Andy Roberts ” a short story from “Rainbows in Braille” – A collection of short stories – By Elmo Jayawardena
As it happened
I knew Andy from years gone by. No one bothered with his real name; he was simply Andy Roberts, of course connected in some way to cricket and the fiery West Indian fast bowler of yesteryear. Andy’s mother, Cicilin, worked for Aunty Dee, job description, Major Domo of the kitchen and in charge of all the chores that went with a middle class home in the sixties.
“She is the boss,” Aunty Dee used to tell all her friends.
“I am out at work and it is Cicilin who runs the home.”
Big and charcoal-black, that was Cicilin, hefty as a hippo, with a smile that sprouted through toothless gums and an abundance of breasts that overflowed out of her homemade jackets worn above her cloth-wrapped bottom. Cicilin certainly was ramrod at Dee’s home, duties included everything plus occasionally spanking the little masters, the Dee juniors of the household. This was Sri Lanka, sans wars and turmoil, times when life was lighter, slow lane and lazy stroll, where laughter came easy and plenty to all and sundry.
Andy was about ten and hailed from a family of more than a dozen. He tagged along with his mother, to stay at Dee’s.
“One more mouth for me to feed, one less for that useless Kalakanniya,” she referred in the most un-complimentary manner to Cicilin’s no-good husband. That’s how it all worked, super simple.
Andy Roberts was ordinary, the prototype average in everything, eternally with a faraway look. His marbles clicked slow and his lift never reached the top floor, stuck somewhere at lower levels to go through life with a mere semblance of want and ambition. He had been to school to learn to write his name and a few syllables and there ended his academics. Andy passed his time at Aunty Dee’s helping his mother in the kitchen and doing small-time work such as watering the garden and sweeping the house, plus running errands for whoever needed his services.
Andy’s day really began when Aunty Dee’s son came home from school. Being the same age as Andy they were inseparable playmates. The two would go straight into the garden with bat and ball, an imaginary Lords. They would set stumps, the master taking guard and Andy measuring his run up. The contest would begin with the little master wielding the willow and sending the soft ball to all fences and roofs in the neighbourhood to the demon fast bowling of Andy. Servant boys seldom got to bat, they only bowled, and so Andy bowled and bowled.
Andy was short, very short; so short that even a bouncer would have clean bowled him if he ever took the crease. That’s how tall he stood from the ground. But, he was lethal with the ball. Sarong tucked up in Kahapata fashion, long galloping run-up, a sky jump and of course no over arm but simply a wild chuck. Andy sent his short-man class missiles to little Dee who smashed them into makeshift boundaries at all corners of the garden. They played everyday till the Angelus chimed at the nearby church. Little Dee was Gary Sobers, Clive Lloyd or Vivian Richards or whoever came to mind that day. Of course, the mate was always Andy Roberts, the four-footer errand boy, water man in the garden and Cicilin’s kolla, who transformed into a demon fast bowler by afternoon.
The world got older, so did the rest of us, each growing and drifting away from the tender years. Little Dee’s name began to be splashed in sports pages while Andy took the domestic servant’s route and went to work as a temporary gardener in a five-star hotel. No more cricket, just rainbow memories of Kahapata sarongs and chucking balls for the little master to swing his bat. That was fine, new chapters to begin.
That’s when Andy fell in love.
“She works at the hospital,” Andy boasted to all and sundry, “she is an attendant in the children’s ward.”
They had met on the train, the one they rode everyday while wending to work. It was a “look and smile” train romance, the hundreds that ignite among the young to give them some colour to their lives. This was Segal’s Love Story modernised, Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neil replaced, Andy was in ecstasy with daises popping out of his ears. Lo and behold, love and all, stolen Matinees and amorous evenings at “Hard Rock Cafes”.
“Nothing like Hindi movies,” Andy convinced his love, “They are very very long.”
Those Hindi romances would soar and fizzle numerous times, lengthening the movies to a good three hours. Not a word understood, the whole pantomime was dragging and everlasting, longer the better for Andy’s kind.
, “Who cares a hoot about what goes on the screen,” Andy pumped up his hospital attendant.
“Who cares about what they say and why they cry,” that was Andy’s explanation.
The action was all on the seats, Andy doing gymnastics; creeping his hands in all directions and twisting what else he had in all combinations of sensuous contortions. The hours were long, so was the action, pure limited lust, a prelude to a promised paradise when the show was over.
That’s where they went after the Hindi movies, to the Hard Rock Café for a bit of a finale. That part was played on the sandy beaches of Dehiwela where pauper lovers sat on large abstract granite boulders munching ten-cent gram. That was their Hard Rock Café, hard rocks to sit on and ten-cent kadala gotu to munch. Andy spoke of their future together and the hospital attendant listened. Andy had great plans, marriage, kids, where to pitch their tent and so on.
“Who knows?” he squeezed her hand and said, “We might even save enough money to buy a small part of the moon.” Such was their love talk.
Lulled by the sea breeze they awaited anxiously for the sun to go down to become more adventurous in their treasure hunts, all to re-enact the Willie-Boy’s immortal Romeo and Juliet in its Sri Lankan version, of course a little saucier than good-man William ever imagined.
Andy did fine, temporary job tending the five-star flora, riding trains with Ali McGraw and spending exciting evenings at the Hard Rock Cafe, what more to ask of life?
The monsoons changed, so did people. The hospital attendant shifted gears and upgraded from her temporary gardener to a more prosperous salesman at Ceylinco House. Andy’s sails collapsed, the romance went rotten, broke our fast bowler’s heart. He didn’t know how to cope. Pleadings with the attendant to resurrect the love story fell on deaf ears.
“How to go back,” defended Ali McGraw.
“No more ‘thuttu-dekay lovers’ in my life and no more Hard Rock Cafes either.”
She was now cuddling in Green Cabin and eating ‘lamprais’ and drinking extra sweet milkshakes at Cream House with the Ceylinco man.
No way out, no life without the attendant, Andy, the lost lover, a soul shattered man, an also-ran in the race of romance, took eleven gulps of Pynol to end his life.
Miracles do happen. A work mate in the hotel spotted Andy in a pool of vomit and sounded the alarm. Fellow workers gathered and rushed Andy in a three wheeler to the accident ward of the General Hospital. A quick cleansing of the stomach, flavoured with a little bit of luck and Andy survived.
It was to ward 14 he was rolled on a high hospital trolley. The word had already spread, fellow patients strained their necks to see their new Pynol Pal enter ward. They all wanted to get a glimpse of the ‘Kamikaze Kid.’ Mere mention of attempted suicide had made Andy somewhat a celebrity.
Visitors trickled in, and visitors questioned. So did the nurses and the attendants and fellow lodgers of the Government Hospital ward. Andy stared at the ceiling and kept silent, not saying a word as to why he had tried to end his life.
Two days later a sergeant came, from the Slave Island Police Station. Kata Uththara business, the law had to know why Andy attempted suicide. That was the law.
The floodgates opened. Andy’s mournful tears poured and then cascaded. The policeman waited, pencil in hand, notebook ready to record the reasons.
“Every six months they call us and stop our work,” Andy wailed like a child.
“Then they start again, same pay same conditions as a new labourer,” Andy went on to spill some forbidden beans about labour exploitation, a well concealed situation hush-hushed by the powers and swept under the carpet.
“No EPF, no ETF, nothing, no service charge, not even leave when we are sick.”
“We fall sick, they cut our pay, so we go to work, sick or not sick.”
“The worst is we cannot even join the Worker’s Union to tell them to fight for us, we are casuals from six months to six months, not entitled to Union protection.”
“Three years I slaved in the sun and rain looking after their garden, for what? Only to be told by the boss, “take it or leave it.”
“They treat us worse than animals,” Andy went soft as in confession. “So what’s the point? Isn’t dying better?” The question was direct and went straight into the Policeman’s heart through his khaki tunic, piercing his unpolished police brass buttons.
Andy said more, all to do with the unfairness of life in his gardener’s job. The Sergeant wrote and wrote till his pencil went blunt. A few onlookers heard too, the ward occupants who had nothing to do and longed for any little drama to divert their attention from the drudgery of groans and moans of their fellow patients.
They nodded in affirmation. “It is true,” they said for the policeman to hear.
“Life has been very unfair to Andy the gardener.”
“Some action must be taken,” they voiced in their impotent protest.
Andy kept crying and adding more versions of his exploited slave existence in the hotel trade.
“You think we get to eat?” going into over-drive in a sigh-filled lament.
“They give us the same tasteless rice and dhal everyday and they throw away the food that remains in their restaurants.” It certainly was a sad revelation for the audience.
“Why? Are our mouths too rotten for their fancy food? Andy asked his face in torment, his soul in rage.
“Throw to the garbage bins than give us? And we eat rice and dhal and dhal and rice everyday while rotting in the sun to preserve their flowers.”
The writing finished and the policeman left with his blunt pencil and pierced police brass buttons. He would file his report at the station, but before that he would talk to his boss. This story could be a fairy tale if some bleeding-heart reporter got hold of it. It would become a smash hit in those Fanon type “Wretched of the Earth” columns that scream justice and equality. People in the hotel trade needed to know that the lid was about to fly off and the beans were about to spill out from their Pandorian Hotel Kingdom.
“Good that you came to me,” said the one with more brass buttons.
“I know the hotel people; they need to know before that arsehole tells the whole world his rice and dhal stories.”
Telephones rang and “more brass buttons” spoke and the one from the hotel was grateful; ‘Black Label’ grateful.
First came fancy dishes from the hotel, especially prepared for Andy to regain his strength. They were sent in logo-printed hotel plates and cutlery that twinkled like sequins in a fairy’s dress; all wrapped in cellophane to showcase what Andy ate. They came three times a day, almost like a buffet. Ward-mates joined too, to relish the left-overs that Andy couldn’t finish. All thanks to Andy and the police report and someone‘s call to someone in the hotel trade.
“I wanted to see for myself how you are recovering,” that was none other than the Personnel Manager himself. He had come with a few others from the office to see Andy, his disciples from the personnel department. They all stood around Andy, their ties strangling their bloated necks and their hotel food fattened bellies almost bursting under their tight leather belts, Cross pens in the pockets and sunglasses on the heads. The disciples had all joined the Boss to visit their long lost friend. Some even touched the gardener’s toes and knees, of course over the sheet, just to show they cared.
‘You get well Andy, you come back and I will not have you cutting grass and trimming hedges anymore,” the Manager promised. “You will be in Housekeeping or maybe even in a restaurant and of course permanent with service charge and everything,” he looked at his henchmen who nodded a prompt amen.
In some old half torn bristol-board file was Andy’s report, gathering soot and dust in the Slave-Island Police Station; conveniently and gainfully forgotten.
I saw Andy again, at Aunt Dee’s 75th birthday party, now promoted to butler status in the Dee household. He was serving drinks and supervising the re-filling of food trays. Andy is now married (not to Ali McGraw of Hard Rock Cafe fame).
“That’s my wife Sir,” he pointed to a smart looking woman serving ice coffee to the guests with two little ones in tow.
“They are five and three,” he birth marked his offspring.
We conversed awhile, told me he now has a steady job in the same hotel. He is a permanent employee in the house-keeping department, medical leave and annual leave and service charge included.
Aunty Dee’s son was there too celebrating the mother’s birthday. He is now a well known international cricketer, Andy’s old playmate and cricket partner who braved and faced Andy’s Kahapata Sarong thunderbolts everyday till the angelus was rung in the nearby church.
“Yes I remember how Andy bowled and how I batted, this was our Lords,” he nostalgically pointed to the garden.
As for Andy, same old Andy Roberts, laughing at life with the far away look, Cicilin’s Kolla, demon pacee, train-ride Romeo, horticulturist, hemlock man, all-round guttersnipe, who whilst lying on a hospital bed, in one quick thinking moment, yorked and clean-bowled the establishment.
Mini Glossary
Kalakanniya – a miserable man
Kahapata – folded to the knee
Kolla – little boy
Thuttu-dekay -very cheap
Kata Uththara – verbal evidence
Kadala Gotu – gram packets
Lampraise – rice cooked in a meat stock and baked in a banana leaf
