Bone China (9 page)

‘I see Thornton has found all the good-looking women again,’ Aloysius greeted her peevishly, breaking into her thoughts.

Grace laughed lightly and went inside to see for herself.

It was quite true; Thornton was having a wonderful time. He saw no reason to be as morose as his elder brother Jacob,
or bad-tempered like his younger brother Christopher. Not, of course, that anyone knew where the devil Christopher was. Gone, no doubt, to some political rally. Thornton could never understand how anyone would deliberately choose a meeting over such a good party. Well, wasn’t that Christopher all over. Always making life difficult for himself. Still, Thornton was not one to try to change the world. No, no, he thought, seriously, shaking his head, frowning a little. He did all of that with his poetry. In the new ‘voice’ he was developing.

‘Can I read some of your poems, Thorn?’ asked the pretty nurse he was chatting to, anxiously seeing his frown. She hoped she wasn’t boring him.

Thornton smiled, and the world tilted. Before righting itself again. The girl’s knees locked heavily together, making her sway towards him. Thornton did not notice. He had begun to recite one of his poems.

‘Oh!’ the girl said breathlessly when he had finished. ‘I think that was wonderful!’ She felt that she might, at any moment, swoon with desire.

‘Oh please,’ asked another girl, joining the group belatedly, looking at Thornton’s glossy hair. ‘Please say it again. I missed the first verse.’

Jacob, deep in conversation with someone very dull, glanced up just as his brother was tilting the world again. There was nothing new here as far as Jacob could see, nothing suspicious, he thought, satisfied. Although, he paused, frowning, it suddenly occurred to him that lately Thornton had been out rather a lot. Feeling his elder brother’s eye on him, Thornton coolly tried tilting the world at him too, with no success. Jacob merely shook his head disapprovingly and went back to his dull conversation. Oh dear, thought Thornton regretfully, no
joie de vivre
. None whatsoever.

The Prime Minister had asked their sister to play the piano. He had made a little speech about the lovely Miss de Silva. He told them all how proud he was of this home-grown talent. Then he led Alicia to the piano. Everyone fell silent as Alicia began to play. She played as though she was alone. As though she was at home, and the Prime Minister had not held her hand and smiled at her. She played as though there was no one there at all. Life was like that for her, thought Frieda, standing beside Robert with her breaking heart, watching him watch Alicia. Life was so easy for her sister. On and on went Alicia’s fingers, galloping with the notes, crossing boundaries, lifting barriers, drawing everyone in this elegant room together without the slightest effort. Aloysius reached for another drink. No one noticed.

Sunil watched Alicia from the back of the room. Words like ‘majority language’ did not matter to her. Her language was simpler, older, less complicated. If only life could be like Alicia, he wished, filled with tender pride. It had been a useful evening for Sunil, meeting the Prime Minister, being noticed. His hopes for a united country were strengthened in spite of all the talk of civil unrest.

Alicia was playing when a telephone rang for the Prime Minister. She was still playing when he received the news that rioting had broken out all over the city. The police needed the Prime Minister’s authorisation to deal with it. She was still playing as he left the party in his dark-tinted limousine with Sir John and the Chief Constable. No one saw them go. Sunil, suspecting an incident, went in search of more information. He learned that the rioting had got out of hand. What had been a slow protest, a silent march, days of handing out leaflets had turned into crowds of angry people, voices on the end of a megaphone. Someone had been injured. Then the number had risen and there had been some fatalities. A petrol bomb had been thrown.
It was a night of the full moon, this night before the eclipse. There was a rumour that a Buddhist monk had been involved. An unknown passer-by had seen a young priest running away, a thin smear of saffron in the night. If a Buddhist monk had really been involved Sunil knew it would be bad for everyone. It would only take one single gesture, he thought, one furious shaven head, for centuries of lotus flowers to be wiped out forever.

Alicia had just finished playing when the intruder broke in. Walking swiftly past the guard, past the doorman who tried and failed to stop him and past the servants who then appeared, he burst in, blood clinging to his shirt. His face was streaked with sweat and dirt. He was no more than a boy, his hands were cut and bruised, one eye was swollen and bleeding. There was glass in his hair and he smelt of smoke and something else. Someone screamed. The servants, having caught up with him, twisted his arms behind his back. The boy did not struggle. He stood perfectly still, searching the faces in the room until he found the face he had been looking for, crying out in anguish,

‘They killed them! They killed them! I saw them burn! Oh Christ! I saw them burn!’

Grace, recognising him before anyone else, stepped forward saying in Sinhalese, in a voice seldom heard in public, coldly, sharply to the servants, ‘Let him go! He’s my son!’ And then in English, ‘Christopher, who has done this to you?’

Outside, the rain they had all longed for began to fall with a thunderous noise, in long beating waves. Drumming on the earth, on the buildings, lashing against the land in great sheets. But no one heard.

T
HE RAIN DESCENDED WITH A VENGEANCE.
It filled the holes in the road, it beat a tattoo on the fallen coconut shells and moved the dirt, transforming it swiftly into mud. It fell on Grace, standing stock-still and statue-like in the coconut grove, sari-silk clinging to her, flowers fallen from her hair. There was no escape. The land became a curtain of green water. Pawpaw leaves detached themselves, floating like large athletic spiders to the ground. The rain spared nothing. There were so many rivulets to form, so many surfaces to hammer against. Although it was still quite early, huge black clouds gave the garden an air of darkness. Even the birds, sheltering, waiting patiently, could barely be heard above the chorus of falling water. Earlier on, in the dead of night, a servant swore she had heard the devil-bird scream. It had come out of the forest because of the rain, the servant said, in the hope of escape. But escape was no longer possible.

‘Aiyo,’ wailed the servant, for she knew this was an ill omen. ‘You must leave an offering on the roadside,’ said her friend the cinnamon seller. ‘If you heard the devil-bird you must pray to God for protection.’

So the servant woman took a plantain leaf and some temple flowers. She wrapped a mound of milk rice and rambutans in it, decorated it with fried fish and coconut, and left it outside the gate. She hoped the gods would be pleased. But the gods were not listening. They were too busy with the rains.

Then just as suddenly, without warning, it stopped. The noise and the roar of the water ceased, and the early-morning traffic picked up from where it had been held up. Bicycle bells rang, the rickshaw men ran, and the crows that had been sheltering under the eaves of buildings came out again and continued their scavenging in the rubbish as though they had never left off. The ground steamed. The mud remained on the road of course, and passers-by still held up their umbrellas to catch any stray drop of wetness, but by and large the rain had stopped for the moment. It was as though someone had turned off a tap. What a different the sun made, bringing out all the everyday symphony of sounds, of callings and cawing and whistling and scrapings, and because she had slept in late after last night’s event, Alicia’s scales and arpeggios, joining in where the rain left off.

The servant, having made her offering to the gods, on this day of total eclipse, brought in the breakfast. It consisted of milk rice, coarse jaggery, seeni sambal and mangoes.

‘For the lady,’ she said, beaming at Grace.

It was meant as a pleasant surprise, but Grace, coming in just then (where had she been at this hour? wondered Myrtle), soaked to the bone and ashen-faced, did not look pleased.

‘What is this?’ she had shouted. ‘Who gave you permission to make milk rice? Who
told
you to make this auspicious dish? Do I pay you to make food without instruction?’

Myrtle was astonished. Her cousin seemed beside herself. She was not normally a woman to show her temper in this way. Grace did not look well. She looked on the verge of collapse.

‘Where’ve you been, darl?’ Aloysius asked, astonished. ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere. You’re soaking. Here, give her a towel, will you, Myrtle? Thornton, pour your mother a drink.’

‘I have a headache,’ Grace said abruptly, seeing Myrtle staring at her. ‘I’m going to bed.’

She disappeared to her room.

‘What on earth is going on?’ asked Myrtle slyly.

Aloysius, ignoring her, walked abruptly out of the room.

‘What’s wrong with your mother?’ Myrtle asked Frieda.

But Frieda did not want to talk either.

‘I think I’m coming down with a fever,’ Frieda mumbled. And she too disappeared into her room.

Some party, no? thought Myrtle. She nodded her head from side to side, as though having a heated conversation. Jasper watched her intensely. He was on his higher perch this morning and felt much better since it had rained. The air had thinned out and it was generally much cooler. He felt his old self again. Almost. He shuffled round and round the perch.

‘Hello, bastards,’ he said, and when Myrtle ignored him he jauntily whistled a snatch of
The Magic Flute
, the bit he knew the best. Then he did his impersonation of the neighbour’s dog and for an encore he whistled the Schubert that Alicia always played. Then, when his saw-drill noise had finally driven her from the room, cursing, he began to repeat a new sound he was learning. Softly at first, for Jasper always perfected his repertoire softly, he practised the sound of the devil-bird. Last night he had been woken up several times. First, there had been the sounds of sirens rushing past. Then Christopher had come crashing in.

‘Good morning, men!’ Jasper had remarked, though, unusually for him, Christopher had not replied.

The rest of the family followed, making no effort at being quiet. And finally, sometime towards the early morning, he had awoken again to a long and awful scream, so long and so strangled that Jasper, lifting his head, sleepily protested.

‘Be quiet, men!’

The sound had gone on and on, not waking anyone else, but it had stayed in Jasper’s head and he remembered it now with his usual clarity.

During the shocking, hurried journey home, shocking because no one had ever seen Christopher in quite this way before, hurried because of the embarrassment, they had all been subdued.

‘It was a good party you missed,’ said Thornton tentatively, not wanting to upset Christopher any more by questioning him too closely.

What was the matter with him? he wondered uneasily. Had he been in a fight?

‘Time we left anyway,’ Aloysius said by way of comfort. He looked shocked, Thornton noticed, while Grace seemed almost too upset to speak.

‘What on earth were you doing at the demonstration?’ asked Jacob. The thought of what might have happened frightened him, making him sound furious. ‘What did you expect, you fool, if you go to dangerous places like that? I told you to keep away from the riots. I told you. You’re lucky to have got away with burnt hands!’

‘That’s enough now, Jacob,’ Grace said quietly from the back of the old Austin Morris. Her voice was that of a stranger. It was hardly audible. In the darkness her face looked deathly pale.

‘I hope Sunil will be all right,’ Alicia said anxiously, for, in
spite of all her pleas, Sunil had gone back to the UEP headquarters to send a telegram.

‘Don’t worry, darling,’ Grace said, ‘he’ll be fine.’

She sounded as if she was gasping for air. Thornton’s unease grew. Christopher too seemed to be struck dumb. His headlong flight to find his mother, his astonishing uncontrollable grief, was followed by silence. As soon as they got back to the house, he disappeared. No one could make any sense of what had happened, no one could work out why he had been anywhere near the riots. Unobserved by any of them, Christopher slipped away and rode his bicycle all the way back to the beach at Galle Face.

It was now almost four o’clock in the morning. The rain had perfumed the air, only the sound of the sea gnawing at the shore remained, a reminder of the storm. Far away on the horizon a streak of lilac struggled to appear against the sky. The boats were coming in with the day’s catch. On the quay, seagulls circled around the fishermen, waiting for a pause in the activities, hoping for a morsel of food. Christopher stared at the beach, miraculously ironed smooth with the morning, every blemish swept as though by an unseen hand. Grief, like nothing he had ever felt before, broke, riding roughshod over him. He was distraught.

Last night was a million light years away. Remembering Jacob’s foolish questions he began to heave. Jacob, he thought, busy sucking up to the
whites
. And Thornton, the empty-headed beauty, what did
he
care about, except how he looked and what everyone thought of him? Only his mother, thought Christopher, incoherent now, only his mother had understood.

‘Come back,’ he screamed. ‘Come back!’ His voice was whipped by the sea breeze and caught in the roar of the waves.
He stood screaming and choking as the seagulls circled the sky. ‘I’m finished,’ he cried. ‘It’s over.’

He had not gone to watch the riots as Jacob suspected, or to join in the demonstration. His thoughts became disjointed. Everything that had followed was blurred. Racked by sobs, broken, desperate, he fell to his knees on the soft white sand. Raising his face towards the sky, he whispered, ‘I can’t go on.’

Only a few hours earlier he had visited Kamala with a heart that brimmed over with hope. Carrying the tenderness that he showed no one else. Kamala had been ill, but seemed to Christopher’s anxious eyes to be much better.

‘You
are
better,’ he recalled saying fiercely, willing her to be. And Kamala, laughing (he always made her laugh), agreed.

Her father was at his Galle Face stall, selling plastic jewellery. White butterflies trapped in Perspex, flecked with gold, dozens of bangles, pink, yellow and green. There was to be a demonstration tonight, and a march organised by the railway and factory workers. A peaceful march. Christopher met Kamala at the stall.

‘Let’s walk along the beach,’ he had said, for he had brought money with him. ‘I want to buy you some fried crab and Lanka lime. Then we can be happy.’

Yes, that’s what he had said. He remembered it very clearly, being happy was something he could only do with Kamala. As they walked he had talked, as he often did, of his passionate desire for free state education. It was his favourite subject, his dream.

‘It
must
be offered to everyone,’ he had said. ‘Not just the rich but the coolies, the servants. In any case…’ he paused, while Kamala gazed admiringly at him, ‘why do we need servants anyway?’

Kamala listened not fully understanding, but agreeing with
everything. Full of pride. He had told her the Greenwood story again. He was always telling her that story. How many times had she heard it? But on each occasion she listened patiently.

‘By the time it was my turn the money had run out. They gave it all to that fool Thornton. And what did he ever do with it?’ he had fumed, unable to stop himself. He had known Kamala hated to hear him talk about his brother in this way.

‘You mustn’t,’ she had said, earnestly. ‘You mustn’t say these things. Your family is a gift, Chris. It’s
bad
for you to talk like this.’

It hadn’t stopped him though. He had taken no notice of her. Last night he had begun again, moaning on and on about Thornton and the price of a decent education in this country. Never knowing how he was wasting time. Kamala had pulled his hand and teased him into a better mood.

‘Next year, after my sister’s wedding,’ he told her, ‘we’ll get married. I’ll speak to my mother. Just wait,’ he said, as if it was Kamala and not he who was in a hurry, ‘you’ll see, I
will
become a journalist.’

He hated to think of Kamala sleeping in the shack with the
cajan
roof that let in the monsoon.

‘Soon,’ he promised, ‘you’ll sleep on a proper bed in a clean, dry bedroom with a roof made of tiles. Our children will have decent educations.
All
of them, not just a chosen few.’

He had said all this. Only last night.

The Galle Face had been crowded with people. But Kamala’s father let her take a walk along the beach with Christopher. He knew his daughter’s illness was not curable. It was her karma. So he let them walk together along the seafront, letting them enjoy what brief happiness they could. Two young people with no idea of what their future held, but planning it anyway.

After a while they decided to go back up the hill towards
the centre. Someone said there was a street fair and Christopher thought they might try the tombola. He had forgotten about the Tamil strikers’ demonstration. It was Kamala’s father, catching sight of them retracing their footsteps, who remembered. But by the time he had found someone to mind his stall they had vanished from sight. The crowds had grown. Away from the sea breeze the smell of sweaty bodies mixed with the fetid slabs of meat in the market as he hurried through the maze of stalls. An air of nervous tension hung over the neighbourhood. Outside, close to the Fort and behind the market, a few mounted policemen in white uniforms waited expectantly. Most of the shops in this area were shut or closing, there was no sign of the fair, and no sign of Kamala or Christopher. One or two men on bicycles rode by. A few dogs scavenged in the gutters. Kamala’s father quickened his pace.

The whole of this part of the city was in darkness. A muffled sound of voices, the faint throb of a loudspeaker could be heard in the distance, but still he could not see anyone. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a movement, but when he turned there was nothing there. He hurried on knowing he could not leave the stall for long. He needed to find Kamala and Christopher, to warn them to keep away from the demonstration. He was now in St Anthony’s Road and in front of him was the great Roman Catholic cathedral. Close by was Temple Tree Square where the Bo trees were tied with offerings. Kamala’s father breathed more easily, for this was a sacred site with an open aspect and lights. Through the trees, on the other side of the square, he could see the reason for the silence. The demonstrators, with their banners, had gathered together to listen to the speaker. The march had ended peacefully after all and as he approached Kamala’s father saw with relief that Christopher and Kamala were on the edge of the crowd.

‘Kamala,’ he had called. ‘Kamala, Christopher. Come here.’ He waved urgently, becoming suddenly, unaccountably afraid.

Only then did he see the shadow of a saffron robe. Only then did he smell the petrol and see the ragged flames, one after another, until too late, a circle of fire surrounded him. Drawing closer and closer. A Kathakali dance of death.

‘Watch out,’ he had shouted in vain. ‘Be careful. Chris, Chris, take her away.’

They heard him shout but the words were indistinct. Kamala turned and ran towards him. For a brief moment, in the flare of the burning rags, Christopher saw them both clearly, her wide bright eyes reflecting the light, her hair aglow. Then he heard only their screams, father and daughter, mixing and blending together with the sound of his own anguish. Flesh against flesh, ashes to ashes.