by Roma Tearne
‘Sweet things always take away the burning of a hot curry,’ she said, unconsciously quoting her mother.
The boys tucked in, jostling each other in their greed. Meeka’s presents were piled on the floor. She would look at them later. Two girls had locked themselves in the bathroom and she could hear them giggling and flushing the toilet. Gillian opened the back door letting in a thin stream of cold air. It was raining a little.
‘Let’s play murder in the dark,’ said Geoff, having had enough of the food. He was trying not to think about it, but he felt a little sick.
‘No,’ said Gillian firmly. ‘We have to sing “Happy Birthday” now, you idiot. The grown-ups will be here soon and we’ll have to go home.’
And she swept the remaining crockery into the sink, unfortunately dropping two cups on the hard linoleum floor. They broke into perfect halves and lay there, two generations of use, resting neatly by the plastic waste-paper basket.
‘Oh whoops!’ said Gillian, smiling apologetically at Meeka.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Meeka. Being her parents’ daughter she was polite. Her granny and her mother had always said if a servant broke something one should never get angry. It was bad manners. ‘I’ll clear it up later,’ she said airily.
She ignored the strange feeling in the pit of her stomach and the knowledge that somewhere in the distance, waiting at some traffic light, crossing some road, were her mother’s feet marching determinedly home. An advancing army. She would have to work fast to get the place cleaned up. The truth was she wanted the children to go home. They had played pass the parcel. They had played musical chairs. Meeka had a feeling they might have scratched her father’s record of a Mozart opera, but that at least could be hidden. It had been difficult playing musical chairs to Mozart, and even harder to play it to a Beethoven sonata.
‘Don’t you have any singles?’ Marion asked her. ‘Any Beatles?’
‘’Ow abowt the Monkees?’
Meeka had none of these wonderful, exotic things, none of this forbidden fruit. The questions served only to highlight her inadequacies. Old-fashioned music was all that was on offer.
‘Cor! Yer mum ’n’ dad are different, ’nt they?’ Geoff observed.
‘Thas cos they’re foreign,’ said Gillian, loyally.
In that moment of careless innocence Anna-Meeka felt a great longing not to be foreign. What would she have to do to stand with these children and be counted as one of them? She paused for a moment, wondering about her choices. Change her parents? Stop them listening to this old-fashioned music? Never. Her father would never stop listening to it and going on and on about Auntie Alicia. He could be surprisingly stubborn. Even if, by some miracle, she worked on him, what good was that, there was still the matter of the funny way they talked. That will never change, thought Meeka sadly.
She played dead lions with the children, but now she was desperate for them to leave. She was tired and hot. There was so much clearing up to do. And all the time the army was nearing. Geoff was being very friendly. Sam seemed to like her too. Susan wanted her to be best friends, annoying Gillian, who felt, quite rightly, that it was she, after all, who had discovered Meeka. Meeka listened to this talk as from a great distance, thinking about the Hartley Green pieces of bone china on the kitchen floor, and suddenly, she was certain. She wanted them all to go.
But there was still the cake to cut and the candles to blow out. Gillian was calling them to the table. Meeka had never noticed it before but Gillian was really very bossy, and large. She had the beginnings of breasts. As if reading her thoughts, Geoff grinned.
‘Bossyboots!’ he said, and he winked at Meeka.
‘When we get back to school,’ he said, ‘I’ll pick you for the rounders team.’
Meeka grinned. Her grin did not reach her eyes, but no one could tell. Only her mother would have known that it wasn’t her usual smile, but her mother was not there, thank God. Not yet. Gillian lit the candles and they all sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and Meeka grinned again, this time because Jennifer had emerged from the bathroom with a pair of Savitha’s knickers on her head and was singing the loudest. She blew out all the eleven candles with one huge whoosh while the children screamed, ‘Make a wish, make a wish and it will come true!’ before cutting deep into the soft sponge covered in butter icing and thick strawberry jam. And it was like this, caught in the stream of cold air from the open back door, caught like a rabbit in the beam of a headlight, so too was Meeka caught in the icy rays of her mother’s astounded stare.
It was clear she had died and gone to hell. Such was the power emanating from that glowing, red-ringed stare that when the front doorbell rang a moment later, signalling the arrival of the parents, Gillian’s mother and Geoff’s older brother, Marion’s dad, Meeka was still standing at the Mouth of Hell. She would stand there for a long time.
‘Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate!’ intoned Jacob solemnly when he heard the story. ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter.’
He savoured the words slowly, rolling the sounds around his mouth, delighting in the movement of his lips as he spoke. It was as musical as the warm Irish brogue of Geraldine, his new girlfriend. The richness of her voice was what had first drawn him to her, thick and sleepy as a morning under the crumpled covers on her bed, with him beside her. Geraldine was the best thing to have happened to him and the key to his future success. She was his inspiration, the person who for the first time encouraged him to do what he wanted. She was the one. With her beside him his business idea seemed almost a reality. It was almost time for her to meet his family. Although so far he had hesitated, had been unable to mention her name to any of the de Silvas. Partly, he supposed, this was because he needed to be certain this warm, hoarse-voiced relationship was going in the right direction. Although mostly he knew it was because his family were so peculiar. He never knew from one minute to the next what their individual or collective responses might be. He never knew what major crisis might be taking place among them. What drama was going on that might suck him in. A point perfectly illustrated tonight at this meeting in the White Hart pub.
It was an Emergency. Thornton had been the one to ring him up on this occasion, and Christopher, finding it highly entertaining, was laughing now. Thornton finished his account of Meeka’s behaviour and Christopher was still laughing in huge phlegm-gathering shouts, his whole body rocking from side to side. He slapped his thighs, he clung to the table. When Thornton came to the part where Savitha, walking into the house, found her underwear on some white child’s head, Christopher seemed to have a seizure. Thornton wrinkled his nose in distaste.
‘Holy shit, men!’ said Christopher wiping his eyes. ‘Holy shit! I’m going to buy the girl a birthday present!’ And off he went again hooting like the Capital Express that travelled across the island twice a day. It was not that funny.
‘Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate!’ said Jacob again, loving the music in the words. ‘Do you remember the language teacher we had, Thornton? Back home? What was his name, men?’
Thornton could not remember. There was a crisis in his immediate home, never mind ‘back home’. His wife and daughter stood with horns locked, his mother’s priceless china was broken, there was mess all over the kitchen and birthday presents that needed to be given back. It was not easy. His head ached.
‘If you don’t stop making such a noise,’ he told Christopher with uncharacteristic fury, ‘I’m walking out of this place.’
He had come here for some peace, for a drink with Jacob, not to be laughed at. Why is this jackass here, he thought, resentfully, forgetting he had rung Christopher in the first place. Why is he poking his nose in my family affairs? Thornton glanced at Jacob for support but Jacob was not listening. Is he going off his head too? wondered Thornton, amazed.
‘What do you care about some teacher at Greenwood School?’ he asked, crossly. ‘How many years ago was Greenwood for God’s sake?’ Thornton shook his head in disbelief, lowering it int
o the foam of his Guinness. ‘Greenwood belongs in another life,’ he said abruptly.
A life that had contained his mother and had order in it. This life, thought Thornton raging inwardly, is filled with worry from morning to night.
But Jacob continued to stare into space dreamily.
‘I can still remember that last afternoon as if it were yesterday,’ he told them both, proudly. ‘You and I walking along the valley towards the house. There were cream butterflies everywhere, d’you remember, Thornton? They were everywhere, streaming through the sunlight, in between the trees. You said the sunlight was dappled and you were going to write a poem about it! Then you picked some of the azaleas, even though I told you not to. You said they were for Mummy. Now what on earth was the name of the language teacher?’
A great longing, an unbearable sadness brushed lightly against Jacob. All at once, and with piercing sharpness, his forgotten ambitions, and Dante, and his teacher’s name came back to him.
‘Hugh Wallace-Smith!’ he said triumphantly. ‘That’s it!’
Thornton ignored him. Living too long in the UK had obviously made Jacob soft in the head. I am alone, he thought. Alone, among aliens and fools. And he too felt the gentle hand of the past brush against him.
Christopher, seeing his brother’s face, tried to control himself. The old childhood grievances quivered within him. What use were Thornton’s good looks here in this country? Back home his looks had got him almost everything he wanted. Here they were all third-class citizens, good looks or not. Here they were nobodies.
But all he said was: ‘The girl is a rebel, men. She is courageous! I predict great things for her. Not your medical-school rubbish,’ he said scornfully. ‘My advice, dear brother, is tell your wife to stop her weeping and wailing. Tell her to stop her bloody shouting and throw her crockery in the bin. Then you must encourage the girl with her music. Let her write down those tunes in her head. She is the future, men. Let her do what she wants, otherwise, mark my words, you’ll have trouble on your hands.’
He laughed again in spite of himself, a wild rasping laugh full of admiration for Anna-Meeka, who should by rights have been his and not his pretty brother’s at all. And he thought how strange it was, this feeling of kinship, this sweet tenderness he felt for his small firebrand niece, fighting her way through the jungle of her new life. How unexpected it was that, having folded away his old emotions, having given up on his passions, he should be reminded of them once more by this child. He had never thought he would feel this way again.
14
FRIEDA BROUGHT THE PHOTOGRAPH IN TO show Alicia. She had no interest but Frieda pretended not to notice. Sometimes Alicia wondered why her sister didn’t just give up.
‘Look,’ Frieda said. ‘Alicia, do look. It’s a photo of Anna-Meeka, in her new school uniform. She looks just like those photos of Mummy when she was little!’
Alicia did not care. The child was a stranger. She had been born in the most terrible year of her life. The child meant nothing to her.
‘I was imagining how wonderful it would be to see them again,’ Frieda said, wistfully.
Alicia made no response. She was stretched on her bed, reading. That was all she ever did.
‘Alicia, don’t you want to do something?’ Frieda asked, her voice strained. She did not say, ‘Don’t just sit here reading, day in and day out, hardly going out, never showing any interest in anyone.’ She did not say, ‘At least you were loved, unlike me.’ She could not be so disloyal. But they had these non-conversations regularly.
Alicia waited patiently. Eventually Frieda would go off to finish some job or other. Eventually she would leave her alone. She knew they had expected her to ‘pull herself together’ long ago. She knew they were at a loss, uncertain how to cope with her. Maybe they had hoped she would find someone else. The thought always angered her. Years had passed, his name was no longer mentioned. She no longer went into the room where the piano was. It was true, she did not go out much but that was because she hated crowds. The problem was she had nothing to say to anyone any more. They thought she was still thinking of him. Of course she thought of him, but not in the way they imagined. He had simply become part of her flesh and bones, her skin, her hair. He was in the air that she breathed. Everything was overcast because of it. Most of the last few years had been spent in a colourless vacuum. They did not understand this and so they were frightened of saying the wrong thing. How could she tell them all she felt?
‘I’m going to Mass later,’ she said instead.
Mass was the only other thing she actually took pleasure in. It was the only music she could stand. But she did not tell Frieda this either. Nor did she invite her to accompany her.
‘There’s no service tonight,’ Frieda warned. ‘Don’t forget there’s a curfew. There was a suicide bomber in Kollupitiya.’
Today was a bad day. Her sister was lost in another world, an unreachable, untouchable world. Frieda sighed. When Alicia had first been widowed she had blamed herself.
‘I was jealous,’ she had cried in confession. ‘I wanted what Alicia had.’
Afterwards, she had vowed to devote her life to helping her in every way she could. But Alicia did not want any of it. She doubted if Alicia even noticed her any more. Slowly, as the years had passed, and her own desires changed, her guilt faded, replaced instead by an uncomplicated sadness for her sister. She looked after her parents. She talked to her mother; for the first time she had her mother’s undivided attention, and she found that she was strangely content. In spite of all the trouble around her, in spite of missing her brothers and her niece, she was happier than she had ever been. For the first time in her life she felt more confident than Alicia.
Frieda gazed at the picture of her niece. Anna-Meeka had an air of determination about her. Frieda suspected she was not easy.
‘I bet she’s stubborn,’ she said, laughing a little. Then, when there was still no response, she went out, gently closing the door.
Anna-Meeka did not pass her examination. She did not get a place at the grammar school. Thornton was speechless. Jacob shook his head; things had come to a sorry pass. Christopher laughed his phlegm-choked laugh and offered Meeka gainful employment with the Socialist Party. Savitha said nothing. What was there to say? She had only just recovered from the birthday party. She needed to get her strength back before she could comment, plan a course of action, prepare for battle. Her batteries were flat. She had sent her article to Wickrem Fernando at the Times back home only to have it rejected by that island stooge, that corrupt man who was not prepared to stick his neck out and blow the whistle on Life in the Kingdom of the United. Well, that was that. Her writing was rejected, her crockery was broken and she had had enough of Rosenberg and his damn sweatshop. Discarding her slacks forever in favour of her national dress (she should never have succumbed to such a betrayal), clutching her Cambridge Certificate and her newspaper cuttings, she marched on those now famous feet over the bridge to Millbank and into the Department of Environment, in search of a new job. If Thornton could do it then so too could she. Anna-Meeka, listening to those marching feet, that army of discipline moving off, kept silent, having only recently returned from the Mouth of Hell. Common sense told her to lie low for a bit. Instinct made her discreet.
Every afternoon after school, she went to the library, where a beautiful girl with ramrod hair and blue eyes worked.
‘Is your dad called Thornton de Silva?’ asked Miss Ramrod.
Meeka was wary. Was this a trap? Was her mother having her watched? These days she could not be certain. Only this morning at break she had said as much to Susan (they were going to be in the same class at the new school). So Miss Ramrod mentioning her father was understandably a little unnerving. Miss Ramrod smiled. Her hair smelt of hyacinths and winter.
‘It’s just that you reminded me of someone who comes in quite often. I thought maybe he was your father.’
‘Yes,’ said Meeka, deciding to take a chance. ‘Y
es, he’s my dad!’
And she loved the way she said it, like everyone else in her class. Just like Susan or Gillian or Jennifer, straight out and uncomplicated.
‘He’s my dad!’
Miss Ramrod smiled again. She moved strands of hair away from her mouth, and stamped Meeka’s books.
‘He’s nice, your dad,’ she said softly.
Meeka was a little taken aback. Then she too smiled, throwing Miss Ramrod into an alarming confusion. The world tilted. Seeing a sliver of a possibility, the chance of an experiment, unable to resist, Meeka took it.
‘We live alone,’ she said sadly, nodding her head, ‘me dad and me.’
‘Ever since me mum died, we’ve lived alone. That’s why I’m often out on my own.’
She smiled once more at Miss Ramrod, picking up her library books, ready to flee, congratulating herself on her performance. Then she noticed Miss Ramrod’s eyes fill with tears. Was she that good? Obviously she was going to become an actress. Meeka couldn’t wait to tell Susan and the others. Miss Ramrod was speaking again, so softly that Meeka had to bend forward to hear her, and again she smelt the hyacinths.
‘Oh, poor man!’ said Miss Ramrod. ‘Poor, poor man. He must be so lonely.’ She looked at Meeka; the smile had vanished as quickly as it appeared. Poor little thing, thought Miss Ramrod, probably the child is lonely too.
‘Give him my love,’ she said. ‘Tell him it’s Cynthia from the library. He’ll know me. You’d better go home now,’ she added, for the little girl was hopping from one foot to another.
Meeka nodded. She was going to become an actress. Definitely.
Dinner that night was unusually silent. Everyone was preoccupied with their own thoughts. Savitha had got the job. Much to her surprise, her interview had been outstanding. Her future boss did not speak in the tongues of the local people but in the kind of English Savitha understood. He had quoted Kipling and welcomed her to the department. Savitha had squirmed with delight; at last, she had found an intelligent person to talk to. Someone she could share her love of poetry with. As she served up the food thinking about her boss, Mr Wilson, the quintessential English gentleman (so different from that rat Rosenberg), she smiled silently to herself. They had talked about Swinburne at teatime and Mr Wilson had offered her a biscuit from his biscuit tin.
