Free Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje Page A

When she was called to give evidence she kept referring to him as “My Lord My God.” E.W. was probably one of the ugliest men in Ceylon at the time. When he asked Lalla if Brumphy was good-looking—trying humorously to suggest some motive for her protecting him—she replied, “Good looking? Who can say, My Lord My God, some people may find
you
good looking.” She was thrown out of court while the gallery hooted with laughter and gave her a standing ovation. This dialogue is still in the judicial records in the Buller’s Road Court Museum. In any case she continued to play bridge with E. W. Jayawardene and their sons would remain close friends.
    Apart from rare appearances in court (sometimes to watch other friends give evidence), Lalla’s day was carefully planned. She would be up at four with the milkers, oversee the dairy, look after the books, and be finished by 9 A.M. The rest of the day would be given over to gallivanting—social calls, lunch parties, visits from admirers, and bridge. She also brought up her two children. It was in the garden at Palm Lodge that my mother and DorothyClementi-Smith would practise their dances, quite often surrounded by cattle.
    * * *
    For years Palm Lodge attracted a constant group—first as children, then teenagers, and then young adults. For most of her life children flocked to Lalla, for she was the most casual and irresponsible of chaperones, being far too busy with her own life to oversee them all. Behind Palm Lodge was a paddy field which separated her house from “Royden,” where the Daniels lived. When there were complaints that hordes of children ran into Royden with muddy feet, Lalla bought ten pairs of stilts and taught them to walk across the paddy fields on these “borukakuls” or “lying legs.” Lalla would say “yes” to any request if she was busy at bridge so they knew when to ask her for permission to do the most outrageous things. Every child had to be part of the group. She particularly objected to children being sent for extra tuition on Saturdays and would hire a Wallace Carriage and go searching for children like Peggy Peiris. She swept into the school at noon yelling “PEGGY!!!,” fluttering down the halls in her long black clothes loose at the edges like a rooster dragging its tail, and Peggy’s friends would lean over the banisters and say “Look, look, your mad aunt has arrived.”
    As these children grew older they discovered that Lalla had very little money. She would take groups out for meals and be refused service as she hadn’t paid her previous bills. Everyone went with her anyway, though they could never be sure of eating. It was the same with adults. During one of her grand dinner parties she asked Lionel Wendt who was very shy to carve the meat. A big pot wasplaced in front of him. As he removed the lid a baby goat jumped out and skittered down the table. Lalla had been so involved with the joke—buying the kid that morning and finding a big enough pot—that she had forgotten about the real dinner and there was nothing to eat once the shock and laughter had subsided.
    In the early years her two children, Noel and Doris, could hardly move without being used as part of Lalla’s daily theatre. She was constantly dreaming up costumes for my mother to wear to fancy dress parties, which were the rage at the time. Because of Lalla, my mother won every fancy dress competition for three years while in her late teens. Lalla tended to go in for animals or sea creatures. The crowning achievement was my mother’s appearance at the Galle Face Dance as a lobster—the outfit bright red and covered with crustaceans and claws which grew out of her shoulder blades and seemed to move of their own accord. The problem was that she could not sit down for the whole evening but had to walk or waltz stiffly from side to side with her various beaux who, although respecting the imagination behind the outfit, found her beautiful frame almost