Brixton Beach Page 9

  Two moths danced in and out of the window, lighting up the moonlit sky. The smoke from the mosquito coil rose upwards in thin white tendrils.

  ‘What if he doesn’t send for them?’ Kamala asked, voicing the question in both their minds. ‘What if paying their passage makes no difference? What if he just forgets them?’

  Someone was shining a searchlight on the bay and all sorts of colours appeared out of the night.

  ‘If he doesn’t send for them, it’s simple. They’ll stay here,’ Bee said. ‘But I don’t think it’ll come to that.’

  Two days later Stanley came to see them, travelling up the coast by train. It was a Saturday. He brought some chocolate and something called bath cubes sent by his brother for the niece he had never met. Sita sat out on the verandah to talk to him. Even from a distance they looked like awkward strangers meeting for the first time. Not like husband and wife, thought May. Alice, eating her chocolates, watched them. Her mother looked all wrong.

  ‘You know I’m going to England in April,’ Stanley told his daughter. ‘To get a house ready for you.’

  Alice yawned. She was still waiting for Janake to arrive as he had promised.

  ‘You must look after Mummy for me, huh?’

  He was going, he said, to send for them both as planned, in three months.

  ‘You can come on the boat together,’ he said with an enthusiasm she hadn’t noticed in him before. ‘And there will be a new English school and new English friends. You are a lucky girl!’

  Alice frowned. She didn’t want new friends. She wanted to play with Janake and to see Jennifer. A lot of things had happened since she last saw Jennifer. The thought made her frown deepen and she opened her mouth to argue. Seeing this, her mother smiled nervously. Two deep dimples, from her life before the baby, appeared on Sita’s face.

  They stayed there long after her smile had gone, as though wanting to remind everyone of what Sita had once been like. Ah! thought Kamala triumphantly, you see, she will be happy again. It’s time she needs, you fool, thought May angrily, looking at Stanley. Why can’t you touch her, you cold bloody fish!

  ‘Don’t frown, Alice,’ Sita said. ‘We have to get out of this place. The way your father has been treated, what happened to me, all these things mean we can’t stay here any longer.’

  The dimples seemed at odds with Sita’s words. A large garden spider ran across the verandah floor making her shiver. There were so many things Sita hated about this place. Things that now would never go away but would only get bigger. Alice was thinking of the baby in her own way. Dead or alive, she saw the baby would have always been a problem. From her mother’s surprising determination and her father’s suppressed anger she could see that leaving had become a reality and there was no room for negotiation. But she understood too, with uncanny insight, the baby would come with them. The servant boy in the house opposite was tuning his transistor radio. The music reminded Alice of the fairground ride on that now distant birthday. A wave of rage, unexpected and frightening filled her chest. She didn’t want to cry in front of anyone, but where was her grandfather?

  ‘You’ll miss my wedding, Stanley,’ May was saying without sounding the slightest bit sorry.

  ‘Yes, he will,’ her sister agreed.

  ‘There have been more riots,’ Stanley said.

  He appeared to be challenging them all in some way. He was glad his father-in-law wasn’t present. It was impossible to speak freely in front of him. Pig, thought May. She too was glad her father was absent. Tamil pig! Her father would have read her thoughts and reprimanded her.

  ‘They killed my child, men,’ Stanley shouted, losing control without much effort.

  Watching impassively Alice saw his face had grown darker. Her mother looked like a coconut frond beaten by the rain.

  ‘Singhalese bastards!’ Stanley shouted, Bee’s absence giving him courage. ‘A wedding is hardly a priority, men. We need to get out before any more damage is done to my family’

  The music on the servant boy’s transistor had changed. Alice knew it was the song called ‘True Love Ways’. Esther would be wearing her taffeta dress and dancing in time to the music.

  ‘The overseas Tamils are fed up,’ Stanley said. ‘I’m telling you, they’re becoming a force. One of these days this damn government will be whipped.’

  ‘What are they planning?’ May asked, fear leaping like a fish in her throat. ‘What about us? What about the thousands of Singhalese who are innocent, who have no problem with the Tamils?’

  But Stanley wasn’t interested.

  ‘They’re your people, men,’ he said. ‘Speak to the butchers who killed my child. When the time comes, there will be no pity left in us, hah!’

  ‘Stanley,’ Bee said calmly, ‘you’re speaking like a fool’

  He had come in unnoticed. A butcher is a butcher. Don’t forget the doctor who saved your wife.’

  But Stanley, either from the strain of keeping his mouth shut for too long, or the confidence brought on by his imminent escape, couldn’t stop.

  ‘No disrespect, men, but it’s your people who are asking for a civil war. If that’s the case, they’ll get one, just wait a little. Remember that all’s fair in war.’

  Sita began to weep silently. Bee took out his pipe and tapped it against the side of the wall. Alice saw his jaw tightening. Then with a visible effort and no change in his voice he spoke.

  ‘I understand how you feel,’ he said. ‘I know you have to go. The situation is getting intolerable. Of course you must go. But it need only be for a while. There are many, many Singhalese who think as you do. These people will not allow this to develop into a civil war.’

  He took out his tobacco pouch and began packing the pipe. He didn’t look at Sita, he did not even look in her direction, but his whole body strained at the sound of her weeping. The transistor music was still playing insanely and the sea had a beautiful silvery line on the horizon. The cook was scraping coconut, and next door the servant boy was sweeping the verandah. A crow cawed harshly in two-part harmony. The sound went on and on turning in the dazzling air. The day had been transformed into a bowl of blinding light. Of the sort that had dazzled their English conquerors, thought Bee, as he stood in the doorway, quietly. It had made the English mad, he had once told Alice.

  He had only been half joking at the time and Alice had laughed at the thought of the soothas going mad. But it was true, they had come here to conquer and instead the light snared them.

  ‘Don’t they have light like us in England?’ Alice had asked at the time.

  ‘Oh, heavens no! The English went back home blinded, and of course they wrote about our light. The nineteenth century is full of it,’ he had said, grinning. ‘The tropics became a strange, magical place in their imagination after that. They went away different!’

  Kamala had laughed. ‘Stop it!’ she had said.

  But Bee had continued looking solemnly at Alice, the devil in his eyes.

  ‘It’s true!’ he had said. ‘They were drugged by too much sensation. Their books are full of it, as you will read when you get older. English gentlemen seduced by the narcotics of jungle love!’

  And now she was going there, he thought. He felt ill. She had asked him what it would be like.

  ‘Will it be different in England?’ was what she had asked. The question had rendered him helpless.

  ‘I believe it will be,’ he had said eventually. ‘Probably in ways you would not expect. Not better, not worse, you understand. Different. Anyway, you’ll see, soon enough.’

  ‘Do I have to go?’

  That was what she had asked next. But how was he meant to answer that?

  ‘Listen, Putha,’ he had told her, to keep himself out of the story, ‘this is your first home, you were born here. That’s a powerful thing, don’t ever forget it. But it may not be your last, you understand. And that’s all right, too. It will be beautiful in England even though the difference will surprise you. You’ll just have to sear
ch for it.’

  Standing in the doorway he recalled that conversation. Wondering if he should have told her what he really believed; that this place with all its tropical beauty was where she should remain. And also that he believed it would make no difference. For although she would leave Ceylon, Ceylon would never leave her. Listening to the rush and crush of waves now he wondered how long it would take for them to see the consequences of such a violent uprooting. And he thought of this small beautiful place, once the centre of his world. Without her it would be the centre of nothing. Stanley’s voice buzzed in his ear like a large bluebottle. With a great effort Bee dragged himself back to the present.

  ‘Then go for a time,’ he said out loud, without looking directly at Stanley, making his voice as neutral as possible. ‘This situation will not last forever and the change will be good for you all after what has happened,’ he said, thinking too that Alice needed her parents’ attention.

  ‘But come back before she changes too much,’ he added brusquely, ‘give her an education and then come home.’

  And he went outside, as though the matter was settled, to mix some colours for a new print he was making, calling to Alice to come and help him.

  Soon after that Sita and Alice went back to Colombo to prepare for Stanley’s departure. Back to the rickshaw-clogged streets lined with ramshackle buildings. A new harsh mood was in the air. As if a whole secret way of life had died while they had been away and the city was now preoccupied with different things. Sita walked slowly. She was still bleeding internally. At the crowded outpatients she queued with other mothers, nursing their babies. The air was filled with a tinnitus of flies as she sat, one more saried woman in a colourful line of reds and yellows against a lime-green wall. Smallpox inoculation had come to Ceylon for the first time. All around them infants screamed. Sita watched dully. She could not understand how a broken heart could still palpitate with such pain. Alice sat quietly beside her, swinging her legs. After her injection they were going to see Jennifer’s mother and the new baby. Then tomorrow she would go back to school. The thought of facing her class teacher Mrs Perris made her nervous. Before she had left, her grandmother had told her again not to worry about telling her friends that the baby had died.

  ‘Many people lose babies in this country,’ Kamala had said consolingly. ‘You mustn’t worry.’

  ‘Why should she worry what people think?’ Bee had demanded, overhearing the conversation. ‘Alice has better things to think about. She understands these things happen, don’t you, Putha?’

  Alice had nodded and then begun to giggle because her grandfather was tucking in a small parcel at the foot of her bed.

  ‘What is it? Can I see?’ she said, struggling to get it.

  It was a book she had been wanting. Another Enid Blyton.

  Waiting in the clinic, watching the other children being given their vaccinations, Alice half closed her eyes, thinking of the Sea House. Her mother stared ahead not speaking. When it was her turn, the nurse told her she was having a tetanus injection as well.

  ‘Put your arm out,’ the nurse said. ‘You mustn’t forget to collect your smallpox certificate,’ she reminded Sita. ‘You won’t be allowed into England without it.’

  Sita nodded.

  ‘You are a lucky girl, going there!’ the nurse continued, smiling encouragingly.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ Alice told her.

  She spoke softly and the nurse didn’t seem to hear. The needle branded a small circle of pinpricks on her arm. Alice clenched her fist, saying nothing.

  ‘There might be a small reaction,’ the nurse told her mother, after which they went out into the burning sun. Suddenly Alice didn’t want to go to Jennifer’s house or see Jennifer’s mother or the baby boy she had just had. The sun boiling down on her hatless head made her feel sick.

  ‘Why do we have to go now?’ she whined.

  ‘They’re expecting us,’ Sita said shortly. ‘It will be rude if we don’t go.’

  She was carrying a parcel of some of the exquisite dresses made for her own baby.

  Jennifer lived in Colombo 7, where the gardens were lush and green and freshly watered. They took the bus, leaving the broken beauty and the chaos of the city. Even the bus appeared subtly different to Alice; emptier, cleaner. Not many people had reason to go to Colombo 7.

  ‘Look, all the signs have changed,’ Alice told her mother in English.

  ‘That happened weeks ago,’ her mother said.

  Sita clutched her parcel close to her chest. Alice swallowed. She didn’t want her mother to give away the baby dress, but she could see from the expression on Sita’s face it would do no good to bring the subject up. In the last few days, her mother had stopped her terrible crying and Alice was afraid if she mentioned their baby it would all start again.

  ‘My arm hurts,’ she said instead, hoping to give her mother something else to think about.

  Sita ignored her.

  ‘Don’t scratch it,’ was all she said.

  At Ratnapura Road they got off. The streets had widened out and were tree lined and shady. Jennifer’s house was in a cul-de-sac. A manservant opened the gate. Orange blossom and shoe-flowers cascaded over the wall. A water sprinkler was watering the grass and underneath the murunga tree stood a large shiny pram. Some dogs tied up and out of sight began to bark hysterically. Instantly they heard the alarming high-pitched cry of the baby. Sita pulled Alice along sharply, nodding at the servant woman who led them into a large cool room with tiled floors and air conditioning. Things happened in quick and disjointed fashion after that. Jennifer arrived and hugged Alice but couldn’t stop staring at Sita. Alice watched her mother try to give Jennifer’s mother the present, but because she was holding her baby Sita had to put the parcel on the table. Sita looked small and a little frail. It made Alice suddenly very angry. The baby cry was like a siren, urgent and impossible to ignore. Jennifer’s mother laughed delightedly and began to feed him.

  ‘Take Alice to play,’ she told her daughter.

  ‘Is it true, you are going to England?’ Jennifer asked as soon as they were out of earshot of the grown-ups.

  There was a Russian doll on the window ledge. Alice picked it up and began to take it apart, each doll getting smaller and smaller until the last one was so minute that she fumbled and dropped it.

  ‘Leave it,’ Jennifer said sharply. ‘Don’t break my things. When are you going to the UK?’

  ‘In a few months’ time. My dada is going to send for us.’

  The baby’s thin cry went on and on in Alice’s head.

  ‘Does it cry all the time?’

  ‘Quite a lot,’ Jennifer said importantly. ‘Baby boys are like that, you know.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Yours was a girl, wasn’t it?’ she asked.

  Alice looked at her. She had never noticed how very black Jennifer was. Her lips were so large that their pink insides showed even when she wasn’t smiling. She looks very Singhalese, thought Alice.

  ‘Your mother married a Tamil, that was the problem,’ Jennifer said, knowingly.

  The baby’s cry was less intrusive, now. Outside the window a crow hawked harshly and they could hear the sound of saucepans being scraped. Singhalese voices rose and fell in the hot, lovely air. Without warning, Alice felt she too might start to cry. She wanted to go home. The air conditioning was too cold and her arm was hurting.

  ‘My head hurts,’ she told Jennifer. ‘I think I’m reacting to the smallpox, you know. I had to have it because of going to England.’

  After their hurried departure into the sunlight her arm hurt less. And much later on, in the evening, she listened to her mother recounting the visit.

  ‘She wanted me to leave,’ Sita was telling Stanley.

  From behind the door where she listened, Alice heard her mother’s terrible pleading tone. She was certain Sita’s face was pleading too. It made Alice grind her teeth.

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone,’ Stanley said, s
ounding bored.

  ‘I didn’t want her to think I was jealous. We went to all the hospital appointments together, I had to visit at least once.’

  ‘Well,’ Alice’s father said, ‘we’ll be out of this hell soon enough. Thank God!’

  The next day at school Jennifer avoided Alice. She had made friends with a new girl who had joined their class while Alice had been away. The new girl was called Vishvani and she too lived in Colombo 7. The chauffeur drove Jennifer to school with her.

  ‘There’s no point in my being your friend,’ Jennifer told Alice. ‘You’re going overseas soon.’

  She paused imperceptibly then added: ‘Oh, and by the way, we threw away your mother’s dead-baby clothes. My brother has plenty of things to wear. We don’t need your bad luck clothes.’

  4

  LONG BEFORE HER SISTER’S WEDDING DAY, Sita’s heart had become hard as a rambutan stone; shrunken and dark and unbreakable. It happened so stealthily that very few people noticed. A week after the visit to Jennifer’s house, Sita started wrapping her preoccupations between the folds of the baby clothes so painstakingly embroidered in her other life. Those long monsoon afternoons, when she used to dream of the unborn son who would change the world, had vanished. Knowing there was no longer any point in resurrecting her hopes, she packed her soft-cotton sorrows carefully inside the large empty trunk that seemed to have invaded her mind. Then, quietly, she climbed into it and shut the lid. As the first terrible shocks subsided to tremors, she saw what she needed to do in order to survive, so without fuss she simply disappeared. No one appeared to notice. No one remarked on her absence; most people thought the concertinaed, crumpled person walking around, going about her daily business, was the same old Sita, mother of Alice who asked too many questions, returning after a little personal misfortune. Headstrong wife of that Tamil man Stanley whom she had married in haste and who could not even afford to pay for a private confinement.

  ‘What can you expect?’ asked a distant relative, paying Sita a visit in order to find out how things were progressing with this wayward woman. ‘God is punishing you for marrying a Tamil.’