Funny Boy (13 page)

He came in softly, his hands behind his back. “I have something for you,” he said, and laid the books on the blanket. I cried out in delight, and one by one I picked up
Good Wives, Little Men
, and
Jo’s Boys
. I wanted to reach out and hug him, but, feeling that this was inappropriate, I thanked him instead.

I noticed Amma standing in the doorway. She was looking at Daryl Uncle and there was an expression on her face I had never seen before.

Mala Aunty diagnosed my illness as infectious hepatitis. For the next two weeks I was very sick, and the days and nights seemed to dissolve into each other. Now and then I would hear Daryl Uncle’s voice in the hall outside, and once he sat by my bed, holding the cold compress to my forehead.

Gradually, I became conscious of the passing of the hours and when it was time to eat or go to the toilet. I grew more aware of the people around me, too, and I was quick to realize that many things had changed while I was sick. First, Daryl Uncle had become a frequent visitor to our house. He often spent time in my room, reading to me from one of the books he had bought. I noticed that something had altered between Amma and him. They spoke to each other with fewer words and more gestures, just like Neliya Aunty and Amma did. I also observed that on many mornings Amma dressed up in her smartest pants suits and left the house, not returning until it was time for Sonali and Diggy to come home from school. She seemed very different these days, happy but strangely nervous. Neliya Aunty, however, seemed to be in a very bad mood, and her anger was directed mainly at Amma.

Sonali and Diggy had changed, too. Sonali had become secretive, as if she had done something very bad, and she spent a lot of time in her room, drawing with her felt-tip pens. Diggy
had grown morose and would spend hours in the driveway with his air-gun, shooting at an old condensed-milk tin he set up as a target.

In the next week, both Neliya Aunty and Diggy became increasingly sullen. Then, to my astonishment, they became rude to Daryl Uncle, and, finally, he started coming less frequently. Neliya Aunty never went out to greet him any more and, when he visited, she would retire to the back verandah to help Anula with the cooking.

Finally the situation reached a head when Diggy turned his target-practice on the neighbours’ chickens. One Saturday morning, we heard the sound of his gun followed by the squawking of the hens. I went to my window and was just in time to see Amma yelling at Diggy to come down off the wall. When he did, she took him by the arm and shook him, shouting, “I’ve had enough! How much can I tolerate!”

It was then that Amma decided to take me away to convalesce in the hill country. I was overjoyed when I heard this. It was already May, the monsoon had not arrived, and the heat in Colombo was unbearable.

The bungalow we had rented surpassed all my expectations. It was on top of a hill, and once we had put our bags in our rooms we stood on the back verandah and looked down over the terraced garden. The garden was beautiful, with triangular and circular flower beds that contained an assortment of flowers which grew only in the hills. The garden bordered on a tea estate and, for miles below us, we could see, like a green carpet, the tidy foliage of the tea bushes.

The best part was that I was going to have Amma all to
myself. The only other person in the bungalow was a cook, and she left by early afternoon. It was a glorious day. After lunch and a nap, we sat in the garden and played Scrabble and ludo until the sun set. Then we went inside and ate dinner in contented silence, listening to the crickets and the call of the nightjar outside.

The next day, I was standing in the front garden in the shade of a fir tree when I saw a man walking up the hill towards the house. Even though he was quite a distance away, I knew soon enough that it was Daryl Uncle. I stared down at him, surprised, wondering what he was doing here. Then, as I watched him, I felt a sudden rush of disappointment and resentment. My bliss was to be disturbed, for I knew that the moment he entered our house I would no longer have Amma’s entire attention. Daryl Uncle had seen me now, and he waved to me. I didn’t wave back. When he was close enough he must have seen the expression in my eyes, because he said, “Are you all right?”

The friendly smile and the look of concern on his face reminded me of the day he had brought me those books, of how he had read to me while I was sick and had sat by my bed, holding a cold compress to my forehead. Much against my will, I felt my disappointment at seeing him begin to dwindle a little. He held out his hand to me and I took it as we began to go up the driveway. When Amma opened the front door, she didn’t seem at all surprised to see him.

Later that evening we were having tea out on the lawn when I said to him, “Why aren’t there many Burghers in Sri Lanka, Uncle?”

He was sprawled out on the grass in front of Amma and me. Both he and Amma laughed.

“When the government made Sinhala the national language in the 1950s many of them left because they only spoke English,” he explained.

“Are they English?”

“No. Their ancestors were Dutch, but people sometimes treated them as if they were English, especially after Independence.”

Daryl Uncle looked a little sad at this and, to cheer him up and make him laugh, I said with false naïveté, “If they had married Sri Lankans, they would have been real Sri Lankans, no?”

Instead of amusing him, my remark only made him seem more sad.

“It was not that easy,” he said as he studied his teacup, which sat on the grass. “Some Sri Lankan people thought Burgher people were too white to marry their children and some Burgher people thought Sri Lankan people were too brown to marry theirs.” I noticed that Amma and he were looking at each other and, for a moment, I felt as if they were no longer aware of my presence. I found myself observing his high cheekbones and the glints of gold in his brown beard, his thighs and the way they changed colour at the edge of his shorts, and his gentle, courteous manner, which seemed to ease something inside Amma, softening her sharp edges. I couldn’t help comparing him to my father, who, with his balding head, thin legs, slight paunch, and abrupt way of talking to Amma, cut a poor figure next to him.

Daryl Uncle was with us all the time. At night, when I went to bed, I could hear the murmur of their voices on the front verandah. Yet when I woke in the morning Daryl Uncle was never there. He would always come up to the house after breakfast. He made me laugh a lot and usually included me in his conversations with Amma. Also, Amma was happier than I ever remembered her being and this made her even more kind and loving towards me.

Then, on the night before we left for Colombo, Daryl Uncle and Amma had an argument. When I heard their raised voices, I got out of bed and leaned out of my window, which opened onto the side garden. The cause of the argument seemed to be that Daryl Uncle was going to Jaffna for a week, the day after we got back to Colombo.

“Are you mad?” Amma shouted at him. “There is fighting going on there.”

“Nothing will happen to me,” Daryl Uncle said. “Neither the army nor the Tigers care about someone who looks like a foreigner.”

“You’re putting your life at risk for nothing,” Amma insisted.

“It’s not nothing,” Daryl Uncle said. “People are being tortured and killed even as we sit in all this opulence.”

“Rubbish,” Amma said. “Absolute rubbish.”

“How can you be so callous?”

“You’re the one who’s callous,” she cried. Then her voice became tearful. “What about us? We have so little time left.”

“You know I’ll come back,” Daryl Uncle said, his voice softening.

“If you care for me, you’ll stay.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said firmly, “I love you, but I have to go. I must do it.”

“You’ll find nothing in Jaffna,” she said quietly now, as if defeated.

“I hope to God you’re right,” he replied.

I shut my window, then leaned my head against the pane, feeling the world spinning around me. Moments from the time Daryl Uncle came into our lives revealed their significance to me and I understood what he was doing here and why Amma had taken me away to convalesce. I felt a cold chill of fear as I realized that I was an unwitting accomplice in this scheme for Daryl Uncle and her to spend time together, away from the family. I thought of my father and felt my dread deepen. What would happen if he found out? Surely they would have to be divorced. I recalled Mr. and Mrs. Siriwardena down our road and what a terrible disgrace their separation had been. How the neighbours had talked about Mr. Siriwardena and his running away with the next-door servant woman; how people on our road stared at Mrs. Siriwardena, when she passed them, and sometimes even laughed openly at her. Their son had been in my class and the boys had teased him until he cried.

I shuddered at the idea of these things happening to our family. Not wanting to think about all this any more, I went to my bed and lay down. I finally fell asleep in the early hours of the morning and dreamed that we were the little women. Amma was Jo, the tomboy, Neliya Aunty was Meg, Sonali was
Amy, I was Beth, the sick one, and Daryl Uncle was Laurie, the boy next door who was in love with Jo. It was Christmas, and all us little women were longing for our father to come home.

The next day the monsoon broke. Daryl Uncle had left on the early-morning train and so he didn’t come up to the house. I was glad of this.

Amma and I waited for the taxi that would take us to the station. The rain was falling in sheets of water and the living room, usually so bright and cheerful, appeared gloomy in the grey light, the colours of the upholstered chairs, faded. Amma sat on a sofa and stared at the carpet. As I looked at her, I remembered my happiness on our first afternoon here, what a good time I had imagined we would have together. Now I wondered if all she had thought about was the next day, when Daryl Uncle would arrive.

Finally the taxi came and we picked up our bags and went slowly to the door.

When we reached Colombo, Neliya Aunty, Sonali, and Diggy were waiting for us at the Fort railway station. It was peculiar to see them standing there waving cheerfully at us. Sonali and Neliya Aunty hugged me tightly. Even Diggy seemed in an exceptionally good mood, for he patted me on the back and showed me the skin of a squirrel he had shot. As I listened to them telling Amma and me about the things they had done while we were away, I felt a terrible sense of distance from them.

When we got home, there was a letter on the hall table. It was from my father. Amma glanced at it. Then, without opening it, she put it in her bag.

I began school the next day. After such a long period of freedom, school, with its rigid timetables, cantankerous teachers, and irritating boys, should have been unbearable, but it was a relief. Amma was to pick me up after school for the next few weeks because I was not considered well enough to cycle home with Diggy.

That afternoon Amma arrived at the school with Daryl Uncle. Seeing him made me feel a sense of dread. As I got into the car, I could tell that they had been fighting. Daryl Uncle gave me a slight smile and Amma looked straight ahead of her. We drove in silence to Daryl Uncle’s house. He lived on a street in Bambalapitiya. His house was the last one on the road, and beyond it were the railway tracks and the sea. When Amma stopped the car, Daryl Uncle tried to touch her arm but she moved it away.

After a moment he said, “I’ll be back in a week.” Then he got out of the car and I climbed into the front seat. Daryl Uncle stood at his gate and waved, but neither of us waved back. Amma turned the car around, the tires squealing slightly, and drove back up the road. When we reached the top of the road, I looked back and saw that Daryl Uncle was still standing at his gate.

After a while I said to Amma, “So Daryl Uncle is going to Jaffna?”

She looked at me, shocked, and I glanced away from her quickly. When we arrived at our house, Neliya Aunty was sitting on the front verandah doing some sewing. Amma parked the car and went hurriedly past her to her room. When I came up the steps, Neliya Aunty beckoned to me furiously and asked in a whisper, “What happened?”