The Flower Boy

by Karen Roberts

“It’s all so strange,” the Sudu Nona was heard to say to similar-minded, magazine-reading, tea-drinking English ladies. “Not only does she speak passable English, but she makes passable mince pies too. Thank God—imagine having curry for Christmas, my dear!”

  ON THE TWENTIETH of December, Jonathan reluctantly returned home for his school holidays. He looked even more lonely and out of place than he had before he left. He found his mother even more unbearable, his father even more reticent and his sister even more buried in her books.

  The only bright spot in his otherwise gloomy existence was his new baby sister, Lizzie.

  He doted on her and spent hours playing with her and talking to her, never seeming to get bored with her limited conversational abilities like most almost-eleven-year-olds would have. Instead, he seemed to delight in her gurgles and spit bubbles and even her wet nappies.

  His mother couldn’t understand it. To her, the baby was a necessary evil that had been visited on her one night, the Third Child. Jonathan was her beloved firstborn.

  She had envisioned the two of them having many cozy chats in front of the fireplace, taking long hand-in-hand walks through the gardens and generally making up for lost time. Instead, she lost her son to her baby.

  She bitterly resented the time Jonathan spent with Lizzie and although she tried valiantly to conceal it, it would often snake out in a petulant comment.

  “Mama would occasionally like to talk with you, dear.”

  “Darling, you’ve plenty of time to learn to change nappies, you know.”

  “What do you two talk about?”

  And so on.

  Jonathan soon learned to ignore the comments and instead of loving his mother less, he loved Lizzie more. He felt an odd kinship with this happy, smiling creature who had come into his life so unexpectedly.

  In spite of the fact that he had been cosseted and pampered by his mother from the day he was born, he was lonely, and felt that Lizzie was too.

  But unlike him, she didn’t seem to mind, finding her own happiness in rattles and spit bubbles and, lately, in shiny baubles and tinsel emerging from dusty boxes like hibernating animals after their long sleep.

  IN THIS CROWDED sea of Christmas excitement, Chandi floated like an uninhabited island, hugging his happy thoughts to himself. Even at the church school, where the nativity play rehearsals were in full swing, he was frequently pulled up for not concentrating, but he didn’t mind.

  This was Mr. Aloysius’s big chance to show the tiny world of Glencairn what a great theatrical director/producer he could have been. He had already appointed Father Ross from the tiny Glencairn church to be his official assistant, although the good father’s role was limited to collecting old sheets, towels, tinsel and clothes to be used for costumes and props.

  So far they had done quite well, and the motley assortment sat in an old tea crate under Teacher’s table.

  Father Ross had come out to Ceylon to convert natives and spread the word of God, before going on to India where more heathens awaited his ministrations.

  Having traveled no farther than London from his native Scotland, he had imagined Ceylon to be a wild, untamed place with naked, spear-toting, sunworshiping natives everywhere. The reality had both disappointed and relieved him. Being of a teaching background and because of a dire need for dedicated (which actually meant underpaid) teachers, he had been sent to Glencairn and put in charge of the church and church school.

  He had grown to like it here and was genuinely fond of his parishioners, who in turn felt real affection for the mild-mannered, good-natured priest, who wasn’t above having an arrack with them at weddings, baptisms and funerals.

  Every time the Nuwara Eliya diocese brought up the subject of India, Father Ross would tell them he had so much more to do here, and they let him be.

  He was a true missionary, and didn’t give them problems involving married women and young boys like the previous parish priest had.

  CHANDI WAS CAST as one of the three kings, much to Sunil’s secret disappointment, who himself was only one of about thirty shepherds. But Sunil did not live at the bungalow.

  The nepotism continued with Rangi playing the Virgin, and Leela as the Angel Gabriel.

  Every day they had to stay an extra hour after school to rehearse.

  The tables and chairs were cleared away from one of the classrooms and the thirty dirty shepherds took their places.

  Sunil had to shade his eyes and look up at the cobwebby ceiling for the Star in the East, which was going to be fixed later on. For now, all he could see were alarming-looking cracks with brown fungus growing out of them.

  Then along came Rangi, her Joseph, and his imaginary donkey. Under Mrs. Carson’s old blue bathrobe, Rangi had a pillow tied around her stomach that had split in one corner after too many tyings and now left a trail of moldy cotton behind her.

  They had to knock at an imaginary door and face Bala the school bully, who played the obnoxious innkeeper quite well. The manger was made up of handfuls of dried African grass, and it was there they sat to wait for the Savior to make an appearance from Rangi’s leaky pillow.

  The actual birth was censored. The audience only saw Anne’s old plastic one-eyed baby doll, wrapped in swaddling old nappies, lying in the manger.

  Chandi and his two other kings arrived, also shielding their eyes and staring up at the fungus-filled cracks, looking in vain for something that looked like a star, that wasn’t really a mummified spider.

  The grand finale was when shepherds with their imaginary sheep, the Magi on their imaginary horses and camels, and the other faithful met at the manger to pay their respects to the one-eyed baby doll.

  Although he didn’t mean to hold up rehearsals, Chandi did anyway, with all his questions. What if the Baby Jesus had decided to be born into a palace, or at least a bungalow? In fact, why hadn’t he? Wouldn’t he have saved his parents a lot of grief? Why didn’t God send down a chariot to take them to Bethlehem? Why didn’t God get rid of Herod, because then there would have been no trouble to start with?

  Mr. Aloysius struggled to find answers, but eventually left it to Father Ross to deal with Chandi’s spiritual teetering.

  The Sudu Mahattaya and Nona and their children were coming and there were rumors that the family from Windsor would also attend. It was important to create a good impression, he told his charges, who had no idea what “impression” was. They hadn’t got that far in their English class.

  At which juncture, Chandi presented him with another poser: didn’t only God create?

  Mr. Aloysius ignored the question, wishing for the umpteenth time that Chandi would stop asking questions. None of the other children did.

  BACK AT THE bungalow, the Sudu Nona eyed her calendar with increasing trepidation. If there was another thing she hated about being the lady of the manor, it was the guest appearances she was supposed to make every now and then.

  She had no idea what she was expected to do, so she usually nodded and half-smiled, as if full smiling would encourage familiarity. She felt a little like royalty.

  The play was scheduled for the twenty-third of December at five in the evening, which was also inconvenient since she had guests for Christmas Eve dinner. The family from Windsor had invited them the previous year, and this year it was Elsie Buckwater’s turn. She was determined to do better than they had.

  Bigger turkey, more potatoes, more Brussels sprouts, more mince pies, more Christmas pudding.

  On the afternoon of the twenty-third, Chandi fidgeted while Leela fitted the silver-paper-covered cardboard crown on his head.

  He wore his school shorts and shirt, but had a frayed piece of purple silk from someone’s old sari tied around his shoulders like a cape. He carried the top half of a broomstick covered with silver paper in one hand, an empty gift-wrapped box in the other and had pink powder, lipstick and rouge on his face.

  He felt slightly ridiculous.

  The chief guests arrived sharp at five and were met and esc
orted to their seats by a nervous reception committee headed by Mr. Aloysius. The family from Windsor had not come, which was both a disappointment and a blessing, since there were only six bugless chairs in the school.

  They had been debugged earlier on by Antonis, the half-mad school watchman, who had poured several pots of boiling water over them, and had managed to pour some on his feet as well, hence the dirty bandages and the hobble.

  With the exception of Mrs. Buckwater’s genteel snores and the plastic one-eyed, fingerless baby doll Jesus slipping through Rangi Mary’s nerveless fingers and landing on Chandi Magi’s respectful foot, the play played smoothly.

  Afterward, scores of lipsticked and rouged kings, shepherds, angels and others flocked to pay respectful homage to the Sudu Mahattaya, who ruffled a few heads, patted a few backs, clucked over a few babies and smiled once at Mr. Aloysius.

  They all slid uncertainly past the Sudu Nona, who didn’t at all mind being slid past. It gave her less to do. Anne looked amused, Jonathan looked distraught and Premawathi tried hard not to beam too much with motherly pride.

  Only Chandi was disappointed, for Rose-Lizzie had been left behind at the bungalow with her ayah-jailer.

  CHRISTMAS DAY ARRIVED quickly, not at all like last year when it had chugged in like the Ruhuna Kumari with all twenty carriages attached, negotiating a particularly tricky climb.

  The family decked themselves out in their seasonal finery and left for church in the silver car, which had been brought out and polished by Krishna for the occasion.

  They went to the church in Nuwara Eliya town.

  The small Glencairn church had its Christmas service too, attended by a full congregation of unbedecked factory workers who sang louder and prayed harder than all the bedecked people in the big church in Nuwara Eliya.

  Premawathi couldn’t go because she had too much to do, and Rangi and Leela had to help her, so Chandi missed Christmas service. He didn’t really care.

  He waited impatiently until the family came back from church, because this was the one day in the entire year when the help was allowed to hover around the open drawing room door to watch the presents, which had sat underneath the Christmas tree, being handed out and opened.

  He wasn’t really interested in the presents, but Rose-Lizzie would be there. Open and revealed like a just-unwrapped, longed-for Christmas present.

  He was washed and scrubbed extra hard with Ammi’s pol mudda for the occasion. His teeth gleamed whitely and his face was gray from too much Pond’s powder. He hung a piece of tinsel he had found earlier around his neck, but Ammi pulled it off.

  The Christmas tree glittered with fairy lights, throwing silver and gold reflections onto the faces of the family ranged around. The Sudu Mahattaya was in his wing chair, the Sudu Nona was arranged artistically on the sofa, her arm around Jonathan who was perched uncomfortably next to her, Anne was on the carpet in front of the sofa, and Rose-Lizzie was in the unrelenting grip of the ayah-jailer.

  Appuhamy stood behind his master’s chair like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

  Clustered around the door, like an untidy bunch of unmatched grapes, stood Premawathi, Rangi, Leela, Chandi, Krishna and the three girls who helped around the house.

  To Chandi, who had pushed himself as far into his mother’s reddha as he could, the scene before him looked like something out of a storybook. The family, the tree, the roaring fire, the bay window. It was a perfect picture, marred only by the unmatched grapes hanging around the door.

  He fixed his gaze on Rose-Lizzie, who seemed more interested in the shiny tree. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed her to look at him.

  He opened his eyes and found her dark blue eyes fixed on him in an unblinking stare. He stared back, then blinked. She blinked back. He blew out his cheeks. She blew out her cheeks. He stuck his tongue out. She did the same.

  He regarded her gravely and she regarded him gravely back. Then he smiled and her serious little face dissolved in a wide, white grin. Three teeth now. Three polished pieces of perfectly white coconut, without black worm holes in even one.

  The child and the baby grinned across the four years, thirteen adults and infinite circumstances between them.

  “Chandi, Chandi.” His mother’s urgent stage whisper penetrated the grin and suddenly, the years, adults and circumstances were there again.

  His mother was pushing him forward. Everyone was looking at him and the Sudu Nona was wearing her kind Christmas look and holding out a small, odd-shaped package. He went forward and took it.

  “Merry Christmas, Chandi,” she said in her Christmas voice.

  “Thank you,” he mumbled, and rushed back to the safety of his mother’s reddha. She bent toward him.

  “Did you say thank you?” she demanded softly. He shot her an angry look. Of course he’d said thank you. He wasn’t that stupid.

  He looked at Rose-Lizzie and surreptitiously waggled his fingers at her.

  She waggled her fingers back at him.

  LATER, THE LITTLE family sat opening their presents in their little room. His was a red plastic money box in the shape of a pig, its curly tail plastered against its fat bottom. It looked sleepy. He turned it around in his hands and wondered where he could hide it once he had transferred the England fund into it. It was too fat to go under the stone.

  Ammi’s present was a new reddha, a dark blue one, the color of Rose-Lizzie’s eyes, with little white flowers on it, the color of Rose-Lizzie’s skin. She also got five rupees, which she folded into a tiny square and tucked into her brassiere. Leela got two fake-tortoiseshell hair grips and Rangi got a cake of English Lavender soap, which she placed carefully in her small box of clothes, next to the identical one she had got last Christmas.

  They talked softly about the lights on the tree, about how sweet the Sudu Baby had looked and about how Jonathan had kept shifting in his seat to avoid his mother’s clutches.

  Their conversation was interrupted by a sudden commotion outside the kitchen door and they all ran out to look.

  Krishna was being chased by the Christmas turkey, which had somehow managed to escape and was grimly determined not to be Christmas dinner.

  Sunlight glinted off the large Sheffield steel knife he was brandishing around as he hopped from foot to foot to avoid the beak of Glencairn’s irate main course.

  Chandi, Leela and Rangi laughed helplessly, but Ammi was not amused. She strode over to Krishna and snatched the knife away from him.

  “Get into the house, you buffoon, and stop delaying dinner,” she ordered. Her voice had the same effect on the turkey as on Krishna, for it stopped dead and looked at her with inquiring eyes.

  Chandi was about to entreat his mother to spare it when she grabbed it by its neck and, with a quick clean motion, chopped its head off. Its headless body ran around for a few seconds, jerked once and finally died properly.

  Chandi just stood there, shocked not so much by the death of the turkey, as by his mother’s ability to kill with such quick ease.

  He turned and ran indoors, his stomach churning.

  That night, he dreamt that his mother was being chased by a whole gaggle of huge turkeys with sharklike teeth, each brandishing a shining Sheffield steel knife, while he just stood there and laughed hysterically.

  chapter 7

  THE MONTHS PASSED WITH THE SWIFTNESS OF A RIVER IN SPATE.

  The invisible cloak of childhood was shedding itself slowly but surely, and in its place grew another invisible cloak. This new one was more fragile than the last, needing more of the colorful threads of imagination to keep it intact.

  The smell of rebellion was in the air. In the kitchen, Krishna rebelled against Premawathi’s iron control, sarcastic tongue and ear-twisting by stealing food whenever he could and peeping more frequently when she took her baths.

  Premawathi rebelled against her feelings of loneliness and need by rushing to and fro even more frantically than usual, and tiring herself out in the process.

  In the ma
in house, Jonathan, whenever he came to visit, rebelled against his mother’s loving grip, which hardened every day like rapidly cooling caramel, by going off on long solitary walks or spending hours with Rose-Lizzie.

  Anne rebelled against her enforced friendships with neighboring planters’ children, most of whom she thought were empty and vacuous, by simply not speaking when she was taken to visit them.

  And John Buckwater rebelled against his wife, whose voice seemed to be getting higher as her interest in their lives got lower, by simply ignoring her.

  In the church school, Chandi rebelled against Teacher’s postblackboard naps by throwing chalk-saturated dusters at him whenever his back was turned.

  And in her plush, lace-trimmed pram, Rose-Lizzie rebelled against her ayah-jailer by sinking her perfectly white pieces-of-coconut-like teeth into Ayah’s fleshy underarms whenever they were within range.

  Rose-Lizzie was by now nearly three, and walking and talking. She was pampered by everyone except her mother, who found her three-month-old English magazines far more absorbing than her three-year-old daughter.

  John had given up trying to change things.

  He had talked, implored, threatened, but Elsie Buckwater’s little bubble of discontent was prick-proof. Every day she withdrew a little more, got a little more distant, showing animation only when people from neighboring bungalows visited.

  She treated her husband with icy formality, her children with absolute indifference and the servants with cold hauteur.

  John now concentrated on being both father and mother to Rose-Lizzie, often taking her piggyback around the plantation when he went out on his inspections. She flashed her toothy grin at the pickers, who would wave and grin back at her.

  He spent his evenings playing with her, reading to her and explaining the complicated business of tea to her, while his wife lounged in the Chesterfield by the bay window and flipped and sipped.

  If Rose-Lizzie missed her mother’s care, she didn’t seem to show it.

  Chandi occasionally saw her, but only from afar. He was content to wait, because he knew that it would be only a matter of time before their friendship blossomed. Besides, he had other things to concentrate on these days.