by Roma Tearne
Meeka watched her mother peering into the pot of lamb curry, delving into the rich umber juices, the curry leaves and the potatoes, smiling lopsidedly with concentration. Meeka watched closely; her large eyes were curiously bright and sharply focused. Had Jacob been there, he would have noted the resemblance; Grace certainly would have recognised it at once and Christopher would have been delighted. It was as though Jasper was in the room perched above them, watching with interest. Every time Savitha moved, her smile broadened in a peculiar way. Meeka glanced at her father but he was helping himself to dahl and raw coconut.
Thornton was busy thinking about his day. The office girl had come in, looking so thin, so pink-and-white and panty-hoseish, that everyone had commented. Thornton, never having registered her before, was startled. Belatedly he had realised she was looking straight at him. The boldness of the women in this country compared to those back home fascinated Thornton. Savitha was speaking and with a small jolt Thornton realised where he was. He glanced hastily around the room. Then he looked at Anna-Meeka. She was eating quietly, not talking too much for once. It occurred to Thornton that he was still very disappointed with her for not doing well in her exams. The headmaster had told them at the parents’ evening how well she had made the transition to her new life.
‘She’s a perfect example of integration,’ he had said.
But he had not talked about her eleven-plus results. When Thornton grumbled to Jacob later all his brother did was shake his head.
‘Find the money for a private school, men,’ had been his best suggestion.
Meeka, helping herself to a little more rice, tried to gauge the situation. A new tune circled around in her head. She wanted to play it on the piano after dinner. She knew she had been in the bad books for a long time, what with one thing and another, but she had an important announcement to make. Her father was quiet tonight. Even though he never said so, Meeka knew he missed her granny. She knew her mother did too. In fact, she was sure they did not like it here in Brixton. If only her granny lived in Brixton she was sure her parents would not fuss so much. Tonight, however, everything seemed fairly calm. Her father was not shouting or waving his hands about and her mother was smiling in a most peculiar way. Meeka wondered if her face would get stuck if the wind changed. She giggled. Instantly, both pairs of eyes were upon her, her father’s suspicious, her mother’s watchful. Oh Gawd! thought Meeka.
Thankfully, she did not say it. Instead she said what she had been waiting to say all evening.
‘I’m going to be an actress,’ she announced, ‘when I grow up. I’m going to be like Julie Christie, and I’m going to dye my hair blonde!’ She smiled her father’s sweet smile, looking straight at them, piercing their hearts with love and fear and a longing to end this nightmare, leave it all right here on the Formica table and go back home. To take their darling daughter back to safety. Civil war or not.
‘I think I have talent,’ she added, being her father’s daughter and therefore certain. ‘And looks!’
Savitha gave a hollow laugh.
‘We are going to put you in a private school to give you a proper education,’ Thornton said pompously. ‘Your mother and I are somehow going to find the money. Do you hear me?’
He had not meant it to come out like that, but there, it was out in the open. All his cards on the table. Meeka looked at her mother, but her mother’s smile had vanished and she was frowning at her father.
‘I went to the library today,’ she said, hoping to distract them. ‘After school. Cynthia said to say hello to you, Dad. She said you were nice. She’s got blonde hair and you like her, so why can’t I have it too?’
Afterwards, she could not understand what all the fuss was about. Why, for instance, her mother turned her mouth into a dark wrinkled prune and her father banged his fists on the table shouting in the ‘back-home’ language that Meeka was beginning to forget. Would Cynthia, smelling as she did of hyacinths and winter, like the way her father had curry stains on his nice white shirt? she wondered. Anyway, she had one last thing to tell them. They were not in the mood at the moment. She would make it clear at some later date, when they were less excited. She was not going to any private school. There was no way this was going to happen. She would run away and live with Susan, or Jennifer or Geoff. Whatever happened, Meeka was quite clear about one thing. She was going to the local comprehensive school with her friends. In September.
September, however, was still a long way off. There was the summer to get through first. Their first summer in London; a slow, gentle summer of days that would be etched on their minds forever. They had been in the UK for nearly a year. All that angst, all that planning to get here, and now a whole year had gone so swiftly. Thornton looked out from his office window at the tube station with its stack of Evening Standards and its buckets of scentless, forced carnations. He watched the red London buses sailing close to the tops of the huge plane trees and he remembered the glimpses of sea that used to be his view. He sat dreaming of the early-morning swims with Meeka, the walk along the beach towards the crab seller and the snacks in greasy cones that burnt their hands. It seemed only yesterday that his small daughter in her checked cotton dress, a gap in her front teeth, would pull his arm as he nodded off on a rattan chair on his mother’s veranda.
‘Come on, Daddy, I’m bored. Let’s go to the beach,’ she would pester.
And all the while his mother had watched them, standing in the doorway smiling, as luminescent tropical light slanted through the green glass of the skylight, gathering in iridescent patches, spreading on the cool marble floor. Alone in the office Thornton shook his head. Everything has changed, he thought, his beautiful face taking on the softness of loss.
They had come here for safety, to give their small daughter an education, a better life. But other things were happening to them instead. He was not prepared for any of it. Having grasped this thing called ‘The New Life’ with both hands, his beloved daughter was now turning it into something he had not anticipated. I can see it, thought Thornton staring out of the window, they all think I’m a fool, but I can see where it’s going. Straight to the dogs, that’s what.
Yesterday he had finished early at work. He had forgotten to tell either Savitha or Meeka. He had intended to surprise them by being in the house when they returned, making one of his salads or doing the washing-up. With this in mind he had taken the tube, walked quickly past the park in Kennington, past the new corner shop just opened by an Indian family, past the library (it grieved him now that he had not even stopped here), such was his desire to get back before anyone else. As he turned into the street where he lived, he saw a group of children walking back from school, shouting and screaming, in that terrible unintelligible way he hated. One of the children was a girl with a skirt so short as to be almost indecent and hair like a bird’s nest. She was throwing her school bag up in the air, dancing about, screaming louder than the others (singing quite beautifully, Thornton observed), making the other children laugh. It was only as she broke away from the group, taking her key out of her bag, that he registered who she was.
‘Bye,’ said Meeka, waving at the little group, laughing so much that she could hardly get her key in the lock. ‘Bye, see yer tomorra.’
Thornton hung back, skulking behind a plane tree. For a moment he felt ashamed to be stooping so low. It was early afternoon. The roses were just beginning to bloom. Thornton was shocked. Was this screaming harridan he had seen really Anna-Meeka? She had done something to her school uniform, turned it into a miniskirt. And there was something different about her face too, he thought, puzzled. She looked older, somehow. Why had her mother let her go to school like this? What sort of mother was Savitha? His own mother would be horrified if she could see the child of her favourite son looking this way. Thornton’s anger rippled through the summer leaves of the plane trees. Unable to stop himself, he went to the main road in search of a phone box and some change.
‘Hah! It’s me!’ he said
as soon as the phone was answered. ‘What sort of woman are you, letting my daughter go to school dressed like a white child? Hah?’
Mr Wilson, who had picked up the shared telephone, listened for a moment and handed it to Savitha.
‘I think it’s for you,’ he said with a small courteous bow.
‘Yes?’ Savitha. ‘Oh yes, what can I do for you?’
‘What is wrong with you?’ fumed Thornton, unstoppable now. ‘You have no standards. Money, money, money, that’s all you think of. Why don’t you stay at home and look after our daughter, huh? She has turned into a slummer!’
‘Yes,’ said Savitha. She nodded earnestly. ‘I quite agree. You’ll need to look into the source of it. Try finding the original file. It’s probably in the archives somewhere. Go back to the beginning, I think.’
She put the phone down with a firm little click,
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Mr Wilson who, being the perfect gentleman, would never have dreamed of asking her a single question. ‘We have some trouble with our plumbing.’
And off she went, to wash her hands in the ladies’ lavatory.
Thornton’s eyes bulged. What was he to do? His wife did not seem capable of a coherent conversation. His immediate worry, however, was his daughter. All he had wanted to do was to come home early and surprise them both by being there, clean the house, wash the bloody china, read a newspaper or two. Now here he was, a wreck, outside the phone box on the Vassal Road. He searched his pockets in vain for some change, wondering if the pubs were open yet or whether to go back and confront Meeka, or phone that idiot wife of his again.
This was how Cynthia found him. Fortunately she had finished work early, ramrod hair swinging, short exquisite miniskirt that showed off a pair of gorgeous long, long legs, pretty pink lips, pretty handbag, pretty everything it would seem. That’s how Thornton saw her.
‘You have arrived at a moment of crisis,’ he said, going towards her.
Having played rounders all afternoon Anna-Meeka was starving. She heated some leftover chicken curry. Then she made a sandwich, adding some sliced raw green chilli, some tomato ketchup and some crisps. But before she ate it, just in case her mother came home early, she rolled her skirt down from the waistband, combed her hair and plaited it just as she had done before going to school that morning. One thing Anna-Meeka de Silva had learned over the months was the golden rule of not cutting it too fine. Since the fateful day of her disastrous birthday party she knew always to leave plenty of time for clearing up. She removed the traces of the day from her appearance, washed the eyeliner from her lashes and cleaned her teeth for good measure. Then, and only then, did she eat her sandwich. There were two letters on the mat, both blue aerogrammes. One was for her parents and the other was addressed to her in her grandmother’s frail handwriting. Meeka opened it slowly. She had not written to her grandparents for ages. Somehow there was never enough time.
Her grandmother’s face rose clearly from the paper. Guiltily, she wished she had kept in touch more. She had promised never to forget them all, never to forget her home, but she had forgotten. Her grandmother did not reproach her.
My darling Anna-Meeka, she had written. I have been thinking about you a great deal, as have your grandpa and your aunties. We’ve all been wondering how your music is coming along, whether you are still making up your tunes or whether you are busy with exams. I long to hear you play. There is no music here.
Yesterday I walked to the end of the garden to the bench (near the coconut grove, d’you remember where I mean?).
Meeka paused. Of course she remembered.
You can hear the waves from there, although you can’t quite see them. I tried to pretend you were down there on that little stretch of beach, with your daddy. That soon you would both walk up the hill, laughing and shouting, being starving hungry! D’you remember how Auntie Frieda used to scold your daddy for not wiping the sand off your legs? My darling Anna-Meeka, how I miss you all.
Grace’s voice came over the seas to her, carrying with it the traces of coconut polish and heat. It brought with it the memory of an almost forgotten language. She made it clear she thought Anna-Meeka was wonderful. Once when Meeka had told her she wanted to be famous her granny had nodded in agreement. She hadn’t laughed, or folded her lips, as Meeka’s mother would have done. She had not knitted her eyebrows together like her father. She had simply looked delighted, saying she was sure Anna-Meeka could do whatever she wanted to. Thinking about her now, wishing also that she had made another sandwich for she was still hungry, Meeka vowed to write more often to her.
It is late afternoon now, Grace continued. The servant is out in the yard at the back shaking out some mats. I can hear the coconut man throwing the coconuts to the ground. Do you remember the thambili you used to love? And the coconut sambals?
Meeka stopped reading for a moment. A strain of music ran through her head, borne on a distant sea breeze. It mingled with the harsh staccato of the crows, cawing in the afternoon as she fell asleep. Grace’s loving voice rippled softly. The voice drifted on, telling her of her aunt Frieda and her grandpa. More trouble was brewing on the island.
It is a good thing, she wrote, your parents have taken you to England. You will be safe there, safe from the terrible violence and corruption of our own people. In England, she continued, there is justice. Still, no matter what, Ceylon is still your home, the place where you were born. There is something magical in that because it’s where you will always belong. One day, Anna-Meeka, wrote Grace in her tired handwriting, I hope you’ll be able to return home safely.
Meeka read swiftly, skipping these boring parts of the letter. She agreed with her grandmother (dare she call her ‘Nan’ as Gillian and Susan did?), England was fab. Then she saw that Grace had saved the most interesting bit of news for the last.
Your Auntie Alicia is coming to England. I have written to your mummy and daddy separately. We have been able to buy her a ticket at last.
Meeka gave a shriek of excitement. Her memory of her aunt was vague, but because of her tragic past she remained an exotic figure in Meeka’s imagination. There was the music and the fame of course, and then there were the shootings.
Tomorrow, thought Meeka, I’ll tell them about it at school. She frowned, thinking furiously. It would go something like this: ‘The gunman entered my nan’s house. He overturned the grand piano, killed a few servants in the process and smashed all the bone china. Then…’ Meeka paused, her mind racing, ‘he shot the mynah bird and shot my uncle Sunil too. Everyone screamed; there was blood everywhere. My dad came in like the man from U.N.C.L.E. and wrestled the gun from the man’s hand, but he killed my mum by accident. All this happened long before he married my stepmother Savitha, of course.’
Such was the drama of her story that Anna-Meeka’s eyes shone with emotion. It was how Savitha, opening the front door just then, coming in cautiously after work, fearing God knows what in this madhouse, found her daughter. Standing in the kitchen talking to herself.
‘What?’ demanded Savitha, her eyes darting swiftly around the room, searching for the hidden children, the broken crockery, the mess, the God-knows-what. But all she could see was Anna-Meeka, standing alone, looking very sweet, her hair plaited, her uniform immaculate, and a few crumbs of food on the table. Savitha, shuddering, peered suspiciously at her daughter.
‘Where’s your father?’ she asked.
Meeka shrugged. How was she to know where her father was? Didn’t her mother know she had been at school? Was she keeping tabs on her father too? Perhaps he had been having a party. The thought struck Meeka as funny. She opened her mouth to say something and then she remembered the news.
‘Mum! Mum!’ she said. ‘Auntie Alicia is coming. She’ll be here soon.’
God, thought Savitha in a panic, I better start cleaning this filthy house now! But all she said was: ‘Has she got a visa, then?’
Thornton lit a cigarette. Then, with a gesture of exquisite courtesy, he placed it
gently between the pretty lips of the stunning Cynthia Flowers.
They were sitting in the White Hart and Thornton was watching Cynthia Flowers sip her Babycham in its delicate glass. The frisky fawn, etched on the side of the glass, looked so much like her that he felt a poem coming on. A feeling of well-being drifted over him. It had been some time since he had felt the urge to write any poetry. Cynthia Flowers, frisky as her Babycham Bambi, saw the light in his eyes and the glow surrounding his beautiful face. It had all been her doing, she thought later, the poor man had been in such a state when she happened upon him. What could she do but take him to the pub? It had taken her some time, to find what the problem was. It was his daughter of course. How he loved her! Heavens, thought Cynthia, he must have really loved his wife. The child was probably a daily reminder of this lost love. Cynthia Flowers was too sensitive a person to ask him exactly how his wife had died. How could she ask when the man was in such pain? She had not yet begun to feel jealous of the dead woman. Not yet. So she did what she was very good at. She listened.
‘In Ceylon,’ Thornton said, angrily, ‘girls don’t behave this way.’
Cynthia Flowers, her rosebud mouth very pink and kissable, asked, ‘Where is Ceylon?’
‘It’s a little island,’ Thornton said, used now to explaining where it was to the English. ‘A small piece of the world, shaped like a teardrop.’