The Flower Boy

by Karen Roberts

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing at the memory of their escapade all those years ago.

  John swatted Rose-Lizzie’s behind as she passed him. “I’m glad you find it funny, young lady. The two of you gave your mother and me some grief, if I recall.”

  They gave him a funny look and walked on, whispering to each other. John stood there for a few moments before he realized what he had said. He smiled.

  He couldn’t really help it. Although Premawathi was still extremely aware of appearances and sometimes went to annoying lengths to keep them up, almost everyone knew. Nobody seemed to find the situation shocking or uncomfortable: not his children, not her own and certainly not Robin Cartwright, who, John suspected, was more than half in love with her himself. Nobody talked about it either, but John was always aware that he was being watched by Chandi.

  Chandi wasn’t hostile. He just—watched. Waiting to see if I’ll hurt his mother, John thought wryly. Not that he blamed the boy. Premawathi had had a rough deal in life, and although John tried to give her little gifts and slip her some extra spending money, she was adamant in her refusals. One day, when John was trying to persuade her to take twenty rupees to buy some clothes for Leela’s baby, who was due soon, she had looked at him and said, “Don’t you see? It would spoil everything.”

  “Not for me,” he insisted.

  “For me,” she said quietly.

  After that he hadn’t tried anymore, and despite his impatience, he admired her pride tremendously. And her practicality, although that destroyed him sometimes.

  “Will you always look after me so well?” he asked her late one night, as she rubbed liniment into his aching back.

  “Always is a long time,” she replied, not pausing in her task.

  “Well, will you?” he asked, trying to turn his head to look at her.

  She pushed him firmly back on the bed. “For as long as you’re here,” she said briskly.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he declared.

  “That’s what Disneris said and where’s he now?” she asked wryly.

  He pushed himself up and turned to look fully at her. “I’m not Disneris,” he said mildly. “I am the Sudu Mahattaya.”

  She laughed at his accent. “Yes, and that’s why you too will go one day,” she said lightly, looking away so he wouldn’t see the pain in her eyes.

  “I’ll never leave you willingly,” he said gently, turning her face around to him.

  “Ah, but you’ll still leave,” she said, a hint of bitterness now creeping into her voice. She stood up and went to the bathroom to wash her hands.

  He sat there and stared silently into space, wishing he could find the words to reassure her, but knowing he couldn’t. Not honestly, anyway. He had thought many times of writing to Elsie and asking her for a divorce. It was not as if anything held them together. The children were older.

  But then what? he asked himself. Even if they did find Disneris, who indeed seemed to have disappeared into thin air, and even if he did agree to a divorce, could he marry her? Uproot her from everything that was dear and familiar to her? Take her away from her beloved mountains and sunshine, to a cold gray world where people hurried and the sun grudgingly doled out its rays like a miser parting with his money?

  He couldn’t do it. And yet he couldn’t face the thought of losing her either. It was truly an intolerable situation, and one he preferred not to dwell on.

  CHANDI AND ROSE-LIZZIE went to wash before dinner. As soon as they were sure they were out of earshot of the others, Rose-Lizzie turned to Chandi.

  “There!” she said triumphantly. “Did you hear what he said?”

  “Who?” Chandi asked innocently.

  “There you go again, pretending you don’t know! You know who! My father.”

  “Well, what did he say?”

  She leaned forward. “He said ‘your mother and me’!” she whispered.

  “Why are you whispering? There’s no one here. And she is my mother, you know.”

  “Yes I know, but that’s not how he meant it. Do you think they’ll get married?”

  Chandi looked at her in exasperation. “How many times do I have to tell you? They are married. Both of them. To your mother and my father, remember?” He turned and started walking away.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded. “I’m talking to you. It’s very rude to walk away when someone’s talking to you.”

  “When you stop talking like a two-year-old, I’ll talk to you,” he said over his shoulder and hurried off.

  He made his way to the kitchen, washed quickly at the sink and dished out a plate of food for himself, and sat on the kitchen step.

  For a while, he had taken his meals with the family, at John’s insistence, but lately he had started eating in the kitchen once again. John had asked him why and he had said, “I should eat with my family, Sudu Mahattaya, like you eat with yours.”

  John had nodded understandingly and put his arm around Chandi’s shoulder. “You’re growing up to be a fine young man, Chandi,” he said. “I wish I had a son like you.”

  Chandi smiled back sympathetically, for he knew how disappointed John was with his own son.

  “If you change your mind, there’s always a place for you at table,” John said.

  Chandi nodded. “Thank you, Sudu Mahattaya.”

  He ate with his fingers, not with a fork and knife like he did when he used to eat with the family. Presently, Jinadasa came to join him.

  “Argued again, I hear,” he said, looking affectionately at Chandi.

  Chandi grinned. “They expect me to, so I shouldn’t disappoint them, no?”

  Jinadasa laughed. “You’re smarter than all of us put together.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes.

  “Jinadasa Aiyya,” Chandi said hesitantly, “when is Leela Akki’s baby coming?”

  “Soon, I hope. She won’t be able to walk if she grows any bigger,” Jinadasa said, smiling at the thought of his wife. Leela was due to give birth in less than a month. “Why?”

  “Will it hurt her when the baby comes out?” Chandi asked.

  Jinadasa sobered. “Yes, I imagine so. But they say that when a woman sees her baby for the first time, she forgets the pain immediately.”

  “I hope there are no landslides or anything like that,” Chandi said worriedly.

  “Landslides?” Jinadasa asked, confused.

  But Chandi had already finished and gone to wash his plate and hands.

  AS IT TURNED out, there wasn’t a landslide, or indeed even a drop of rain the day their baby finally made its appearance, five days late.

  It was just after sunset and the sky outside was magnificent. Chandi and Rose-Lizzie were walking back to the house from the oya, and although they saw sunsets like this quite often, this one made them stop and gaze.

  The sky was untidily streaked with pink and purple and blue, as if a bunch of mischievous angels had kicked over their paint pots. Here and there, it shimmered as if golden dust had been haphazardly tossed around.

  It was an artist’s sky, and as they finally approached Glencairn, they saw Robin Cartwright painting frantically, trying to capture it on canvas before darkness descended. They went over and watched.

  “There’s no point,” he said without turning around. “Even the most talented painter could never do this justice.”

  “So why are you trying?” Rose-Lizzie asked reasonably.

  “I don’t know. I just had to try,” he said.

  “It’s a pity,” Chandi said, still looking up at the sky, which was still spectacular.

  Robin Cartwright turned around. “What is?” he asked curiously.

  “You’re so busy trying to paint it that you’re missing the whole thing.”

  Robin Cartwright regarded him quizzically, laid his paintbrush and palette down and said, “I do believe you’re right, Chandi.” Having abandoned his attempts, he lay down on the grass and joined them in looking.


  Presently he stirred. “What a show,” he sighed. “If I were a baby, I couldn’t have picked a more beautiful evening to be born.”

  Chandi sat up. “What are you talking about?”

  “Leela,” Robin Cartwright answered tranquilly. “She’s in labor. She’ll be on her way to the hospital pretty quickly, I imagine.”

  Chandi rose and ran into the house without waiting for either of them.

  Rose-Lizzie sighed. “I hope he doesn’t get too upset,” she said.

  “Upset? Why?”

  “He heard me being born and I don’t think he’s ever forgotten it.”

  “He must have been just a baby at the time!”

  “I don’t think Chandi was ever a baby,” she replied.

  In the house, Chandi flew from room to room looking for her and finally ended up on the veranda, where he watched helplessly as Leela was carefully loaded into John’s car. Jinadasa and his mother got in and John was about to drive off when he spotted Chandi standing there. He rolled down his window.

  “Chandi,” he called out, “nothing to worry about. We’re just on our way to the hospital. Look after the house, will you?”

  Chandi nodded and watched the car drive away.

  SO, TWELVE YEARS after Rose-Lizzie was born, Glencairn had its second baby, also a girl. Sita was born a few minutes after midnight that night and was brought home in triumph by her parents only a day later. This birth was easy.

  Chandi spent her first day home simply looking at her, marveling at her perfection and her smallness, allowing himself to be shooed out of the room only when it was time for her feeds.

  He had never been given the opportunity to see Rose-Lizzie as a newborn and he had never forgotten his disappointment. Now he gazed to his heart’s content, examining every one of Sita’s tiny fingers and toes, gently touching her shock of black hair. If she slept, he waited until she woke up so he could look into her gray eyes, which his mother said would change to black soon.

  Rose-Lizzie was not as fascinated with the new arrival as Chandi was. After her first visit, which lasted only five minutes, she got bored and wandered off.

  AT SIXTEEN, CHANDI’S dream of going to England was very much intact, although he still hadn’t told anyone about it. He had discontinued his flower business some years ago, only because he found that a gangly thirteen-year-old didn’t have the same appeal to visitors as the grinning four-year-old had had. After several cold stares from the women and rough brush-offs from the men, he was forced to admit to himself that he’d have to find a new avenue of work if he was to keep his England fund growing.

  Initially that had been easy too, for the Sudu Mahattaya gave him numerous odd jobs and paid well. Chandi spent his Saturdays and Sundays washing and polishing the car, polishing John’s shoes and occasionally running errands to other plantations or to the factory.

  Strictly speaking, John didn’t have to pay him anything, but since the flowers at Glencairn were now blooming untouched, John had figured that for some reason, Chandi’s business had come to a halt. And since he knew Chandi was diligently saving money for something, he decided to help him out. Anne and Rose-Lizzie were given weekly pocket money. John was too afraid to offer the same to Chandi, for fear of offending him and Premawathi. Hence the odd jobs.

  Lately, though, even those had sort of petered out, because as Chandi became closer to the family, it didn’t seem right to treat him like an errand boy.

  Now, Chandi only washed the car for two rupees a month and waited patiently for Christmas and his birthday.

  Chandi now had over fifty rupees. It was no longer hidden under stones in the back garden, but resided in an envelope under his pillow. Premawathi had come across it once while cleaning, and she had been shocked.

  “Where on earth did you get so much money?” she asked Chandi dazedly.

  “I saved it,” he replied defensively.

  Premawathi stared at him, a million questions on her lips. Wisely, though, she kept silent, only advising him to open up a post office savings book and put it in there. Chandi listened quietly enough, but resolved to do nothing of the sort. With people like Gunadasa working at the post office, who knew what might happen to his hard-earned money?

  With age had come the realization that he still had quite a lot of saving to do in order to buy himself a passage to England, but luckily or unluckily, he still wasn’t sure what it actually cost.

  When Sita was born, he agonized over whether he should dip into the envelope and buy her a present, but after giving it much thought, he decided not to. After all, when he returned from England, he could bring her much better presents than the ones that the Nuwara Eliya shops had to offer.

  Not that she didn’t have enough. In the weeks before her birth, Premawathi had hand-sewn dozens of pretty cotton baby clothes for her, and Rose-Lizzie had generously dug into her old toy chest and come up with a whole lot of toys, some slightly motheaten, some smelling strongly of camphor balls, but all still better than Nuwara Eliya’s limited offerings.

  WHEN SITA WAS six months old and her eyes finally became black, Leela and Jinadasa decided to leave Glencairn and return to Maskeliya. Jinadasa’s father was old now and couldn’t look after the few acres of vegetables he cultivated. Since Jinadasa was his only son and would eventually inherit the land, it was left to him to take care of it, and his elderly parents.

  Leela didn’t seem to mind, and even seemed to look forward to the change. Although some years had passed since Rangi’s death, the memories were still there, and an underlying sadness. Leela wanted her first child to grow up in a happy place, free of sad memories, and although she didn’t know if Maskeliya was happier than Glencairn, it was still a change.

  Premawathi was disappointed but she understood.

  Chandi was devastated.

  He felt as if he were losing his other sister too. He had grown fond of Jinadasa and doted on baby Sita. Now he was losing all three at the same time.

  “Why do they have to go, Ammi?” he demanded.

  It was late evening and the rest of the house was settling in for the night. Premawathi and Chandi were walking through the gardens, as they often did when they had something to talk about. Premawathi had felt the anger building up in Chandi and she had been the one to suggest this evening’s walk.

  Now she sighed. “You know why, Chandi,” she said practically. “Jinadasa’s parents are old now. They need someone to look after them.”

  “Why can’t they come to Glencairn and live here? There’s plenty of room and I’m sure the Sudu Mahattaya won’t mind.”

  “And what about the land? Who’ll take care of that? I’ll miss them too, but it’s the right thing to do, child,” she said.

  “I think our family is cursed!” he said angrily. “Other families stay together, but in ours, everyone just leaves.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder but he shrugged it away. “Chandi, our family is not cursed,” she said patiently. “And it’s not that everyone wants to leave, it’s just that everyone wants to live their own lives. Leela is a wife and a mother now. Her duty is towards her husband and family.”

  “Well, what about you, then?” he demanded angrily, missing the shock that leapt into her eyes. “What about your duty to your husband? Why didn’t you go with him or try to stop him leaving us?”

  With an effort, she kept her voice level. “Because I chose to stay and take care of my children.”

  “And the Sudu Mahattaya?” he asked mockingly, knowing he was hurting her but unable to stop the angry words from tumbling out.

  She stopped and turned to face him, her face taut with tension. “I have done my duty towards my children. Leela is settled down and you are grown up now,” she said steadily.

  “And Rangi?” he almost shouted. “What about her? She jumped off World’s End and you didn’t even care!”

  In the moonlight, Premawathi’s face paled. “Nobody even knows if she jumped or fell off. And I did care. I do care,” she corrected
herself.

  He felt as if she were being cold-blooded about the whole thing and it angered him even more. “I know! And I know why, too! She saw you! You and the Sudu Mahattaya, talking and hugging and everything.”

  Premawathi swayed, her face deathly white now. “What?” she whispered disbelievingly. “You knew and you never said anything? All these years I have wondered why, and now you tell me this? Now you tell me?” She sank to the dewy grass and buried her face in her hands.

  Chandi was stricken. The anger left him as suddenly as it had come, and in its place was remorse and fear. He knelt beside her.

  “Ammi, I’m so sorry, Ammi,” he said, holding her shaking shoulders. “I don’t know why I said those awful things.”

  She took her hands away from her eyes and he was relieved to see there were no tears. Then he saw the pain.

  “Because it’s true,” she said dully. “Perhaps I’ve always known but hoped it wasn’t so, and who can blame me? I thought there could be no greater pain than for a mother to bury one of her children, but this, to be the cause of my own child’s death—this is agony. I don’t think I can bear it.”

  He held her face in his hands, hating himself in those moments more than he would do ever again in his life. He truly loved her and to know that he had caused her this grief was almost too much for him. So what must it be like for her? his conscience tauntingly asked him.

  “Ammi, what’s done is done. I had no right to speak to you the way I just did, and if I could give my life to take my words back, I would.”

  She looked at him. “I know you would, my son,” she said, “and you had every right. You had the right of a brother avenging the death of his sister.”

  She closed her eyes briefly and when she opened them again, he saw only love. “All these years,” she said compassionately. “What a burden it must have been for you, what a terrible burden.”

  He had spent the last few moments wondering if his mother, too, was lost to him. Now he began to weep, his remorse and relief becoming one. He let his head fall to her lap and she cradled it, stroking his hair as she used to do all those years ago.

  They stayed there, oblivious to the damp night and the crickets that suddenly burst into noisy song. The moon slipped in and out of clouds, alternately illuminating the tableau on the lawn, then enveloping it in darkness.