by Isla Blair
The panther looked like a giant version of Mingo, my black cat. Ayah said we could look up now, but to go on keeping very still. The panther must have got bored, because it walked off into the tea without a backward glance. “We go home now, Misses.” Ayah told us that if we had we moved or run away, the panther would have been sure to chase us, but we could run home now to tell Mummy of our adventure.
Usually after our walk we would wash our hands and have tea in the nursery, sometimes on the verandah – tea was made up of bread and honey and biscuits and a cake baked by Boy. Mummy would have a cup of tea with us and soon we would get ready for our special time with her. We would go into the cool drawing room – there were blue and white ginger jars on the floor in corners and there was always a small bowl of flowers – hibiscus or lilies or a tiny vase of English daisies. Before our tea and time with our mother, Fiona and I – when we remembered – would go to the farthest back part of the garden, where the waterfall had become a trickle and slid over bits of slimy moss, and we’d pick the tiny wild orchids that grew there, nestling under the ferns. We’d take them into Mummy, who thanked us and kissed us. The orchids never lasted. They had gone brown and droopy by the next morning and the chokra would throw them out. They were so pretty where they grew, with little splashes of water on them; it was hugely disappointing that, when you picked them, they almost immediately died. Mummy said it was the same with wild bluebells that grew in Scotland; it was best to admire them and leave them alone.
In the drawing room, we would sit on the sofa, one either side of Mummy, and listen to the radio. She would have her arms around us when we’d hear the tales of Mr Mayor, Larry the Lamb, Dennis the Dachshund, and Mr Grouser. This was Children’s Hour on the World Service and Uncle Mac really did seem like our uncle, we knew him so well. There was much interference as we strained to listen, but we didn’t mind. I put my thumb in my mouth and twiddled my hair, I felt utterly content; this was our world and we were safe and happy and nothing could change it.
After playing in the garden, riding our bikes and doing gymnastics, the shadows in the garden lengthened and we knew it would soon be bath time. Ayah prepared us for our baths by rubbing us all over with almond oil. “Good for the skin Missy.” During these bath time preparations and rituals with Ayah and the almond oil and us running around, behind the bathroom door that led off from our bedroom, the Goosle Man would come from the kitchen with huge pans of hot water to fill the tin bath for us. He would boil up the pans on a charcoal burning stove until they were bubbling hot – and he had to make several journeys to our bath to fill it up. We knew he was there and what he was doing, but as he was never there when we were about to get into the bath, we never thanked him. I’m not sure it occurred to us to thank him. I wish we had though, for the pans must have been heavy.
Mummy would come in and wash us with duck shaped soaps, which were really Imperial Leather – I love the smell of Imperial Leather soap – and squishy big rubber sponges and face flannels that we would wet and put over our faces and breathe in and out and suck the soapy water through the cloth. When baths were over, Mummy would pull us out, slippery and pink, and she would towel us dry, but first she would cover up our heads and make us disappear and call our names and kiss our faces when she saw us again. We laughed and laughed. She would comb my hair and didn’t seem to mind that it was bolt straight, unlike Fiona’s, which curled softly and prettily. “But your hair is shiny like a great big chestnut. You are my baby Saluki.”
And she would tell me what a chestnut was, and a Saluki, and that I was the baby kind, with shining silky hair – and I felt nice. I’d put my thumb in my mouth as I nestled into her and smelt her sweet lily of the valley fragrance. And she would tell me things. She didn’t mind my thumb in my mouth or that I curled my hair with my fingers. It was just something I did. I was Isla and it was my habit. Then we would run around some more in our pyjamas, but not so much as to get over–excited. We would slick our wet hair down, like Brylcreemed boys, and get into our pyjamas. We knew that Daddy would soon be home.
It wasn’t long before we heard him. “Hello, Vi dear, hello girls” and we would rush to him. Fiona was too big to scoop up, but I wasn’t – and he’d hold me against his shoulder and I marveled at the smell of him: sunshiny, horsey, wood smoky, tea – of course – pipe smoke and, inexplicably, crushed limes. I’d kiss his neck and it tasted salty on my lips. He took Fiona by the hand and carried me into the drawing room. The chokra didn’t need to be told that a whisky and soda would be welcome and in a breath it appeared on a small silver tray which was put down on the table beside the chair Daddy usually occupied, with Fiona perched on its arm and me on his lap. “So what has been happening today?” We would chatter on about our day until the news came on the World Service. He’d tell us to shush and he’d sit with his ear right up to the radio as it crackled and whistled and he kept twirling the little dial “...to get a better reception.” Sometimes he would give up and we’d go back to his chair and he’d tell us what things he’d been doing.
Very soon it was bedtime and one or other of our parents, but usually Mummy, would come in and read to us. We liked the “Just-So Stories” best. How the elephant got its trunk, for example. They seemed to be part of our world here at our real home in India. I liked Jemima Puddleduck and Peter Rabbit too, but they seemed foreign – I had never seen a fox, or a rabbit for that matter, or foxgloves or radishes. Crocodiles and elephants and tigers and panthers were real to me. The jackals were certainly real. They started crying at night, howling – a sickening sound, like a small baby screaming as if it were being hurt. The sound scared me and made me want to cry.
Mummy or Daddy, or sometimes both of them, would kiss us good night and tell us to sleep tight, not let the bugs bite and tip-toe out to have their baths and their drinks and change for dinner.
Those were the days when I felt happy and loved and surrounded by all my favourite people.
Fiona, Beverly and Jane Beaumont and Isla at Cananoor
But this was a special day – the day before we were going Home. Fiona and I kept saying to each other, “This is the last time we will...”. Everything became the “last time”.
There had been so much rushing about and conversations over the black steel trunks that were lined up in the hall. They all had labels on them and there were several that said “Not wanted on voyage,” some that said, “For voyage, cabin trunk.” All had the name “Blair-Hill” written on them in white paint and a number, so Fiona said, as she picked up the labels, “Look, Isla, this one says ‘Misses F. and I. Blair-Hill – for voyage’. That’s us.” We had packed our small brown leather suitcases, achingly heavy even when empty. Getting ready for Home overpowered any thoughts of goodbye. We both sensed on this day that something momentous was about to happen. Fiona looked sad sometimes as she touched the bedside table or smoothed down the counterpane on the bed. I wondered if she was feeling the little stirring of panic that I felt. I didn’t say anything, for maybe she was only happy and excited – besides, voicing the fear that I felt, that I may never come back, would make it solid somehow and I was nervous, too, in case Fiona shared my apprehension and that would make it greater.
There seemed to be lists everywhere: lists of things to pack, things to do, lists for the servants of their duties while our parents were at Home in the UK. I couldn’t read them, but Fiona said she’d never seen so many lists.
We ran from the bees to the bottom of the garden just before it sloped away down the hill and looked out over the valley and the Munnar River to Grahamsland Estate on the other side. Everywhere was tea, clipped neatly and symmetrically so it looked like the lawns at the manager’s bungalow, Ladbroke House. From where I stood at the edge of our garden at Ailsa Craig, I could look down at the tea, the brightest greenest green you could imagine, brighter than the green grass in story books or the frog with the bulging eyes we had in our bath each night. If there was a breeze, you could smell it, impossible to describe –
not mown grass, or parched earth suddenly rained on, it had its own scent, just tea. “Oh! Girls, smell the tea,” Mummy would say. I always had an urge to be able to fly over it, brushing the bright green leaves with my feet, it looked so soft, satiny and shiny. On this special day, there was no breeze. It was still, but not silent. Buzzing and twittering and croaking, cooing and cawing made up the morning sounds. I loved this time of day when, wherever you looked, things were sharp and clear and clean, without the blurry haze of midday or the soft peachy glow of late afternoon before the sun slipped behind the Anamudi Hill. Now, soon after dawn, it was as if everything had been washed and this was the slice of the day that held all the secret promise of the unfolding morning.
Usually we would have breakfast on the verandah, but today we were in the dining room when Daddy came in. He had been up since dawn doing his final “muster”, giving instructions about what jobs were to be done that day and the duties that were to be carried out by his assistant in his absence of four months. We had papaya, a special treat, but I didn’t like to tell Mummy that I thought papaya – or as Daddy called it, “paw-paw” – tasted like sick and I was always rather alarmed by the black, shiny seeds that looked slippery and sticky with tendrils of orange flesh hanging from them. My mother saw me looking at the slice of papaya in “that way” and said, “Isla, don’t be silly now, give it to me and I will slice away the seeds and cut the papaya into little cubes.” I’d said nothing about the sinister black seeds, but she seemed to know. “I didn’t like the seeds either, when I was a little girl.” I’d almost forgotten that she had lived here in India since she was thirteen.
I looked at my parents and felt so lucky that they were mine. I thought they were both beautiful. My mother was slender, with small hands and nails kept clean and not too long. Sometimes though she painted them red and I didn’t like that. I thought it made her look like the horrible queen in Snow White. She had high cheek bones and eyebrows that arched over her blue eyes. I thought her eyes were the loveliest I’d ever seen. I’d sometimes look at my own eyes in the mirror and see, reflected back, green/tawny/brown eyes that were called “hazel”. I wondered if they would grow to be blue like hers as I got older. The most noticeable thing about my mother was her hair. She was a natural blonde, very blonde, and it was gently wavy, framing her face like a halo – like all the saints in Fiona’s book from Kodaikanal Convent School.
Last month she had visited a friend’s house on a neighbouring estate and they decided they would give each other a perm. She came home with a tight frizz that looked like wool. I shall never forget the look on my father’s face. He looked at her for a long time and then said “Oh Vi, dear, what have you done?” “I know,” she said, “A mistake, but it will grow out.” She never permed it again.
I loved her hair, which she sometimes wore in a snood – which I thought was such a funny word – but usually it was just left to blow about in the breeze. Sometimes she would let me brush it for her. It was soft and looked like spun gold. She was endlessly patient and let me put combs in it, but drew the line when I suggested bows and ribbons. Fiona had bows and ribbons in hers, which looked nice because it was curly. But I wasn’t allowed bows, as my hair was too straight and slippery and anyway, I “wasn’t the type for bows.”
Only last week, at the High Range Club, I was in the lavatory in the Ladies’ powder room when I heard two of my mother’s friends, Dulcie Mann and Myrtle McCall, talking about Fiona and me. “Fiona is such a pretty little girl isn’t she?” There was agreement and then a silence. “Funny how the two girls are so different.” I sat on the lavatory with my pants round my ankles and I felt I had been slapped around the face. I couldn’t come out of the cubicle, because the two women were still there and maybe some others who had heard them. I felt anguished but also that I’d let my family down. My father was tall and handsome; my mother was beautiful – everyone said so – and Fiona, with her way of looking up at you with her head bowed by shyness, was pretty. How was it that I was so different from them? Where had I come from? My father, my mother, my sister had hair that curled. Mine lay in sheets beside my face. Mother’s eyes were blue, Daddy’s and Fiona’s green – mine were this tawny, greeny mix. I wasn’t like any of them. Was I part of them? Was I a baby found under a bush, whose real mother didn’t want her? Maybe I wasn’t a Blair-Hill at all. A bubble of panic rose in my throat. What if I didn’t belong anywhere, to anyone? The powder room became silent. I still sat there and wanted so badly to cry. If I wasn’t pretty, I would have to be good at something else, because I’d noticed that people, on the whole, responded to prettiness.
Fiona was calling me. “Isla, Isla, where ARE you?”
“I’m in here.”
“Why are you still in there, are you alright?”
“I don’t know if I’m alright, because I’m not pretty”.
“Isla, come out.”
I did.
“What is this?”
“Well I heard them say it, that I was not pretty like you.”
“Who said it?”
“Mrs McColl and Mrs Mann.”
“What rot, you look alright to me.”
“Yes, but I’m the only one of us with straight hair and my eyes are not any sort of colour, but a mixture of everything. And I can’t wear bows or frills because I’m not the type.”
“I don’t know about any of that, but I think you are being a goose. Come on, all the ayahs in the children’s room have started a game of blind man’s bluff and Alice Souter is IT.”
I joined the game.
This incident, small in itself, has stayed with me all my life. For a long time I felt as if it was not possible for me to measure up – not just to Fiona, but to anyone. I’m sure the two overheard women didn’t mean to damn me by saying I wasn’t as pretty as Fiona. I suspect they were commenting on our different personalities, but it felt like a slap and I still feel the sting of it. I have never believed people when, as an adult, they have complimented me on my appearance, as that little voice in the dark corner of my head spreads the virus of doubt. Daddy would say, “Looks are not everything; if you believe that prettiness is of such consequence, you’ll believe that’s all you really are and you can be so much more than merely decorative. Other things about people are far more important.” He, who was married to the most beautiful woman in the High Range. I imagine, like most children, I needed to be reassured about these seemingly trivial things and I was to learn that soon there would be no-one there to supply the reassurance I coveted and so the doubt persisted, locked up, growing solid and impenetrable. But I also learned as I grew older that he was right – again – that the complexities of the human spirit were worth far more than a pretty pout and prominent cheekbones.
Isla aged 2
* * * * *
Soon the evening was upon us and it wouldn’t be long before morning came, and our journey Home.
Daddy came in to say good night and read us a story called “Greyfriars Bobby”, about a little dog in Edinburgh who was so faithful to its master, he never left him, even when he was dead; he just sat on his grave. The story made me feel rather sad and then the jackals started howling. Daddy said “Well, you won’t hear any jackals in Scotland.” He kissed our foreheads and told us to sleep tight.
Ayah slept not very far away from us, but not in the same room. After Daddy had left us, she crept in to our bedroom and sat on our beds and stroked our backs.
“Sleep now, Missy.”
I threw my arms around her. “I wish you were coming Home with us, Ayah. Please, please come with us.”
Ayah said nothing. The jackals started again. “I don’t like them, Ayah, I don’t like the jackals.”
“I know, Missy, Ayah will put a shoe upside down on the window ledge outside and the jackals will not come near. They will see the shoe and run away.”
I don’t know if they did, but the howling stopped and I slept.
TWO
Not Wanted on Voyage
&n
bsp; I arose on the day of departure, excited, a bit apprehensive and confused by the rush of activity in the house when, in a blink, it was time to go. We said goodbye to Boy and to Matey and to some of the Boy’s children and we tried to find Fiona’s cat, Samson, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Fiona was inside putting on her sandals, when Ayah called me to her. She put into my hand a little round box wrapped up in see-through tissue paper. You opened it by pressing a little button on the front; inside, it was a goldy colour and there was a mirror on the inner lid, but the outside lid was the special thing. It was the brightest, bluest blue: iridescent, luminous, almost metallic. Ayah said it was made from a butterfly’s wing. Against the blue was the black silhouette of a man and a woman in old fashioned clothes, she with piled up hair and wearing a wide dress and he with buckled shoes and hair tied low on his neck with a ribbon. Above them was a branch of a tree filigreed against the sky with leaves and soft round apples. I was enchanted.
But I was filled with regret that I had no present to give Ayah. I took off my silver bangle, the one with a Scottie dog on the clasp, and asked her to wear it – which was silly, of course, as it didn’t fit her. “I want you to keep it anyway, Ayah. We can think of each other when we take out our presents and then we won’t seem so far away.”
She kissed my eyelids; my chin went all prickly and tight as I kissed her cheeks and her coconut-oil hair and hugged her so tight that Daddy had to peel me off her. I didn’t cry though, nor did Ayah.
Daddy called for Fiona to “juldi, juldi” – hurry up; she still couldn’t find Samson. Ayah stood between us when Daddy took a photograph of the three of us – the sun was very bright. Then Ayah gave us all garlands of orange marigolds, one for each of us. They smelt of crushed up sunshine and the red earth after rain and a bit curry-ish. Then she pulled the bottom marigold off Fiona’s garland and one off mine and folded our fingers round the flowers. “For luck, Missy Fiona. For luck, Missy Baba Isla.” Then she was gone. I put my marigold into the butterfly-wing box.
