Running in the Family Read Free Page B

who managed to persuade all those she met into chaos. It was Lalla who told us that the twenties were “so whimsical, so busy—that we were always tired.”

THE WAR BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

    Years later, when Lalla was almost a grandmother, she was standing in the rain at the Pettah market on her way to a party. Money was not so easily available and she did not own a car. When the bus arrived she herded herself in with the rest and, after ten minutes of standing in the aisle, found a seat where three could sit side by side. Eventually the man next to her put his arm behind her shoulder to give them all more room.
    Gradually she began to notice the shocked faces of the passengers facing her across the aisle. At first they looked disapprovingly and soon began whispering to each other. Lalla looked at the man next to her who had a smug smile on his face. He seemed to be enjoying himself. Then she looked down and saw that his hand had come over her left shoulder and was squeezing her breast. She smiled to herself.
    She had not felt a thing. Her left breast had been removed five years earlier and he was ardently fondling the sponge beneath her gown.

FLAMING YOUTH

    Francis de Saram had the most extreme case of alcoholism in my father’s generation and, always the quickest, was the first to drink himself into the grave. He was my father’s and Noel’s closest friend and the best man at several weddings he tried to spoil. Unambitious, and generous, he lost all his teeth young—something he could never remember doing. When he got into a fight he would remove his false teeth and put them in his back pocket. He was in love for a while with Lorna Piachaud and started fights all over her wedding reception. He even attacked his own wife and then, overcome with guilt, decided to drown himself in a section of the Kandy Lake that was only twelve inches deep. While he crawled around on his hands and knees, H— consoled Francis’ wife as well as he could “and took as much as he could get.” If Francis was the extreme alcoholic, H— was the great rake, his tumescent heart notorious all over Colombo.
    Francis and his friends discovered that the cheapest drinks could be found on ships, where alcohol was duty free. Pretending to visit departing relatives, they would board vessels in the harbour and stumble off gangplanks in the early hours of the morning. They were usually ordered out of the lounge when Noel, unable to play a single tune, started thrashing out one of his spontaneous concerts on the piano. Once, when asked to prove who they knew on board, my father opened the first cabin door and claimed a sleeping man as his friend. My father was wearing a tie from his “Cambridge” days and the sleeper, noticing this, groggily vouched for him. They coaxed the sleeper to the bar and my father managed to remember all the Cambridge names, recalling even the exploits of the notorious Sharron K—, who caused havoc with the population of three colleges.
    One night Mervyn came to our house and told Vernon, “We’re all going to Gasanawa, get dressed.” It was one in the morning. Vernon went off to find his clothes and returned to find Mervyn asleep in his bed. He couldn’t be moved. You see he just needed a place to sleep.
    Gasanawa was the rubber estate where Francis worked and it became the base for most of their parties. Twenty or thirty people would leap into their cars after a tennis tournament or during a boring evening and if the men were already drunk some of the women drove. They all poured out at Gasanawa where they slept in cabins that Francis had built for just such moments. Whenever he was sober, Francis tried to make the estate a perfect place for parties. He lived on gin, tonic-water, and canned meat. He was in the middle of building a tennis court when his boss ordered him to build a proper road into the estate. This took three yearsbecause Francis in his enthusiasm built it three times as wide as the main road in