Читать книгу Brixton Beach - Roma Tearne - Страница 9

DAWN WAS STILL AN HOUR AWAY. The caravan of delights had packed up its brightly coloured lanterns. Dulith the puppet man, long fingers drumming against the side of his truck, headed for the coast road. He was followed by a trailer carrying the carousel horses and another with the stilt-man at the wheel, trailing tinsel through the window. The clowns slept, chuckling softly, traces of make-up still on their grimy faces; and the helter-skelter men, having concertinaed the helter-skelter down to almost nothing, moved their trailer with hardly a sound. Leaving in silence was what they always aimed to do, waking no one, refusing to disturb the children and their dreams. The monkey lay sleeping beside the lion tamer, exhausted and dour, and the lady card reader, having taken his wig off, urinated on to the road from his moving caravan. It was all part of the fun of the fair. It was all part of life for the fire-eater and the shadow dancer and the inflatable man. Another town, another crowd, another group of noisy punters eating freshly spun candyfloss. All in a day’s work; here today, gone tomorrow, with no time for regrets. The sea rose and fell as they hit the coast road, heading north. They would be back in a year; same time, same place, right here on the hill where the short, rough grass would have grown over the chalk numbers that had marked the positions of the rides.

Alice stirred. A telephone was ringing in her dream. It rang and rang again insistently, pushing against the carousel that played out its tune in her head. The feet running across the coconut-polished floors sounded like a thousand galloping horses. It was still dark, the sun had not risen; the mosquito net around her cot was undisturbed. Opening her eyes, Alice saw the sky on the point of being punctured by light. Her dream fled the room, leaving behind a puzzling echo. She frowned, trying to recall the music that played on the merry-go-round, but it evaded her. Nothing moved. Even the sap, bluish-white as mother’s milk, had stopped dripping from the rubber trees in the plantation nearby. But something had disturbed Alice. The edges of a peculiar awareness nudged her gently, like an old shell murmuring, insisting she awoke. She sat up, fully awake, alert now. She was hot and the flower-scented garden was calling out to her, so in a swift movement she threw off the mosquito net, stood on the low window sill beside her bed and launched herself on to the gravel below. It was the water pump dripping outside the gate that had woken her, she decided. Someone had forgotten to turn it off. Further along the garden a long beam of light extended across the ground. With one blow it cleft the garden into two. She saw with surprise that her grandfather was up and working in his studio. Alice hesitated, wondering whether to disturb him. Overhead, the beginnings of dawn poked a hole in the sky. Faint rose-pink light flooded out, spreading across the horizon, seeping into the sea. The air was filled with a selection of newly unwrapped scents from the Jacaranda tree. Alice crossed the gravel in her bare feet and stood on the empty coconut oil drum near the window of the studio. Her grandfather had his back turned to her. He was bent over his etching press, but the studio looked tidy, not at all as it usually did. Black scrim hung neatly on their nails, stiff with dry ink; his cleaned rollers were stacked on shelves above his head and none of his copper plates were in sight. Alice craned her head. What was her grandfather doing at this hour? Something about the angle of his body bothered her and she hesitated for a moment longer, not knowing whether she should disturb him. Bird-arias exploded into the morning. She heard a soft, puzzling sound and then she froze in terror as Bee sunk slowly to his knees. The next instance she toppled over and crashed down into the gravel.

The noise brought him to his feet. He stood in the doorway, a thin man in a white sarong that matched his hair. His face looked strange, as though it was a jigsaw puzzle that had been put together in the wrong way. Confused, she stared at him and it was another moment before she saw with cold, creeping horror that he was crying.

‘Your mother has lost the baby,’ he told her simply, spreading his hands out in front of him.

Seagulls carried his words in circles above her head, their keening cries tangling with the breaking waves so that forever afterwards Alice would be unable to separate any of these sounds from what had been said. Forever afterwards she would connect the lost baby with the birds and the vast drum of the sky pouring out light as though from an open wound.

Time stood still for her as the events fixed themselves on her mind. Gradually, as the sun gained strength, a thin line marked the horizon, separating the sea from the sky. The waves became transparent as lace while the sky continued to lighten. The waves arched their backs, crashing, concussed against the beach. People passed by, silhouetted against the sun. Far away in some other reality a train hooted its way across the coast. It was the Colombo express, travelling up from Dondra, the very tip of the island.

‘Come, Alice,’ Bee said, when he could speak again. ‘The worst is over for her.’

But he looked terrible, making no move towards the house either. Where had they been when Sita had needed them most?

‘Let’s go for a walk on the beach,’ he said finally, taking her hand.

A baby girl, he told her, haltingly. Her sister. Not the brother called Ravi as her mother had hoped.

‘She didn’t live to see the day.’

He was exhausted. A delicate eggshell sheen spread across the water even as they watched. Fishing boats were bringing in the night’s catch, trailing long nets full of silvery cargo through the shallows. An arrowhead of gulls streamed behind, heralding the day with their shattering cries. The fishermen, splashing through the water, dragged the boats on to the beach; then they unloaded the catch and threw it carelessly into the flat woven baskets that would be taken to the fish market later. Dead fish and sea-rot smells drifted on the breeze, swooped on by hosts of fluttering gulls. A sense of unreality hung in the air.

‘The doctor was responsible,’ Bee said. He seemed to be talking to himself. ‘A Tamil child’s life is worth nothing.’

‘I hate Singhalese people,’ Alice told him.

Her voice sounded unfamiliar, uncertain. She was bombarded by emotion, tossed in a cross-current of confusion, feeling she ought to cry. No tears would come. Instead, small evil thoughts danced in her head and swam behind her eyelids. Had the baby been blue like Mrs Perris’s dead husband? Did it cry? And hanging over all her questions, terrifying her, was the memory of the wish she had made. She glanced at Bee. He had stopped walking and Alice now felt a cold wind clutch at her heart.

‘I want you to understand,’ Bee was saying quietly, looking directly at her, searching her face. ‘People will think you’re only a child and they will hide things from you. Later they will tell you it was for your own good. But you won’t stay a child forever. And I don’t want you to misunderstand.’

Some of the shock in his voice was replaced with anger.

‘You must know the difference between hating one person and hating a whole race. Don’t make that mistake. The doctor was a man, a pariah man. Not even a dog can be that bad. Chance made him Singhalese, remember that, Alice. He would have been bad anyway’

They walked on silently. I have a dead sister, thought Alice, trying out the words in her mind. She shivered inwardly. Already she felt different.

‘Such a little life,’ Bee murmured.

They were walking along the same road that Alice had danced on just hours before. Now it had become a remote and distant place and everything had changed in a night. The day lay crushed before her. With a flash of insight she realised she was struggling with events beyond her control. She had become a girl with a dead sister. Nothing was certain any longer. They reached the beach. She could hear the sounds of children’s voices carried by the breeze towards her and she saw a few boys pulling a boat out of the water. They were the boys who lived in the little cluster of huts close to the railway line, children of fishermen. Squinting against the sun, Alice watched them silently. Sadness tugged at her, bringing with it a threat of tears. But the tears still would not come and the unmistakable feeling of aloneness made her feel she was no longer part of the beach or these children. Perhaps, she had never really belonged here, she thought in dismay. The sea breeze was making it difficult to breathe and there was a queasy, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wished her old friend Janake would return. The dead sister hung as heavy as a Tamil thora chain around her neck. Other children had had dead relatives, but they had not willed them to be dead. Frowning suddenly, she wanted nothing more of it.

‘Alice,’ her grandfather was saying, ‘your father wants to take you to England. Did you know?’

Alice stared at him. Understanding knocked against her like a ball in a socket. She heard the words, curiously familiar and yet not believable.

‘You don’t get a passport unless you’re going to travel,’ she said slowly, remembering Esther.

‘Yes.’ Bee nodded, the tone of his voice confusing her. ‘That’s true, darling.’

He hesitated.

‘In England,’ he said, ‘you will be quite safe.’

She was silent, digesting this.

‘We cannot keep you safe here any longer,’ he continued. ‘You must go; the young have no future here. It is best, for a while, at least.’

He stopped walking and stared out to sea. She could not read the expression on his face. All she knew was that in the wide-open aspect of the beach he looked frail and very dear to her. I am. safe here with you, she wanted to cry, but the words seemed to lodge in her throat and the sea breeze whipped her breath away and lost them.

When they got back, after her father had phoned, Alice heard the facts, such as they were. By the time they filtered down to her they had become simpler, softer. A tale murmured in the shocked voice of her aunt May.

‘In England,’ May told her, ‘childbirth is safe. But in this country it depends on who you are and who your doctor is. Your dada is not a rich man. He could not pay for the private hospital’

May had been crying on and off ever since she had heard the news; her eyes were bloodshot and swollen. After school had finished she was going to Colombo to visit her sister. And sometime after that, Kamala told her granddaughter, there would be a very small funeral.

‘Can I come?’ Alice asked cautiously.

She was too afraid to voice what she was beginning to suspect; that she had willed this to happen.

‘No, you must stay here. Grandpa Bee is going to bring your mama back here to recover. She won’t be going to the funeral either. She’s too weak. You can stay and look after her.’

Alice said nothing. What would she say to her mother when she next saw her? Would her mother have bloodshot eyes, too? Guiltily she wondered how much Sita would guess of her part in the baby’s death.

‘Is she thin now?’ she asked in a small voice.

And only then did she remember her friend Jennifer.

‘Jennifer’s mother is having a baby too,’ she told Kamala in dismay. ‘She said they were going to have a boy. A Hindu astrologer told her mother that finally, after five girls, she would have a son.’

It was too late. Jennifer would tell everyone that Alice had wanted the baby to die and then everyone in the class would say she had made a curse. Perhaps, thought Alice in panic, she would be sent to the police.

‘Do I have to go to school on Monday?’ she asked, wanting to cry. ‘Can’t I stay here a bit longer?’

Yes, darling,’ her grandmother said, looking at her in a funny way.

Perhaps she too had guessed the terrible secret, thought Alice, really frightened now.

You’ll stay until after the funeral. Then you must go back to school. And if Jennifer asks you, simply say the baby died. There’s no shame in that, Alice. It wasn’t your poor mother’s fault.’

Stanley rang again.

‘You’ll have to be kind to your mother,’ he told Alice, as if even he had discovered her secret. Reluctantly she agreed, aware of Bee’s watchful eyes on her. Afterwards, without a word, Bee got the car out to drive May to the hospital. He would go with Stanley to the undertakers to organise the funeral. Kamala gave May a food parcel of rice and bitter gourd with chillies. The cook had baked it with fenugreek in the clay oven, knowing it was Sita’s favourite dish.

‘She’ll be hungry,’ Kamala whispered, ‘even though she won’t realise it.’

Kamala too sounded close to tears. She gave May a flask of coriander tea.

‘To dry the milk.’

Alice glanced at her.

‘She may have a fever.’

Kamala was speaking hurriedly, avoiding looking at May. Alice watched them from the corner of her eye, both fascinated and repelled by the whispering voices. Everyone was avoiding looking at each other, as if they feared something awful would show in their faces.

After they had gone the house fell silent. There was still no sign of Janake, as Alice wandered around aimlessly.

‘Why don’t you see if Esther is around?’ Kamala asked.

But Esther was nowhere in sight either and Kamala, busy getting the room ready for Sita, had no time to talk.

Alice looked around for something to do. On her grandmother’s instructions, she reluctantly decided to do a drawing for Sita. The thought of her mother’s return was beginning to curdle uneasily within her. She drew a picture of the view from Mount Lavinia Hill with its bougainvillea-covered houses, its coconut grove and its glimpse of the sea. After some deliberation she decided not to draw the ships that were so constantly present on the horizon. The ships that she had taken for granted all her life had, since this morning, taken on a new and more sinister meaning. So instead she drew the three rocks beside the hotel where she had often swum. She hoped it would bring back happy memories for her mother too.

The servant had taken a mattress out on to the verandah and was dusting it. Then she began to sweep Sita’s old room. Sita would sleep alone so she might rest properly. The servant took all the furniture outside and began to clean it.

‘Move away, Alice, baby,’ the servant said. ‘You’ll get covered in dust. Why don’t you lie down for a bit?’

Alice went into her room. She didn’t want to be called baby. She stared at the mosquito net hastily thrown aside earlier that morning. She had known this room all her life. It was as familiar as her own hand. The deer’s head that her great-grandfather had brought back as a trophy from England stared down at her. A bowler hat worn by one of her ancestors hung over its face, covering its sad, dead eyes. Alice shivered. The hat had been put there by Kamala years before when a much younger Alice had been frightened by its eyes. No one had ever bothered to remove it, and the deer now stared eternally into the dark interior of the hat. Sitting on the end of her bed, Alice glanced around the room. There was a faint smell of camphor and polish and washed cotton. The lump of clear green glass that she had found on the beach during her last visit stood on the window sill, exactly where she had left it. Everything was as before; only she, Alice Fonseka, had changed. Her guilt hung on an invisible hook in the thickening midday heat. Once, when she had been very small, a servant told her a story about a child who had done something bad. Afterwards, the servant told Alice, every time the child moved, every time she walked or sat down or played in the garden, the devil would walk behind her, dragging his chains. Recalling the story, Alice wondered if she too would be hearing chains soon? She listened, but nothing happened. Through the dazzling bright sea light far down below the cliff came the sound of a passing train. Its echo went on and on.

She stared blankly at the sea. There was no way of explaining her unhappiness to herself. On the beach another group of children jumped in and out of the waves. From this distance they looked like small birds darting about, waving their arms in the air, free. Janake was still nowhere in sight. She watched the boys for a moment longer, hearing their faint laughter. Until this moment childhood had held no threat for her. But as she stood watching the scene below, for the second time that day, the idea that things had in some irreversible way altered began to take shape in her mind. The sun reappeared with renewed force from behind a cloud. She longed to be down on the white sand, laughing at nothing and getting soaked. She longed to see Janake and have him tease her. Standing beside the open window, recalling her grandfather from earlier in the morning, she emulated what he had done moments before he had seen her. Raising her arms up, letting her body descend slowly to the ground, curiously, she tried to imagine how he must have felt. Such was her absorption that she did not hear the gate bang shut or the footsteps on the gravel. Esther’s face looking up at the window startled her.

‘What are you doing, Alice?’

‘Nothing,’ she said crossly, frowning, standing up. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘We heard the news,’ Esther said. She sounded shocked, unsure of herself. ‘Amma sent me to ask if you would like to come over to our house.’

Alice was puzzled. Esther sounded unusually friendly.

‘What’s done is done,’ Alice told her, unconsciously echoing her grandfather’s words.

Esther stared back at her. In the bright paintbox-coloured daylight her dress looked strangely tawdry, the traces of lipstick on her lips, drab.

All afternoon Bee sat helplessly beside his eldest daughter while she slept a drug-induced sleep. Then the doctor who had delivered the baby came in. Together they had watched Sita. Her womb had ripped, her uterus would need stitching, and when she finally began to remember she would have to bear a different kind of pain.

‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor had said.

Bee noticed how dark his eyes were, just like pools of rainwater.

‘She’ll recover,’ the doctor had told him, ‘physically, anyway. There will be no more children, but she’ll recover. The stitches will heal, the scars will be hidden, outwardly everything will be in order. I’ve made sure of that.’

He shook his head. Then he told Bee he had decided to leave the island. He was no longer able to stay silent about all those things he was witnessing, he said.

‘I became a doctor so I could alleviate suffering, not add to it. But this place—’ he had lifted his hands in a gesture of incomprehension—’is turning me into a coward. I fear for my wife, my family. I am no longer able to do my duty as I should.’

Bee listened without comment.

‘I’m going to Australia,’ the doctor had continued.

Outside the room the noise of the ward drifted towards them. Bedpans clattering, newborn babies mewling, laughter, even.

‘Yes,’ Bee agreed finally, expressionlessly ‘My daughter will be leaving too. They want a better life for my granddaughter.’

That had been all they had said. The doctor placed his hand lightly on Bee’s shoulder. Then he nodded briefly and left. His face had been full of a grave pity. It had almost been the undoing of Bee.

At dinner that night Esther and Dias came round again and the talk turned on the events of the day. They were all in shock. Looking around at his family, Bee said very little. He still felt numb from this terrible day. Darkness was encroaching. The servant came in silently and switched on the light. Instantly two large orange-spotted moths flitted in and began to circle around the bulb. Alice and Esther finished eating and went quietly on to the verandah, seeming to be swallowed up by the dark garden. They too were quiet. Bee waited until he was certain they were out of earshot.

‘First let them bury their dead,’ he said, turning back into the room.

I am accepting the inevitable, he thought in silent pain.

‘We must let them go in peace to the UK,’ he told Kamala.

‘Something more should be done,’ May said, angrily. ‘Someone should be told, for God’s sake! He should be struck off, Amma. How can we stand by like this and do nothing?’

May was crying again, but this time she was angry as well.

Later, when the visitors had left and Kamala had coaxed her, Alice went without fuss to bed. But she could not sleep. A full moon shone in through her window and once or twice she sat up and looked out at the sea. She could hear the grown-ups out on the verandah now and she could smell tobacco from Bee’s pipe. The low hum of their voices blended with the drone of the insects.

‘How can you?’ Aunt May was asking.

‘We can’t afford the lawyer,’ Kamala said in a low, sad voice.

She sounded as though she too was crying.

Then Alice heard her grandfather tap his pipe against his chair. Until now he had been mostly silent.

‘It isn’t a question of money,’ he said hesitantly, and Alice strained her ears to catch his words. ‘Even if we found the money for the lawyers, and even if the nurse could be called on to testify, who would believe this was done simply because she has a Tamil name? Would anyone believe us? We would be taking on the government doctors. I can’t think of a single lawyer in this country who would want to do that.’

The sound of his voice, quiet and incomprehensible, comforted Alice, so that closing her eyes, finally, she drifted into a dreamless sleep.

The funeral took place early on the following Thursday. May stayed with her sister in the hospital. Only Stanley and Bee were present. They paid the gravedigger and Stanley carried the tiny white coffin himself. The scent of orange blossom marked the moment, fixing it in Bee’s mind. Murderers, he thought, as the first fistful of soil hit wood. Then, when all that remained was a fresh mound of earth, they turned without a word and headed for Colombo. The sun was beginning its climb in the sky. The city was wide awake and filled already with the bustle of rickshaws and horns and the sounds of a thousand indifferent lives. Bee glanced at his son-in-law. He had never been close to Stanley; this was, he saw, their closest moment. Driving home along the coast road, in an afternoon of unbroken heat, his mind brimming with images of his daughter’s exhausted face, Bee felt the light, unbearable and savage, scythe across him. Then with its sour, stale smell of seaweed and other rotting vegetation, the day disintegrated slowly before his eyes.

While the funeral was taking place in Colombo, Kamala gave alms to the Buddhist monks. Dias had come to help, bringing her cook with her to the Fonsekas’ house. The priests were praying for the life that had passed briefly by, blowing out like a candle. All morning they had sat cross-legged, head bowed, their tonal chants filling the house as they blessed the white cotton thread. Their voices rose and fell, sometimes flatly, sometimes softly, always with a deep vibration. They were dressed in traditional saffron robes, so starkly bright that even the familiar sitting room with its ebony and satinwood furniture, its old sepia photographs and plants, took on a dreary air by comparison. The heat in the room, in spite of the doors and windows having been thrown wide open, was oppressive and unusually cloying. Janake, back from his aunt’s house, was present with his mother.

‘Let’s go outside,’ Esther whispered. ‘How much longer is this pirith chanting going to last?’

No one could eat until the monks had been fed. It was bad form and disrespectful to do so, but the savoury smells drifting out into the garden were tantalising.

‘I’m starving!’ Esther said flatly, and she sneaked off, leaving Janake and Alice on the verandah.

‘Where’s she going?’ frowned Janake. ‘She can’t eat yet.’

‘She’s gone to steal some rice to make chewing gum with,’ Alice told him.

‘What?’ Janake laughed. ‘She’s off her head!’

Alice said nothing and Janake looked at her sharply. He was four years older than her and had known her all her life. Yesterday when he had returned from Peradeniya his mother had told him about Sita. His mother had also told him that Alice was probably going to England because of what had happened. Janake had been shocked.

‘But, Amma, Alice loves it here,’ he had cried. ‘And it would break Mr Fonseka’s heart if she went.’

Janake had been present on the first day Alice had been shown the sea as a tiny baby. He had been with her when she took her first faltering footsteps across the sands. It had been Janake who had held her hand, watched over by an anxious Bee. As she grew, it was always Janake who played with her whenever she visited her grandparents. A few weeks ago he had gone with Bee to buy a bicycle for her. The idea of Alice going to England, of her never being here, was incomprehensible to him. He glanced at her. His mother had told him not to mention the subject to Alice in case she didn’t know, so he couldn’t question her. Alice was staring straight ahead with an unusually serious look on her face. Janake scuffed the ground with his feet and then he picked up a stick and began whittling it.

‘Esther’s a fool,’ he said angrily. He felt both helpless and full of an unaccountable rage.

Esther returned with a handful of hot rice. She squeezed it into two balls, offering one to Janake.

‘Here, have some home-made chewing gum,’ she grinned.

‘No thank you,’ Janake said, scowling. ‘That isn’t real chewing gum,’ he scoffed.

‘Fine!’ Esther cried, tossing her ponytail and offering it to Alice instead.

Alice became aware of a certain shift in the order of things between the three of them.

‘You’re supposed to keep moving it in your mouth like gum,’ Esther laughed, not unkindly. And don’t swallow it!’

‘But it isn’t real gum, and I’m hungry.’

‘Why do you want to be so American?’ Janake asked curiously.

He was watching them with narrowed eyes and Alice had the distinct feeling he wanted to pick a fight with Esther.

‘You should stop trying to be like other people and just be Ceylonese. We are a great country!’

‘This is a boring place,’ Esther said shortly. ‘And in any case, I’m not one of you Singhalese types, men. I’m a Burgher, remember. See?’

She held out her arm, which was several shades lighter than Janake’s.

‘Huh!’ Janake snorted. Alice is fairer than you. Put your arm out, Alice.’

‘That’s because she’s half-caste, idiot. Her father is a Tamil.’

‘So? So are you! Idiot yourself.’

Esther shrugged, losing interest. She stared out to sea. Later on, when she got home Anton, the boy from the fair, was coming to call.

She chewed her mouthful of rice more slowly. Anton had a distant Tamil relative and this made Dias nervous.

‘Just look what happened to Sita,’ Dias had warned. ‘I don’t want that to be your fate. We’re Burghers. Who knows when it will be our turn to be kicked? We should be careful.’

But Esther didn’t care. She would be fifteen soon. She hated this country. She hated the way things were changing, and she did not want to study in Singhalese.

‘But soft, a light shines from the east,’ she murmured.

‘What?’ asked Alice.

Janake began to laugh. Esther was silent. She was thinking of Anton, wishing he had kissed her at the fair. In reality he had grinned and offered her some real American gum. America, that was where Esther wanted to go. Not England.

‘“Gallop apace, you fiery horses,’“ she said loudly, forgetting where she was.

Until the new law had stopped them learning in English, they had been studying Romeo and Juliet in school. No one would ever translate it into Singhalese.

‘What are you saying?’ Janake asked.

‘Nothing you’d understand.’

And she turned to Alice instead, for Janake was annoying her.

‘I was just thinking, you know, men, your sister will have been buried by now.’

Alice too was thinking. She wanted to write a letter to Jennifer. My dear Jennifer, she wanted to say. My sister died yesterday. I will be coming back to school soon. Calling the baby ‘sister’ made a difference to how she felt about it. How odd it all was. A mottled brown, dusty rattlesnake writhed in the dust. Alice imagined her mother in her hospital bed, writhing as if she too was shedding a skin. It occurred to her that, had her sister lived, there might have come a time when the two of them would have sat on the verandah just as she was doing with Esther. Alice would have been the eldest. It was the hottest moment of the day. Her grandfather had still not returned from the funeral. How long did it take to bury someone? Inside the house, the sounds of pirith had stopped and the food was being brought in. Esther moved restlessly.

‘Dust to dust,’ she intoned. ‘But life must go on, and I’m ravenous!’

‘Alice,’ someone called.

‘They want to tie the thread on you. Go, quickly,’ Janake said. ‘Go, Alice. Tomorrow you can show me how you can ride your bicycle on the beach.’

Esther gave her a small shove.

‘The sooner that’s done, the sooner we can eat, child!’

The monks were having their food at last. Strangely, now that they had stopped chanting, Alice could hear the melodious echoes everywhere. She could hear it within the hum of the cicadas, rising and falling, and the imperceptible rustle of the leaves on the murunga tree, and in the waves that spread like ice cream on the beach. She wondered what her school friend was doing now. My dear Jennifer, my sister was buried today and now I’m going to have the pirith string tied around my wrist to help her into the next life. The leaves on the mango tree were covered in fine sea dust. A thin black cat limped in from next door’s garden; she stretched out on the parched flowerbed and licked her wounds. Two thoughts like brightly coloured rubber balls juggled in Alice’s head. One concerned her mother and the other her sister. There wasn’t a single cloud floating in the sky. Eternity was up there, but she was starving. She went hurriedly in to have the thread tied to her wrist.

After they had finished eating, the monks washed their hands in the jasmine-scented finger bowls. They wiped them on the white cotton towels, blessed the house again, bowed and left. Everyone bowed back with their hands together. Aybowon. The house seemed to sigh. It remained a house in mourning, but at least it had been blessed.

‘Nothing more will happen here,’ the servant told Alice confidently. Everyone helped themselves to food in a quiet, subdued manner. Murunga curry with coconut milk, kiri-bath, milk rice, or plain boiled rice cooked in plantain leaves, whichever you preferred. There was jak-fruit curry, and dhal and coconut sambal. Dias gave Alice such a big hug that she squeezed the food all the way up to her throat and Alice thought she might vomit. Then Dias kissed her hard and she lost the two Indian rubber balls of thought she had been juggling. They dropped on the floor and rolled away to be retrieved at some later date. For the moment, Alice concentrated on getting away from Esther’s amma. Janake had disappeared again.

‘Your mummy will be coming home soon, child,’ Dias said, her lipstick-kissed-away-lips looking sad.

I’m fine, Alice wanted to shout, with the defiance for which she was renowned. She wanted everyone to look somewhere else because, more than anything, she wanted to forget about her mother and the baby. She did not want to be reminded about them. She wished her aunt May would come home; she wished her grandmother wasn’t so busy supervising the food. She wanted Janake to come back from whatever he had been sent to do. But most of all she wished her grandfather would return. Dear Jennifer, it wasn’t really a proper baby, but everyone is making such a fuss. She rubbed the letter out of her thoughts.

The afternoon dragged on. There was still no sign of Bee or May.

‘You know, the child is grieving too,’ Dias whispered to an aunt. ‘They must keep an eye on her, cha, make sure she doesn’t get withdrawn or anything.’

Alice could hear her from across the room. Her grandfather had always said her hearing was very good.

‘Where’s Janake gone?’ she asked.

Esther shrugged.

‘I’m going home,’ she yawned.

She had had enough drama for the moment and she wanted to curl her hair before Anton came.

‘Cheerio,’ she cried, waving good-bye.

Alice heard her whistling ‘True Love Ways’ as she left. Dias heard it too and hurried after her daughter, annoyed with her behaviour in this place of mourning. It was a signal that the afternoon had ended. Kamala told Alice that it was time for her to get out of her alms-giving clothes, have a wash and then a nap. So by the time Bee drove his car in through the gate, the house was quiet. The servant boy closed the gate after him and stood waiting.

‘Shall I wash it, sir?’ he asked.

Bee nodded and gave him the keys. Then he went up the steps into the house. One of the monks’ black umbrellas rested against the door. Kamala and the cook had cleared the food away. There was a covered dish and a place set for Bee at the table.

‘Do you want something to eat?’

He nodded and went to wash his hands. When he came back she was standing by his chair.

‘How was she?’

He sat down.

‘As you would expect,’ he said shortly. ‘She wanted to go to the funeral. The doctor managed to persuade her she was not strong enough.’

He ate a mouthful of food in silence.

‘I think the doctor was wrong,’ Kamala said slowly. ‘They should have let her see the body.’

Bee grunted. He had no desire to eat, but he let her serve him.

‘Did Janake come?’ he asked instead.

Kamala nodded.

‘Did he leave a note for me?’

‘Yes. It’s in your studio.’

‘Good!’

They were silent. Kamala waited until he finished what he was eating. Then she served him another ladleful of rice.

‘Did you tell her?’ she asked softly. ‘Her second child looked like her first?’

Bee shook his head.

‘I don’t suppose that husband of hers had much to say?’

‘He was crying most of the time,’ Bee told her. ‘He wants her to write something for the papers. He wants the world to know about the murder of his child.’

Kamala opened her mouth to say something, but, changing her mind, closed it. There was no point in talking about Stanley.

‘She should have seen the child,’ she insisted instead.

‘Where’s Alice?’ Bee asked, pushing aside his plate.

The taste of the food made him feel sick.

‘Sleeping. Dias thought she was unusually quiet. She thought we should talk to her because she noticed she was eavesdropping all the time.’

‘So what?’ Bee asked sharply. ‘What’s wrong with that? It’s perfectly normal for a child of her age. Why doesn’t Dias mind her own business?’

He took out his pipe and began to fill it with tobacco.

‘Alice will be fine,’ he said irritably. And tell Dias that Sita will be coming back with May in a few days’ time. They’ll be fine, too. That woman should look after her own daughter instead of interfering with other people’s affairs.’

Kamala sighed and Bee pushed his chair back and stood up. He would be in his studio, should anyone want him.

‘Tell Alice to come and find me when she wakes,’ was all he said.

Kamala watched his receding back. A small rush of cooler air made her shiver. There was something he was not telling her, but she knew Bee was stubborn and would speak only in his own time.

They had been together for thirty years. When they had first married, she had been a girl of only eighteen. Bee had been the new teacher in the boys’ school. Kamala’s father had decided Bee was a suitable match for his daughter. Both sides approved and Kamala was introduced to him. They had both been young; the British had still been in power. After they were married, every time Bee had seen the British flag flying he would swear. At first Kamala had been amazed by his fury, but later on it had delighted her. Until that moment she had no real idea of his true character. Politics had never crossed her mind. In this backwater she had not met anyone as forthright as Bee. Her father and brothers were very conservative, diplomatic, quiet. Bee was different and Kamala liked his hot-headedness, his passion. Later, as she got to know him better, she felt the weight of this passion turn itself towards her with astonishing force. She fell in love. They had been married for three months when she fell both pregnant and in love almost simultaneously. Not for her this English notion of romantic love before marriage. Kamala’s love had come slowly like a small stream, appearing first as a trickle, then gathering pace until it grew into the great river that it was today, flowing steadily down to a larger sea. For this reason Kamala had puzzled over Sita and she had found Stanley an even greater mystery. Her daughter had hardly known the man. Given their different backgrounds, how could Sita be sure she loved him? But when Kamala had tried to discuss these things with Bee he had refused to be drawn. Not for the first time in their marriage she came up against his stubbornness. From this she had known how deep his hurt had gone, and because of this she had kept her own counsel. It had not been easy. Then Alice had arrived. The child had switched on the light they so desperately needed. Although, Kamala reflected sadly, she had also brought them a whole different set of anxieties.

Preparing to go to bed at last, Kamala thought back to the day Alice had been born. How happy they had been on that day. Moonlight fell across the garden sending great shadows from the lone coconut tree on to the gravel.

‘I’ll just have another look at her,’ Bee said, coming in, glancing at her, ‘check she’s asleep.’

Kamala nodded and waited. She was praying silently to the Buddha for peace to return to the house. Incense drifted through the open window. The night was cooler as they lay, side by side, in their old antique bed in a room steeped in bluish moonlight and scented as always by the sea. This was the bed where first Sita and then May had been born. Life and death, thought Kamala sadly, here in this house.

‘We might need to prepare for another visitor,’ Bee said quietly.

‘When?’

‘Not sure. After the demonstration, is my guess.’

Outside a solitary owl hooted and the moon moved slowly across the sea.

‘So at least you can still help someone,’ she murmured.

She felt infinitely old. Turning, she faced Bee, moving closer to him as she had done every night, without fail, all these years. He smelled faintly of tobacco and of linseed oil; he had been smoking too much in the last few days. It wasn’t only this news she was waiting for. She was certain there was something else. A train rushed past.

‘What is it?’ she asked at last, fearfully, in Singhalese.

Bee said nothing. He lay motionless for so long that she wondered if he had heard her. She hesitated, a cold fear in her mouth, willing him to speak. Finally he moved restlessly, his face unreadable.

‘Stanley leaves in a month,’ he said. ‘He’s got a passage to England. He decided to leave first and get a job, then send for them. I’ve told him that I will pay their fare. That way they won’t be parted from him. It will be better that way. Alice needs both her parents and the family must not be split up. They’ll be gone in four months at the most.’

Outside, the sea moved softly. The beach was empty, the water a churning mass of silvery black. Nothing could distinguish it from the dark unending emptiness of sky.