David Beresford Another Country Recent genetic evidence supporting the view that mankind is descended from a single woman in Africa and disclosing that man only arrived tens of thousands of years later is obviously startling. It would suggest (at least to my unscientific mind) that if humankind was cast in the Almighty’s image then he is surely a she and the feminist lobby has a strong case for lobbying the press ombudsman to have the record put straight where the ownership of the spare rib is concerned. It comes as a relief to me, personally because of a … well, if not life-long passion, then at least a juvenile interest in questions of ancestry.
Several of the novels I enjoyed as a youth borrowed from what might be called the “ugly duckling” theme. This is, of course, the tradition by which the heroine, or hero, is victimised in childhood for being different. All is explained when the youngster is exposed as an unapologetic imposter, being in reality an aristocrat kidnapped, or hidden in his/her infancy and thus entitled to marry the nearest member of the royal family masquerading as a frog (or vice versa) and to a lifetime’s happiness on the civil list. Being greatly taken by this plot line I closely examined myself in the bathroom mirror and my father’s features more surreptitiously over the dinner table. I was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the mix-up that concealed my nobility behind a middle-class faade must have occurred further back in the family tree. Ancestry was little discussed in our home, but I determined to keep an eye open for the family name confident that the evidence would soon present itself and curious only as to the whereabouts of the estate and the degree of title. It was therefore with some interest that I read a boys’ adventure story about Gordon of Khartoum after discovering that one individual who featured prominently in it was one Lord Charles Beresford. Excitedly I read on to find that Lord Charles was an aide to Kitchener who led a relief column sent to rescue Gordon then besieged in Khartoum by hordes of “whirling dervishes”. My excitement abated somewhat when I read that the relevance of Lord Charles to all this was that he had suffered bad corns that had necessitated several days’ delay in the progress of the column. This apparently resulted in Gordon’s brave death on the steps of Khartoum Palace under the knives of the, no doubt, whirling dervishes. Strongly advising my puzzled mother to give this book a miss, on grounds of dubious scholarship, I privately swore to abandon the ancestral hunt forthwith for fear of what else might come tumbling out of the cupboard. I did accidently come across the trail again in a pub in the small Irish village of Crossmaglen celebrated as the “capital of bandit country” where the man behind the bar inquired with a small smile whether I was any relative to “the Beresfords who were the black bishops of Armagh”. Fortunately I had been briefed that “black” in Ireland was not a reference to pigmentation, but to a name given to Protestant extremism and I denied the charge with an indignation that had little foundation in my uncertainty and ignorance. I was to be reminded of all this years later when I visited my family in South Africa who were not so reticent where the pursuit of family roots was concerned. They informed me it had been discovered that a grandfather whom we had thought to have been an English missionary was in fact Polish. Returning to London and rationalising that the childish oath barred me only from pursuit of aristocratic ancestry whereas artists were notoriously from all levels of society I was hurrying to buy a few recordings of Chopin when I passed one of my favorite drinking holes, the French Pub in Soho’s Dean Street. I dived inside and ordered a half pint of bitter (they refused to use pint glasses in this pub, on cultural and aesthetic grounds).
There I found myself in conversation with a blond bombshell who was sitting on the fringes of what was clearly a partying group. I inquired after her accent. “Polish!” she declared proudly. “We’re all Polish,” she said, gesturing to her companions.
Nearly choking on my beer with excitement I managed to blurt the news of my grandfather’s recently discovered nationality, expecting the entire assembly to erupt into a mazurka, or whatever it is blond Poles do when they are happy. But she looked me over with her gorgeous blue eyes and announced in a withering tone: “Some of my best friends are Jews.” Reflecting on it, they are all born of the same motive, whether it is the class system, anti-Semitism, racism, religious bigotry or any of the many other variations on the theme; an attempt to start with an advantage in the rat race we now call life. Which is why I am so relieved at the discovery of Africa’s solitary Eve. With a virgin birth in one’s family line, who needs the rest?