Bone China (24 page)

Yesterday he had finished early at work. He had forgotten to tell either Savitha or Meeka. He had intended to surprise them by being in the house when they returned, making one of his salads or doing the washing-up. With this in mind he had taken the tube, walked quickly past the park in Kennington, past the new corner shop just opened by an Indian family, past the library (it grieved him now that he had not even stopped here), such was his desire to get back before anyone else. As he turned into the street where he lived, he saw a group of children walking back from school, shouting and screaming, in that terrible unintelligible way he hated. One of the children was a girl with a skirt so short as to be almost indecent and hair like a bird’s nest. She was throwing her school bag up in the air, dancing about, screaming louder than the others (singing
quite beautifully, Thornton observed), making the other children laugh. It was only as she broke away from the group, taking her key out of her bag, that he registered who she was.

‘Bye,’ said Meeka, waving at the little group, laughing so much that she could hardly get her key in the lock. ‘Bye, see yer tomorra.’

Thornton hung back, skulking behind a plane tree. For a moment he felt ashamed to be stooping so low. It was early afternoon. The roses were just beginning to bloom. Thornton was shocked. Was this screaming harridan he had seen really Anna-Meeka? She had done something to her school uniform, turned it into a miniskirt. And there was something different about her face too, he thought, puzzled. She looked older, somehow. Why had her mother let her go to school like this? What sort of mother
was
Savitha? His own mother would be horrified if she could see the child of her favourite son looking this way. Thornton’s anger rippled through the summer leaves of the plane trees. Unable to stop himself, he went to the main road in search of a phone box and some change.

‘Hah! It’s me!’ he said as soon as the phone was answered. ‘What sort of woman are you, letting my daughter go to school dressed like a white child? Hah?’

Mr Wilson, who had picked up the shared telephone, listened for a moment and handed it to Savitha.

‘I think it’s for you,’ he said with a small courteous bow.

‘Yes?’ Savitha. ‘Oh yes, what can I do for you?’

‘What
is
wrong with you?’ fumed Thornton, unstoppable now. ‘You have no standards. Money, money, money, that’s all you think of. Why don’t you stay at home and look after our daughter, huh? She has turned into a slummer!’

‘Yes,’ said Savitha. She nodded earnestly. ‘I quite agree. You’ll need to look into the source of it. Try finding the original file.
It’s probably in the archives somewhere. Go back to the beginning, I think.’

She put the phone down with a firm little click,

‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Mr Wilson who, being the perfect gentleman, would never have dreamed of asking her a single question. ‘We have some trouble with our plumbing.’

And off she went, to wash her hands in the ladies’ lavatory.

Thornton’s eyes bulged. What was he to do? His wife did not seem capable of a coherent conversation. His immediate worry, however, was his daughter. All he had wanted to do was to come home early and surprise them both by being there, clean the house, wash the bloody china, read a newspaper or two. Now here he was, a wreck, outside the phone box on the Vassal Road. He searched his pockets in vain for some change, wondering if the pubs were open yet or whether to go back and confront Meeka, or phone that idiot wife of his again.

This was how Cynthia found him. Fortunately she had finished work early, ramrod hair swinging, short exquisite miniskirt that showed off a pair of gorgeous long, long legs, pretty pink lips, pretty handbag, pretty everything it would seem. That’s how Thornton saw her.

‘You have arrived at a moment of crisis,’ he said, going towards her.

Having played rounders all afternoon Anna-Meeka was starving. She heated some leftover chicken curry. Then she made a sandwich, adding some sliced raw green chilli, some tomato ketchup and some crisps. But before she ate it, just in case her mother came home early, she rolled her skirt down from the waistband, combed her hair and plaited it just as she had done before going to school that morning. One thing Anna-Meeka de Silva had learned over the months was the golden rule of not cutting
it too fine. Since the fateful day of her disastrous birthday party she knew always to leave plenty of time for clearing up. She removed the traces of the day from her appearance, washed the eyeliner from her lashes and cleaned her teeth for good measure. Then, and only then, did she eat her sandwich. There were two letters on the mat, both blue aerogrammes. One was for her parents and the other was addressed to her in her grandmother’s frail handwriting. Meeka opened it slowly. She had not written to her grandparents for ages. Somehow there was never enough time.

Her grandmother’s face rose clearly from the paper. Guiltily, she wished she had kept in touch more. She had promised never to forget them all, never to forget her home, but she had forgotten. Her grandmother did not reproach her.

My darling Anna-Meeka,
she had written.
I have been thinking about you a great deal, as have your grandpa and your aunties. We’ve all been wondering how your music is coming along, whether you are still making up your tunes or whether you are busy with exams. I long to hear you play. There is no music here
.

Yesterday I walked to the end of the garden to the bench (near the coconut grove, d’you remember where I mean?)
.

Meeka paused. Of course she remembered.

You can hear the waves from there, although you can’t quite see them. I tried to pretend you were down there on that little stretch of beach, with your daddy. That soon you would both walk up the hill, laughing and shouting, being starving hungry! D’you remember how Auntie Frieda used to scold your daddy for not wiping the sand off your legs? My darling Anna-Meeka, how I miss you all
.

Grace’s voice came over the seas to her, carrying with it the traces of coconut polish and heat. It brought with it the memory of an almost forgotten language. She made it clear she thought
Anna-Meeka was wonderful. Once when Meeka had told her she wanted to be famous her granny had nodded in agreement. She hadn’t laughed, or folded her lips, as Meeka’s mother would have done. She had not knitted her eyebrows together like her father. She had simply looked delighted, saying she was
sure
Anna-Meeka could do whatever she wanted to. Thinking about her now, wishing also that she had made another sandwich for she was still hungry, Meeka vowed to write more often to her.

It is late afternoon now,
Grace continued.
The servant is out in the yard at the back shaking out some mats. I can hear the coconut man throwing the coconuts to the ground. Do you remember the thambili you used to love? And the coconut sambals?

Meeka stopped reading for a moment. A strain of music ran through her head, borne on a distant sea breeze. It mingled with the harsh staccato of the crows, cawing in the afternoon as she fell asleep. Grace’s loving voice rippled softly. The voice drifted on, telling her of her aunt Frieda and her grandpa. More trouble was brewing on the island.

It is a good thing,
she wrote,
your parents have taken you to England. You will be safe there, safe from the terrible violence and corruption of our own people. In England,
she continued,
there is justice. Still, no matter what, Ceylon is still your home, the place where you were born. There is something magical in that because it’s where you will always belong. One day, Anna-Meeka
, wrote Grace in her tired handwriting,
I hope you’ll be able to return home safely
.

Meeka read swiftly, skipping these boring parts of the letter. She agreed with her grandmother (dare she call her ‘Nan’ as Gillian and Susan did?), England was fab. Then she saw that Grace had saved the most interesting bit of news for the last.

Your Auntie Alicia is coming to England. I have written to your
mummy and daddy separately. We have been able to buy her a ticket at last
.

Meeka gave a shriek of excitement. Her memory of her aunt was vague, but because of her tragic past she remained an exotic figure in Meeka’s imagination. There was the music and the fame of course, and then there were the shootings.

Tomorrow, thought Meeka, I’ll tell them about it at school. She frowned, thinking furiously. It would go something like this: ‘The gunman entered my nan’s house. He overturned the grand piano, killed a few servants in the process and smashed all the bone china. Then…’ Meeka paused, her mind racing, ‘he shot the mynah bird and shot my uncle Sunil too. Everyone screamed; there was blood everywhere. My dad came in like the man from U.N.C.L.E. and wrestled the gun from the man’s hand, but he killed my mum by accident. All this happened long before he married my stepmother Savitha, of course.’

Such was the drama of her story that Anna-Meeka’s eyes shone with emotion. It was how Savitha, opening the front door just then, coming in cautiously after work, fearing God knows what in this madhouse, found her daughter. Standing in the kitchen talking to herself.

‘What?’ demanded Savitha, her eyes darting swiftly around the room, searching for the hidden children, the broken crockery, the mess, the God-knows-what. But all she could see was Anna-Meeka, standing alone, looking very sweet, her hair plaited, her uniform immaculate, and a few crumbs of food on the table. Savitha, shuddering, peered suspiciously at her daughter.

‘Where’s your father?’ she asked.

Meeka shrugged. How was she to know where her father was? Didn’t her mother know she had been at school? Was she keeping tabs on her father too? Perhaps he had been having a
party. The thought struck Meeka as funny. She opened her mouth to say something and then she remembered the
news
.

‘Mum! Mum!’ she said. ‘Auntie Alicia is coming. She’ll be here soon.’

God, thought Savitha in a panic, I better start cleaning this filthy house now! But all she said was: ‘Has she got a visa, then?’

Thornton lit a cigarette. Then, with a gesture of exquisite courtesy, he placed it gently between the pretty lips of the stunning Cynthia Flowers.

They were sitting in the White Hart and Thornton was watching Cynthia Flowers sip her Babycham in its delicate glass. The frisky fawn, etched on the side of the glass, looked so much like her that he felt a poem coming on. A feeling of well-being drifted over him. It had been some time since he had felt the urge to write any poetry. Cynthia Flowers, frisky as her Babycham Bambi, saw the light in his eyes and the glow surrounding his beautiful face. It had all been her doing, she thought later, the poor man had been in such a state when she happened upon him. What could she do but take him to the pub? It had taken her some time, to find what the problem was. It was his daughter of course. How he loved her! Heavens, thought Cynthia, he must have really loved his wife. The child was probably a daily reminder of this lost love. Cynthia Flowers was too sensitive a person to ask him exactly how his wife had died. How could she ask when the man was in such pain? She had not yet begun to feel jealous of the dead woman. Not yet. So she did what she was very good at. She listened.

‘In Ceylon,’ Thornton said, angrily, ‘girls don’t behave this way.’

Cynthia Flowers, her rosebud mouth very pink and kissable, asked, ‘Where is Ceylon?’

‘It’s a little island,’ Thornton said, used now to explaining where it was to the English. ‘A small piece of the world, shaped like a teardrop.’

‘Oh!’ exclaimed Cynthia, covering her kissable mouth with her hand, giggling. ‘Is it that bit of land joined to India?’

Thornton sighed and shook his head, momentarily distracted.

‘No, men. If it was, the world might take more notice of what’s happening there.’

He went back to the problem in hand. The child did sound a
bit
of a handful, thought Cynthia. With the wisdom of her twenty-two years she decided she probably just needed a little mothering. Having listened carefully, Cynthia suggested Meeka come to the library to see her after school. Perhaps she could get her interested in reading the children’s classics.

‘You are so wonderful!’ said Thornton draining his pint, looking thin and interesting. ‘You have given me hope again. That I might save my child from these slummers!’

Cynthia gave a small gurgle. ‘I just want to help,’ she said, downing her Babycham with such speed that all the bubbles went down the wrong way making her laugh some more. She really could not help it. The early-spring evening glowed with promise. Dappled sunlight fell across the empty pub tables even though there had been no sun a moment before. It lifted the smoke in the air in shafts across the room and out through the windows which seemed high and majestic and wonderful.

Walking home, full of Guinness and largesse, thinking about the sonnet he would write, Thornton realised it was getting late. Letting himself into the house he felt a sudden urgency for the lavatory. Savitha, hearing this, thought, Yes, he’s been to the pub again. Meeka, also hearing the sound of the flush being pulled, thought, Oh good, he’ll be in a happy mood now. Then she remembered the
news
.

‘Auntie Alicia is coming to England! She’ll be here soon.’

Thornton sat down heavily at the table. He was hungry.

‘What’s to eat?’ he asked Savitha, feeling suddenly exhausted.

‘Drunk!’ said Savitha triumphantly, as though she had scored a hit. ‘I suppose you’ve been drinking with those brothers of yours? Like father like sons, is it?’

‘I am not drunk!’ bellowed Thornton, glaring at Savitha’s retreating back and at his daughter’s grinning face.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

Then he looked at his daughter again. She seemed normal enough.

‘What are you wearing?’ he demanded, confused.

Meeka, still in her school uniform, was doing her homework.

‘What do you think she is wearing, you stupid man?’ asked Savitha. ‘They don’t wear saris to school in this country, you know.’