Brixton Beach (29 page)

It began to rain during the October half-term. Alice spent most mornings in bed and then in the gloom of the afternoon she would venture a few streets away to the children’s library. It was warm in the library and, as there were no children to stare at her, she would while away a few pleasant hours reading the art books. The leaves had begun to fall in earnest now and it became dark early. Returning home laden with books she would sit in her room and draw the view outside her window, staying there until her mother called her downstairs for dinner. To her surprise, Alice had begun to love her bedroom. It was, she discovered, the warmest part of the house and the only place that really had the sun fall on it. The faded strawberry wallpaper and the threadbare velvet curtains comforted her after the long silent days at school. The room had the added advantage of being far enough from her parents for them to hardly bother to come in, but not so far that she missed any of their arguments. Lying in bed, listening to the muffled sounds of her mother clearing up and her father’s radio, she felt safe at last to let her mind wander back over her life at school. She had made no friends. Last week there had been a new arrival in the class. The girl had recently moved up to London from a place called Poole and the teacher had made her sit by Alice.

‘I lived by the sea too,’ Alice had volunteered. ‘It was a very, very blue ocean.’

But the girl had not been interested and a few days later had made a friend of another child. Alice pretended she didn’t care. Snatches of the past drifted in and out of focus during the long and tedious days that led up to half-term.

‘Daydreaming, again, Alice,’ the teacher had said, exasperated, shaking her head.

‘You’re weird,’ one of the boys told her, pulling faces at her.

Confused, Alice had become even more silent, longing for the moment when she’d be back at home, climbing the stairs to her room. And safety.

Towards the end of half-term Alice noticed something else. Her mother had begun taking out the baby clothes from the shoebox and ironing them. The clothes looked shabby and even the cotton lawn, once so fine, was unremarkable in the wintry light. Alice felt a tremor of shock go through her. She understood with a hopeless sinking of her heart that her mother would never be the same again. Her father, too, was changing. Alice registered that he no longer hid the fact of the strange perfume that surrounded him. And she saw too, without a single word being passed between them, that from now on
she
would be the one who would protect her mother. So when her mother started taking out the dead baby’s things once more, Alice kept quiet, not drawing any attention to this change, knowing instinctively that Stanley would not like it. Sure enough, her father, who seldom missed anything, soon began to question her mother with increasing anger.

‘Why don’t you throw them away?’ he asked her, lying in their double bed piled high with lemon-coloured blankets and eiderdowns, watching his wife fold the wretched things over and over again.

Alice stood outside the bedroom door, listening intently. It was important that she heard everything. She wanted to be ready to rush in and distract them the moment her parents started fighting. She felt the need to be fully alert, ready to avert a disaster. It was an exhausting business, but she had to do it; it was her job. Two and a half months had passed since their arrival and her parents were arguing more than ever.

‘Say something, men,’ Stanley was shouting. ‘Don’t just ignore me. You’ll go off your head again if you don’t talk. Remember how you were before I left?’

Alice pursed her lips, just as she knew her mother was doing at that moment.

‘If you don’t throw them out, Sita,’ Stanley threatened, ‘I will. It’s for your own good,’ he added, sounding uncertain, now. ‘You’ve got to stop brooding in this way’

Then Alice heard his voice soften as if he was talking to himself. And a moment later, as she strained her ears, there came the eternal sound of her mother’s weeping.

‘Your aunt May is going to have a baby’ Stanley told Alice a bit later on, over dinner.

Alice stared at her plate. Why on earth was her father talking about Aunty May’s baby when he
knew
it upset her mother so much? She shivered.

‘I don’t feel well,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘Can I go to bed?’

They ate in silence for a moment longer. Sita, her face swollen with crying, appeared to make a huge effort.

‘Yes,’ she said absent-mindedly, ‘you’d better go to bed in that case.’

Janake walked up the hill with some fish and a letter from his mother.

‘Go and see how they are,’ his mother had insisted. ‘Mr Fonseka will be feeling terrible after the things that have happened. Go and see them, and give him this letter.’

Janake’s mother could not bring herself to discuss the events of the last couple of months. The loss of his granddaughter had been bad enough for Mr Fonseka without the news about Kunal. A few days ago, the doctor had visited them. He had come walking on the beach, crossing the railway line at a point some distance away from the level crossing. There were police at the level crossing, the doctor had told them, so he had had to run across the line when the signal was green.

‘Be very careful, sir,’ Janake’s mother had warned him. ‘Sometimes the signal doesn’t work. It’s dangerous, you could get killed.’

The doctor had looked grimly at her. He had come to tell her something, he said.

‘I can’t visit Mr Fonseka for the moment,’ he said. ‘I think I’m being watched and I don’t want to lead them to the Sea House.’

Janake’s mother nodded. She understood.

‘I need a message to be taken there. Can the boy do it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No one will question him. Everyone knows he played with Mr Fonseka’s granddaughter. It will be quite normal for him to visit because he misses her.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Janake’s mother said. ‘Don’t worry. I can send them some fish.’

‘Good!’ the doctor said, looking relieved. ‘Give him this telephone number. It’s my brother’s number at the hospital; he needn’t be afraid to call it. We’re going to have to find a different safe house for the next refugee. I don’t want the authorities to get suspicious of Mr Fonseka.’

Janake’s mother nodded once more. She would send Janake this afternoon, she promised.

So Janake went, taking the fish and the letter. The blistering afternoon light bathed the beach and the sea-heat burned the back of his neck as he walked. A few stray dogs trotted behind, smelling the fish he carried, but Janake turned several times and shouted threateningly, shaking his fists at them and in the end they gave up and wandered off. Since Alice had gone, the children no longer played beside the rocks. Most of them had been rounded up and sent to the local army camp where they would stay until they were trained. All except Janake. He had other plans. And this was one of the reasons he wanted an opportunity to talk to Mr Fonseka. He walked quickly across the burning sand, his feet bare, his head unshaded from the sun. Soon he passed the rocks where he had helped Alice carve her name. Glancing at it, he grinned. Yesterday he had examined it again and her name, carved with his own sharp penknife, was as clear as ever. He had told Alice she would return but since she had left he was less sure. She had vanished with such speed, and the enormity of her journey, never very comprehensible to him, had become unimaginably distant. Janake missed Alice. Right from the start, even when she had been a toddler, holding his hand, taking her first unsteady steps along the
beach, he had known that she was different from the other children who played by the fishing boats. After she had gone, after the night when he had seen Mr Fonseka crying on the beach, Janake had moped for a while, staring at the ships eternally placed on the horizon. They all looked the same to him; remote as stars, impossible to imagine what life, if any, they might carry within them. It was exactly how he thought about England. With Alice gone, Janake had no desire to play with the other children; they seemed inferior by comparison. Occasionally he had glimpsed Esther walking up Station Road, but he still loathed Esther and so avoided her. There was a free school in the town now, but Janake refused to go to it. The town itself was full of edginess. Janake’s mother didn’t want her son to be idle. If the army saw him loafing around they would pick him up, so she sent him out once or twice with the fisherman. But whereas once this would have been enough for Janake, these days it no longer interested him. He talked constantly of Alice, imagining what it must be like for her in her new life.

Alice will be at a proper school with proper lessons,’ he told his mother enviously.

Weeks passed and Janake became quieter, less inclined to either go to school or out with the fishermen. The only pleasure he took was in reading his English books. In every other way he lacked motivation. It was then his mother had hit upon her idea, the one he wanted to talk about to Mr Fonseka. She had needed an excuse to send Janake to see him, and here it was.

Janake hurried across the beach with the sun on his back, walking close to the water’s edge, absent-mindedly weaving in and out of the waves to cool his feet. The light beat relentlessly on his eyes, angular and sharp, making him squint. The Colombo express rocked past. The news from the capital was disturbing. All over the city riots were springing up like an epidemic, but after Kunal’s death Janake’s mother had stopped taking any interest in the news. When she first heard what had happened at Elephant Pass she had cried for days, refusing to speak to anyone. Janake too became silent with shock. Then after about two weeks his mother stopped crying and cleaned their hut,
grimly turning her face away from what was going on in other parts of the country. She had recently got a job in the hotel kitchen. They would now have a little more money. And that was when she devised her plan.

‘Go and talk to Mr Fonseka about it,’ she said, parcelling up the fish and sending him out. ‘Mr Fonseka will tell you if it is a good idea. Go now. And don’t forget to give him the letter.’

So here was Janake with his parcel of fish.

‘Be quick or the fish will go off,’ his mother warned.

He counted the ships as he walked. Today there were four, all lined up close together, white as swans, their black, beak-like funnels poking into the sky. Having tried and failed to imagine Alice on one of them, he turned away from the sea and climbed the hill towards the Sea House.

The road was empty; this was the dead time of the day. The gate was unlatched. It was the first thing he noticed. The garden was silent save for the chirping of giant grasshoppers. An air of neglect hung everywhere; dead flowers dropped from the hibiscus bushes on to the cane chairs out on the verandah and a small metal tray with unwashed teacups stood on the table. The house too was quiet. Janake walked around the back, hoping to see the servant woman, but there was no one there. He paused, uncertain whether to go in or not. Clearly there was no one about. Then he noticed the studio across the garden was open and Mr Fonseka was working inside. Janake hesitated. He remembered Alice saying her grandfather never liked anyone except her going into his studio when he was busy. But Alice was no longer here. Aware of the fish wet against his arm and the unopened letter, Janake hesitated. As he stood wondering what he should do, Bee wiped his hands on a rag and came to the door. Janake saw him strike a match and light his pipe. And he saw with a sharp spurt of shock that the old headmaster looked terrible.

‘Sir,’ he said, before he could stop himself. ‘Sir, are you ill?’

‘Come in, come in,’ Bee said impatiently, not hearing. ‘Don’t just stand there, boy. What d’you want? Is it the cook?’

Janake swallowed. Mr Fonseka didn’t seem to recognise him.

‘It’s Janake, sir,’ he said cautiously.

Mr Fonseka had a reputation of being fierce if annoyed.

‘I know who you are,’ Bee said, irritated. I’m not senile yet.’

He stepped back, letting Janake in.

‘What’s this?’ he added, spotting the soggy parcel Janake was carrying.

‘Fish, sir. From my mother. Caught this morning.’

‘What am I supposed to do with it?’ Bee asked, glaring at him. I’m here alone at the moment. Mrs Fonseka has gone to visit our daughter.’

Janake stood awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

I’m sorry, sir, my mother insisted. And she gave me this letter to bring to you, from the doctor.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’ Bee said, taking it hurriedly from him.

He seemed to relax a little.

All right, go and leave the fish in the kitchen. And wash your hands before you come back.’

The walls of the studio were hung with etchings. Bee was staring at them when Janake returned. The letter was opened and on his table.

‘They aren’t quite right yet,’ he said, seeing Janake looking at them, adding in a different voice, ‘When did the doctor visit?’

‘I don’t know, sir, I wasn’t there.’

‘Well, if he comes again, which I doubt, tell him I’m going to Colombo soon and that I’ll see what I can do to help. Okay? Will you remember that?’

Janake nodded. The prints on the wall were small, intense images in black and white. In one a girl stood staring at a severed sheep’s head served up on a plate. Behind her a group of children jumped in and out of the sea, silhouetted against the sun. The girl had the unmistakable features of Alice. The whole feel of the image was one of suppressed violence. The black was very solid; the etching marks were furious.

‘I wanted to ask your advice,’ Janake said at last, hesitantly.

Bee appeared lost in thought.

‘Sir?’

Bee turned.

‘I was…my mother…’ Janake swallowed. ‘She wanted me to join the Buddhist monks, sir. I would be able to get an education and…’

He stopped.

Bee was staring at him. For a moment he thought Mr Fonseka was going to shout at him.

‘You see, sir,’ Janake said quickly, ‘it’s the only way for someone like me to get any sort of education. I want to do something for this country. I don’t want to be a fisherman. I would like to be able to help people like Kunal. I would like to do something for the good of this country. We are a Buddhist country, but we don’t behave like Buddhists any more.’