Kicking the Pricks

III

Ill This page intentionally left blank MAORIS I looked at a photograph of my father and his three sisters, and it struck me . . . (maybe it'sjust physiognomy changes through the generations) that these Edwardians had . . . that the sisters looked like . . . Maoris. So for a while I went around boasting I had Maori blood. One day I plucked up courage, and said to my father: 'Do we have Maori blood in the family?' He was speechless , he was so shocked, I don't think he had ever expected this question. After a moment he said: 'Of course not! That's preposterous.' So I said: 'Is there any way of looking back through the records, in New Zealand ?' 'No,' he said, 'all the records were burnt late last century.' To save the situation I changed the subject to St Germain, the Saint in the family, St Germain, patron of Parisian night-life. AN INHERITANCE I was born on the 3ist January 1942 at 7 in the morning, in Royal Victoria Nursing Home, Northwood; a late Victorian suburb of London, where my grandparents had retired after a life spent in the tea and timber trade in Calcutta . My father, a young RAF officer, met my mother at a dance at Northolt airfield in 1939. She was 21, he in his early 305. 115 My father second left, my grandfather and grandmother My father had lived in this country for ten years. A second generation New Zealander, his grandfatherhad left the family farm in Uplowman in Devon late in the ipth century, to farm on the Canterbury plains near Christchurch . He had been brought up on the farm, riding the 25 miles to school and back each day; as he made the journey he dreamed of becoming an engineer, and, as opportunities in New Zealand were limited, sailed for Britain in 1929 with the idea of staying four years. Except for two brief holidays, he was never to go home; he was to make his life in this country. His marriage and the advent of the war put any possibility of returning out of the question, though I know he always dreamed of the plains, and hardly a day would pass without some echo from the mysterious world of my antipodean uncles and aunts. It was a cold and foggy day when he arrived at Southampton and boarded the train for London; London seemed to him dirty and rather inhospitable. After searching unsuccessfully for a cheap hotel he spent the first night at Toe H, Kennington. The next day, after checking in at New Zealand House, he went to the Air Ministry to enrol for the RAF. Any illusion that the old country welcomed its colonial sons was quickly dispelled, as the officers who interviewed him seemed preoccupied only by the fact that he might return home. He recorded that his reception was as frosty as the weather. Surprised by this attitude and disillusioned with the metropolis, he took digs in Watford which he described as 'a quiet leafy suburb'. He received his commission. When he died last November, in the magpie jumble of his home there were over 200 letters describing his RAF life and neat files recording his search for his roots in 117 Devon. He was obsessed by a need to belong. Few of the locals in Lymington could have guessed that the Air Commodore with his monocle was a New Zealander. For my father became a chameleon. In order to beat the British Establishment, he joined them outwardly, but inwardly rejected them. He fought their war mercilessly and felt cheated. He bought me a private education, but I could tell he hated the public school ethos. He turned me into what he most loathed: an Englishman, with an accent he adopted but despised. To make sure neither my sister nor I forgot this sacrifice, he catalogued and filed every school bill, and never forgot to tell us how much we had cost him. Back in 1939 my grandmother met the handsome young squadron leader for the first time. He arrived with a Siamese cat, which eyed her pet canary, leaving it severely disturbed: their relationship got off to a bad start. My mother was very beautiful, and although my father could hardly be termed a gold-digger (the family had little money, as my grandfather had died very young) my grandmother disapproved of him. Shewas not a snob...