rose in turn were in a state of utter shock – they had never heard anyone swear until they met the Scottish girls at the mill.

  ‘I’d never heard the F-word before,’ Nan said. ‘They used to talk about sex. It was a total re-education. Although it might be for the best that I couldn’t understand much of what they were saying. I just kept having to say “pardon?”’

  Not only did they look and speak differently, but Nan and Rose were useless when it came to work. They had never so much as made a cup of tea, it was brought to them by the servants. Dolly, at the age of forty-two, had never cooked a meal in her life.

  They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but Dolly had to learn pretty much everything – cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry – from scratch. I am in awe of the staunchness that was required. I’m younger now than she was then, and I wonder how successfully I would fare in similar circumstances. She had brought with her a book of Indian recipes that she had noted down by hand from the cook’s instructions, and she taught herself how to make them – where other families at that time would have Sunday roasts, she always made a Sunday curry. Her recipe book also contained a lot of information that was no longer useful to her: how to run a vast Indian household, with tips on how to manage the staff and host formal colonial-style events.

  Their circumstances had changed so dramatically, in such a short space of time, but they adapted. I never heard them complain, and my nan doesn’t even remember any of them doing so at the time. Mostly, she says, they were grateful.

  ‘We were always so happy together. We were joyful. My parents were selfless people; it’s the way families were in India, how Indian families still are. We had each other and we were so close. We shared everything. That’s why us siblings still all get on so well. We’re all so different, but we are never critical or tell each other what to do. We love each other unconditionally, there’s no doubt about it. We got that from our parents. They had so much love in their hearts for people. My mother was also a very high-principled woman. I hope I am too.’

  Obviously the whole experience was a total culture shock for them. And, in spite of their best attempts to get on with it, they were unquestionably affected by what had happened during those last days in India. Nan remembers seeing a group of people running down the street one day in Bridge of Weir, and how she turned to Rose in utter panic. They instantly assumed they must be running from some terrible disaster, and they joined in as fast as they could. Turned out they were running for the bus.

  ‘I will never forget that as long as I live. There’s us tearing down Bridge of Weir high street … When we moved there, we didn’t have a clue – the first time we went to the sweet shop, they asked for our ration coupons. We didn’t even know what they were.’ However, Nan is always at pains to point out that, while their experience was unusual, times were hard everywhere during and after the war. She often says being in London during the Blitz would have been far worse.

  In the mill, no matter how many times she was shown, Nan couldn’t even get as far as working out how to thread the machine by herself. She managed to last working there for a few months, but this was mostly achieved only through charming people into feeling sorry for her.

  Rose, on the other hand, didn’t even last that long. The most independent of the sisters – and, as we would say in modern parlance ‘a total badass’ – she immediately went ‘fuck this’ and took a train by herself to London, deciding that she might as well try her luck and see what happened.

  Present Day

  Nan credits a great deal of her staunchness to ‘values’. She takes the concept of ‘values’ very seriously. Much of this is based on the family values for which she attributes her ability to assimilate into a foreign culture under adverse circumstances – no matter how bad things got, the family had each other and were grateful to be together. I’m sure this is at least
in part why we continue to be such a close family to this day.

  Nan also includes, under the umbrella of ‘values’, her religious beliefs. She reckons that’s what has got her through a life that hasn’t always been easy: basically, blind faith. She feels sorry for me that I don’t have this.

  Every evening when we’re going to bed, I somehow forget about Nan’s praying ritual. I’ll be pottering about and chatting to her – brushing my teeth, plugging in my phone and optimistically checking for any messages from The Lecturer, generally preparing to get into my camp bed for the night (for please let us not forget the camp bed).

  ‘Nan, shall I switch off the light?’ I’ll ask eventually.

  She does not reply, and when I look over to her side of the room, I see that she is sitting bolt upright in bed in her nightie, her hands folded and her lips silently moving. About five minutes later, she will reply.

  ‘Sorry, my darling. I was saying my prayers. Good night and God bless you. Love you.’

  I find it comforting to know that I am included in my nan’s prayers every night. I know this because she often tells me that she prays for me. Dolly used to pray for everyone in the family by name every night, and now Nan has taken on the mantle and does the same. Given the size of our family, it’s not a small undertaking. I may not have faith, but I like the idea of continuing this tradition somehow. I guess I need to find my own version of it.

  My nan’s religious faith is one of the things I find truly fascinating about her. It’s fascinating because it’s so surprising. If it weren’t for the fact that she’s always saying ‘God bless you’ and occasionally namedrops ‘the good Lord’, you totally wouldn’t have her down as a religious person. I’m not sure exactly what a religious person is supposed to be like, as I don’t really know any others, but I can only assume it’s generally someone who’s a lot less fun and more judgey than my nan. She likes a gin and laughs at my dick jokes, even when she pretends to disapprove. As far as nans go, she’s definitely on the rad side.