Louisa was dusting the verandah furniture and Annalukshmi and Manohari were sweeping the verandah and breaking cobwebs. They paused in their work, sighing inwardly at the prospect of another tedious visit.
“Well, cousin,” Philomena declared, “I am flabbergasted. How many days I have been coming here and you never thought to mention this news about Kumudini.”
“News?” Louisa said, not knowing what she was talking about.
“You mean, you don’t know? Kumudini is pregnant.”
“Haaah?” Louisa cried in surprise.
Annalukshmi and Manohari looked at each other, astonished.
Louisa recovered herself. “What are you talking about, cousin? You must be misinformed.”
Philomena shook her head. “No. My friend Viola Emannuel is back from Malaya. Her husband is one of the few Tamil gynaecologists in Kuala Lumpur, and she knows for a fact that Kumudini is pregnant. Has been for the last four months. Soon after they were married.”
“No, cousin, that can’t be.” Louisa looked to her daughters for support.
“Why wouldn’t we have heard if she was?” Annalukshmi demanded. She was sure that her aunt had got things wrong. “Why wouldn’t Kumudini have written and told us?”
“Why indeed,” Philomena said. She sank into a chair. “It’s certain that Parvathy and your father are keeping her from informing you. They want her to have the child there so they can prevent its baptism.”
Louisa sat down as well. Philomena had, unwittingly, touched on one of her own misgivings. Though she had given her grudging permission to this marriage, she was haunted by doubts and concerns. She had begun to speculate whether her husband would honour the pact she had made with Parvathy about the religion of Kumudini’s future children. “No,” she said firmly. “Parvathy would never do that. She is a woman of her word.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, cousin,” Philomena said.
Once Louisa and the girls had retired to the kitchen to put the finishing touches to the lunch, Manohari said, “Imagine if akka got pregnant right after they were married. Out on the first ball.”
Louisa frowned at her and told her not to be crude.
“She isn’t pregnant,” Annalukshmi said impatiently, and she wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. “It’s just Aunt Philomena’s rubbish. I don’t know why she keeps coming here with her wretched nonsense. I have a good mind to put Epsom salts in her food one of these days.”
“I agree it’s probably nothing,” Louisa said. “But I am going to send a letter to Kumudini today. By express post. Let’s clear this up once and for all.”
That afternoon, as she lay in bed trying to sleep despite the sluggish heat that the overhead fan merely shifted around, Annalukshmi pondered what her Aunt Philomena had said and felt even more sure that she was wrong. Besides it being customary for girls to return to their mother’s house for the later part of their confinement, Ceylonese women in Malaya always came back at the beginning of their pregnancy. Medical facilities in Malaya were backward when compared to Ceylon, and during those early dangerous months it was very important to be near a good hospital and good doctors. She doubted that her aunt or her father, whatever intentions they might have about the child’s religion, would take such a risk with her sister or their future grandchild.
Annalukshmi looked over at Kumudini’s empty bed and sighed, thinking back to the wedding more than four months earlier. Since Muttiah and Parvathy had been in Ceylon for only two weeks, there had been a flurry of activity to organize the reception. Her Aunt Philomena, despite her cries of horror when she found out and her threats to disown their family, had been unable to resist a wedding. She had arrived with Mrs. Beeton’s Cookery Book tucked under her arm to supervise preparation of the wedding breakfast. It had been a small affair, just the immediate relatives. The Mudaliyar and Nalamma had made the ballroom at Brighton available for the breakfast. Their Uncle Balendran had given away the bride since their father had not been able to come in time from Malaya. He had, however, sent a long letter castigating Annalukshmi and praising Kumudini for her good sense. At the wedding itself, Annalukshmi had found it difficult to ignore the strange, often pitying looks she got, the whispered conversations behind open fans.
The wedding preparations had been so frantic that it was only once they were at the jetty bidding goodbye to her sister that Annalukshmi had realized what she was losing. When they had returned that day to their now quiet house, she had been filled with despondency. Her gloom had not been helped by the arrival of Christmas. She had missed her sister during the making of the cake, the annual trip to Colombo Cold Stores to buy the suckling pig for Christmas dinner, the shopping for presents. When the holidays were over, she was glad to return to school and the sense of purpose her teaching career offered.
Annalukshmi picked up her book. She glanced at it and then flung it down again. In this heat, even reading was too much of an effort. Besides, she had read this novel before. She thought of going next door, to Brighton, and finding out if her grand-uncle, the Mudaliyar, was going into town on business. She might be able to get a ride with him to Cargills’ bookshop. Annalukshmi noticed that Manohari was lying on her side, her head propped up by her arm, looking at her. “I thought you told me Nancy and Miss Lawton were in Nanu Oya,” Manohari said.
“They are.”
“That’s how much you know then. Yesterday when Amma and I were shopping at the market in Pettah, I saw Nancy with that Mr. Jayaweera.”
“How can that be? Miss Lawton and Nancy would have told me that they had returned to Colombo.”
“Well, I know what I saw.”
Annalukshmi lay back in bed, puzzled. Surely if Nancy and Miss Lawton had returned, they would have sent word that they had arrived. Mr. Jayaweera had recently moved to a rooming house in Pettah. Annalukshmi wondered if Miss Lawton and Nancy had been to visit him without her. She felt put out that this might be so, given they had said they would go together to see his new lodgings. However, she would not let this spoil the pleasure she felt at their return, which would no doubt provide some relief from the drudgery of her domestic chores.
She decided to get a rickshaw this evening, once it was less warm, and go to visit them.
Annalukshmi pushed open the gate to Miss Lawton’s bungalow. As she entered, she noticed that the grass had not been cut in the last two weeks as the gardener had gone back to his village. The front path, usually well swept, was covered in dry leaves. She saw that the front door was still locked and none of the verandah furniture had been put out. She felt sure now that they had not come back, that Manohari had made a mistake.
Annalukshmi knew that Miss Lawton’s servant, Rosa, had not gone to her village this year, and she went around the side of the house to look for her.
As she walked along, she was startled to suddenly hear Nancy’s and Mr. Jayaweera’s voices on the side verandah behind a thick screen of foliage. Annalukshmi stopped, pleased. Nancy and Miss Lawton had indeed come back from Nanu Oya. She walked up to where the foliage began and she was about to part the leaves when she heard Nancy say, with a deep sigh, “You can’t understand how hard this is for me. I am not by nature a deceitful person. I am miserable about this.”
“Yes, I know, I know,” Mr. Jayaweera said soothingly in Sinhalese. “But it will only be for a few weeks more.”
Annalukshmi carefully pushed aside the foliage to try to understand what was happening. What she saw startled her.
Mr. Jayaweera and Nancy were seated on a wooden bench. He had his arm around her and he was stroking her head, which was resting on his shoulder.
Annalukshmi started to move away, but it was too late, they had seen her. Everyone was still, then Mr. Jayaweera and Nancy quickly broke apart. He stood up and she turned her face in the other direction.
After a moment, Mr. Jayaweera silently extended his hand to help Annalukshmi climb up on the verandah. They stood again, looking at each other. Then Nancy began to cry. �
��Forgive me, Annalukshmi,” she said. “I am so very, very sorry. I did not want you to find out in this way.” She got up and went quickly into the house.
“Please, Miss Annalukshmi,” Mr. Jayaweera said, “go and talk with her.” He inclined his head slightly towards her and left.
Annalukshmi went inside to go after her friend.
As she crossed the gloomy drawing room, she felt a hundred questions crowd into her mind. But, more than that, she felt curiously betrayed by what had been revealed. Had she mistaken her and Nancy’s closeness. They had shared their pasts with each other, yet, her friend, all along, had kept this important secret from her.
She found Nancy seated on the bed. She was no longer crying. She glanced up at Annalukshmi. “Are you very hurt?” Nancy asked after a moment.
Annalukshmi did not reply immediately. “I … I can’t deny that I am,” she said. “A little. After all we’ve told each other.”
“Yes,” Nancy said. “But I wanted to protect our friendship.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have not yet told Miss Lawton. I simply did not feel it was fair to involve you in my problems, causing you discomfort with her.”
Annalukshmi saw the distress in her friend’s face. She came and sat down next to Nancy on the bed. “You will have to tell Miss Lawton eventually. It is not as if she would throw you out like some Ceylonese parent would.”
“No. But this will upset her deeply, my involvement with a man who is poor with a family to support, who has no real prospects. And a non-Christian at that.” Nancy stood up and crossed the room, then turned back to her friend. “Miss Lawton has often expressed worry about my future, you know, realizing that my position is neither here nor there, that I don’t quite fit in. But I believe, though we haven’t always seen eye to eye, or agreed on everything … I suppose I want to believe that if I were to find something I really wanted and was happy, she would come to accept it”
“Yes, Nancy, I’m certain of it.”
“I will have to be careful though. Choose my time carefully. Vijith – Mr. Jayaweera – is vulnerable. I don’t want her blaming him, asking him to leave the school.”
“But the longer you wait, the worse it gets, Nancy. It’s better to tell her now and take the consequences.”
“Vijith and I want to wait a few weeks. The lady who owns his boarding house has promised to find him employment in a bank. Once the school finds out about us, it is going to look very bad for Miss Lawton. The parents will think that she committed an impropriety by encouraging the affair while he was living in our house. Or they will think she was not clever enough to see what was going on under her very nose, so how can she be trusted with their daughters. Vijith and I both feel that the honourable thing is for him to find another job.”
That evening, as the sun set over the lawn, they walked about the garden and Nancy told her of how her alliance with Mr. Jayaweera had begun very shortly after he had come to the school. She had felt almost immediately a sense of ease with him, liked the fact that, when they were alone together, he spoke to her in Sinhalese, a language she used so infrequently now and one that brought her back to the life she had lived before she came to Miss Lawton. It had soon been clear to her that Mr. Jayaweera returned her admiration. He was barely at the school a month before he told her that his feelings for her went beyond friendship. As she spoke, moments in the past began to reveal themselves to Annalukshmi in a different light. And though she was pleased for her friend, she could not help but feel concern.
In January, Nancy and Annalukshmi had decided to join the Ceylon Lawn Tennis Association Club, which was in Victoria Park. Over the past few months they met often for a game. One evening, a few days after Annalukshmi had stumbled upon Nancy and Mr. Jayaweera, the two friends came together for a round of tennis. When they finished their game, Nancy began hurriedly to put her things away. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “but I won’t have a drink today. I’ve arranged to meet Vijith for a little while in the park.”
“Of course,” Annalukshmi said, trying to keep the disappointment from her voice.
Nancy patted her on the shoulder in thanks. Then she got on her bicycle and set off across Victoria Park.
Annalukshmi watched her go, feeling abandoned. She had asked her rickshaw man to come fifteen minutes late, so she and Nancy would have time for their drink. Now she would have to wait for him alone. She made her way to the lawn in front of the clubhouse and sat down at one of the wrought-iron tables. Other players sat at the tables around her, chatting. Their camaraderie increased her isolation. The sky above was beginning to darken now, a precursor to one of those evening thundershowers that briefly relieved the heat of April. After a few moments of sitting thus, she could not bear it any longer. She would leave some money with a ball boy to pay the rickshaw man for his wasted effort.
Once she had done this, Annalukshmi began to walk across Victoria Park.
She had no sooner left the club when she saw Nancy and Mr. Jayaweera ahead of her. He was wheeling Nancy’s bicycle and she walked beside him. Annalukshmi quickly stepped off the path so they would not see her, and she watched them. Mr. Jayaweera was holding Nancy’s hand tucked tightly under his arm and he was looking down at her with great fondness. Nancy’s face was suffused with a glow of happiness.
Miss Lawton returned from Nanu Oya a few days later and suggested that Annalukshmi come for a visit. The headmistress’s face lit up with pleasure when she saw her, yet Annalukshmi was barely able to look her in the eye as Miss Lawton pressed her hand warmly. She stayed for dinner that night, but, rather than it being a pleasure, she found it a strain. She had always valued Miss Lawton’s company for the freedom she had to discuss any dilemma with her, the assurance that she would find a sympathetic and discerning ear. In Miss Lawton’s presence, she was now conscious of the things she could not speak of, and found it difficult to talk about anything else.
A week after Philomena Barnett had told them about Kumudini, the family at Lotus Cottage received a letter. It was from Parvathy and was addressed to Louisa.
My dear thangachi,
Rejoice for Kumudini is pregnant! By the time you receive this letter, she will be on her way to Ceylon for her confinement.
You should know, however, that she is actually four months’ pregnant. Murugasu thambi and I have been urging her to return to Colombo these last months but, displaying a will she has no doubt inherited from her father, she has refused to leave, insisting that her place is with her husband, that scores of women give birth every year in the hospitals of Kuala Lumpur without harm either to themselves or the child. She did not even want you to know of her condition, saying you would worry unnecessarily. Finally, Murugasu thambi and I put our foot down and so now she is on her way to you. She will arrive in two weeks. I remain pledged to our agreement about the child’s religion.
Parvathy.
The letter Louisa had sent her daughter could not have arrived in Malaya yet, so this was not a response to it. Parvathy’s last sentence, her commitment to the baptism of the child, removed any suspicions they could have had on this point. In fact, it seemed deliberately mentioned to allay any doubts they might have. As they reread the letter and discussed it, they could not help but feel that the culprit in this delay was Kumudini herself. They wondered how she, so well known for her good sense, could have held up her return in this way.
“It’s love,” Manohari finally declared with mock sentimentality. “She cannot bear to be parted from the one who brings rays of sunshine into her life.”
It quickly came to dominate Louisa’s mind that she was going to be a grandmother. That very morning, despite the blistering heat, which made their leather slippers stick to the tar of the roads, Louisa went into Pettah to shop for cotton cloth that she would use to make shirts for the baby. She expected that Annalukshmi accompany her.
Pettah, being one of the oldest districts of Colombo, didn’t have any of the wide, tree-lined streets the
rest of the city boasted. Instead, its narrow jumble of lanes were open mercilessly to the sun, and the mixed smells of bloody meat and putrefying fruit and vegetables were heightened by the heat. Annalukshmi, grimly carrying the parcels, watched her mother jostling with the crowds, hurrying from shop to shop, buying lace and ribbons and buttons and cotton cloth, bargaining with enthusiasm and fierceness. It was clear to Annalukshmi that for the next five months, her mother would have one thing alone on her mind: the birth of her grandchild.
That afternoon, after they came home, Louisa told Annalukshmi that she wanted her to give up her tennis game with Nancy that evening and, indeed, for the rest of the week. She was to devote herself to smocking little shirts for Kumudini’s child.
“I’m not giving up anything,” Annalukshmi cried, now truly infuriated. “You’re acting as if the child is going to be born next week.”
“Don’t be selfish,” Louisa said. “You have enough time in the world to go and play tennis with Nancy.”
“So will Kumudini have time when she gets here. She’ll have nothing to do the whole day but sit and smock shirts for her child.”
“A fine aunt you’ll make,” Manohari said. “Just like that evil Mrs. Reed in Jane Eyre.”
“Kadavale,” Annalukshmi cried. “You’d think this was the second coming.”
Louisa looked at her as if she had committed a sacrilege.
The new school term was to begin in a few days and Annalukshmi volunteered to help Miss Lawton and Nancy tidy up the staff room. They met one morning to do so.
Annalukshmi was in the process of cleaning out the teachers’ cubicles when she said to the headmistress and Nancy, “We’ve had some good news this week. My sister, Kumudini, is pregnant.”
Miss Lawton was at the table going through old correspondence, sorting out what needed to be thrown away. Nancy was up on a chair taking down the curtains so they could be washed. They both stopped what they were doing. “Congratulations,” Miss Lawton exclaimed.
Cinnamon Gardens Page 22