Brixton Beach (2 page)

O
NLY THE YOUNG CAN FEEL THIS WAY
. Unaware of time’s passage, only they can be so trusting. It is their good fortune to live without question, storing up memories for that later day when middle age allows them to re-visit the past. Time of course will change things; time will mould and distort, lie and trick them with all its inconsistencies. But in the brief interlude, suspended between dreaming and waking, before the low door of childhood swings shut behind them forever, the young, with luck, can experience complete happiness.

On the night before Alice Fonseka’s ninth birthday her father Stanley brought home two bright red apples. Stanley worked at a factory that imported all the foreign fruit for the rich Cinnamon Gardens Singhalese who could afford to live like the English.

Apples are a luxury,’ Stanley told her. ‘But because it’s your ninth birthday, you must experience the taste of luxury!’

He smiled without joy, being preoccupied with things other than his daughter’s birthday. Tomorrow, Alice’s mother Sita planned to take Alice up the coast after school to stay with her grandparents for the weekend. The baby Sita was expecting was due in a month and Alice’s trip to her parents was partly to give Sita a chance to rest.

‘But you can only stay for two nights,’ she warned Alice, peeling the apple and cutting it into segments.

The flesh was pale and spongy. Alice ate it reluctantly.

‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why can’t I stay longer?’

‘Two nights,’ her mother said firmly. ‘Finish your apple now and get ready for bed. You’ve got school in the morning.’

Alice scowled. She was not the slightest bit sleepy.

‘I want to stay for a week.’

Visiting her grandparents was the best part of any birthday.

‘Will Grandpa Bee meet us at the station?’

‘Yes, he will. Now be good and get ready for bed. It will make your birthday come sooner.’

‘Oh! I can’t wait to see him,’ Alice cried, slipping off her chair and running around the satinwood dining table excitedly.

Sita ate the left-over piece of apple. As a small child, Sita had nicknamed her father Bee. She no longer remembered her reasons for this, but the name had stuck and now everyone called him Bee, even his wife Kamala.

The next day when Sita collected Alice after school she brought the remaining apple with her, packed carefully between her daughter’s overnight clothes in her blue plastic visiting bag.

‘You can share it with Grandpa Bee, if you like,’ she said when she met her.

Alice nodded, her eyes shining. She had been too excited to sleep last night, but although she was tired happiness rose in her like the spray from the sea. It was midday. The church clock was striking the hour. Children swarmed out of the school gates dressed in the starched, immaculate white uniforms of St Clare’s College; the girls had neatly plaited, coconut-oiled hair, the boys wore gleaming shoes. Only her daughter, it seemed to Sita’s critical eye, looked as though she had been rolling in the scrub again.

‘Anay
, Alice, how did you become so filthy? Have you been sitting in the dirt again? And just look at your hair!’

The child’s hair, carefully plaited that morning, had come undone. There were bits of twig stuck in it and her uniform was streaked with paint.

‘You’ve been climbing the tree again, haven’t you?’ Sita asked in exasperation. Her daughter’s knees were covered in cuts. Alice hopped from one foot to the other, ignoring her mother.

‘I’ll never be eight again!’ she shouted at some of the children rushing past, waving at them.

She was carrying a paper bag with presents from her classmates.

‘Can we go now, Mama?’ she cried, dancing about and rubbing her already filthy shoes deeper into the red earth.

Sita sighed. The year was 1973 and with every birthday her daughter seemed to become more of a tomboy.

Mrs Perris the teacher came out to talk to them. She stood in the boiling heat just outside the gate, in the road where the beggars were gathered, close to the women selling spiced ambarella and mango
sambals
, close to the palmist chalking up sherbet-pink marks on the ground. Mrs Perris hardly noticed the noise and the confusion that cartwheeled around her. She was glad to get out of school for a moment, she told Sita. But Alice saw her teacher look nervously over her shoulder as though she expected someone, the headmaster perhaps, to come out and tick her off. Several mothers collecting their children looked curiously in their direction. It was unusual for a member of staff to talk to a parent in this informal way outside the classroom. The tight security since the bomb had gone off made it difficult to be as free and easy as in the old days.

Alice ought to be very tired,’ Mrs Perris said, wagging her finger. ‘I have to tell you she hasn’t stopped talking today. I couldn’t get a single piece of work that was worth anything from her. In fact, I moved her away from Jennifer to sit by herself, didn’t I, Alice? Lucky it’s a special day, huh, or I might have had to cane you!’

But the teacher was only teasing and Alice grinned, knowing this. She had the feeling Mrs Perris hadn’t come out to talk about her.

‘Nobody got much sleep last night,’ Sita said, absent-mindedly pulling her daughter away from the hole she was digging so energetically with her foot.

Alice gave an exaggerated sigh. Her mother’s hair, she thought indignantly, was no better than her own. Strands of it had escaped from its pleat and stuck to her sweaty face. Opening her mouth to comment, she caught Sita’s eye and fell silent, sensing instantly and with perfect understanding that her mother was in one of her tricky moods. Sita was tired.

Her tiredness was a constant uneasy presence, a weight as heavy as the humid monsoon-imminent air around them. It was clear to Alice that it was simply the fault of the wretched baby her mother was soon to have. Alice did not want this baby, she had been hating it from the very moment her mother told her the news. What was even worse was that she was absolutely certain no one else wanted it either. Not long ago Alice had overheard a conversation between Aunt May and her grandmother.

‘There couldn’t be a worse time to bring a child into the world,’ Aunt May had said.

Alice, who was expert at eavesdropping, had been taken aback. She had not realised the grown-ups disliked the thought of it too. So why didn’t they just get rid of it?

‘They cry all night,’ her best friend Jennifer had warned her. ‘You won’t be able to sleep for months and months!’

Jennifer had burst out laughing at the look of horror on Alice’s face.

‘Well, I’ll get rid of it, then,’ Alice had said.

She had spoken offhandedly, hiding her unease.

‘If it won’t behave, no one will want it,’ she added with more bravado than she felt.

The other children in the class had asked her what she intended to do.

‘Kill it, of course,’ she had said without hesitation, making the boys guffaw loudly.

The conversation however had made her a little guilty and she was glad when it was dropped. Then it turned out that Jennifer’s mother was expecting a baby too. Alice scratched her leg, thinking about what she had said, brushing away a mosquito. It had surprised her that both mothers were having babies at the same time.

‘Must be because they’re friends,’ she had said.

‘Oh, don’t be stupid,’ Jennifer had scoffed. ‘Everyone knows men give them babies.’

Jennifer was the class encyclopaedia.

‘How?’ demanded Alice. But Jennifer, having reached the extent of her knowledge, pulled a face, refusing to say another word.

After that Alice had been silent, sharing her dark thoughts with no one, not even her grandfather. She simply hoped the baby would die.

‘I know,’ Mrs Perris was saying in a low voice, moving her head from side to side. ‘Ayio! I heard it on the news. Rioting in Wellewatha, for the second time in a month. This is turning into a witch-hunt against the Tamils. I thought of you last night, child. Is your husband okay?’

She glanced towards Alice, who pretended to examine the scab forming on her knee.

‘Yes, yes,’ Sita said, lowering her voice.

‘Thank God he came home before it started, you know.’

There was a pause and both women fell silent. Then Sita looked around nervously.

‘Did I tell you our passports have arrived?’

‘Really! That’s good news, isn’t it?’ the teacher said encouragingly.

Sita nodded.

At least now we know for certain we can leave.’

Mrs Perris placed her hand on Sita’s arm and squeezed it. Alice looked curiously at them both, not understanding but struck by the look on their faces.

Earlier in the year Mrs Perris had been widowed. The change in her had been shocking. Her husband had been killed in the riots in Jaffna. Everyone agreed he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Alice had wanted to find out what the wrong place was, but again no one would tell her. She tried asking her father but Stanley told her to go away and stop bothering him, and Sita told her not to talk so much.

‘They’re all bastards,’ she heard her father tell her mother.

He was in one of his bad moods at the time. Alice was aware that her father knew all the bastards in Colombo. Even Grandpa Bee was impressed by this fact.

‘Well, Stanley certainly knows a bastard when he sees one,’ she had overheard Bee say.

At the time, Alice had been standing behind the door listening intently, wondering if she too would be able to recognise a bastard if she ever saw one. Bee had been speaking quite softly, under his breath, but even from behind the door Alice had detected a curious note of triumph in his voice. Bee had been unaware that Alice was nearby.

It was only her grandmother, being more knowing, who had shushed him sharply.

‘Be quiet,’ she had scolded. ‘The child might be listening.’

At that, Alice, pretending to be a stork standing on one leg, balancing on the ball of a foot, nearly toppled over. It was true she was always eavesdropping. Listening was something that had become second nature to her; straining her eardrums until they nearly burst, standing with her mouth open behind half-closed doors, worrying a piece of information as though she was a dog with a fallen coconut, coaxing it to split open and reveal its secret. Even Jennifer had congratulated her on her skill.

‘You do have a nose for scandal,’ she had observed.

Alice hadn’t known what a scandal was, but she did know that the world was full of unresolved, interesting stories that everyone conspired to keep from her.

After the bastards had killed her husband, Mrs Perris had eventually returned to school. The children waited curiously to see how she would behave. Thirty pairs of eyes swivelled silently towards the teacher as she walked into the classroom. She wore a white sari, the Kandyian way. It was meant to make her look more Singhalese, but all it did was make her unfamiliar. Every time anyone spoke to her she looked as though she might burst into tears. Very soon the whole class, which collectively was more cunning than people realised, saw that Mrs Perris was completely changed. Once she had been a woman who loved teaching. Now she appeared not to notice when the children misbehaved. The class, working together, seized the opportunity. Led in part by Jennifer, they became unruly. The noise brought out the teachers from the other classrooms, stampeding like a herd of elephants. Everyone wanted to see what was going on in Mrs Perris’s once perfectly behaved class. Some of the teachers tried to stop the noise. Some of them looked at the widow with pitying eyes, as if they were thinking, ‘Well, she’s done for!’ It was as if a gong were sounding in Mrs Perris’s head, stultifying her.
I’m finished
, it banged.

‘She looks terrible,’ Jennifer declared with conviction, ‘especially around the eyes.’

Alice disagreed. Jennifer was her best friend, but often Alice felt the role was unsustainable. Being friendly with Jennifer was like taking a ride on the back of a tiger. You held on or got eaten alive.

‘My mother said Mrs Perris’s husband turned blue when they killed him,’ Jennifer told the class with relish. As though someone had coloured him with dye!’

In spite of herself Alice was agog, her eyes turning into saucers of amazement. But she liked Mrs Perris and did not want her hurt by gossip, so she decided to challenge Jennifer.

‘How does your mother know?’ she demanded.

Jennifer scowled, unused to being contradicted.

‘She went to look at him, silly,’ she said, her face so close that her sugary hot breath from the toffee she was secretly eating poured threateningly over Alice.

‘Like this!’ And she pinched Alice’s arm, hoping to make it blue. ‘He was in his coffin, you know, men,’ she added, making her voice rise and fall. ‘And his lips were swollen, just as if a mosquito had bitten him.’

She narrowed her eyes and stared intently. Was Alice by any chance squeamish? Alice hesitated.

‘I don’t believe you. Dead people are supposed to look peaceful,’ she said finally.

Jennifer snorted.

‘You’re scared,’ she had observed shrewdly, and then in a final insult, ‘baby!’

After that she had refused to say any more on the subject. And Alice, whose passionate thirst for knowledge palpitated vainly in her chest, was not prepared to beg for any further information. There was a peculiar sad stillness in Mrs Perris’s face that made her appear frail and strangely beautiful. It both puzzled and fascinated Alice. Once or twice she had tried talking to her father, but Stanley just yawned and poured himself another whisky.

‘Those bastards get away with everything,’ was all he said in his predictable way. ‘Sita, can you get me some ice?’

Alice had watched as her mother left the clothes she was sewing for the baby and went to fetch the ice.

‘Time for bed, Alice,’ she had said, noticing her hovering about.

Still Alice continued to be preoccupied by Mrs Perris. On her last visit to her grandparent’s house she brought the subject up with Bee.

‘Mrs Perris looks transparent,’ she told Bee.

Transparent was a word that interested her.