it there? Now that the British have gone?’
Christopher frowned. His father was looking shifty. ‘What’s he up to, now?’ he muttered to Jacob.
Aloysius was thinking furiously. Being in the new government meant access to British whisky and British cigarettes. Aloysius was sick of arrack and unfiltered Old Roses. Being in the government meant better rations and a superior quality of rice. With his eyes firmly on the main chance, he watched Sunil talking to Alicia. His daughter, he observed, with a growing sense of well-being, had changed in the last three years. The promise of her childhood good looks appeared to have come to fruition. Until now her life had been filled exclusively with her music. She had spent her days in a dreamworld hardly straying from the confines of her Bechstein. Never mind, thought Aloysius, delightedly, all this was about to change. Tonight had brought the first public recognition of her talent. What else had it brought? Seeing his wife approaching, he waved, excitedly.
‘Darl,’ he cried, ‘come and meet Sunil Pereira.’
And without a moment’s hesitation, before his wife could comment, he invited this courteous young man home. The romance, for clearly it was to be just that, was to be encouraged.
‘He seems very nice,’ Grace admitted later, a little doubtfully. Left to herself she would have waited a while before issuing any invitations. ‘Aren’t we being a bit hasty though?’ she ventured. ‘Perhaps we should find out a bit more about him first? Her future is just beginning and this is only the first one.’
‘Nonsense, she’s the perfect age, darl,’ said Aloysius, looking sentimentally at her. ‘The same age as you were when your father gave me your hand.’
Yes, thought Grace, sharply, and look what a mess I made. But she kept her thoughts to herself.
‘Why do I have to be there when he visits?’ complained Jacob, who had planned to work overtime. ‘I don’t have anything to say to him.’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Jacob,’ Aloysius replied, annoyed, ‘show some family solidarity, will you?’
The day after Alicia’s graduation the newspapers were full of reviews of her performance. Her talent, her youth, her future, all these things were suddenly of interest. Already she had been offered two concerts.
‘Beethoven and Mozart,’ she said, in a panic, ‘all in a month. How will I learn them?’
The de Silvas were staggered. Overnight, Alicia had become something of a celebrity. A photographer came to the house and her picture appeared in a music magazine. The family felt as though they were seeing her for the first time. And suddenly there was an admirer as well. Two more weeks went by. Sunil Pereira came to call. He had thought of nothing else but Alicia since the concert. He waited, impatient for the visit, a prey to Ranjith Pieris’s teasing. He hardly slept, dreaming constantly about her.
‘Go and see them, men,’ Ranjith teased. ‘Put yourself out of your misery, or I’ll have to!’
So, plucking up his courage, unprepared for his meeting with her, much less her eccentric colonial family, he went.
Let loose at this first encounter, the de Silvas reacted each in their different ways.
‘Hello, Sunil,’ said Thornton, shaking hands with him, smiling in a new and dazzling way. It was clear he needed to do nothing else. ‘Why don’t you come with us to the party at the Skyline Hotel next week? There’s supposed to be an extremely good jazz quartet playing.’
Ah, yes, why not? thought Myrtle. Why not show off in our usual fashion?
Christopher, resigned and silent as always, saw no point in getting annoyed with his family. They were completely crazy. Any friends of theirs were bound to be crazy too. What am I doing here? he thought. I don’t belong.
‘Where do your parents live, Sunil?’ asked Grace tactfully, thinking, first things first. A few discreet enquiries never went amiss. Earlier that day she had discussed Sunil with Vijay. Lying in his arms, she had told Vijay about their first encounter.
‘He has an open, friendly face,’ she had said.
Seeing him again, she felt she had been right. The young man seemed unaffected and honest.
‘My father worked for the railways,’ Sunil told them. ‘He was killed in the riots of ’47: Now my mother lives in Dondra.’
He hesitated. Would a family such as this have heard about the riots in ’47? Grace nodded, encouragingly. Of course she remembered.
‘He was crushed in an accident,’ Sunil said. His father, he told them, had been working his shift at the time. He had not been part of the riots but in the skirmish that followed he had been trampled to death. ‘My mother couldn’t get her widow’s pension because it was thought my father had taken part in the demonstration. She should have taken the matter to a tribunal but, well…’ He spread his hands out expressively.
Alicia was listening. There was not a trace of bitterness in Sunil’s voice. In the silence that followed, Grace read between the lines. She had heard how terrible things had been, how many people had been killed. Sunil’s childhood would have been very hard as a direct result. Being a Sinhalese woman, Sunil’s mother would have been ignored by the British. She would have had no idea how to get any compensation. Aloysius nodded. One brown face, he guessed, would have been the same as any other. Aloysius was unusually silent. The talk turned to other things. To Sunil’s political ambitions for the new country they were building. Good God, thought Aloysius astonished, I must be growing old. This boy’s optimism is so refreshing.
‘Our only way forward is through education,’ Sunil told Alicia, earnestly. It was a simple thought, he admitted, apologetically, but the discovery was a turning point for him. Christopher, about to leave the room, stopped in surprise.
‘All the foreign rule we’ve been subjected to is bound to affect us as a country,’ Sunil continued. ‘We have become a confused nation. What we desperately need now is free state education. For everyone.’ He was talking to them all, but it was Alicia he was looking at. ‘Sinhalese, Tamils, everyone,’ he said.
There was no doubting his sincerity. Ah, thought Jacob, cynically, here we go again, same old story. Well, what does he think he can achieve alone?
‘I went from the village school to being a weekly boarder in town,’ Sunil told them. ‘Then I took the scholarship exam for Colombo Boys School.’
A self-made man, thought Aloysius, impressed. They are the best. It’s men like this we need.
‘I found it paid off,’ Sunil smiled at Alicia. ‘After that, I could send my mother some money.’
But he’s wonderful, Alicia was thinking. He’s so wonderful! Christopher too was listening hungrily. Here at last, in the midst of his idiotic family whose sole interests were concerts and parties, was someone he might talk to. Here at last was a real person. Someone who might care about the state of this place. Suddenly Christopher wanted desperately to have a proper conversation with Sunil. But there were too many de Silvas present. He stood sullen and uncommunicative, hovering uncertainly in the background, not knowing what to do next.
Sunil had no idea of the tensions around him. The family behaved impeccably, plying him with petits fours (where, he wondered fleetingly, did they get them?) and tea, served in exquisite white bone-china
