Bone China (10 page)

The night was nearly over now. For Christopher there would never be such a night again. He stared at his hands. They oozed liquid through the bandages his mother had used. The burns covered both palms, crossing his lifeline, changing it forever. He had heard afterwards, there had been many others. One of them, he had cried, hardly registering the look on his mother’s face, had been the man she knew as Vijay.

The dawn rose, the sun came out. Beach sweepers began clearing the debris from the night before, but still Christopher stood motionless, Kamala’s name tolling a steady refrain in his head. A newspaper seller shouted out the headlines, riots, petrol bombs, fourteen dead, seven injured. The government was to impose a curfew. But Christopher heard none of this. It was the day of the total eclipse.

They found his bicycle first. It was another four days before they found him. He had wandered for miles along the outskirts
of the city, without shoes, his bandages torn off, his hands a mass of sores and infected pus, his face covered in insect bites. He did not see the eclipse as the moon slipped slowly over the sun. Or the many thousand crescent shadows that drained the warmth from the earth. Or hear the birds, whose confused, small roosting sounds filled the sudden night. And, as his family searched frantically for him, Christopher remained oblivious of the darkness that slipped swiftly across the land before sinking at last, gently, into the Bay of Bengal.

G
RACE, FACE DOWN, FISTS CLENCHED,
was lying across the bed. She was trying to control herself. Somewhere far in the distance a train hooted. The sound sliced the air. She shuddered as though she had been hit by it. Aloysius was frightened. Closing the bedroom door, he stood for a moment staring at her in horror.

‘What is it, Grace?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘Nothing happened to Christopher in the end. What’s wrong?’

Her face was thrown against the pillow and she was shaking. No sound came from her. Nothing. Just the clenching and unclenching of her fists. ‘Grace,’ said Aloysius, fearfully. He took a step towards her, the room blurred for a moment. Not even when he had told her they were leaving their home in the hills had he seen her this way.

‘Grace,’ he said again.

His own voice sounded unrecognisable. He hesitated, suddenly terrified. Then he knelt down beside the bed and tried to take her in his arms. Her sari clung to her, dripping wet with filth from the road. She was shivering.

‘What is it, Grace?’ Aloysius asked again, pleading, half not wanting to know. ‘It isn’t Christopher, is it?’

Something in the tone of his voice made her turn blindly towards him and he caught her as she fell soaked and weeping into his arms. He had no idea how long he stayed in this way, with her cold body and her heart beating against him. Eventually there was a knock on the door. It was Thornton.

‘Not now,’ Aloysius said quickly, before Thornton could see the state his mother was in.

Then Aloysius undressed her, drying her hair, her arms, wiping her face even as she cried, getting her into bed, unquestioning. Concerned only that she would lie down under the mosquito net, with the lights off and the shutters closed.

‘I’ll call the doctor,’ he said, when it was clear that her grief would not abate. ‘Please,’ he said, huskily. ‘Please, Grace. Wait, I’ll be back.’

And he went out, shutting the door softly behind him, to make his phone call and send Thornton and Myrtle away, telling them Grace was ill with stomach cramp and the doctor would be here soon.

Outside the rain increased and thunder beat against the sky. The air had cooled rapidly and small insects invaded the house. Aloysius woke the servant woman and asked her to make some coriander tea for Grace. Then he waited for the doctor to arrive.

Frieda iced the wedding cake while Myrtle read the instructions out loud.

‘“To Ornament Your Wedding Cake.”’

With only two months to go there was still a lot to be done. Frieda’s head ached with a fever. It was raining again, heavy rain that vomited out of the sky, thrashing the branches of the coconut trees. Every word Myrtle uttered, every crack of thunder
made the veins in Frieda’s temples pulsate harder. How her head ached. The rain had brought in several uninvited guests. Large garden spiders thudded against the walls and a rat snake slithered in through the front door, curling up by the open fire in the kitchen. The cook had been blowing into the flames when she saw it.

‘Missy, missy,’ she shouted to Frieda. ‘We have a visit from the Hindu God. It is good luck, missy. It is a good omen for the wedding.’

The cook would not move the snake. In the end it left of its own accord. Grace, had she heard, would have been annoyed by this superstitious nonsense, but Grace was not well. She had seen the doctor repeatedly, because her stomach pains had worsened. Now, almost a month later, although she was over it, she still slept badly. Once she was an early riser, now, everyone noticed, she found it difficult to get up at all. She looked so exhausted that Frieda and Myrtle had taken over the icing of the cake.

‘“For the ornamentation, fancy forcing pipes are not absolutely necessary,”’ said Myrtle.

It felt as though a thousand steel hammers banged inside Frieda’s head. What was Myrtle saying?

‘“This piping will not be easy for a beginner, but with patience and practice there is no reason why it should not be mastered.”’

Frieda imagined Robert. She saw his face reflected in the metal icing nozzle. The beautiful white icing reminded her of him. She wanted to write his name all over the cake. She wanted to write her own name next to it.

Soon the cake was finished, three tiers of it, all beautiful and porcelain – white, pristine and bridal. And then, on top of everything else, Frieda had developed another nagging worry. What was wrong with their mother? Was she sick with some terrible disease? In all her life Frieda had never known Grace to be ill.

‘Have you noticed how quiet she is?’ she asked Thornton, some time later. But Thornton too seemed preoccupied and answered only vaguely. Next, Frieda tried talking to Jacob.

‘D’you think what happened to Christopher has upset her?’

‘Christopher is an idiot,’ Jacob said sternly. ‘You must not encourage him to worry Mummy like this
ever
again. D’you understand?’ He almost said, ‘When I leave for England you will have to watch Christopher,’ but he stopped himself. It was too soon to tell anyone of
his
plans.

Grace had changed. In the weeks that followed Christopher’s escapade she stopped going into the city to visit the nuns and spent most of her time at home, sleeping. When she was awake, she seemed tired and short-tempered. Aloysius too was different. He seemed to have undergone a transformation, as far as Frieda could tell. He had stopped going to the club, played no poker at all and insisted Grace took her meals in bed. Frieda’s worry grew.

‘Alicia,’ she said finally, ‘have you noticed how exhausted Mummy is all the time?’

‘Mmm,’ said Alicia. ‘How d’you mean?’ She had just finished her practice and was staring at her list of things to do.

‘Well,’ Frieda continued, glad to have her sister’s attention at last, ‘yesterday, when Daddy finally went out, she got one of the servants to bring over a huge climbing jasmine. It was in full flower but someone had pulled it up by the roots. Now isn’t that a strange thing to do? When I asked her where she got it from, she looked annoyed. She told me the nuns gave it to her as a present. I had a feeling she didn’t want me to ask.’

‘So?’ asked Alicia, looking up briefly. What was Frieda talking about now? Was she wrong, or had her sister become a little dull of late?

‘Well, isn’t it a strange present to give her?’ persisted Frieda. ‘When we’ve got three jasmine bushes in the garden!’

Alicia shook her head, not knowing what to say.

‘She got Christopher to plant it underneath her bedroom window,’ Frieda continued. ‘One of the branches accidentally broke and she started to
cry
! Can you imagine that? Mummy crying over a jasmine plant? And then, Christopher gave her a
hug
!’

Alicia had to admit,
that
was interesting. But then again she wasn’t all that surprised.

‘Weddings are emotional times,’ she told her sister wisely. ‘I read it in the
Book of Etiquette
.’

‘Perhaps,’ Frieda mused, ‘the scare of nearly losing Christopher has affected her more than we realised.’

As she iced her sister’s cake Frieda went over the sequences of events on that terrible night. Would any of them ever forget it? Even her father, Frieda noticed, had been affected by it. Her father was clearly very worried. At least Mummy has him, thought Frieda, wistfully, remembering again the way in which Robert had looked at Alicia. Lucky Alicia. Lucky everyone. Did no one care that
she
was suffering too? Staring at the expanse of white icing, thinking of her breaking heart, she listened to the rain. No, she reflected mournfully, no one cares. She was unaware that Myrtle watched her.

Myrtle of course, understood what Frieda’s headaches were about. She had mentioned it in her diary, that morning.

October 31. Thank God the monsoons are here at last. I have not been able to write through lack of time. There are still two months left before this wretched wedding. G is too weak to be of much help. It looks as though Mr Basher was right although I had no idea her downfall would be through an illness. Well, it’s as good as any other misfortune, if not better! She certainly looks
pretty dreadful. A, of course, is full of such concern that it has become quite comical. I’d like to tell him that he should be looking forward to possible widowerhood! After all, I shall be there; I’ll look after him. For the last couple of weeks, needless to say, I have been working like a coolie (with no acknowledgement). F remains uselessly slow and a complete misery, while our little Bride has her head in the clouds. Have an interesting theory about F. I have noticed she likes white boys!! If this isn’t nipped in the bud soon there’ll be trouble from that direction too. Like mother like daughter. Don’t I know it! Anyway, G looks pretty terrible at the moment. There has been no need for me to do the thing Mr B suggested, as yet. Shall save it for the other event. Apparently the doctor thinks G’s got dengue fever.

The month of November passed slowly. All across the capital the riots had temporarily destabilised the country. Everyone desperately wished to put it behind them. Christmas was around the corner to be followed swiftly by the wedding. The cake was ready, the invitations had been sent out. One evening Grace, appearing to be much better, came out to sit on the veranda. Everyone was pleased. Thornton pulled up a chair under her newly planted jasmine bush. Alicia began to play her mother’s favourite piece of Schubert and Frieda went to tell the cook their mother would be joining them for dinner. Grace had been ill for nearly a month. She looked smaller, more delicate, infinitely more lovely, thought Aloysius, watching her, surreptitiously. He had grown cautious. On that first night, when she had been so distraught, turning to him for the first time in many years, Aloysius had not known what to do. She had begun to tell him something incoherently, and Aloysius had been afraid.

‘Don’t say anything,’ he had told her. The less he knew the better. ‘You don’t need to tell me, darl.’

I don’t want to know, he told himself, repeatedly. Whatever it was, it’s enough that she’s here, with us now. Afterwards, in the days and nights that had followed, when he had shielded her from the children’s anxieties and protected her from Myrtle’s curiosity, he had regretted stopping her. He had begun to wish she would confide in him. But as the days turned into weeks and Grace became aware once more of the need not to upset her family, Aloysius saw that the moment had passed. She regained control of herself and he intuited she would never turn to him in that way again. So Aloysius watched her struggle, talking with Christopher for long hours, pulling herself back to life, and refrained from comment.

‘It’s been too much for her,’ he told Myrtle, fobbing her off, refusing to be drawn by her questions. ‘What with losing Alicia soon, and Christopher’s nonsense on top of that, she’s not as strong as she likes to think she is.’

Myrtle raised her eyebrows.

‘Of course,’ agreed Frieda wistfully, ‘it’s the thought of losing Alicia that’s upsetting Mummy so much! It’s about the wedding, isn’t it?’

They had all agreed. Then, as the wedding approached, Grace, with an enormous effort, did seem to pull herself together, so some, if not all, of their former pleasure appeared to return. Sunil was so much a part of their lives now it was hard to imagine a time when he was not present. After the riots he had won a small electoral victory with the UEP in the south.

‘No one,’ he told Alicia passionately, ‘wants a civil war. This island has lived for centuries in perfect harmony, why can it not do so again?’

He had tried talking to Christopher, but here a door slammed heavily in his face. Sunil did not take offence. He continued his work with simple optimism, determined to walk the road of
peace. There was still so much work to be done. His wedding was only a few weeks away. Then, after the Roman Catholic Mass, before they went upcountry for their honeymoon, there would be a brief blessing ceremony at the temple in St Andrew’s Road. Sunil’s mother had arranged it. For an auspicious time of day.

Somehow Jasper had escaped. He had always lived in a little room off the hall where the windows were covered with wire mesh. But at some point, due to the heavy rains, or perhaps his own feverish pecking, the mesh had worn out. Christopher, who in the past would have been the one to notice this, no longer either noticed or cared. Christopher was beyond all such childish interests. Silent and morose, he did not respond to Jasper’s greetings. In fact, no one thought about the bird. Even the dog next door had disappeared and no longer provided sport for him. Bored and ignored, Jasper looked elsewhere for entertainment. Nobody bothered. Nobody missed him. The wedding and other events had more or less taken over the de Silva family. Several days went by. He flew gloriously out through one window and onto the jackfruit tree, then further on into the plantain tree. Swooping silently in through yet another window, pecking the kittens who mewed and hid under the furniture. For four days Jasper was mute, afraid, no doubt, of being caught. Then, having picked his victim, he descended on her.

Myrtle was not expecting this. After her morning ablutions she usually spent some time in her room. On this particular morning, she was in her room, a towel wrapped around her head, her dark body patched with talcum powder, wrapped in a vast multicoloured housecoat. She was holding a small metal object in her hand.

‘Hello, sister,’ said Jasper swooping down on her.

Myrtle jumped. And dropped the metal plate. Startled, she raised her arms above her face.

‘Get out!’ she screeched. ‘Get out! Get out!’

Jasper watched her with interest.

‘Atten-tion!’ he said solemnly, imitating the army captain he had once seen.

‘No! No!’ yelled Myrtle, flaying her arms about in a vain attempt to drive him away. ‘Get out! Get out!’

Jasper narrowed his eyes to thin bright slits. He perched on the top of her wardrobe, leaving a small deposit that ran easily down the smooth mahogany, landing on the back of the chair, close to Myrtle’s neatly folded sari. He squawked imperfectly but with some satisfaction. He was still practising his devil-bird impersonation. Then he belched, as he had often heard Aloysius do.