Acts of Mutiny (31 page)

All the while the city reeled and unreeled around them. Mrs Piyadasa explained what mangosteens were; and which merchant lived in that great house; or which coppersmith, from whom she bought all her kitchen requirements, in that diminutive booth. She spoke lightly of how the Indians had come first of all, and then the Portuguese, the Dutch, burning and torturing, unfortunately – the ones for God, the others for cinnamon. And here were the buildings of such-and-such descent and here were those of another, though this was not the ancient capital.

And there was the house of her best friend from school; and there was her husband’s warehouse. And from just here they could see both lighthouses at the harbour entrance. And then last of all the British came. Did they see the clock tower while driving past the street’s end? And over there stood one of the few Muslim temples; until one drove through the Pettah where the Tamil people lived, who might be either Hindu or Muslim, of course. Sorry for the rails again.

Over here a sweet stall, would they like sweets? How difficult it was these days to keep reliable workers; but the world market in tea was holding up well, she thought, smiling at her son, and would do as long as there were English people to drink it, smiling at them. Such, there, was the national dress, but very few of the men still wore it, only the women, really. What would they say to the zoo, the beach as well, perhaps, to kill two birds with one stone? Ah, here was her son’s school; he must return to his studies now that his mum and dad had returned safe from the sea.

At Dehiwala they left the car, and strolled among the creatures, the palm trees, the unstoppable vegetation, which twisted up over everything, then cascaded down a precipice to the lake in great lavender drifts. A gang of long-legged storks was working the shallows, strutting in the green reflection; close at hand a tiny hen ran over lily-pads. And as they moved in the perfume of frangipani by the lawns and between the quiescent beasts in their cages – languid tigers or apes preoccupied amid the straggle of bougainvillea that quite covered them over with a froth of purple flowers – Robert longed to catch her, delay her in a stolen embrace.

Still, again, he found himself flaming patiently, deliciously, without question. They climbed back up. The paths were narrow; creepers and bladed bushes thrust at them from either side. Mrs Piyadasa led the way, and Penny followed, a step in front of him. A pair of Buddhist priests in their pleated saffron, holding their umbrellas up against the dappled sun, passed by them on the slow earthen steps while butterflies large as birds, black and velvety-winged, flapped across their route.

When they returned to the car, they drove past the great former Residency at Mount Lavinia and on to the beach where there was the same jungle stretching right to the edge, almost. They could believe the butterflies had followed them – great butterflies fluttering to the sound of surf. There were swimmers where a notch in the coastline made the hint of a bay, and one enormous palm drooped low over the sand towards the jut of a ridge: rock or coral he could not tell. Mrs Piyadasa found a table among the lilies at the edge of a shaded clearing where you could watch the waves, and ordered the white-suited waiter to bring them some tea.

‘As if we haven’t seen enough ocean to be going on with,’ she said, and laughed.

‘Poor Pom would have worried something might eat him,’ Penny responded, eyeing the white holiday-makers breasting the surf. ‘Sharks and crocodiles are his particular
betes noires
at the moment. And if you leave the water alone, there are still snakes, he says, that might drop on you from the trees. Now Finlay and the others appear to have dropped
him.’

‘Can’t say I’m all that surprised,’ Robert said. He found himself having suddenly to picture the boy. It threw him off his absorption in her.

‘You won’t see him any more, anyway, Mrs Piyadasa,’ Penny said.

‘The boy Ralph? No. The one my husband lent his field-glasses to. How he loved to look at the waves during the storm.’

Mrs Piyadasa told them about Kandy. ‘Ah, you would have seen the Buddha’s tooth.’

‘The Buddha’s tooth?’

‘You can see his tooth?’ said Robert.

‘Ah, well. You can see the casket in which its casket is hidden inside another casket. Or so we’re told.’ She laughed again.

‘Did the Buddha come to Ceylon?’ Penny asked.

‘Well, yes. We like to think he did. And when the moon becomes full – you will have gone, I’m afraid – there is a great celebration of his visit. In eight days’ time. But the tooth was taken from the actual flames of his cremation, and smuggled here from India.’

‘How astonishing.’ They saw another monk leave the thick margin of vegetation and begin to walk across the beach. ‘But must a true Buddhist really give up everything and renounce the world?’

While Penny engaged their hostess about religion, Robert felt jealous again and left out, as if a snake’s hood collapsed on the instant and the gaze that had held them fascinated with what was dangerous, yes, but wonderful and worth everything, turned merely to slink off back to the jungle.

‘I thought the Buddha was a kind of god,’ she was saying. ‘I thought you … forgive me. I thought people worshipped him.’

‘Oh no. He was a man. A prince. He was married, and then renounced the world. He fasted until all his bones showed through and then he returned to teach. He enjoyed eating again. Then he died. That’s how the tooth became available.’

At least there wasn’t God in it, Robert thought, angrily. He hated the thought of the tooth: how would anyone know it was there? He wished she would just laugh at it and turn back to him. Mrs Piyadasa was being polite. He looked intently at Penny, seeking to recover his feeling, wondering what had happened and what on earth they were going to do when they got to Australia. How on earth would they survive the landing? Hugh, and so on? Where would they live, supposing they did just declare independence, as it were? He felt himself smile sardonically at the joke. But surely it would be an impossibility after all?

‘He was born a Hindu then?’

‘In India. But far away, in the North. Ceylon was supposed to be the kingdom of enchanters and all manner of wicked spirits.’

What were they after all but a pair of momentary sightseers? Here they touched so lightly, once more knowing nothing about the place they were passing through. The English again floating by, holding, bleeding dry, but never encountering. Surely always the worst kind of tourists. The greatest empire the world has ever known. He looked around at the extraordinary, exotic scene in which he sat. It was incomprehensible. He was adrift and almost held on to his chair.

‘The king of Lanka abducted Sita away in his flying chariot, you see. And afterwards when Ram had crossed Adam’s Bridge with an army of monkeys to rescue her …’

It could not have happened without overwhelming violence. Where, he asked himself, did you see the scars? How did one ask a polite hostess about that?

And Penny looked such a stranger, incomprehensible female flesh by the sea, in her trim blouse and printed cotton skirt sitting there with her cup of tea chatting about who knew what. She wore a blue belt. He felt the weight of that great book across his chest, and remembered the Roman examples, the strange atmosphere of his schoolroom Latin.

‘But the Buddha renounced his renunciation, in a way?’

‘In a way he did. One tries not to do cruel or hurtful things, to others, or to oneself I suppose. You are right. I suppose that is a way of putting it, yes. So as not to be reborn too often …’

He had turned to the schoolroom science that had determined his career. He had been at home nowhere, like the English; now he would somehow drag Penny too into perpetual homelessness. He felt the weight of the invisible stars, his work.

‘And though she was restored to her true husband’s love, Sita knew she had been dishonoured, and could do nothing but give herself to the flames.’

But it passed. Seated once more in the car, he knew the mood had passed and that he loved her – and that they must and would go on.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Haven’t said much. I was thinking. I hope I wasn’t rude. It’s all right now.’

Back on board the
Armorica
they made their consummation. They went to her cabin, turned the key in the lock, and there they were: the moment had come. They say the drowning man sees his life flash in front of him; Robert spun and whirred and found himself conscious as never before. She was naked in front of him.

‘It’s all right, darling,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’

The curious thing was that she actually seemed to be pleased with him. How beautiful she was. How delicate, gentle and vulnerable. How disgusting intimacy might be.

‘You do understand it’s you I want, Robert. You do understand that, don’t you?’

He nodded blindly.

‘It’s not just any man, Robert, but you. Precisely and exclusively you.’

‘I’m sorry, it’s …’

‘And that means whatever you do or are, or will be.’

Lovemaking was a thing entirely unexpected and on its own terms. No one could have anticipated that. He discovered the saltiness of her skin, her sweat, the odours of her body, her intimate irregularities, her moles, an abrasion, a cut, the individuality of every strand of hair. He found his own strength against hers. She pulled him to her and filled his ear, until his brain felt like a tactile cavern of happiness, with the splashings of her voice and tongue. She embraced him with her legs, strained him to her with her arms, breathed him with her lungs. It was a contract. She nodded and kissed him back, again and again.

So the world flooded over them, until they lay panting in the lower bunk, sprawled one over the other, tangled in an exchange of limbs. It was as she had said it would be, wonderful; and yet, strangely, nothing out of the ordinary – because they were lovers, and that was what they did.

Australia, of course, was altered for ever; it was not what it had been. Who could consign himself now to the desert? Who could imagine, now, that endless futility of brandishing and spear-throwing, that exhaustion of the heart to which he had committed himself? Lying in Penny’s arms he remembered Ceylon. His mind was like the flapping of a butterfly’s wing, lovely and erratic. He remembered the colours, the profusion, all now past. He remembered the parting from Mrs Piyadasa at the edge of the harbour; and, curiously, the boy Ralph, who shared the same return launch. His thoughts came back to Penny. But when they had finished their kisses, and he was drifting to sleep in her arms, the thing he had unconsciously noticed nudged into his head. ‘Poor kid. He must have lost his little suitcase, forgotten it somewhere. He came back without it. You know Chaunteyman’s getting off next stop. That’s one thing I shan’t be sorry about.’

‘Is he really, darling,’ Penny murmured.

The open-air swimming-pool was filled with sea water. It looked like a normal pool but tasted quite different. To port and starboard its sides had blue tiles. Fore and aft there were close-set bars running vertically the whole depth. The water was in a cage. The sea was taken up through one end; and slowly given back by the other – but the apertures in the grilles were too narrow and the regions beyond too dark to see how the whole system worked.

I used to worry, especially as I lay in bed, that we would hoover up a shark one day. The idea tempted me to prayer and I thought of the Leviathan. I needed to reassure myself whenever I swam that the bars were solid and in place after the night, and that the pool contained no camouflaged man-eater waiting on the bottom particularly for me.

Since Aden the place had become a social focus, of course, and began to occupy a great part of each day’s agenda, particularly for the families with children. The week before Colombo had taken on a bright, half-dressed seaside quality. But after the resumption of our passage eastward the first excitements of exchanging English winter for Equatorial summer began to wear off; and for the children swimming fell away as the prime activity. Not all of them really liked the taste, or the way the water would sting the eyes and blister the very fair skins with salt. And always for parents and children alike there was the danger, day after day under this high unaccustomed sun, of bad burns cruelly delayed until the pleasure was over and the damage done. The pool was deceptive, leaving its marks.

Sometimes too the water-level would be sunken well away from the rail, for reasons I could never explain; and since there was no shallow end, then only good swimmers could hope to do anything more than cling to the ladders, or drift helplessly in water-wings and rubber lifebelts. But I could swim like a fish, and took more and more to the pool as I was included less with the others. I stayed in beyond the children’s official times and swam with the adults. Mr Chaunteyman bought me a face mask so that I could save my eyes and peer into the secret places of the grilles.

Barnwell’s aircrew continued to enjoy the pool, and liked to swim in a group. Just after the children’s time, while afternoon tea was being served, they would roister out of the Verandah bar and take the pool over, diving and shouting. They were given a wide berth, and there were comments about the apes of Gibraltar. But I held my course, and they did not bother me, with their guffaws and horseplay; nor I them – it was only the fez and so on that had set them off before. For my part, I believed they frightened the shark. They ignored me. And when all five got out at once, as if by some signal to go off to sunbathe, the pool area was left sometimes quite empty, and I would be free to survey my kingdom.