Brixton Beach Read online

‘Thatha, I think I’ll leave this other holdall. We’ve got too much stuff,’ Sita told him.

  ‘Is this war definitely coming?’ Alice asked Janake.

  ‘Maybe. But I’m coming to visit you in the UK anyway,’ Janake told her. ‘Just wait and see. I’ll turn up one day!’

  The bravado in his voice did not escape her and she wanted desperately to say something more to him. She wanted to ask him what this war would be like, whether he and her grandparents would be safe. She wanted to assure him that she did not want to leave, but she seemed to have lost her voice and in any case instinct told her it was too late for such sentiments. She looked at Janake as he stood squinting anxiously at her and saw with horror that she was going to miss him too.

  The morning with its mists rolling in from the sea, its fishermen shouting, ‘malu, malu,’ and the rush and panic of getting to the station, finding a seat and forcing the window open, was too absorbing to leave room for anything else. They snatched at words.

  ‘Have you packed your new Enid Blyton book?’ ‘Don’t forget to look out to sea tonight and wave.’ ‘We’ll write as soon as we’re in London. In twenty-one days!’ ‘Look after yourselves,’ the grandparents said, smiling funny lopsided smiles. Standing close together, not like her grandparents at all but like an old married couple. Bee and Kamala left their hugs until the last possible moment.

  ‘There’s a new merry-go-round on the hill,’ was all there was time for Alice to notice before, with a shrill whistle, the train began to move.

  Suddenly, when it was too late, when their faces had begun to move away from her, she started to cry. And as the faces on the platform passed swiftly by, she saw, also, that all around and beneath her was the sea, huge and wide and filled with sunlight. In a few hours they would be on it.

  There was nothing for it. Sink or swim, thought Sita grimly, her arms and legs aching as she climbed. They had said their good-byes to May and Namil and Uncle Sarath. Neither sister had cried. Something had stuck in both of them, stopping them from doing so. The noise and the stifling heat, Sita’s tiredness and tension were inexorably caught up in a turmoil of confusion. She saw that May looked well. Her honeymoon was over, but there was still the excitement of the house being built and then there was the choosing of furniture to come.

  ‘Now then, darling,’ May told her niece, ‘mind you look after Mama for me. She’s all the sister I’ve got.’

  And that too was it; once again the swiftness of departure was what they remembered. All around them people were crying. Sita watched impassively; she could not cry. Not even when they were on the launch, moving unsteadily across the bay, not even when May waved and called her name was she able to respond. The small motor boat took them out to the furthest tip of the sun-washed harbour, close to the breakwater. Then the boatman helped them, one by one, on to the narrow gangway. Children screamed as they stood up and the boat rocked madly. Before them, thin and insubstantial, was the rope ladder, each rung seeming higher than their legs could ever reach. Would it hold their weight? The sun beat relentlessly on Sita’s back and her head throbbed as she followed Alice higher and higher up the gangway. Reaching, it seemed, for the sky.

  ‘Hold tight, Alice,’ she said faintly. ‘Hold tight.’

  Everything happened too quickly. I wasn’t ready to leave; there were things I forgot to say. And now, she thought, it will last forever. They reached the top of the gangway. Below was a mass of swaying, saried women, their oiled heads bent in concentration, their voices a sad chant of farewell. In front of them were the neat dark ankles, the bright patterned silk of an unknown sari, fluttering like a useless flag in the breeze. And far beneath them was the sea, turquoise and restless. There was no going back.

  Hands reached out to help them up the last steep step and she saw humanity hanging out of every porthole, from every deck. Ribbons floated down into the sea, someone was flying a kite. The strange unfamiliar smell of diesel mixed with the salty air made Sita nauseous. From somewhere inside the ship they heard the faint strains of the national anthem, its sad sweet melody, haunting and full of all that they loved, all they were leaving. The music, heard only at state funerals and other such occasions, drenched them in sorrow.

  Alice,’ Sita cried in a panic, ‘where are you?’

  But Alice was beside her, her small face streaked with grime, her mouth firmly shut. In silence, somehow they managed to find their cabin. It was in the bowels of the ship.

  ‘C Deck, next stop the engine room,’ said the steward jokingly, pointing them towards the door.

  Almost instantly they noticed the deep bass vibration, the vast hum of the engines. Staring at their small cabin in dismay they saw that this was all they were to have for the next twenty-one days. Two bunk beds, the sea, and each other. They made their way back up on deck again, negotiating the maze of stares, wrinkling their noses at the unfamiliar smells, staggering a little as the ship creaked gently. Pushing doors almost too heavy for them both, they went out into the fresh sea air to feel the warm breeze of their home and the painfully broken light. In the distance were the bare slabs of white-hot sand. Beyond was a coconut grove, sharply defined against the extraordinary sun. And it was then, suddenly, that Alice wanted passionately to get off the boat. She had had enough. Sita found a space to lean out over the edge, but the harbour and May and Namil were no longer distinguishable. In this way, slowly, with a creaking heaviness of metal and hearts, the Fairsea inched its way out of the harbour towards the open sea. Ahead was the pilot ship guiding them as far as the breakwater before it too turned back home. It was how Alice became aware, watching the island’s sandy beaches recede, its dense coconut palms vanish, that the raised voices around her were broken by another, unfamiliar sound. The sound went on and on, rhythmically, unnoticed by everyone in the confusion of the moment, but as she listened Alice heard it clearly and was rendered speechless. For it was the soft swish of the waves as heard from a boat, pulling them away from the land where they had been born, washing over her mother weeping.

  Night came. A night with no tomorrows, Bee thought, standing at the water’s edge. Far away in the distance was a ship that moved flatly on the horizon like a child’s drawing. Was it them? Was it their ship?

  ‘Eat a little,’ Kamala said. ‘Try.’

  His heart was hanging on its hinges. Broken. They dared not speak for fear of conjuring up the evil spirits of the day. Should they have gone to the harbour? Should they have stood and waved like May? I can bring nothing of this back, thought Bee. Every room seemed to describe an unfinished act. The presence that had filled the empty spaces of the house, that presence, had gone. May and Namil arrived, as planned, with tales of the last moments. As though it had been an execution, Bee thought.

  ‘No, Father,’ his daughter, the only one left to him now, said. ‘It happened so quickly, they hardly had time to say good-bye and they were bundled on the launch. You would have upset yourself needlessly. As it was, no one cried.’ Bee disagreed silently. It would have been better if they had cried. Better then than later, with no one to comfort them. May sighed. She could see her father was beating himself with a stick.

  ‘How will Sita manage Alice?’ Kamala worried. ‘She has hardly recovered herself.’

  ‘Stanley will be at the other end to meet her,’ May soothed.

  That’s generous of him, Bee thought, bitterly. But he didn’t say it. And the child, he had wanted to ask May. What about the child? Tell me? Did she grieve? But he couldn’t ask that, either.

  ‘She sent you this,’ May said, knowing how it was for him.

  And she gave him a drawing Alice had done in the train, going up to Colombo. It was a self-portrait.

  ‘Wait, I’ll put the date on it,’ Bee muttered, going out to his studio.

  They let him go, nodding at each other, saying nothing.

  So now it was night. Bee’s grief walked silently with him along the narrow spit of beach. He was too old for grand demonstrations or declarations. He kne
w when he loved and he knew about those things from which he would never recover. Here she had grown, a child with only small hints of what she could one day become. He would walk with that small child for what was left of his own life, here on this beach. Every night. Across the water a sickle moon trod a pathway of light and suddenly a sound carried across the breeze from the next bay. It was the long, lonely hoot of the night train as it rushed along the line. How often he had heard it. But tonight the sudden sound, this silhouette through the trees, was Bee’s undoing. It was how Janake, wheeling the precious bicycle Alice had given him, hurrying to make a shortcut through the trees, found him, leaning against an empty catamaran.

  ‘I knew what it would be like,’ he told Janake, finally. ‘Yet knowing doesn’t make it any easier.’

  Janake scuffed the sand with his bare foot. As it happened he had been on his way to see Mr Fonseka. The doctor, unable to leave his surgery for the moment, had given him a message to deliver. Janake had been about to blurt the message out, but Bee Fonseka was too upset. How can I tell him? Janake thought. I can’t, not now. When Mr Fonseka had composed himself and Janake had promised to come for an English lesson later in the week, he said good-bye. Guiltily he rode off without saying a word.

  ‘You tell him, Amma,’ Janake begged his mother. ‘How could I say Uncle Kunal had died in the car?’

  On their very first night on the boat, the passengers were given strange things to eat. Italian food, long slimy strings of a substance Alice had never seen before. Sita did not want food, all she wanted was to stay in the cabin and write a letter to Kunal. She wanted it to be ready for when the purser made the collection.

  You go,’ she told Alice. ‘You know where the dining room is, go and eat with the other children.’

  But the food was inedible. Like worms, Alice announced at the children’s table, making everyone snigger, and the Swiss girl sitting next to her, vomit.

  ‘Why can’t we have some rice?’ Alice demanded of the steward.

  ‘There’s no rice where you’re going,’ he sneered. ‘Better get used to proper food, you little savage!’

  The Swiss girl had to go to bed.

  ‘See what you did,’ the steward said crossly, clearing up the sick.

  Several other children left the table. Alice didn’t care. She wasn’t hungry either. She took one of the strange-smelling orange fruit and went on deck to wave to her grandfather and Janake and Esther as she had promised.

  Later, one of the staff knocked on the door of their cabin to complain to her mother, telling her Alice had been disruptive at supper. Sita regarded her daughter with a glazed look after the man had gone.

  ‘This isn’t like you Alice,’ she said helplessly.

  Sita looked hot and unhappy with the thought of the days and nights yet to be spent in the darkness of the cabin. When she had finished scolding her daughter in this half-hearted way, she placated her with a spoonful of the precious vegetable pickle from one of her grandmother’s carefully packed jars.

  After tonight,’ she told Alice, ‘there are only twenty days left before we’ll be on dry land again.’

  The morning after his family had begun their voyage, Stanley awoke with a feeling of well-being. It was Monday, almost three months since his startling arrival in London and at last he had a proper job. He had been temping, washing dishes, addressing envelopes and generally odd-jobbing. Sunlight streamed in through the thin brown curtains of his bedroom, falling on the drab, peeling wallpaper, the yellow eiderdown, the oddly heavy furniture. For a moment he wondered where he was as he stared at the painting of a woodland scene on the wall. What leaves there were on the trees were brown. Autumn, thought Stanley, half in a dream, and he remembered Sita reciting a poem about autumn to him when he had first broached the subject of their migration to England. A picture of Sita swam before his eyes and he sat up with a start. It was seven o’clock and he was due to report at Rajah’s office at eight thirty.

  ‘Don’t be late,’ had been Rajah’s words to him as they had parted.

  Last night Stanley had again had dinner with his brother. Still disorientated, he had been determined to cook something for himself in his new home, but Rajah had been insistent.

  ‘I’m going to take you to an Indian restaurant, men. It’s very cheap and I want you to meet some of the people there.’

  ‘Indian?’ Stanley had asked, startled.

  This was a new idea. Rajah had given him a peculiar look.

  ‘We’ve all got brown skins so far as the English are concerned,’ he explained patiently. ‘Forget about the rules at home. They don’t apply here.’

  He had laughed at the look on Stanley’s face.

  ‘You’ve got a lot to learn, Putha!’ he had cried. ‘And you’ve got to learn fast, before that Singhalese wife of yours arrives.’

  Rajah had been driving at the time, having picked Stanley up from the house at Cranmer Gardens. They were heading over the river.

  ‘Why you wanted to saddle yourself with a bloody Singhalese woman was one thing. But to book her a passage to this place at the same time was sheer madness. What were you thinking?’

  ‘Her father insisted on it,’ Stanley said lamely. And I thought it might help.’

  ‘Help? In what way, for God’s sake? When has a Singhalese ever helped a Tamil!’

  His brother turned towards him, roaring with laughter.

  ‘Christ, Rajah, keep your eyes on the road!’ Stanley cried nervously.

  After their meal, Rajah had taken Stanley to a meeting at the house of a Tamil friend. Stanley had been surprised to see so many Tamils gathered together under one roof. Arguing about the state of Sri Lanka.

  ‘There’s a civil war about to break out, men,’ a dark Jaffna man was saying belligerently. ‘Just wait a while and you will see. The Singhalese shits have a lesson coming bloody soon!’

  Stanley sat in a corner of the room, listening. A man handed him a can of beer. The man from Jaffna was shouting again. Stanley sighed. He knew the type. There were plenty of them in Colombo, stirring up trouble, aggravating an already delicate situation. Why was his brother mixing with such people when at home he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing so?

  ‘We need money for weapons and for training in the use of those weapons.’

  ‘We have to help our people and stand by them,’ another man said.

  At the end of the meeting, a tray was passed around. Everyone placed their donations on it. Then a piece of paper was given to Stanley for his name and address. How much would he be able to donate each month?

  ‘He’s got no money,’ Rajah said, waving the tray away. ‘He’s still temping. Wait until he gets the permanent job I’m organising for him!’

  The woman in charge of the collection smiled at him before turning to Stanley. He saw a flash of gold in her teeth.

  ‘Is it true your wife is Singhala?’ she asked.

  Stanley had been taken aback and had nodded uneasily. It was some weeks since he had last felt uncomfortable about having a Singhalese wife. He had thought all that was behind him.

  ‘Never forget your brothers,’ the woman said quietly.

  ‘But is a civil war the answer?’ Stanley had asked timidly, surprising himself.

  The island and all its dysfunctional problems were less important, somehow. He looked around for Rajah, but his brother had moved off and was deep in conversation elsewhere. Stanley saw him take out his cheque book.

  ‘Pay next time,’ the woman with the gold teeth said.

  She was smiling at him, but he sensed her watchfulness too.

  ‘Would you like to come to my temple at the Oval next week? For prayers?’

  ‘I’m a Catholic,’ Stanley had said.

  The woman had fixed him with her eyes for a moment longer. Then she smiled again.

  ‘You might not always be a Catholic,’ she said. ‘And I can tell there is some sort of problem in your marriage. Your wife’s holding you back.’

  ‘How d’you
know?’ Stanley asked, mildly surprised.

  ‘Anay! I can tell from your face. You’re struggling a little, hah? Your wife isn’t religious either. Come to the temple, just for once, before she arrives. It will do you good, you’ll see, make you very prosperous.’

  Stanley didn’t know how to respond to this. The woman was not good-looking, she was too thickset for that, but her eyes were arresting. Half frightened, half mesmerised, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘have this.’

  She pushed a small packet into his hand.

  ‘Put some of this on your tongue every evening. After you have taken your bath. Say a prayer to the Bhagavan. He’ll hear you, I promise.’

  Still Stanley didn’t answer. The woman laughed.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘They call me Manika. Come to the temple, if you want. Next Thursday.’

  And she went.

  In the car going back, the small packet tucked inside his coat pocket, Stanley had been quiet. Rajah was talking enthusiastically about the evening.

  ‘It’s our duty to help other Tamils,’ he said. ‘These are our people.’

  Stanley agreed, only half-listening. He was thinking of Sita. She would be arriving soon. The thought of her filled him with dismay. What, aside from survival, had kept them together? Somewhere between the mountains of Greece and the Mediterranean, the intensity had gone out of his life in Colombo. He had shed his anger like a skin.

  ‘Have you thought of divorce?’ Rajah asked slyly, taking him by surprise.

  Stanley looked at him. What had he said?

  ‘Come on, men, don’t look so shocked. What’s the matter with you? In this country anything is possible. I’ve been telling you for years.’

  But later, back in his own flat, Stanley felt less certain. The packet, when he looked at it, turned out to be ash. Holy ash? wondered Stanley. Before he went to bed, he put some experimentally on his tongue and closed his eyes. There were unknown expenses ahead. The future was full of uncertainties. Perhaps the ash, holy or not, would bring him good luck. He had no idea what he wanted.