Bone China (13 page)

‘Prayma, who’s that woman dancing with Thornton?’ asked Grace again.

‘I don’t know,’ said Prayma. ‘D’you know, Mabel?’

‘No,’ said Mabel. ‘I’ll ask Auntie Angel-Face.’

Auntie Angel-Face didn’t know either. She was getting a little short-sighted, and deaf too if truth were known.

‘She was at the church,’ said one of the cousins.

‘Well, let’s ask him,’ said Auntie Angel-Face, boisterously.

Grace would not do that. Her good manners would not allow herself the luxury of curiosity.

‘She’s white,’ said Auntie Angel-Face, in a neutral sort of way.

‘She’s very pretty,’ said Coco, uncertain.

‘
So old
,’ said the cousins.

‘Innocent!’ shrieked Auntie Angel-Face, being unable to stand the suspense any longer. ‘I want to talk to you. Come here.’

Thornton was dancing with the So-Old-White-Woman. He was actually jiving. Rather well, so he thought.

‘Who,’ asked Auntie Angel-Face, ‘who is
that
?’ and she pointed a fat, nail-polished finger in the direction of the So-Old-White-Woman who was wriggling her hips and flapping her thighs together, and who suddenly took a leap into Thornton’s arms, her bright red court shoes sticking out on either side of his slim hips, her head lower than his crotch, a suspicion of knickers for those who were looking. Uncle Innocent’s eyes bulged out of his head. His jaw dropped. Cigar ash fell to his feet unnoticed. A slow, lascivious smile played on his lips. There were other changes too. He stood up straighter, cleared his throat of its customary phlegm, flicked imaginary ash off his shirt when in fact the ash was all over his shoes, and began to perspire heavily. Sensing an audience, Thornton turned, slowly, with a sensuous shake of his hips. The music stopped. He smiled broadly and walked towards them. Towards Uncle Innocent, Auntie Angel-Face, his cousins, his sister, towards his mother. He had been waiting for the right moment and here it was, presenting itself.

‘This is Hildegard,’ he beamed. ‘Mummy, Hildegard and I were married this morning!’

‘Hello, Mrs de Silva,’ said Hildegard, holding out her pretty hand, filling the awkwardness of the moment. ‘I am Hildegard.’
And then, as there didn’t seem to be much response, ‘May I call you Mother?’

No one spoke. Thornton looked at his mother. He saw with some surprise that the expression on her face was not as he expected. Because his mother, Thornton realised somewhat belatedly, was looking at him, the Light of Her Life, her Boy Who Could Tilt the World With a Smile, in a way that did not bode well for the immediate future. Thornton hesitated. The famous smile faltered. His mother’s expression, he saw, would have to be dealt with.

Married
this
morning
? thought Grace, disbelievingly.

‘How
old
is she?’ asked Auntie Angel-Face, and Prayma and Mabel and Uncle Innocent, stalling for time. And that was even before the uproar from Aloysius and Jacob. Jacob had a field day, years of accumulated resentment were aired that night, and the next, and for many nights after. In fact, Jacob had such a time of it that for a while he stopped thinking about his plans for the UK. Such was the disruption caused by that night. Such was the
drama
.

Only Christopher had no comment to make. It was debatable as to whether Christopher even knew what on earth was going on. He hovered on the periphery unnoticed. Alicia had tried dancing with him, the cousins had tried joking with him but Christopher would not be drawn. He had nothing to say. He wandered over to the servants’ quarters where the cook’s son was rolling betel and squatted down, belching loudly. Close by in the murunga tree Jasper kept watch.

‘Here comes another idiot,’ said Jasper.

‘Hello,’ said Christopher, rather unsteadily. ‘What are you drinking?’

‘Whisky, putha,’ said Jasper from the depth of the tree, getting it right for once.

‘Good idea,’ muttered Christopher. ‘That’s the best suggestion I’ve heard all day.’

The servant boy offered him a bottle of arrack.

‘Listen!’ said Christopher, after he had taken a swig. He stabbed at the air and swayed towards the servant boy. ‘I’m going to overthrow this government.’

The servant boy took the bottle back and Christopher glared at him.

‘It’s no laughing matter,’ he said loudly. ‘D’you hear me? You’re going to help me.’

He belched and Jasper belched back, making him jump. Then he laughed, high-pitched and strained. The servant boy stopped rolling his betel and grinned. He pulled his sarong tighter and nodded his head.

‘Hello, Shiny?’ asked Jasper suddenly from above.

Christopher collapsed in a fit of hysterics.

‘Jasper!’ he screeched. ‘Jasper, I’m trying to organise a coup and all you can do is talk about Shiny!’

The servant boy laughed. He had never seen Master Christopher like this before.

‘Bastards!’ said Christopher, beginning to weep. The servant boy held out the bottle again, but Christopher, having curled himself up under the murunga tree, had suddenly fallen asleep. In his tightly clenched fists was a small Perspex brooch in the shape of a butterfly, the sort that was sold in the
kadés
that lined the seafront. The servant boy picked up the arrack and went inside, for he was certain he could hear shouting and crying on a very grand scale.

He had known her for over a year. Her name was Hildegard Rosenstall and she had travelled to the island from the Indian subcontinent where she had been living for some years. She
was beautiful. And she was twenty years older than Thornton. Grace, looking as though she were on a saline drip, had the facts fed slowly to her.

‘Now, Grace, take a deep breath. Slowly, breathe slowly,’ said Auntie Angel-Face. ‘Move away, everyone, she needs air!’

Frieda was crying because, well, because she was at an emotional point in her life, what with one thing and another. She felt incredibly sad and awfully tragic although she was not sure why. She hated atmosphere and there was certainly an atmosphere surrounding Thornton, and Grace. And almost everyone else. So Frieda was crying, buckets and buckets of tears.

‘Will someone do something about Frieda, for God’s sake?’

‘Should we phone the newly-weds?’

‘Innocent, don’t just stand there!’

‘Quick, get some ice.’

All was confusion.

After the wedding night came the morning after. Understandably, no one had slept. The combination of alcohol and angst kept them all awake. All except Christopher who stayed in his stupor unnoticed until the early-morning rain woke him, making him stumble, dry-throated, into bed.

‘Poor boy,’ reported Jasper without making it clear which boy he meant. No one took any notice of him. No one took a swipe at him. Even Myrtle, his favourite, seemed incapable of paying him any attention.

‘Hello, Shiny,’ he muttered, flying back into the trees.

Grace was still silent. Her anger was so great that it had rendered her speechless. The de Silva clan thought it was grief that robbed her of her voice. They had no idea that Grace had only two thoughts in her head. Should she kill Thornton? Or the Woman?

Thornton smiled quite a bit in those early hours. Beautiful, limpid smiles, but it was not working. He turned his eyes into dark pools of passion and sorrow. But that didn’t work either. Jacob throbbed. He had turned into an engine of self-righteous speech. What on earth was it to do with him? wondered Thornton mildly. Not surprisingly Aloysius had reached for the bottle. This
was
a crisis. Uncle Innocent agreed, it was indeed a
crisis
. Uncle Innocent felt too many things, some of them to do with Hildegard herself, the hussy, but in the short term he felt he should show some solidarity with Aloysius and join him with the whisky and soda. The rest of them sided vociferously with Grace, whose beautiful teeth were clenched with rage.

Dawn came slowly. Rose-washed, delicate light, scented with the softness of rain. The heat of the day was slow to reveal itself, simmering, building up to its usual crescendo. Inside the de Silvas’ house, outside on the veranda, and further back in the garden, however, the emotional temperature rose inexorably. Hildegard, her enormous eyes filling with tears, could stand it no longer. Thornton had begun to look like a little boy. He made her feel her age in ways hitherto unknown to her. There comes a time in a woman’s life when her age begins to mean a great deal to her, and sadly this time had arrived for Hildegard. What could she have done? Her skin was still supple; her hair had no hint of grey. She had no children. Who would have thought this could have become a problem? Was every woman on this wretched island expected to be a sacred cow? Hildegard, her slim childless figure belying her age, wondered what she had done. They all clearly thought, as she had begun to feel herself, that she had seduced Thornton, instead of the reality, which was the other way round. Hildegard, whose eyes kept filling up, unaware of the effect it was having on Uncle Innocent, decided it was time to leave. She looked at Thornton for support
but there was a vacant spot where Thornton’s emotions should have been. So Hildegard left in a way that would be remembered afterwards, in silence and with dignified speed.

Thornton hardly noticed. He was feeling a little confused. Confused and with the beginnings of a serious headache coming on. He wished Frieda would stop weeping. It was getting on his nerves. He wished his mother would unlock her teeth. It was affecting the power of his smile. As for his eldest brother, he wondered again, what on earth
his
problem was? Still, he yawned, he was almost too tired to think. He had been certain he was in love but now, well, he couldn’t be sure. His eyebrows shot up into a vulnerable position towards the top of his head. He felt tears of self-pity fill his eyes. Grace, noticing this, felt herself weaken. The family held their breath. And waited. It would be several days yet, but could the end be in sight?

‘Quick,’ said Auntie Angel-Face in command again. ‘Prayma, tell the cook to make some food. Poor Grace has had nothing to eat.’

‘It’s lunchtime already,’ noticed Mabel, surprised. ‘How the time has flown!’

‘I don’t think we should disturb the newly-weds, do you, Auntie Angel? Let them have a little peace to enjoy their honeymoon.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘A telegram will only upset them,’ shouted Uncle Innocent, wondering if he should catch up with Hildegard and offer her a lift somewhere.

Mabel took Frieda in hand and tried to staunch the tears, not in itself an easy operation, and Coco made some tea that no one drank. She had seen it done in the movies and thought she might try it herself. Jasper, feeling much better after a sleep, flew in and saw Myrtle more or less where he had last seen her.

‘Hello, sister,’ he greeted her cheerfully, whereupon Grace, to whom this was absolutely the last straw, arose majestically and hurled her slipper with such force and fury at him that she caught him by surprise, sending him squawking out of the window, knocking over Aloysius’s empty bottle of whisky in the process.

It was midday. The heat had at last revealed its hand. The de Silva family, those that weren’t asleep, sat down to a desultory lunch. It was, they realised, somewhat with surprise, New Year’s Day.

‘Happy New Year!’ said Uncle Innocent, experimentally, seeing how the words sounded and how they all reacted to them. He was trying to keep any lustful thoughts of Hildegard to one side, in order not to cloud the issues at stake. But he kept forgetting what these were and all he could think of were those enormous blue eyes. Uncle Innocent was a sucker, as clearly Thornton had been, for blue eyes. All this passion, he thought feverishly, it was too much for him at his age. Besides, he was worried in case Auntie Angel-Face got wind of his thoughts. Grace was bad enough at the moment without Angel-Face at it too. He poured himself a glass of cold water, clear, cleansing, life-sustaining liquid that it was, and retired to his bed for an afternoon rest.

T
HE WINDS OF CHANGE COME SWIFTLY.
Seldom is there warning. No darkening of the skies, no cockcrow. Instead, suddenly, there comes a stirring breeze, a spiralling dust cloud, a change in things forever. January was cooler. The rains still fell daily, soaking into the ground with the parched and insatiable lust of many months. The island could never seem to get enough wetness, never quite quench its thirst. It breathed in the rain then paused while the forests grew, waiting for the heat to continue.

Grace, appearing to cope with the shock of Thornton’s escapade, headed for the church. The family held their breath.

‘My child,’ said Father Giovanni, ‘have they had carnal knowledge of each other?’

‘No, Father,’ said Grace carefully. ‘Not to my knowledge. My son is headstrong,’ she ventured. ‘He is deeply sorry. He wishes to confess.’

‘Yes, yes, I understand,’ murmured the priest, frowning. He mulled over the recent events. ‘Would you say this young man was led astray? That he was gullible? That the woman was a corrupting influence, perhaps?’

Grace hesitated. Her anger with Thornton had not fully subsided. Where had she gone wrong? Should she have been firmer with him when he was a child? But he had been a wonderful child, thought Grace. She felt cornered.

Father Giovanni considered her. She was a fine-looking woman. An admirable woman, with an unfortunate, useless husband. More importantly, Kollupitiya Cathedral was heavily subsidised by the de Silvas. Christmas and Alicia’s wedding had left a warm glow in the church. And there was little doubt: Grace had her fair share of troubles to bear. Looking at her face in the candlelight, he thought, The poor woman deserves a break.

‘Well, now,’ he said clearing his throat, making up his mind swiftly, ‘he always was a headstrong boy, was your Thornton.’ And he smiled at Grace. ‘Tell him to come and see me in the mornin’, will you?’ he said. ‘And we’ll see what we can do to settle the matter.’

At home, the family held their breath, but they were confident. It was just a matter of time. Annulments came only from Rome and the Holy City worked in mysterious ways. It would not be hurried. There was nothing to do except wait. Twelfth night came and went. Myrtle noted the changes.

January 15. Well they never do things by halves here. Naturally we had to have two weddings! When the Golden Boy delivered his trump card the expression on G’s face was so funny that I had to go out of the room because I was laughing so much. I had forgotten what a temper she has. Illness aside, she became her old self when it came to her darling son. A couple of pieces of her precious bone china went flying in the process. Aloysius tried restraint but there was no stopping G. I’m glad that everyone saw her true colours for once. Innocent looked as though he was having some sort of fit. He just stared and stared at the Woman! No one
seems to know anything about this Hildegard, or where on earth Thornton found her. In some gutter somewhere no doubt, although why she wants to be married to him is a mystery to me. Can’t she see how stupid he is? Well, anyway, she’s not going to be Mrs de Silva for much longer by the looks of things. I knew Thornton was a fool but even I couldn’t have anticipated such behaviour. They’re all angry with him, even Jacob. If anything could kill G off it’s this. If Mr B’s horoscope is to be believed, there’s more to come!

Grace appeared to have put aside her strange lethargy and depression. Uncle Innocent and Aloysius took to drowning their sorrows together, daily, Frieda was still crying intermittently despite all Mabel’s efforts, and the bridegroom appeared to be in a state of confusion. He needed time to take stock, to confess to Father Giovanni. Had he thought about it, Thornton might have seen the desperation of Hildegard’s love and the unsuitability of what he had done. But Thornton, as was becoming increasingly clear, had not been thinking clearly.

Everyone was preoccupied, leaving them unprepared for the next gust of wind. Quietly, unnoticed by anyone, except Grace, Christopher made plans to leave. Silently, without fuss, he went about his preparations. There was nothing to keep him here. No one noticed because what was there to notice? Only his mother, talking to him at odd, snatched moments, understood.

‘What is there left for someone like me in this place?’ he asked her bitterly.

He would be leaving in a few weeks. His ticket to the UK had arrived. He had confessed his plans to her.

‘Things are getting worse here. I can’t take any more,’ he told his mother, flatly.

Grace looked at the ticket. Colombo, Cairo, Genoa,
Southampton. She handed him back his visa, his passport. He was exhausted by the effort of living. They both were.

‘There’s no justice of any sort,’ Christopher said. He spoke quietly. There was no sign of his usual anger. Perhaps disillusion was a quieter thing. ‘There’s nothing left. The government is terrible. Wealth and religion and endless corruption have ruined my life,’ he said. ‘No one either notices or cares.’

His voice broke. Grace nodded silently. She could not deny any of it. She would not argue, even if she had the strength. Nevertheless, she asked him with infinite tenderness, ‘What will there be in England for you, Christopher? What comfort will you find there? Away from your own people?’

‘At least I’ll find justice there!’ he said. ‘They have laws. Laws that work. They’re English, aren’t they? Decent English people. They care about the poor. They care about
their
people.’

She said no more after that. It broke her heart all over again. He is young, she thought, he has ideals. Who was she to question if he was right? She did not mention Kamala. There was no need to say her name. Kamala moved between them like a glimmer of light, in the untouchable layers of their conversation. Kamala and Vijay. The long years of her mothering stretched behind Grace. She could not have foreseen any of this. She could not have foreseen her pain. Finally, hesitantly, it was Christopher who spoke of Kamala.

‘There will never be anyone else,’ he said, so softly that she could barely hear him. He sounded lost and older than his years. ‘All that sort of thing is finished for me.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Grace told him, quietly. She too hesitated. ‘One day, who knows? Don’t talk in this way. Things happen. Unexpected things.’

Please God, she thought. She wanted to say more. She wanted to tell him to be different from her. She wanted to say, make
something of your life, Christopher. Don’t waste it. You are not like me, you have more possibilities. But she was silent, afraid of hurting him further. She knew the dark scorched places in his life could not be eased, and that the hurt he felt would not be spoken of again. Both of us, she thought, have learnt to control ourselves. The light had moved, evening was almost upon them, she could only dimly see his face. Her heart ached for her youngest son, for his aloneness and for his courage. England would change him further. He would grow a new self; wear it as though it were clothes. She wanted England to work for him and because of this she wanted to make his leaving as easy as she could.

‘If it is truly what you want,’ she said at last, her sense of hopelessness lengthening with the evening, ‘then go. I can’t say I don’t mind, because I do. But if it will help, then go.’

She saw clearly what she must do. She saw that Christopher needed a last desperate leap in order to propel himself into his adult life and she acknowledged with sadness that her presence from this moment on could do no more than hold him back. This last act of her mothering was the most important. The time for
my
needs has passed, thought Grace. And she let him go.

The morning of Christopher’s departure was dark and stormy. White-topped waves scurried outside the harbour bouncing against the small boats that took the passengers out to the big ocean liner. Christopher had one trunk labelled with the name of the ship. ‘FAIRSEA’, it said in blue and white letters. ‘SYDNEY’, ‘COLOMBO’, ‘CAIRO’, ‘GENOA’, SOUTHAMPTON’, it declared. ‘DECK THREE. CABIN 432.’ Jacob stared at the ticket. ‘Passengers are expected to embark at 1400 hours for departure at 1600 hours.’

Jacob was mesmerised. Never had he come so close to holding
a ticket. He blinked owlishly at Christopher as though seeing him for the first time. Christopher, the runt of the litter, was escaping first, Christopher, the unexpected one, chasing the monsoons across the seas, getting away. Jacob was stunned. It should have been him. Whenever he had imagined this moment of leave-taking, he had been in the leading role. He had imagined himself waiting to climb aboard the motor launch that would take him to the ship. Looking very tall and serious, impressing the other passengers, his family, everyone, with his quiet reserve. But here instead was Christopher, unfamiliar in his new suit, surrounded by the family.

‘Have you only one trunk?’ asked Thornton, surprised.

Loaded no doubt with party political leaflets, thought Jacob.

‘He’s got an ocean-liner carrying bag,’ said Frieda. ‘I packed it this morning. It has got your favourite sambals and chilli pickles, Christopher. There are some ambarella fruit as well and a couple of Jaffna mangoes. Any more than that and they will spoil before you have a chance to eat them.’

‘I’ve put some rosary beads in a thambili, for you, darling,’ said one of the aunts.

‘And a picture of St Christopher as well,’ said Frieda.

She knew Christopher would not want it but would keep it because it was from her. At the last moment she gave him a framed photograph of all the family at Alicia’s wedding.

‘Well,’ said Jacob, trying to be magnanimous and show he did not care, ‘you’re about to become a travelling man and embark on
life
.’

Christopher, scowling and tense and with no sense of any new beginnings, suffered the wait while his family, together for the last time, solemnly wished him goodbye. First Thornton, his beautiful eyes filling with tears, no sign of Hildegard (where, wondered everyone, was she?), embraced him.

‘Look after yourself, Christopher,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ll be happy in England.’ He felt sad for the brother he knew the least, the darkly raging one, the one who made life harder for himself by always going against the flow. ‘I’ll write to you. These are bad times we are going through,’ he said, thinking of himself a little too, for wasn’t his own life undergoing a stormy patch at the moment? ‘I’ll send you a poem of farewell!’ he added.

Then Jacob embraced him and shook his hand as the English did. ‘We’ll be meeting soon,’ he said cryptically.

Frieda demanded nothing, Frieda merely cried, making Thornton sigh heavily.

‘When I have the schedule for my first concert tour I’ll visit you,’ said Alicia, wanting to be different from the rest of them in her new married state. ‘I’ll bring you some mangoes!’

Sunil had taken time off work. He alone looked relaxed and fresh. He kissed his brother-in-law on both cheeks with the genuine affection that touched everything he did, squeezing his shoulder, silently wishing him well. He knew the riots had affected Christopher deeply but he had never felt he could ask why. He hoped things would improve for him in England.

‘I hope we’ll meet again soon,’ he said smiling. ‘Take care of yourself.’

Myrtle watched them all. Today she wore her predictions like a tortoiseshell ornament in her hair. Christopher, she knew, was only the first to go.

Christopher waited, enveloped by the smell of hot diesel and his family’s good wishes, passive for once, silent as always, alien already. Until at last, the great horn blasting them back onto the motor launch set them waving. Until Frieda’s arm ached and his mother’s small strained tearless face became one with the sea of faces below, until he could distinguish them no more. In this way Christopher watched them slipping away as easily
as the island itself with its coconut-dense edges, sinking into the sea. Slowly the waving became ineffectual and the enormity of the water a reality. Beyond the haze of sunlight, the ship turned from the safety of the coral reef, sounding its long last farewell home, before heading for the open seas. For Christopher, the mist forming before his eyes confirmed only that there would be no new beginning, no wonderful future ahead, but simply the restless movement and the endless cycle of his karma.

So Christopher was gone, flown the de Silva nest while Rome worked slowly behind the scenes for Thornton. The de Silvas, with their network of contacts in the Catholic Church, were able to call in a favour from a distant relative in the Vatican. Just two months short of his twenty-first birthday Thornton’s underaged marriage was ripe for annulment. Saved by a whisker, thought Jacob sourly. How did the boy do it? wondered Uncle Innocent, amazed.

‘So
young
!’ was on everyone’s lips.

‘What a waste! What a shame!’

Thornton the poet, the limpid-eyed heartbreaker, the lover of all the finer things in life, was left with no choice but to fall heavily and regretfully out of love with Hildegard. What a thing was this, thought Hildegard, weeping into the long hot nights. Packing her bags to return to a Europe she no longer had any taste for, running away as she had always run before. Vanishing (forgotten for the moment by all but Uncle Innocent), back to Europe where blue-eyed women cause less of a stir.

‘Naughty boy,’ said Jasper, quietly.

Jasper was growing old and no one heard him any more. The rains had finished for the moment, the tropical vegetation grew and the shuddering awfulness of the
karapoththas
, the
cockroaches, seemed everywhere. The imaginary leopard cub that had prowled the edges of the garden during Alicia’s wedding had grown unimportant. Aloysius, aware of the distant rumble of violence, of Grace’s unspoken despair, was quieter, stayed closer to home, drinking less and seldom organising any card parties. Christopher’s absence had made more of a difference that any of them expected. There was a dullness in the air. The gelatinous heat shrivelled up the once green and pleasant parks. Who cared if the elephants had left the jungles? Who cared if they were dying in the towns? Elephants could not provide a national identity. Only language could do that. Language mattered more than anything else now. This was the thing to provoke bloodshed.