Bone China (28 page)

‘She must do science,’ he said again.

‘Well, her test results throughout the last year are not good,’ said the Head of Year puzzled, running his finger down the list of names.

‘No, no, no. She has to do science to become a doctor.’ He had planned her future, step by slow step. Didn’t this man know?

The Head of Year was taken aback. He looked at Thornton. In all fairness to him he had no idea what he was taking on here. He thought this was a simple parents’ evening. He thought that in a few minutes they would be done and he would be able to go home. How was he to know that he was taking on a whole valley covered in mist and tea and an ancient family home with a lake and God knows what? How was he to know he was taking on Thornton’s lost education? He had never even heard of Grace de Silva for heaven’s sake. How would anyone in this school, not far from the Brixton Road (he told his wife later as he drank a glass of Eno’s to clear his stomach), how could anyone have known what this man wanted?

‘They usually want their girls married off quickly, and sent back home to have babies.’

Well, this one was different and it took a while before the Head of Year realised.

Savitha spoke next. ‘I don’t care if she becomes a doctor or not,’ she said slowly, ‘but she must have some secretarial skills. Should everything else fail, you know, she doesn’t make it to medical school, et cetera,’ Savitha waved her hand, ‘well, then I want her to be able to get another job. Perhaps she could do music as well.’

‘Well,’ the Head of Year said, looking doubtfully at the timetable, ‘she can’t do both music and chemistry. They’re on at the same time. So she’ll have to choose. If she wants to do music at university we recommend she does one foreign language at least. Possibly two. Does she play an instrument?’

‘What?’ interrupted her husband, startled. ‘No, no, no. Nothing of the kind. We are going to fix private tuition in maths, physics and chemistry. No? So don’t you worry about that, men. She will be fine. Just put her into the right classes. That’s all we want from you.’

Savitha folded her lips. She was not about to have a public argument with Thornton in front of a schoolteacher. Later on, when they were back in the house, that would be a different matter.

Where, for example, did he intend to find the money? How he was going to pin Meeka down for these private lessons, had he thought of that? The girl was only interested in playing the piano. It was the only thing she did when she was at home. Shouldn’t she be allowed to study it?

Savitha glanced across at her daughter. Their arguments had increased with the onset of adolescence. It both puzzled and saddened Savitha. What a sight the girl looked. With her
maxi-coat and her eye make-up, her nail polish and her dark hair all over her face. Straight out of the jungle, thought Savitha, half in despair, half inclined to laugh. What were they going to do with her? Here she sat, slumped on a chair, sulking as usual, trouble written all across her brow. Of course Thornton might be right. Anything was possible, but from where she was sitting she doubted there was a future in medical school for Anna-Meeka. Sex, thought Savitha,
sex
was what she saw. Sex would be the next problem. Undoubtedly. Which teacher would they consult then?

The Head of Year was an optimistic man. It was why the job suited him so well. He believed, for every problem there was a solution. Savitha could see he had no concept of the misty hills, those tea-covered valleys or the boys’ school her husband had once attended. She doubted if he ever drank his tea from delicate porcelain cups placed on fragile saucers. No, Savitha could see he did not have a clue. So she let him get on with it. Sitting back on the loose-weave blue office chair, crossing her saried legs, she waited.

‘Anna-Meeka,’ said the Head of Year kindly, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes, ‘we’ve done all this talking but we haven’t asked the most important person what
she
wants from these next two years. Given that your parents want you to stay on, which subjects would you like to take?’

‘Dunno,’ said Meeka, glancing across at her parents.

There was a silence. In that moment, unexpectedly and without warning, she saw them as if for the first time, from a great distance. They looked so small and defenceless sitting bolt upright in this unfamiliar place. Her father was wearing his psychedelic tie but the expression on his face did not match it. His face, she saw with surprise, looked closed, stubborn. And sad, somehow. Her mother wore open-toed sandals and socks
under her sari. She too looked wrong. Like the time outside the school gate long ago, Anna-Meeka saw, her mother looked cold and confused. How
old
they looked. How unhappy. She had not noticed this before. They had changed, she thought, in slow revelation. Suddenly, with blinding clarity she saw them as she never had before, their faces dark and troubled, and in this colourless room, their love for her so utterly transparent, so desperately clear.

A piece of music lodged in her head played over and over again. All day long the sounds had run on in this way, like slow-moving water, gathering and growing within her. She could think of nothing else. It engulfed her, flooding her senses, leaving no room for anything else. It seemed to hold all the colours from their discarded life, all the dazzling brightness they had once taken for granted. It was filled with the sound of the sea. She wanted to get home quickly, to write it down on the manuscript paper her uncle Christopher had given her. She wanted to play it in order to understand more clearly the subtle shifts and changes, and what difference these enharmonics made to the whole. She needed to sit quietly at the piano and let the sounds come to her, flow through her fingers, correcting themselves as they fell into the early-evening air.

‘Dunno,’ she told the Head of Year. ‘I want the science option, I s’pose. Like my dad says.’

‘T
HERE’S A VISITOR HERE TO SEE YOU!’
Frieda said, unable to keep the pleasure from her voice.

Her mother was sitting by the window looking out towards the garden, waiting for Aloysius to arrive with the newspapers. Every morning he insisted on going across the street to the hotel where he had a glass of whisky. Then he brought back the newspaper to read aloud to her. Grace never complained, although Frieda was aware she worried about her father’s safety. Slowly, over the last few years her parents had grown closer. Aloysius had changed after Grace’s glaucoma had been diagnosed. These days he gambled and drank only moderately. Although physically much frailer than his wife, he did what he could to ease her path into the darkness, reading endlessly to her, writing her letters and taking over whenever Frieda went out. In the years since Alicia had left the three of them had become a tightly knit unit.

‘Guess who’s here, Mummy?’

Grace turned towards her daughter’s voice. When she spoke her own voice was strong and full of life. Her face remained
beautiful. Only her sight, realised Ranjith Pieris, shocked, only that has gone.

‘Hello, Mrs de Silva,’ he said, taking her outstretched hand, ‘d’you remember me?’ adding, as she struggled to rise, ‘Please, don’t get up. I’ll sit here by the window with you.’

‘Of course I remember you,’ Grace said, radiant with delight. ‘Of course!’ And she clung to his hand.

‘You were Sunil’s best man. How could I forget you! Where have you been all these years?’

‘I’ve been in Canada, until just two weeks ago, and now I’m on my way to the embassy in the UK. I couldn’t leave until I’d seen you all once more.’ He would not let go of her hand. ‘How are you? How’s…’ he hesitated, ‘Alicia?’

So they told him. Over tea, on Aloysius’s return, they told him all the news.

‘She stopped talking,’ Grace said quietly. ‘D’you remember how she cried? How she could hardly stand up at the funeral?’

Ranjith nodded. He had been one of the pall-bearers.

‘We could hardly hold her down,’ Frieda murmured. ‘We thought she would hurt herself.’ She shuddered. The monsoon rain had fallen, soaking into their grief.

‘Afterwards the doctor had to sedate her for days,’ Grace said. ‘Only it wasn’t much good. Her pain broke through.’ Black, terrible, rain. ‘And then, after that, only silence.’

Ranjith nodded. He could guess how it must have been. He had been about to leave the country when Sunil had been killed.

‘I stayed because of the funeral.’

He had visited the house, again and again. But Alicia had been unable to speak. He had gone then, as planned, moving from embassy to embassy. Wandering the world, not wanting to come home. They had not seen him for years.

‘I’m going to England now,’ he told them. ‘For four years.’

‘Oh, but you
must
meet them all,’ Grace said joyously. ‘Can we send gifts with you?’

‘Of course, of course. No problem!’ Ranjith said, delighted. ‘You don’t know how much I have thought of everyone here, over the years.’ He hesitated. ‘I was at the ballot counting when it happened, you know,’ he said very softly. ‘I
saw
Sunil being machine-gunned down.’ He shook his head, unable to go on. They had known that it had been Ranjith who called the ambulance. ‘When I accompanied the policeman back here, I could hear the piano.’

‘She was practising,’ Frieda said. ‘I remember it too.’

Schubert, thought Grace. But she didn’t say so. She remembered the Schubert, even now. But she had not known it was Ranjith who brought the news.

‘How could you,’ Ranjith said. ‘You were too distraught.’

He had lived with the guilt of being the one that survived, he told them. All these years, he had lived with this thought. They were silent. They had not spoken so openly for years.

‘If Alicia will see me,’ he said, ‘of course I’ll visit her.’

‘She still won’t say his name,’ Frieda told him. ‘But she is happier in England. Strange, Thornton says she likes being left alone. There’s nothing to remind her, I suppose.’

‘Maybe we should have sent her away long ago. Soon after it happened,’ Aloysius said.

‘No.’ Grace shook her head. She was certain of it. ‘No, no. She was not ready for that. We sent her at the right time.’

They talked late into the afternoon. Many things, previously unsaid, were uncovered. Frieda watched her mother’s face brighten and become animated. The sun moved slowly across the sky and the servant brought in lunch. They ate rice, seer fish and murunga curry, followed by fresh pineapple and a slice of Frieda’s cake. It was while they were drinking tea that a dull
thud was heard. The house shook briefly. There was a harsh crackle of breaking glass followed by a moment’s silence.

‘It’s another bomb,’ Aloysius said. ‘Another suicide.’

The sky was a hard cut-glass blue; the afternoon’s heat merciless. In a moment the air filled with sirens and distant screams.

‘They’ll put the curfew on again,’ Aloysius observed. ‘You’d better go, Ranjith, while you can.’

‘We’ll write our letters tonight,’ Frieda promised. ‘And get a parcel of things together for you to take. I’ll see if I can get some ambarella for Savitha.’

In the four years she had spent in Highgate Alicia had made no friends. She kept away from Savitha. Savitha was the one who had had the child, the husband. She was the one with a life. They had never been close. Thornton, once her favourite brother, was greatly changed, preoccupied with concerns of his own and often bad-tempered. Alicia referred to this change in her letters home.

They are very different now
, she wrote.
You would hardly recognise them, Mummy. I feel as though I will never have anything in common with this new generation of de Silvas. I can’t even tell the twins apart and as for Anna-Meeka I have the strong feeling she doesn’t like me much. I don’t blame the child; she used to remind me of things I’d rather not think about
.

It was the closest she had ever come to speaking of the past. Regret lurked in the letter.

Thornton seldom brings Meeka to visit me any more
, she continued.
I think he’s embarrassed by her sulkiness. Last Saturday I went over there to deliver your latest parcel. I could hear Anna-Meeka playing the piano. I didn’t recognise the music so I stood outside their front door for ages without ringing the bell. I suppose it was one of the pieces of music she makes up. It was strange but
also very beautiful, and quite complicated. Not at all the sort of thing I’d expect her to be capable of, given her limited musical knowledge. I was reminded of Elgar and also Benjamin Britten and it made me feel bad that I’d never shown any interest in her. Still, it’s too late now. When I rang the doorbell she stopped playing immediately and when I went in there was no sign of her. Savitha told me she had gone to finish her homework but I think she didn’t want to see me
.

Apart from her solitary walks and occasional visits to concerts, Alicia’s letters to her mother had become the only other regular feature in her life. As usual it was Frieda who wrote back, answering for the three of them, sending the news. Then, one day, Frieda’s letter had news of a different kind.

Guess who’s going to London?
she had written excitedly.
It’s someone you know! He’s a big shot in the government. Can you guess
? Frieda had chosen her words carefully.
He was Sunil’s closest friend
.

Alicia stared, her throat constricting. The name sat on the page branding itself into the flimsy blue paper, the ‘S’ and the ‘u’ and all the other letters falling into their place, making up his name, with such a sense of rightness, such a sense of loss that time itself stood still again. Somewhere in her head were the harsh sounds of weeping. Beyond this, she knew, terrified to read any further, were all the memories she dared not look at. She paused. Her hands were shaking. Often in the past she had wanted to end her life. When she first arrived in England she had come close to doing so. No one had known and, somehow, she had not. But her depression rarely lifted. The endless years of her widowhood stretched before her.

On an impulse, later that day she wrote back to Frieda. Yes, she would meet Ranjith.

Yes, she thought, that’s him.

And she turned to the waitress and ordered a pot of tea for two. Ranjith Pieris had not changed much. He was a little greyer, perhaps, smaller than she remembered, but he still had the same smile, the same round face. There was an air of carefulness about him, a hint of authority, revealing itself as he threaded his way across the room. He was looking for her. She had suggested they meet in the British Museum for tea among the potted palms, behind the Sphinxes. Alicia loved the Sphinxes, the great dark obelisks, the ancient gods. Often before a concert she would while away an hour or two in their enigmatic presence. Like them she too waited for the end of time. The women in the café knew her now, knew all she wanted was a pot of tea, or at most an egg-and-cress sandwich. She looked as though she might have been somebody once, they decided. It was hard to say why. Perhaps it was in her face, perhaps it was the way she moved, or maybe it was simply that she never seemed to notice anything: their glances, the glances of others, the occasional smiles of curiosity.

She must have been lovely too, they remarked, this enigma-of-the-café.

‘She’s
still
lovely,’ said the chef. ‘With those large eyes, those high noble cheekbones!’ he said, half in love with her.

But Alicia never smiled. She always looked cold, even in summer. Like some small bird, a sparrow who had strayed in for a crumb, a sliver of something, but who knew it could not settle here, she came and went. They watched her before going to take her order, gazing at the soft fineness of her faded sari. She was so unlike the other Asians that came in. Their resident sparrow. Belonging to the museum, coming early, staying late and always, so the invigilators reported, always wandering through Egypt.

Today seemed at first to be no different. She came in quietly.

‘Ah,’ the waitress murmured, ‘she’ll be wanting egg and cress, a glass of water, and then her tea.’

She had her book with her; it fell open at the page she wanted, marked out by a blue aerogramme. Today, although she opened her book, she seemed restless, searching the room, her eyes a great beam of light moving up and around, first to one side and then another, pausing always by the entrance to the café. From this, they deduced, she was waiting for someone.

Ranjith Pieris saw her a second after she had ordered the tea and broke into a smile. She’s aged, he thought, shocked, moving towards her. And he folded her in his arms tenderly, with something of the love for them both, Alicia and his dead friend.

‘Alicia!’ was all he could say; too much clamoured for attention between them. They stood, their hands tightly clasped as they once had when he visited her backstage after a particularly fine performance. It had been on the occasion of Alicia’s engagement. Ranjith had come with Sunil, bringing flowers. She had teased him then, saying it was his fault for introducing Sunil to music. Their children would blame him, she said, when they were old and quarrelling with each other. Now he knew they were both remembering these words as they stood among the tables, with the china clattering and the tea urn bubbling, and the voices of tired children clamouring for a drink.

‘Let’s have some tea,’ said Alicia. Agreeing to this meeting had shaken her but it was nothing to how she felt on coming face to face with Ranjith Pieris. Knowing this, Ranjith sat down with her holding her hand, and drank the tea and talked of other things easily, letting it run on, about the troubles on the island.

‘How’s Jacob?’ he asked. ‘And Thornton? What’s Christopher up to?’

Alicia smiled and shook her head. ‘Where do I start! How long are you in England for?’

‘Four years,’ Ranjith said. ‘Plenty of time to meet up. I’m staying with Robert Grant in Canfield for a while, just until I find my own place. D’you remember Robert Grant?’

‘Ah,’ said the café staff to each other, ‘the little sparrow has found love!’ They meant no harm; it was just the way it looked from where they stood serving teas.

‘Who?’ asked Alicia gratefully, for he was pressing on her wound and the floodgates trembled. They could spring open of their own accord at any moment she knew. ‘I don’t know the name.’

‘Yes,’ said Ranjith, still holding her hand, giving the café staff hope. ‘Yes, you played at the party for his father at the Governor’s house. Remember? The night of the riots that Christopher was involved in?’

‘Oh! Yes,’ she said too quickly. Now she remembered. ‘Robert Grant, was that his name? Didn’t he use to be Thornton’s friend?’

‘Everyone was Thornton’s friend,’ Ranjith said, smiling broadly.

‘Well, you should see Thornton now,’ Alicia warned. ‘I don’t think he has any friends. He married,’ she hesitated, not knowing how to describe Savitha. ‘He has a beautiful wayward daughter,’ she said instead.

‘Remember Hildegard?’ Ranjith said.

‘Oh Hildegard! Mummy saw her off pretty quickly!’ and Alicia laughed softly, thinking, yes, there were other, good things she could talk about after all.

‘Thornton is very different, now,’ she said. ‘His daughter’s
changed him. He’s very serious. Bringing up Anna-Meeka is a serious business!’

Ranjith looked at her with amazement.

‘It’s true,’ Alicia said.

‘Oh, I want to meet all of them again,’ Ranjith said delightedly. ‘And the wives, tell me about the
Irish
one. She’s had twins, hasn’t she?’

He looked at Alicia, searching her face for the clear-sighted girl he had once known. Wondering, fleetingly, what had happened to the music.

They talked and talked. About Grace and Aloysius and Frieda. And the light coming in from the high windows, curved and elegant, faded to a thin rosy glimmer until the bell heralding closing time rang, and rang again. The staff in the tea room clattered away the cups, and saucers and plates, until, at the third and final ring of the bell the huge fluorescent lights flickered off. They left through the side entrance. Maybe the sparrow will be happy now, the staff said again, taking off their aprons, hoping it was so. And the Sphinx slept, and the obelisk slept, and all the ancient gods from the Middle Kingdom slept, while the tiny magic eye of the security system kept watch over all of history and its memories trapped like so much dust in the fine midsummer air.