Bone China (6 page)

‘Splendid! Splendid!’ he said out loud.

And having kissed and congratulated his daughter, he asked Sunil what he did for a living. Sunil hardly heard him and it was left to Ranjith Pieris to speak to Aloysius.

‘We both work for the External Trade Office,’ Ranjith said.

‘How interesting!’ Aloysius nodded. Civil servants, he thought, pleased. Well, well, how very interesting. I may be an old dog, but I can still spot a winner, when I see one. How fortunate, they were fluent both in Sinhalese and in English.

‘So,’ he asked, casually, ‘you work in our new government, huh? How d’you find it there? Now that the British have gone?’

Christopher frowned. His father was looking shifty. ‘What’s he up to, now?’ he muttered to Jacob.

Aloysius was thinking furiously. Being in the new government meant access to British whisky and British cigarettes. Aloysius was sick of arrack and unfiltered Old Roses. Being in the government meant better rations and a superior quality of rice. With his eyes firmly on the main chance, he watched Sunil talking to Alicia. His daughter, he observed, with a growing sense of well-being, had changed in the last three years. The promise of her childhood good looks appeared to have come to fruition. Until now her life had been filled exclusively with her music. She had spent her days in a dreamworld hardly straying from the confines of her Bechstein. Never mind, thought Aloysius, delightedly, all this was about to change. Tonight had brought the first public recognition of her talent. What else had it brought? Seeing his wife approaching, he waved, excitedly.

‘Darl,’ he cried, ‘come and meet Sunil Pereira.’

And without a moment’s hesitation, before his wife could comment, he invited this courteous young man home. The romance, for clearly it was to be just that, was to be encouraged.

‘He seems very nice,’ Grace admitted later, a little doubtfully. Left to herself she would have waited a while before issuing any invitations. ‘Aren’t we being a bit hasty though?’ she
ventured. ‘Perhaps we should find out a bit more about him first? Her future is just beginning and this is only the first one.’

‘Nonsense, she’s the perfect age, darl,’ said Aloysius, looking sentimentally at her. ‘The same age as you were when your father gave me your hand.’

Yes, thought Grace, sharply, and look what a mess I made. But she kept her thoughts to herself.

‘Why do I have to be there when he visits?’ complained Jacob, who had planned to work overtime. ‘I don’t have anything to say to him.’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Jacob,’ Aloysius replied, annoyed, ‘show some family solidarity, will you?’

The day after Alicia’s graduation the newspapers were full of reviews of her performance. Her talent, her youth, her future, all these things were suddenly of interest. Already she had been offered two concerts.

‘Beethoven
and
Mozart,’ she said, in a panic, ‘all in a month. How will I learn them?’

The de Silvas were staggered. Overnight, Alicia had become something of a celebrity. A photographer came to the house and her picture appeared in a music magazine. The family felt as though they were seeing her for the first time. And suddenly there was an admirer as well. Two more weeks went by. Sunil Pereira came to call. He had thought of nothing else but Alicia since the concert. He waited, impatient for the visit, a prey to Ranjith Pieris’s teasing. He hardly slept, dreaming constantly about her.

‘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!’