Cinnamon Gardens (39 page)

Balendran had Joseph take the note to his father right away.

That evening, Miss Adamson telephoned Balendran to say that his father wanted to see him. Balendran felt nervous at the impending confrontation, but his trepidation was easily surpassed by his exhilaration and excitement over seeing his father routed, over having his father at his mercy.

When his car entered Brighton, Balendran instructed Joseph to take him around to the back. As if in anticipation of what was to come, there were no servants around.

The door to his father’s study was slightly ajar. He knocked and went in. His father was dressed in a verti, with a shawl around his upper body. He was writing and he waved his hand at Balendran to come in and sit down, then he continued with his work. Balendran saw that the Mudaliyar was trying to gain an advantage over him by keeping him waiting. The very transparency of what he was doing made Balendran relax. The seriousness of his expression, his father’s frown, reminded Balendran of a child who had not learnt his letters but applied himself with great assiduity to his scribblings.

The Mudaliyar finally finished, pressed a blotter to the paper, and put it away. He picked up the note Balendran had written to him and glanced at it again. Then he took off his spectacles. “Yes,” he said. “I have received your letter and thought about it carefully.”

He clasped his hands in front of him on the desk. “You are freed of your duties.”

Balendran breathed out, astounded.

“You should devote yourself to your book and finish it. I, myself, am a scholar and am aware of just how much effort goes into a work such as yours. This afternoon I have hired back Mr. Nalliah, our old manager.”

“What?” Balendran cried. “But he was robbing us blind, Appa.”

“I think Mr. Nalliah has learnt his lesson. People are capable of bettering themselves, you know.”

Balendran stared at his father, unable to believe what he was hearing.

“He must be paid a salary,” the Mudaliyar continued. “This, of course, means that there must be economizing in other areas. We are old people, your mother and I. At our stage of life, we cannot live without the few things we allow ourselves. You must, therefore, bear Mr. Nalliah’s salary. Whatever money you have drawn from the running of the estate must be reduced to meet the salary.”

“Appa –” Balendran began to protest.

“There is also the matter of your car. I have told Mr. Nalliah it will be at his disposal every morning and when he has to go to the estate.”

Balendran started to protest again, but the Mudaliyar interrupted to say that the meeting was over. “Once you have finished your book and are ready to resume your activities, I will have Mr. Nalliah relieved of his.” With that, the Mudaliyar rose to his feet, waiting for his son to leave.

“Good night, Appa,” Balendran said softly.

The Mudaliyar nodded in reply.

As Balendran came out of his father’s study, he heard someone coming down the passageway. Wanting to avoid having to make pleasantries with anyone, he stepped back and waited. After a few moments, Miss Adamson appeared. She was wearing a housecoat. Without knocking, she went inside the Mudaliyar’s study, shutting the door softly after her. In the silence, Balendran could faintly hear the sound of the clapping and
singing that often emanated from the servants’ quarters at night.

The study door opened. Balendran stood back in the shadow of the stairs. Miss Adamson went down the passageway and, after a few moments, his father followed. Balendran stepped forward just in time to see his father enter Miss Adamson’s room.

A sound in his mother’s drawing room made Balendran glance upstairs. A memory came back to him of that time his mother had asked him to go to Miss Adamson for help, the half-sly, half-discomforted look on her face. Balendran felt giddy. He gripped the banister to steady himself. After a moment, he went shakily down the stairs.

When he was outside, his legs felt as if they would give way under him. He sat down on the edge of the verandah and leant back against a pillar, breathing deeply. He thought of his mother. Behind her docile, naïve façade was a woman who was wise to the ways of the world. He felt a deep anguish for what she must suffer every day, what effort it must take for her to go about her daily routine, knowing all the while of this encroachment into her very home about which she could do nothing, like being constantly assailed by a pestilence of termites or rats. Not only had she grieved over the banishment of Arul all these years, but now she had this humiliating liaison to contend with. Even as Balendran was agonized by his mother’s terrible situation, he also felt a certain respect for her strength. While such a thing could have made someone unbearable to live with, his mother had remained kind and magnanimous to everyone.

The singing from the servants’ quarters intruded on his thoughts. He glanced in that direction and he felt a terrible anger well up in him against the unfairness of a world in which people like his father managed to do as they pleased with no consequence. He would not let his father triumph over all of them.

From tomorrow Mr. Nalliah would take over his duties, take over the use of his car. His car? It was not his car at all. It belonged to his father and he had only assumed the use of it. Balendran thought of his brother’s flat in Bombay. The furniture was broken and used, but it was his. He, Balendran, had worked hard at the family affairs, had considered whatever money he drew from the estate and temple to be rightfully his. Now he saw that he had been a fool to think so. The only thing that was his was Sevena; that and an inheritance he had from his grandmother.

When Balendran got home, he found Sonia reading in the drawing room. She was so engrossed in her book that she did not hear him enter. He stood watching her for a moment, then called out her name. She looked up quickly and rose to her feet.

“What did your father want, Bala?”

“I need to talk with you,” Balendran replied.

She was frightened by the seriousness of his tone.

He came and sat down next to her, took her hand in his and pressed it. Then he got up and went to stand by the bookcase. “The thing I want to tell you is very hard for me to speak of … it has to do with my father. Something I learnt about him in India.”

Then, not looking up, he told her about his father’s relations with Pakkiam’s mother, the reason he had brought Pakkiam to Brighton. He did not describe what he had seen this evening. It was too new for him to be able to speak about yet.

When he was done, he glanced at Sonia. She was looking at him, appalled. He went and sat down beside her and took her hands in his again. Then he told her of the letter he had written to his father and the consequences of it.

“You did what was right, Bala,” Sonia cried out. “I don’t care if we have to take rickshaws. It doesn’t matter.”

The fierceness with which she spoke filled his heart with gratitude.

“We’ll show him that we can manage very well without him.”

“It’s not a question of our managing or not, Sonia. Certain wrongs must be righted. Others have suffered and they must be recompensed.”

Sonia said she understood.

“Before I left, Seelan and I found a small house for himself and his mother in a more pleasant part of Bombay. Yet that is not enough. When I was there, Seelan expressed a desire to see Ceylon. I will write and suggest a short holiday here, telling him that once he is ready to come, I will arrange his passage. If he finds that he likes it in Colombo, as a place to live, then I will help him establish himself here.”

“What about your father? He will never want to set eyes on this grandson. How can you subject the boy to this?”

“I will explain that his grandfather may not accept him at first, but will ultimately have to come to terms with his presence here. That he must not let his grandfather stand in the way of his happiness.”

At the same time, Balendran knew the role a grandchild fulfilled in the Mudaliyar’s life. A grandson was a continuance of his lineage, the aristocratic blood of his family. According to his father, Seelan would never fulfil this function as his blood was tainted. An image of his son with the Mudaliyar’s favourite horse, Nellie, came into his mind. Whenever Nellie won at the Colombo or Nuwara Eliya races, it was Lukshman whom the Mudaliyar invited to lead Nellie past the grandstand and receive the applause of the spectators. Balendran had seen the absolute
pride in his father’s eyes as he had looked at Lukshman, so handsome as he bowed charmingly to the grandstand.

“And his mother?” Sonia said, interrupting his thoughts. “I doubt she will be happy to let him come, given the way her husband was treated by his own family.”

Balendran nodded. “Her reaction to the suggestion of her son coming here was, of course, cautious. But, being wise, I feel she would do nothing to dissuade him from pursuing what he wants.”

Balendran turned to his wife. “And I will ensure to the best of my ability that, for the sake of my brother, my nephew has all the advantages Lukshman would enjoy. I will help Seelan in his endeavours wherever he may see that they lie.”

That evening, Balendran and Sonia sat, hands clasped, discussing their plans for their nephew, closer to each other than they had been in a long time.

T
he escalating tensions between the Minerva Hiring Company and its taxi drivers had taken a new direction. Faced with an intractable management, the taxi drivers, under the advice of the Labour Union, had gone on strike. For the first time in Ceylon, a boycott had also been organized. It was directed at any business that supported the taxi company and, as a result, a chain of petrol sheds found themselves blacklisted.

One morning, Annalukshmi was alone in the staff room, correcting students’ exercise books, when the groundskeeper put his head in through the door and said, “Where is Principal Nona, missie?”

“She’s teaching.”

“Aiyo, missie, there’s two police mahattayas at the gate.”

“Policemen?” Annalukshmi stood up. “What do they want?”

“To see the Principal Nona.”

Mr. Jayaweera had gone on an errand to the bank, so Annalukshmi felt that she should go and invite the policemen to
come inside. She put the cap back on her pen. “Go to the senior classroom block and tell the Nona. I will let them in.”

As Annalukshmi left the staff room, she wondered what trouble had brought the police to the school. When she reached the gate, she grew a little alarmed. For there, on the other side, was the Inspector General of Police, an Englishman notorious for his cruelty. She recognized him from pictures she had seen of him in the newspapers. Another policeman was with him, of low rank, Annalukshmi could tell, from the way he stood at attention looking straight ahead of him.

The inspector was obviously irritated with having been kept waiting, as he snapped at her, “I ask for Miss Lawton and I get every other person in the school.”

Annalukshmi opened the gate and said, her voice catching slightly, “I have sent the groundskeeper for her.”

She noticed that the inspector smiled slightly, pleased that she was nervous.

They had nearly reached the building that housed the office when she saw Miss Lawton hurrying across the quadrangle, followed by the groundskeeper. When Miss Lawton reached them, the inspector’s demeanour changed and he became courteous. “I am terribly sorry to take you away from your class, madam, but this is a matter of some urgency.”

“Indeed,” Miss Lawton said, still breathless. She indicated for them to go inside.

Annalukshmi followed and seated herself in the staff room. She picked up an exercise book, but her ears were attuned to the murmur of voices behind the closed door of the headmistress’s office. After a few moments, Miss Lawton gave a little cry and Annalukshmi heard her say, “Oh no, inspector, that can’t be so. I’m sure Mr. Jayaweera is not involved.”

She did not hear the inspector’s reply.

Annalukshmi felt a fear come over her. She thought of the ongoing taxi strike. Was Mr. Jayaweera involved in labour unrest again? She contemplated going to the gate and waiting for him there to warn him of the presence of the police. Yet, even as she deliberated this, the school bell rang announcing the end of the period. She had a class of girls waiting for her and she had no choice but to gather her books and leave the staff room.

For the rest of the morning, Annalukshmi found it difficult to conduct her lessons with much attention. What did the police want with him? The more she thought about it, the more she wondered if Mr. Jayaweera had involved himself in this taxi strike. She felt a sense of dread.

By lunchtime, the entire school knew of the inspector’s visit. Annalukshmi returned to the staff room to find all the teachers in an excited state, discussing what had happened in lowered voices as they gathered their belongings to go home for lunch. Annalukshmi was dismayed to learn that, upon his return, the police had taken Mr. Jayaweera away for questioning. None of the teachers seemed to know why, or what it was that he had done. Nancy was in the staff room and she indicated, with a slight nod, for Annalukshmi to follow her outside.