Brixton Beach (9 page)

‘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.

W
HEN THE MOMENT SHE HAD DREADED
finally arrived and she saw her mother walking slowly up the garden in her faded orange sari, Alice felt her legs grow unaccountably heavy and turn to stone. Kamala coaxed her out on to the verandah and reluctantly down the steps, a bunch of gladioli thrust out in front of her face. Long after she had forgotten her mother’s lop-sided expression of trying not to cry, Alice remembered the deep, burnt orange of the flowers and the shimmering sea-light. She gave Sita an awkward hug and the scent of the flowers passed violently between them. Dazzling sea colours of a certain unbelievable blueness flew into the house while the sound of the cicadas rose and fell in feverish cadence, reminding Alice of the Buddhist monks. It was Kamala who took charge of the situation, enfolding her daughter in a loving embrace, recalling the day Sita had walked in with the newborn Alice. No one else was capable of much. Within minutes Sita was installed in a chair and a cup of weak coriander tea was in her hand.

‘I’ll put your mama’s flowers in a vase in her room,’ Kamala told the child, smiling encouragingly, aware of some indecision. ‘She can see them when she has her rest.’

Alice nodded. She was a murderer. In the awkward silence that followed, Sita stared straight ahead at the sea. Two catamarans with dark patched sails stood motionless in the distance. Alice stole a
surreptitious look in the direction of her mother. Sita had wanted a boy named Ravi but, because it had been a girl, they would have called her Rachel after the child in the film,
Hand in Hand
. Alice swallowed.

‘Did it hurt?’ she asked eventually.

Without warning her mother began to cry, a thin long howl followed by great choking sobs. Her sari was coming undone. Alice stared at her in dismay, wishing she hadn’t spoken.

‘Mama,’ she said uncertainly, looking around for her grandmother, wishing Janake would come over as he had promised. Sita looked frightening and unfamiliar. Her body was its old shape with her stomach almost flat again. She began to speak in a high, strange voice that wobbled on the edge of hysteria. Panic-stricken, Alice called her grandmother.

‘I thought my legs were being pulled apart,’ Sita was saying through a storm of tears. ‘And then my stomach collapsed. They didn’t let me see her, they didn’t want me to!’

She wrung her hands and her face twisted with the effort of trying to speak while she cried.

‘We have to leave this place, Alice. We must go far away from these murderers. We must go to England. Your dada is leaving first, but we must follow.’

Alice stood rooted to the spot. Her mother looked like one of the puppets she had seen at the fair. Her grandparents, coming in just then, moved swiftly.

‘Come, come, Sita, don’t upset yourself and Alice with talk like that. Let’s take you into the bedroom.’

‘Give your mother a kiss, Alice,’ Bee said calmly, ‘and then she must rest. After that I want you to come with me; there’s something I have for you. I’ve been waiting for the right moment.’

They stepped out into the hot afternoon, and turned towards his studio, a small shadow walking close to a larger one. Her bicycle was leaning against the mango tree exactly where they had left it. Seeing it, Bee stopped and sighed.

‘Child…’ he said.

And then he shook his head.

‘Can I ride my bicycle?’ Alice asked, stalling for time uneasily.

Her grandfather was beginning to sound frightening too. Whatever it was he was about to say, she did not want to hear. Bee nodded absent-mindedly. She wanted him to be angry with the government or her father. She wanted him to look fierce, but all Bee did was continue to stare at the sea. She sensed that Shockwaves were going through him. At last he took a deep breath.

Alice,’ he said, and to her relief he sounded stern. ‘There are certain things you need to know.’

She froze. He knew! She had wished the baby dead and he was going to hand her in to the police. Bee was looking at her. The heaviness that she had been carrying around for days shifted and the sun on her neck was as warm and comforting as a hand. Mango scents from the tree pressed against her. It was such an ordinary day. On the dry parched ground a yellow-spotted gecko moved haltingly, back and forth. Alice watched it until it disappeared under the debris of fallen leaves and then her grandfather’s voice was suddenly very clear and steady in the pause.

‘It is not the end of the world, you know,’ he was saying lightly, as though he was talking to himself. And it isn’t for almost four months.’

‘What?’ she asked, startled.

‘Huh?’ he said gruffly. ‘What d’you think? That you won’t come back, huh?’

When she looked up, he appeared to be laughing, with all but his eyes.

‘It won’t be forever. When this trouble stops, you’ll come back, you know that! Just you wait and see. I shall be right here, waiting for you. Now come, Putha, I want to show you what I’ve been saving for you.’

Are we going to England?’

Bee nodded. His lips were pressed firmly together. They crossed to the back of the house where he had spent his life battling with the wind and the monsoons to create his garden. Most of the plants he grew were in containers he had stolen from the kitchen, much to the annoyance of the cook, who was always complaining to Kamala. Bee never took any notice. Going over to the old cupboard that lived outside his studio beside the murunga tree, he searched inside and
handed Alice a small box with drawers attached. When she opened it each compartment held all the seeds he had collected from his garden.

‘See, child, there’s a whole garden here, waiting. I’ve been saving all of them for you. See, here’s a forest sleeping in your hand!’

It was obvious he had been preparing for this for some time, that in fact he had always guessed they would leave one day.

‘So you can take my garden with you wherever you go,’ he told her firmly. ‘And you must grow the plants just as I’ve shown you. Hmm?’

She nodded, silenced. The shadows lying in wait on the edge of her bright looking-glass world jostled with each other, inching a little closer. Certainty was seeping into her like sea water from a hole dug on the beach. Alice stared dumbly. A confusion of thoughts swam in her head. The view of the sea, the yellow-spotted gecko now darting across a branch of the murunga tree, and her grandfather, all the well-loved sights of the slowly baking afternoon became as insubstantial as a mirage. Again her heart flexed with sadness and a faint sense of premonition brushed against her. The rush of the sea was faint as though from a shell held to her ear. Blinking, she observed her grandfather in the mottled shade of the tree.

And there’s something else I want to tell you,’ he was saying, ignoring the look on her face, frowning at her. ‘Having certain thoughts about things won’t make them happen. We all have those sorts of thoughts. Sometimes we have to
think
them in order to see what we feel, d’you understand?’

Alice nodded as the vomity thoughts moved up her throat. And then subsided back into her stomach. She felt like the blocked gully at the back of the garden. Sometimes the servant poked it with a stick and the dirty water went away. But a blocked gully, the servant had said, was always a blocked gully. You never knew when it might overflow. Her grandfather was looking at her closely, so she carefully put her don’t-care face on. Bee wasn’t easily fooled. She needed to be careful.

‘We all have thoughts, Alice,’ he repeated softly. ‘Understand?’

Again she nodded. Luckily her grandfather had turned and was looking far out to sea again.

‘She should have been allowed to see the baby,’ he murmured. ‘What you don’t see stays in your mind longer. It haunts you. D’you understand?’

Alice waited. It occurred to her that this was another way in which she was changing. Because I’m nine, she decided, I don’t get impatient any more. I’ve learned to wait. She knew that her dark secret about the baby was inside the gully. Out of sight for the moment, at least.

‘This will always be here,’ Bee said, pointing to the view and the garden. ‘Waiting for you to return.’

He spoke fiercely.

‘You know that I will never, never leave you.’

Then his face cleared.

‘I’ll take you for the cycle ride later, after I do a bit of work,’ he said in a different voice. ‘And you can look for Janake.’

But later things got worse. Three weeks was not long in the cycle of recovery. Sita was in a terrible state. Her breasts still leaked milk and she had been warned that the tear in her uterus would take months to heal. Walking was painful because of the stitches and despite constant sedation she slept only fitfully. In the end they moved her bed into her sister’s bedroom so May could talk to her whenever she woke. What frightened Alice the most was that her mother could stay silent for only so long before she began her story again. The family doctor came to call. He had been a friend of the Fonsekas for as long as they could remember. He had delivered both Sita and May. Now he came to examine Sita, to check her wound was healing and to change the dressing. He came just when the four o’clock flowers were closing. Alice tried filling her head with the sound of the sea in order to blot out her mother’s cries. After the doctor had left, Bee called Alice and she wheeled her bicycle over the level crossing towards the beach. They walked without speaking, pausing only at the kade for Bee to buy some tobacco. When she had been younger, Alice used to love to stand at the level crossing watching the express as it roared towards Colombo. Tonight they were late and the train had already gone and the beach when they reached it was empty, scribbled all over with
small sand worms. Two enormous gulls walked sedately in front of them, managing to keep a fraction of an inch away from the waterline.

‘I’m going to sit on this rock,’ Bee told her, ‘and draw the view and smoke my pipe. Why don’t you see if Janake is around by the huts?’

He had not told Alice, but he had begun to draw her. The drawings were to be his talisman against the coming departure. The sun had not set and the light had a curious candescence. It hung over the sea uncannily as Alice rode in a wobbling line towards the huts. Janake, when he wasn’t out with the fishermen, helped his stepfather to collect coconuts. Today, to her delight, he was still on the beach chopping firewood. She stood watching him for a moment. He was as much a part of this place as she was, so constantly present in her life that she had hardly noticed him until now. The savoury smell of cooking drifted from one of the fishermen’s huts making her mouth water. Janake, stripped to the waist, raised his arm high in the air before bringing it down on to the log. The way the axe struck the wood looked easy, but Janake was sweating. There was a slowly growing pile of wood nearby. Turning, he saw Alice and addressed her in Singhalese.

‘Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘Why does the tree smell of perfume?’ she asked.

‘It’s a special tree,’ Janake said. ‘It can cure many things.’

He smiled a flash of very white teeth. Then he told Alice the townsmen had finally given his mother permission to chop down the tree. They had needed the permission because of the tree’s medicinal properties. Early this morning the tree men had come and taken the tree down and now his mother wanted him to saw these parts up. Some for firewood and a piece to make a table.

‘I’ve been doing this all day,’ he said. And waiting for you. How is your amma?’

Alice picked up a small chip and smelled it.

‘That’s a medicinal smell,’ Janake told her. ‘The herbal doctors will pound it up and make it into a poultice.’

‘Shall I take some for my mother?’

‘If you like. Ask the cook to grind it for her. Is she bad?’

Alice nodded. She was reluctant to tell Janake how bad her mother was, or that she didn’t want to look at her face. He was a boy who would stop a bus on the road if there were a tortoise crossing. How could she tell him she had caused a death? She frowned. Janake was absorbed in stacking the wood into piles.

‘Can we go to the sand dunes?’ she asked.

‘Okay,’ Janake said without looking up. ‘Wait a minute till I finish this. We can walk to the next bay. You might find things for your collection.’

He was right. They found some old driftwood with paint on it and a piece of blue fishing net.

‘It must have come from one of the catamarans,’ Janake said, examining it.

The wood revealed two colours, one underneath the other. Aquamarine over-painted by cobalt blue. It was scratched and peeling, still damp from the water. The evening stopping train passed slowly by. It was half empty. Glancing up, Alice saw a woman with bright red lipstick eating a samosa. When the train slowed down at the level crossing a man in a white shirt leaned out of an open window and watched them. He smiled and waved at Janake. Alice had a feeling she had seen him before. Then she remembered that he had come to her grandparent’s house during the riots one Singhalese New Year. He had slept in her grandfather’s studio for a few days. He had looked very frightened at the time and then he had gone away. The train began to move off and the man waved at them both.

‘That’s my uncle Kunal,’ Janake said as the train gathered speed. ‘D’you remember him? I was visiting him the week you had your birthday.’

‘Does he live with your aunt then?’

‘She’s not my real aunt,’ Janake said and then he gave a shout. Half buried in the sand was a beautiful piece of wood. He began pulling it out.

‘Oh, can I have it, please, Janake,’ Alice cried excitedly.

‘I’m getting it for you, wait! Don’t pull it, you’ll break it.’

‘Oh! Look!’

‘What are you going to make with it?’ Janake asked curiously. Alice shook her head. She couldn’t say, but she wanted to take it home anyway.

That night, when the household were finally in bed and Sita turned restlessly in her dreams, Bee told Kamala about Alice’s afternoon of foraging.

‘My studio is full of her finds,’ he said with admiration. ‘She’s going to be a maker of things when she is older.’

It was only to Kamala, and under cover of darkness, that he dropped his guard.