Bone China Read online

  ‘Bring her to me, Grace,’ the Director said, smiling at her. ‘Let’s hear her play, let’s see what she can do first.’

  The Director had a soft spot for Grace. He had never really understood why she had thrown her life away with Aloysius de Silva. Seeing her lovely, anxious face, he was determined to help if he could.

  Grace needn’t have worried. Three weeks later Alicia was accepted on her own merits, securing a scholarship for the entire three-year diploma. Her daughter’s talent would not be wasted and the last of Grace’s legacy would remain untouched. Waiting for that rainy day.

  When he heard the news Aloysius looked with admiration at his talented daughter. Alicia was sixteen. Her future was bright.

  ‘You see, darl,’ he said beaming at Grace. ‘She’s got our talent! Thank goodness one of them has, eh?’

  ‘Well, I think we should all thank Myrtle, first,’ Grace said, handing the letter of acceptance to her cousin. ‘Without her lessons, Alicia, you would have been nowhere!’

  ‘You’ll be able to play on a Steinway, Alicia,’ Thornton said, pleased for his sister. ‘And everything sounds wonderful on a Steinway!’

  ‘This calls for a celebration, darl,’ Aloysius decided, much to Grace’s alarm. ‘Our family will be famous yet, you’ll see!’

  And he went out to play a game of poker, to win some money and buy his clever daughter a present. Or if not a present for Alicia, thought Aloysius unsteadily, moments before he fell into the sea at Galle Face, then at least some whisky.

  Myrtle watched him go. Afterwards, she wrote in her diary.

  Thursday, September 4. So, my cousin thanks me as though I am her servant. How she loves to play the good mother while neglecting her husband. As for Aloysius he will die of drink.

  Towards evening, an Englishman from the Tea Board brought Aloysius home. Grace would not go to the door. She was too ashamed. She sent the servant instead.

  ‘He’s had a slight accident,’ the Englishman said tactfully to the servant, helping Aloysius into the hall.

  There was a brief pause.

  ‘Is Grace de Silva at home by any chance?’

  Myrtle, hearing the commotion, opened her door stealthily and listened for a moment. Then she went back to her diary.

  Four o’clock, she wrote, grimly. And Aloysius is drunk again. I shall continue to record what goes on in this house. Who knows when it might come in useful? If Grace is doing something illegal, if she is caught, my diary will be useful evidence.

  Grace was furious. She recognised the man’s voice. How could Aloysius make such a fool of them both? He might not mind being humiliated, but what about her?

  ‘Charming bastards,’ said Aloysius staggering in, stopping short at the sight of his wife skulking in the doorway. ‘Why on earth are you hiding, darl?’ he asked cheerily. ‘I know he’s white but he’s not such a bad fellow, you know, underneath. My clothes made rather a mess of his jeep, I’m afraid!’

  He laughed. Grace glared at him. She would never raise her voice in front of the servants.

  ‘They don’t like me much any more,’ continued Aloysius mildly, unaware of her fury. ‘They think I’m no use with the local idiots.’ He wagged a finger at her. ‘They think I don’t know what’s going on, that I’m a bloody fool! But I know what the British are up to. I know what’s going on.’ He leaned unsteadily against the door. ‘Divide and rule. That’s been their game for years, darl. These fellows don’t give a damn about any of us.’ He made a gesture as though he was cutting his throat. ‘I think I’ll have a little lie-down now, if you don’t mind, darl.’

  And off he went, first to wash off the seawater and then to pour out a small hair of the dog, after which, he informed the servant sternly, he would have a late afternoon nap.

  All her life, Myrtle wrote, G has had everything she wanted. The looks, the wealth and the man I wanted. But she’ll never be happy. And he has wasted his life because of her.

  In a month from now Alicia would leave for the Conservatoire. She would be a full-time boarder. Myrtle paused, staring out at the bright afternoon garden. That would leave Frieda, she thought.

  The shadow, she wrote, whom no one notices!

  3

  THE WAR ENDED. IN SPITE OF ALL the predictions, Japan had not invaded. The enemy, it seemed, was within. The writing on the wall was no longer possible to ignore. A hundred and fifty years of British Rule, guided by Lord Soulbury, drew to a close and the island became a self-governing dominion. One day it would no longer be called Ceylon. A few days before independence was announced Aloysius was offered early retirement.

  ‘They want me out of the way,’ he told Grace, avoiding her eye.

  Ostensibly his retirement was due to his ill health. Privately, all of them knew it was a different matter. His drink problem had never gone away, his liver was failing, his eyesight poor. On his last day he came home early.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ he announced. ‘The end of my working life!’

  There were several vans with loudspeakers parked outside on the streets delivering party political broadcasts.

  ‘Of course I drink too much,’ Aloysius shouted above the racket, glaring at the servant who handed him a drink. ‘But they kicked me out for a different reason.’ He was more subdued than Grace had seen him for a long time. The servants closed the shutters to muffle the noise.

  ‘I’m a Tamil,’ Aloysius said, to no one in particular. His voice was expressionless. ‘That’s not going to change, is it? They can give their damn job to one of their own, I don’t much care any more.’ He was beginning to sound cornered. ‘The old ways are finished. These fellows have no need for courtesy. Or good manners. Life as we have known it will shrink. We’ve been sucked dry like a mango stone!’

  Discarded, thought Grace. That’s how we’ll be.

  ‘I shall breed Persian cats,’ declared Aloysius.

  He looked with distaste at the cloudy liquid in his glass.

  ‘I’ve forgotten what decent whisky tastes like,’ he muttered.

  Christopher, standing in the doorway, looked at both his parents in amazement. Why did his mother remain silent, why couldn’t she stop his drinking?

  ‘Hah!’ Aloysius continued, grimacing as he drank. ‘The Sinhalese have been waiting years for this. Well, let’s see what happens, now they’ve got the upper hand.’

  He’s like a worn-out gramophone, thought Grace wearily. In all the years of their marriage she had never told him what he should do. But she was tired. Aloysius switched on the radio and raised his voice.

  ‘It was bound to happen. I told you! Independence will change everything.’ He was getting into his stride. ‘The Tamils won’t be able to keep a single job.’

  Pausing, he took a quick swig of his drink.

  ‘The English language will become a thing of the past.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Grace said, sharply.

  ‘What d’you expect, men? The minute the suddhas, these white fellows, are gone and Sinhalese becomes the official language, what d’you think will happen? They’ll forget every bit of English they’ve learned. In schools, in the offices, all over the bloody place! It’s obvious, isn’t it? And then,’ he gave a short laugh, drained his glass and poured himself another drink, ‘not only will the Tamils suffer but we’ll be cut off from the rest of the world. Who the bloody hell except the Sinhalese will speak their language?’

  He held his glass up to the light and peered at it for a moment.

  ‘Here’s to the new and independent Ceylon!’

  Christopher waited uneasily. He knew the signs. His father would gradually become louder and his arguments more circular. The six o’clock news finished. Evening shadows lengthened in the garden and a small refreshing breeze stirred the trees. Somewhere the liquid, flute-like notes of a black-hooded oriole could be heard calling sweetly to its mate: ku-kyi-ho.

  ‘Our Sinhalese peasants will be the new ruling class,’ Aloysius declared, waving a hand in the direction of the serv
ants’ quarters.

  Christopher was horrified. Well, don’t for God’s sake antagonise them, he wanted to say. Don’t just get drunk, do something. His father was all talk.

  ‘On the other hand,’ Aloysius continued, the arrack taking effect, ‘can one blame these fellows? The British have been snubbing the Sinhalese for a century. Is it surprising they are angry?’ He paced the floor with furious energy. ‘They lost their language and their religion was totally discarded. How d’you think you can suppress a large majority like this without asking for trouble? Huh? Tell me that, men?’

  He glared at his wife as though it was her fault. No one spoke. Grace closed her eyes and waited while Aloysius drained the last drop in his glass, triumphantly.

  ‘Having finished playing merry hell the British fellows are off now, leaving us to pay the price. Is this fair play? Is this cricket?’ He was working himself into a frenzy. ‘Soon we’ll all be talking in Sinhalese. Except I can’t speak a bloody word of course.’

  He belched loudly. Christopher made as if to leave the room but Aloysius held out his glass absent-mindedly.

  ‘Get me some ice, will you, putha?’ he said.

  The radio droned on. It was beginning to give Grace a headache. She went over and switched it off. Then she looked at her watch. Although she knew he was right, Aloysius in this mood was best ignored.

  ‘That’s enough,’ she said finally. ‘Dinner will be ready in an hour. Myrtle,’ she smiled at her cousin, ‘can you tell the others, please?’ She would not have talks of politics at the dinner table. ‘And stop frowning, Christopher,’ she added. ‘Tonight we are celebrating your father’s retirement.’

  She spoke firmly, hiding her anxieties. The signs of civil unrest had been growing steadily for months. Two weeks before independence had been declared a series of riots had broken out in the north of the island. The poorest outcasts, the coolies, had had their vote withdrawn. Predictions of trouble swarmed everywhere with a high-pitched whine. Rumours, like mosquitoes, punctured the very flesh of the island. Discrimination against the Tamils, it was said, had already begun in the north. When she heard the stories it was always Vijay that Grace thought of.

  Their affair had run on for several years. It had exceeded all their expectations. It had proved that rights and wrongs were complicated things with mysterious inner rhythms. It had given them hope when they had expected none. Vijay was the most disturbed by this. Grace, having discovered her conscience was smaller, steadier than his, had never been as frightened as he was. It was Vijay who struggled to accept what had been given to him. He submerged himself in her, making no demands, never probing her on her other life which was so patently different, never questioning her on her sudden long absences. He loved her with a burning intensity, impossible to quench, existing only for her visits, trustingly, utterly faithful. His understanding still astonished Grace. Whenever she appeared at his door, tense and worn, he would unravel her sari and massage her with sandalwood oil, waiting until the strained anxious look left her face before he accepted what she offered. Silently. He did all this silently. Instinct kept him so. Instinct made him give her the passion she seemed so desperately to crave.

  Occasionally, when news from his home town could not be ignored, he would talk about his childhood. Grace, unable to help him, listened as his anger burrowed a hole through his life. Vijay had grown up in a smallholding where the red-brick, earth and the parched years of droughts had made it impossible to grow much.

  ‘Our land was always tired,’ he had said, stroking her hair, lulling her to sleep, his voice husky. Usually it was after they made love that Vijay did most of his talking. ‘But my parents never stopped working.’

  After his father died of dysentery Vijay’s older brothers took over the farm. His mother struggled on and although food was scarce there was always a pot of dhal and some country rice on the fire.

  ‘I couldn’t bear to watch my mother and my brothers becoming old before their time.’

  He was the youngest child. He was bright. The schoolteacher, before he had lost his job, had wanted Vijay to continue with his studies, and maybe one day try for the university.

  ‘I thought, if I moved to Colombo, I could find work and send money home. Maybe I could even begin to study again.’

  But it was not to be. The only work he could find in Colombo was tiring, and difficult to come by, and Vijay soon became dispirited.

  ‘There are too many prejudices towards the Tamils,’ he said. ‘And in this country, if you are born into poverty there is no escape.’

  At first, alone and homesick, all he had been able to do was survive. He had never expected to stumble upon Grace. She had not been part of any plan, he told her, smiling a little.

  ‘I remember exactly how you looked, and where you stood!’

  The light slanted down on them through his small window, casting long purple shadows on the ground.

  ‘I saw you first, long before you even noticed me!’ he told her, delighting in teasing her.

  He had dropped a bale of silk in his astonishment, he remembered. The silk had slipped and poured onto the ground, so that he had to gather up armfuls of it before the manager saw him. He had stood holding the cloth, cool against his face, watching as Grace went out of the shop.

  ‘Do you remember? You had a young girl with you,’ Vijay told her, smiling. ‘I could see, one day she would be like you.’

  Alicia. Grace had been glad that he had seen Alicia. She longed to show him the others, reckless though it was. She wanted him to meet Frieda and Jacob, her solemn son, and fierce, angry Christopher, and beautiful Thornton. But every time she voiced this thought Vijay shook his head.

  ‘It is enough for me to imagine them.’ Grace felt her heart contract.

  Everything about him, his voice, his words, soothed her. Like the coriander tea he made whenever she came to him, exhausted from dealing with Aloysius. She found it unbearable that he asked for so little. It was the hopelessness of their love that hurt her most of all. But when she told him this he dismissed it lightly, with a small shake of his head.

  ‘It’s just a dream of ours,’ he said. ‘How can a high-caste woman like you make a life with someone like me? Let’s just dream!’

  It pained her to hear him speak this way, so accepting of his place in society, with no attempt to change his lot. There were no words to express her own feelings. Not since her father had died had she felt so cherished.

  ‘But he loves you, doesn’t he?’ Vijay asked her once, referring to Aloysius. ‘How can he not love you? He cannot be a bad man, Grace, not if he loves you.’

  She loved him for his generosity.

  ‘Yes,’ she had said, Aloysius loved her. It was not Aloysius’s love that was the problem any longer.

  ‘We belonged together in another life,’ Vijay liked to say. ‘In some other time. In another place. Perhaps you were my child, or my wife. Only the gods will know.’ Vijay was a Hindu. It was easy for him to think this way. ‘After you died,’ he said, his eyes shining as he kissed the hollow in her neck, ‘my grief was such that the gods told me, wait and she will come back to you.’

  She wanted to believe him. Often, kneeling in the church, she heard his words. But when she looked all she saw was a cross.

  ‘You are such a courageous woman,’ he would tell her. ‘D’you know that? You have insights far in advance of these times we live in.’ He had learned much from watching her. Slowly he had begun to understand the rich Tamils in this country. ‘This gambling and drinking is just one more sign of what is happening.’ They had lost their way, he told her, earnestly. In the wake of British Rule, they shared a thread of hopelessness with the poor. ‘Aloysius is no different from the others,’ Vijay said, in his defence.

  When he ran his hands over her fair, unblemished skin he felt as though he touched all the despair of the island, all their collective troubles, their desires, their confusions, here on this lovely, warm and unlined body.

  ‘
For all of us,’ he told Grace, ‘are doomed in our different ways. Both rich and poor, it makes no difference. We are caught, in the wheel of history.’

  Dinner that night was quieter than usual. For a start there were only five of them present. Alicia was at the Conservatoire, Jacob was working late and Thornton was out. Christopher and Frieda were silent. Myrtle watched them without comment. She could see Grace was very agitated while Aloysius was not so much drunk as in a state of rage. The loudspeakers continued to pour out their endless stream of messages in Sinhalese.

  ‘Why can’t they move away from this road?’ Aloysius said, irritably.

  ‘Take no notice,’ Grace told him, quietly. And she asked the servant to close the dining-room shutters.

  ‘No!’ Aloysius bellowed, flinging his napkin down. ‘Why should we be stifled inside our own home? Wait, I’m going to have a word with them.’

  He stood up. But they would not let him go outside.

  ‘What’s the point?’ said Christopher, unable to keep silent any longer, glaring at his father. ‘This isn’t the way to do it.’

  ‘Christopher,’ Grace said, softly, ‘that’s enough.’

  ‘Where’s Thornton?’ asked Myrtle, challengingly, looking at Grace.

  Grace continued to eat, her face expressionless. She refused to be needled by her cousin. The servant brought in another jug of iced water and refilled the glasses. The election vans were moving off to another street but the tension remained.

  ‘Thornton’s visiting a friend,’ Frieda said, quickly.

  ‘Who?’ Aloysius asked, sharply. ‘Who is it this time? Some girl, I suppose. Why doesn’t he just get a job and make himself useful, for a change?’

  ‘He’ll find it harder and harder to get a job, now we have independence,’ Christopher reminded them, slyly, helping himself to more swordfish curry.