I had no answer. Jay was wrong, but he was challenging me; challenging me to take responsibility for my life. It made me feel hollow and empty and bewildered. Pretending seemed so right to do sometimes – imagining what is not there and bringing it to some kind of life – and yet so wrong to do now. Both houses had become a cage where we each found our only safe ground diminishing daily.
‘When I’m on my own I sometimes feel so lost,’ I confessed.
For a moment, Jay seemed disorientated. Perhaps I should not have divulged my fears, not when things were going so wrong for him, but I was trying to find a lifeline for us both. I wanted the two of us to face things together.
‘Is it okay to go on like this?’ I asked, not at all sure what I hoped he would say.
‘Like what?’
‘Dunno. Is it better not to pretend? Better to face things?’
‘Are you talking about my mother again?’
‘No.’ My toes curled in. Everything shrank. ‘Just us. All of us.’
Even though Sonya feigned deafness, I could see her melt every time Jay shouted at her; she became smaller, stripped down layer by layer. Her reduced face still had a screen glow, but she no longer illuminated the room; her mouth had cut loose from the pull of her eyes. The curve straightened, the radiance subdued. I could not understand how Jay did not see what was happening to her, the anguish he caused day after day.
I tried to comfort her once, after a mauling he had given her over the empty larder. ‘Auntie, he doesn’t mean it.’
‘I know, my dear. It’s not me he’s angry with. How could he be, really? It’s himself. He feels guilty about his father. As you grow, you just soak in the guilt. That’s what happens. It’s the emptiness in himself, not in the larder, that’s the problem. I know it well. The feeling is not nice.’
‘Guilty for what?’
‘His father is a man who wants everything. If he can’t have it all, he’d rather have nothing. Jay needs a better example.’
‘Uncle Elvin?’
She tilted her head, bereft of the once-playful, spray-held curls, the hive now remade as a more conventional bun badly done. Her lips bare. ‘You are a good boy, like a son to me, but you see Jay is part of me. We are the same body, no? He’s a part of me that is hurting badly, like a crushed arm. I have to bear it. The pain. Whatever is wrong, I will not cut it off. You can’t.’ Her breath emptied. ‘When a husband and wife don’t get on, they can cut loose. But a child and his mother have to amputate more than their hearts if they need to separate.’
Sonya troubled me. Jay troubled me. My inability to solve the problems of my life, despite the remedies I’d read, troubled me. Freewheeling alone down Guildford Crescent, I spotted Channa climbing out of a grey Opel Rekord and taking the hand of a man in a pale suit. As they headed towards the entrance to the Lionel Wendt Theatre, Channa saw me.
‘Hey, Kairo. This is my dad.’
I rolled up to them and stopped. Slipping off the saddle onto the middle bar, I waited for Channa’s father to speak. Ronny inclined his narrow Brylcreemed head. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, young man.’
I didn’t know what to say. I never held my father’s hand like that. I didn’t go arm-in-arm with Jay the way other boys did with their friends. A man walks alone, hands free.
‘Going to get tickets for the new show.’ Channa jerked his thumb at a poster on the theatre wall.
Shaku, my father’s friend, had star billing, his name painted in large black, crackly letters over the silhouette of a horse. ‘That’s my dad’s friend. His new play,’ I said.
‘At a time like this, daring – but also perhaps somewhat foolhardy.’ I detected a touch of scorn in Ronny’s thick voice.
‘He says London is the best place for plays.’
Ronny’s free hand flew to his throat. ‘London? You like London?’
‘I’d like to see Hyde Park. Channa’s so lucky.’
‘So, Channa has been talking, has he?’ The glance at his son was sharp, but swiftly sheathed. ‘Well, perhaps one day you’ll go there. Maybe your mother will take you.’
After they went inside the theatre, I wondered why he mentioned my mother and not my father. Mr Cha-cha-cha.
The following week, September’s Binara moon rose sluggishly, weighted by the hopes of new evangelists. The government, in an effort to appease their growing demands and win the support of the Buddhist vote bank, promised new licencing regulations and more holidays. My father was appalled: ‘The real ferment is in the poor bloody youth outside the Colombo precinct whose heroes wear beards and berets,’ he muttered. ‘Not in the shaven heads of monks.’ For me the important result was that soon school would be shut even more often. Strikes plus holidays guaranteed at least a day off every week. One more day to spend loafing. Ferment for me was entirely domestic. My mother noticed.
‘Kairo, you must learn to rise above, not run away.’
‘But you don’t. You just shout.’
‘An argument is sometimes unavoidable when you want different things.’
‘I heard you both.’
She stiffened. ‘But we will never run from each other, your father and me, putha. You know that, no?’
I wanted to believe her but at that point I didn’t know how anyone could know anything for sure. Maybe neither of them had anyone else to run to. Their parents had died before I was born; there were no other seedlings. We were a modern nuclear family – maybe the smallest one in the country.
At Casa Lihiniya, Jay suggested we make a lookout seat for the breadfruit tree that overlooked Bertie’s back garden; he seemed calmer as we set to work on the patio where his father used to smoke. In the four months I had known him, Jay had grown longer and lankier. Now under a bell jar of koel calls and mynah squawks, gathering his tools, he was as big as any man in the world. Elvin peered in from the archway. He waited until Jay had finished the frame before stepping closer.
‘You know, Jay, your mother is not at all well. She needs help.’ One of his hands paddled the air aimlessly.
‘So, what’s new? She’s always been a case.’
‘She needs to go away for a few weeks. I’ve found a place where she can recuperate.’
Jay checked the measurement of the wood he had cut. ‘Only a few weeks? Why not a few years? Why not forever?’
‘I am serious, Jay. I am taking her to America.’
‘America?’ He tossed aside the ruler. ‘Are you taking me too?’
‘Maybe later, but she needs professional help and my friends in Washington are arranging consultations.’ Elvin’s flailing hand returned to his chest which he patted nervously.
Jay remained silent; my throat was dry, but I spoke. ‘She’ll be all alone there.’
‘I’ll be staying close by until she’s ready to come back. They say it could take a couple of months. She’ll be in a clinic while I attend to some business matters.’ Elvin reached out and placed his hand on Jay’s arm. ‘You see, even though they were never exactly happy together, it has been a huge shock. It is not easy for a beautiful diva to come to terms with the idea of another woman. Or, indeed, another man. But your father has his reasons too: Eros is blind. Jealousy unchannelled is always a problem. Perhaps one day Marty will be able to talk to you, man to man.’
‘That’s never going to happen.’
‘You are his dear future. He will do what he can. He is providing for you, Jay. He has made all the arrangements. There will be a divorce, once your mother is ready to deal with it. It is quite a thing in an old-fashioned town like this, but she has me. I will always be there for her. Your father understands. So, for now, you’ll have to hold the fort on your own. I’m sure you are entirely capable, but I’ve asked Mrs Peiris to keep an eye.’ The speech had been difficult for him; he turned to me and tried to end on a more upbeat note. ‘And you, young man, you’ll make sure he doesn’t get up to too much mischief, won’t you?’
‘Will Mrs Peiris stay here?’
‘Sonya woul
dn’t like that. It’s all rather complicated. Not for you boys to worry about now. Iris will be here.’ As a sweetener, he added, ‘And Jay, can you take the cars out once in a while to give them a run?’
Jay pretended not to care. ‘What for? They’re not horses.’
‘Those engines need running; the wheels need a spin. Just keep it under fifty.’
‘Fifty miles per hour?’ I asked in disbelief.
‘He likes a bit of a race, our Jay. But don’t egg him on, boy. As for the horses, they’ll be looked after by Major Carson. He’s been grieving since he lost his poor Tamerlane in the polo.’ He paused over another recalcitrant nut that needed to be cracked. ‘I’d avoid Sulaiman though, if he turns up. Fellow has developed a grudge after that business with the son’s eye.’
Elvin waited but neither of us said anything more. After a while, he lit a cigarette and retreated inside the house. We continued building the tree-seat: cutting wood, dovetailing joints, passing each other chisels and files, our thoughts buried in sawdust. I tried to look into the future but saw no hint of the intersections to come.
Eventually I broke the silence. ‘She’ll get better soon.’
‘Going to America won’t fix it.’ Jay traced a knot in the piece of wood with his finger and coaxed a hidden maturity into his narrow throat. ‘You can cover it up, but it will always be there: failure. Longer than anything you use to hide it.’
True: I could not erase the guilt I felt for not ever meeting my father’s expectations. My sense of inadequacy flared when I could least resist it, stemming from the time when my father had handed me a cricket bat and I had held it the wrong way unthinkingly. ‘The blade has to face the ball, no?’ My father had snorted, baffled by my incompetence. Nothing could mask the failure. Not then, not now.
I watched Jay carve an intricate pattern around the knot with his whittling knife, expressing with his hands more than he ever could with words.
Since the trip to the estate I had been trying to understand how Jay saw other people: Gerry, Niromi, his mother. How could he switch his feelings so swiftly? Was it a strategy of survival, or of alienation – another word I puzzled over. Might Jay turn away from me too? I wanted to know if he reacted the way he did because of what had happened to his family, or to him, growing up. And was there something I should do to protect myself?
I was not with Jay the day Sonya swept all her make-up into her red leather box bag and set off for America. I wanted to be there, afraid it might be the last time I would see her, but my mother insisted I finish my homework and I was not going to argue with her; I had learnt from Jay what not to do with parents. Even Sonya had pleaded once: ‘You must understand, a mother may have faults but we have an impossible job trying to keep a sieve afloat. Listen to yours, Kairo. Don’t do everything Jay does. He’s still learning and he has his father’s faults to deal with. Marty is a very jealous man. He gets jealous even of my lipstick when he sees me put it on. And jealousy wrecks everything.’ I had coaxed her to play the harp again to ease her mind while Jay was out but her fingers had grown sluggish, the notes unkind. I sensed then that she would not find the right ones again until many things had changed in her life and mine and all that had unspooled was wound again tighter and firmer.
By the time I got to Casa Lihiniya that day, Sonya and Jay had already left for the airport. I could only hope that there had been a reconciliation between them as he helped her into the car, or maybe even at the airport where, in films, people pin their hopes to metal railings and kiss and wave and forgive, but I knew the scene was unlikely. Even at that unfledged, uncertain age, I knew reconciliation required recognition. You needed to see the one you had to say sorry to; it didn’t work if all you saw were reflections in a mirror, or the flaws of the past.
I waited for Jay to call but no signal of any kind came that night.
When we met up the next day, I asked him if he was all right.
Jay stroked the long curve of his slender neck and let a hint of clemency wrinkle his face. ‘So scared she looked. She kept searching her handbag like she’d lost something.’
‘America will help her.’
His expression altered and he gave me the same withering look he’d given his mother every time she’d spoken to him since the first signs of corrosion appeared. ‘Are you a doctor now?’
In the days that followed, with neither of his parents around, Jay became both the master and the child of Casa Lihiniya; the house adjusted itself around him like a shell. I envied the freedom he had to grow, not knowing then the limits within which we must each find equanimity.
His interests shifted from the birds to the fish, the trees, the plots, in quick succession; then the cars. He seemed to be always one step ahead of me. Every time I caught up, he’d spring ahead or dive to the side with a quick grin. I did my best to keep the tanks clean, the fish fed, the birds supplied with seeds and fruit, whether he noticed or not.
The biggest problem I had was with Sinbad, who seemed to suffer the most from Jay’s unpredictable bouts of neglect. If the parrot had not seen Jay, and talked to him or been talked to by him, it would creep into Sunbeam’s old birdcage and sharpen its beak on the wires.
Some days, left alone at Casa Lihiniya, I was surprised to discover that I longed to go home.
Although my mother had shed the most conventional aspects of her colonial-era upbringing, she was not a bohemian in the world of broadcasting; she marked Jackie Kennedy, and ordered her tailor to cut her slacks accordingly. Usually she gathered her thoughts silently at breakfast, before taking charge of the coordination of the morning pre-office routines once my father appeared, string vest awry, rubbing the faint memory of trumpeting from the bridge of his nose. But this sun-filled morning she was on the edge of her chair, on doubled-up seat-cushions, with her face close to the table, whispering into a steaming teacup.
‘What are you doing, Ma?’
She put the cup down and quickly spread some cold margarine on her toast.
‘Practising. I have an announcement to make.’
My heart dropped down to a new low. More tuition? Another lasso to dodge? ‘What?’
‘Malini can’t do it next week, so Lazlo asked me to give it a go.’
‘A go?’
‘Programme announcements. He says I have the perfect voice. If I pass the audition, I could be on the All Asia Service.’ She tightened her shoulders, drawing them in. ‘Your father won’t like it. So, let’s not tell him, okay?’
It could hardly be kept a secret, if her voice was going to be on the airwaves. My father would have to switch off even shortwave to keep her out of earshot. But instead of deriding her, I said, ‘Let’s hear you, Ma.’
She began to intone the sort of sentences people keep in the background as broadcast burble.
‘Sounds just like the radio. You could do even the news dead easy.’
A coil in her eased; she flopped back and added a spoonful of pineapple jam to the toast. ‘Now that would really upset him. For all his talk, he gets so discombobulated when things change.’
I was relieved and proud of her – of her sanity and her career, her pink rayon blouse and beige slacks. I did not say anything more to her, but I let her catch my hand and hold it briefly as I brushed past.
I didn’t mention her plans to Jay, not wishing him to compare her to Sonya – someone who lived in a limelight, who needed special protection the way glossy photographs did, or Hollywood movie reels. But I could sense, even if not quite understand, that what they both sought was independence – their own form of independence. My mother needed it to feel secure and safe; Sonya to feel free from the sadness of unfathomable loss.
That evening I was selecting which of my collection of Mad mags to trade for something seriously steamy, when I heard my father’s actor friend Shaku boom out: ‘Hail, Clarence, “Why looks your grace so heavily today?” Trouble afoot?’
Shaku always had two or three buttons of his candystripe shirt undone showing his
broad, coppery chest like Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur. Things extraterrestrial fascinated him and he could recite Brecht as well as Shakespeare at the drop of a button.
I peeped from the landing and saw him swagger in, cap cocked, arms open, and do an exaggerated bow. ‘Hiding at home from the tumult, art thou?’ His deep, resonant voice always mesmerised me.
‘Not hiding, working. Monica is out tonight and it is a good chance to get the form sorted for tomorrow.’
‘Never say die, eh? Good man. So, what’s the old girl up to?’
‘New job at the radio. They’ve apparently asked her to do announcing now. Next thing I know, she’ll be in my bloody ear every time I turn the wireless on.’
She must have called and told him she had passed the test; I was disappointed not to have been the first to know.
‘So, she’ll need some voice training then? Tell her to come to me.’
‘Training?’ My father sounded a little wary. ‘No, she’ll be fine. She can put it on fine. Come, sit, sit.’
‘Will she do the news? High time someone started announcing real news on air. Place is buzzing – MPs ready to cross the floor at the glimpse of a toffee wrapper – but the radio might as well be in the House of Usher.’
A chair scraped the floor; I wiggled closer to the banister.
‘Can’t see her exchanging Pot Luck on a Tuesday evening for a reading from Das Kapital. You have to understand, Radio Ceylon is broadcasting from the site of the original Jawatte lunatic asylum. Same damn place. There is more than a residual effect.’ My father undercut the dubious joke with a sharp snort. ‘Have a drink?’
He called Siripala and asked for the bottle of arrack and two glasses. Ice and ginger ale, he added, not that Siripala needed to be told.
‘How’s the play?’
‘Over, men.’
‘So soon?’
‘You didn’t come?’
‘Sorry, Shaku. Too much right now on my mind.’
Suncatcher Page 19
