Black British by Hebe de Souza Page A

cry baby. Look at the way you yelled and yelled and yelled when Mummy went abroad.”
    I was accustomed to this accusation so had a number of responses ready, but didn’t get a chance.
    â€œLeave her alone.” The tone was mild with just a hint of steel. My father never interfered with our squabbles so three pairs of eyes enquired of a newspaper.
    â€œI was sent to boarding school at the age of seven. From being the cherished first son surrounded with dogs, horses, pet mongooses, music and singing I went to long draughty dormitories, cold corridors and people who spoke with a funny accent. For nine months of the year I was separated from the family.”
    Our father had been educated in what was considered the best school in India, in a hill station 1,000 kilometres away. For eleven years, the time that made up his childhood and teens, he had seen his family for only three months each year. We knew that, but the context brought home the impact it must have made on him at the time. Our stunned silence was audible. It sounded like a priceless vase had smashed into smithereens on the hard floor. In my mind I heard the tinkling of broken glass.
    With an ironic smile my father lowered the newspaper. “Don’t look so tragic. In time I came to love it and enjoyed the camaraderie of the other boys. We had lots of fun. But in the beginning it was terrible. So I felt for Lucy.”
    He considered a moment and added, “I feel for my mother. It was dreadful for her. We were adults when school was over and then each of us was sent to college in England. She missed out on watching her sons grow into men.”
    We digested this reality before he continued. “A lot of mothers suffered in this way but were powerless to intervene. They had to cope with long absences however much they might have hated it.”
    What about fathers? Didn’t they miss their sons too? I looked up, caught Lily’s eye and in that moment knew why none of us had been “given away” to be reared in boarding schools.
    We also knew his response to that initial separation would have been stoic. Fear, isolation, abandonment, bewilderment were feelings that were not allowed to be expressed. Boys were expected to have a stiff upper lip and prove themselves worthy of inheriting an empire.
    It was the norm set by the then ruling classes. They sent their children away from a preposterously young age, in the stated best interests of the child. Since that section of society persisted in the misguided illusion that they were superior to all others, they insisted they had a God-given right to tell other civilisations how to live and bring up their children. Their rules went unquestioned. They couldn’t – or wouldn’t – or didn’t want to see that their actions were nothing short of a sophisticated form of child abuse. And control.
    For many of those boys, continued isolation from families that started at a tender age reputedly led to attachment problems in later life. So perhaps it was a deliberate strategy to block close family ties so that young men were left emotionally free to service lonely and often dangerous outposts to ever expand the Empire. We were lucky, however. Our father openly acknowledged his affection and high regard for us, his family.
    It was a double-edged sword when two years later his younger brother joined him at boarding school for those oh-so long months. At least he had a sibling with him, someone with whom he shared those unspoken, all-important family ties. On the other hand, he gained the added responsibility of looking after a younger brother. In practice that meant at nine years old, while he was still a child, he was expected to manage his own feelings as well as assume an adult carer’s role. Ever after he was vigilant about charging an older child with the unfair responsibility of caring for a younger one, regardless of either child’s temperament.
    My noisy panic must