Bone China

by Roma Tearne

  They left at night and travelled inland. They had booked a sleeper but Anna-Meeka was too excited to sleep. As the train climbed higher and higher hooting its smoke along the narrow-gauge track, she sat humming to herself, first with Thornton and then Savitha, watching the dark ravines rush by, catching glimpses of the many waterfalls flash past in a gush of white foam. Towards dawn, the air cooled and all of them slept, exhausted. They did not wake again until the smell of tea assailed their noses. Hurrying to open the blinds, they saw to their delight and astonishment the bright green tea-covered hills, just as they had left them, swathed in veils of mist, rising softly all around.

  ‘We’re home,’ murmured Grace. ‘At last!’

  ‘Oh, Jacob should be here!’ Thornton cried.

  Aloysius chuckled. ‘Look, darl,’ he said, ‘that’s the place where they used to have the tennis tournaments, remember?’

  ‘Meeka,’ Thornton said, excitedly, ‘I used to walk to school along this valley. Look! There’s a cloud of butterflies. I used to try and catch them.’

  Grace nodded. Her eyes were shining. She remembered.

  ‘Let’s have lunch at the tennis club, first,’ she suggested. ‘Anna-Meeka, you’ll be able to eat wild strawberries now, because they grow here.’

  Savitha watched mesmerised. She had never been upcountry before.

  ‘We’ll take a taxi to the house,’ Aloysius cried. He was laughing with delight.

  ‘Well, let’s put our bags at the rest house, first,’ Grace decided. ‘And have a wash.’

  The air was thin and fragrant as they stepped off the train. Kingfishers darted through the trees.

  ‘There must be a lake nearby,’ Thornton said. ‘Oh, I wish Jacob was here. And Alicia –’ He stopped, abruptly. No one said anything. Grace glanced uneasily at Savitha.

  ‘Come,’ she said firmly. ‘Let’s get to the rest house first. Then we’ll go up to the house.’

  ‘I hope it’s how we left it,’ said Thornton, uneasily. ‘D’you remember how it was screened by the trees? I hope they haven’t cut them down.’

  What had prompted them to look back? Jacob and Christopher, receiving a letter sent jointly to them weeks later, read it from their great impassable distance and were nonplussed. How could they feel the heat now, except as a distant memory? A strange paralysis had descended on these two brothers. Survival in this urban jungle with its cold wind tunnels and its incomprehensible communication took up most of their energy. How could they explain this to the mother who could not even see their greying hair? Their thoughts of the past were vague these days, insubstantial as breath on a cold morning on the way to work. They sat reading, brought together by the letter, somewhere in a cold winter pub. The task ahead, this thing called the new life, had not yet opened up. When it did, they would be unable to see its possibilities; they would notice only its limitations. So they sat, in their ill-fitting suits, holding their newly fractured lives, uncomprehending. They were in need of cherishing but this too was no longer available, and the likelihood of their recovery from such a brutal uprooting was a sad illusion. Somewhere in that pub, sitting close to the coal fire, the brothers read their mother’s letter and struggled to imagine the rooms where they had once slept, with the painted walls scraped and broken by bullet holes, the polished green and pink glass smashed, the ropes swinging from light fittings, the chipped and dark-stained marble floors. It was time for another round of Guinness before reading the rest of the letter. Then, drink in hand, they learned about Jasper. Jasper, who should have lived to a ripe old age, shot for shouting at an armed soldier, while they were all away upcountry.

  ‘Hello, sister!’ he had shouted as, too late, the servant girl tried to stop the man from raping her.

  Tucked away in the cosy pub, on that wintry evening, somewhere in the Borough of Southwark, halfway into their second round of Guinness, the brothers, reading of Jasper’s fate, remembered and could drink no more.

  Errors

  11

  AUGUST WAS MERCILESSLY HOT. IT BROUGHT a rancid stench from dustcarts that mixed with the cloying sweetness of roadside shrine-flowers. Faded black umbrellas and orange robes walked the streets. Danger hovered in every alleyway. Fear hung oppressively around the city, turning what had once been lively and festive into dark suspicion. Gone were the days when the rich moved upcountry, opening their houses and their tennis courts, while their servants served soft drinks in tall bead-covered jugs. Gone were the days when the sound of rickshaw bells and horns and whistles and baila music from transistor radios filled the air. Once August had been the month of the Perahera, when shadow-dancers on the high trapeze pointed their elbows at the neon sky. But now all that was over. Carelessness was a thing of the past. Conversation in public was a dangerous thing, for language had become an identity card. No one was to be trusted. No one knew who might be listening. Anger filled the streets where once the shadow-dancers had walked. Anger was everywhere, simmering like the heat, unquenchable, taut, tar black and desperate.

  This August was Grace’s undoing. As she lay awake in the stifling heat, in a house grown empty, with a life that had shrunk to a husk, she listened to the night swelling in the darkness. Wherever Thornton and his family were, she knew it to be some other hour. What were they doing? Was it daytime in the place they were? Was the sun shining on them? They had left her. Now at last she understood what this meant. Before they left she had held herself together, wanting to be strong. Wanting to hold together these last precious moments so that later, when she was alone and Aloysius and Alicia and Frieda slept, and the sprawling house was silent, she could bring out the images of their departure. And look again at the faint imprints that were all that remained of the sad slow ebb of her life. It had been Savitha, almost completely silent for days, who had broken down with astonishing grief. Savitha, and then Thornton. Anna-Meeka had merely hopped from foot to foot, anxious to be gone, hoping that if they went quickly then no one would cry. Solemnly she promised Grace that she would look after her parents. Chattering brightly, on and on, wriggling and jumping up and down with suppressed excitement and worry, promising not to forget them all, to write often, and yes, yes, she would be good too.

  ‘You won’t cry, Granny, will you?’ she had begged anxiously.

  Grace had promised. No, she would not cry.

  Now, staring into the unbroken darkness, the thin whine of mosquitoes just beyond the net, she heard a piano. The girl in the next house was playing a nocturne. Slowly the notes dropped like polished glass into the balmy air. Alicia slept in a room further down the hall, locked away, silent, impenetrable. Grace pictured her small form, crumpled among the white sheets, dark hair covering her face, sleeping just as she had as a child. Alicia had shown no sadness when Thornton left. No, thought Grace, recalling her daughter standing at the harbour in her widow’s white, Alicia had nothing to say. She had witnessed too much. She was no longer reachable. Only Frieda, simple uncomplicated Frieda, with her abundance of tears, had hugged Anna-Meeka who, oblivious to the effect of her smile, talked on, telling her aunt kindly that they would be back soon, making it sound as though she was going to the market with her mother. In spite of herself Grace had smiled, even as she kissed her son goodbye, wondering if it was for the last time, remembering the small boy who used to walk home from school along the valley with its waterfalls, its blue-green tea-covered hills and its storms of butterflies. Remembering how he had played jazz late at night, his foot jammed on the loud pedal, until his sisters shouted at him, fearing he would break the piano, while Jasper, turning round and round on his perch, also shouted at him.

  ‘Turn it down, old chap!’ Jasper had shouted. ‘Be quiet!’ he had said, making them all laugh.

  And now, thought Grace, as the night jasmine uncurled itself, now what shall I do? Four thousand years of peace and an ancient god were no longer enough for a country brimming with violence. A sacred tree, a thin white thread around Savitha’s wrist, what use were any of these things? The nigh
t was filled with doubts. Her son’s discarded hat in the hall, Savitha’s parcel of chillies, forgotten in her haste, Anna-Meeka’s plastic doll, its blue eyes staring at the sky, all of these things with their touch still warm on them were more than reminders of her own grief. Seeing it from this great, terrible distance she knew it was a loss for the country itself. Other losses would follow. Irretrievably. But tonight was hers alone.

  The sound of the piano had stopped, the lights had gone out, the garden was steeped in darkness for it was a moonless night. Small rustling noises, soft murmurings filled the air. Frogs croaked intermittently. All these noises, thought Grace hearing them afresh, turning her despair against the wall, would never be heard by them again. Far away, as though in answer, in a distant part of Colombo, came the sound of heavy gunfire, muffling the constant rhythm of the sea.

  Thornton looked out of the window and shifted his legs. Opposite him, Savitha talked quietly to Anna-Meeka. They were all exhausted. High banks of grassy slopes, scattered with buttercups flanked the railway line; late summer in all its glory. Railway dust, golden and abundant in the wonderful morning sunlight obscured the view. The sky was a cloudless blue. Looking up, Thornton could see a small glider rising up with the thermals. He watched it until it disappeared from view. Every now and then a neat patchwork of wheat-combed fields flashed by.

  ‘Mama, I’m thirsty!’ said Anna-Meeka in her sing-song voice, waggling her head from side to side. She stared at the man sitting opposite until he looked away.

  ‘Why can’t I have a drink, Mama?’ she asked.

  She scratched her head with an enthusiasm and a single-mindedness that did not seem quite possible. The sound of the train was different from the sounds she was used to. She swung her legs in time to its beat.

  ‘My head is scratchy,’ she said, adding in a voice that carried clearly across the compartment, ‘Do you think I’ve got head lice? Or have they died because it’s cold in England?’

  The man opposite looked at her again and Meeka scowled at him. Someone else further along the carriage sniggered. Savitha spoke, aware of the man’s glances, knowing he was listening. She spoke softly in Sinhalese. Anna-Meeka, ignoring her, continued to scratch her head. Thornton bent his handsome profile towards his daughter. He smiled at her.

  ‘Leave your head alone, Meeka,’ he said softly. ‘Your mama will wash it with soap when we get to our place in London.’

  ‘Why is that man looking at me?’ asked Meeka, losing interest momentarily in her head, fixing the man with a limpid unblinking stare.

  ‘Anna-Meeka,’ said Thornton sternly, ‘don’t speak so loud. These people all understand English here! We’re not at home now.’

  He turned back to the window and the boat train, hooting at a level crossing, passed swiftly through the sunlit countryside with its black-and-white cows, its green public footpath signs, its small farm outbuildings, hurrying and clattering into a small tunnel, speeding onwards to London’s Waterloo.

  In the taxi, sandwiched between her parents and the small amount of luggage they had brought, Meeka caught her first glimpses of the city. London encased in summer, lit by the afternoon sun, washing the embankment and the pineapples on Lambeth Bridge with its golden glow. London, that place her parents had talked about so much, bringing her here, they said, because here they could give her all the things no longer possible to give her at home. London, thought Meeka enchanted by what she saw, was beautiful! Huge buildings, their tops dipped in light, their sides covered in grime, were everywhere. The traffic swished richly, silently, on thick rubber tyres, on roads without the smallest pothole.

  Traffic that behaved, thought Thornton in amazement. No bullock carts, no horns, no open-topped vehicles with radios blasting or vegetables spilling out. Why had Jacob not written about the silence? It was hard to imagine his brothers here, in this huge city. He had not seen Jacob for thirteen years, longer in the case of Christopher.

  Too big, thought Savitha, shivering a little, and too fast. She had been frightened for days. She felt beaten.

  They were over the bridge now, passing Lambeth Palace.

  ‘Where’re yer from then, mate?’ asked the taxi driver sliding back the hatch, addressing Thornton looking at him in the mirror.

  Thornton started. What had the man said? Was he talking to them?

  So Meeka told him, in her clear sing-song voice, liking the man instantly, liking his funny way of talking, jumbling all his words up together, wanting to make him talk some more, wishing she could talk like him.

  ‘We’re off the boat train, mate!’ she said copying him, liking the sound of his laugh.

  ‘Blimey, you’re a caution, ain’t yer, luv? Mum an’ dad’ll ’ave ter watch it. Ye’ll ’ave ter watch ’er, guv!’ he said addressing Thornton through the mirror, winking at him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Thornton not knowing what on earth this man was talking about, but willing, very willing to be helpful.

  ‘Yes. We have just spent twenty-one days at sea so my daughter is a little tired. We are all looking forward to a rest on dry land tonight.’

  And he nodded his head politely. His wife, clutching her bags, frowned nervously and whispered something in the child’s ear. The black cab, symbol of all they had anticipated for so long, crossed and recrossed the river in a cunning dodge of the one-way system, drove past the school where Meeka would be going, before depositing them at last at their front door. They had travelled seven thousand miles.

  Then this is what they found. A little ground-floor flat (the estate agent had called it a garden flat) in a block of dirty Victorian houses, on a wide tree-lined street close to the cricket ground. Thornton brightened a little when he saw this.

  ‘Aiyo! There is no veranda,’ said Savitha, struggling to keep the tears from her voice. She wanted to go home.

  ‘Carpets!’ said Meeka, dancing down the hallway having kicked off her shoes and socks. She did not like wearing socks.

  The rooms were gloomy, for the house faced west and although it was only four in the afternoon darkness threatened. The de Silvas prowled around the flat, released from the captivity of twenty-one days, uncertain what to do next. The beds had piles of thick blankets folded neatly, waiting to be made up. Heavy fusty curtains lined the windows, ready to be drawn, ready to block out anything that passed for light. Dotted around were small metal stoves that Meeka’s Uncle Jacob had warned them about. He had found them the flat, and put in Aladdin paraffin heaters for when it got cold.

  ‘It’s cold now,’ said Meeka laughing, throwing herself on the unmade bed in what was to be her bedroom, waving her thin legs up in the air, banging them against the wall. The cold was exciting, it made the air smell of all sorts of foreign exciting things, things she did not know about but wanted to investigate. It muffled the sounds around her. The silence had a texture to it that made her wish she had a piano to play.

  ‘There’s a note here from Jacob,’ shouted Thornton from the kitchen. ‘He’s coming over tomorrow with Christopher and he’s left some food in the fridge.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Savitha pursing her lips together, showing the first spontaneous emotion since they had embarked on their journey, so that Meeka, sensing some interesting drama, put her legs down and sat up.

  ‘Hmm, that bastard! Couldn’t he have met us at the docks?’

  She spoke softly and Thornton, not hearing, replied, ‘Come and see what he has left in the fridge! All sorts of things. Butter wrapped in paper and fresh milk! Come here, Meeka, putha.’

  Curiously, Meeka went to see the strange cheeses, bread and something called liver pâté. Thornton set the yellow Formica table, found an old teapot and pulled out the packet of tea they had packed. It was, he noticed, with a stab of quickly suppressed homesickness, from the valley where he had been born. For a moment Thornton struggled. The distance seemed infinite. His mother was no longer a bus ride away. How had the past arrived so quickly? Grief, unexpected and sharp, tightened around him. There was a bottle of m
ilk with a shiny gold lid on it, a box of dark chocolate. A feast.

  ‘No, wait,’ said Savitha suddenly, ‘wait, I’ll get one of our teapots.’

  She unpacked one of their boxes, pulling at everything, so that the smells of sandalwood and ginger tumbled out and moved around the room. The sun had vanished. Had there really been sunlight when they were on the train? Or had they imagined it? Anna-Meeka shivered. The tune in her head had gone. It was suddenly too cold and her mother looked small and pinched. Her mother looked as though she was about to cry.

  ‘Can I have some rice?’ Anna-Meeka asked firmly. ‘Rice with malu curry?’

  The brothers arrived the next day. Memories followed them into the room. Distance framed their childhood, sharpening its focus. Sentiments rushed in like warm air, for the moment anyway. Then Thornton smiled. No surprises here of course, nothing to write home about, thought Jacob, wryly. Everything was as it always was, in that respect at least. There were other shocks. In that swift first greeting, Jacob and Christopher saw their mother sharply defined in Thornton’s face. Had he always looked like her? wondered Christopher, momentarily taken aback. He felt the angry stirring of emotions he thought he had left behind. Home tugged insistently. For a moment no one could speak. Savitha had been cooking, it was not much, but the smells were of home. Even twenty-one days and an expanse of water had not altered the smells they once knew. Christopher looked closely at his sister-in-law. The last time he had seen Thornton he had been in the thralls of Hildegard. Savitha seemed very different from her. Well, well, well, thought Christopher, so the film star played it safe in the end. I wonder what this one’s like. His lips twitched. Savitha, serving them tea in their mother’s bone china, realised that no one noticed or cared.