by Roma Tearne
‘The first time was when I took her bags to her room. I read the labels on her bag and saw that her name was Miss Sandy Fleming, from Buffalo. I tried to imagine such a place,’ he said. ‘She saw me reading the label and smiled at me.’
He saw that her smile was even-toothed and confident. Such confidence frightened him a little. But it also fascinated him. Then the woman had thanked him and given him a tip. The second time she spoke was a few days later. She was poring over a map but, catching sight of him, she asked him for directions instead, saying that maps were too confusing. She smiled at him again and it was then that he had noticed her eyes.
‘They were like green marbles,’ said Sugi.
He could remember them still. Startled, caught unawares, Sugi had smiled back and Sandy Fleming had touched his arm lightly saying he ought to be coming with her on her trip. He had held the door open and, as she passed through into the blinding sun outside, he smelt the perfume on her skin. Again she touched him, lightly on the cheek.
‘After that I was unable to stop thinking of her,’ Sugi said. ‘I didn’t see her again for ages; my shift changed and I was needed to work in the kitchens.’
Often after he finished work he would loiter in the corridor near to Sandy’s room in the hope of catching sight of her, but she was never around.
‘Then about six weeks later,’ Sugi said, ‘the manager found he was short-staffed. He asked me to serve in the dining room.’
It was late afternoon; most of the guests had retired to their rooms to lie under their ceiling fans until the worst of the heat had passed. Outside, the sea was an unbelievable swimming-pool blue and the sand was bleached white. The breeze masked the blistering heat. Only fools would have ventured out but Sandy was on the terrace, her yellow straw hat providing her with a slight filigreed shade.
‘I went to ask if she would like a drink,’ said Sugi. ‘A Lanka lime, a gin and tonic? You see, I knew how the Americans loved to drink.’
But in reality he had wanted only to talk to her. So he went out with his silver tray, his clothes a white flag in the sun, and he saw that she was crying. He had been about to move away quickly, eyes downcast so as not to intrude, when she turned and, seeing him, began a conversation as though she had left off a moment before.
‘She told me that her fiancé had called off their engagement. She told me he had fallen in love with a German. Imagine that, she said. I didn’t know what to say, so I was silent.’
He had seen that her eyes were smudged and greener than the cat’s-eye gemstones mined in Ratnapura.
‘He prefers Germans!’ she had laughed with heavy sarcasm.
She asked Sugi if he had a girl. She was sure he did for he was such a handsome boy, she told him. And if by any chance he did not have a girlfriend, she had said, then he should tell her, because she would not like to think of him being wasted. Sugi saw that she was drunk.
Later, in his room in the servant quarters he thought about her, wishing he had not been so tongue-tied.
‘I never asked myself what a woman like her would want with a boy like me,’ he told Nulani.
He did not see her the next day, or the day after that, even though he looked for her everywhere. He asked the chambermaid if the American lady had checked out and found that she was still there but her bed had not been slept in for two nights. The chambermaid wondered why he wanted to know this.
‘I pretended I had found a brooch of hers but the chambermaid was no fool, she told me to hand it in at the office and not have anything to do with the American.’
‘She is a loose woman,’ the chambermaid had said, showing her betel-stained teeth, fanning Sugi’s interest further.
Then late one evening, after he had descended into a state of despair, when he was working on the reception desk, she had come in with a British Army officer in tow. They were laughing noisily, and Sandy was swaying slightly. She asked for her key, looking past Sugi. Much later she called up for a bottle of champagne and when he took it up himself she tipped him, complaining to the manager afterwards that he had looked at her in a manner that was too familiar.
‘Some weeks after,’ said Sugi, ‘I left Colombo. I felt everyone was judging me. I didn’t know if they thought I was a thief or a fool. Or both. So I left and went into domestic service in the south.’
He stopped speaking. In the distance a train thundered by. It was the afternoon express from Colombo. The sun had moved away from the house as he had talked and a cool breeze had sprung up. All of it had happened so long ago, in the days when the war had been something they had hoped would be avoided. He had been young then and his mother and sisters had constantly tried to find a woman for him. But the planets had been fixed in such a way when he was born that his horoscope revealed them to be in discordant houses, so that it had proved impossible.
‘I seemed to be attracted only to unsuitable women,’ he said wryly. The war and time had eroded his desire, he told Nulani, so that before he realised it, he was too old care any more.
Sugi fell silent. All this had happened long ago. Now his interest lay elsewhere. How many lives does a man have to live before he can finally be at peace? he thought, thinking too of Mr Samarajeeva. These days he wanted only to help Sir. There was something very fine and very noble about Theo Samarajeeva, something that had not been seen in this country for a long time. We are a Buddhist country, thought Sugi, turning things over in his mind. But what has happened to us? Where has our compassion gone? He would do anything for Sir, he knew. Help him in any way. Before he had left Theo had told Sugi he wanted to marry Miss Nulani.
‘Do you think it’s wrong of me, Sugi?’ he had asked.
Sugi had been amazed. Why was Sir asking him?
‘You are a wise man, Sugi,’ Sir had said warmly. ‘So tell me, am I doing the right thing?’
‘It is the best thing you can do, Sir,’ Sugi had said. ‘Nothing else will do, for either of you, now. It is meant to be. You were meant to meet, your ages do not matter. At first I was worried, but now, I am certain of it.’
Sir had smiled at that, his anxieties momentarily smoothed out. And then, because he could not say all he felt, he had tried to joke.
‘I take it I have your blessing, Sugi,’ he had said.
‘A thousand blessings, Sir.’
And they had sat in this way, in the darkness, sipping their beers, wrapped lightly in all that was left unsaid. Later, Sugi again said, ‘I’ll look after her. She’ll be safe until your return.’
‘I know,’ Theo had replied, with calm certainty. ‘I know you will, Sugi, you are my friend.’ And then early the next morning he had gone.
‘Sir is different,’ Sugi told the girl, now. ‘Sir is a wonderful man. And soon,’ he said gently, smiling encouragingly at her, ‘when he returns, I hear you’ll become his wife. So be patient, have faith. It will be a blessing for you both, you’ll see.’
His words settled between them, like the flock of white birds that sat in circles on the empty beach.
While he had been talking, the girl had been drawing him. She had never drawn him before. She did not know why this was, she said. But she had drawn him now. She showed him the sketch. Then she tore it out of her notebook and gave it to him. Tomorrow, she told him, she would start a small painting. It would be of Sugi and it would be finished by the time Theo returned home. It would be her welcome-home present for him, she said, smiling at last.
Vikram was finally preparing to leave for the east coast. He told the servant woman Thercy that he was going away for a time. He told her to pass the message on to his guardian should he contact her. Thercy nodded without questioning him. It was none of her business and Vikram was old enough to please himself. She was glad to have the house to herself for a while. Once he goes, she thought, I will give the place a good clean.
Vikram packed a rucksack. He shouted to Thercy to give him some ironed shirts. Then he went into the town. There had been no trouble for weeks, no curfew, no murders. The army
seemed to have gone to ground. It was as good a time as any for Vikram to disappear. Gerard told him the Chief should not be kept waiting. So Vikram went over to the gem shop. As soon as Gerard saw him, he closed the door and shuttered up the shop. Then they both went upstairs.
‘Can I have some arrack?’ asked Vikram.
Gerard hesitated for a fraction of a second. Since the business at the crossroads, he noticed, Vikram was less polite, more confident and full of demands. But he got two glasses and poured some arrack for them both. He handed Vikram his travel documents. The papers stated that Vikram was a Singhalese man of twenty.
‘You shouldn’t have a problem with that,’ Gerard said easily. ‘Your Singhala is perfect, you even look Singhalese. In fact, if I didn’t know better I would say you were one of these bastards!’
Vikram grinned. Gerard noticed he downed his arrack in one gulp.
‘You know what to do, huh? Take the train to Colombo. Then go to this address and ask for Rajah. Say Singh sent you. Give him this packet of tea. Be careful how you hold it. There’s no tea inside it, remember!’ He laughed heartily, amused at his own joke. ‘Rajah will take you to Batticaloa. You’ll have to travel by night because of the daytime roadblocks. But that shouldn’t be a problem as there’s no curfew at the moment. When you get to Batticaloa you will be given over to a man called Lakshman. You can speak Tamil with him, safely. Lakshman will take you to the Chief. He’ll blindfold you for security reasons, OK? Now, any questions?’
Vikram said nothing, looking meaningfully at the arrack bottle.
‘No,’ said Gerard shortly. ‘Not in the middle of the day. I can’t afford to have you drunk in broad daylight. Now, listen carefully. You’ll be at the training camp for a couple of weeks, maybe a bit longer. I’ll see you only after that. By that time you’ll have been briefed for your next assignment. Then there’ll be nothing you won’t be able to do for the Tamil people. You’ll get your chance to avenge your family at last. OK?’ He paused. ‘Again, any questions?’
‘Can I have my gun back?’ asked Vikram.
Gerard sighed. The truth was he was getting a little bored with the boy and his monosyllabic ways. After the initial eagerness at the crossroads shootout, Vikram had sunk back into his usual morose silence. Well, anyway, thought Gerard, this latest little job will put some life back into him. Brute force was fine for a foot soldier but Gerard hoped for better things from Vikram. He knew the work ahead would be punishing and rigorous, the assignment the most ambitious the Tigers had undertaken yet. It remained to be seen if the boy was up to the task. Vikram was looking at him expectantly. Oh yes, thought Gerard wearily, the gun. I almost forgot.
‘Vikram,’ he said patiently, ‘you can’t take it with you. You will have your own gun once you get to the camp, men. A more up-to-date model. You can’t travel with a thing like that across enemy territory. Why can’t you understand?’
For a moment he thought the boy would argue. But then Vikram picked up his pass and his papers and left. Silently, as he had come.
Outside, the afternoon was gelatinous with the heat. It was the mosquito season once more. Everywhere the drains were clogged with rotten fruit that had burst open. The sun, dustladen and harsh, lay with bright indifference over the shuttered town. An occasional bicyclist passed by. Vikram crossed the main road and turned through the coconut grove heading towards Sumaner House and the last of his things. Bony cattle grazed on the common land, chewing a frothy cud, gazing into the distance. A stray dog barked at the breeze. Otherwise the town rested from the heat. Vikram passed by a water pump, stopping to quench his thirst. A few overripe mangoes lay squashed on the ground among a scattering of cigarette stubs and smashed beer bottles. The stench of garbage was everywhere. Since the war had advanced to this corner of the island, even the refuse was not collected. The market stalls had sold out long ago and moved on but the stray cats remained, skimming the ground for a phantom lick of fish, staring sleepily at the flies that swarmed on their sores. Vikram passed the road island and cut across through the temple grounds. Ahead of him was Nulani Mendis. He could see her talking to the local doctor. The doctor was writing something on a piece of paper. Then he nodded and went towards the temple. Seeing Vikram the girl raised her arm in greeting and waited. She was wearing a white dress and she had tied her hair in a coil at the back of her head. She looked cool and very pale. She waited and as he came closer fell into step with him. Vikram was startled. He saw that today she did not smile.
‘My mother is not very well,’ she said as though she was picking up a previous conversation. She pointed in the direction in which the doctor had gone. ‘And I can’t get this prescription until four o’clock.’ She looked around as though she expected to find what she needed.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ asked Vikram.
‘I don’t know. I think she misses my brother. It is a terrible thing to lose a son.’
Vikram said nothing, remembering the story of Lucky Jim’s departure. Mrs Mendis had thrown a party and most of the school had gone to it.
‘I looked for you at my brother’s party,’ the girl was saying. ‘But you didn’t come. Have you left school?’ she asked, adding, before he could say anything, ‘I have. There seems no point. I’m no good at anything.’
She sounded lost. Vikram looked at her curiously. Something, some desperation, uncoiled itself from her and moved towards him. Did she mind that much about her useless brother? He could not think whom she reminded him of.
‘You can draw,’ he said and the girl smiled so suddenly that Vikram stopped walking, startled.
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘I can draw.’
But she spoke flatly, reminding him of the rumours that had once circulated about her silences. He had the strangest of urges to tell her not to mind so much, but the heat and her proximity confused him. Her apparent ease, as though it was an established fact that they were friends, unnerved him too. They walked a little way saying nothing. The girl seemed lost in thoughts of her own.
‘What’s it like in Sumaner House?’ she asked at length. ‘Do you get lonely in such a big place?’
She was looking at him. Her eyes were huge and unhappy. He saw that they were very clear, like the eyes of a small child.
‘My father was killed too,’ she said softly, unexpectedly. ‘I expect you’ve heard. Everyone gossips about it. We never found out who poured petrol over him. The police came, but they never caught anyone. I was in the house when it happened. I saw everything.’
They had come to the top of the lane where her house was. Vikram did not know what to say.
‘Don’t let gossip worry you,’ she continued.
He had the oddest feeling they were talking of something else entirely, that they had spoken in this way before. It seemed to him they were picking up threads from another conversation.
‘Everyone does it,’ she went on. ‘It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just the way things are.’
‘You’re friends with the old man at the beach house,’ he blurted out unthinkingly.
He knew she would leave in a moment, but he wanted to keep her here, wanted to keep her talking to him. Suddenly he could not bear the thought of her going home. The girl stood for a moment longer, looking at him. Vikram saw that in fact she was exhausted, that possibly she had been crying. Small beads of perspiration had gathered on her brow and there were dark rings under her eyes. And although her hair was coiled up she wore no flower in it as he had often seen her do.
‘He has gone away,’ she said flatly.
She stared out at the sea. He thought she might say something else but she seemed to change her mind and smiled instead. The smile didn’t quite reach her eyes and he wished he hadn’t mentioned the old man. Confused, he scuffed the ground with his feet. She put out her hand and touched his arm.
‘Don’t do that,’ she said absent-mindedly. ‘You’ll ruin your shoes.’
Vikram could think of nothing to say.
‘I must go,�
�� she was saying. ‘I must make my mother some coriander tea. See you.’
And the next moment she was gone.
Time crawled slowly like the geckos that came out of the cracks in the walls. Every day Nulani returned to the beach house and painted under the watchful eyes of Sugi. He tried to make her eat a little, knowing that when she was at home all her energies were directed towards caring for her mother. Theo had been away for three weeks.
‘Halfway there, already,’ said Sugi encouragingly.
But it was no use, Sugi could see that her unhappiness was growing and her energy fading like the colour in her green skirt.
‘How is your mother today?’ he asked. He knew from his friend Thercy that Mrs Mendis was very unwell.
‘Must be her broken heart,’ Thercy had said. ‘Even though her daughter looks after her so lovingly, it’s the boy she wants. It was always the boy as far as she was concerned.’
Jim Mendis wrote one letter home. The day the letter arrived the girl came rushing down the hill to Sugi, wanting to tell him the news.
‘He shares a house with an English boy,’ she said. ‘They have become good friends. And he plays cricket,’ she said delighted for him.
Sugi listened. Jim Mendis had not asked a single question about his mother or sister.
Theo wrote. Without any hope that the post would reach her, still he wrote. ‘I’m longing to come home,’ he said.
Every night, he told her, he put a tick in his diary. He hoped she was missing him as much as he missed her. And, he said, smiling as he wrote, everywhere he looked he saw only her face. Distance had focused his thoughts, stripped him of diffidence. Slowly he wrote his first words of love and, having started, found he could not stop.
The party for the film premiere was very grand, very important, I suppose, but, without you, I didn’t have the slightest interest in it. All I could think of was how much I miss you and wonder what you would make of so many strange people, all dressed in their finery. How you would have wanted to draw them all! Everywhere I go I seem to see things with your eyes. You see what you’ve done to me? And incidentally, have I told you how lovely your eyes are? Or, when you used to sit at the back of the veranda in your lime-green skirt, how impossible it was for me to work? All I wanted to do was to keep you talking so I could stare at you! And now you are so far away. Last night I woke in a panic worrying about whether you were all right. I had to force myself to remember you had Sugi looking after you. I trust Sugi with my life, you know, and so can you. I calmed down when I remembered that. I have told him we are going to get married when I return. I know you won’t mind. Sugi only wants us to be happy.
