Normally, Rose-Lizzie would have reacted by swinging a well-aimed shoe at his ankle or sticking her tongue out at him, regardless of whether he was right or wrong in his suspicions.
Instead, her eyes had filled with tears and she had spun on her heel and rushed away. Chandi had been sitting there feeling guilty and miserable when his mother came in.
Now his eyes stung from trying not to cry. His idyllic life at Glencairn seemed to be disintegrating slowly, as the things and people that held it together came apart. He longed to get away. But where? Deniyaya was a possibility, but he shrank away from it. He would get old there.
He could go to Leela and Jinadasa or try and contact his father and ask him if he could go and live with him, even for a while. As his thoughts ran on, he knew deep down that he wouldn’t be going anywhere. Not in the near future anyway, because regardless of how impossible she was, he couldn’t abandon his mother.
He lay down on the grass and resisted the urge to squint against the glare of the sunlight, opening his eyes wide instead. The harsh light made his eyes water and if his tears emerged too, he didn’t know.
The sky spread over him like an unrelenting canopy of blue, uniform and uninterrupted except by a single cloud. It looked out of place in the blue vastness but it floated along bravely, and suddenly Wordsworth’s simile made sense to Chandi.
It all depended on one’s mood, he thought.
IN HER BEDROOM, Rose-Lizzie punched her pillow ferociously and swore that she would get even with Chandi. The fact that his suspicions were not too far off the mark made her even madder. She had kept her promise to herself for almost a year now, and it had been one of the longest periods in her young life. But now her patience was wearing thin.
On her thirteenth birthday, and Chandi’s seventeenth, beyond a stilted greeting, she had avoided him all day. He had given her a beautiful stone he had picked up from the oya, black with flecks of silver embedded in it, and although she had been thrilled with it, she had given it a cursory look, murmured her thanks and left it on the table next to the chair where she was sitting.
His look of disappointment was better than any birthday present.
These days, she accepted invitations to go to other estates with her father and Anne, and although she found the children and their games boring, at least it was something to do. She had also found herself a new hobby. On her last birthday, her father had given her some packets of seeds, more from exasperation at her constant aimlessness than from any particular desire to make her a horticulturalist.
She had commandeered a plot that bordered the side lawn and proceeded to dig, weed and manure it with grim determination. When she finally planted her seeds, everyone held their breaths waiting for something to happen, and when the tiny plants finally pushed their way up past the surface, there was a collective sigh of relief.
Now, a few months later, a profusion of marigolds, azaleas and button flowers fought for space in their cramped quarters, and Rose-Lizzie had been seen digging up another plot elsewhere in the garden.
John didn’t mind because although Sunil weeded, watered and mowed whenever he had the time, he didn’t really have a green thumb. Besides, finally, Rose-Lizzie seemed to have found something to do.
Chandi had watched her a few times, but she didn’t acknowledge his presence so he didn’t say anything either. He stood there and scowled, unreasonably angry at her for ignoring him and paying more attention to the garden than to him. He was used to Rose-Lizzie’s devotion, which bordered on hero worship, and to be ousted from her affections by a bunch of plants was galling to say the least.
Now she sought sanctuary in her garden and plunged her fork into the already pliant soil, digging up perfectly good seedlings and hurling clumps of soil into the grass behind her.
She had hoped Chandi would follow her, but apparently he had better things to do. She yanked at a clump of weeds, which suddenly came free and unbalanced her, making her fall backward.
She heard laughter from the veranda and looked up angrily.
“Whoa, whoa!” John said, holding up his hands placatingly. “Don’t shoot me. I’m on your side, remember?”
“Nobody’s on my side,” she muttered.
John sat on the low wall encircling the veranda and looked down at her. “Lizzie, what has happened to you? You used to be such a happy child. Lately you’ve been”—he looked at her face and chose his words carefully—“well, different. Not like yourself at all. Want to tell your old dad what’s troubling you?”
The fork dropped from her fingers and she looked up at him pathetically. “I’m trying to be patient, Daddy.”
“Why do you have to be patient?” he asked, his heart going out to her.
“That’s what Premawathi told me I must be. Then he’ll play with me again and not be nasty and horrible.”
“Ah.” John finally understood. “She’s right, you know. Everyone needs time, and unfortunately, sometimes it’s not the right time for other people. Chandi is growing up.”
“But he’ll be old soon and then he really won’t want me anymore!” she wailed.
John laughed. “Oh, I think it will be a while before he’s so old and doddering that he won’t want to play with you, my darling. Give it a little more time. Things always work themselves out, you’ll see.” He straightened up. “I’ve got to drive over to the club to pick up some papers. Want to come along?”
She stood up and wiped her hands on her skirt. “I suppose so,” she muttered, “but only if I can come like this. I can’t be bothered to go and change.”
“I didn’t expect you to,” John replied, wondering desperately how long this phase was going to last.
As they drove along the peaceful mountain passes, he kept glancing sideways at her mutinous profile and thought how strange that his union with Elsie could have produced three children who were all so unlike one another.
There was Jonathan, peevish and surly, who showed every sign of becoming a male version of his mother.
Anne, self-possessed and gracious, who reminded John of his own mother, who had been a lady in the truest sense of the word.
And lastly, Lizzie. She looked like neither of them, and her impetuosity and clever tongue were all her own.
In some ways, John was proudest of her. In others, he despaired and often wondered if he should have sent her back to England. Living with Elsie would have taken the edge off her a bit, but every time he had thought about it, he couldn’t bear the thought of not being with her.
“Would you like to go home to England for a holiday?” he suddenly asked her.
She looked at him as if he had gone mad. “No! This is my home!”
“Well, would you like to go there for a holiday anyway?” he pressed.
She looked fearful. “And stay with Mummy? No, Daddy, I want to stay here with you.”
“Yes, I know, but, Lizzie, this is not really our home, you know. And one day, we’re going to have to go back,” he said gently.
“Why?”
“Because we will soon be giving Ceylon her independence. There won’t be a place for us then.”
She studied him. “I don’t understand this at all, Daddy. How can we give Ceylon independence?”
“Because we took it away from them in the first place, moppet,” he said bluntly. “Doesn’t make much sense to me either, although I don’t know if I should be saying that. After all, look at me. Sudu Mahattaya and all that.”
She looked impatiently at him. “I know you don’t care about all that, Daddy, but sometimes it seems so unfair.”
“What does?”
“You know, Chandi and Sunil and people like them living where they do, while we live in the bungalow. I sometimes wonder why they don’t hate us.”
He laughed humorlessly. “Some of them do, some of them do. That’s why we’re going through the production of giving the country back to them.”
“Before they take it back for themselves?”
“Yes.”
“Will we have to go then?”
“Yes, I should think so,” he said honestly.
“Can’t we stay? Just us?”
“No. It would only be a matter of time before they booted us out if we stayed. We remind them of too much.”
“Too much bad?”
“Certainly not too much good,” he replied wryly.
She sank deeper in her seat and thought about what he had said. She didn’t want to go back to England and wondered how she could stay. So deep was she in her reverie that she didn’t notice they had arrived until the car stopped with its usual inelegant lurch.
John was gone for less than five minutes, but when he got back, he looked worried.
“Is everything okay, Daddy?” she asked, feeling guilty about her tantrum when he had so many more important things on his mind.
“What? Oh yes, yes. Everything’s fine,” he said distractedly.
She pretended to study the passing scenery, wondering why grown-ups bothered to lie. Obviously something was bothering her father and, equally obviously, he didn’t want to tell her about it. So why say everything was fine?
She resolved to go and find Chandi the moment she got back to Glencairn. Maybe he treated her with disdain, but at least he was honest about it.
“THE SITUATION IN Colombo is getting worse,” John said to Robin Cartwright. They were enjoying a glass of port after dinner. “Lots of people leaving. I even heard that some of the planters in Badulla and Bandarawela were packing up.”
“Any cause for concern?” Robin asked.
“I don’t know yet. Perhaps we should send the girls back.”
“They’re going to hate you, you know,” Robin said warningly.
“Yes, I know. But what else is there to do? At least that way, if things get a bit dicey, we’ll be the only ones here.”
“But surely nothing’s going to happen up here?” Robin said doubtfully. “These people worship the ground you walk on, old chap.”
“For now. It only takes one or two troublemakers for things to get rough. This handing-over process isn’t going to be smooth, no matter how much we want it to be. Look at India and the trouble there.”
Robin settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “Well, let’s not be hasty. I mean, you kept the girls here through the war. Surely this can’t be as dangerous. At least there are no Nazis here!”
John relaxed a little, reassured by Robin’s confidence. “I daresay you’re right. I’ll be sure to tell the girls you were the one who talked me out of sending them home. Then you’ll be a bigger hero than you are already!”
They laughed.
“They’re good girls,” Robin said reflectively. “Even that little minx Lizzie has a heart of gold. And as for Anne—she’s going to make some man very happy one day.”
John smiled. “I have no concerns about Anne, although I suspect there’s quite a lot of steel hidden under that soft exterior. No, it’s Lizzie who gives me the most sleepless nights. She and Chandi are going to give me more gray hairs than I already have.” He stood up and went over to refill their glasses.
“Chandi,” Robin said musingly. “What’s going to happen to him when you leave? Have you thought about that?” He deliberately didn’t mention Premawathi, but they were both aware she was included in the question.
John sighed heavily. “I’ve thought about little else lately,” he admitted, sitting down again. “It’s a damnable situation, Robin. I’ve seriously thought about offering to take them with us, but you know Premawathi. She gets thorny whenever she feels she’s being offered charity.”
“But it wouldn’t be charity.”
“I know that but she doesn’t. I can’t bear to think of what will happen to Chandi if he’s left here. Or worse still, if he had to go back to Deniyaya. Grim place, from what I’ve heard.”
Robin leaned forward and looked intently at John. “Supposing you asked them to leave with you and they did agree. What then?”
John jumped up and started pacing the room. “I don’t know,” he said helplessly. “I could put Chandi through school. God knows I can afford it and it would give me enormous pleasure, but—”
“And Premawathi?”
John stopped by Robin’s chair and looked down at him. “Ah, my friend, you get straight to the point, don’t you?” He looked up at the ceiling. “To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t think she’ll ever agree to come. Even for Chandi’s sake.”
Robin Cartwright decided he had said enough. No point putting his friend through hell trying to find answers that were already staring him in the face.
He rose, clapped John on the back sympathetically and left.
The fire spluttered and popped, throwing a shower of sparks. A few hours later, just a few embers glowed among the ashes. John, staring intently into it, saw only a laughing face with dancing brown eyes.
A FEW WEEKS later, the same topic was being discussed in the kitchen by Premawathi and Sunil’s mother, who had wheezed her way up the hill to visit, and to thank Premawathi for all the goodies she had been getting via Sunil.
“Just as Sunil gets this job, these modayas in Colombo start wanting to rule themselves. What’s wrong with the white people, I ask you?” she huffed indignantly.
Premawathi only smiled. The question obviously didn’t require an answer and her views were quite different from Sunil’s mother’s.
“Just see what a mess they’ll make of it. That’s the problem with our people. They don’t know a good thing when they see it. They’ll kick the white man out and when they have made a mess of this country, they’ll beg him to come back,” Sunil’s mother continued.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” Premawathi said, amused.
“Do you think the Sudu Mahattaya will leave soon?” Sunil’s mother asked anxiously. “God knows what idiot will come here and start lording it over us.”
A curious little shaft of pain left Premawathi momentarily breathless. “I don’t know,” she said.
“What will happen to my Sunil then? Jobs are so hard to come by these days. Maybe I’ll send him to his uncle in Colombo. But that old miser never did anything for his brother, so why would he want to help his brother’s son?”
Sunil’s mother’s voice faded as Premawathi’s thoughts took over. What would happen to them all? she wondered desperately. Was she destined to become a bitter old woman who lived out the rest of her life alone in some hovel without even a few precious memories to warm up an otherwise cold existence?
Up to this point in her life, the memories she had collected were of work, of hardship, of loss. And, of course, a few paltry years of love. For this last, she had only herself to blame, she knew that, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept.
So was this what her life was to be? No giving, no taking, no living? This wasn’t living. It was mere existence. Even she could see that. She thought of John, who might be gone soon, who would be gone soon, she corrected herself painfully.
He was the only one who had seen her not as a housekeeper, mother or wife, but as a person. As a human being who required as much comfort and care as she had given out all these years. He had cared for and comforted her. He had talked to her, made her laugh, shared his concerns with her, asked for her advice. She had put a stop to all that though, she thought, bewildered. She had deliberately shut out the only person who had been good to her.
And for what?
As appeasement to her guilty conscience?
Don’t I owe it to myself to be happy, she wondered, after I’ve spent most of my life trying to make other people happy? Again, as she had so often in the last few months, she saw John’s concern, heard him pleading with her to tell him what had happened.
She never had.
It had been easier to shut him out.
She rose to her feet, gripped by a sudden urgency. She vaguely heard Sunil’s mother saying something, but ignored her and ran from the kitchen, down the corridor.
John had
just finished his lunch and was going into his room for a nap when he saw her. She looked like an exotic angel, for during her flight down the corridor her hair had come undone and streamed out behind her like a black veil.
For a moment he thought something awful had happened, but as she came closer, he saw her face and felt as if a great weight had been lifted from him. He stepped back into his room.
She didn’t stop when she reached him, but flew into his arms and laid her face against his chest. “Can you forgive me?” she asked softly, and John, knowing she already knew the answer, said nothing but closed his eyes as waves of relief washed over him. With his foot, he kicked the door shut.
“I want to tell you why,” she said later.
He laid a finger on her lips. “I don’t want to know.”
“But you must. Otherwise it will hang between us. This way, I can lay it to rest,” she insisted.
He waited. Taking a deep breath, she started telling him about what had happened that night, what Chandi had seen, what Chandi had said, what she had felt. She poured out her horror, guilt and anguish. Tears streamed down her cheeks at the memory. Tears streamed down his.
“Oh, Premawathi,” he murmured. “No wonder you blamed me. No wonder you shut me out.”
“But I was wrong to!” she exclaimed. “I can see that now! John, I’ve finally started to understand that it would have happened anyway. Rangi would have died young. She couldn’t cope with this world. I scarcely can, and I’m so much stronger than she was. And Chandi had to see, to grow up. I know it was an awful way and I would have given my soul to have made everything different, but it wouldn’t have helped.”
He looked at her with amazement. “You are an incredible woman, do you know that?”
She shook her head impatiently. “No. I’m a stupid woman, treating you like a leper when you’re the only one who’s ever been good to me.”
“You make it very easy,” he said gently.
She rubbed her cheek against his.
“Premawathi,” he said tentatively. She lifted her eyes to his inquiringly. “You know what they’re saying in Colombo. I’ve been hearing things too. You know we may have to leave.” He felt her body tense, but forced himself to continue. “Will you go with us? You and Chandi?”
The Flower Boy Page 32
