to have a fantastic Christmas together. I wish Mike could have been as easy as this with the boys.
I lie listening to the noisy air-conditioning. It sounds like the roar of the surf in a storm, a sound so familiar it lulls me to sleep in seconds.
Cornwall, 1967
Maman rarely talked about her childhood. If Dominique and I asked questions she would evade them. If we persisted, her face would close and she would walk away from us and remain distant for the rest of the day.
It was as if her life started from the time she met Papa. We heard that story enough times. Dominique especially loved it because she featured in it.
Papa, moored in a Brittany harbour on his father’s fishing boat, caught sight of a lovely woman and a pretty little girl dancing at a festival.
‘Love at first sight!’ Papa declared; for both Marianne and Dominique, aged three.
The rest is history. Well, not quite. He could not carry them both home to Cornwall in a fishing boat. Women were not allowed on the boats in those days and in any case Maman took some persuading. She was wary of men and did not want to leave France. But of course, Maman was never going to lose her handsome Cornishman. When she came over to visit Papa she realized that living in Cornwall would not be very different from living in Brittany.
Maman was connected to the earth in a very French way. Gardening mainly meant food and I loved watching her grow a huge array of fruit and vegetables in the kitchen garden. Papa dug out a small allotment for her out of the corner of the small field behind the orchard.
She planted sweet peas and flowers between the fruit and veg and she fed half the village. When she got chickens Dominique and I hastily gave them all names so that she could not cook and eat them. Tilly, Misty, Hetti, Susan, Agnes …
Maman capitulated and grew to love all her chickens. She would pick them up and stroke them like cats. She cried as hard as the rest of us when the fox did his worst, which he often did.
Neither Maman nor our aunt Laura ever talked about their childhood or our grandparents. It was a mystery, a closed book. Aunt Laura once told Dominique and me that it was the kind of childhood you left behind as soon as you could and tried never to revisit.
Maman was an enigma. She loved to help people yet there was a core of steeliness in her that sometimes shocked. I hoped that when she grew old she would tell me about her childhood, about my grandparents, but she never did. Her paternal grandmother had been Moroccan but we only knew this from Aunt Laura.
She was also unforthcoming about her life before she met Papa. As Dom grew older she was naturally curious about her biological father. She wanted to know how she came to be born. Maman was unnecessarily truthful and evasive at the same time. She always said the same thing: Dominique’s father had just been someone she had gone out with a few times. He was a student. She knew little about him. He had disappeared before she even knew she was pregnant. She was sorry, but there was nothing more she could tell Dominique about him.
How old was he? What was he studying? Was he good looking? Was he nice? What had they talked about? Dominique would not let it go. Was she like him? Had Maman got a photo of him?
The stories our parents tell us of our birth root us in family life. How hard would it have been for Maman to make up a little comforting fairy story for Dominique? But she never did. As I got older, I realized there must have been shame and trauma attached. Maman simply could not bear to talk about him.
If Dominique appealed to Papa for more information he would look uncomfortable. He was loyal to Maman and, I think, embarrassed about how little he knew of her life before he met her. Maman must have told him something about Dominique’s father before she married him, but Papa was never going to talk to us behind her back.
He would beg Dominique and me not to upset Maman, to respect her wishes and her right not to talk about her past.
‘Don’t I have a right to know who my own father was?’ Dominique would cry.
‘I hope you think of me as your papa, my little bird. I couldn’t love you more,’ Papa would reply.
It was true and Dominique knew it. But once she became a confused and difficult teenager with hormones screaming round her body, the onslaught of questions about her father began all over again. She was constantly at war with Maman and screaming at Papa.
‘You are not my real father. You can’t tell me what to do!’
Mostly, Papa was patient but one day he had had enough.
‘Dominique, stop this! It is pointless and cruel to constantly bully your mother for answers she does not have. Stop making yourself miserable. Just accept that your biological father was a good-looking, nice young man Maman knew little about. She cannot change what happened. Isn’t it enough that you are beautiful and much loved? You are making us all miserable … especially Gabby, is that what you want?’
I never doubted Maman loved Dominique but she was hard on her when she reached puberty. Sometimes, when I look back, I wonder if, subconsciously, Maman was punishing Dominique for her own mistakes. Papa and I both tried to protect her from Maman’s tongue, even though Dominique pretended she did not care.
My feisty, stunning sister was a free spirit. Her beauty made her stand out as she grew up. She drew everyone to her like a magnet. It was not hard to see why Maman was terrified that life would repeat itself.
I can still see Maman out in the orchard with her dark hair pinned back in a neat plait only the French can manage. She could look chic even in wellington boots. She was slim and always wore blue denim jeans or white shorts, with crisp cotton shirts, topped with a navy guernsey; like a sort of uniform.
She would pick the apples from the ground, wary of wasps, and turn them carefully searching for bruises, placing them on old wooden trays so they did not touch, like they used to do in Loveday’s time. Every now and then she would smile and lift her head and gaze out to the blue sea shimmering sinuously below the house. It was as if she could not quite believe she was here, in this garden, in this safe place that had become her whole world.
This world was small and insular but she was a loved and respected teacher. She had standing in the village and I sensed, even when I was small, that Maman would fight like a lioness if anything ever threatened her home, her family, or the life she loved.
Karachi, 2009
The Shalimar lies on the edge of Karachi. The large windows of Mike’s apartment look across tree-lined roads that surround the hotel from two sides. There is the distant roar of traffic hurtling towards the centre of the city and I can glimpse cranes rising from the docks on the skyline where the sea lies invisible.
The hotel is having a facelift so half the floors have been modernized but Mike’s apartment is in the old wing at the top of the building.
As we come out of the lift and walk across the reception area for breakfast Rana calls out, ‘Assalam-o-alaikum, Mr and Mrs Michael! Good morning! Good morning!’
Two breakfast waiters are standing by the door of the restaurant like sentinels. They rush over to Mike and usher him to a table by the window.
‘Good morning, Naseem. Good morning, Baseer,’ Mike says.
‘Good morning, sir. Good morning, mem.’
I can see this is a morning ritual. Mike grins as both Naseem and Baseer shadow me around the abundant islands of food laid out on crisp tablecloths. Fruit cascades among glittering ice. Bread and croissants nestle in baskets. On a separate island there are heated containers.