Vanessa Branson - One Hundred Summers

ONE HUNDRED SUMMERS

Mensch Publishing

51 Northchurch Road, London N1 4EE, United Kingdom

First published in Great Britain 2020

This electronic edition published 2020

Copyright Vanessa Branson 2020

Vanessa Branson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: HB: 978-1-9129-1414-2; eBook: 978-1-9129-1415-9 Export TPB: 978-1-9129-1416-6

For Noah, Florence, Louis and Ivo

If you dont do it, you havent done it.

Eve Branson

CONTENTS

Sri Lanka, 20 January 2017

Im sitting with my great friend Navin a keen historian, linguist, thespian and wit next to a monumental stone Buddha in the Sri Lankan hills. Were contemplating how we got to this point, and where on earth were going.

Those of us lucky enough to be born in the decades after the Second World War sailed towards the new millennium with innocent, wide-eyed enthusiasm, taking it for granted that the waters ahead would be calm. Improvements in health, human rights and education, together with the decline in conflict and inequality, gave us cause for optimism. We placed our faith in the rule of law, and in diplomacy. Walls were tumbling and bridges were being built. Its true that the dark clouds of climate change were rumbling in the distance, but the storm hadnt yet broken.

But now were not so sure.

Youve got to laugh, said Navin, breaking the silence.

Yes, I said, shrugging my shoulders and raising my palms to the air in surrender. Its frightening though, as if everything our parents and grandparents fought for is being undermined.

I was already grappling with my own unresolved past and now, approaching my sixties and with the world so unsure of which direction it was taking, I was wondering how on earth to deal with the coming years. We could hear the rumble of bulldozers as they began their days work, ripping up the rich jungle nearby and transforming it into neat palm oil plantations. Then the words of that wise old Buddha broke into my thoughts.

To understand where youre going to, you first have to understand where youve come from.

I cant just sit here and do nothing, Navin, I said, opening my laptop. I need some sort of anchor, some certainties to grab hold of. Im going to do some digging into my past. Navin was silent as I continued, warming to my theme. Im going to delve back, maybe by a century, to see how my family coped, while history tossed them on the wild seas of fortune.

Wow, good luck, he chortled, before opening his own laptop.

Ill give it a year, I whisper, somewhat startled by my conviction. I like the symmetry of spending one year covering three generations over one hundred years. Ive said it now. Theres no going back. My fingers hover over the keys. But where to begin?

I wonder what your father would have made of the world today? Navin asks.

I smile as I recall Dads slow, deep, twinkly, oh-so-English voice. The thought that so much of him is me and that his essence is spiralled through every inch of my being comforts me as I try to channel a little of his ease. I close my eyes and feel his warm chuckle enter my soul.

Sussex, 2011

My father was one of the happiest people Ive ever known. Not laugh-out-loud happy (although he would often weep with laughter); more a purring, contented sort. His diet consisted of standard English fare: plenty of eggs, white sauces, cheese and sausages, and a slug of Gordons gin each evening, poured into a cut-glass tumbler as the pips for the six oclock news rang out from the wireless. Regardless of this, and despite the stresses of work and living with my restless mother Eve, my father discovered the secret to deep contentment.

Nearing the end of his long life, Dad would drive to my Sussex farm to join me for a walk. Achieving this simple task was a complicated affair that involved ingenuity and effort on his behalf and a certain amount of patience on mine. On reflection, although these few walks were just a couple of hours, carved out of odd weekends here and there, they were of monumental significance in my life. They were the only occasions that my father and I spent time together, alone and at peace.

The battered silver BMW that he still proudly drove, aged ninety-two, would crunch up the drive, towing a trailer on which his mobility scooter teetered precariously. It tickled me to note that, for someone whod rarely been in a grocery store in his life, his scooter was called a Happy Shopper. We would then carefully position two scaffolding planks from the back of the trailer a wheel-width apart and my father, armed with walking sticks and virtually blind, would shuffle up the planks, position himself behind the controls of his beast, turn on the ignition and reverse towards the planks, often after a false start or two as he tried to line the wheels up with the planks. Watching him reverse gingerly down, with a wheel first an inch over one edge and then the other was, quite frankly, terrifying.

Oh lordy, hed whoop, once he was safely on the ground. Alls well that ends well!

Well done, Dad youve made it. How lovely to see you. Id bend down and kiss his cheek while patting his bulky shoulders. Any excitements? Id ask.

Darling, I have to tell you, this morning I bagged that old father fox hed been wreaking havoc with our chickens. Theres nothing quite like the Happy Shopper when it comes to silently creeping up on foxes, armed with my twelve-bore.

Leaving the front drive, wed head off around the fields, his electric buggy setting the pace. We were often silent as we settled into each others moods. I found it hard not to feel moved by the sight of this once-powerful man who was now barely my height, his spine having concertinaed into an agonising rub of bone on bone. He would cheerily explain his widening girth as the consequence of his torso being squeezed outwards as he shrank. The truth had more to do with the fact that, since the war and subsequent rationing, he could not allow a morsel of leftover food to go unfinished. We called him the family dustbin, as he would happily exchange his plate for ours with a grin. Pity to let this go to waste.

Over the years, Dad had had numerous melanomas removed from his face and head and as a result always wore a battered old Tilley Hat that he lined with tin foil, having read somewhere that it would radiate the suns harmful rays away from his bald head. Invariably he wore one of the flamboyant short-sleeved shirts hed collected on his travels over the years, with khaki shorts and, over the bandages covering his ulcerated shins and swollen ankles, a pair of flesh-coloured surgical stockings to keep the dreaded thrombosis at bay.

I was always excited to show him new developments on the farm and to talk through the ideas we had for the future, such as how I was planting avenues of oak saplings with a view that, in years to come, these walks would be transformed by the dappled shade of mighty trees.