BY PHILIP LOWE
My dearest wife has written her own memories in a book and has inspired me to write my own. I feel a little cautious in sharing my own memories of relationships and journeys. As long as everything I have experienced has brought me here, it is excusable.
I pray that our children do not experience the doubt, duplicity, and pain that I had.
I do not wish to deny the work my father must have effected, yet I believe, as my own future has taught me, he could have behaved differently—not only towards me.
My early teenage years became ripe picking fields. As I grew, my opinions changed.
At times, I recalled memories I thought were lost. Some were too uncomfortable. I have been able to reflect many times on motives and aspirations, yet it seems there has always been a different hand directing my path.
I do not know how my wife has relieved her life and her own difficulties. She must be so much stronger than me. Reader, I love her.
Bonny
One day, the kitchen staff were rather delayed and appeared to be distracted. I sauntered down to the kitchen, where there was a great deal of noise—the moaning and bawling of a childbirth. A small crowd of anxious women had surrounded a woman who made the sound. She was lying on the floor outside.
An imminent birth was happening, and I thought that I should leave. However, I saw that she had nothing supporting her head, so I ran into the kitchen and found some towels. Returning outside, I noticed that a large black-skinned woman had taken control. She grabbed the towels I was carrying without saying anything to me.
Everything seemed to be happening near the door to the ice closet.
After a while, a woman in the crowd screamed, and two ran away. Through the gap left in the dwindling crowd, I could now see the exhausted mother caressing her newborn child. One woman—who had taken part, I believe—left the room looking tired and downcast, and I could not understand why.
A young servant came to see the baby and burst out with a shrill laugh that disturbed both mother and baby. The mother strove to comfort the babe, and I was left wondering why there was laughter. The servant who laughed shouted out repeatedly, “It’s black! It’s black!” as she hurried from the scene.
It has long been a belief of mine—which I still hold (although I do not know when I started holding it—perhaps I heard someone say this when my brother was born )—that those newly born are luminous and magical. It is not just parents seeing a new face they created for the first time; the infant has a power that draws attention like a magnet draws things to it. Look at pictures of the Christ child and his nativity—the viewer’s attention is inevitably drawn towards it, obviously—yet in the painting all eyes are drawn to the baby who shows off this power.
I never noticed the colour of the baby. Maybe I had spent time with others amongst the staff who made me ignore colour. Some people behave completely differently with skin colour, which I believe to be very strange. When my father was in the house, there were often people with different coloured skin, even though I knew he could not tolerate such people.
The baby was bonny—the mother clearly thought so as she held him or her. I never discovered the gender. A few days later, I watched as she and (I presume) the father walked down the path towards the gate in that horrible wall.
I received no knowledge of her from others of the kitchen staff. Some shook their heads and smiled at the memory of her whenever she or her childbirth were mentioned. No knowledge about her husband either.
This has encouraged me to think of a relatively recent happening. There are wooden frames at the back of the house, requiring visits from those who know how to maintain such things: up some frames, fruit is encouraged to grow. I believe a greenhouse was planned for this area, using much of the sun’s presence here.
A man staggered into the house; I was climbing downstairs at the time. Obviously, he could not talk but was pointing to his throat as he entered. He walked backwards with staggering steps and was saved from falling by the wall. Then I recognised him as a carpenter who worked on the frames behind the property.
A lot of shouting brought out two of the moustachioed men from downstairs. Other than their attempts to lower the choking man’s wild-eyed panic by slapping him in the back, they did nothing.
Then a dark-skinned man came into view from downstairs; he quietly gave instructions to the surrounding and slowly growing crowd; I could not see what he did very clearly, but I think he bent over and held his own legs. I think the choking man was then lain on his back and something popped out of his mouth. I then heard the choking man laugh, then he hugged the nearby moustachioed men and, in tears, thanked them repeatedly. He did not thank the dark-skinned man.
The dark-skinned man left the scene in silence and slowly went downstairs. Unthanked, unrecognised, unjustly ignored.
The bonny baby I saw was bonny, whatever colour it was. Beautiful as a rainbow.
After this, I examined atlases in the library. One atlas had fine watercoloured illustrations of local scenes and people. I saw pictures of men wearing stranger hats and clothes than one would find at a fayre or in the theatre. At the theatre, when I was very young, I saw a man dressed in this way performing magic tricks. I cannot remember any tricks, but I can remember his brown face and gazing eyes. He delighted the many military men in the audience. Yet Jesus himself must have looked like that, with dark skin.
My own experience of people with different coloured skin has been wholly positive. My father, mother, teachers, journeymen, and everyone else called anyone with a skin colour different from their own “savages.” My teachers taught me this. Even smiling priests would call them pagans, infidels. People whose religion was unknown to them.
Negroes were particularly hated in my early years—and are still hated. I can see now in my early memory a man spitting on a negro as he walked nearby, near a church. The negro man seemed to accept it as normal behaviour, and he walked on. From childhood negroes have been dismissed—they have been described to me as impatient, aggressive, smelling bad, even violent. Certainly intellectually subnormal.
Heaven knows if Adan was treated like this.
So I wondered—if Jesus came from Israel, would he not have looked like one of those dark-skinned people in the paintings of my atlas? I dared to ask a teacher about this, and he hit the back of my head with a ruler for my “impudence.”
Soon after, I asked a new, elderly priest in church, where stained glass windows told the story of a European, Nordic Jesus. The priest looked weak and sleepy. Certainly not energetic enough to hit me. Yet I was wrong…
He started shouting at me. I think if he had the strength to hit me, he would have done so.
“Read the Book of Revelation! Read the Book of Daniel! He has hair like white wool—like snow! White is mighty—pure, unblemished, like a fresh blade. Get rid of those who cry for “freedom” outside the freedom of Christ. He lived and died for us and gave us the example of one pure, pure in heart; one wise, unlike all those thousands who cannot read. He became very loud, then saying, “He suffered for us—unjustly, unlike those thousands who deserve it. He…” I admit I stopped listening. More and more, I looked at him and thought there was something wrong with his eyes. Nurses—women in the apparel of a nun—silently led him away. He continued to shout, and the noise decreased the further he went.
I looked in my Bible and found Cindy’s daisies. I hoped she and her elder sister were well.
I could not find Jesus saying a thing about skin colour. Not in anything he said, indeed, through the whole Bible, I could not find anything about people’s appearance.
Many priests and others I had heard some priests who had very clear ideas about skin colour.
Some years before, I was talking with a priest who had spent some time in India; that is, he spoke to me. He was disparaging about people he had met there—I remember he called them “elephant worshippers.” He said that one “brown” man had served him, and he discovered he had a family who lived nearby; one night his wife fell ill, and he knocked on the priest’s door and begged for help.
He wondered why on Earth he would assist someone who had turned his back on his God? The priest said that the man promised to turn his back on his God and worship the Christian God. He simply did not believe him.
He smiled as he recalled getting the “brown” man arrested and the death of his wife.
He said, “Thank God for a few less of ‘them.’”
My mother returned, even though I saw very little of her.
After her return, I recalled the presence of a gun in the house—behind a mirror, I think. I must have seen it only once or twice, but I recall yearning to hold it. After I heard about my father’s behaviour and having seen his activities abroad, the gun became more than an object to hold and for which to yearn.
There were many comings and goings amongst the staff here. One worker in the kitchen had a friend join her; her husband had died, and she needed support.
He had been killed in the Irish War of Independence in its earliest stages. He had left her with two children and a farm. Obviously, she said she couldn’t work on the farm. I was keen to know what kind of farm it was. I remember her looking at me (when I asked) with disdain. Perhaps, I thought later, I was too English. It was a potato farm. “Thank the Lord for that farm,” she said. The farm, she said, would keep her and her children alive, even though someone else was tending it at the moment. Watching her talk, I thought she was absolutely beautiful, but for a square ginger birthmark on her cheek. Her hair was as black as a raven’s.
She had been here but a few days, and there was a tremendous and horrible noise. Of course, I left my room to see what had happened: I saw the raven-hàired woman pulling her children towards the front door. Her friend from below stairs followed her shortly afterwards. The beauty shouted, “The Devil lives here! The Devil lives here! Get out!”
My mother appeared as she heard the noise. She had been staying and sleeping in Pierre’s room. Our eyes met, and she shook her head in exasperation, and she looked down, still shaking her head.
I surmised the rest with hints from other members of staff and my knowledge of my father and his activities in foreign climes.
My father somehow inveigled his way downstairs into her bedroom. I assumed and hoped he did not know that she shared the room with her children. After trying to empower the mother—she must have been stronger than he expected—she ran off. The friend of the woman who ran out made sure a carriage from behind the house took her where she wanted to go. The whole house was left in silence. Within a week, her friend left her position.
Obviously, my father said nothing about the incident. More proof to add to my hostility towards him. I dared not say a word.
I could not believe his attitude towards people of a different skin colour. Would his attitudes, expressions, and inclinations be passed down to me?
