How would you know…

I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…

When I was living in Ireland, my late sister Carol, invited me to go along to a writing group (yes! face-to-face!) and I realised that I had once enjoyed writing creatively but that as you rise in age, free-writing is one of the first things to go in order to make room for more academic subjects. I remembered one of the few unprompted stories I wrote outside school – it was a ghost tale in which a sorrowing father whose little daughter had accidentally walked into the big saw blade in her father’s saw mill and now, on the one year anniversary, the father, eyes blurred with tears and beside himself with grief and guilt, does the same… This short and sorry tale, though of a genre I don’t enjoy, is evidence that all my mother’s storytelling had left its mark and after the short writing challenges in the writing group, I started a novel which I still haven’t finished (although I have picked it up again recently). The novel deals with themes of post-colonialism and looks at the abuses that happen between countries as if they were intra-familial abuse and weaves several threads around it’s central characters taking in Rwanda, India and Ireland. With such weighty themes, the novel has taken a lot of research and gestation as you can imagine. On the other hand, my second novel – the opening anyway – came to me in a dream when I was recuperating from a hip replacement – I awoke and reached for my phone to record as much as possible before, as dreams are wont to do, it vanished. I started writing and it proceeded in a very linear manner – I even tired to use the A to Z 2021 (see the tab at the top of this page), to push myself to finish it. I didn’t quite make it, but it did get done in the following six months. I felt that finishing a novel (since as I have remarked before, I am not good at finishing things) would, however different a book it was from the first effort (a utopian science fiction novel), be an effort worth making and so it has proved to be. I now have a Critique Partner and he is also writing a science fiction novel though now that I have moved back to the first book, he has taken the change in good faith. Although there is a twenty-year difference in age between us, we never lack things to talk about on our two-weekly chats.

An extract from “The Book” (it has no title yet)
There is a sub-plot in the book involving a young Indian Rhodes scholar at Oxford who has finally plucked up the courage to ask a young Irish barmaid out on a date and being Oxford – it has to be punting…

As she lay back against the cushions of the punt, like Cleopatra propelled down the Nile, Margaret’s only regret was that she was compelled to face backwards. Watching Satajayit’s somewhat erratic and obviously unpracticed use of the punt pole to propel them downstream made Margaret nervous. Besides, although this branch of the Cherwell could not really bear comparison with Africa’s greatest river, nevertheless, Margaret would have preferred to watch it’s charms unfold facing forward. She did not feel she knew Satajayit well enough to face forward in silence or to lie bottom up in the sloping bow of the punt and offering possible distraction to Satajayit. So, resigned to watching the river recede from her, Margaret decided to risk a lesser distraction from his efforts by resuming conversation with Satajayit.
“You never finished telling me who Cecil Rhodes was”, she said.
“No indeed”, said Satajayit as he ducked to avoid the branch of a tree he had managed to steer beneath. Out in the open, he managed a long, powerful glide in the right direction along an open stretch of water with no other boats or obstacles to negotiate and took advantage of the respite to reply more fully. “You must have heard of De Beers Diamond Mines?” she nodded ”Well, Cecil Rhodes founded the company and made millions when he was still a young man. He went out to South Africa to join his brother in farming because he had poor health and the warm climate helped. After they were rich, he came back to England, to Oxford in fact, to complete his education.”
“They must have been delighted to have such a rich young man come here. From what I hear these colleges are always on the lookout for benefactors.”
“I am sure you are right. So too were the Freemasons because they invited him to join.”
“Really!” said Margaret, sitting up a little. “My father was a Freemason too. It’s big with the Protestants in Ireland. Bloody men’s clubs! All sticking together to scratch each other’s backs is what it’s all about!” This sudden vehemence surprised Satajayit and caused his next thrust of the pole to wobble the boat precariously.
“Ach, I’m sorry but I’ve no time for all that carry on!” she said, flopping back onto the cushions.
“No, no, you are right!” said Satajayit animatedly, “and Rhodes thought so too. Even the night he joined, with the usual secret initiation, he wrote they were an organisation ‘with ridiculous and absurd rites without an object and without an end.’ The next night, he had a brainwave – to create a secret society to further the interests of the British Empire and indeed all the Anglo-Saxon people. He wrote down his plan and called it ‘Confession of Faith’.”
“So that’s what you meant about his relationship to the mother country. Well, if you ask me, England was never any ‘mother’ to her empire – more like a thoroughly bad father. Look what they’re still doing in Northern Ireland!”
“Oh yes, I have been reading about that – most unfair on the Catholics. So, although you are Protestant, you are not in agreement with the British policy in Northern Ireland?”
“No! I am not! And the funny thing is, it wasn’t till I came to England that I started to see what was really going on. At home people don’t talk that much about Northern Ireland and ‘the troubles’. You know, when partition took place, we had a civil war that was almost worse than the war to get Britain out of Ireland. Both wars were bloody, but this was worse not because it was us against them. No, this was father against son, brother against brother. So that’s why I think we don’t want to hear about it all starting up again in the north. But then when I came here people were so ignorant about Ireland, like those eejits in the pub today but when I did get talking to the odd one, I realised there was a lot I didn’t know either and I started to take home the papers people left in the bar and to read them. It’s all a terrible mess, Ireland, it’s all ignorance and stupidity on the part of the British. Half the politicians don’t know any more than those students and they don’t care as long as the Unionists continue to vote with them!”
“It is strange to hear you use the word ‘partition’ as my country too has had partition when the British left and likewise it was divided along religious grounds. India is mainly Hindu and Pakistan is mainly Muslim, although there are a few people in each country who didn’t move at the time of partition, so there are still some troubles from time to time. Personally I don’t have any time for all that religious nonsense. India is stuffed full of religions for all the good it does. If there is a God or Gods, I am sure he wouldn’t want people squabbling the way they do!”
“Well isn’t that what the British always did with their bloody Empire? They conquer a country and exploit it as long as they can, and when they leave, they leave it all upside down like a house after a burglary with everybody fighting amongst themselves?” This was more a statement than a question – Margaret sitting bolt upright with indignation again.
“Oh, but in India they left behind great civilisation, railways, a legal system, schools and of course a parliamentary system!” Satajayit said, adding proudly “To which I for one hope to belong someday!” He beamed and completely forgot to pole, nearly running into another punt coming the other way. Only hasty action by the other punt avoided a mishap, but Margaret scarcely noticed with, as her Grandmother would have said, ‘her dander up’. “Do you so?” she said “Well I bet when you are in the know, you’ll find the British robbed the place blind before they left, I mean if they were so great for India, how come there are so many starving people there?”
“Oh my golly! You do ask some difficult questions. I have never met a woman so fierce in her opinions before. Why, you ask better questions than some of the students in the seminars I go to!”
Margaret fell back laughing but sat up again suddenly and with a serious look said, “Well, do you know, I’ve never said anything like that to anyone before! They may not talk much about the north where I come from, but I can tell you, they wouldn’t like to hear me say what I’ve been saying. Oh, Jeany Mac no!” and she burst out laughing again.
“Jeany Mac? Who is this Jeany Mac?” asked Satajayit once more poling the punt downstream and beginning to look more comfortable with the process.
“Ach, it’s only a saying we have, I don’t know where it comes from or who she was.”
“Are you perhaps one of these feminists?” Satajayit asked cautiously.
“Well I haven’t burnt my bra if that’s what you mean!” Margaret replied with mock indignation and burst out laughing at the look of embarrassed horror that overtook her companion’s features and nearly caused him to fall off the punt. ”I’m sorry,” she said, “I was only joking. I never thought of myself that way, but I suppose I do agree with a lot of what they are saying, even though I’ve only read about it in the papers, I mean I don’t actually know any. Come to that I don’t know many people at all. This is the first time I’ve been out with anyone.” She said, suddenly shy, her eyes dropping to her lap as she wondered at her candidness with this comparative stranger.
“You don’t have any family here in England?” he asked quietly.
“No. I left home under a bit of a cloud, and when I came here, I had to do something I didn’t feel very good about and I just kept myself to myself for a long time.”
Satajayit had little experience of women, and although he could not guess what she might be referring to, instinct told him it was better not to probe, so he punted on steadily, the two of them silent for a few minutes. Margaret realised she felt better for having spoken to someone about the loneliness of the last while and it occurred to her that maybe it was because Satajayit was also alone in a strange country that had liberated her.
“Tell me about your family.” She said and noticed a cloud pass momentarily across Satajayit’s normally sunny features.
“There is not much to tell.” He said diffidently. “My parents are not very well off. They are farmers, and I have an older brother who will take over the farm.”
“Really! Me too!”
“What a coincidence! It is truly a strange world. I myself won scholarships, first to school and then to the University of Bombay and finally to here, to Oxford University.” He beamed.
“Your family must be very proud of you so!”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” Deflating visibly Satajayit suddenly headed the punt alongside a stretch of open bank and pushed the pole firmly into the mud to hold them fast and sat down facing Margaret. The sudden seriousness made Margaret sit up and draw her legs in to face Satajayit eye to eye.
“You must understand, my father is a very old-fashioned man. He believes everyone has their place and they should stick to it. He thinks I have no business getting ideas above my station and that no good will come of it!”
That sounds only too familiar, thought Margaret but said nothing – just looked sympathetic.
“It is most fortunate that I do have an older brother who wants to farm, otherwise I would have had no choice about going to school. I would have had to stay on the farm to look after my parents when they got old.”
“And do you have any other brothers and sisters?”
“No. That is quite unusual you know, for an Indian family. It makes my mother sad and maybe a bit ashamed. I think perhaps she is proud of me, but she would not contradict my father. It is only because the other people in the village were so pleased for me that my father allowed me to go away to the school in town, and that is where I met Mr Horatio Singh!” Satajayit said, his serious face breaking into a smile of happy reminiscence.
The serious moment seemingly passed, Margaret burst out laughing at the strange combination of names.
“What is so funny, please?” said Satajayit with a frown.
“Horatio! It just seems a strange name for an Indian man!”
“Ah well, you see Mr Singh’s parents were very keen on history and wanting to give their son a truly auspicious start in life, they named him for the great Englishman Horatio Nelson!”
“I see. And what did he do, this Horatio Singh?”
“He was my school teacher, and because it was not a boarding school, but I lived too far away, I used to live in Mr Singh’s house. He was like a second father to me and I can say with the utmost certainty that without Mr Singh, I would not be here today”, and he looked around as if to take in the full reality of the exact spot in which they had come to rest.
The effect of this look was so comical that it was all Margaret could do to keep a straight face, but not wishing to offer any further offense she managed.
“Yes indeed, he it was who set me on the path to learning and gave me encouragement, he is truly my mentor.”
By now, it was late in the afternoon and the light was starting to fade. Satajayit punted them slowly back to the boat station. For the first time since they had met that day, they fell silent, but companionably so.
Margaret felt relaxed and lay back contemplating this gauche but passionate thinker who was propelling her along like the Queen of Sheba whilst Satajayit glowed inwardly at having negotiated the novel experience of dating a member of the opposite sex without any mishaps. They made their way up the High Street again both knowing that sooner or later they would have to go their separate ways, though neither voicing the question of where that might be or what might follow on from this first encounter. Satajayit lived in Rhodes House whilst Margaret lived out along the Cowley Road and so was walking in the opposite direction to home. Half way up the High Street, Satajayit wordlessly took Margaret’s hand. They turned together to look in some of the shop windows, both noticing the novel reflection of their conjoined forms more than the contents of the shop display and yet without comment, savouring their silent companionship. Finally, they reached Carfax, the crossroads at the top of High Street, and Margaret turned to face Satajayit, reached up to plant a firm kiss on his cheek. “I’ll be seeing you at the Turf then”, she said, and with a squeeze of his hand, she turned and walked back the way they had come.

© Andrew Wilson, 2025