by Carl Muller
‘Mama,’ said Beryl, ‘Why you are crying? People in the lane saying all sorts of things.’
‘Never mind them. See, all this Sonnaboy writing. And I think when I read some he must be really loving my Buiya, no? And even Saint Anthony telling me that you must be old enough. So if you want to marry him you tell now and we will arrange.’
Mother and daughter looked at each other and there was a long silence . . . except, of course, in Florrie’s heaven, where Saint Anthony must have been laughing his head off!
Everything else happened at hectic pace. Sonnaboy, calling the next morning, was informed of Florrie’s consent. He had his transfer and, if he married, a bungalow to call his own in Kadugannawa. So he was rushed, very rushed, but he still found the time to waylay Iris and give her such a slap that old Simmons actually wrote a song about it and it became a party hit. Totoboy, rising to protest, was duly smitten and went to work with a belladonna plaster on the right side of his face. He got no sympathy from his fiancee. ‘Your face? What about my face? For one week it benumbed and can’t even eat.’ She told Totoboy that they either get married right away and move out of range of his lunatic brother or he was never to look her in the eye again.
So Totoboy went, quite inebriated, to the altar and Sonnaboy scowled and said she already had enough wedding presents from him (referring, of course, to Iris’ share of the loot) and Totoboy embraced him and said, ‘That’s all right and let bygones be bygones,’ and drove away for a liquor-laden honeymoon singing ‘Show me the way to go home’, at the top of his voice.
Sonnaboy and Beryl planned an end-November wedding. They did not reckon on the obduracy of Father Romiel of St. Mary’s, Dehiwela, and Father Robert of St. Mary’s Bambalapitiya. The Werkmeister affair had been noised abroad and old Werkmeister was determined to haul Sonnaboy into courts. Attorney-at-law Bumpy Juriansz had opined that this was an open-and-shut breach of promise. The priests began to shilly at Dehiwela and shally at Bambalapitiya. Florrie stared accusingly at her intended son-in-low. ‘Never said, no? about this other girl thing?’
So Sonnaboy went to All Saints Church, Borella and when Eustace and Merril Werkmeister got wind of the wedding, they rounded up a gang of Sinhalese thugs from Kawdana and went to the church. It was the 26th of November. Father Bernard Coelho was startled to find his church doors guarded by burly railway men, each wielding a heavy stick. The bride arrived with her mother, brothers and sisters to be surrounded by Kawdana roughnecks who suddenly raised their sarongs and fled as the railway moved in with well-directed cudgels. So Sonnaboy and Beryl were married behind closed doors and emerged into the sunshine to find Eustace and Merril at the gates mouthing obscenities and making threatening gestures. Sonnaboy needed no bidding. He had, he roared, had enough; and married life began in spectacular fashion as the bridegroom fared forth to give the Werkmeister brothers the drubbing of their young lives. Never had such a crowd gathered outside All Saints. It was reported that even the guards from the nearby Welikada prison trotted up to watch the fun. With his wedding suit in tatters, Sonnaboy continued to pound the Werkmeisters to a pulp-like consistency, all the while hampered by people who tried to drag him away and drape his head with ribbon and bits of bouquet. It was a glorious morning. Having tipped both brothers into the roadside storm drain, he dusted his suit, sucked at his knuckles and grinned hugely.
At the Nimal Road residence, Beryl dabbed iodine on his bruises while guests ate and drank hugely, and Cecilprins rose to wish them all happiness, and Florrie kissed Beryl, and Elva cried and Bertie, uncommonly drunk said, ‘Just a moment, I have a small score to settle.’ And hadn’t Sonnaboy threatened his Elva and wasn’t an apology in order? Sonnaboy smiled and said yes, he had threatened Elva but that was all over and Bertie was welcome to his sister-in-law. Bertie said it was a matter of principle. ‘I demand ana ‘pology. Elvash going—going to marry me. Nobody can threaten her, d’yer hear?’ So Sonnaboy nodded and went up to Bertie and poked a large fist into the man’s eye and the poor idiot fell back into his chair, rocked over and went to the floor with a crack and lay there until dragged away to a bed where his puffed and purpling eye was covered with a slice of raw meat. Florrie laughed herself into stitches, cackling, ‘Come and look, will you, mutton face with beef in the eye,’ and everybody gathered to look and drink a toast to Bertie.
Totoboy, as expected, struck form quickly and went into one of his music hall routines:
Mama’s gone dancing, baby don’t you cry,
Mama’s down at the Savoy—oh boy!
Mama’s gone dancing, baby don’t you cry.
Mama’s gone and Papa
Wouldn’t ever dare to stop ‘er . . .
He sat on the floor with an old doll of Beryl’s and pretended to rock the baby while he sang and in the merriment, Elsie with a big stomach and Leah and Anna, still showing no signs of pregnancy, were telling a fascinated Beryl about this brother of theirs she had had the misfortune to marry; and Elva sat stony-faced and Iris drank her seventh whiskey and smiled a benediction on everybody although she had reached the stage where she had to close one eye to bring a face into focus. Even Dunnyboy found the revels to his liking for he mooched over to the kitchen and was able to corner Soma in a corner between kitchen and garage where it was an instant’s work to raise the woman’s cloth to her hips and perform in his singularly deft manner while Soma urged him to ‘quickly finish before somebody comes’ and then asked for a rupee which he said he did not have. Soma was disappointed. She decided that there was no use in allowing these gentlemen to get between her thighs. In future she would adopt a more mercenary attitude, like payment in advance.
So Sonnaboy and Beryl went away to a hill-station called Brookside, off Bandarawela with second-class railway warrants courtesy of the Ceylon Government Railway and Cecilprins warned that if he met Viva, ‘Don’t go to hammer.’ Beryl found that the sleeping berth on the night mail to Badulla was a most uncomfortable marriage bed. She had thought that her husband would operate along the lines of that old man in Lauries Lane who used to fondle her and give her sweets and small coin. This was a rampage. Crammed, stark naked into the narrow berth with the thrumming of the train and the whistle of the engine piercing the night, she was penetrated with scant ceremony and bit her lip in pain as a huge shaft seemed to drive in and out and the weight of her husband made her gasp and want to cry halt. The pain stayed and throbbed even when he spent himself and lay over her and stroked her hair and did not see, in the faint light, the tear that trickled down her face. Bending his head and climbing out of the lower berth, he stood, penis streaked with her blood and said, ‘You want to clean?’ and dumbly watched as he wet a cloth in the tiny washbasin and wiped her vagina and rubbed at the blood on the boiled cloth sheet. ‘It’s paining, anney,’ she whispered and he bent to kiss her and squeeze her small breasts and say, ‘That’s the way first time. Have to break, no? And your hole also small. Thought I couldn’t put right in. See, have blood on my hair, also. I’ll wash and come.’
Beryl was trying to rise when he came out of the toilet and he was erect and he pushed her down and took her again and this time she put her arms around him and opened wide and it was long and slow and she felt the excruciating tickle of his public hair on her clitoris and she began to arch her back as he rode her. Then there was no more pain and only wave upon wave of sensation that stormed through her and she shuddered in earthy ecstacy. She had never known anything like this before. And so they lay and loved as the train climbed and raped each tunnel on its way into the mountains and Sonnaboy later said that no train in no railway on earth could boast of such a bout of lovemaking. They finally pulled apart when the berth attendant tapped and said, ‘Tea or coffee, sir,’ and realised that their station was not far up the line. Shivering in the mountain cold, they dressed and Sonnaboy changed the stained lower bunk sheet for the upper and both slipped into warm coats and readied their luggage. ‘Only four days we have,’ he said, nuzzling her, and she giggled and said
, ‘I’m Mrs von Bloss now,’ and he pulled her on his lap and stroked her breasts and said, ‘You like to fuck, no? About twelve times I think we did last night. How the feeling?’ Beryl blushed like a ripe apple. If this was being married, she thought, why, play on. She buried her face in his shoulder and held him tight and he thought that all the birds in Heaven were in full-throated song. Who would have dared to tell him that when he was fifty, she would be thirty . . . and then the shame and the heartaches would begin . . . .
Part Three
Bearing Fruit
Elsie brought a girl into the world, and Eric was pleased. He would look at the pink bundle and say: ‘I did that?’ until Elsie scowled and told him to go to the devil. Eric never thought he could do it, having been quite clueless about the matter. It had been a problem, this business of procreation. Elsie finally took charge and practically drilled the poor fellow in matters of procedure. ‘Keep moving, you fool,’ she would blare, ‘If want to have baby you think you can just put in and keep? Everything I have to tell?’ So, with Elsie barking the orders like some physical training instructor, he would juggle and joggle and succeeded in impregnating her despite his awe at her fat outspread thighs and a vagina that seemed to threaten him.
Poor Eric lived in fear of Elsie all his life. She even decided when he should sleep with her. ‘Because I know you men want that I’m allowing,’ she would say sternly, ‘You think this is fun for me?’ And she never admitted to an orgasm. Many years and many children later she told Anna: ‘That Eric useless, men. After so long, still don’t know to do properly. Everything have to tell. Only thinking of race paper and putting doubles and trebles. What for, I don’t know, got married to him. Even after I grab by the bum and shout and make to go up and down, he crying and saying can I get up now. If don’t put a clout nothing will he do.’ A strange relationship, to be sure. The fact is that Elsie, after marriage, discovered her true self. She was a sadist. Bashing Eric was her way of masturbating.
Eric never realised how much satisfaction his wife derived in ill-treating him. He took her slaps, her buffets, her viciousness in bed as an outpouring of love and she in turn experienced deep sexual pleasure in watching him squirm. Each time she beat him she would begin to breathe hard and then cross her legs very tight and bend and stretch until the paroxysm came and passed. She would then release him and rush to the bathroom to squat and slap water between her legs.
Nevertheless, here was Noella, the first of a new generation. The baby was hailed by Cecilprins as the wonder of the age and he insisted on all the family being present for the christening and a grand party. ‘Now I’m grandfather, no?’ he said to everybody in Boteju Lane. ‘And now my other children all uncles and aunties also.’
The baby had, in truth, a surfeit of uncles and aunts and while on this subject the chronicler feels that it might be a revelation of sorts to detail the manner in which the family kept branching out. Like one of those hardy, unstoppable jam fruit trees!
A. CECILPRINS HANS VON BLOSS of Kotahena married MAUDIEGIRL ESTHER KIMBALL of Colombo
They produced:
DUNNYBOY PRINS who did not marry which was considered a great mercy.
ELSIE MAUD who married ERIC HENRY son of HENRY WORTHINGTON DE MELLO and AGATHA JOSEPHINE DE WITT.
ANNA CONSTANCE who married DIONYSIUS RICHARD, son of DIONYSIUS RATNAYAKE COLONTOTA and SISILIANA GODAMUNARALAGE SEETIN AKKA.
TERRY ANDERS who married BERTHA ROSE, daughter of ANTHONY WILHELM McHEYZER and CLAUDIA RUTH VANCUYLENBERG.
VIVA RICHARDSON BONIFACE who married OPEL SARAH, illegitimate daughter of JAMES WITHERSPOON LUDWICK and MISSIENONA MORAES.
TOTOBOY DAVIDSON BRENNAN who married IRIS ELIZABETH, daughter of GEORGE GREGORY HOLDENBOTTLE and MAVIS JOHANNA FRUGHTNEIT (or so it said in the birth certificate which did not explain how Iris became so black).
MARLA MONIQUE who left home and no record of her subsequent movements exist.
RUTHIE RAMONA who eloped with ANTHONY FERNANDEZ, a Goanese cook who served in the Royal Navy.
PATTY FRANCISCUS who died early.
FRITZY STANISLAUS who also died.
LEAH BERNADETTE who married GEORGE GLADSTONE, son of MAXWORTH DE MELLO and MATHILDA HONORIA MUSPRATT.
VINTO GRATIEN PRINS who died early.
SONNABOY DUNCAN CLARENCE who married BERYL HYACINTH, daughter of CLARENCE FENNIMORE DA BREA and FLORRIE MARIA TODD.
With this point of reference, as it were, the number of relatives Elsie’s daughter was inflicted with was legion. And what of the goodly ranks of in-laws and those on the ‘mother’s side’ and ‘father’s side’? Indeed, any Burgher celebration always saw the strangest claims to those ties that bind. Perfect strangers would roll up and say: ‘Why, men, I am Ivy’s third cousin, no? Kelaniya Mullers, men. What? You never knew? And this is my cousin Eardley. He also connected. His sister marry your uncle Bunno’s cousin on mother’s side. So how about a drink?’ To continue . . .
B. HENRY WORTHINGTON DE MELLO of Chilaw married AGATHA JOSEPHINE DE WITT of Mutwal.
They produced:
MADELINE ROSE who became a nun.
PARKER RUDOLFUS who married MARY VIOLET, daughter of TENNYSON PHOEBUS and MARION DELICA VANDERWERT.
ERIC HENRY who married ELSIE MAUD, daughter of CECILPRINS HANS VON BLOSS and MAUDIEGIRL ESTHER KIMBALL.
C. DIONYSIUS RATNAYAKE COLONTOTA of Gampaha married SISILIANA GODAMUNARALAGE SEETIN AKKA of Gangodawila.
They produced:
DIONYSIUS RATNAYAKE SOLOMON who went to Moneragala to view a prospective wife and never came back.
DIONYSIUS RICHARD who married ANNA CONSTANCE, daughter of CECILPRINS HANS VON BLOSS and MAUDIEGIRL ESTHER KIMBALL.
SUMAMA RATNAYAKE who married BARKIS SINGHO POLONWITA who was not really certain who his parents were.
D. ANTHONY WILHELM McHEYZER of Colombo married CLAUDIA RUTH VANCUYLENBERG of Mount Lavinia.
They produced:
JOHN BLOOMFIELD who married CARMEL MARIA, daughter of DICKYBOY GONSAL and PETUNIA BAKELMAN and was cut off without a penny!
MORRIS DENVER who married NAOMI JANE, daughter of ALEX VANDERSTRAATEN and ZOE CAROLINE PRINGLE.
BERTHA ROSE who married TERRY ANDERS, son of CECILPRINS VON BLOSS and MAUDIEGIRL ESTHER KIMBALL.
MARTHA PATRICIA who married Captain JOHN DERRICK, son of Regimental Sergeant Major MAXWELL WALES MARTENSZ and YVETTE GWENDOLINE OHLMUS.
KENNETH PICKERING who married THOMASINA HARRIET daughter of GEOFFERY ‘BUNTY’ SPITTEL and JEAN OLIVIA MARS.
ADRIAN WAVELL who married MELANIE MARGARET daughter of JOHN SPENSER BARTHOLOMEUSZ and CLARICE BUBSY FERREIRA.
E. JAMES WITHERSPOON LUDWICK of Bambalapitiya took to bed MISSIE NONA MORAES of Bambalapitiya.
This illicit union resulted in:
OPEL SARAH who married VIVA RICHARDSON BONIFACE, son of CECILPRINS HANS VON BLOSS and MAUDIEGIRL ESTHER KIMBALL.
Missie Nona Moraes is reported to have taken off when Opel was five, having told Ludwick that ‘it not good to having bastards and if not going to get married I going to live with my people in Chekku Street.’ She kept her word. Papa Ludwick, much shattered, took his woes to a bunch of itinerant Pentecostalists who tracked down Missie and persuaded her to come back whereupon, in celebration, Ludwick promptly made her pregnant. Missie was distraught. She told her sorrows to the vegetable woman who recommended papaya milk and gin for an early abortion. So Missie collected the milk of the papaya tree—half a tumbler, mind—topped it with Rawlings gin and sent the concoction down the hatch. What happened inside her could best be described in hushed tones by an obstetrician. She was carried out of the house, stiff as a board, haemorrhaging madly and shuffled off the mortal coil in the small hours.
F. GEORGE GREGORY HOLDENBOTTLE of Dehiwela married MAVIS JOANNA FRUGHTNEIT of Dehiwela.
They produced:
SAM DUNSTAN who died.
ROLLO SYLVESTER who ran away with the girl who came with the dhoby woman. Further details are shrouded in m
ystery.
ERIC WINSTON who married ANNIEGIRL EMILY, daughter of WINSTON BAAS, a Sinhalese carpenter, and MENIKE. (Or so it is claimed although there is little evidence to indicate that any form of marriage took place).
IRIS ELIZABETH married TOTOBOY DAVIDSON BRENNAN, son of CECILPRINS HANSVON BLOSS and MAUDIEGIRL ESTHER KIMBALL.
MARVIN PUTHA—raised and reared in Borupane, Ratmalana by DAISY AKKA, a woman of easy virtue who swore that George Gregory Holdenbottle was the boy’s father. The fact that she received eight rupees a month from George lent credence to her claims.
BARDO BABY—mothered by MATTIE NONA of Kollupitiya in a hovel at the bottom of Station Lane until he was brought to the Holdenbottle residence one day by an irate Mattie Nona who insisted that she could not bring up George’s son on love and fresh air and insisted that Bardo Baby be cared for by the father. It is recorded that Mrs Mavis Holdenbottle beat her husband senseless that day and had to be locked up until she was in a better frame of mind.
G. MAXWORTH DE MELLO of Kandana married MATHILDA HONORIA MUSPRATT of Ragama.
BARBARA FIONA who married ‘JUNIOR’ JIMBO son of JIMBO HOLSINGER and LAURA MAY LEEMBRUGGEN.
MARTIN EXCALIBUR married DULCIE, daughter of THOMAS WENTWORTH DAVIDSON and DUCKYGIRL THOMASZ.
DOLORES married MARLO MEREDITH, son of JOSEPH MORGAN JACKSON and MAVIS PRISCILLA VAN TWEST.
