Roma Tearne - Bone China

Is she ever going to say anything? he wondered. Women were such strange creatures. He moved restlessly. Not having slept he was exhausted. The effort of wanting to give Grace a surprise windfall had tired him out.

‘So, it’s only the estate we’ve lost,’ he repeated uneasily, trying to gauge her mood. ‘I don’t want to be a manager on a plantation that’s no longer ours. What’s the point in that? I’ve no intention of being one of their bloody slaves!’

Grace stirred her tea. Aloysius was a Tamil man who had, by some mysterious means, acquired a Sinhalese surname. He had done this long before Grace knew him, having taken a liking to the name de Silva. When he first began working as the estate manager at her father’s factory he had been young and very clever in the sharp ways of an educated Tamil. And he had been eager to learn. But most of all he had been musical and full of high spirits, full of effervescent charm. Grace, the only daughter of the planter boss, had fallen in love. In all her life she had never met anyone as intelligent as Aloysius. He was still clever, she thought now, but his weaknesses appalled her. Soon after their marriage he had started gambling with the British officers, staying out late, drinking and losing money. Only then did Grace understand her father’s warning.

‘He will drink your fortune away, Grace,’ her father had said. ‘The British will give him special privileges because of his charm, and it will go to his head. He will not be the husband you think.’

Her father had not wanted her to marry Aloysius. He had tried to stop her, but Grace had a stubborn streak. In the end, her father, who could deny her nothing, had given in. Now, finally, she saw what she had done.

‘The children have been asked to leave Greenwood,’ she told him, coldly. ‘Their school fees haven’t been paid for a year. A year !’

Hearing her own voice rise she stopped talking. She blamed herself. Five children, she thought. I’ve borne him five children. And now this. Her anger was more than she could bear.

‘Stanley Simpson wanted me to play,’ Aloysius was saying. Stanley Simpson was his boss. ‘It would have been incorrect of me to refuse.’ He avoided Grace’s eye. ‘I have always been his equal, darl. How could I suddenly refuse to join in? These English fellows have always relied on me to make up the numbers.’

‘But they know when to stop,’ Grace said bitterly. ‘They don’t ruin themselves.’

Aloysius looked at his feet. ‘When it’s your hands on the wheel it’s so much easier to apply the brake,’ he mumbled.

They were both silent, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock. Outside, a bird screeched and was answered by another bird.

‘Don’t worry about the children, darl,’ Aloysius said soothingly. ‘We can get Myrtle to tutor them.’

Grace started. Myrtle? Had Aloysius completely taken leave of his senses? Myrtle was her cousin. She hated Grace.

‘We’ll start again, move to Colombo. I’ll get the estates back somehow, you’ll see. And after the war, we’ll get the house back too. I promise you. It’s just a small inconvenience.’

Grace looked at him. I’ve been a fool, she thought, bitterly. I’ve no one to blame but myself. And now he wants to bring Myrtle back into our lives. She suppressed a shiver.

Outside, another day on the tea plantation continued, regardless. The early-morning mist had cleared and the coolies had brought in their baskets of leaves to be weighed. Christopher de Silva, youngest son of Grace and Aloysius, was sneaking in through the back of the house. Christopher had brought his mother a present. Well, it wasn’t exactly for her, it was his really. But if he gave it to Grace he knew he’d be allowed to keep it. The older children were still at school and no one had seen his father for some time. It was as good a moment as any. He hurried across the kitchen garden and entered the house through the servants’ quarters carrying a large cardboard box punctured with holes. The kitchen was full of activity. Lunch was being prepared. A pale cream tureen was being filled with a mound of hot rice. Napkins were pushed into silver rings.

‘Aiyo!’ said the cook, seeing him. ‘You can’t put your things there. Mr de Silva’s back and we’re late with the lunch.’

‘Christopher, master,’ said the servant boy who had just served tea for the lady of the house, ‘your brothers are coming home this afternoon.’

‘What?’ asked Christopher, startled.

The box he was holding wobbled and he put it down hastily. He stared at the servant boy in dismay. Why were his brothers coming home? Just when he had thought he was rid of them too. Disappointment leapt on his back; he felt bowed down by it. He was only ten years old, too young as yet to attend Greenwood College with Jacob and Thornton. And although he longed for the day when, at the age of eleven, he could join them there, life at home without Thornton was very good. Thornton monopolised his mother and Christopher preferred his absence.

‘Is Thornton coming too?’ he asked in dismay.

‘Yes,’ said the servant boy. ‘They’re all coming home. Alicia and Frieda too.’

His eyes were shining with excitement. He was the same age as Christopher. They were good friends.

‘You’re all going to live in Colombo now,’ he announced. ‘I’m going to come too!’ He waggled his head from side to side.

‘Namil, will you never learn to keep your mouth shut?’ cried his mother the cook, pulling the boy by the ear. ‘Here, you nuisance, take these coconuts outside to be scraped. And Christopher, master, please go and wash your hands, lunch is almost ready.’

‘What’s going on?’ muttered Christopher. ‘I’m going to find out.’

Then he remembered the cardboard box in the middle of the floor. A muffled miaowing came from within.

‘Namil,’ he said, ‘can you put this in my room, carefully? Don’t let anyone see. It’s a present for my mother.’

‘What is it?’ asked the servant boy, but Christopher had gone, unaware of the horrified expression on the cook’s face as she watched the cardboard box rocking on her kitchen floor.

Further down the valley Christopher’s older brothers waited on the steps of Greenwood College for the buggy to collect them. Jacob de Silva was worried. They had been told to leave their books before returning home. Although the real significance of the message had not fully dawned on him, the vague sense of unease and suspicion that was his constant companion grew stronger with each passing minute.

‘Why d’you think we have to go home?’ he asked Thornton.

‘I thought you said they hadn’t paid our school fees,’ Thornton replied. He was not really interested.

‘But why d’you think that is?’ insisted Jacob. ‘Why didn’t they pay them?’ Thornton did not care. He was only thirteen, the apple of his mother’s eyes, a dreamer, a chaser of the cream butterflies that invaded the valley at this time of year. Today merely signalled freedom for him.

‘Oh, who knows with grown-ups,’ he said. ‘Just think, tomorrow we’ll wake up in our own bedroom. We can go out onto the balcony and look at the garden and no one will mind. And we can have egg hoppers and mangoes for breakfast instead of toast and marmalade. So who cares!’ He laughed. ‘I’m glad we’re leaving. It’s so boring here. We can do what we want at home.’ A thought struck him. ‘I wonder if the girls have been sent back too?’

On their last holiday they had climbed down from the bedroom balcony very early one morning and crept through the mist, to the square where the nuns and the monkeys gathered beside the white Portuguese church. They had had breakfast with Father Jeremy who wheezed and coughed and offered them whisky, which they had drunk in one swift gulp. And afterwards they had staggered back home to bed. Thornton giggled at the memory.