Cinnamon Gardens (18 page)

Balendran did not reply.

“I suppose you thought you could. Dupe foolish old Richard again.” Balendran’s eyes widened, understanding what he was talking about.

Richard took his comprehension as an admission of culpability. Somewhere in him, he had hoped that his suspicions about Balendran’s infidelity would be wrong. “You disappoint me, Bala. For the second time,” he said, his voice shaking. “You disappoint me to the very core.”

“Richard –”

At that moment, Alli came out, followed by an anxious Sonia.

Richard tipped his hat and left, indicating for Alli to follow him.

Balendran watched them go down the driveway, Richard walking briskly, as if he wished to be as far away from Brighton as possible.

“Did you explain and apologize to Mr. Howland?” Sonia asked.

Before Balendran could reply, his father came out of the drawing room.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was not with the commission?” the Mudaliyar shouted at him.

“I was going to, Appa. This very afternoon.”

“You let me make a complete fool of myself. To think I wasted my hospitality on those two. To think …” Words failed the Mudaliyar. He turned away and stormed up the stairs.

Balendran signalled to Sonia and they went to the car.

“Well, it serves Appa right. Mr. Howland had every reason to be angry,” Sonia said once they were in the car going home.

“Do not speak about things you don’t understand, do you hear?”

Balendran had never spoken to her like that before and the anger boiled up inside her. She was hardly able to contain herself until they got home.

Once they reached Sevena, Balendran and Sonia got out of the car and hurried up the steps into the house. The moment they were alone, Sonia spoke. “It makes me sick at heart. Why do you allow him to treat you like that?”

“I told you, this is not your business.”

“Why this terrible sense of duty? This absolute obedience to him? It makes no sense.”

“He is my father. It is our way. Perhaps you can’t understand it.” He spoke as if contemptuous of the fact that she was half British.

“Bala,” she said. “Bala. It has nothing to do with ‘your ways’ and ‘our ways.’ ” She put her hand on his arm.

He pulled away from her roughly and went into his study, slamming the door after him.

She stood staring at the door for a moment Then she sat down slowly on the sofa, despairing that once again she and her husband had reached that point on which there could be no resolution.

Once Balendran was in his study, he removed his coat, put on the fan, and stood by the window, feeling the sea breeze and the wind from the fan cool his body down. He could not forget the look on Richard’s face when Richard said he was disappointed in him to the very core. The shame he had carried with him all these years over how the relationship had ended came back to him in full force. A melancholy began to take hold of him. It was a gloom he recognized from the times he and Richard had fought in the past. Waking in the morning after a bitter quarrel, he arose with a grimness that would last through the day; a bleakness that would enter his bones, making it difficult even to summon up the will to go from the living room to the kitchen to prepare a pot of tea. It could not be so. After all these years, it was impossible that Richard could have such an effect on him.

However, that night, as Balendran sat in his study attending to the temple accounts, he was aware of a listlessness in him that made it difficult to concentrate on his work. After adding the figures inaccurately for the third time, he shook his head and closed the book. The house was silent. He got up quietly and went out of his study. He would go for a walk along the railway line. Yet, after he had put on his hat and taken his walking-stick out of the stand, he stood staring at himself in the mirror, feeling the lethargy in him like a dull fever. He could not find
the strength or the desire to go out. With a sigh, he took off his hat and returned the walking-stick to the stand.

The moment they were back in their hotel room, Richard turned to Alli furiously. “Why did you ignore my wishes? You could tell that the last thing I wanted to do was go to that bloody house.”

Alli looked at him, amazed by his anger.

“That vile, filthy man. Trying to bribe me with his stupid hospitality.”

“For goodness sake, Richard,” Alli said. “You’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion. He’s a pompous, old fool. He was more humiliated than you were when he found out –”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Richard stormed off to the almirah to look for his bathing suit.

By the time Richard got to the swimming bath, his anger had abated. As he climbed down the steps into the water, his legs were shaking. He crouched down in the shallow end, feeling vulnerable and distraught.

The memory of his earlier encounter with the Mudaliyar was one Richard never dwelt on, the excess of it, the humiliation. Yet seeing the Mudaliyar today had brought it all back.

When he returned to his room, Alli was seated on the bed, his legs out in front of him, reading Leonard Woolf’s
The Village in the Jungle
. He looked up when Richard entered, but, seeing the stiff look on Richard’s face, he thought he was still in a bad temper and quickly returned to his book.

Once Richard had changed into his dressing gown, he came and sat down on the bed next to him.

“I need to talk to you,” he said after a moment. “To tell you
something I’ve never mentioned before.” He took Alli’s feet onto his lap.

Alli put his book down on his chest and waited.

“I never explained to you how things ended with Balendran.”

“No, my dear, you never did.”

Richard shook his head and looked away from Alli, ashamed of what he had hidden from him all these years. “The old man, the Mudaliyar, just turned up at our flat one day.”

Alli drew in his breath.

“One look at his face and we saw that somehow he knew about us.”

“But how would he have found out such a thing?”

“A friend of Bala’s, I think. A chap named F. C. Wijewardena. It was horrible. More so for poor Bala than for me, I’m afraid.”

Richard was silent, lost in the memory of that time. “The moment the old man started in on us, Bala fled the apartment, without even a coat, in the middle of winter. When we were left alone, his father told me I was vile, that I had ruined his son. At first I tried to assert myself, to order him out of the flat. Then he threatened to have the police charge me with sodomy.” Richard paused. “I was terrified. After all, it hadn’t been that long since the Wilde trial.” He looked at Alli. “Our lives are so fragile. One word to the law can shatter our lives into a thousand pieces. The old man saw his advantage and he broke me down.” Richard shook his head. “Soon I was on my knees pleading with him not to go to the police. He even slapped me and I did not defend myself.” Richard looked away. “He ordered me to leave the flat. He was going to move in, take charge of his son. I obeyed his command. I left, went back to my parents’ home in Bournemouth.”

Alli took Richard’s hand.

“After all those promises of love and being together always, I never heard from him again.”

Alli drew Richard towards him and held him tightly. They were both still, listening to the sound of the waves breaking against the shore. Richard looked up at Alli. “There must have been a good reason for Bala’s silence. Don’t despise him for what he did.”

Alli shook his head to say that he did not do so. After a moment, he took Richard’s face in his hand. “Don’t take this the wrong way, sweetest,” he said, “but I do feel, even more strongly now, that it wasn’t the commission that brought you here.”

Richard drew away from him in protest.

“I know you don’t believe in psychology, but I think we sometimes do things for reasons we’re not aware of.”

“You’re not suggesting I’m still in love with Bala?”

“I don’t know,” Alli said. “But I do think that one must rush into one’s dilemmas and not away from them.”

Alli got off of the bed, went to the window and looked out. “This Ceylon is a bore,” he said. “There is nothing to see here. Centuries of imperialism have completely obliterated the culture.” He turned to Richard. “I was thinking that I might take a trip to India. See the temples of the south.”

Richard started to protest, but Alli held up his hand. “I know what you’re thinking and that is partly the reason. My time away will give you a chance to settle this thing once and for all.”

He smiled slightly. “Of course I could be doing a very foolish thing. You could go and fall in love with this Balendran all over again and then where would I be?”

“Oh no, Alli. Never, never.”

“Qui vivra verra,”
Alli said and turned to look out at the sea again.

K
umudini’s desire to see Annalukshmi married, though coming from a genuine wish for her sister’s happiness, was motivated to some degree by self-interest. If all went well with the Macintosh boy, it meant that her own possibilities would open up. With her elder sister married, she would be able to receive offers herself. In the days that followed the sending of the photograph to the Macintoshes, she found herself thinking of one prospect in particular.

The Van Der Hoot School for Ladies that Kumudini attended was run by Mrs. Van Der Hoot, a Dutch Burgher lady. The school operated out of her home. Mrs. Van Der Hoot had a daughter, Sylvia, and a son, Dicky. Dicky was a house officer at the General Hospital and his fellow house officers often visited while the School for Ladies was in progress. It was a situation that Mrs. Van Der Hoot did not discourage because she knew that the popularity of her school had something to do with the presence of these highly eligible bachelors. She would often engineer her ballroom class to coincide with their arrival. Then
the bachelors would be persuaded to accompany the young ladies. Mrs. Van Der Hoot, well tuned to the racial and caste sensitivities of Ceylon, was very careful to pair off like with like, Karava Sinhalese with Karava Sinhalese, Goyigamas with Goyigamas, Burghers with Burghers, Tamils with Tamils, and so on. Since Kumudini was the only Tamil at the school, she invariably found herself partnered by a young Tamil doctor named Ronald Nesiah. Through Sylvia, Kumudini heard of Ronald’s interest in her (conveyed through Dicky). He had, of course, not dared to speak to her about it. She would never have forgiven him that impropriety. When they danced together, they maintained the strictest formalities, always addressing each other as Dr. Nesiah and Miss Kumudini. Yet it was delicious knowing all the while that he liked her. As they danced, she was very conscious of the warmth of his hand against her back, the feel of his palm in hers. Occasionally, she would steal a look at him and what she saw did not displease her. He had a nice moustache, which was fashionably curved at both ends. He had a rather big nose and a too-prominent forehead, but these were not serious deterrents. His slow, measured way of speaking suggested a man who was calm and thought carefully before he acted. A man who would make a patient and caring husband.

A few days after Kumudini found out about the Macintosh boy, she told Sylvia about the possible proposal for her sister.

“Oh fabulous, Kumudini!” Sylvia enthused, clapping her hands together. “I’m sure your doctor will be delighted.”

“You’re not to say anything.” Kumudini blushed.

“Why not? You know he has been waiting for this opportunity.”

“Has he?” Kumudini blinked in confusion, wanting to know more.

“Dicky tells me that your doctor is like a racehorse chomping at the bit. It’s all Dicky can do to keep him from falling on his knees in the middle of our drawing room and proposing to you.”

“He’s not ‘my doctor,’ ” Kumudini said primly.

Sylvia narrowed her eyes. “I say, Kumudini, why don’t I whisper your news in Dicky’s ear. It won’t hurt to get a jumpstart on things, no?”

Before Kumudini could reply, Sylvia said, “Leave it to me. I’ll be the model of discretion.”