The Flower Boy (32 page)

She resolved to go and find Chandi the moment she got back to Glencairn. Maybe he treated her with disdain, but at least he was honest about it.

“THE SITUATION IN Colombo is getting worse,” John said to Robin Cartwright. They were enjoying a glass of port after dinner. “Lots of people leaving. I even heard that some of the planters in Badulla and Bandarawela were packing up.”

“Any cause for concern?” Robin asked.

“I don't know yet. Perhaps we should send the girls back.”

“They're going to hate you, you know,” Robin said warningly.

“Yes, I know. But what else is there to do? At least that way, if things get a bit dicey, we'll be the only ones here.”

“But surely nothing's going to happen up here?” Robin said doubtfully. “These people worship the ground you walk on, old chap.”

“For now. It only takes one or two troublemakers for things to get rough. This handing-over process isn't going to be smooth, no matter how much we want it to be. Look at India and the trouble there.”

Robin settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “Well, let's not be hasty. I mean, you kept the girls here through the war. Surely this can't be as dangerous. At least there are no Nazis here!”

John relaxed a little, reassured by Robin's confidence. “I daresay you're right. I'll be sure to tell the girls you were the one who talked me out of sending them home. Then you'll be a bigger hero than you are already!”

They laughed.

“They're good girls,” Robin said reflectively. “Even that little minx Lizzie has a heart of gold. And as for Anne—she's going to make some man very happy one day.”

John smiled. “I have no concerns about Anne, although I suspect there's quite a lot of steel hidden under that soft exterior. No, it's Lizzie who gives me the most sleepless nights. She and Chandi are going to give me more gray hairs than I already have.” He stood up and went over to refill their glasses.

“Chandi,” Robin said musingly. “What's going to happen to him when you leave? Have you thought about that?” He deliberately didn't mention Premawathi, but they were both aware she was included in the question.

John sighed heavily. “I've thought about little else lately,” he admitted, sitting down again. “It's a damnable situation, Robin. I've seriously thought about offering to take them with us, but you know Premawathi. She gets thorny whenever she feels she's being offered charity.”

“But it wouldn't be charity.”

“I know that but she doesn't. I can't bear to think of what will happen to Chandi if he's left here. Or worse still, if he had to go back to Deniyaya. Grim place, from what I've heard.”

Robin leaned forward and looked intently at John. “Supposing you asked them to leave with you and they did agree. What then?”

John jumped up and started pacing the room. “I don't know,” he said helplessly. “I could put Chandi through school. God knows I can afford it and it would give me enormous pleasure, but—”

“And Premawathi?”

John stopped by Robin's chair and looked down at him. “Ah, my friend, you get straight to the point, don't you?” He looked up at the ceiling. “To be honest, I don't know. I don't think she'll ever agree to come. Even for Chandi's sake.”

Robin Cartwright decided he had said enough. No point putting his friend through hell trying to find answers that were already staring him in the face.

He rose, clapped John on the back sympathetically and left.

The fire spluttered and popped, throwing a shower of sparks. A few hours later, just a few embers glowed among the ashes. John, staring intently into it, saw only a laughing face with dancing brown eyes.

A FEW WEEKS later, the same topic was being discussed in the kitchen by Premawathi and Sunil's mother, who had wheezed her way up the hill to visit, and to thank Premawathi for all the goodies she had been getting via Sunil.

“Just as Sunil gets this job, these modayas in Colombo start wanting to rule themselves. What's wrong with the white people, I ask you?” she huffed indignantly.

Premawathi only smiled. The question obviously didn't require an answer and her views were quite different from Sunil's mother's.

“Just see what a mess they'll make of it. That's the problem with our people. They don't know a good thing when they see it. They'll kick the white man out and when they have made a mess of this country, they'll beg him to come back,” Sunil's mother continued.

“We'll have to wait and see,” Premawathi said, amused.

“Do you think the Sudu Mahattaya will leave soon?” Sunil's mother asked anxiously. “God knows what idiot will come here and start lording it over us.”

A curious little shaft of pain left Premawathi momentarily breathless. “I don't know,” she said.

“What will happen to my Sunil then? Jobs are so hard to come by these days. Maybe I'll send him to his uncle in Colombo. But that old miser never did anything for his brother, so why would he want to help his brother's son?”

Sunil's mother's voice faded as Premawathi's thoughts took over. What would happen to them all? she wondered desperately. Was she destined to become a bitter old woman who lived out the rest of her life alone in some hovel without even a few precious memories to warm up an otherwise cold existence?

Up to this point in her life, the memories she had collected were of work, of hardship, of loss. And, of course, a few paltry years of love. For this last, she had only herself to blame, she knew that, but that didn't make it any easier to accept.

So was this what her life was to be? No giving, no taking, no living? This wasn't living. It was mere existence. Even she could see that. She thought of John, who might be gone soon, who
would
be gone soon, she corrected herself painfully.

He was the only one who had seen her not as a housekeeper, mother or wife, but as a person. As a human being who required as much comfort and care as she had given out all these years. He
had
cared for and comforted her. He had talked to her, made her laugh, shared his concerns with her, asked for her advice. She had put a stop to all that though, she thought, bewildered. She had deliberately shut out the only person who had been good to her.

And for what?

As appeasement to her guilty conscience?

Don't I owe it to myself to be happy, she wondered, after I've spent most of my life trying to make other people happy? Again, as she had so often in the last few months, she saw John's concern, heard him pleading with her to tell him what had happened.

She never had.

It had been easier to shut him out.

She rose to her feet, gripped by a sudden urgency. She vaguely heard Sunil's mother saying something, but ignored her and ran from the kitchen, down the corridor.

John had just finished his lunch and was going into his room for a nap when he saw her. She looked like an exotic angel, for during her flight down the corridor her hair had come undone and streamed out behind her like a black veil.

For a moment he thought something awful had happened, but as she came closer, he saw her face and felt as if a great weight had been lifted from him. He stepped back into his room.

She didn't stop when she reached him, but flew into his arms and laid her face against his chest. “Can you forgive me?” she asked softly, and John, knowing she already knew the answer, said nothing but closed his eyes as waves of relief washed over him. With his foot, he kicked the door shut.

“I want to tell you why,” she said later.

He laid a finger on her lips. “I don't want to know.”

“But you must. Otherwise it will hang between us. This way, I can lay it to rest,” she insisted.

He waited. Taking a deep breath, she started telling him about what had happened that night, what Chandi had seen, what Chandi had said, what she had felt. She poured out her horror, guilt and anguish. Tears streamed down her cheeks at the memory. Tears streamed down his.

“Oh, Premawathi,” he murmured. “No wonder you blamed me. No wonder you shut me out.”

“But I was wrong to!” she exclaimed. “I can see that now! John, I've finally started to understand that it would have happened anyway. Rangi would have died young. She couldn't cope with this world. I scarcely can, and I'm so much stronger than she was. And Chandi had to see, to grow up. I know it was an awful way and I would have given my soul to have made everything different, but it wouldn't have helped.”

He looked at her with amazement. “You are an incredible woman, do you know that?”

She shook her head impatiently. “No. I'm a stupid woman, treating you like a leper when you're the only one who's ever been good to me.”

“You make it very easy,” he said gently.

She rubbed her cheek against his.

“Premawathi,” he said tentatively. She lifted her eyes to his inquiringly. “You know what they're saying in Colombo. I've been hearing things too. You know we may have to leave.” He felt her body tense, but forced himself to continue. “Will you go with us? You and Chandi?”

She smiled in the darkness. “You're not being fair. You ask me anything now and I'll agree. Ask me when you know for sure that you have to leave.”

“And what will you say then?” he persisted.

She became serious once more. “I don't know, John. I honestly don't know. It's not as easy as saying yes, you know. There's so much else involved. I don't know if I could leave. This might not be much, but it's my home. If I came to yours, it would be the same thing as you being here. I wouldn't belong. And perhaps one day, I'll have to leave.”

What could he say? He wanted to shout and say no, it wouldn't be like that at all, to stamp his foot and insist that she change her mind, to use all the emotional blackmail he could—Chandi's education, Chandi's future. But he didn't. He stared bleakly into the darkness, waiting for the ax to fall on his happiness.

IT WAS OBVIOUS to everyone that John and Premawathi had regained their lost paradise. At least for the time being. Chandi felt an easing in his heart and for a while, it seemed as if the house were sighing with contentment.

Perhaps it was infectious, this happiness, or perhaps it was simply a time when decisions became easier to make, for Ayah announced that she was leaving to make a new life with the firewood man, whose name, they discovered, was Pala. He was going south to start a small poultry farm with his savings, and Ayah was going with him. No one knew if they planned to get married or not, but it didn't matter.

She left in June with her bag of belongings, fifty rupees from John and tears in her eyes, for she had spent thirteen years of her life at Glencairn and even though she was going to a new life and a new love, it was still a wrench. She clung to Rose-Lizzie for long moments, and whispered endearments in her ear, the same endearments she had whispered to her since she had been a baby. Rose-Lizzie blinked back her own tears and tried desperately to come up with a flippant comment, but for once was at a loss for words.

Chandi watched silently as she surreptitiously wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and then looked around to see if anyone had seen her.

In the days that followed, he tried to maneuver casual meetings in the garden and after lessons. He didn't want her to think he was feeling sorry for her, because that would have wounded her far more than all the departures life had in store for her. But perhaps she sensed it anyway, because she took care to avoid him.

Chandi unreasonably felt dejected at her rebuffs, conveniently forgetting that he had been guilty of meting out the same treatment just months ago. Now he was the one to slouch around getting in everyone's way, irritating people and initiating arguments during their study time.

On Saturdays and Sundays there were no lessons, and Anne, Rose-Lizzie and Chandi were usually left to their own devices.

Anne was always busy, and spent her weekends planning the week's menus and going through the linen closet looking for things that needed mending. At almost twenty, she showed no signs of wanting a life other than the one she currently had, but then again, there were no real options available to her except to return to England, which she refused to do.

She wanted to start a school for the children on the plantation, or at least teach at the church school, but John had advised her to wait awhile. Besides, she always had a lot to do. Lessons and Glencairn took up most of her days. Technically, she had learned all that Robin Cartwright could teach her, and both he and John had no doubt that she could pass any university entrance examination with ease if she wanted to.

She just didn't seem to want to.

She seldom went out and when she did, it was usually to the factory to speak with the workers and listen to their problems, or sometimes down to the oya with Rose-Lizzie.

One particularly hot Saturday, they sat in the shade of the old flamboyant, which cast its shadow, and occasionally its flowers, on the water. In spite of their thin cotton dresses, they were hot from their walk down here. They lay in the grass and fanned away the heat with their straw hats, laughing with delight at the small butterflies that appeared in droves at this time of year and hovered above the flowers like yellow clouds. Unlike butterflies in the city, which flew away at the sight of people, these actually ventured closer to see if these strange ugly flowers contained some secret cache of nectar.

Little had changed here in the last decade. There were no people to foul up the water and no new factories to empty their effluents into its clean, clear depths. Very few people ventured here, and the few who did only dipped their hands into the water to wash hot faces or to slake their thirst. The grass remained cropped to a comfortable height thanks to old Jamis's cow, which was brought up here to graze during the hot months, while old Jamis napped beneath the same flamboyant tree that Anne and Rose-Lizzie reclined under now.