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.
‘Well, that should suit Thornton, then,’ Myrtle said. She laughed hollowly.
Grace stopped eating. She was no longer hungry.
‘He’s a poet! He can’t do any old job,’ protested Frieda.
No one seemed to hear her. Frieda felt like crying. She wished Thornton were here; she loved his cheerfulness. She wished her sister wasn’t at the Conservatoire; she missed her terribly. I hate Myrtle, she thought, glancing at her mother. Grace looked around the table. She too wished Thornton were present, with his
