The Flower Boy

by Karen Roberts

  It was as if happiness had miraculously erased all her aches and pains, Chandi thought sourly.

  To Chandi, she might as well have hung up a great big flag that said she was John’s. Thankfully, everyone was too involved in his or her own business to notice or to care, and while Chandi often wanted to shake his mother for being so obvious, he was also relieved that she wasn’t miserable anymore.

  chapter 29

  IN 1948, THE FINAL DRAFTS FOR THE NEW CONSTITUTION WERE BEING drawn up in Colombo, in preparation for the ceremonial handing over of Ceylon back to the Ceylonese. Or the unceremonious booting out of the conquerors, as Robin Cartwright called it. The ceremony was to take place on February 4, 1948, and all the remaining British in Colombo were either directly connected to the governor’s office or indirectly connected to the handing-over process.

  Even fewer British were to be found in the hills, for although they had arrived full of enthusiasm, they were all more fond of their own skins than they were of the mini-kingdoms they had established during their reign. A few stayed on, but most of them thankfully returned to England with suntans and stories of their Ceylon sojourn. With no one to run them, plantations went to pot. Tea grew unpicked, tea pickers languished jobless and wageless, and bungalow staff wondered if they would be kept on or let go. Since the transition was yet to happen, the bigwigs in Colombo hadn’t yet decided who was to do what. The handing over of the government was obviously far more important than the fate of the tea plantations.

  John and a few other planters absorbed as many of the unemployed workers as they could into their own workforces, but on the understanding that the ax could fall yet again, and with the same distressing speed. Many were willing to work even without wages, for what else was there to do? There was talk in Colombo about repatriating many of the predominantly Indian tea pickers back to India, a prospect the tea pickers themselves viewed with dismay. It had been years since they had left, their homes were established here and there was nothing to go back to. John could see the fear and uncertainty and wished he could reassure them, but he couldn’t. He fumed with impotent anger against the authorities in Colombo, but knew that even they wouldn’t have any answers.

  So they picked tea, some paid and some not, and waited to see what fate would be decided for them.

  It was an insecure existence, but the only one they had.

  These days, or more specifically, these nights, John and Premawathi had temporarily put aside passion. He was worried. Everyone looked to him for direction, when in truth he had no idea where he was going himself. Figuratively speaking, of course. Literally speaking, he knew where he had to go. Back to England, however unsavory the thought. But that was still in the future.

  So these nights, they talked. Like any married couple, they stayed awake discussing the events of the day, he airing his concerns and fears, she absorbing some, batting away some, robustly reassuring him, silently worrying with him. His main concern, other than the safety of his immediate family, which didn’t include only the two girls, but also Chandi, Robin Cartwright and Premawathi herself, was for the estate workforce. The Sunils and Asilins and Periyathambis and Sinnathambis who relied on him for their daily bread, which was becoming increasingly hard to provide.

  Although production still continued on the slopes and at the factory, the more important going-ons in Colombo had taken precedence over tea auctions and exports. And while the tea business hadn’t exactly come to a grinding halt, it had certainly lost some of its momentum. So had its earnings. Premawathi quite rightly suspected that John was dipping into his own savings to pay the workers on time. She and Robin Cartwright had both offered to have their salaries deferred for a while, but although John had been touched by the offer, he wouldn’t hear of it. “No reason why you should suffer just because those titled monkeys in Colombo haven’t got their act together,” he said. The salaries continued to be paid on time every month.

  Chandi and Rose-Lizzie, with friendship now regained, spent endless hours discussing and debating what all these happenings would lead to. They were both aware that the end was approaching slowly but inevitably, and Rose-Lizzie, with all the selfishness of youth, worried exclusively about what it meant for them. Chandi’s concern included his mother.

  Rose-Lizzie was terrified at the prospect of returning home to England, but she was also intelligent enough to realize that no matter how terrified she was, she would still have to go.

  Chandi was terrified at the prospect of being left behind, but had now started to nurture a secret hope that perhaps he would be taken back with them. He and his mother. After all, it wasn’t as if they had somewhere else to go, and in his opinion, his mother had done plenty for Glencairn and deserved to be taken with them to England. He didn’t dwell too long on whether he himself deserved to be taken along too, but it stood to reason that if his mother went, he went too.

  Rose-Lizzie seemed pretty sure that if they went, they would all go, for as she said, who would cook for them in England? Or teach them or play with them for that matter?

  They spent hours discussing every possibility and eventuality, buoying their sagging spirits with grand plans.

  “It will be strange to go to school again, after having Mr. Cartwright teach us for so long,” Rose-Lizzie said thoughtfully.

  “Maybe you won’t have to. Maybe he’ll still be able to teach you.”

  Rose-Lizzie shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. The only reason he teaches us now is because there are no schools here.” Something he’d said suddenly registered. “You said ‘you.’ As if you weren’t coming with us.”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Chandi said disconsolately. “Maybe the Sudu Mahattaya won’t want to take us.”

  Rose-Lizzie looked outraged. “Don’t be silly! Of course he’ll want to take you. And your mother too. He can’t leave you behind!”

  Yes he can, Chandi thought, but he didn’t say anything.

  “You can go to school with me,” she continued. “Even though we’ll be in different classes, it’ll still be fun.”

  “Where will we go to school?” Chandi asked, getting drawn into the conversation despite himself.

  “I don’t know. London maybe. Or Dorset. Or Manchester. That’s where Daddy’s family comes from.”

  “Which one’s the best?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been.”

  “Do you think I’ll get to go to university like Jonathan?” he asked hopefully.

  “I don’t see why not,” she replied airily. “After all, you’re far smarter than Jonathan is.”

  “He’s your brother. You shouldn’t say anything bad about him,” Chandi rebuked mildly.

  “I didn’t say anything bad about him. I said something good about you.”

  They relapsed into silence, Rose-Lizzie already making a list in her mind of all the things she would do with Chandi, and Chandi wondering what he could do to make sure he went to England.

  “Do you think your mother will refuse to go?” Rose-Lizzie asked suddenly.

  Chandi winced. “I don’t know,” he said. It was what he was secretly afraid of.

  “Well, what do you think?” she demanded impatiently. “Couldn’t you ask her or something?”

  “What am I going to ask her? Your father hasn’t said anything yet, and you don’t know if even you are going.”

  “We will go,” she said gloomily. “I heard Daddy and Mr. Cartwright talking the other night, and they were saying it’s only a matter of time.” She flapped a limp hand at a bee buzzing near her ear.

  They were sitting on the hill that overlooked the main Glencairn road. They had actually set out that morning to the oya for a swim and a splash, but when they got there, they found Robin Cartwright painting.

  They watched as he stood back and surveyed his canvas. He was doing a landscape of the oya, the big flamboyant and the distant hills.

  “That doesn’t look much like the oya,” Rose-Lizzie said critically. Indeed it didn’t
, for the stream on the canvas looked more like the Mahaweli river, huge and brown.

  Robin Cartwright looked crestfallen. “Don’t you think so?” he said. “I thought it looked quite good actually.”

  Chandi came up behind them. “I think if you make it bluer and smaller, and make the mountains bigger and greener and put some flowers on the tree, it’ll look quite nice,” he said, trying to make up for Rose-Lizzie’s criticism.

  Robin Cartwright looked even more pained.

  They stood there, offering more words of advice, but soon they got bored and decided to find another private spot to talk. One bicycle had gone past in the last two hours and behind them, Jamis’s cow munched contentedly.

  They both heard the car at the same time and jumped up to see who it was.

  “It’s Jim Hogan from Windsor,” Rose-Lizzie said, shading her eyes against the glare. “I wonder what he wants.”

  “He’s probably come to see your father,” Chandi said.

  “I know that,” she retorted. “I’m wondering why. He hardly ever comes over unless he wants something.”

  “Why else would he come?” he asked reasonably.

  “Well, he could just come to say hello,” she said.

  “Hardly anyone just comes to say hello,” he said. “People usually want something.”

  “What do you want?” she asked curiously. “I mean, more than anything in the world?”

  To go to England. “To see my mother happy,” he lied.

  “Liar,” she said knowingly. She leaned back on the grass.

  “How do you know that’s not what I want?” he challenged.

  “Because you’re too selfish. I’m not saying you don’t want her to be happy, but you must want something for yourself more.”

  “I don’t,” he said, irritated because she read him so well. “Just because you’re selfish, it doesn’t mean everyone is.”

  “I want you to come with us to England more than anything else in the world,” she said triumphantly. “So you can’t call me selfish.”

  “Yes, but you want me to come because if I don’t, you won’t have anyone to talk to or play with,” he said equally triumphantly.

  She sat up, looking indignant. “Yes I will. I’ll make lots of new friends.”

  He said nothing, knowing that she was probably right. She was pretty and smart and people took to her quickly. He felt vaguely depressed.

  “I still want you to come,” she said affectionately, slipping her hand into his. “And if you’re really nice to me, I might even marry you some day.”

  He pulled his hand free. “I told you. Friends don’t get married. It spoils everything. And anyway, I don’t think I want to get married.”

  “Not ever?”

  “No.”

  “But everyone gets married.”

  “Mr. Cartwright hasn’t.”

  “That’s probably because no one would marry him.”

  “Well, maybe no one will want to marry me,” he said hopefully.

  She slipped her hand into his. “I’ll marry you,” she said gaily.

  He grinned at her. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “No,” she said. “And nor should you. Daddy says as long as there’s life, there’s hope.”

  He gave her a sudden push and she went rolling down the steep hillside, yelling obscenities at him. She reached the bottom and sat up breathlessly, laughing when she saw Chandi rolling down the hill after her.

  DESPITE THEIR EFFORTS to remain happy and hopeful, they could feel the insecurity, the same insecurity that had infused the workers’ compound. It had crept up the path to Glencairn and seeped into the pores of its occupants. It reared its insecure head in different ways. In Premawathi’s preoccupation. In John’s furrowed forehead. In Robin Cartwright’s heartiness and desperate attempts to capture everything about Glencairn in his paintings, as if he couldn’t trust his memory. In Anne’s reading habits, which had shifted from Tennyson to the Times of Ceylon.

  Chandi masked it in a cloak of nonchalance.

  Everyone else’s fear and insecurity frightened him more than any he might have had himself. Glencairn, with all its intense happinesses and intense sadnesses and memories and insecurities, was still home. Had always been home. As much as he hated it when it brooded in its unhappinesses, he loved it when it basked in its happinesses.

  Long ago, somewhere in the long, winding, sometimes dark and sometimes light passage of his childhood, it had almost ceased to be a house and almost become a person. Almost.

  When its walls showed patches of damp during the rains, when its windows creaked during the winds, when its rafters sprinkled slivers of wood during the hot season, then it was a house.

  But sometimes, when the same windows that creaked in the wind seemed to open their arms wide to catch the sunlight, when the steps leading into the veranda seemed to smile, when the warmth of the rooms felt like an embrace, then it was a person. Almost.

  The house had aged gracefully, like a pink-powdered, rheumy-eyed, blue-haired dowager. Purple and white bougainvillea grew up the sides of its walls and spread over its roofs. The walls were still white, thanks to annual whitewashing, but the floors showed faint cracks here and there. Although they were filled with red polish whenever it was applied, ants industrially cleared them out again and took up residence.

  Termites had tried to get their teeth into the claw-footed dining room furniture, but the ebony had proved too much of a challenge, so they contented themselves with nibbling on the rafters, hence the sudden showers of wood slivers. In the living room, the linoleum had faded to an indistinct orange, which Chandi privately thought was much prettier than the original tomato red.

  The upholstery on the chairs had faded too and the whole effect was somehow subtler and warmer than it used to be during Elsie’s time. But then, Elsie would never have put up with faded fabric or linoleum.

  John’s study was where lessons were learned, chats were had and family meetings were convened. It was perhaps the only room that showed any serious signs of wear and tear, but nobody seemed to mind the frayed armchairs or the equally frayed rug that Robin Cartwright paced as he taught, and John paced as he thought.

  Nobody could remember when the kitchen had ever looked anything but well worn and well used.

  The lawns were mown once a month, and the flowerbeds no longer had to put up with Rose-Lizzie’s vicious attentions. She had given up gardening in favor of Chandi, or rather, her renewed friendship with Chandi.

  Oddly enough, they seemed to be doing far better on their own. Like rush-hour traffic and traffic policemen. The guava tree outside the dining room had finally stopped bearing fruit and now bore only fire ants. Unlike the fruit, however, the fire ants were allowed to grow undisturbed. And at the end of the garden, the boundary walls were covered in lichen and moss.

  SINCE NO ONE of any reliability knew quite what to expect before, during or after the handing over, John cabled people in Britain for news. His solicitor cabled back reminding John of the “India thing,” as he called it, and advising him to come back, or, at the very least, send his family back.

  Jim Hogan from Windsor had paid Glencairn one of his rare visits to inform John that his missus and children were going back to England on Thursday’s steamer and to borrow the old truck. His Plymouth couldn’t take all their belongings. He also informed John that the folks from St. Coombs had already left, and advised him to send the girls back because who knew what could transpire.

  John listened politely and said he had decided to hang on and see what happened, which Jim Hogan thought was a mistake and said so. Better send the family back, he said in parting.

  Since the family had already decided that it had no intention of being sent back, and John himself had no intention of leaving until he was literally forced to, he politely thanked the solicitor and people like Jim Hogan for their advice and carried on as he had before. The frown on his forehead, however, remained, as did Premawathi’s preoccupatio
n.

  IN AN EFFORT to relegate, at least temporarily, worries to the back of minds from the undeniably frontal position they were currently occupying, John suggested a trip. He first brought the subject up in the privacy of his room late at night, while the others slept.

  “What do you think about us all piling into the car and going off to Belihuloya for the day?”

  She was re-coiling her hair, which had come undone in the course of his enthusiastic greeting, and stopped abruptly.

  “Well? What do you say? We could go somewhere else if you want.” He was busy packing his pipe and didn’t see her stiffen.

  “I don’t really want to,” she managed, clearing her throat, for her voice had suddenly become quite husky.

  Still he didn’t look up. “How about Colombo then? I have some work there, and we could easily make it there and back in a day. Could even stay the night somewhere if you wanted to.”

  “No.” The word came out more harshly than she had meant it to. John looked up. She was standing in front of his dressing table, which had one main mirror and two smaller ones on either side, and was reflected at different angles in all three. The bedside lamp cast deep shadows over her, gently tracing the long line of her neck and the vulnerability of her chin. He thought he had never seen her look so beautiful. But her eyes were pained.

  He rose and went over to her, lifting her chin from its resting place on her chest. “Prema?” he said gently, using the abbreviation of her name that he used when they were alone. “What is it?”

  Her eyes, when she raised them to his, were quite dry and yet swimming with remembered sorrow. Rangi-remembered sorrow, he knew instantly. She went unprotestingly when he drew her into his arms and stayed there quietly like an obedient child. He held her like that for a long time, looking over her head at the three reflections of the two of them.

  She finally lifted her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” he said. “It’s me who should be sorry, for being such an insensitive ass. I just thought it would be a nice change for us to get away from the worry and all.”