Bone China - Roma Tearne

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doubt, to some political rally. Thornton could never understand how anyone would deliberately choose a meeting over such a good party. Well, wasn’t that Christopher all over. Always making life difficult for himself. Still, Thornton was not one to try to change the world. No, no, he thought, seriously, shaking his head, frowning a little. He did all of that with his poetry. In the new ‘voice’ he was developing.

      ‘Can I read some of your poems, Thorn?’ asked the pretty nurse he was chatting to, anxiously seeing his frown. She hoped she wasn’t boring him.

      Thornton smiled, and the world tilted. Before righting itself again. The girl’s knees locked heavily together, making her sway towards him. Thornton did not notice. He had begun to recite one of his poems.

      ‘Oh!’ the girl said breathlessly when he had finished. ‘I think that was wonderful!’ She felt that she might, at any moment, swoon with desire.

      ‘Oh please,’ asked another girl, joining the group belatedly, looking at Thornton’s glossy hair. ‘Please say it again. I missed the first verse.’

      Jacob, deep in conversation with someone very dull, glanced up just as his brother was tilting the world again. There was nothing new here as far as Jacob could see, nothing suspicious, he thought, satisfied. Although, he paused, frowning, it suddenly occurred to him that lately Thornton had been out rather a lot. Feeling his elder brother’s eye on him, Thornton coolly tried tilting the world at him too, with no success. Jacob merely shook his head disapprovingly and went back to his dull conversation. Oh dear, thought Thornton regretfully, no joie de vivre. None whatsoever.

      The Prime Minister had asked their sister to play the piano. He had made a little speech about the lovely Miss de Silva. He told them all how proud he was of this home-grown talent. Then he led Alicia to the piano. Everyone fell silent as Alicia began to play. She played as though she was alone. As though she was at home, and the Prime Minister had not held her hand and smiled at her. She played as though there was no one there at all. Life was like that for her, thought Frieda, standing beside Robert with her breaking heart, watching him watch Alicia. Life was so easy for her sister. On and on went Alicia’s fingers, galloping with the notes, crossing boundaries, lifting barriers, drawing everyone in this elegant room together without the slightest effort. Aloysius reached for another drink. No one noticed.

      Sunil watched Alicia from the back of the room. Words like ‘majority language’ did not matter to her. Her language was simpler, older, less complicated. If only life could be like Alicia, he wished, filled with tender pride. It had been a useful evening for Sunil, meeting the Prime Minister, being noticed. His hopes for a united country were strengthened in spite of all the talk of civil unrest.

      Alicia was playing when a telephone rang for the Prime Minister. She was still playing when he received the news that rioting had broken out all over the city. The police needed the Prime Minister’s authorisation to deal with it. She was still playing as he left the party in his dark-tinted limousine with Sir John and the Chief Constable. No one saw them go. Sunil, suspecting an incident, went in search of more information. He learned that the rioting had got out of hand. What had been a slow protest, a silent march, days of handing out leaflets had turned into crowds of angry people, voices on the end of a megaphone. Someone had been injured. Then the number had risen and there had been some fatalities. A petrol bomb had been thrown. It was a night of the full moon, this night before the eclipse. There was a rumour that a Buddhist monk had been involved. An unknown passer-by had seen a young priest running away, a thin smear of saffron in the night. If a Buddhist monk had really been involved Sunil knew it would be bad for everyone. It would only take one single gesture, he thought, one furious shaven head, for centuries of lotus flowers to be wiped out forever.

      Alicia had just finished playing when the intruder broke in. Walking swiftly past the guard, past the doorman who tried and failed to stop him and past the servants who then appeared, he burst in, blood clinging to his shirt. His face was streaked with sweat and dirt. He was no more than a boy, his hands were cut and bruised, one eye was swollen and bleeding. There was glass in his hair and he smelt of smoke and something else. Someone screamed. The servants, having caught up with him, twisted his arms behind his back. The boy did not struggle. He stood perfectly still, searching the faces in the room until he found the face he had been looking for, crying out in anguish,

      ‘They killed them! They killed them! I saw them burn! Oh Christ! I saw them burn!’

      Grace, recognising him before anyone else, stepped forward saying in Sinhalese, in a voice seldom heard in public, coldly, sharply to the servants, ‘Let him go! He’s my son!’ And then in English, ‘Christopher, who has done this to you?’

      Outside, the rain they had all longed for began to fall with a thunderous noise, in long beating waves. Drumming on the earth, on the buildings, lashing against the land in great sheets. But no one heard.

       5

      THE RAIN DESCENDED WITH A VENGEANCE. It filled the holes in the road, it beat a tattoo on the fallen coconut shells and moved the dirt, transforming it swiftly into mud. It fell on Grace, standing stock-still and statue-like in the coconut grove, sari-silk clinging to her, flowers fallen from her hair. There was no escape. The land became a curtain of green water. Pawpaw leaves detached themselves, floating like large athletic spiders to the ground. The rain spared nothing. There were so many rivulets to form, so many surfaces to hammer against. Although it was still quite early, huge black clouds gave the garden an air of darkness. Even the birds, sheltering, waiting patiently, could barely be heard above the chorus of falling water. Earlier on, in the dead of night, a servant swore she had heard the devil-bird scream. It had come out of the forest because of the rain, the servant said, in the hope of escape. But escape was no longer possible.

      ‘Aiyo,’ wailed the servant, for she knew this was an ill omen.

      ‘You must leave an offering on the roadside,’ said her friend the cinnamon seller. ‘If you heard the devil-bird you must pray to God for protection.’

      So the servant woman took a plantain leaf and some temple flowers. She wrapped a mound of milk rice and rambutans in it, decorated it with fried fish and coconut, and left it outside the gate. She hoped the gods would be pleased. But the gods were not listening. They were too busy with the rains.

      Then just as suddenly, without warning, it stopped. The noise and the roar of the water ceased, and the early-morning traffic picked up from where it had been held up. Bicycle bells rang, the rickshaw men ran, and the crows that had been sheltering under the eaves of buildings came out again and continued their scavenging in the rubbish as though they had never left off. The ground steamed. The mud remained on the road of course, and passers-by still held up their umbrellas to catch any stray drop of wetness, but by and large the rain had stopped for the moment. It was as though someone had turned off a tap. What a different the sun made, bringing out all the everyday symphony of sounds, of callings and cawing and whistling and scrapings, and because she had slept in late after last night’s event, Alicia’s scales and arpeggios, joining in where the rain left off.

      The servant, having made her offering to the gods, on this day of total eclipse, brought in the breakfast. It consisted of milk rice, coarse jaggery, seeni sambal and mangoes.

      ‘For the lady,’ she said, beaming at Grace.

      It was meant as a pleasant surprise, but Grace, coming in just then (where had she been at this hour? wondered Myrtle), soaked to the bone and ashen-faced, did not look pleased.

      ‘What is this?’ she had shouted. ‘Who gave you permission to make milk rice? Who told you to make this auspicious dish? Do I pay you to make food without instruction?’

      Myrtle was astonished. Her cousin seemed beside herself. She was not normally a woman to show her temper in this way. Grace did not look well. She looked on the verge of collapse.

      ‘Where’ve you been, darl?’ Aloysius asked, astonished. ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere. You’re soaking. Here, give her a towel, will you, Myrtle? Thornton, pour your mother

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