Black British (5 page)

Against this background sometimes innocent events took on menacing proportions, like the time an intruder climbed down the skylight rope in the drawing room. Waiting on the front verandah for my father to return home for lunch my mother was teaching Lorraine cross-stitch embroidery while Lily and I played with our paper dolls cut out from the English
Woman and Home
magazine when, without warning, the radio in the drawing room behind us sprang to life.

“Who's there?”

The alarm in my mother's voice frightened us and we all looked up. As the sound continued, my mother dropped her sewing and making a gesture for us to follow her, raced down the three steps that led to the porch where we huddled together, rigid with fear, knowing there was no one around to come to our assistance.

The static continued, sometimes at full volume, sometimes as background blur. Accompanying it was a strange, staccato
chit-chit-chit
that told us someone was definitely in the drawing room. We knew it wasn't the servants, because they had left for the siesta hours.

We stood for an eternity that was a few seconds before my mother acted. Inching forwards she reached the doorway and stopped transfixed until, with a squeaky voice called for the gardener: “
Mali
,
mali aurjha yah
,” prompting Lorraine, Lily and I to dash forward to her.

A brown-face monkey had used a skylight as an entry point, slid down the cord and was perched on the upright radio. He had grasped the receiver button and switched on the radio. Fascinated by the sounds, he twisted the knob back and forth, changing the volume, all the while happily chattering to himself.

My mother's voice, and perhaps the sight of a primate bigger than himself, frightened the monkey. He swung onto the skylight cord to retrace his steps but in doing so activated the pulley that slammed the skylight shut, thereby closing off his escape route.

Jabbering angrily, the monkey clambered onto the picture rail almost five metres above the floor. Grabbing hold of it, he dangled mid-air as he looked over his shoulder to fling abuse at us. A moment later he jumped down to run along the top of the upright piano and, with an elegant, effortless leap, landed on the pelmet above the door of our private rooms. Directly opposite us, from a distance of about thirteen metres, he looked down, while we, grouped around the front door, gazed up.

Three curtains protected the inner sanctum: a short one at the drawing-room door, a floor-length one between the two rooms and another short curtain at the entrance to my mother's rooms. There was a real danger the monkey would dart down and disappear through these layers to be lost in the inner maze – forever!

“Get the
mali
!” A sharp tone conveyed urgency to Lorraine to get help from the gardener.

But we were rooted to the spot by a spectacular display. Continuing his circuit around the room, the monkey dropped onto the granite mantelpiece above the fireplace, found he couldn't get purchase on its highly polished surface so spat vituperative gibberish at us as he skidded across it. With more ambition than sense he sprang towards the door leading to the dining room and latched onto the silken damask curtain in the doorway. Slipping downwards he screeched in high-pitched fury as the curtain oscillated under his weight.

As soon as he landed, the monkey turned tail, hissed feverishly at us, sped towards the fireplace and jumped into the grate.

In a masterpiece of anticlimax, he disappeared up the chimney.

For many years afterwards, the local people talked in awe about this unusual, solitary, sooty monkey that roamed the neighbourhood, shunned by its troop, living a lonely, friendless existence. Never had such an animal been seen before and never would be again.

That evening on my father's return from his mills our parents discussed the incident.

“Monkeys carry rabies,” he explained to his young daughters, “so Mummy had to be careful. She didn't want to frighten the animal so that it bit one of you. She also knows the local people worship a god that takes the appearance of a monkey, so out of respect for their beliefs she didn't want to shoot the animal.”

My mother's tart voice interjected. “I also didn't want to cause a riot. I saw enough killings during Partition, I don't want to see any more or inflict them on my children.” She was referring to the massacres during the India–Pakistan partition of the previous decade.

Addressing us directly, she continued. “You know you have to be careful so you are not kidnapped and bad men hurt you. You know that, don't you?”

Our chorus of assent appeared to satisfy her but at the time we had no understanding of the white slave trade. We just knew our physical safety was at stake.

Not all threatening events had a tame ending so we needed a security system to help protect us. Electronic surveillance being far too futuristic for Kanpur at that time, we had to resort to creative strategies.

The Indian parrot's role was to guard the front of the house as she had a bird's eye view of the driveway from her cage in the verandah.

Screeeeeeech
,
Screeeeeeech
,
Screeeeeeech!
echoed through the front rooms, splitting eardrums and prompting my mother to say, “There's someone on the front drive. Stay close to me while I see who it is.” After leading an entourage of children and dogs to the drawing room window she'd look through protective bars and check out the intruder.

“
Pretty Polly, pretty dear all the way from Cashmere
,” and my mother knew it was one of our regular fruit vendors on the front porch.

“
Que Sera Sera
.” The joyous song had my mother singing along with the parrot. “That's Lorraine home from school. Let's go and greet her.” And Lily and I would fly out to meet our elder sister.

One way or another, no one could creep up without Mitzi announcing their presence. Her plumage was emerald green complemented by a vivid red beak and long tail feathers that she was often silly enough to extend beyond the bars of her cage.

“Don't pull her tail!” Exasperation showed in my mother's voice. “How would you like it if someone pulled your hair?” But it was Mitzi who knew the best method to stop me. Betraying a public house background and getting her gender confused, she'd recite:

“
Polly's sick

Call the doctor. Quick, quick, QUICK!

Hang the doctor, call the cook

Polly wants his pint of beer
.”

A gaggle of geese were our other watchdogs. “Hiss,” said the old gander flapping wings that could do wicked damage. “You haven't fed me. I'll tell Mummy!” And sure enough, a dispatch would intuit my mother's whereabouts and complain in such a forceful manner that even I had to capitulate.

Every February between five to seven eggs were “set” and six weeks later we'd have fluffy yellow goslings. February was also the month when hawks appeared high in the heavens. Compared to the geese, we were easy targets.

“Aaaaagh!” I yelled as a hawk silently swooped and my
paratha
became its lunch.

The geese never lost a gosling. The hawks weren't silly enough to take on a reigning gander.

We relied on the geese. At the back of all our minds was the legend of those birds that saved Rome from the Gauls. Accordingly, the goose run had been built next to our bedroom with their entrance outside our bathroom door. Being territorial and aggressive, the geese objected whenever anyone went past. The old gander would raise its ugly head, raise Cain
and
lead his harem out to attack. It would take a brave man to take on the geese.

We also had three dogs. Tina the miniature dachshund was my mother's faithful companion who followed her everywhere. Buckley-the-bitsa was the happy, feel-good one with an overworked tail and we loved him dearly. Reg, the last of our trio, was an adoptee when friends migrated to Australia. He was aloof, not given to showing affection and had no affiliations with anyone.

“There's something wrong with that mangy-looking dog.” My father's lip curled with contempt. “He never barks, just sleeps in the sun all day and slinks around in that disgustingly cowed manner as though he's ill treated.”

All three dogs slept in the house at night. Tina's bed was an old wooden crate in my mother's dressing room. Buckley was chained to the grate in the dining room and Reg was meant to be in the fan room. The idea was that dogs, parrot and geese were dotted around the house to alert us to any intrusion.

Reg, however, had other ideas. He had a Houdini-like ability to slip his lead and move noiselessly around the house, further infuriating my father. The labels “disobedient” and “untrainable” were added to his reputation. None of us were fond of him but the year my mother went abroad he excelled himself and taught us love.

In the early hours of the full moon night in March that year, my mother, always a light sleeper, felt Reg's cold nose nudging her into wakefulness. In the silence that followed she became aware of a subtle “
khud khud
” sound. As she told us later, she froze, held her breath and went rigid, listening intently.

Nothing. Darkness. A moment of eerie silence, absolute silence, absolute stillness. Even the air held its breath. About to exhale, she heard the sound again and Reg nudged her with single-minded determination. A few minutes later she heard it again, a metal-against-metal sound coming from the adjacent room.

“Wake up. There's someone in my dressing room,” my mother whispered urgently as she shook my father, simultaneously noting that Reg, ever silent, had slipped away. In the next few seconds five separate things happened.

My father, instantly awake, shot out of bed, and using the darkness of the bedroom to protect himself, reached out and switched on the light in the dressing room. He found no one and at first glance nothing appeared disturbed.

My mother flew to our rooms to check on us.

A bloodcurdling scream of agony rent the air.

The geese rose as one and with ear-splitting ferocity attacked the chicken wire of their run, intent on murder.

And the driver, who was sleeping in the garages, screamed out to the gardener to announce a thief. “
Mali
.
Mali
.
Chor
.
Chor
,” preceded his scurry up the moonlit driveway to pound on the side door hysterically crying “
Sahib! Chor
.
Chor
.”

But there was no
chor
and Reg wasn't anywhere to be found either. The story was later pieced together from the driver's report and what was found at the site.

Suspecting that valuable items would be in the house preparatory to my mother leaving, an enterprising local decided to break in. Knowing better than to take on the geese and enter through our rooms, he stood on a wooden crate to reach the window behind my mother's dressing table. Using pliers he cut the thick metal bars that protected the window, making the khud khud sound that my mother had heard, and which had alerted Reg.

Reg was an exceptionally intelligent dog which, until then, we hadn't appreciated. Instinctively knowing my mother would receive him more favourably than my father, he approached her. Happy that she was fully awake, he silently slipped away to sneak up on the burglar.

We never discovered how he escaped from the house or what else happened. All the driver kept repeating was, “The
neelu kuta
came like
shaitan
” which was interpreted as Reg, the blue dog, had behaved like the devil when he went on the attack.

Lorraine, Lily and I, five at the time, slept through the whole
tamasha
and Tina the dachshund didn't budge either, though her box was in the dressing room, the epicentre of activity.

So much for being a guard dog!

The next morning Reg was back at the pantry door awaiting his food and looking his usual butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth self. Being hero of the hour didn't sit well with him for he soon slipped away to find his private spot in the sun. However, from that day he changed and took to following us around the compound keeping a watchful, ever-protective eye on his young charges.

In the evenings he sat with us, initially curled up in the corner but gradually coming closer until he lay at my feet and under my bed at night. No amount of dragging him back to the fan room was of any use. As soon as our backs were turned, he'd find his way through the dark, draughty corridors to his favourite place.

If the door to the fan room was bolted to lock him in, he simply scratched and scratched with a dedication that penetrated our sleeping minds so we dreamed of rats scurrying around inside our skulls, feasting on our brains. Though it went against the grain to give in to a dog, it soon became easier to leave Reg under my bed and get a good night's sleep.

He became my keeper, my constant companion and worked his way into my heart. It was almost as though he intuited when he first arrived that he was with us on sufferance so took good care to make himself inconspicuous. On the night of the attempted burglary, was it survival that made him look after us and by default himself, since he was in our care? Or was it canine loyalty that prompted him to protect his family however poorly we treated him?

Whatever it was, once we praised and loved him for coming to our rescue he became a different animal, involving himself in the family, and bit by bit everyone grew to love him. It was then we realised that our unwarranted criticism had made him withdraw into himself and keep below the radar. It took only a few kind words, a little positive attention for him to blossom. The worst part was that we had no idea we were being cruel. We didn't give him a chance to shine and yet he soared to the challenge when the need arose.

From then on Reg's new and unwavering devotion was a large part of my life until ten years later when the cruel march of time made it kinder to send him on ahead of us.

We laid him under the massive laburnums where each May the yellow blossoms would form a bright counterpane for his bed and each June he would be protected from the searing heat.