by Roma Tearne
‘Meeka,’ he said, ‘Meeka, get up. You’ll be late for school.’
Letting out a small sound of fury, Anna-Meeka thumped out of bed and shot straight out of her room. She glared at her father who was about to bang on her wall again. Then she stopped, and stared at her mother. Thornton went back to his toast with its coating of thick-cut marmalade. He was reading the newspaper.
‘There’s something here about Ceylon,’ he said to his wife. ‘You know, you should start writing for the papers here.’ And he held out his cup for more tea.
‘What are you wearing?’ asked Meeka dubiously.
Savitha eyed her daughter. The good thing about Anna-Meeka, she decided with satisfaction, was that she always noticed everything. But she did not say this.
‘Hmm?’ asked Thornton, not looking up. ‘I’m wearing my new suit of course, for work. Now hurry up and get ready.’
He picked up another of the newspapers he had bought that morning. He was trying to decide which paper to take regularly. Christopher had said he should only buy the Guardian but Thornton had no intention of taking his advice untested. He wanted to check out all the possibilities for his future poems. It would be a pity to lose the momentum he had almost gained back home. Meeka stared at her mother.
‘Mama!’ she shrieked, suddenly wide awake and horrified to see her mother’s legs evident in this way. ‘You can’t go out like that.’
‘Aha!’ said Savitha triumphantly, waggling her head from side to side. ‘Good morning, everyone. So finally someone speaks! My husband is blind but thankfully my daughter has inherited her sight from me. Well, I’m exceedingly sorry, men,’ she said, addressing the dining room in general, ‘in case you’re interested, I have got a job!’
And she went back to pouring the tea into their lovely bone-china cups. But it was not that simple. Whatever made her think it would be? Later on, even though she was busy, there was plenty of time for her homesickness to return. Mr Rosenberg had put her in the corner of the room, a little away from the rising and the falling of machines, the movement of the pedals beating the air like wings and the sound of scissors against cloth. She sat working, her own rhythm out of step with the rest of them. A small exotic seabird, stranded on a narrow spit of land, her wings closed. Sewing together this thing called denim: piece against piece, raw edge against raw edge. She wore black slacks.
Outside, the last fragments of a late-October sunshine gathered together for one final salute, one last display of warmth of the Indian summer, turning the afternoon, pivoting slowly, lifting up the edges of the plane leaves so they gave the appearance of being young and tender.
The green is so different here, thought Savitha, raising her face to the last of the sun. Soft sap green, lacking the sharpness of tropical colour. Muted just like the birds in this place, she thought. Caught below the tideline of the whitewashed windowpane, Savitha could see very little, working silently, bent over the cloth, words running like music through her head. An idea for an article was taking shape but it was too early to say where it might lead. To a random harvest maybe, or nowhere perhaps?
In the beginning the women she worked with had tried to be friendly, but after she had overcome the business of understanding their speech she could find no point of common reference between them. She had been coming to the sweatshop for nearly a month now. When they were not working furiously, racing against the clock, the women gathered together in groups for their break, going outside for a cigarette, catching the last of the glorious autumn light, chatting, laughing even. Savitha was astonished, what was there to laugh about?
In the end they left her alone, thinking her stuck-up, having their breaks without her, cigarettes and mugs of tea in hand. Their conversation drifted backwards and forwards and again Savitha noticed how easily the black women fitted in. They were always teasing Mr Rosenberg. Savitha did not know what to make of this either and, with no one to confide in, began every evening at home to write some notes of her own. Thornton, pretending to read the newspapers, eyed her slyly and was relieved. He hated her working in the factory. It made him ashamed and angry.
‘What would my mother say if she knew?’ he was always asking her. ‘What would Frieda think?’
Savitha refused to comment. Privately Thornton felt very unhappy. The woman he had married was changing. We no longer laugh together as we used to, he thought, puzzled, feeling helpless in the face of Savitha’s stubbornness. So that every evening, hiding behind his newspaper, he watched her as she scribbled furiously. Clearly she was going back to writing. With any luck she would leave this stupid job, get out of these completely unsuitable clothes, and go back to behaving as a wife and mother should. This flat is too small, fretted Thornton. We’re all on top of each other here.
Savitha, unaware of any of this, continued to work out her own confusions. Yesterday afternoon, during one of the short and difficult-to-negotiate tea breaks, two new recruits were introduced to them. Indian women both of them, wearing baggy red silk trousers, their hair was heavily oiled with ghee and plaited along the length of their backs. Looped gold earrings and startling fluorescent bangles moved discordantly on their arms. Mr Rosenberg introduced them first to the group and then singled out Savitha.
‘There you go, Savinta,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a couple of your countrymen so you can be ’appy. Don’t say I don’t give you nuffin!’ He laughed a little nervously. For ‘Savinta’, as he mistakenly called her, was not like his usual ladies. With her silent efficiency, her fluent (though heavily accented) English and her inscrutable stare, she was a mystery to Rosenberg.
‘She’s a bleedin’ snob, ain’t she!’ observed Doris, his longest-standing employee and foreman by default.
Rosenberg was inclined to agree with her. ‘Savinta’ unnerved him.
‘What’s she got to be a snob about, then? She’s no better than the others.’
Having hired the other Asians with the hope they were as efficient as Savitha, he herded them together in a little bunch, away from everyone else.
‘All together, keep you ’appy,’ he told Savitha, smiling with a heartiness he did not feel.
Savitha stared at him with astonishment. The women were Indian. What did Rosenberg mean? They were Indian coolies, probably from a plantation rather like the ones the de Silvas once owned. On that last trip upcountry Aloysius had talked about the ancient rulers who once lived in the palaces. Grace and Thornton had shown her the lakes where Grace’s mother had grown the flamingo-pink lotus flowers. They had stayed at a wonderful rest house and listened to the roar of a nearby waterfall. The air had smelt of soft rainwater and tea.
‘All this,’ Aloysius had told her, proudly sweeping his hand across the view, ‘all this belonged to us once, you know, Savitha.’
The younger, idealistic Savitha had stared at the old filigree carvings, the sacred statues softened by lichen and daily offerings of flowers, and had argued hotly over the injustice of such privilege existing hand in hand with the coolies working on the hillside. But now, now she felt torn. Now she was no longer certain of those beliefs. Something puzzling was happening to her principles. More and more since her entry into this country, she found herself being crushed between her old socialist tendencies and a new uncertain alliance with the de Silvas’ past. The women beside her were Indian peasants hardly able to speak English, staring at Savitha with unabashed curiosity, talking to each other in their own language, cocooned in a strange world of their own. Refusing, thought Savitha, furiously, refusing to speak in English! Who did they think they were, refusing to learn this beautiful language? Why weren’t they trying to integrate? Hadn’t the British been criticised for this very thing? She glared at them.
During their break the two newcomers sat huddled on the landing eating from their tiffin boxes. Savitha’s mouth watered but still she refused their overtures of friendliness. Was she a snob then? Was this her secret weakness? She felt she had become like the people she had once despised in Sri Lanka. She had hate
d them for their airs and graces, their useless pride, their snobbishness. And here she was behaving in the same way. It distressed her that it seemed no longer possible to live up to her ideals. But I am not like them, she wanted to cry, confused and upset without knowing why. How do I make myself interested in what interests them? There is something wrong with me, she decided, finally, filled with a different kind of despair as she continued to drink the weak dishwatery tea provided by the establishment, concentrating, instead, on reading George Bernard Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.
13
COMING BACK LATE ONE EVENING, on a night with a full moon, Grace smelt the lime trees growing beside the house. The rain had washed away the dust and crushed the leaves, releasing their scent into the air. The monsoon was almost over, but the heat had not become oppressive yet. She had been to evensong at the cathedral. Small flecks of light hovered around the statue of the Virgin. It was the first time she had ventured out in months; Frieda and Aloysius had not wanted her to go but the curfew had been lifted temporarily. She would have gone anyway, but they did not know this. She no longer cared about her own safety. There had been another letter from Savitha. Included with it was a piece of paper covered in badly drawn musical notations from Meeka. Thornton had scribbled a note at the bottom of the letter, saying he would be writing separately.
Savitha was lonely; Grace felt the loneliness struggle through the thin blue paper.
Winter will soon be here, wrote Savitha, the light has almost vanished. You can’t think what that means until you are threatened with its loss. I listen to the sound of sewing machines all day. They remind me of the wings of small birds. My thoughts are continuously of home. I think of you all the time. When will it be safe for us to return?
‘She has a job?’ Grace said to Frieda, puzzled. ‘Sewing? But she can write so vividly, with such passion. Why isn’t she writing her articles?’
Frieda was nonplussed. Savitha had always been a mystery.
Thornton has become very quiet. He misses you and he worries all the time about Meeka.
From this Grace deduced Savitha was worried about him. And little Anna-Meeka, what news of her?
She’s grown a lot, wrote Savitha, proudly. Grace was thrilled.
She’s changing fast, wrote Savitha.
Must be the better food, thought Grace.
I forgot to mention Thornton has managed to buy a piano. You knew how much Meeka wanted one? Well, now she’s very happy. She plays it all the time, listening to the records we have and copying the tunes. She can play anything just by hearing it once! A few weeks ago we found a piano teacher as well. A Polish woman, called Mrs Kay. Thornton asked her to put Meeka in for her Grade 4 exam. He thinks it will be a good thing if she could do some exams. But Meeka doesn’t want to do exams, she says. Mrs Kay says she only wants to improve on the Beethoven! Mrs Kay says it’s not such a bad thing, and it shows where her interest lies, whatever that means, but Thornton is furious. He thinks we are wasting our money and wants to find another teacher. Anyway Mrs Kay has been teaching Meeka to write music (see enclosed) and she’s been writing down all sorts of things. D’you remember how she used to suddenly make up little tunes when she was at the convent? Well, she’s still doing that. Her teacher told us that perhaps Meeka should study music theory instead. Thornton was disappointed, although he tried to hide it. You know he would hate her to try to be a concert pianist, but still, I think he would have liked her to show some sign of her aunt’s talent. Anyway, yesterday Meeka was playing some of these ‘tunes’ when Thornton came in. She told him, ‘This one is for Granny and Auntie Frieda. It’s about the sea and about Jasper.’ Thornton didn’t say anything, he just stood watching her and then he told her to go back to practising her exam piece.
‘Hmm,’ mumbled Aloysius, jerking his head in the direction of Alicia’s room. ‘That’s different. She never did that!’
So you see how she remembers Sri Lanka, continued Savitha. And every day, she added in her postscript, every single day we drink our tea from your beautiful bone china!
Thornton’s letter had arrived a few days later. Grace stared at the well-loved handwriting for a long time before she opened it. But then, in spite of everything she felt, somehow the letter had made her laugh, for Thornton was unable to hide his irritation with the world, especially his beloved daughter.
Anna-Meeka, he told his mother, is trying to talk like the white children in her school! She has a piano now but she’s very stubborn and she keeps changing the notes in the exam pieces she’s supposed to be learning. I hope this isn’t going to be the pattern with her other lessons because she has the eleven-plus exams to take soon. Christopher makes matters worse. He’s forever encouraging her to do whatever she wants, telling her stories about me from the past, simply to annoy me. As for Jacob, continued Thornton, his irritation gathering momentum, I just don’t understand him. We meet up but he has nothing to say of any interest. He’s become very withdrawn since he left home.
Walking in the garden that evening, when the heat had died down a little, Grace thought about her letters. Even after all this time some things did not change. Thornton and Christopher were no closer to each other. Their squabbles and their worries continued, regardless. She could see no problem with Anna-Meeka though. It was Thornton and Savitha who were the ones in need of attention. Yesterday Aloysius had written to his granddaughter, his hand moving shakily across the paper, telling the child things about their daily life in Sri Lanka, reminding her of her home, aware that he was unlikely to see her again. Watching him, Grace had felt bereft. A fatal gap had opened up between them all. The ship that had carried them away had left a space too wide, and impossible to cross.
Two nights previously the curfew had been lifted and there was life back on the streets, giving it a deceptive air of normality. But it would not last. Thin rice-paper clouds moved silently in the sky. The crescent moon glided through them. Beyond the lime trees a performance of Kathakali dancing was taking place. Grace could hear temple drums. Last week there had been another suicide bomb in the capital outside the Central Bank. It had killed fifteen people including the child who had carried it. There had been a piece in the paper by Amnesty International protesting against the use of children in war.
As she walked across the moonlit garden, Grace noticed the lights in Alicia’s room were on. Turning, she looked at the gate, half expecting to hear the sound of Thornton returning. Of all the pointless things civil war is the most pointless, she thought. Tonight she had knelt in the candlelit church and prayed for the country to unite, hoping that when it was all over there might be something left to unify. Through the branches of the trees she caught glimpses of her elder daughter moving in her room. There was no longer any trace of the girl she once had been. Christopher had called this place a poisoned paradise, and Grace, with Vijay so recently murdered, had agreed.
‘But we cannot blame the land,’ she murmured to herself, as the garden shifted and settled into the night. The land in all its beauty was not at fault.
Like the garden, her thoughts moved restlessly. It would take five days for a letter to reach her children. Lately, a soft film seemed to be passing before her eyes, making writing difficult. Before long her father’s blindness would be hers.
‘Are my sons happy?’ she had asked feverishly, when she prayed. Always, she came back to this single unanswerable question. Could they be happy having cut their connections with their homeland as though they were the ribbons that had stretched from the ship? Could they be happy at such a price?
A servant hurried through the trees. He wanted to warn her he had seen a snake in the grass where Grace stood. ‘The moon was nearly gone,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s a time for serpents. Did you notice an offering to the gods was left outside the gate earlier?’ The servant was frightened. It was not an auspicious thing to happen.
‘Ignore it,’ said Grace. ‘Why worry about the serpents and devils
when all the time the real enemy walks, unmasked, within our midst?’
Above her, the luminescent moon slipped silently behind the clouds.
‘Well,’ asked Christopher, ‘what d’you think then?’
He placed two pints of Guinness on their table and sat down, pushing some loose change towards Jacob. Then he raised his glass to his lips with a smile of satisfaction. He had not had a drink since lunchtime. Jacob frowned. Somehow, since Thornton’s arrival, he seemed to have got sucked into the habit of meeting his brothers for a drink at the pub. It was Christopher’s fault.
‘Let’s introduce him to pub life,’ he had said.
Why do I always end up paying? thought Jacob irritably. What do they need me for?
‘Haven’t you been paid yet?’ he asked.
‘No, men, not yet. I’ll buy a round next time. Don’t fuss.’
‘That’s what you always say,’ said Jacob.
‘Yes, OK. Don’t be such a bloody capitalist. I’ll pay next time. Now then,’ he leaned towards Jacob, his eyes bright, ‘tell me what you think of our sister-in-law.’
‘Oh!’ Jacob was not interested in Savitha. ‘She’s all right, I suppose. At least she keeps Thornton in his place.’ He yawned. Then he remembered something else. ‘Are you seeing that woman in the leopard-skin coat?’
‘What?’ asked Christopher startled. ‘What d’you mean? Has Thornton been spying on me again?’
‘Calm down, Christopher. Thornton will be here in a minute. It was the barman who asked me, actually. I hope you’re not entertaining a call girl?’
