by Roma Tearne
‘Please,’ she said, ‘have some tea.’
Myrtle stared at her vacantly. ‘How are you?’ she murmured. And then when Frieda remained silent, continued, ‘It’s so strange. I half expect to see her come in.’
Frieda’s face quivered. She didn’t have the strength to deal with her aunt. But after that one remark, Myrtle seemed more interested in telling Frieda about her own life in the years since she had left Station Road.
‘They are playing merry hell in Jaffna. No one here has any idea of the things going on there.’
She told Frieda about the shortage of food and the people who disappeared suddenly in the night, children plucked from their beds, boys on their way to school, old men who had connections with the Sinhalese.
‘People are suffering,’ Myrtle said. ‘Your mother would have been shocked.’
She paused and neither of them spoke. In a few hours they would have to leave for the church. Frieda felt faint with the strain.
‘She was better than me, you know,’ Myrtle said at last. ‘Your mother.’
The sound of distant gunfire added to the unreality of the moment.
Then, quicker than she could have anticipated, it was over. The cars arrived and Frieda brought Aloysius out into the bright, terrible heat. A peacock cried plaintively in the garden next door. The air was still; even the branches of the coconut trees were motionless against the dazzling, weightless sky. A few neighbours had come out onto the road to watch as Grace’s coffin, surrounded by flowers, was borne swiftly away.
Afterwards, because of the curfew, those mourners who had come from afar left hurriedly. All that remained in the soft, sad, afternoon light was the scent of jasmine. Evening approached and the sea sighed.
‘Nothing has changed,’ said Aloysius, ‘except me. And for me everything has finished.’
After he had thrown the first handful of earth he had spoken briefly to Myrtle. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he had said, simply. ‘She would have been glad of it.’
Myrtle had cried, embracing them both. She had given Aloysius a small photograph, taken many years ago, of a young and happy Grace, standing with her father in the garden at the House of Many Balconies, smiling into the sun.
Towards nightfall, the others rang again. Thornton had been unable to say much. Frieda had dreaded speaking to him, aware that he would be the worst of all. Incoherent in the end, he had handed the phone to Savitha. In all their lives together, Frieda had never known him be like this.
‘Is he going to be all right?’ she asked, frightened.
‘Yes, yes.’ Savitha’s voice came back to her with its own echo. ‘Don’t worry, he is strong. As long as he has Meeka he will be all right.’
Anna-Meeka, sounding restrained and distant with her strange English voice, spoke next. ‘Hello, Auntie Frieda,’ she said. ‘How is Grandpa?’
I no longer know her at all, thought Frieda. She has become someone else entirely.
Christopher didn’t ring until much later.
‘Meeka looks very much like Mummy, men,’ he said, awkwardly.
He spoke first to his father and then to Frieda. But when he heard Frieda’s voice he had begun to cry. He had cried and cried for so long that she began to worry about the cost of the call. Then Frieda asked him something she had vowed never to ask any of them.
‘Please come home one day,’ she asked. ‘When this war is over, come home.’
And Christopher had cried, wretchedly, ‘I will, I will.’
After the phone call, Aloysius went to bed. He was beyond speech and his eyes were bloodshot with exhaustion. Frieda gave him something to help him sleep. He had been drinking all day and she was worried about him. She closed up the house and moved some of the flowers into the hall where it was cooler. Glancing around, she caught sight of Jasper’s old perch. It stood motionless against the skylight. No one had thought of removing it in all these years. Hesitating a moment, she went into her mother’s study. Everything was as usual. Her diaries were stacked on shelves; photographs lined the walls, Thornton’s published poems, Alicia’s press cuttings, books and papers. Grace’s glasses lay uselessly on her desk. Through a blur Frieda saw her mother’s inner life spread out as though she might return to it in a moment. Grief struck her forcefully, sending her hurrying out to pour herself a glass of whisky, the first in her life. Tomorrow, she thought, tomorrow was time enough to start going through her mother’s papers.
Distance distorted their grief. Thornton placed his sorrows out of sight, pressed like flowers within a book. Meeka, racing through her scales with impatience, reminded him of all that was best in his misspent youth. He had begun to understand that Grace would be with him forever. She was a collection of perfect things in his imperfect life. He closed his mind and refused to speak of any of it. He had almost forgotten he was to meet Hildegard. Cutting three roses, telling Savitha he was visiting Alicia, he left the house.
Summer was almost over. It was an unremarkable day of the palest blue, with a touch of autumn in the air. Catching sight of his reflection in the tube, he saw a man reaching early middle age carrying roses. How strange it was, he reflected sadly, to be travelling across London clutching yellow roses on his way to meet Hildegard after all these years. He could not remember the last time he had carried flowers for anyone. Idly, he wondered what she was like. They had corresponded a little since that first letter and he had told her of Grace’s death. There was, he felt, a certain reluctance on his part to put too much down on paper, in case it might be misconstrued. Better to say whatever they wanted when they were face to face.
The train lurched and rattled, emptied of almost all its passengers, carrying Thornton with his reflections and his roses and all the uncertainties working in him as though he was a young man again and his mother in the house in Station Road waited for him to come home.
He did not see her. He was too deep in his melancholia, lost somewhere in the scent of the flowers that rested beside his cup of tea. The station café was a transient place of unhappiness and filth. Platform announcements cross-hatched his thoughts. The tea was watery. It smelt of detergent. Thornton sat as though he were resting after a great journey. Exhausted. Nearby sat an old, very large woman with thinning grey hair. A tramp. She coughed once or twice raspingly and Thornton glanced up only to look away again. The waiter began to sweep away the rubbish under the tables. A train rattled past, the café filled and emptied of people. Thornton sighed, staring into space.
Just like a ghost couple, thought Hildegard, sadly. Here, then, was her heart’s desire, while she was changed beyond recognition.
‘Look!’ she tried to say. ‘It’s me, Hildegard. Can’t you see?’
He could not see. Hildegard sat, stunned, her throat constricted. Like quicksilver, like the music his sister made, her passion had always run too fast. I was always out of step, she thought with despair, willing him to look at her again and see the woman he had once loved. Wanting him to recognise her. And even then, she thought, although my body was lithe and supple, and I could dance with the best of them, outdance him even, although I was pretty and golden-haired and Uncle Innocent loved me at first sight, it was never any use. I could never be one of them.
After a while, having looked at his watch several times, when the tea was cold and undrinkable, and the sound of rain on the high wrought-iron roof rattled like a thousand grains of rice, Thornton grew increasingly restless. Meeka was having a private lesson in physics at six o’clock and he wanted to be back to check she didn’t miss it. Savitha, who took a dim view of the lessons, would not fuss if Meeka stayed at her friend’s house. Where was Hildegard? he wondered, irritated. She might have rung him at work if she had changed her mind. Pushing his half-drunk tea away in distaste, he rose.
Well, he thought, frowning, glancing at his watch again, I at least have kept the appointment.
He had wanted to make his peace with her; he had been willing to talk. But she had changed her mind obviously. Enough, he had waite
d long enough. Pushing the flowers into the rubbish bin he strode hurriedly away.
Robert Grant stared at the ceiling. A thread of light from the street lamp moulded itself against the cornices, sharply defined in the darkness. A slight breeze moved the curtain and the thin line changed and swelled. It was raining again. The leaves were singed with brown. Autumn was on the march. With the children back at school he would be able to spend more time at work. Sylvie would busy herself waiting patiently until he finished work and came home. Now you can relax, supper will be ready in a minute, she would say, turning the side lamps on in the large drawing room, humming to herself as she moved plates and glasses about, lifting the casserole out of the Aga, pleased he was back. Sylvie asked so little. And here he was betraying her in this old-fashioned way.
Beside him Alicia slept. Soundlessly, hardly stirring, limbs curled towards him, dark hair covering her face. If he moved his head and lifted it slightly towards her, took in the faint perfume of her long hair and listened, he could hear her even breathing, could see her small body rising and falling underneath the covers. Robert stared at the line of light across the ceiling. Every night this is what he saw.
Every night, he thought wryly. Every night! If only it was. He loved her. It was the simplest feeling in the world, and yet unbearable. He would have thrown everything away for her. Every last thing he had worked for, his children, his work, everything he possessed was a pale shadow beside Alicia. Had he loved her all those years ago, when he had first heard her play the piano at the Governor’s house? Since meeting her again the constant restlessness that had dogged his life had gone.
It seemed such a short while ago that he had taken his leave of her in Sri Lanka, dodging the monsoon, laughing as he went, putting the de Silvas out of his life. The trees in their garden had been strung with coloured lights in preparation for the wedding. He had been vaguely aware of Grace’s watchful eyes and he had told himself firmly that he was glad to be sailing away. He had not dared to think of what might have been had Alicia met him first. And now, there was no one he could ask, no one he could share this love with.
She did not want it. She took from it only the barest crumb. There is nothing of me left, she had said candidly, lifting her small face towards him. Not wishing to deceive him, not once, not even for a moment. Such was her honesty. He had only himself to blame. He glanced at her as she slept. Though no longer young, her skin was silky to the touch, glowing against the whiteness of his hand.
Anyone who knew him would have thought him crazy. Risking all he had, not thinking about his children, his reputation? If the papers got hold of the story it would be the end of his career. Caught by his conflicting desires, his thoughts circled round and round his head, like the endless wheels of a train, the street lamps kept on shining, and his heart kept on beating and Alicia went on sleeping, while the thread of light on the cornice marked the hours and the minutes ticking relentlessly towards the dawn.
21
NO ONE HAD SEEN IT COMING. In one stroke, all that had been established lay shattered at their feet. They would never find it again. Time moved slowly for the de Silvas. Their last great realisation had shocked them. Life would not be what they had dreamed. Since his mother’s death, since his failed attempt to meet Hildegard, Thornton had withdrawn quietly. Savitha watched him tending the garden. She served him hot rice in his mother’s tureens, gave him cups of tea in her bone china, but there was nothing else she could do. She could see what she had always suspected: without their mother’s influence the de Silva family was disintegrating. In spite of a drunken husband, in spite of the war, Grace had kept them together, while she, Savitha, could not even control her daughter. One end-of-summer evening, soon after the funeral, while Thornton cut the grass, Savitha sat at the kitchen table and began writing a letter to Frieda. All letters home were now written entirely by Savitha; Thornton simply sent his love.
He’s all right, Savitha wrote, knowing Frieda worried about her brother. We talk less but I expect that would have happened anyway. When you have been married for as long as we have, silence hardly matters. I know what he’s thinking, anyway! You mustn’t worry. Of course your mother’s death was a shock, but living here has made him strong. I’ve been having dreams about the day we left Sri Lanka. You have no idea how frightened we were that morning when we said goodbye. Everything frightened us then, leaving you was terrible of course but the huge ship frightened us and the sea was so enormous. I thought we would drown. We were terrified! So we talked more. We are no longer like that, we are resilient. We have lost something else. Perhaps it’s our innocence.
She paused, not knowing how to go on. Not knowing how much Frieda would understand. It had taken the garden party to mark their dislocation. You see, Frieda, she continued, struggling to explain herself simply, I have discovered that being part of an empire means you lose your individual and collective identity.
Savitha stared at what she had written. Frieda would think her mad. Meeka had begun to play the piano. It was something she had been tinkering with for days. Recognising it, Savitha raised her head absent-mindedly and listened. The music travelled under the closed doors, reminding her of something familiar yet elusive. It drifted softly across the house, very sweetly and melodiously. Meeka played a chord and then a series of arpeggio. Her hands ran across the keys, pausing and the music changed texture, its modulation rising slowly. Savitha held her breath without understanding why. Thornton, pausing as he cut some roses, heard it faintly and hummed absent-mindedly. The piano needs tuning, he thought. Frowning, Savitha went back to her letter.
We no longer know who we are, or what we want. Our sight is impaired and our anger too great.
She sighed. What was the point? Frieda would not see beyond her grief and the civil war that had taken her family away. With Grace gone there was no one else Savitha could speak of such things to. But she did mention Christopher. She had begun to understand Christopher better, she told Frieda.
He saw what the war would do long before anyone else. How it would destroy everything of value and wrench us apart. It has taken too many people away, dispersing the richness in the place, robbing it of its talent. Christopher saw that. And because he can’t do anything, because he is a man, he drinks to forget this betrayal.
We are from the same place after all, she decided, pausing, thinking about Christopher, remembering Sunil, the other person who had tried to do the impossible alone. The piano music had changed into a minor key.
Things will only change slowly, she continued, hoping Frieda would understand, and probably not in our lifetime. Fairer societies do not come overnight.
‘Is that Frieda you’re writing to?’ asked Thornton, coming in with some vegetables from his plot. He went over to the sink and turned on the tap. The scent of newly cut grass wafted in through the kitchen door.
‘Close the door,’ said Savitha. ‘It’s getting cold.’ Autumn was heading towards winter.
‘Send my love, will you?’ Thornton said. ‘Say I’ll write as soon as I can.’
His face was silhouetted against the fading light. He looks tired, she thought. His mouth was stern, disapproving. Pity clutched at Savitha’s heart. She saw clearly what Grace had always known. I have come all the way from the orphanage in Dondra to this place, she thought, but I am so much stronger than he is. Sighing, she added Thornton’s love and sealed her letter. Then she stood up. It was time to cook the evening meal. The piano music was reaching its end. For the moment, the green of the island retreated from Savitha’s mind and instead the twilight of the late evening was filled with the tender sound of swallows.
It had started with her clearing Grace’s room. Tidying up the papers, putting them in order. There were still letters to be answered. For a long time Frieda had been reluctant to do anything. Every time she went into her mother’s room she simply cried. She was too apathetic to care. In this way eighteen months passed before she could face it. Then, one afternoon when Aloysius went for his
walk to the hotel and she was a little stronger, she forced herself to begin sorting out Grace’s things. Aloysius would not look at them. He was very frail now but he remained stubborn on the subject. Frieda let him do as he pleased, staying out even when she felt it was not safe, and drinking. It was all that was left and she had not the heart to stop him. She had given up worrying about the curfew and the bombs. They were part of daily life.
It was while she was sorting out the photographs, making them into piles, some for Thornton, some for Alicia, others for Jacob, that she found the photograph. Sitting back on her heels, Frieda glanced at it. She did not recognise the tall, slight man in the sarong. A few, yellowed jasmine flowers fell out of the envelope along with it. Idly she turned the photograph over.
My dearest love, Vijay, Grace had written. October 8, 1950.
Frieda looked at the picture, puzzled. Vijay? She did not know anyone called Vijay. She put the photograph aside, meaning to ask her father when he came in, but then something made her reach for Grace’s diary. What had they been doing in October 1950?
Today is June 23, Grace had written. Three years and one day since Vijay died and I have been unable to write until now. A thousand days and nights have passed since that terrible night. Somehow I lived through all of them. Smiling on Alicia’s wedding day. Dealing with the family, Thornton’s crazy marriage. It’s a small miracle that I managed to survive. Through the skin of my teeth and in spite of Myrtle’s inquisitive stare, I have survived.
