Brixton Beach Read online

  Are you awake?’ he asked. ‘Can you hear me?’

  Kunal opened his eyes. He felt very tired with the feeling that he had been struggling for a long time. The effort was suddenly too much. He tried to smile politely, but his lips were cracked and swollen and nothing happened. All he wanted to do was sleep. He had a vague sense that Sita had been reading to him. A book lay on the chair beside his bed. The doctor picked it up and sat down. Then in the same, quiet, soothing way, he began to speak. He spoke softly and Kunal struggled to understand what he was saying. One word repeated itself.

  ‘Hospital?’ Kunal asked, not understanding.

  ‘You should be there now,’ the doctor went on saying very gently and slowly. ‘But if we admit you, the army will take you. You will not be seen again.’

  His voice dipped in and out of focus like the headlights of a car. He too seemed to be struggling with his own words.

  ‘You want me to leave?’ Kunal said, understanding.

  He had been waiting to be turned out. He knew what danger he was putting this family in. I can hide in the coconut grove, he thought, until the morning at least. He must have spoken out loud because he saw the doctor shake his head.

  ‘No,’ the doctor said slowly. In the pale honeyed light from the lamp his face looked drawn. ‘This isn’t what I’m talking about.’

  His voice was down to a whisper. It came from a long way off with infinite kindness.

  ‘I find it difficult to tell you,’ he said.

  Still Kunal did not understand.

  ‘Probably you would have to have the leg off anyway. Possibly in brutal circumstances. The gangrene has taken hold. I will bring the surgeon from the hospital. He can be here by tomorrow. It will take us that long to get the morphine. We will make sure you don’t feel anything during the operation.’

  Kunal startled. Terror leapt into his mouth like a fish. It slithered and swam up his throat. It filled his lungs and his nose, stopping him from breathing. He could not understand what steps he had taken to get to this point. And then the horror of what he was faced with, the terrible truth, hit him like a wave. He thought he heard himself crying out. His breath was coming in short bursts. The doctor’s face blurred and changed. His mouth was distorted, the words coming from it slowed.

  ‘No!’ Kunal screamed. ‘No! No! Please, no!’

  When he had finished writing his postcard, Stanley stood up and paid for the coffee.

  ‘Coffee no good?’ the waiter asked.

  Stanley smiled and shook his head. Then he paid for it with some of his precious drachmas and made his way back to the hotel. He would have to get a stamp. On the way back he stopped several times. Each time he caught a glimpse of the Parthenon from a different angle. The cold had worsened to such a degree that he couldn’t stop shivering. He took a wrong turning then tried to retrace his footsteps but turned into a blind alley instead. There was a barber’s shop on the corner; he was sure it hadn’t been there before. Someone spoke to him but he didn’t understand what they were saying.

  ‘Hotel Patria?’ he asked, but then didn’t understand the reply.

  This is ridiculous, he thought. If I can find the Parthenon then I’ll be able to find the hotel. But the Parthenon was nowhere in sight. He turned left. Perhaps he could find the docks and the seafront. The cold had numbed his hands. People were wearing gloves, he noticed. As he walked down towards what he hoped was the seafront, he noticed a small restaurant with an inviting array of meat on sticks and a curious flatbread rather like a roti. It made his mouth water. There were bottles of wine in the window. He was hungry and wondered if he could afford to stop for something to eat. But all he had was a little Greek money and a traveller’s cheque. Hesitatingly he opened the door and went in. The place was empty. Stanley stood, uncertain as to what he might do next. Somewhere in the nether regions, behind a beaded curtain, a radio droned endlessly. He couldn’t understand a word.

  ‘Hey!’ he called out tentatively. ‘Hello!’

  There was no reply. He looked at his watch. It was almost midday. He had told the Swedish girl, Marianna, that he would meet her for lunch. Making a small sound of impatience he walked out of the restaurant. But things outside were no better. To his utter amazement the sun had vanished. The sky had taken on a milky, greyish tone and the small, regular dots of wetness falling on his face were not rain but snow. As for the Parthenon, that might very well have existed in his imagination only. There was no sign of it whatsoever. Grimly, fearing he would die in this place, unable to stand the cold any longer, he went in search of a shop. In order to buy a map and find the Hotel Patria.

  Sita, washing the mud-splattered mangoes, listened to the house breathe. It was late. The doctor, having talked to Kunal, having given him something to help him sleep, had left. Alice was in bed and Bee was back in his studio. Sita could hear Kamala out in the garden lighting joss sticks at the house shrine. Both Kamala and May had been praying beside the old statue of Lord Buddha for an hour. They had prayed for Kunal and the ordeal that lay ahead, so that he might have strength to bear those misfortunes he had brought into his life. They had prayed his karma might be good in his next birth. After that, Sita suspected, they would have prayed for May’s forthcoming wedding, and for her own impending journey. Sita had not joined in the prayers to the Buddha. Her prayers, she knew from past experience, would not be answered. Eventually she heard May going to bed. Their mother was still praying and Sita waited patiently, counting the mangoes and thinking. Earlier that evening, when she had first heard the word ‘amputation’ she told the doctor instantly that she would help as much as she could during the operation. She would help Kunal to let go of what belonged to him. The doctor was relieved. The capacity of the human heart for bravery never failed to surprise him and he accepted Sita’s offer gratefully. Kamala and Bee, he told her, would be best employed fending off any unwanted visitors and keeping the child out of the way.

  ‘You will make a perfect nurse,’ he had told her, smiling sadly.

  Sita finished wiping the mangoes. Half an hour later, Kamala came in and the two women began cleaning. They started with the kitchen. By tomorrow morning they would have worked their way across the house, leaving it spotless. By the time the surgeon arrived, the annexe and Kunal’s room would be ready. Putting a kettle of water to boil, listening to the rhythm of the rain and her mother’s instructions, for the first time in many weeks Sita felt a strange, youthful energy fill her troubled mind.

  It rained all that night. Great swathes of water washed everything. Towards midnight Sita insisted Kamala went to bed.

  ‘We’ve nearly finished,’ she told her mother, still with a curious sense of well-being about her. ‘You’re exhausted. Go to bed. I’m not tired, yet. I can do this last bit by myself.’

  Knowing her daughter wanted to be alone, reluctantly, Kamala went. Outside the whole world was veiled in rain. Sita worked on. It was well after midnight before the cleaning was finished. The kitchen had become an oasis of order. No one had cleaned it in this way for years. Fully awake, Sita wandered through the sleeping house breathing in the fresh smells of rain and sea air. She felt exhilarated. Walking quietly through the rooms she had the distinct feeling of a momentous change going on within her. She felt her home, with all its well loved books, its blue-and-white Portuguese plates and carved ebony elephants was imbued with an air of loveliness she had never noticed before. It was as though she were seeing the place for the very last time. And yet, she thought, at any moment, memory itself might fail her, wiping out this place she had called home. Why had she not treasured it more?

  ‘Kunal,’ she said softly to herself.

  She had not said his name out loud before. He was teaching her to look, she thought.

  For the first time in days she thought of Stanley. He seemed to have disappeared from her mind completely, she saw, becoming part of a betrayal she was trying to forget. The child they had lost had belonged to them both, but she had hardly spoken of what happ
ened with Stanley. Yesterday afternoon, while she sat with Kunal in the hours before they had been told of his impending loss, Sita had felt her tongue loosen once again. To distract him she had brought out her shoebox and showed him the tiny garments that had never been worn. He had watched her silently.

  ‘You still have Alice,’ he said finally, as she closed the lid of the box.

  But Sita had shaken her head. There were dead things buried within her, leaving no room for Alice, she told him. It wasn’t love that was missing. Simply energy to exercise that love.

  ‘You mustn’t say that,’ Kunal had said feverishly. ‘Don’t underestimate your daughter’s power over you.’

  Running her hand across the clean scrubbed kitchen table, remembering the conversation, Sita paused. Kunal did not know yet; one leg did not make up for the loss of another. Yesterday afternoon, after she had closed her box, Kunal had been inclined to talk. His eyes were bright with the raging temperature they could not bring down.

  ‘I have a story for you,’ he said suddenly.

  And he told her about his own family. His parents had lived in Trincomelee once, making a living in the sea.

  ‘I did not want to be part of the fishing community,’ he said. ‘I was desperate to study and get to the university. But, as you know, when the British left, all education for the Tamils stopped.’

  He paused and she gave him a drink.

  ‘Your father was wonderful to me,’ Kunal told her. ‘He was the new headmaster at St Aloysius. When I went to him and told him my story he gave me the job on the strength of the unfinished qualifications. That was how I came to teach the fifth standard.’

  Things were going according to plan, he told Sita. He sent regular money home even though he couldn’t afford to see his parents often. There had been no prejudice in the school, Bee made certain of that. But then Kunal had fallen in love with a Singhalese girl.

  ‘Just like you.’

  He smiled at Sita, his face taking on a rumpled, blurred look. Sita wondered if he should try to sleep a little. They had married against her parents’ wishes, Kunal told her, and after that he had been determined to get a transfer to Trincomelee. To be close to his own parents in a place where there were other Tamils. He wanted his young wife to have some relatives who cared about her.

  ‘She was pregnant, you see.’

  Bee had been wonderful. He promised to talk to a headmaster in Trincomelee, try to get Kunal a transfer. And in the end that’s what happened.

  ‘We arrived at the school-teacher’s house one January day,’ Kunal said. ‘We were full of hope, ready to begin our new life.’

  The house was small, just two rooms and a bathroom. But the garden was glorious. It was full of frangipani and tiger-striped lilies, he remembered. A paradise with brilliant blue kingfishers darting by the water and air that was clear and smelled of lilac.

  ‘My wife was very happy. She had been afraid she would miss the sea, coming from the south. But, you know, in Trincomelee the sea is all around.’

  So they had started their married life in earnest. Every day Kunal went to the school where he taught, returning late with piles of marking. His wife grew big with their child. His parents adored her and the small community they lived in welcomed them without prejudice. All was perfect. Until, that is, his wife went into premature labour.

  ‘I had to borrow a car to drive to the nearest hospital, almost fifty miles away.’

  Even that had not worried him unduly. It was what he had expected. The drive through the jungle was not hazardous. It wasn’t a particularly dangerous road, there were no big cats, no elephants. But they had reckoned without the complications of the labour. The umbilical cord had wrapped itself around the baby’s neck, strangling it. And his wife had bled to death.

  He finished speaking and Sita hadn’t known what to say. They sat for a long time without speaking, listening to the sound of the servant scraping coconut in the yard. Then Sita stood up and wiped Kunal’s brow. He had fallen asleep again, exhausted by so much talking. Sita had sat on silently holding her shoebox until Kamala came in to relieve her. Later, when she heard about the amputation, she knew what she must do for Kunal.

  By the time he got back to the hotel, Stanley was soaking and the snow was beginning to settle. If he hadn’t been freezing, he might have enjoyed the sensation of walking through it but, as it was, all he wanted to do was get out of his clothes. He knocked on Marianna’s door but there was no answer. Possibly she had got fed up with waiting for him and had gone out. He decided to order something to eat in his room and have a bath. His brother had told him that baths were the thing in England and as the ship only had showers this was his first experience of a bath. He ordered his food and turned the tap on. Outside the window the view was changing as though by magic under the snow. Stanley stared at it, mesmerised. He could hardly believe that he could be having such an adventure. In a few short days his world had been transformed like the street outside. Sita, Alice (the postcard to her lay soggily in his coat pocket), his in-laws, even his mother, had taken on the appearance of photographs in an old family album. Why, he wondered dreamily, had he ever thought marriage and a family was the answer?

  He bathed. The water was soothing and wonderfully hot, wrinkling his skin, filling him with well-being. Then he drank the beer he had ordered and ate the thing called kebab, which was delicious, not at all like the bland food they were served on the ship. He decided to write a letter to Alice as well. It occurred to him that he would need different clothes if the weather was to remain this bad. Money, thought Stanley, that was all he wanted now. The sooner he got to London and his new job, the better. He turned his mind to the letter. Taking a sheet of hotel notepaper he began to write.

  My dear daughter,

  I am writing this in my hotel here in Athens. What am I doing in Athens, you might wonder! Well, two nights ago there was a problem with the ship and we were forced to disembark while they mended it. You can tell Mama that the shipping liner is paying to put us up for a few nights with all expenses paid. Isn’t that good? This morning I saw the Parthenon and later it began to snow. Yes, Alice, I could hardly believe it, either. It is fantastic being away from Ceylon at last. You are a very lucky girl to be coming to England. How many other children your age can have such a chance to start again? You have your dada to thank for that.

  Stanley paused, frowning. He was almost certain Bee would be shown the letter. He could imagine what Bee would say. Only now he was a safe distance from his father-in-law did Stanley realise how much he disliked him. Low-class Singhalese, he thought, with some satisfaction. Well, he would never see him again, thank God.

  I have just had my first bath, he continued. Because I was so cold after walking in the snow, when I got back to the hotel I filled the bath with hot water and lay in it. It was wonderful. And I thought to myself, this is only Greece. Think what England will be like! Even more civilised. A Swedish passenger on the boat thought all the problems in Ceylon stupid and, I must say, from this distance they are stupid. The people there are full of ignorance and primitive ideas.

  He stopped. No point in writing all this to the child. She wouldn’t understand and Bee would see it as a direct dig at him. Well, so what, thought Stanley defiantly Do I care?

  I shall have to stop now as I intend to go out and find a stamp to post this letter.

  He had no intention of going out in the blizzard that seemed to be gathering outside, but he was getting bored with the letter.

  Tell Mama not to worry; I shall write again when I reach England.

  With love,

  Your loving father

  There was a knock on his door as he finished sealing up the letter. It was Marianna. She held out a bottle and two glasses.

  ‘Chin-chin,’ she said, laughing. ‘Where were you?’

  Stanley stared at her. She was wearing a blouse through which he could see her bra very clearly.

  ‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asked.

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bsp; ‘What?’ she laughed. ‘Cold? No, this isn’t cold!’

  ‘It’s snowing outside,’ Stanley said, blinking.

  ‘Oh Stanley, you are funny! This little bit of snow, it’s nothing. If you want to see snow, you must come to Stockholm. I will take you skiing.’

  Stanley continued to look at her foolishly.

  ‘Until that time, if you let me into your room I have brought some vodka for us to drink.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ Stanley said. ‘Sorry, come in. Of course.’

  And he opened the door wide, showing her the room with its cosy bedside light and the turned-down bedcover on which he had been sprawling.

  Anxiety stretched like a cello string across the house the next morning. Alice woke and heard it play itself out in a long slow series of notes. Kamala woke dreading the sounds the day would bring. A labourer working in the coconut grove was sawing dead wood. Sita woke after only a few hours’ sleep, full of energy. The house seemed to have sandwiched its tension between two thick slices of silence. It was a glittering morning, the sort that followed heavy rain. The sea made little grumbling sea noises and the breeze flicked smartly through the waves, leaving small white pieces of foam in its wake like rubbish thrown from a ship. Already the day had an inevitable feel to it, thought Kamala, watching Alice come out of her room. The child has changed, she thought. She’s quieter, more obedient of late. The kitchen was scrubbed clean. The house smelled of antiseptic and steam.

  ‘Two egg hoppers and a swim?’ her grandfather said, intercepting Alice on her way to the kitchen, sweeping her away from the annexe like a leaf caught by a sudden gust of wind. Her aunt May had gone to school and her mother seemed to have disappeared too.

  ‘Your mama is helping the doctors with the operation,’ said Bee firmly.