The Jam Fruit Tree

by Carl Muller

  So, as this chapter opens, we have a great many lives to consider—all first cousins and moving in an ever-widening circle of more cousins and aunts and uncles galore. Keeping track of them all is a formidable task, but rewarding, for this was, indeed, a brave new age.

  Education had spread throughout the island at breakneck speed. Now was a stupendous levelling. Big Catholic and Methodist institutions, Buddhist and Muslim colleges arose to spew forth the finest men and women of all races that the island ever knew. This was the age of scintillating literati who grew and matured in the finest British tradition. Big schools and colleges for boys and girls still stand, harking back to that golden age. In and around Colombo were St. Joseph’s College, St. Peter’s College, St. Thomas’ College, St. Benedict’s College, the Royal College (once the Royal Academy), Wesley College, Ananda College, Nalanda College, Zahira College, St. Mary’s College, St. John’s College, Ladies College, the Pembroke Academy, St. Bridget’s Convent, Holy Family Convents, Good Shepherd Convents, St. Clare’s Convent School, St. Lawrence’s School, Thurston College and so many, many more. Other beacons of education stood elsewhere: Trinity College, St. Anthony’s College and St. Sylvester’s as well as Kingwood College in Kandy: De Mazenod College in Kandana, St. John Bosco’s College and Technical Institute in Hatton, St. Xavier’s College in Nuwara Eliya, where another Good Shepherd Convent also operated; Our Lady of Victories Convent in Moratuwa; St. Aloysius College, Galle; St. Patrick’s College, Jaffna, the Sacred Heart Convent, Galle, ad infinitum. It would be impossible to list every school, academy and yes, university—two were instituted in Colombo and Peradeniya—that each contributed to fine-tuning students, sent them for further research and study in England and made them of unique bent and calling in a host of scholarly disciplines. The brightness sprang up everywhere. No longer, then, were the Burghers the ‘preferred’ lot. In the ranks of professionals were the Sinhalese, Tamils and Malays and Muslims as well and the competition for slices of the cake grew fierce. It became an unfamiliar world to the old-time Burgher parents. ‘My God, child,’ Leah would exclaim, ‘Our children nowadays learning things we never even heard of. So how to see what they are doing in the school?’ Carloboy would sit with a Latin Grammar and grin hugely and say aloud: ‘Faceo, Facere, Feci, Factum,’ and Beryl would stop stock-still on the way to the kitchen. ‘What is all that you are saying? Now learning all the filthy words at school and coming? You wait, I’ll tell your father when he comes home.’ Latin, for Beryl, was definitely not on.

  Elsie’s Noella was a little beauty. Long, black hair that waved naturally over her shoulders and quite classic features. Leah’s Marlene, with her shock of black curly hair and dancing eyes and rich, full lips was a power to be reckoned with. Even Iris’ Fortune, with her long lashes and high cheekbones was too attractive to be true. When she dimpled into a smile, she was totally devastating. Nobody in the family could tell how Terry’s Bubsygirl fared, for when Terry retired and returned home to settle in Bandarawela, he chose a remote spot on the Welimada road, far from town and, he hoped, from his brother Viva whom he declared was a fruitcake. Bubsygirl must have had her moments, for she found a Royal Air Force flight lieutenant named Gerry Cowan who said he loved her madly and that it was very good for his glands—he got under her skirts regularly. Opel’s Patricia, too, was pleasant enough, even if she had bow legs and spent all her time smoothing down the front of her dress so that her young breasts would be taken note of.

  For many years the families did not see much of each other. Sonnaboy left Kadugannawa, on transfer to Chilaw, where Diana Evelyn was born. Then, when stationed in Colombo, he rented a house in 34th Lane, Wellawatte. Beryl was pleased. This was more to her liking. She had never liked being too far away from Nimal Road; but was most upset when she learned that her mother had moved into her sister’s in Maradana and Elsie, of all people, had moved into her old home and had given birth to Dorcas Mathilda and Beulah Catherine and had become a downright dragon of a woman.

  Elsie’s three girls could never understand their mother’s perpetual tantrums and black moods. While Noella came out bouncy and beautiful, Dorcas was a thin, awkward child who had to wear spectacles early in life and who stuttered when she spoke and buried her head in her books. Beulah was positively plain and devoid of any feminime characteristics. She developed a hunch, walked with her elbows stuck out, wore dresses that would have looked better on a camel and adopted a forbidding expression which is a characteristic of many a wretched woman who knows full well that no man would attempt to probe even with the proverbial barge pole. She was also a simpleton, and Elsie marched into the Holy Family Convent one morning, inquired after Beulah’s progress and was told that while the child was growing fast and more awful with each passing day, was devoid of everyday Standard I intelligence.

  ‘You mean she is a damn fool,’ Elsie said.

  The teacher was shocked.

  ‘No, no. She understands what is said. But she cannot learn. No powers of retention. She knows her alphabet up to P only. And she can’t join in any class activities. Won’t sing or recite, can’t count to more than fifteen . . . and she beats the other children.’

  Elsie had heard enough. She took Beulah by the ear, hauled her out of the classroom and out of the school. Beulah squealed like a stuck pig, but there was no one to stop her being dragged home and slapped and pushed into the kitchen. ‘No more school,’ Elsie yapped, ‘Sit in the house and work!’

  Noella and Dorcas, on the other hand, were quite brilliant, and while Dorcas grew tall and gawky and looked quite stork-like with her long, unmuscled legs, Noella got by with long flashes of intelligence, clever fudging and her teachers always giving her top marks since they couldn’t be sure if the girl knew nothing or too much of any particular subject Then Elsie, after resorting to a new and most savage way of reducing Eric to tears, became pregnant again. Eric would moan softly, but the fiery pain actually made him hard and goaded him to display more initiative than he had ever shown before. Elsie discovered this in those cruel moments when she beat him. Lately, she had resorted to the cane. Her daughters would watch with large, fearful eyes.

  Elsie would leap up at the sound of the gate while Eric stepped in as though walking on eggshells. His face, like a trampled doughnut, would crease into an uncertain smile.

  ‘You brought the beef like I told?’

  Eric hung his head. ‘When I went, all finished.’

  ‘Finished? How to finish like that? All the beef markets in Borella and no beef? Here have no servants to go for beef. If went straight after work like I told, can easily buy. What, men, useless, no? If can’t even buy the beef. So where were you all this time, then?’

  Noella would edge out of the dining-room to the kitchen where Beulah was peeling onions. ‘You can hear?’ she would hiss, ‘Sure to give a whacking today.’

  Beulah would shudder. Dorcas, at the dining-table, would hunch over her school books and bite her lower lip.

  ‘So where the beef money?’ Elsie would grate.

  ‘Here, dear.’

  ‘This is two-fifty. I gave three rupees, no, for five pounds beef. Went and put an all-on, I suppose. If have horses running, enough for you. I must think of everything in the house. Small thing tell to do and that also say no beef and take fifty cents. Went to bucket shop first, that’s why got late to go to the market.’

  ‘But, my dear—’

  ‘Don’t you come to my dear me! Coming here to tell lies, in front of the children also. You wait, I’ll give you!’ and Elsie would take the long rattan cane from the top of the whatnot and Eric would give an alarmed squeak and run to the bedroom where Elsie would seize him and push his face into the bed and stripe him across the buttocks. Then, panting excitedly, she would slam shut the door and drag down his trousers and thrusting her hand between his thighs from behind, seize his testicles and tug at them while Eric screamed thinly. His saliva would wet the bed and Elsie would growl and tug and his back would burn where the cane had
bitten him and the wrencing agony of that fierce grip would make his penis grow hard and throb in great thrusting jerks.

  And that was how the seed that was Ian Stanford Eric was planted and the boy was born to be another Eric—a plodder without a will of his own, beaten into submission by his mother.

  Elsie bore two more girls—Thelma Marilyn and Caroline Daisy, and for Ian, the only boy, it was a threatening world where only Dorcas gave him a pitying look, Thelma scorned him, Caroline looked at him witheringly and Noella did not hide her contempt and looked at him as though he was far beneath her. Beulah, too, had scarce the time for him, so he would creep, mouse-like into Dunnyboy’s little room where the old man would pull him in by the hand and stroke his head and tell him that everything was all right. So Ian grew up a sad, befuddled boy. He liked to draw and was happiest with sketchbook and pencil and his line drawings were very, very good. But his young life held too many nightmares. Dunnyboy abused his body with impunity but there was no real pain in that . . . not the way his mother abused him; not the mind-pain his sisters gave him. And so he grew . . . and drew . . . and allowed Dunnyboy to do whatever he wished, and developed a stammer and a nervous tic under his left eye and the muscle of his left shoulder and withdrew into himself and masturbated incessantly. Even St. Peter’s College held no charms for Ian where he was bullied and caned by priests and considered a strange, ill-assorted boy with a sullenness that sat very deep.

  Cast in a happier mould Carloboy who was taken by Beryl to old Mrs Poulier’s small private school in Wellawatte. Two Pouliers, actually—the old lady who was fat and pink and wore long dresses with lots of lace and kept her grey hair in a net; and her spinster daughter who wore black stockings and court shoes, carried a parasol and looked quite severe in dresses of beige and charcoal. Poulier’s school was a Wellawatte landmark. Excellent grounding for the tiny tots who would stand around the old lady and recite nursery rhymes and ‘I’m a little teapot’ Carloboy was sent to the Lower Kindergarten with a ‘Radiant Way’ reader and was told to read, ‘Sing, mother, sing, mother can sing,’ which even at five years of age, was too, ‘childish’ for him. He had learnt many words and knew to read a lot more than the ‘Radiant Way’ could offer. For one thing, the tiny 34th Lane house in Wellawatte was full of Beryl’s Girl’s Own paperbacks; and those Girl’s Crystal illustrated strips which cost fifteen cents each and which Sonnaboy bought for her. The comic book form captivated Carloboy who was soon caught up with the Hollywood and American heroes of the time—Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, Tom Mix and Gabby Hayes. Those were the ‘cowboys’ of the time, along with such gaudy characters as Torch and Toro, the Submariner and Captain Marvel and later, the Lone Ranger. So, while Leah’s Marlene found her mother’s scrapbooks a heady fuel to inflame her love of language, Carloboy discovered the wonder of words with each beat-up copy of Marvel Comics, the exploits of Dick Tracy, the adventures of Rupert the Bear and the many battered books he begged for each time the bookman came to the door—Alice In Wonderland, Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan and the exploits of the warlord of Mars, the pirates of Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Conan Doyle’s marvellous tales of mystery. All this made Carloboy quite the dreamer. He found his sister, Diana, an infinite pain in the neck. She was as thin as a rail, sharp-featured, always ailing, and he disliked her. As a companion, Diana was most unsavoury. Beryl was blunt. She couldn’t abide Carloboy who, she told the neighbour, was a perfect little monster as a baby, but she loathed Diana, who she said was like a smelly crow. Ivy Ratnayake lived next door, and Ivy was, through some complicated process, a relation. Wasn’t Ivy’s uncle Dr Elmo da Brea? And hadn’t Beryl, at some time or another, seen this same Dr Elmo come to Nimal Road to be welcomed by her mother? If this Uncle Elmo was Ivy’s uncle as well, there had to be some hook-up.

  ‘Funny thing, no?’ she told Sonnaboy, That Ivy is my cousin or something.’

  ‘What do you mean or something?’ Sonnaboy would growl, ‘Not enough the relations we’re having?’

  ‘But she is a Todd, no? My mother is also Todd. And Uncle Elmo came there yesterday and you must see how she is going on because have a doctor in the family.’

  ‘Who the devil is Uncle Elmo?’

  ‘My uncle. Used to come to Nimal Road when we were living there. Anyway, I told to see about Diana.’

  Seeing about Diana was quite a family preoccupation. ‘Another Auntie Nellie,’ Sonnaboy had said gloomily when it was known that the girl had an unbreakable bed-wetting habit. In fact, Diana’s bed-wetting persisted well past her thirteenth year. She would rise each morning, reeking of urine and would howl the house down when driven into the bathroom to bathe. It didn’t help any when Carloboy stood outside the door and hissed: ‘Pisspot, you’re a pisspot!’

  At other times, too, he was quiet explicit. ‘Pooh,’ holding his nose. ‘Pippie smell near you,’ and Diana would bawl and run to Beryl who would swat her and drive her to the bathroom. Also, the family discovered, she had no stomach for travel. She was the only child, Beryl declared, who would vomit in a train. ‘Damn wretch is deliberately doing it,’ she would storm, ‘If go in a bus, vomiting; sending to school in a rickshaw, vomiting; so all right, rickshaw must be jerking and in bus even other children also get sick. But when in the train how to vomit? And just listen to the way she’s breathing, will you. Hoosh, hoosh, hoosh, hoosh, like something stuck in the drainage. Uncle Elmo said she is asthmatic or having esson ophelia or something. Never heard of such a thing. Will take now for blood tests and all.’

  Sonnaboy was not particularly interested. He had worked a train to Polgahawela and back, and cycled all the way from Dematagoda. He was tired. Yet, he had refused the offer of a railway bungalow in Mount Mary. The rent allowance did not cover the rent he was paying true, but he reasoned that by staying in private quarters, he was his own man and well out of the railway’s clutches.

  ‘For one thing, no bloody call boy to come and disturb,’ he said. It seemed that drivers and guards who lived in railway bungalows were ‘on call’ if the railway suddenly needed a driver or guard in an emergency. The call boy would come, bang at the gate at two a.m. and shout ‘Cooolle Boooy! In the house, who is?’

  Driver Samson’s wife, who had just left a tumbled bed to wash would say: ‘There, call boy is shouting. Get up and go and see.’

  Samson, who is dozing off, deliciously tired after the previous hour’s exertions, is not pleased. He goes to the hall window, hitching up his pajamas. ‘What the devil, men, shouting like this. To sleep even won’t allow.’

  ‘Cole Booy, sir. Told to tell you have to work five-twenty down.’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘Galle goods train, sir. Come to shed three o’clock.’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  The next-door bungalow lights come on. Driver Ben Godlieb is annoyed. ‘Don’t you buggers know the time?’ he yells.

  Samson spreads himself. He tells Godlieb to fuck off.

  Godlieb insists that people are entitled to some sleep at night and it was all very well for Samson to say whatever came to his brainless head, and if it were not for the iron-rail fence that divided their properties, he would dearly love to dismember Samson and scatter his limbs over Baseline Road.

  Samson listens interestedly and heaves a flower-pot at Godlieb.

  The call boy, meanwhile, is yawning hugely. These small hour missions to Mount Mary are most unpredictable. Why, only last night he had been scared out of his wits by something white and indeterminate that had flapped at him in the moonlight from the top of a fence. Daring all, he had cycled closer and lo, it was a pair of knickers! He had puckered his forehead and tried to imagine under what circumstances these ‘nona’s jungies’(ladies undies) could have found their way into the spiked rail of a fence. The wind could not have carried them off a clothes line for they had been carefully tied to the tip of the spike. Like a trophy of sorts. Pukka buggers these railway town people!

  In the opposite bungalow, guard ‘Tintack’ Mack tells his
wife: ‘Mabel, those buggers are shouting again.’

  ‘Who? That Samson?’

  ‘Who else? There . . . what was that?’

  ‘What, what?’

  ‘Glass-breaking sound. See, men, if rogues are trying to get inside.’

  Mabel covers her head. ‘So you go and see, will you.’

  Actually, that was Godlieb, who having received Samson’s flower-pot, had returned the compliment by heaving a potted begonia through Samson’s parlour window. More lights come on. More drivers and guards enter the fray. Samson’s wife screams at him from the upstairs balcony: ‘For God’s sake dress and go. This the time to break all the flower-pots?’

  So Samson clumps in, gets into regulation khaki overalls and goes to Galle, driving a line of goods wagons with a great deal of coupling and uncoupling and shunting boxes into sidings all along the way. Plenty of overtime on a job like this and that cheers him up marvellously.

  The next morning his wife drapes herself over the balcony and sings out to Godlieb’s wife: ‘Hullo, Prinsy, how?’

  Prinsy beams. ‘Your devil went to work?’

  ‘My God, yes. Come and take your begonia. Had to clean the mess in the hall.’

  Prinsy nods. ‘And your calladium all over the veranda, men. I’ll tell to come and put a board in your window.’

  ‘No, never mind. Can tell the buildings fellow to put a new glass. Your devil is still sleeping?’

  ‘What to sleep. There he is in the back garden, shouting at somebody. Working in the afternoon. Now won’t give peace the whole morning.’