Uhuru Street (4 page)

‘What’s up, eh Ali?’ I shouted after him, looking up from an assembly of cardboard box and wooden reels on the floor.

‘The young queen,’ he said, ‘she’s coming!’

He stopped, came back inside, pulled my hand and together we took off. But that was no way to beat the crowd running with us, and soon I was on his shoulders, bumping along and towering over
the others. We ran on main roads and along side streets, all the while following the crowd ahead of us as they took first this turn and then the other. Men and women came out of houses and stores, shielding their eyes from the sun, gazing towards a mass of people now converging from many directions. Some looked up at the sky and pointed. Finally we stopped where a huge crowd had gathered around the war memorial, the elevated bronze statue thrusting a bayonet at some unseen enemy.

‘There it is – the bird,’ said Ali, pointing up. And there it was, like a locust buzzing in the air – the helicopter from which the princess had landed. For some, as for Ali, this was the only sight they had of the royal presence.

Sitting on Ali’s shoulder and looking over the black, fuzzy heads of the mass of people, all straining their eyes and craning their necks, I saw the princess waving a white-gloved hand. Her dress was white and her wide-brimmed hat was also white. A figure of such grace and poise, as if an angel had descended from the sky. And beside her, in his tasselled black and gold ceremonials, the Governor, Sir Philip Morrisson – a name whose each syllable we had learnt to pronounce with mystical awe.

Much as I liked Ali, and despite our special relationship, it was I who proved my elders right and caused Ali to leave us. There
was
something else for him in our home.

Every afternoon, at about three o’clock, Ali would leave the store and go upstairs to the flat to make tea and bring it down in a thermos. Mother was practically addicted to tea, which she required in regular doses. Without it her headache would creep up on her, paralysing her and causing the rest of us much anxiety. But Ali never had to be told – the tea was there when she needed it. It was one more reason that made him so special.

One afternoon Mother ordered me to go up after Ali to remind him to make an extra cup for my aunt who would be visiting. Grumbling, I went upstairs as I’d been told. When I reached the
landing the door was open. This was normal, of course – Mehroon was inside, and a girl did not lock herself up with a man, let alone a servant. But as I walked in, a strange and at first comical sight met my eyes, the meaning of which took me a while to realise.

Ali stood perched somewhat precariously on the large wooden dining table which he had moved. He was leaning against the top of the bathroom door and, face pressed against the metal bars, was looking down through the ventilator window above it at my sister Mehroon taking her afternoon bath. Upon hearing me, he started, looked at me, and jumped lightly down on the floor.

‘I shall marry her,’ he said, as if confidingly, and moved the heavy table back.

Ali was dismissed immediately, and Mother went without her tea that day. I never saw him again. Perhaps he went back to his farm, but more likely he found better employment elsewhere, possibly even with a European family. He was followed by Elias, more sombre, solid, who was not as good, but who stayed longer.

The Jiwanis moved away to better times and places, all ten of them, and the four Pereras moved into the flat across the street. They brought to the place an air of gloom and depression such as it had not seen before. Soon afterwards Mrs Daya their neighbour reported to Mother: ‘They come with a secret to hide.’

Each morning Mrs Daya descended on the street from the second floor, and did her rounds of the stores, while waiting for the fruit and vegetable sellers to arrive. She brought the freshest news and gossip. But the Pereras were Goans and their affairs of little interest to the rest of us. They would have passed through the neighbourhood without much notice, but for Alzira.

She walked into the store late one afternoon – school over and the family noisily crowding the customer space – holding a piece of printed material with a gleaming, threaded needle sticking out from it. With the other hand she moved aside a clutch of belts hanging from the doorway. A tall ambling girl with a large mouth and short, straight hair, her long faded dress hanging loosely on her. She was grinning, a little shyly.

‘How are you, Mama?’ she said. ‘I live across the street, over there, and I sew ladies’ clothes. I charge ten shillings for a dress, but for the first one I will charge seven. When you have something, let me know.’

Mother looked at her from behind the counter and the rest of us continued to stare at her.

‘I do all the modern styles,’ Alzira told her, with a glance at my sisters. ‘Look …’

She had two pattern books under the material and Mother’s interest was caught. She took the books and flipped a few pages expertly until her eyes fell on a design.

‘Look,’ she said to my sisters, ‘the pina. Just like the one that European girl was wearing.’ Any European woman who chanced by on our street was the subject of Mother’s deepest scrutiny, as she watched out for new patterns.

Mehroon and Razia jumped up from their seats and went to look over Mother’s shoulders, while Alzira looked around the store. She checked the babies’ bonnets hanging in a bunch, made by my grandmother, then the knickers, and the dresses on the rack.

‘How would it look,’ Mother asked, her finger on the pattern, ‘if this line of buttons was removed, and instead you put a bow here – a chocolate-coloured bow?’

‘Not bad, Mama. I’ve used a lace before, but a bow would look as good. Yes!’

With this piece of tact she won a place to sit. Aloo and I were asked to disappear – to play outside or study upstairs – and Alzira sat down on the vacated bench, throwing a sly grin of sympathy at us as we went out.

It became her regular place, this bench, in the late afternoons. Sitting, legs crossed and hunched over some material, needling away, chatting with Mother, or gossiping with Mehroon and Razia when they were back from school. Alzira’s afternoon news – unlike Mrs Daya’s morning bulletin – merely supplied merriment.

We learnt that Baby, who lived in the low tin-roofed house across the street, had been ordered by her husband to touch her toes one hundred times before dinner. Poor Baby couldn’t even see her toes standing up. Alzira had simply listened in to the passionate quarrel taking place downstairs from her window. Next
we received confirmation of what had long been suspected. That Roshan Mattress, who owned the third store from ours, entertained a Punjabi police inspector as lover. He came around ten o’clock in the morning pretending to look for stolen goods. The two would disappear into the shadowy interior of the store, ostensibly searching piles of mattresses and diligently prodding stacks of stuffing as they inched their way behind them. They emerged noticeably chipper, ordering tea and snacks. The inspector would leave brushing lint from his uniform and swinging his baton.

Alzira cheered us up. Her company was a boon to Mother, and she made the girls blush and giggle. Only as the afternoon drew to a close, after a cup of tea from the thermos that stood by Mother’s feet, or having been treated to bhajias from Khatibai’s Saidi who came around on a bicycle, would she gather up her things and take her leave.

What we learnt of her own family we also found out through gossip and observation. Her father was a retired civil servant, a big morose man, flushed and balding, whom we usually saw in khaki shorts and hanging shirt tails. Except on Sundays he rarely ventured out for long, going only for a paper or, it was rumoured, a bottle. The mother was a thin sickly creature, prematurely old and with dark uneven teeth, who came out on even rarer occasions. Alzira had a brother and sister, both younger and educated. Pius worked in customs at the harbour, and Maria – small, dark, vivacious – was a secretary with a law firm. They were regulars at the Goan Institute, these two, where jazz trumpets blared on Saturday nights and boys with Elvis hairstyles and girls in cancans did the rock ‘n’ roll. On Sundays Alzira walked to church with her mother and father, curbing her naturally long strides to allow them to keep pace. Maria usually got a ride, and Pius went off with some friend on his scooter.

I dreaded being sent to Alzira on errands. Her mother invariably answered the door, her black teeth and bad mood giving her
the look of a snarling witch. Motioning me to wait she would go back in, while I stood outside in the littered landing for her daughter to come and see to me.

A long and dark passageway led inside, into whose mysteries I could not see and was not let in to see. But I discovered my own access: our second-storey window looked down into their three rooms facing the street. And sometimes, with nothing else to occupy me I would be drawn to that window. I looked on, unashamedly, observing the uneventful workings of that other home; long minutes of staring deep into that gloom, temple pressed against the cool metal bars. Scene after scene of silent, meaningless activity, as if carried out by phantoms. Lights on in one room; a newspaper fetched, a dress material picked up from a chair; lights off, then on in the next room; someone reading, someone sewing, someone drinking long from a glass. Rarely more than a person in a room, rarely a scene of hilarity or mirth. Sometimes the lights never turned on, and the grey evening shadows were engulfed by the black night without a protest.

The news of Maria’s engagement passed like a ripple through the neighbourhood. For the brief period of a few days it went around, was marvelled at and commented upon and then allowed to pass, pending developments. Maria was not liked very much for her high and mighty (it was thought) ways and the news while it lasted was a cause for envious backbiting.

We learnt from Alzira that Maria had gone to visit an aunt in Kericho in Kenya, where she met the man she got engaged to; and (from Mrs Daya) that the aunt had made several prior phone calls and the engagement had all the appearance of being ‘arranged.’ Mrs Daya had the only telephone in their building. Maria’s fiancé (or ‘lover’ as he came to be called) was the only son of a rich family, and it was this that was the cause of all the excitement and envy. He lived with his mother and sister on a European tea estate that
he managed. What he offered was nothing less than a release for Maria – a release from drab surroundings into the high and good life of garden parties, travels abroad and chauffeur-driven trips to Nairobi.

While the news was still fresh Maria herself arrived – the triumphant queen returned – not too unwilling to show herself more now while she waited and shopped for the big day. An announcement duly appeared in the
Sunday Standard
, accompanied by a picture of the couple. Maria had all the luck it seemed.

It was then that Mother came out with her advice to Alzira and told her not to take things too lightly.

‘You should also get married,’ she pronounced one afternoon.

Alzira deftly snapped the sewing thread from the material on her lap and smiled, retying the loose end.

‘I’m in no hurry Mama …’ she said, ‘I will bide my time. I don’t want to marry any old person and regret it for the rest of my days!’

‘Don’t be too choosy. It will be too late then. There is nothing like having a man of your own, I tell you. Even if he be one-eyed or lame – a man is a man.’ She nodded knowingly. ‘Without a man you’ll be nothing. Haven’t you had any good offers?’

Alzira grinned in embarrassment, finally looking up from her sewing. All eyes were on her.

‘There must have been
some
,’ said Razia. ‘Tell us about them … Come on, tell us! Please!’

Razia and Mehroon had reached fifteen and sixteen, and marriage and boyfriends had become subjects of keen interest. Only recently a young man had started spending time at our store, treating everyone to Coke and roasted mhogo and being a lot of fun – until Mother found out that he’d been boasting about his exploits with Mehroon that he had obviously made up. He was told, with much loss of face on his part, that her daughters were not ready for marriage yet and he never showed up again.

‘Well, there was this teacher …’ Alzira began.

‘Who?’ said several voices at once. All the teachers in town were known.

‘John Fernandes …’

‘Fahndo? What are you saying! Really?
Mr
Fernandes?’

Mr Fernandes, or ‘Fahndo’, taught history at the boys’ school and had a reputation for his arrogance. He rode a scooter, spoke good English, and was turned out rather smartly. He also knew his subject which was not always true of our teachers, especially those who came from India and Pakistan. The thought of Alzira saddled behind Fahndo, holding him by the waist, was on several minds at once. She was a head taller than he.

‘Did he give you rides?’ asked Razia.

‘Yes, several times!’

‘Then what happened?’

‘His family thought I was too tall – and not educated enough.’

‘How stupid!’ said Mehroon. ‘If he thinks himself so educated and modern, why does he stop to listen to them?’