About this time there was a little non-political and light relief in which the patient reader is entitled to share. Kaikoo Mehta, still Father's boon companion, decided to visit India after a gap of some 16 years. There was great excitement in the family, for in those days travel was neither so casually nor so frequently enjoyed as it is now.
Kaikoo was still looked after by the dignified Mrs Milton. I think Mrs Milton was the most beautiful woman I have ever known, even allowing for childhood fancifulness. I often think of her when the more extreme womens'-libbers talk of the oppression of women. Mrs Milton would, I think, have surprised them. She was, we were always told, of aristocratic lineage but she married a man who turned out to be a gambler, a drunk and a wastrel. After the birth of a son, this disaster of a man was turned out by his exasperated wife and disappeared from the scene. But apparently there were slight manifestations of his existence from time to time but she managed with skill and dignity to avoid any unpleasant contact. One morning she telephoned my Mother to say she had received a telegram telling her that her husband was dead; she had immediately wired back demanding a photograph of the corpse - she feared news of his demise was just another ruse out of his usual bag of tricks! The photograph was duly received and he was never spoken of again. Here was one Edwardian lady who was not to be oppressed by male chauvinists.
Although to be a house-keeper had its menial side, this was minimised and never brought into public view by the lady-like Mrs Milton. When laundry had to be done, she rose at 5, got a good fire going, heated the water, hung the washing out in the garden in dry weather or round the fire in the large kitchen in bad weather, and it was always ironed, folded and out of sight by the time Kaikoo rose in time for a leisurely breakfast. The house-cleaning was done in those private hours when Kaikoo was in the office and she always appeared in public immaculately dressed, with her gossamer-fine white hair piled elegantly on her aristocratic, held-high head.
A few days before Kaikoo's departure we were all invited to dinner and I was allowed to go and spend the afternoon with Mrs Milton; I was therefore one of the few who had ever seen her at work in her kitchen. She kept house on a modest budget and was, by nature, thrifty. I watched, enthralled, as she twisted each sausage in the middle, magically making each one into two; this, I thought, was masterly, and in the evening, when the dish was circulated at table along with the roast chicken, I proclaimed my admiration to the assembled guests - wasn't Mrs Milton clever, I cried, she made ONE sausage into two, just by squeezing and twisting them in the middle. I was too lost in admiration to notice the embarrassment my revelation caused to host, hostess and guests alike.
The night before he was to sail, Kaikoo and Mrs Milton came to dinner with us and after a celebratory meal, we all wished him well on his journey, excitement giving way a little to sadness at the thought of his impending absence from us. As Mummy shut the front door after the guests, she said in a quiet, shocked and amused voice to Daddy, "Kaikoo has dyed his hair!" Daddy laughed. "Is that what it was? I have been looking at him all evening and wondering why he looked so different!" They were both really tickled by this unexpected effort at rejuvenation - dying one's hair in those days was not the norm that it has become today; but I do not think that either of them guessed the cause of this unusual act of vanity and desperation on the part of this aging bachelor.
On the day of his return, poor Mrs Milton telephoned my Mother to drop the bombshell - Kaikoo had arrived home with a wife and a mother-in-law in tow! He had not mentioned his intentions to anyone, not even to Father. Mrs Milton was angry because she was convinced that my parents MUST have been in Kaikoo's confidence and she felt there had been a conspiracy of silence against her; but it was not so; neither Mother nor Father had had the least inkling of Kaikoo's romantic intentions. Indeed, the news intrigued and tickled them even more than the dyed hair had done. Both bride and mother-in-law were charming and gentle Parsee ladies, but for Mrs Milton, used to keeping house for a bachelor gentleman, the advent of two women in the household was more than she could bear. When she had had time to get over the first shock and came to believe that neither Father nor Mother had been taken into Kaikoo's confidence, she came to visit Mummy to pour her heart out and seek some sympathy and consolation. "Well, Sehri," she asserted in her usual down-to-earth manner, " the East will be alot sweeter now those two old faggots have left it!" She did not remain with them long but took herself off to an elegant mansion-flat in Hendon. She and Mother continued to visit each other but sadly, we saw much less of her than before. She must have found it very lonely after having participated in Kaikoo's life for so many years and shared his friends. Her age, of course, in the tradition of the times, was never revealed; but I would guess she was nearing the age of retirement when she left and perhaps the rest from toil compensated for the loss of the social round. And she was able to spend more time with her semi-invalided son, Mat. (It was only years afterwards that I realised 'Mat' must have been short for 'Mathew' - throughout my childhood, whenever I heard the name mentioned, I thought he was called 'Mat' as in 'hearth-rug' and often wondered why!)
Now that Kaikoo was a family man, with a wife to go home to, we naturally saw less of him in our home, though, of course, we all met fairly often. There was an Indian Social Club in London and my parents had always been active members; Mummy was perennially on the committee. and when Kaikoo's wife joined, she was also elected to the committee so the two wives met quite frequently without their menfolk and were always good friends. But I don't think any us of ever got over the surprise of Kaikoo's belated and secret matrimony and, to Father, I think it always remained something of a joke.
One week-end, the Committee of the Indian Social Club met in our house and they were all assembled in the drawing room. The President of the club at that time was Mr Mavlankar, a very old friend of my Father's whose 3 daughters were friends of my sister and myself - they were quite wealthy compared to us and it was always a great treat for me to spend a day in their comparatively lavish home and to play with the youngest daughter's dolls; they were the kind I was taken to look at in Selfridges by way of a Christmas treat but which never found their way into my possession. Towards the end of the meeting, Mr Mavlankar had a heart attack and died. We children were all upstairs out of the way of the grown-up activities, but I well remember all the hubbub, and the general sorrow and commotion. As usual, one of Mummy's sisters was staying with us and I remember them talking in hushed whispers for the rest of the day, though we were protectively kept upstairs until all the practical arrangements were completed. I was still too young to understand exactly what death was all about, but it was none-the-less a traumatic day. Mr Mavlankar had had his own business and for several months after the tragedy, Mrs Mavlankar would arrive at our house and stay closeted with her late husband's secretary and Father who, as always was ready to offer advice and support; he helped to keep the business going long enough to put all the affairs in order,after which the family left their Wimbledon home and went back to India.
Every year, the Indian Social Club put on a Christmas party at the Savoy Hotel and the children of members and their guests received gifts. Because Mummy was on the Committee, we were always involved in the pre-party preparations, blowing up balloons, tying up parcels and decorating the tree - it was a high-light of our year. So Kaikoo Mehta's bride joined in all these festivities. As in all social clubs there were little jealousies and bickerings and we quite looked forward to Mummy coming home and relating to us and to whichever of her sisters happened to be there, all the goings-on at these committee meetings. My Mother was always a gifted mimic and she would give a humourous and colourful blow-by-blow account of any little tiffs between the committee members; Mummy's acting out of events in her own life were the nearest thing we had to theatre and she was every bit as entertaining as the real thing.
Occasionally she would be really angry about some quarrel or disagreement and would relate the events with passion to anyone who would listen when she got home; in a way, I think we enjoyed these scenes of theatrical tragedy even more than the funnier episodes. Anyway, we all enjoyed the club at secondhand through Mother. Sometimes, when matters of club policy were to be discussed, Father would try to persuade my mother to support what HE would prefer - but she always insisted that SHE was the committee member and that she would make up her own mind. Occasionally this led to disagreements between the two of them, but Mother always stuck to her guns and went her own way. (She didn't need to burn her bra to keep her womanly dignity, integrity and self-respect).
As usual, Father could not think that all the children of the more affluent, middle-class Indians should be given a party while the children of the poor lascars in dockland went without. So, through the Indian Workers' Welfare League, we always put on a similar party for the seamens' children and their wives. The children were given a toy and the Mothers were given a packet of tea and other household goodies. This party was always held in Poplar Town Hall and we would be there the whole day, helping to make sandwiches and cakes and sweets. I always thought it alot more fun than the rather formal party we had at the Savoy - playing 'oranges and lemons' and 'here-we-come-gathering-nuts-in-may' always made me feel horribly self-conscious and I dreaded it every year. I still don't enjoy light-hearted socialbility. The Poplar party was less organised and much more fun. And Father was always in a good mood and usually his political cronies in the I.W.W.L. would come home afterwards and talk above our heads but I enjoyed just mingling with grown-ups. I suspect the older end of the family found it all a bit of a boring duty and made their escape as soon as they could.