by Roma Tearne
‘Go and see them, men,’ Ranjith teased. ‘Put yourself out of your misery, or I’ll have to!’
So, plucking up his courage, unprepared for his meeting with her, much less her eccentric colonial family, he went.
Let loose at this first encounter, the de Silvas reacted each in their different ways.
‘Hello, Sunil,’ said Thornton, shaking hands with him, smiling in a new and dazzling way. It was clear he needed to do nothing else. ‘Why don’t you come with us to the party at the Skyline Hotel next week? There’s supposed to be an extremely good jazz quartet playing.’
Ah, yes, why not? thought Myrtle. Why not show off in our usual fashion?
Christopher, resigned and silent as always, saw no point in getting annoyed with his family. They were completely crazy. Any friends of theirs were bound to be crazy too. What am I doing here? he thought. I don’t belong.
‘Where do your parents live, Sunil?’ asked Grace tactfully, thinking, first things first. A few discreet enquiries never went amiss. Earlier that day she had discussed Sunil with Vijay. Lying in his arms, she had told Vijay about their first encounter.
‘He has an open, friendly face,’ she had said.
Seeing him again, she felt she had been right. The young man seemed unaffected and honest.
‘My father worked for the railways,’ Sunil told them. ‘He was killed in the riots of ’47: Now my mother lives in Dondra.’
He hesitated. Would a family such as this have heard about the riots in ’47? Grace nodded, encouragingly. Of course she remembered.
‘He was crushed in an accident,’ Sunil said. His father, he told them, had been working his shift at the time. He had not been part of the riots but in the skirmish that followed he had been trampled to death. ‘My mother couldn’t get her widow’s pension because it was thought my father had taken part in the demonstration. She should have taken the matter to a tribunal but, well…’ He spread his hands out expressively.
Alicia was listening. There was not a trace of bitterness in Sunil’s voice. In the silence that followed, Grace read between the lines. She had heard how terrible things had been, how many people had been killed. Sunil’s childhood would have been very hard as a direct result. Being a Sinhalese woman, Sunil’s mother would have been ignored by the British. She would have had no idea how to get any compensation. Aloysius nodded. One brown face, he guessed, would have been the same as any other. Aloysius was unusually silent. The talk turned to other things. To Sunil’s political ambitions for the new country they were building. Good God, thought Aloysius astonished, I must be growing old. This boy’s optimism is so refreshing.
‘Our only way forward is through education,’ Sunil told Alicia, earnestly. It was a simple thought, he admitted, apologetically, but the discovery was a turning point for him. Christopher, about to leave the room, stopped in surprise.
‘All the foreign rule we’ve been subjected to is bound to affect us as a country,’ Sunil continued. ‘We have become a confused nation. What we desperately need now is free state education. For everyone.’ He was talking to them all, but it was Alicia he was looking at. ‘Sinhalese, Tamils, everyone,’ he said.
There was no doubting his sincerity. Ah, thought Jacob, cynically, here we go again, same old story. Well, what does he think he can achieve alone?
‘I went from the village school to being a weekly boarder in town,’ Sunil told them. ‘Then I took the scholarship exam for Colombo Boys School.’
A self-made man, thought Aloysius, impressed. They are the best. It’s men like this we need.
‘I found it paid off,’ Sunil smiled at Alicia. ‘After that, I could send my mother some money.’
But he’s wonderful, Alicia was thinking. He’s so wonderful! Christopher too was listening hungrily. Here at last, in the midst of his idiotic family whose sole interests were concerts and parties, was someone he might talk to. Here at last was a real person. Someone who might care about the state of this place. Suddenly Christopher wanted desperately to have a proper conversation with Sunil. But there were too many de Silvas present. He stood sullen and uncommunicative, hovering uncertainly in the background, not knowing what to do next.
Sunil had no idea of the tensions around him. The family behaved impeccably, plying him with petits fours (where, he wondered fleetingly, did they get them?) and tea, served in exquisite white bone-china cups, and love cake on beautiful, green Hartley china plates. Alicia played the piano for him and Jasper watched the proceedings silently, gimlet-eyed and newly awake from his afternoon nap.
The conversation became general. Grace and Aloysius were charming hosts. All those house parties, those weekend tennis events had not taken place for nothing. Even Jacob became cautiously friendly, talking to Sunil about his work exporting tea. Sunil was interested in everything. Aloysius told him about the tea estates that had once belonged to Grace while Thornton showed him some of his poems. But this last proved to be too much for Christopher. Taking the cats with him, he disappeared.
‘Thank God, sister!’ shouted Jasper, who loathed the cats.
Sunil was enchanted all over again. How could he not be? Jasper alone was a force to be reckoned with.
‘Have you ever played poker, Sunil?’ asked Aloysius.
‘Oh no, please, no!’ exclaimed Grace. But she was laughing.
‘Wait, wait,’ Thornton cried. ‘Let’s all play. Come on, Jacob, you too!’
The evening meandered on. The card table was brought out; ice-cold palmyra toddy in etched Venetian glasses appeared as if from nowhere; and, with the unexpected arrival of the aunts, Coco and Valerie, the family launched into a game of Ajoutha. It was a magical starlit evening, effortlessly filled with the possibilities of youth. Alicia was persuaded to play the piano again, this time for Sunil’s friend Ranjith Pieris who arrived just before dinner was served out on the veranda. Sunil could not remember another time as wonderful as this.
‘You know, I have Ranjith to thank for meeting you,’ he told them, beginning slowly to relax, feeling some inexplicable emotion glowing within him each time his eyes alighted on Alicia. For it had been Ranjith, he told them, shyly, who had bought the tickets for the Conservatoire recital. It had been Ranjith who, persuading Sunil to accompany him, had sent him reluctantly out into this bright looking-glass world of elegance, from which there would be no going back.
The wedding was set for December when it would be cooler. The invisible forces of karma worked with effortless ease. Gladness filled the air. Sunil was a Buddhist, but in the face of Alicia’s happiness, no one cared much. For Alicia was radiant. Everyone remarked on the change in her. Her career was taking off. Having given two more concert performances in Colombo she was invited to take part in a radio series in the New Year.
‘After that, who knows?’ said the Director of the Conservatoire. ‘An international tour perhaps? Grace, your daughter is an extraordinary girl.’
‘Let’s get the wedding over with first, for goodness’ sake!’ begged Grace. The world seemed to be spinning madly with so many things happening at once.
‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Aloysius joyously, helping himself to the whisky the bridegroom-to-be had just brought him.
The marriage was arranged for the last day in the year, a Poya day, a night of the full moon. An auspicious sign, a good omen.
‘Come along, everyone,’ cried Aloysius with gusto, ‘let’s drink to the wedding of the year!’
It was the first proper whisky he had drunk in months. It was clear he was going to get on with his future son-in-law like a house on fire.
‘What we need is a small windfall,’ he added with a small gleam in his eyes. ‘A little poker might do the trick, what d’you think, darl? Huh?’
Grace ignored him. She was still ignoring him, when, four weeks later the windfall turned out to be in the form of a broken arm.
‘Don’t worry,’ Aloysius told her, finding it hugely funny. ‘It’s only August after all. By Christmas I will be out of the
sling!’
Grace had other things on her mind.
‘Father Giovanni wants the bride and groom to attend matrimonial classes together,’ announced Frieda, who was in charge of helping her mother on all such matters. Frieda was to be the bridesmaid. ‘Otherwise, there can’t be a church wedding, he told me.’
‘Hindu bastard!’ screeched Jasper, not following the story very well. He was feeling the heat.
‘Be quiet, Jasper,’ said Grace absent-mindedly.
‘Bastard!’ said Jasper sourly.
‘That bird should be shot. He’s a social embarrassment. I’ll do it, if you like, darl,’ offered Aloysius, whose right hand was still capable of pulling a trigger. ‘This is entirely Christopher’s doing, you know. God knows what he’ll come out with when the guests start arriving.’
But naturally everyone protested and Jasper was spared yet again.
Meanwhile, in all this commotion, no one noticed Thornton’s frequent mealtime absences. Jacob, the usual guardian of all the siblings, was preoccupied. In just over a year’s time he hoped to secure a passage on one of the Italian ocean liners that crossed and recrossed the seas to England. He told no one of this plan which had been fermenting quietly for years. His sister’s wedding, his brother’s whereabouts, these things had increasingly become less important to Jacob. If he noticed his family at all these days, it was from a great distance, their chatter muffled by the sound of the ocean, that heartbeat of all his hopes. So Jacob, the sharpest of them all, the one who noticed everything, failed to notice that Thornton was often absent. Which left Thornton free to do just about whatever he wanted. At last that wonderful smile was paying off. These days, his dark curly hair shone glossily and his large eyes were limpid pools of iridescent light. Such was his laughter when he was home, planting a kiss on his mother’s head, tweaking his sister’s hair, deferential towards his father, that nobody really registered those times when he was not. Except Jasper that is. Jasper was always saying crossly, ‘You’re late!’
‘I know,’ laughed Thornton, coming in with great energy, sitting down at the piano, playing the snatch of jazz he had heard only moments before as he walked up to the house. ‘I’ve been looking for a new mynah bird, old thing!’
‘Oh Thornton!’ exclaimed Alicia, rushing in. Being in love made her rush. ‘You are so clever. I wish I could play by ear.’
Thornton laughed, delighted. The piano under his fingers took on the swagger of the dance floor. He would be playing at his sister’s wedding.
‘Will you play “Maybe” and “An American in Paris” at the reception?’ begged Alicia, her arms around his neck, hugging him.
‘Yes,’ said Thornton. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
And he laughed again with the sheer joy of it all, pushing his hat down over his eyes, sticking a cigarette in the side of his mouth Bogart-style, foot pressed down on the loud pedal, until he deafened them all with the vibrations. Alicia, because she was happy, assumed naturally that his happiness was due to her. Naturally, being in love, what else could she assume? But Thornton was filled with an exuberance, a secret glow that was nothing whatsoever to do with the sunshine outside, or his sister. It was a tingling feeling that made him belt out ‘As Time Goes By’ one minute, and ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ the next.
The house was almost continuously filled with activity, music pouring out of its every window. Love was in the air. Even the stifling heat of the dry season could not dispel it. Everyone was completely wrapped up with this, the first marriage in the family. The visitors’ list grew daily. Relatives from across the island, from Australia, and from as far away as Canada were coming.
‘We mustn’t forget Anslem, you know,’ said Aloysius. ‘Oh, and that fellow, what’s his name, darl, you know, the chap from the hill station?’
‘Harrison?’ asked Grace. ‘Yes. He’s on my list. What about Dr Davidson and his wife?’
‘Don’t forget the Fernandos,’ Frieda reminded her. ‘And is Mabel coming?’
‘What about Anton?’ asked Thornton. ‘I hope he’s coming.’
‘He is,’ said Grace frowning, looking at her list again, harassed. ‘Alicia, is Ranjith Pieris definitely Sunil’s best man? I need to know.’
‘Yes,’ shouted Alicia from another part of the house.
‘Oh good!’ said Thornton. ‘Hey, Jacob, Anton’s coming!’
‘Good,’ said Jacob, hurrying out. He was late for work.
Having sold off a piece of her land Grace prepared to throw open their doors for a party bigger and grander than anything in living memory. Bigger than Grace’s own wedding and grander than the party thrown by her father at the birth of Jacob. Grace was orchestrating the whole event, and Aloysius…Aloysius could hardly wait for the celebrations. A huge wedding cake was being made. As rationing was still in operation this was no easy task, but in this, at least, the bridegroom was able to help. The list of ingredients was frightening.
‘Rulang, sugar, raisins,’ said Frieda importantly, ‘sultanas, currants, candied peel, cherries, ginger preserve, chow-chow preserve, pumpkin preserve, almonds, Australian butter, brandy, rose water, bee’s honey, vanilla essence, almond essence, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, one hundred and fifty eggs.’
Even Myrtle was drawn in and for once joined forces with the cook to weigh, chop and mix the ingredients, while Sunil was consulted on the little matter of the eggs. His mother in Dondra was instructed to round up all the hens she could find. Sunil volunteered to fetch the eggs, returning with all one hundred and fifty, travelling on the overnight steam train that hugged the coconut-fringed coastline, lit by the light of the phosphorescent moon.
It was hot and airless in the train and several times during the night Sunil went out into the corridor where the breeze from the open window made it cooler. A huge moon stretched a path across the water. From where he stood it shone like crumpled cloth. Sunil stood watching the catamarans on the motionless sea and the men silhouetted on their stilts, delicate nets fanning like coral around them. It was the landscape of his birth, the place he loved and had grown up with. It was part and parcel of his childhood. Now, with this sudden momentous turn of events he was leaving it all behind to begin his married life in Colombo. Soon, very soon, he would have a wife to support. And then, he thought with wonder, then, there would be children! In the darkness his face softened at the thought. He had been an only child. He could not imagine children. His and Alicia’s. He knew his mother worried about this unexpected match to a Tamil girl. She had said nothing, but he knew what was on her mind. Sunil, however, was certain. He had given his heart, and his certainty was such that nothing would go wrong, he promised her. If the United Ethnic Party came into power, as he fervently hoped, then his political ambitions and all his wishes for unity on the island would be fulfilled at last, and the vague and reckless talk of civil war would be averted. It will be averted, thought Sunil determinedly. One day, he had promised his mother, brushing aside her anxieties, climbing aboard the train, with his parcel of eggs, they would build a house in Dondra, at the furthest tip of land by the lighthouse, overlooking the sea. So that she might live at last surrounded by her memories, so that he and Alicia, and all their children could be frequent visitors. Peering out of the carriage window, with the sea rushing past, his thoughts ran on in this way, planning, dreaming, hoping, as the Capital Express sped along the coast, hissing and hooting plaintively into the night. The ships on the horizon looked out from the darkened sea at the delicate necklace of lights on this small blessed island, as Sunil, gazing at the moon, carried one hundred and fifty eggs back for his beloved’s wedding cake.
4
BY LATE OCTOBER THE HEAT IN Colombo had become impossible. There had been no rain for months and the garden that had thrived under Grace’s care began to wilt. The air was thick and clammy and humid but still there was no sign of any rain. Every day the sky appeared a cloudless, gemstone blue, joined seamlessly to the sea. One morning, when the preparations for the wedding were fully under wa
y, Grace decided to leave early for Colombo. These days she was always shopping in Colombo. There was Alicia’s entire trousseau to buy; there were clothes for the other children. And there were her own saris, too.
‘Start lunch without me,’ she told Frieda, as she waited for the taxi.
‘I won’t be in either, darl,’ Aloysius warned her.
He had joined a new club where he could play poker undisturbed. Grace nodded. She had seen to it that Aloysius had only a limited amount of money each month and she was happy for him to spend it as he pleased. Once this allowance was gone, she told him, firmly, there would be nothing more until the next month. Sitting in her taxi, driving across the heat-soaked city, she dismissed him from her mind. It was Vijay who filled her thoughts. She was on her way to visit him. It had become increasingly difficult for Grace to escape, harder to find suitable excuses to leave the house. But although she was aware of an increased risk, she saw Vijay as often as she dared, seldom leaving it longer than a week. After two months of unemployment Vijay had finally got a new job as a cook in a restaurant. It meant he worked late and was only free during the mornings and although in some ways this made things easier for Grace, she missed seeing him in the evenings.
‘I’ve been longing to see you,’ she cried breathlessly, coming in quietly, noticing how cool his tiny room was. Noticing the white sheet on his makeshift bed and the spray of jasmine in water on the table. She loved this room with its pristine cleanliness and its sparse austerity. Vijay was looking at her with a tender expression that made her heart turn over.
‘I have all morning,’ she said, sounding like a young girl, feeling the luxury of her words. They had no need to rush.
Afterwards, lying side by side, she saw there were hours left. Vijay lay with one arm around her staring at a patch of light flickering on the ceiling. Grace could see fragments of them both reflected in the mirror that stood beside the door. A leg entwined with a foot, indistinguishable from a smooth hip. Joined as one. Skin to skin. Turning her face towards his, she pulled him gently away from his private reverie, her eyes dark and very beautiful so that, unable to resist her, unable to remain melancholy in the face of her certainty, he buried his face in her. And began to kiss her, slowly and methodically, inch by inch, with an urgency he had not shown before. Outside the morning sun rose higher in the sapphire sky, shortening the shadows, increasing the heat, unnoticed by them. When finally she could speak again Grace told him about a party she had been invited to. She liked to tell him about her days and what the family did. She wanted him to know everything about her life.