Black British Read Free

India.”
    In the national upheaval and chaos that invariably follows the demise of a great power, some of the local people found interesting ways to convey this message to us so that we lived with ever-present threats to our personal safety. That made us prisoners in our own home: willing prisoners, but prisoners nevertheless, isolated from people around us and marked as different. With dwindling fortunes our lives were a portrait in sepia, little more than witness to an iridescent past.

CHAPTER 2
    IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE
    â€œLook at this ! This is our house. Our house.” Lorraine pointed to a picture in the Mother Goose book she was reading. Lily and I duly peered at the black-and-white sketch and saw a building of bizarre angles and planes and shadowy shapes and shadows. We nodded our heads because Lorraine knew everything. She was eight years old.
    The home we inherited was massive and strong and accepted everything thrown its way, from the vicissitudes of weather to the oddities of my family. It had started life as four central rooms with external walls three bricks thick to withstand cannon fire and provide insulation against the great heat of summer. The ceilings soared up to the high heavens, providing ample room for spacious thoughts to flourish and many preposterous arguments to grow and expand. Surrounding these rooms was a wrap-around verandah and in front, a high porch supported by eight 5-metre rusticated columns.
    Over the years, successive generations of my family sought to compensate for the enduring inconsequence of their own existence, by leaving what they assumed was an indelible mark on history. They repeatedly modified the ancestral place, so periodically parts of the verandah were imprisoned, and a generation later, released.
    More rooms were added higgledy-piggledy. Standard dimensions were for other people. My ancestral home insisted on living outside the rules. Ceiling heights followed personal whims so the roofline was a convoluted series of lumps and bumps. Doorways had been bricked up at random, storage cupboards were in odd places and to communicate between adjacent rooms my sisters and I became proficient in our own version of Morse code. My childhood home was a labyrinth of dark, mysterious corridors that led nowhere and staircases that opened on small poky cupboards stuffed to bursting with all sorts of exciting, ancient unknowns.
    If I stand on tiptoes I thought, I’ll be able to reach the door handle. Then I’ll know what’s in the cupboard. The loud crash accompanied by my screams, more of fright than pain, brought my mother, who found me submerged beneath the paraphernalia of earlier generations.
    â€œThat’ll teach you to go poking your nose where it’s not wanted.” Her lack of sympathy soon taught me which door I could open with impunity and when it was advisable to hop out of the way as a grateful closet disgorged its excess baggage and, with multiple creaks of relief, settled back to enjoy its original girth.
    There were an inordinate number of hiding places – useful hiding places.
    â€œIt’s bad manners to eavesdrop,” reproved my mother, but since she looked down from a great height it was easy to ensure she spoke only to the top of my head. I knew it was rude to secretly listen to other people’s conversations, but what option did I have? There was no other way to learn those delicious, adult secrets.
    The rooms we lived in were so large we had to shout to be heard from one end to the other.
    â€œCake,” shrieked Lily one day as she raced from the pantry room, beside herself at an unexpected treat. “Come quickly! There’s cake for afternoon tea.”
    â€œ Snake ,” I heard from my allocated seat at the dining table almost three metres away. Jumping up onto my chair I set up a wail designed to capture adult attention.
    â€œDon’t make so much noise,” my mother admonished. “Do you want