Bone China by Roma Tearne

Author:Roma Tearne [Roma Tearne ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781554689712
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada

‘I’m ready!’ said Meeka, coming into her parents’ bedroom in her school uniform. White shirt, navy blue pleated skirt, sweater, long white socks, new polished shoes. A huge chorus of birds had woken her. The sounds were very different from the birds she knew; softer, insistent in a different way. She hummed quietly to herself.

‘I can’t do my tie,’ she said holding it out.

It was five thirty in the morning. A chink of light showed through the dull mustard curtains. Thornton woke with a start. The street lights had not been turned off yet. He waited for the barrage of sounds to assail his ears, the crows, the servant girl using her coconut scrapers, discarding the shells one by one hollowly on the ground, the sound of the fisherman crying ‘malu, malu’, dogs barking, bicycle bells, whistles. He waited for the lurking heat outside the darkened room to come in, ready to pounce at the merest hint of movement, making itself felt, flooding the room with sweat. He waited, his heart pounding, but all he could feel, all he could hear was the sound of his daughter’s humming. Close by, Savitha was snoring gently. Thornton had been dreaming of the girl with the ramrod hair. She had been smiling at him, moving threads of gold away from her mouth. He had been showing her around the Fort before the curfew, they were eating thosai and drinking king coconut. The girl kept smiling, telling him how wonderful his poems were, and Thornton was just reaching out to touch that great shining mane of cashmere gold with his long sensitive fingers, when Anna-Meeka woke him. He groaned, pulling the eiderdown away from his chin. Could a man not have a bit of peace, even in his own bed?

‘Can you do my tie,’ said Meeka firmly, tugging at the bed covers, soaking him in cold air, determined.

The dawn chorus had got louder and she hummed louder too.

‘It’s five thirty in the morning!’ said Thornton, squinting at his watch.

Regretfully, promising to return at a later date, he put Miss Ramrod away. You understand, he told her, it’s nothing personal, nothing to do with how I feel, but it is just not possible to have any conversation when my daughter is around. She is a fearsome presence, you know, a barrier to all carnal pleasure. Miss Ramrod smiled, still removing hair from her mouth (how much hair did the girl have? Thornton wondered fleetingly), and swiftly faded. She knew when she was beaten.

Later, even Meeka could smell the change in the air; a subtle shift here and there, some traces of dew on the uncovered earth, soft mist on the horizon. Thornton, walking her to the new school, bleary-eyed from his early start, felt it and was pierced with a sharp longing for the hills of his childhood. Meeka felt it and associated it forever with the first day of term, new pencils, ruler, rubber, resolutions. All across the street were children walking to school, calling out to their friends, laughing, chewing bubblegum.

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