A Possible Brother

 

            I first became aware of André when he was still under a year old, in a photograph sent by my father from North Africa along with dates and dried bananas in a very fancy box with foreign writing on the sides.    The photo was not just of André but essentially of a group on a beach which later I thought looked like any old beach though I was told it was in a place called Tunisia where the beaches have to be seen to be believed.  My father was seated on the sand and above him the baby was dangled on his shoulders by a young woman, presumably its mother.   

            I was possibly three or four years old at the time and aware that we had been waiting for a parcel and if I was good it would no doubt contain a doll in what I was told would be National Costume.   I had no idea what National Costume might be but the parcel I now write of clearly did not contain a doll of any description, just the strange dried fruit which once I had sampled I rapidly decided I was not keen on at all.     It was clear that the box also contained something my mother was not altogether indifferent to.   Standing by the kitchen table, the dates and bananas displayed before her in all their dehydrated splendour she had plucked the small snapshot from their midst and now held it between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand so that it caught the morning light from the kitchen window.   She was standing unnaturally straight, her left arm across her breast and she slowly shook her head back and forth murmuring something I was not completely able to understand.   It was perfectly clear that whatever message the beach photograph contained she was disturbed by it.    I was more disturbed by the missing doll, long promised but slow to arrive.

            A day or two later my Aunt Mag was invited to examine and appraise the photo over cups of tea in the front room of the house in Iron Mill Lane.   My aunt’s front room wasn’t kept for best the way ours was but occupied and used on a daily basis and my mother said this was because Mag wasn’t much cop at keeping a room special and if that house with its hallway and inside lavatory was hers she would certainly not be letting those boys come and go as they pleased, tramping over all the mats whether it was a Sunday or a birthday or not.   The trouble with Mag was she wasn’t fussy.

            No longer straight of spine my mother now sat hunched over on one of my aunt’s matching easy chairs that rocked slightly if you were heavy enough to negotiate the mechanism which I never was.   She was asking what Mag thought.  Did she think there might be something Between Them?    And did that child resemble anyone?    My aunt took the snapshot over to the bay window where you were able to get an uninterrupted view of the Three Jolly Farmers were it not for the almond tree, and held it up high.   No, she said at last, there was no resemblance whatsoever.    I wondered what it was they were so intent upon discussing and when the photo was placed on what my aunt called her coffee table though she didn’t drink coffee, I picked it up and demanded to know who the people were but they were paying no attention to me at all and my mother was saying that there were times when she felt that getting married had been the worst day’s work she ever did by a long chalk at which my aunt poured more tea and said not to talk such tommy rot.   There were some very good things about Bern.   He was a lovely chap even if he wasn’t a patch on her Harold.   He barely took a drink and didn’t smoke and didn’t use bad language.  What more did Nell want that’s what she’d like to know.   At which my mother muttered something about not being able to trust him and my aunt said well she couldn’t have everything.

            Going home on the 480 bus I learned that it was all very well for Mag to start laying down the law about who might have some good points.  Yes, all very well indeed since her Harold hadn’t been called up and she didn’t know what it was like to be all alone in the blackout never mind the blitz.   What was a woman by herself supposed to do when the warden knocked on the door late at night saying the blackout curtain had chinks in it that’s what she’d like to know?  It was all very well for them that still had men at home with all their health and strength.  Mag didn’t have the first clue as to how it was for others with their husbands miles away and having to bring up kiddies all alone.   Knowing I was one of those kiddies I sat as quietly as possible and tried to be good.  I was accustomed to these diatribes that from time to time emerged when my mother was under stress and realised that no response was expected from me.

            There was not much more comment made about André as far as I can recall for several years, not until Hitler had been well and truly defeated, my father was home again and working at the cement works in Northfleet, and my brother had been born and had already learned to crawl.   I was aware that despite my mother’s disapproval my father kept in touch with a number of the new friends he had made during World War Two, particularly a range of mysterious aunts.   I had already met Aunts Wilhelmina and Philomena and their exotic mother from Greece, who actually came to visit us unexpectedly on one occasion causing mayhem in our household.   Now he spoke frequently about yet another aunt and her mother from Tunisia on whose farm he had convalesced for months recovering from some kind of illness contracted during his time in the desert.   This was the illness that my mother later felt that by rights, once he had died, she should receive a war pension for on the basis that he would never have fallen ill in the first place had it not been for the war.  But that is not strictly part of this story.

    The North African aunt was called Dominique and she lived with her son André and her mother, Mrs Rampant on their family farm.  There were several brothers who helped run the farm and had been teenage boys at the time when my father had lived with them recovering from his illness.  The whole family had been distressed when the time finally came for him to leave. These were the people he longed to reconnect with and had forlorn hopes of a family holiday with them.   We would all four of us go to North Africa he said, and stay with the Rampant family and eat olives and oranges and dates and drink wine on summer evenings.   My mother had already made it perfectly clear that hell would freeze over before she would be prepared to visit a French farm in Africa of all places.  Holidays as everybody knew, cost money and spent on farms in Africa were likely to cost an arm and a leg.  And what’s more she was certain that wine would not suit her stomach.    A week in a caravan in Tankerton would be good enough for her and that was a fact and should be good enough for anyone with any sense!   There did not seem a great deal more to be said on the subject and my father tried hard not to say too much.

            Nevertheless, as time passed Aunt Dominique assiduously kept in touch sending regular letters on flimsy airmail paper with news of all the happenings on the farm.   Sometimes small, square black and white photos were enclosed, of her mother relaxing with a glass of wine on what I learned was the terrace, of her brothers hard at work, engaged in some farm activity, and of little André growing older, starting school and one of him holding aloft a certificate for excellence of achievement.  

            At the sight of the photographs my mother would grow tense and pretend that she was disinterested in looking at them, giving them just a cursory glance when they were passed across the kitchen table but later when my father had departed for his two-to-ten shift at Bevans Cement Works she would examine them closely.    Armed with tea and a Nice biscuit, the snapshots would be reclaimed from behind the mantlepiece clock and spread on the table to be minutely scrutinised.   Those depicting André might be taken to the window and held up and there were times when she rocked back and forth a little and stared into the distance.

            If my grandmother came to visit they might be laid out between the teacups so they could both pore over them and the story of my father’s desire to return to Tunisia would be told again.  Old Nan would say that she couldn’t understand that for the life of her and that Bern could be as silly as cats’ lights at times.  Everybody knew that them foreign places were not much chop at all and certainly not worth all the money spent and all the palaver in getting to them in the first place with Lord only knows how many changes of trains and boats.   You couldn’t beat a week in Ramsgate when all was said and done and oh so easily reached by a fast train from London Bridge.  Once when Aunt Dominique sent a photo of herself dressed for a party and looking glamourous Old Nan observed that if she had her way she’d clean that smarmy looking cow rotten.   And then my mother sobbed in silence for several minutes, her shoulders heaving and I asked why she was crying and was told to button my lip so I did.

      The last photograph we received of André was one of him looking older and very smart in the uniform of the school he would be starting soon and where it was hoped he would be able to learn advanced mathematics because that was his strength.   My father would have been pleased because he was undoubtedly the one who gave the photos of this strange French boy from the farm in Tunisia the most attention.   However, it was by then April 1952 and he had already been dead for a number of months and my mother had gained considerable confidence now that she had two part time cleaning jobs.  She no longer held André to the light, but simply glanced at him and said she would have to write to his grandmother to tell her the sad news.   I wondered why she would not write to Aunt Dominique instead but thought better of asking and instead held my hand out for the photo which she passed to me at once before briskly clearing the breakfast cups from the kitchen table. 

            For some inexplicable reason I took it to school with me intending to show it to the other girls whilst elaborating on tales of the farm where all manner of bizarre and mysterious fruits hung from trees all around, most already dried.  I don’t think anyone was particularly interested but because the photo was never missed I kept it and from time to time looked at it and as we both grew older, wondered what had become of André.

            I’m not sure when it was that I began to realise that there was a distinct possibility that he was our half sibling but when my brother in an attempt to get to know more about his father, embarked upon an in depth investigation of our family roots I was quite certain he would be at once intrigued.   It was startling to find that he wasn’t and his obvious disinterest was pronounced.   Although I brought up the topic on several occasions he always managed to divert the flow of conversation.  Now I wish that I had been more insistent on discussion but his indifference made it all too easy to look for the Too Hard basket, leave it for a more opportune time.   Somehow or other the collection of childhood photos of André have disappeared.  Only that first one of him as an infant remains, being dangled on my father’s shoulders on the beach in North Africa.