The Flower Boy Read Online Free Page B

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    And while tea was the Sudu Mahattaya’s business, flowers were Chandi’s.
    APRIL WAS THE Nuwara Eliya season, when the Colombo social set arrived en masse to escape the stifling heat of the capital. Some stayed with planter friends or at their privately owned hill cottages. Others stayed at the Hill Club or at the Grand Hotel in Nuwara Eliya.
    They spent the next couple of months playing golf at the golf club, trout fishing at Lake Gregory, horse riding at the racecourse and down Lady McCallum’s Drive, or sipping Pimms and martinis in the shade of massive, flamboyant trees.
    In the evenings, they donned white ties, tails and evening dresses and congregated at the Hill Club or the Grand Hotel for an evening of dining and dancing.
    As the influx began, the mountain roads which wound round the hills like sleepy snakes would wake up to the sounds of coughing, spluttering automobiles struggling up the hills in second gear.
    When they began the climb up the mountain on which Glencairn sat, Chandi would be waiting, a huge bunch of flowers in his arms. As the cars chugged past, Chandi would thrust his flowers through their windows and pipe, “Flowers, lady? You want flowers?”
    The ladies would be enchanted by the grinning little flower boy. The men, who didn’t like being thus upstaged, usually growled, “Be off with you, you little scamp!”
    The cars would disappear, leaving Chandi clutching at his precious booty.
    When they came round the next bend, he would be there again, holding out his flowers and saying, “Only twenty-five cents, lady! Nice, pretty flowers?” in a hopeful voice. His endearing grin would be firmly in place.
    â€œOh, where did he come from?” the ladies would exclaim, thoroughly entertained. Chandi would be out of breath from running up and then down the mountain to catch up with the cars, but the prospect of the twenty-five cents would lend wings to his feet.
    About two appearances later, Chandi would be off to pick more flowers, the shiny twenty-five-cent coin feeling pleasantly heavy in his shirt pocket.
    Visitors to Glencairn often showed up with bunches of flowers remarkably similar to the ones growing in the garden outside.
    In the first week of April, Chandi had made two rupees this way. Because of the slightly illegal nature of his business, he told nobody about his little fortune, which lay buried in a corner of the garden, carefully marked by a large flat stone.
    Now he sat and wondered if the stone had been washed away by the rain, or been buried by mud. He hoped not. He had plans for that money.
    He had originally intended to buy his mother a new reddha or two. He had wanted to buy Rangi a schoolbag so she didn’t have to carry her books in the crook of her arm, where they dug into the soft flesh there and left red welts. He had wanted to buy himself a bicycle so he could use it for his flower business; running was hard work.
    Now he was saving it to go to England.
    It seemed like the best thing to do. He didn’t want to stay there. He just wanted to go and then come back, because everyone who came from England seemed to have huge bungalows and beautiful books and red-and-green-checked shorts. Those were reasons enough.
    He wanted a house of his own, not a room off the kitchen. He wanted his mother to wander through gardens picking flowers, and for Leela and Rangi to have their own rooms. He wanted to sit at a big dining table and have an Appuhamy bring unlimited quantities of food in to him. And he wanted his father to be able to live with them.
    His mother often told him that if he studied hard and did well in school, he could get a good job and look after them all. He had decided long ago that England was a far faster and less tedious way.
    He wondered if he would meet the Sudu Mahattaya’s son while he was there. He knew his name was Jonathan although he never called him that. Actually, he never called him anything because