by Isla Blair
Much of my pleasure in writing has persisted with me into adulthood. I have spent time and, I’m afraid, more money than I should in stationery shops. A wonderful shop called Papyrus has recently closed down and I miss it. I liked their hand-made paper, envelopes lined with tissue paper, thick, thick cards, A4 writing paper that a fountain pen glides over as if over glass and sealing wax that sizzles, sending up black wisps of smoke when you plunge your signet ring into it. I love sealing wax, its smell and the smooth feeling of it when it’s set – of course, it’s a bit affected to use it now, which is a shame. At a huge branch of a supermarket I was in recently, that sold everything from saucepans, sunglasses, cuticle clippers and ready-made meals for one, there was no writing paper of any description in their stationery section. A sign of the times.
I don’t know if it was this early deficiency, this late coming to words, paper, pen and ink, that resulted in my being one of the last remaining letter-writers I know. I write long. detailed letters rather than emails; I like the formality in a letter, I like too that, contrarily, one can be more personal, poetic and go deeper into one’s feelings in a letter.
I write all the time; I write a thought on the back of an envelope, or even on a bus ticket; little scraps of paper litter the house. Has all this come about because of the late discovered joy that reading and writing have conjured up? I often wonder if that is a contributing reason for being an actress. Words are the tools of my craft; feelings too, of course, but I’m not a mime – I use words every day as a performer and my delight in them has never gone away.
During our years at West Preston Manor, Fiona and I spent school holidays with our mother’s beloved sister, Ailsa. Despite their very different personalities, Ailsa and my mother looked very similar, with their pale blonde hair and their periwinkle blue eyes, and they sounded alike, the soft burr of their Scottish accents noticeable and comforting. Where my mother was introverted and shy, Ailsa was extrovert and vibrant; my mother had an air of calm about her that so often covered a fluttering heart and her eyes, so like Ailsa’s in colour and shape, wide and round, would look at you with a composure she had schooled herself to feel. Ailsa’s nose was like her mother Jessie’s, gently aquiline; Violet’s nose was straight like her father, Charles Skeoch’s. Ailsa became beloved to us too; she was warm and generous spirited and enthusiastic and she opened her home, her arms and her heart to us. She lived in Bury near Arundel with her husband, the 6’ 5” tall Patrick and her children, our cousins, Brian and Pam. The house was small, but room was found for us and we shared in all the family activities. Looking back, our cousins were remarkably hospitable and kind. I think we took Brian’s room, but if he minded, he didn’t show it. He was funny, he played rugby and the ukulele, he was constantly joking – which disguised a kind and sensitive heart. Pam was mature for her age, she had beautiful legs and an almost old fashioned grown-upness; she didn’t suffer fools. They were our cousins, but soon we would do everything together as friends.
We now belonged to a family, not ours directly, but as relatives, they were the next best thing to our parents. We did normal family things, like take it in turns to wash up or clear out the dreaded Rayburn, feed the cats, Binty and Bwana. We rowed down the river Arun in summer, taking sandwiches wrapped in checked napkins; we went to Point–to–Point races in the winter and spring with headscarves tied in a knot under our chins and in the summer we rode our bicycles into Fittleworth, where we had riding lessons and came back sweaty and smelling of horses.
I was starting to get puppy-fat plump, with stocky legs and a round face. My hair was still straight, despite the newly discovered “rollers”, so I decided to have a perm, giving me the curls I longed for. What a mistake! My fine hair became not curly, but frizzy – and my head resembled a burst sofa. I had to live with my mistake and disappointment until it grew and I was able to cut the perm out.
I went on enjoying the feeling of relief that I could read, that I was no longer looking over my shoulder fearing discovery. I could read, I could write. I was free. My parents’ weekly letters gave me added pleasure now that I no longer had to rely on Fiona, patient though she was, reading their contents to me. My letters home belonged to me now, not written out by Fiona for me to copy. They got longer, more descriptive; I even enclosed bad poems (discovered in my mother’s attic after her death, wrapped in cellophane bags, done up with rubber bands). Embarrassing, rather bum-clenching poems about bluebell woods and daisies freckled in dew.
I enjoyed writing essays about almost anything from buttons and ribbons to the role of dogs and horses in our lives, Harold’s march to Stamford Bridge and Katherine Swynford, John of Gaunt’s second wife. I enjoyed commenting on characters in books, Jo in “Little Women” and the extremely nauseating Nell in “The Old Curiosity Shop”. English grammar was interesting too – where to put apostrophes and semi-colons, “I before E except after C.” “Necessary – one collar and two socks.” Little rules like that. I looked forward to history lessons. History was just stories about people with long hair and beards, but who, doubtless, had the same joys and sorrows that I felt in my life and yet their lives affected ours; stories with the dates thrown in – I loved history lessons.
I liked the bible stories too, not just the parables and the miracles, but all the letters to the Corinthians and the Romans and all those other people, the Sermon on the Mount – that was pretty good stuff and sensible: be kind, be humble, thoughtful and loving – that was what it amounted to. Jesus sounded a good man. but was he the Son of God? I’d never thought about it. But if he said he was, then it might be true, unless he was mad or bad or both.
I started to believe in Jesus, in God. I am not sure if it was religious fervour, or just delight in the church services and the bells and smells. Church going in Scotland had been a dour, bleak affair – no stained glass windows, no bells, not much colour and the hymn singing was pretty minimal and dismal; a choir of elderly ladies, plump girls and a smattering of embarrassed-looking youths sang “All in the April Evening” and “In a Monastery Garden”, but it was hardly transporting. I used to stifle the urge to giggle, not usually successfully. At East Preston church, the services were High Church, much swinging of incense and bowing and I would swell out my ample chest singing the lovely hymns and soon learned all the prayers, including the Creed, by heart. I used to look forward to church; I loved the smell of the burning candles and the incense and the old prayer books and the general damp, herby, mossy smell in the little church. The stained glass windows became familiar, as did the names of the fallen in both World Wars listed on the wall beneath the clutch of flags. I would wonder, vaguely, about Thomas Strawn and Benjamin Pilver, Robert Knox and Peter Barker; what had become of their families, their wives, their mothers? The wall of names made me feel sad, so many names for such a small village.
I went to religious instruction classes with Father Fincham, as I had decided to be confirmed and I gave myself to the instruction with absorption and enthusiasm. The preparation for my confirmation was thorough. I grew excited as the day approached. We were told that as the Bishop’s hands touched our heads to bless us, we would be filled with the Holy Spirit (I hoped I might even speak in tongues as the Apostles did in the Bible, when the Holy Spirit entered them). I was about to be Jesus’ child, not quite a bride of Christ, but certainly his friend.
We wore white dresses and white veils that were to cover our hair “Not an occasion for vanity,” said Miss Boykett. This was a time when we were to think deeply about what we were doing. The trouble was, we looked so silly with the veils nearly meeting our eyebrows, we were self-conscious and thought of little else, so vanity was at the forefront after all. There was a lot of incense swinging, the candles were lit and the choir sang something lovely but incomprehensible in Latin. We all lined up. I was behind Juliet Palmer and was somewhat disconcerted to see that she looked rather fetching in her veil. I was once again a “puddock” and on this occasion the name suited me perfectly. It was my
turn; I knelt in front of the Bishop, kissed his ring as I had been instructed to do, and then I felt his hands on my head. This was the moment I would be flooded with light by the Holy Spirit; I would be changed forever as I was embraced into God’s chosen circle. Nothing. I felt nothing. Not spiritual, enlightened or close to Jesus. Nothing. But I didn’t let on. As the other girls went on about how amazing the experience had been, I agreed.
“Did you feel anything, Isla?”
“Oh! Yes, full of light. I felt it was as if a light was switched on, shining from inside me.”
I didn’t become full of light, but I did go to communion at 8 o’clock every Sunday. I liked the Madeira-tasting communion wine and saying the prayers in a whisper all alone with God. There was a tiny red glass hanging lamp that always had a candle lit in it. We were told this was where God was when we came into the church and we should make that our focus. In truth, it did look like a small, red, beating heart, suspended apparently from nowhere, just above the altar.
My belief in God stayed with me throughout school, but always with a little question mark above it. I wish in some ways that I had faith still – I see so many people sustained by theirs, but my question mark remains.
I would like to believe in a power greater than myself that has a pre-ordained path for me, with the odd foray and diversion through freewill. I’d like to believe that what goes around comes around, but, as my mother would often say, “The wicked flourish like the green bay tree,” and so often it would turn out to be true. I think of all those nuns and monks and the Cathars in France who denied themselves any sort of earthly pleasure hoping for a huge reward in heaven and I want to shout down the long arc of years, “Do it now, for this is it. You will be a long time silent in your cold dark grave.” But they believed it so perhaps that is all that counts.
But I love churches: the tranquillity, the smell and the cloak of calm that descends – it does make one imagine that God is about. I burn a candle and think of all the people who lived before me on their knees with their prayers and supplications; I think about my parents and my good fortune in meeting both my husband and my beloved son so early in my adult life and I whisper gratitude for the unexpected joy both my little grandgirls have brought into my life and a fervent prayer to keep them safe. And I pray for Fiona and her family and I catch myself and think “What AM I doing?” But it comforts me and whether or not there is anyone there to receive my prayer I am glad I have prayed it. I go to church occasionally, at Christmas and sometimes just to feel quiet and it soothes me so who knows...? That question mark again.
One Mothering Sunday in March when I was fourteen, our mother was in England without our father for a short visit. We went to church with her and at one point in the service all the children went up to gather posies of primroses and violets for our mothers from a big basket near the altar. I rather grumpily took the tiny posy of flowers to my mother (surely I was too old for this?), but I saw her eyes prick with tears as she smiled and thanked me and I felt I wanted to fold her up in my ungrateful arms. These were the small rituals and offices she had missed.
I wanted so much to love her with all my heart, but I knew subconsciously that if I gave her my unfettered love, it would feel as if my heart was being ripped out of me again when she had to leave. I had got used to being without her, now that she was back with me, all the choked up longing for her would surface and it couldn’t be pushed down again without feeling as if I were suffocating. So I tried to push her away instead.
I was so pleased and relieved to have her with me, my own mother, to kiss me goodnight and for her to notice my improved prowess as a dancer/tennis player/cyclist, that perversely I was cruel to her and found deeply wounding things to say, usually about her not being there, not in the routine of the household. “You don’t do it like that, that’s not the way it’s done,” and I’d watch her hurt expression, but that didn’t stop me. “How on earth would you know?” I’d cry. “You weren’t here.” And my mother would go quiet and retire to do the washing up or go upstairs for a cardigan and when she came down, I’d notice her eyes were red and I’d feel horrible and hug her a bit too hard. I loved her so much and wanted her to love me so much, but I had a teenage girl’s capacity for cruelty and I would get in little barbs all the time or lash out at her with my unbridled tongue. I’ve never fathomed why. Was I like a cat who, faced with the owner’s return after a holiday or a time of absence, punishes with a turned back and a disdainful shrug of indifference disguising hurt and fury? It’s only with hindsight that I can see my behaviour and feelings were a mass of contradictions.
For just at the time children of my age were flexing their muscles, spreading their wings to fly the nest, my parents were returned to me.
In the Spring of 1959, Aunt Ailsa informed Fiona and me that our Mum and Dad were returning to the UK unexpectedly and for good. I was overjoyed that we would be a family again, sharing a house that was ours and not one rented for a six week stay on the rare occasions they were here, but ours, our very own. Joyful, too, that I would just be with them as their daughter and they would watch me grow and I could tell them of my burning desire to be an actress.
In the summer of that year, when I was fifteen, they came home. It was twelve years after India’s independence and unrest was spreading throughout Kerala (The only democratically elected communist state in the world) and when it reached the High Range and Munnar, there were rumblings which grew into riots. It was considered that it really was time the British went and that all the tea estates should be run by Indian companies, not a Scottish one, which was hardly a surprising view, and one with which my father had some sympathy, but the manner of edging the British out became quite fierce. There was rioting in the factories, and strikes, some of the managers’ offices were set on fire with the managers still inside them and their servants were threatened. There were all sorts of disquieting and upsetting scenes.
However justified the reason for the riots, it must have been wounding to see the people you considered your friends being the ones to shout the loudest and throw the largest stones. I was not there, and I didn’t witness any of this, so I have no first–hand knowledge. But my parents made the decision to leave India one year before my father’s official retirement, twenty–nine instead of the thirty years. This was hastened by the fact that my mother had amoebic dysentery that would not clear up and the doctor advised her that only by returning to the UK could she get the correct treatment to make her well again.
They hardly spoke of their departure and the events leading up to it, and I was too busy in my now English world and too glad to have them home to ask any probing questions. They brought little with them, not that there was much to bring, for most of the furniture belonged to the Company.
On a visit back to the High Range with Fiona in the 1990s, it was disquieting to find our bungalow and Kalaar unchanged. There was the same sideboard, the same lamps, even the same wind-up telephone. I hadn’t realised that all these items were not ours. The past echoed around me and everywhere – down the red tiled corridors, in our bedroom; along the verandah, I collided with a five year old sandaled ghost with hair the colour of conkers. As the driver took us back to Munnar, I sat with my left arm out of the Ambassador car window and remembered the sunburnt pain of it that distracted from the pain of saying goodbye to Ayah as I left the bungalow four decades earlier.
If my parents were leaving India for good – would Fiona and I ever go back, or would our childhood be buried in the monsoon-soaked Indian earth at Kalaar?
At fifteen I gave it a moment’s thought and passed on, not realising then how deep my Indian roots had wound their way round my heart, but where did I belong? Where was home? Would my parents be different living in England instead of India? Would they find me very different?
I was soon to learn about my parents, and my respect for them was to grow as I watched them come to terms with losing their Indian identity and trying to embrace their English one. They wer
e both intensely shy and reserved characters, which could have been mistaken for diffidence, even timidity. They never announced their arrival into a room with a fanfare, rather they would slip into it, observing other people and, finding small talk with strangers rather a strain, they would often end up talking to each other. They were made of strong stuff. Their gentleness belied their strength; they were strong and they were brave.
THIRTEEN
How to Boil an Egg
A precarious, rather frightening and unemployed future lay ahead for them. They hadn’t lived in the UK since my mother was thirteen and my father twenty-one; she was now forty-two, he was forty-nine.
As soon as they reached Tilbury Docks, indeed the very day they disembarked, they raced by taxi to catch me as St. Joan in Shaw’s play at the annual prize–giving event at West Preston Manor – “Light your fires, do you think I dread it as much as the life of a rat in a hole?” I must have been pretty awful in the part, but, again, I felt empowered as the audience went quiet. I won the Acting Cup and saw my parents beam with pride, the first time they had witnessed me collect any prize. I glowed inside.
Fiona had already done a year at the Eastbourne College of Domestic Science, a sort of finishing school, where she learned to cook, sew, darn, iron, arrange flowers and fold guest towels and pillow cases; how to answer invitations and how to address Archbishops, how to organise a household and how to get in and out of cars without showing her knickers. She had just started her training as a nurse at the Middlesex Hospital.
We shared that summer with our parents and although we were all relieved to be together, and this time for always, we were sometimes diffident in each other’s company. It was odd that I should feel shy of these longed-for people. In truth, they were almost strangers. They had lived so long in my imagination that I couldn’t completely recognise them in reality. My father was concerned about money, getting a job and finding a house. I wanted to be the centre of their world, but their world was an uncertain one, money disappearing like sand through a sieve, there were my school fees to pay and a house to find; my father wrote off for countless jobs and never got an interview, rarely even a reply. There was an undercurrent of anxiety, even in the laughter we shared, and I’d hear my parents’ muffled discussions going on into the night, hushed and whispered, and I’d hear the worry in it. But in the morning I’d pretend I hadn’t heard their mutterings and that we were a normal, happy, English family living in our rented house in England – which we were really. We’d make plans about what we were going to do, not just for that day, but for the months ahead. Now it was the four of us together forever and ever.
