Bone China (27 page)

More and more it was Frieda who replied. Grace was having trouble with her eyes, and found it difficult to write.

We are trying to get her to see a specialist,
Frieda wrote.
But she keeps saying she doesn’t need to, or she will when the war is over. She walks into things around the house all the time. I fear
her sight is getting worse. Anyway, I have made an appointment for next week without telling her, so I will let you know what happens. She has become much frailer since Alicia left. Almost as though she was holding on for Alicia’s sake. She hardly goes out any more
.

They had been shocked when they heard, unable to imagine what Grace must be like now. Thornton tried phoning. His mother sounded just the same in the few minutes’ conversation before the lines went down.

In the end Jacob did not go back with the twins. They were so small and the Foreign Office had issued warnings of the dangers of the war, so they sent photographs instead. Jacob looked haggard and overworked. The twins were a handful and Geraldine was bad-tempered and depressed after the birth. Although she still had her hoarse Irish brogue, his wife was almost unrecognisable. She no longer nibbled his ears under the covers. In any case, no sooner had his head touched the pillow than it was time to get up again.

‘At my time of life fatherhood is hard work,’ he admitted to Thornton, adding, somewhat reluctantly, ‘Maybe you did the right thing, men, by having Anna-Meeka when you were young.’

Anna-Meeka had become quieter. She too had changed. School and her friends absorbed all her attention. Her grandmother, her aunt Frieda and the island seemed a long way away. The war was remote from her daily battles over her schoolwork, her hair and the length of her skirt. Soon her parents’ curfew was far more important than any news from back home. Besides, her relatives got on her nerves.

‘Moan, moan, moan,’ she told Gillian wearily. ‘We’re
here
, aren’t we? What’s the use of thinking about a place we can’t live in any longer? Why do they go on and on about Sri Lanka?’ she groaned.

Gillian was mystified. Meeka’s family had always puzzled her.

‘Every single time they get together that’s all they talk about,’ Meeka told her. ‘They are so unbelievably boring, so utterly predictable!’

Gillian was forced to agree.

Even Aunt Frieda’s letters, thought Meeka, are no longer interesting. Feeling uncomfortable and guilty, without even realising it, her own letters to her grandmother gradually petered out.

One evening, Jacob, in his new busy life as a family man, rang to say he had some news.

‘He’s coming over at the weekend to tell us,’ announced Thornton.

‘What now?’ asked Savitha, laughing. ‘Let me guess, the Impostor’s pregnant again?’

‘Oh, Mum,’ wailed Meeka, ‘they’re not bringing the bloody twins, are they?’

‘
Anna-Meeka
!’ said Thornton shocked. ‘Anna-Meeka, don’t let me hear you use language like that again. They are your
cousins
! This is Christopher’s doing, men,’ he said, turning to Savitha. ‘He’s always trying to undermine me, d’you see?’

‘Dad!’ said Meeka, wishing her uncle Christopher was here. He was the only one of her relatives she could stand.

Jacob and Geraldine arrived with their news. Geraldine carried one twin and her rolls of new baby-fat. Jacob carried the other.

‘We’ve been saving up for the lease of a corner shop,’ Geraldine told them proudly. ‘Your brother is about to become a businessman!’

‘My God!’ said Thornton, his voice edged with what sounded dangerously close to envy. ‘An Asian businessman. You’ll be rich.’

‘Well,’ said Christopher when he heard, ‘he always had a tendency towards being a capitalist bastard!’

Christopher refused to get excited about Jacob. His whole family was a disappointment. All, that is, except his delightful niece. In any case, he was off to Trafalgar Square to join a huge Amnesty International demonstration. Did anyone want to go with him?

The twins were crawling now and Anna-Meeka loathed them. She had been the only child for so long that there was no room in her life for these large bawling infants. One twin crawled up to her when she was playing the piano and bit her leg, making Geraldine laugh her belly-rumpling emerald laugh. Meeka was silent, rubbing her leg, her smile not quite reaching her eyes, swearing silently to herself, saying nothing.

Watching her daughter, wryly, Savitha noticed that she no longer said everything that came into her head. Lately she had begun keeping her thoughts to herself. She is growing up, thought Savitha with a twinge of fear.

It was the end of the decade.

O
NE MORNING, BEFORE HE WENT TO WORK,
Thornton received a letter. It landed gently on the mat.

‘Nice stamp,’ said Meeka glancing at it. ‘Who do we know in Lausanne?’ She was late for school.

‘Have you seen this?’ her mother called out from the kitchen. She was reading a copy of a newspaper over breakfast. The paper was still called
The Colombo Times
but Ceylon was now renamed Sri Lanka. ‘The news is terrible! Those bastards in the government are reducing the numbers of Tamils going to the universities now.’

Meeka winced, wishing her mother would not shout so much. Thornton shook his head.

‘I saw it,’ he said, surreptitiously pocketing the letter, thinking no one had seen it. He was not expecting any letters, but instinct made him secretive. ‘There’ll be rioting again,’ he said.

‘It’s odd,’ Savitha continued. ‘We haven’t heard from Frieda for a while. D’you think we should phone them? See if your mother is all right?’

‘Leave it till the weekend. She gets alarmed when the phone
rings. Anyway, I think it’s just the usual story of the post not getting through. We’ll phone on Saturday.’

‘Don’t forget, it’s parents’ evening tonight.’

‘I haven’t,’ said Thornton. ‘Tonight we decide the future!’ he added, trying in vain to raise a smile from his daughter.

Anna-Meeka scowled at them both and, picking up her lunch, went out. Thornton followed her. He often walked part of the way to her school before branching off to catch the tube. It was a situation that annoyed Meeka intensely. She would have preferred to walk by herself. She would have liked to wander across Durand Gardens alone, taking in the early-morning mist over the little park, peering in through the lighted windows of the big tall houses, dawdling. Another school year was under way. September was over and October was here again. This time it was not the Indian summer of their arrival. Looking back, Meeka remembered her younger self with embarrassment. She remembered wanting to feel the cold. Now it was cold all the bloody time. And she had nothing to look forward to any more.

They passed Philippa Davidson’s house. Philippa was in Anna-Meeka’s class. Mr Davidson was standing by his bright red two-seater. He was laughing with Mrs Davidson. Oh yes, very funny, thought Meeka sarcastically. What a bloody funny morning. She imagined the Davidson family, from the time they woke up. Laughing while they cleaned their teeth, laughing as they dressed. Oh my God, how they laughed as they had their breakfast! She could just imagine it. Mr Davidson did not spill his tea all over his jumper or eat too fast and dribble marmalade on the tablecloth, and Mrs Davidson did not shout at him about some bastard in the government. She was sure Mrs Davidson didn’t even know the word ‘bastard’. And Philippa? She probably had her head in a school book, shining
hair tucked behind her ears, a dimple flashing on her cheek as she looked through her homework.

Seeing Meeka as she passed, Philippa turned and waved. In a friendly way.

‘Hello, Meeka!’ she said. ‘Hello, Mr de Silva.’

Meeka scowled, mumbling reluctantly.

‘Pretty girl,’ observed Thornton as the two-seater drove off. ‘Why don’t you make friends with her?’

Meeka scowled harder.

‘Don’t walk so fast,’ Thornton said mildly. ‘You’re not late.’

They parted at the top of the Clapham Road, Meeka turning with a sigh towards school, her father heading towards the tube station.

The tube was crowded and Thornton could not read his letter. Then when he got to work his boss was waiting for him, her face thunderous. Now what have I done? wondered Thornton wearily.

When he had sorted out the problem and apologised again, it was almost time for his tea break. The women in the next office fussed over him, plying him with chocolate biscuits and tea. It was nearly lunchtime before he next remembered the letter, but then Savitha rang.

‘Alicia phoned after you left,’ Savitha said, sounding harassed. ‘I didn’t have time to talk to her. The sink is blocked, and Meeka’s forgotten her maths homework, again.’

Thornton opened his mouth to speak. Savitha’s voice buzzed angrily in his ear.

‘What was I supposed to do? I was already late. I couldn’t take it in. She had to hand it in today or she’ll be given detention. We’ve got a parents’ evening. I hope you haven’t forgotten. I hope you’re not planning to meet your brothers?’

Thornton’s head was beginning to ache. Savitha was like his boss. She could stretch a single complaint into a thesis.

‘No, no,’ he said, wearily, ‘I haven’t forgotten. I’ll get back early, and I’ll ring Alicia, see if everything’s all right.’

Alicia had been to a concert the night before at the Royal Albert Hall. The first concert she had been to in fifteen years.

‘It was so wonderful,’ she told Thornton, astonished.

As they spoke he could hear music in the background. Alicia was playing another record.

‘I sat in the front row listening to the Berlin Philharmonic! The choral part was unbelievable,’ Alicia told him.

Thornton was taken aback. Alicia sounded animated. He made a mental note to tell his mother.

‘We’re ringing home this weekend,’ he told her tentatively. ‘Why don’t you come over?’

After he had finished talking to Alicia he rang Jacob to tell him their sister had finally gone to a concert. But Jacob was busy and could not talk. Then he tried ringing Christopher at work. Christopher had taken a few days off to go to a Communist Party meeting in Paris. He remembered his letter, suddenly, sitting snugly in his pocket, but by now his boss was hovering and, although he wanted to read it, he decided to wait. At lunchtime the office boy came to collect his pools money and stayed chatting to Thornton and before he knew it the hour was over. Although mildly curious he decided to save the letter for later.

The afternoon was long and tedious, an in-between afternoon, not quite summer, not quite autumn, not quite anything. Dampness hung around the trees. Thornton stared out of his window rearranging his pens and sharpening his pencils, threading a new ribbon into his typewriter.

Of such moments, he thought, was his life made up. Trivial markers for the minutes, the hours, and all the days of what was left to him. In three weeks it would be the end of the month
and he would get his payslip. Briefly, vistas would open up, things of beauty and pleasure, things that were the stuff of dreams. Like the bright two-seater convertible he had seen this morning. Last night, when they had gone to bed, he had asked Savitha, ‘Would we have come to England had we known what it really was like?’

Savitha had not answered and he realised she was asleep.

‘I am tired,’ he had said, softly, into the darkness. ‘This endless to-ing and fro-ing every day to my prison in Euston Tower is killing me. What will happen to people like us, so far from home?’ he had asked. But Savitha had slept on peacefully.

Looking out of his window he saw thin misty rain break into a shower, sending people scuttling across the street below. In a few short years Meeka would leave them. Already she was an alien being beyond Thornton’s understanding, struggling through a private war of her own, wearing ridiculous clothes, speaking with that ridiculous accent, trying to be someone else. Staring at the heavy rain clouds, Thornton shook his head. I will grow old and useless in this tower, he thought, sadly. He still missed his mother. The truth was he had never really got over leaving her or his home. Her presence had given substance to his life; his old home had been his anchor. Without them he belonged nowhere.

I don’t want Meeka to have the same fate, thought Thornton, watching the rain dislodge the dying leaves. He glanced at his watch. They had a parents’ evening tonight. If only his daughter could have a respectable profession, become a doctor, earn a good salary,
then
she would be safe. It was the reason they had brought her here. It was his goal. Placing a piece of paper in his typewriter, he opened his shorthand notebook and began to work with renewed vigour.

He did not think of the letter again until he was on the tube,
caught in the rush hour coming home. It was still raining when he arrived at the Oval and he stood for a moment in the draughty entrance taking the letter out of his pocket, but apart from being postmarked ‘Lausanne’, there were no other clues. The space for ‘sender’ remained blank. Something familiar about the handwriting puzzled him and made him nip quickly round the corner to a pub. It was five o’clock on a wet Monday in October. He would have to hurry if he was to get to Anna-Meeka’s school in time for the meeting. Savitha would be waiting impatiently for him. Meeka would most likely be playing the piano. Thornton opened his letter.

It has taken me a long while to pluck up the courage to find you again
, he read.
So much water has passed under the bridge. But I never forgot you. Then last year, I met a friend of your family and I found out you were living in London and had been for a few years
.

Outside the rain intensified. Thick banks of clouds gathered, darkening the sky. A huge lorry had drawn up by the pub. The driver began depositing barrels of beer, rolling them along the pavement. Someone had left the front door open and a sharp wind rushed in, curling itself around the tables, bringing in the sounds from the busy road outside. A taxi, its engine running, stopped by the traffic lights, an ambulance sounded plaintively far away. Fragments of voices hurried past, rushing out of the wetness. Thornton heard none of this. He did not notice the people coming into the bar shaking themselves free of the rain, he did not hear them ordering drinks or see the pub fill up with voices and smoke. His drink remained untouched as he read Hildegard’s letter.

For Thornton was suddenly back on the dance floor. All around, the lights were twinkling in the trees. His father’s shouts of triumph as he won a round of Ajoutha, drifted across the
veranda. He saw his mother, her head thrown back, laughing, while his sister tossed away her bridal bouquet, as her new husband helped her tenderly into the car. And then, thought Thornton remembering, there was the serious dancing with the curly-haired girl beside him. How they had outdanced everyone, laughing all the way into the garden across the lawn and under the tree where Jasper watched them curiously. While the first moon of the New Year rose and shone all over her golden hair. Uncle Innocent had been unable to take his eyes off her. And Thornton, that younger, dark-haired Thornton, dangling his cigarette from his mouth, ignoring her protests, had thrown her up in the air. Laughing and jiving.

I understand if you find this letter distasteful. I know you have a very different life now, a wife, a child, how old is she? Does she look like you, Thornton?

Again he heard the music. How they had laughed, thinking it a joke, marrying on the same day as Alicia. How careless of the consequences he had been. Where had that life gone? It had vanished without warning and he had never noticed. Every part of that foolish marriage had been his idea, but he had let her take the blame. Never once had he tried to contact her, never once had he said he was sorry.

If there is any chance of seeing you again, for the sake of old times, such a terrible cliché, I know, please tell me. I only want an hour with you, to see you one last time. I shall be in London next summer. I should be glad of that chance
.

Thornton looked up from the letter. London, the pub, the evening, everything, seemed strangers to him. He had no attachment here, no relation. Anything might happen, his link with reality seemed suddenly to have been cut like a balloon at a birthday party; it had broken off and was flying free. He looked at his empty glass; he had drunk what was in it without
realising. Somehow he was still here. How had he come from that life to this, crossing time zones, sailing past the equator, never questioning where it would all lead, never quite understanding his choices?

Outside the sky had been swallowed by the night. At home, Savitha would be wondering where he was. If he did not hurry, they would be late for the parents’ evening. Buttoning his coat against the wind, he walked out, noticing the paleness of the faces around him, as though for the first time. Young and old, hurrying past. A longing so great, a need suppressed for years, rose up and engulfed him. At this moment he wanted nothing more than to go back to where he belonged. To the place where the sun, when it vanished from the day, left its warmth on the land, and the people walking on the street, the
ordinary
people, were of the same colour as him.

This is what I am now, thought Thornton, overwhelmed by sadness. This is what I will be always, no matter what, no matter how long I live. The old cries for home will stay with me forever. They can never leave me now. I will simply live with them. And yes, he told himself, I
will
see her. Digging his hands deep in his pocket, clutching his letter, he thought, I will see her one last time, as she asked. It’s the least I owe her.

They were late and her mother was cross. Anna-Meeka stalked ahead not wanting to be part of their argument. The Head of Year was waiting. He was smiling thinly. They were the last parents.

‘Fantastic!’ muttered Meeka. ‘Just wonderful! I’m really looking forward to this.’

‘Science,’ said her father grimly, as soon as they sat down. ‘She must do science.’

There were here to choose her examination options. Meeka
could see he was still fixed on medical school. She stifled a yawn.

Thornton looked at his daughter. Still reeling with the shock of his letter, he scowled. Then he took a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate on the matter in hand. Since he had first sat on the end of his wife’s hospital bed holding the newborn Anna-Meeka, gazing with delight at his responsibilities, none of his ambitions had wavered. Many generations of responsibility were in that gaze; many past histories of love passed down at that point; a father’s to a daughter, a mother’s to a son. It had been this way for Thornton as little Anna-Meeka lay gently sleeping in his arms. So Thornton’s determination was not to be meddled with. He could not be budged from his resolution. Not after all this history.