He was busy thinking. He had a lot to think about. There was school. There was Rose-Lizzie. And there was his father.
He hadn’t missed the gloomy, disapproving looks his father kept giving him these days. Chandi knew they were because of his friendship with Rose-Lizzie but he didn’t understand why his father was so upset about it. It wasn’t as if they were constantly getting into trouble or anything. Whenever he and Rose-Lizzie came running through the back garden and passed the kitchen steps, if his father was sitting there, his face would become long and he would shake his head slowly from side to side.
Even Rose-Lizzie had noticed and had asked Chandi about it. He had no answers for her.
He felt the renewed tension between his mother and father and wondered if he was the cause of it. He and Rose-Lizzie. But he didn’t ask. He just worried. And he watched. He had seen the Sudu Nona go away. He was terrified that next it would be his mother.
He saw Rangi walking some yards ahead. Leela didn’t go to school anymore. She had stayed on at the church school until she passed her grade eight test. Because the church school didn’t have classes beyond that, and because Premawathi simply couldn’t afford the daily bus fare to the school in Nuwara Eliya, she stayed home and helped in the house.
She didn’t really mind, because she had never been an exceptional student. She was far better at cooking and cleaning than she was at history and arithmetic.
While many Ceylonese had abandoned their customs and traditions in favor of the more relaxed British style of living, many things hadn’t changed, like the role of women. In British circles, women were expected to entertain and make witty conversation and generally act as complements to their gain-fully employed husbands. Many of them were like the Sudu Nona had been, although most of them actually enjoyed their roles as hostesses. Giving a successful party and having the most important people attend was considered the highest achievement for a British wife stationed in Ceylon.
For the Ceylonese, women were still the homemakers. There for the purposes of being good wives, bearing healthy children, keeping good homes and keeping their families well fed and happy. Education was a nice advantage but by no means an essential.
As such, Leela was considered to have more than her necessary share of accomplishments. She was a good cook, a good seamstress, a good housekeeper, and she had the added bonus of being able to read and write.
She would make some man a fine wife, but unfortunately not many suitable men were to be found in the vicinity of Glencairn. Not that Leela seemed to mind for, unlike most eighteen-year-olds, she didn’t seem to be remotely interested in men or marriage.
She had matured into a beautiful woman, but there was no one to tell her so except Chandi, whom she didn’t believe anyway.
RANGI HEARD CHANDI kicking his stone and waited. She knew he was worried and it worried her. He caught up and they walked in silence. Since his friendship with Rose-Lizzie had blossomed, he hardly spent any time with Rangi, which made him feel guilty because he truly loved her.
He knew she loved him too. He knew that she didn’t feel bad or angry that he didn’t show her his secret places anymore, or talk to her about his dreams and plans. Rangi was the only one who understood, perhaps even more than Rose-Lizzie.
She was fifteen now, and while she didn’t have the earthy, sensual beauty of Premawathi and Leela, she was beautiful in an ethereal sort of way. She was lighter-skinned and dreamy-eyed and as slim as a reed. Premawathi often slipped her special treats like an egg or some butter or an occasional glass of milk in an attempt to fatten her up. Rangi accepted them meekly and then, once Premawathi had gone, she stole down to the garage and gave them to Buster, who seemed to appreciate them far more than she did.
John couldn’t understand why Buster was suddenly getting fat, and took him on longer walks these days.
Rangi was a loner who didn’t have any friends. Most girls of her age had already stopped going to school. At the workers’ compound, fifteen-year-olds spent their days picking tea and their evenings cooking and keeping house.
No one had time for friendships.
Chandi was always with Rose-Lizzie and she didn’t grudge him that; they were so full of life, she didn’t think she could even keep up with them.
Leela was always busy. Occasionally, she stopped to look critically at Rangi and ask if she was feeling okay. Rangi always said yes. No one expected her to say anything else. She never complained. Even when she felt the weight of life pressing her down. Even when her vague, unnamed fears intruded on her dreams, and she woke up feeling depressed and sad. Anyway, what was there to say? Even she didn’t know exactly what it was that seemed to worry her constantly.
Other than their mother, of course. Rangi watched her intently and saw the loneliness and the pain. She longed to enfold her mother in her thin young arms and comfort her, but how could she do that when Amma went to such lengths to disguise her sorrow? So Rangi could only empathize and silently try to absorb the pain.
That hurt so much, sometimes.
She thought of the previous day. Her mother had been cooking and reached for a dish, quite forgetting that it had just been taken out of the oven and was very hot. She cried out in pain as she burnt her fingers, and where she would ordinarily have held them under a cold tap and carried on, yesterday her eyes had filled with tears and her mouth trembled. Like a young girl.
Rangi’s eyes clouded at the memory.
CHANDI SAW HER waiting and hurried to join her.
She looked like a young eucalyptus tree, he thought fancifully, pale and slim and graceful. And she was such a good person.
Sometimes, when his mother and Leela talked disparagingly about some woman on the estate, Rangi would quietly urge them not to judge people, ignoring their laughs and good-natured jibes about her saintliness.
Rangi looked at all people as good and kind and so people were mostly good and kind to her, even if they weren’t to other people. But some were not, whispering to one another that she was strange and perhaps not quite right in the head. One unkind woman from the workers’ compound had seen her walking alone in the moonlight and even suggested that Rangi might be a witch. Someone else said that if Rangi was a witch, then she was a good witch.
People liked her.
Premawathi worried about Rangi, that her gentleness and unswerving faith in life would get her into trouble. Sometimes she got impatient with her gentle daughter, and urged her to pay more attention to things, not knowing that Rangi took in everything. Much more than she was supposed to.
She had been through the big girl ceremony by this time, wandering through the proceedings in a daze, not quite sure what was happening since Premawathi assumed she already knew.
She never complained, even when the coins were poured over her head.
Now she was moving from one foot to the other since the ground was hot. Her reddha and blouse were handed down from Premawathi to Leela and then to her, and they looked their age. Her hair was tied back with a frayed piece of black ribbon whose ends flew about sadly in the breeze.
“Hurry up, Malli, we’re already late,” she called out.
“Late for what?” he shouted back. “It’s not like we’ll ever actually learn anything. At least I won’t, with Teacher for my teacher.” He caught up with her and she tweaked his nose gently.
“Where else would we go, child?” she asked. “To the British school?”
“Why not?” he said sulkily, although he knew why not.
She looked down at him seriously as they walked. “Malli,” she said, “you’re not a child anymore. You’re a young man. And this kind of talk can only get you into trouble. The school isn’t much, but it’s the only one there is. If you talk like this, Ammi and Thaaththi will be sad because they have no other choice.”
“Why not?” he asked curiously.
“Well,” she said, looking down at the path, “they don’t have enough money to send us to the Maha Vidyalaya in Nuwara Eliya. Even though
it’s free, we’d still need bus fare there and back every day, and it’s a lot of money. And there are no other schools around here.”
“Why can’t we go to the British school?” he asked. “If we pass the entrance test and do very well, then maybe they’ll take us.”
She laughed. “They won’t let us take the entrance test. I don’t think the white children even have one,” she said.
“Then how do they get into the school?” he asked in astonishment. “Everyone has to take an entrance test!”
“What are they going to do if someone fails? Tell them to go to another school?” she said.
He stared at her. He had never heard her speak in this way before.
“It makes you angry too,” he said slowly. “I didn’t think you could get angry.”
She laughed, her anger already forgotten. “I get angry. Everyone does at some time.” She pulled at his arm. “Enough talk. Hurry up now, or we’ll be really late and then Teacher will make you stand outside the classroom again.”
“I won’t miss much,” he said wryly, and they both laughed.
Ten minutes later, he stood outside the classroom and thought about what she’d said about the British school. He wondered if they made their children stand outside the classroom when they were late. It probably didn’t matter, he thought cynically. What were they going to do? Tell them to go to another school?
The more he thought about it, the better the British school sounded. It seemed as if anyone could do anything there and get away with it. Fail tests, go late, maybe even not go at all.
But then, he’d probably want to go to school if he went there, he thought gloomily. He was sure they didn’t have teachers like Teacher who wrote on the blackboard and went to sleep. Their teachers would teach. And talk. And encourage questions and answer them. And delight in dialogue and discussion and debate.
Their teachers would be teachers, not Teacher.
The bell signaling the end of Teacher’s class rang and he waited for Teacher to leave the classroom before going in. Mr. Aloysius came to stand next to him, also waiting for Teacher to leave.
“Good morning, Chandi,” he boomed. “Enjoying some fresh air?” he asked, and laughed at his own joke. Chandi standing outside his classroom was a familiar sight. Only Mr. Aloysius ever commented on it though. Chandi standing outside his classroom had come to stand for everything that was wrong with the church school and nobody wanted to dwell on those things. It wasn’t as if anything could be done about them.
He smiled politely and stretched legs grown stiff with standing. Mr. Aloysius’s face grew serious.
“What did you do this time? Sneeze too loud?” he asked sympathetically.
“No. Came late,” Chandi said briefly.
“Why?” Mr. Aloysius asked.
“I was talking with my sister,” Chandi said.
“Couldn’t you have talked at some other time?” Mr. Aloysius asked.
“No. It was important,” he replied.
Mr. Aloysius nodded understandingly and fell silent. He too had been late, sometimes even to work at his office, because of conversations that couldn’t wait. Most had been with his wife, hence the sympathy.
Teacher walked past and scowled at Chandi.
Chandi scowled back.
Mr. Aloysius also scowled for good measure.
AFTER SCHOOL, CHANDI waited by the steps for Sunil, whose day it was to sweep the classroom. When he had finally finished, the two of them walked to Sunil’s house so Chandi could borrow his books.
Sunil’s father’s quarters in the workers’ compound were small but spotless. His mother came to the door to greet them. She liked Chandi because he was well-mannered and lived at the bungalow.
Sunil’s mother was enormous. Once, Chandi had asked Sunil why his mother was so fat. Sunil had never thought about it, and asked his mother when he went home. She had told him her fatness was caused by a rare illness, which he reported back to Chandi. They spent a few hours wondering what kind of illness that might be, and finally decided she had got fat simply by eating and was too ashamed to say so.
Now, as she waved to them, her arm wobbled and kept wobbling long after she stopped waving. She wore housecoats, long loose dresses that were probably the only clothes which would fit her. Her face was small in comparison to the rest of her, but immediately below her mouth, the fat started.
It began as a series of chins, which shook individually when she laughed. Under them, her mole-spotted neck flared out with many pronounced creases like the seven chains on a Kandyan bride. Her shoulders sloped under their own weight and slid into her still-wobbling arms. Beyond them, Chandi could only guess what lay, because the voluminous folds of her housecoat concealed all but her permanently swollen feet. Her hands were fat too, and her wedding ring had long disappeared into fatty oblivion.
He politely declined an effusive invitation to stay for lunch, collected the books he needed and left. He looked back once to wave to them.
Sunil looked very small next to her.
Rangi was eating her lunch on the step when he walked in. She looked up questioningly at him.
“Yes,” he said.
“How long?” she asked sympathetically.
“Until Mr. Aloysius came. Maybe three hours,” he said.
A few minutes later, he joined her on the step. He was tired and the prospect of copying down two weeks of missed schoolwork was daunting.
“I’ll help you,” Rangi said.
It always surprised him that she seemed to know exactly what he was thinking. He wondered if it was only with him or if she knew what everyone thought.
“There’s a lot,” he warned.
“That’s okay. If we both do it, we can finish it off soon,” she said.
He looked at her, wondering what he had done to deserve her. If he were Buddhist, he thought, he could have put it down to good deeds in a past life. As it was, he could only assume he was not quite as bad as everyone seemed to think he was, and that maybe God liked him just a little.
He told Rose-Lizzie about it when they were sitting beside the oya.
“Rangi knows what I think,” he said, stirring the water with a large leaf.
“So what?” she said unconcernedly. “I know what you think sometimes.”
“No, but this is different,” he said. “She really knows.”
She laughed. “So what?” she repeated. “Are you thinking bad things?”
“No,” he said a little impatiently. “But what if I was?”
“What if you were?” she said as impatiently. “Why are you so worried?”
“It must be difficult for her,” he said thoughtfully. “People think so many things.” He wondered if Rangi knew what their mother thought. He wished he knew.
chapter 20
ROSE-LIZZIE WAS ALSO HAVING DIFFICULTIES AT SCHOOL.
On the first day of school after the holidays, everyone was talking about where they had gone and what they had done.
“I went to Trincomalee with my dad and we went on board a real warship,” said Tony Bronson-Smyth importantly.
“I was supposed to go home to London but they said it was too dangerous, so we went to Simla,” said Mildred Jones, wrinkling her nose at the memory.
“We went down to Colombo and spent the holidays with the Governor. My father knows him very well,” said David Appleby casually.
“I went to Gibraltar to visit my uncle who is stationed out there,” said Emma Trent proudly.
They looked at Rose-Lizzie, who stood there and looked glum.
“Where did you go, Elizabeth?” asked Harriet James, who had gone to Scotland.
“Oh, nowhere,” Rose-Lizzie said vaguely.
“But you must have gone somewhere,” said Jeremy Owens, who had gone to Haputale to stay with the Trevors.
“Well I didn’t,” Rose-Lizzie said defiantly.
“But why not?” asked Mildred Jones.
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to anyway. Cha
ndi was not there,” Rose-Lizzie replied.
“Chandi?” said David Appleby, whose father knew the Governor very well.
“My best friend,” Rose-Lizzie said.
“She’s not British?” Emma Trent asked in a scandalized voice.
“No, and neither is he a she. Chandi is a boy’s name, silly,” Rose-Lizzie said.
“Is he the Village Headman’s son?” asked Jeremy Owens with something just short of vulgar curiosity.
“No, he’s Premawathi’s son,” Rose-Lizzie replied serenely.
“Premawathi?” asked Harriet James, half fearfully.
“Yes. You know, our cook. Although she actually does everything,” Rose-Lizzie said admiringly. “Appuhamy’s old now and he can’t do very much. So Premawathi does everything, but she went to Deniyaya and Chandi had to go with her,” she ended sadly.
The little crowd that had gathered around her dissipated with alarming speed, and Rose-Lizzie stood there wondering what she had said.
One of the teachers standing close enough to eavesdrop hurried off to the staff room to tell the other teachers that John Buckwater had gone slightly mad after his beloved wife’s abrupt departure.
Some were of the opinion that perhaps he had already been slightly mad, which was why she had left in the first place. Miss Rosamund, who was the only unmarried teacher on the staff and pushing forty, said she didn’t care, she just wished he had got a divorce and been done with it. The other teachers sniggered at her and made unkind comments about old maids and desperation, which Miss Rosamund, who was already half in love with John Buckwater, ignored.
As the day wore on, Rose-Lizzie’s puzzlement grew. The children she usually played with and talked to all seemed to have something to do or somewhere to go when she approached them. Even Harriet James, who was Rose-Lizzie’s special friend at school, avoided her and spent the entire day whispering with Emma Trent, whom Harriet and Rose-Lizzie had earlier labeled a cat, because she thought she was better than everyone else.
The Flower Boy Page 21
