Brixton Beach (21 page)

‘That’s not what you said when you first got here,’ Marianna had scoffed. ‘Then it was all, “Oh, I must see the cradle of civilisation!’“

‘Well, I’ve seen it now,’ Stanley said. ‘It’s you I haven’t seen enough of, yet.’

Marianna had been happy enough to oblige, taking her clothes off as easily as she cleaned her teeth. It made for a refreshing change. But he hadn’t known of her desire to be rid of her fiancé. He looked sharply at her and she burst out laughing.

‘Don’t worry, Stanley, it’s quite safe. I’m not going to leave Cedric. You can relax. This is what is called a holiday romance, didn’t you know?’

Stanley swallowed. Soon it would be the end of April and they would be on their way to England.

In the days that followed the amputation Sita found herself praying. Kunal continued to be delirious. He had lost a lot of blood and the doctor still came twice a day to check on him. Sita had become an expert at changing his dressing, washing him and making sure he drank enough. Kamala and Bee continued to take turns sitting with him, but it was Sita who did the bulk of it, remaining beside his bed most nights. Kunal did not recognise any of them. Outside, the days had become hotter, the sky was a pitiless blue and along the coastline the currents changed. The fishermen on stilts moved further up the coast to where it was safer. The doctor tried not to show it but was worried. The first few days after such a serious operation were always tricky, but by now Kunal should have been improving.

‘Try to get the temperature down,’ he insisted. ‘He must have plenty of fluids. The longer he has this temperature, the more debilitated he will become.’

Sita nodded. In spite of the anxiety, she felt wonderfully assured, utterly certain; Kunal would recover. The feeling of calm that had come over her before the operation remained and both Kamala and
Bee watched astonished as she organised the rota for the patient’s care. Everything in the house revolved around it now. At night, while Kamala burnt incense at the house shrine, Sita sat beside Kunal in the darkness breathing in the musty scent that spread slowly across the garden and in through the half-closed shutters. ‘Please get better,’ she prayed silently, all thoughts of her own life wiped out for the moment. And then she would get up and adjust the bedclothes or wipe his face or hold the glass of cool water to his lips, restraining him when he thrashed his one good leg across the bed. Nothing Kamala could say would persuade Sita to move from her post beside Kunal’s bed. She was determined to be present when he awoke.

Another week passed before Kunal realised that the month of April was almost over. Blown out like a candle. He had taken a turn for the better, but it was one more day before he remembered the operation. Waking, he felt the sunlight falling strongly across his bed. He stared, puzzled at the enormous expanse of sky before he suddenly noticed Sita standing beside the bed holding a cup of tea. She was smiling. Kunal began to sit up and as he tried to put his foot out of the bed and on to the ground in order to steady himself, he overbalanced. He would have fallen, had not Sita caught him swiftly with one hand. There was stunned silence and Kunal burst into tears. It was how he learnt the news of what had become of his leg. Sita’s face moved into focus for a moment, a little blurred and passive, and in the part of his brain still functioning he registered once more how beautiful she was. He saw too that she was sorry for him in an uncomplicated way that had nothing to do with pity. He realised these two things in the same instance he understood that he would never again walk unaided by crutches. The thoughts moved simultaneously in Kunal’s head, filling him with a mixture of black despair and confusion.

Later he learned other things. He learned that the curfew had lifted, so for the time being he was safe and that the shutters that had been closed when he arrived were open very slightly now, which was why he could see the sky. The doctor came to check him. Kunal asked him how long he had been lying here.

‘Oh, not long,’ the doctor said lightly. ‘But we’re going to move you somewhere closer to Colombo soon. It will be better there, and once you are strong enough we’re arranging transport to Jaffna.’

Kunal gazed at the doctor, his eyes clear of fever, astonished all over again by the kindness of these Singhalese people. The heat had been rising steadily. In spite of the sea breeze everywhere was blisteringly hot. Kunal could feel it through the bars of the window. He had no idea how long he had lain here but as the days wore on and he grew more alert he became aware of the rhythm of the house. Sita was nearly always beside him and when she was not, either Kamala or Bee was present. They told him the current news. There was an election due soon. It would be best for Kunal to escape to Jaffna before it took place. Bee usually visited in the early morning with the doctor, before taking the child to the beach, and then again in the evening. Sometimes he came with the doctor, sometimes alone. Only Sita was there all the time. It was she who told him the things he was desperate to know so that bit by bit he was able to piece together the story of the last few weeks.

‘It was a very long operation,’ she said. ‘I was worried. I didn’t think they had given you enough morphine. What if you woke up? What if you started to feel the pain? I was frightened.’

She sounded as though she was talking about someone else.

‘You were delirious for days. We took it in turns sitting up with you.’

He remembered shadows, someone wiping the sweat off his face, a fan blowing on him, water being held to his lips.

‘Was it you?’ he asked wonderingly.

‘Most of the time,’ she admitted.

These talks always took place during the evening. One evening she came in just as the sun was setting, and sat for a long time staring out of the window. The sky glowed with the light. Watching her face, he could see clearly the weariness that came from living in a place full of uncertainties. But, he thought, she’s still young.

‘We are living through a terrible history,’ he said tentatively, picking up the threads of an earlier conversation. ‘In the end, we’re just part of that time. We don’t matter in the way we think.’

He wondered if she knew what he meant, but instantly she nodded.

‘So I have lost a leg. See how I say it as though it is a little matter!’

‘You’re adapting,’ she agreed. ‘That’s good.’

‘In the scale of what is happening, a leg isn’t much to lose.’

‘Or a child,’ she asked quietly. ‘Is that what you mean?’

He held out his hand. A moment later the sun had begun to set and was out of her eyes. Darkness would come swiftly after that.

‘I mean, I have a hand that can hold yours. I am grateful to have that, in this time. We cannot expect more at this moment.’

If she wanted to, Sita could still make some sort of life for herself, he thought. But that perhaps was the problem; he could see she had stopped caring about her life.

‘You are stronger than me,’ she said quietly. ‘Look what you have survived. And you are determined too, thank God!’

She was referring to his desperate fumbling attempts at getting out of bed, his balance, learning to walk again, differently.

Kunal nodded. On one of his visits, the doctor had pointed to a crutch leaning against the door. It seemed to Kunal the crutch had been there forever, since he had first moved into the room, long before any talk of the leg coming off. He saw his life like the drawing of a pyramid with everything being a training for this event.

‘Don’t give up,’ he told Sita fiercely, surprising himself.

Bee had told him a little about her husband. It wasn’t so much what Bee had said but how he had said it; dismissively, as though they, and Sita in particular, would carry on regardless of the husband. Don’t go to England, was what Kunal wanted to say. The servant knocked and came in with a tray of food. Bee put his head around the door.

Alice wants to show you something she made today,’ he told them both. ‘I’ll bring her in later.’

Night fell while they sat talking and the stars had begun to come out. Through the open window they appeared very bright. It was as if some strange disturbance filled the sky.

In the end none of them wanted him to be moved, whatever the risk of his staying meant. May and her new husband would sleep in his
sister’s house after the wedding until Kunal left. May, more than anyone, had not wanted him to leave.

‘He isn’t a dog, to be kicked out,’ she told her parents. ‘He’s so helpless. How can I be happy, having done a thing like that!’

So Kunal would stay. No matter what the omens were.

‘There are no omens,’ Bee said. ‘Omens are all in the mind.’

And Kamala agreed without believing him.

No one commented on the change in Sita. No one knew what to say. The fact was Kunal was doing her some good.

‘But, Amma, they’re leaving at the end of July,’ May said, voicing things better, perhaps, left unsaid.

‘Let’s get the wedding over, May,’ her mother told her.

‘But what about Stanley?’ May asked.

Kamala did not respond, although later in bed it was another matter.

‘Maybe Sita has a different sort of life ahead,’ she said tentatively. ‘A different karma than the one we imagined.’

Bee looked at her with faint surprise.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she asked defensively. ‘Can’t I hope? Kunal may go to England one day. Who knows what might happen!’

‘You aren’t that traditional girl I married, after all,’ Bee teased her, with a straight face. ‘I’m not sure I approve.’

‘How can I be traditional after thirty years of life with you!’

She was glad to make him laugh a little and she was happy too that, in spite of everything, the house was coming alive with the life of the wedding. They were happy, at last. For the moment. All of them, that is, except the servant woman who scrubbed and aired the house hoping to remove every invisible trace of the man with only one leg. The servant lit sandalwood joss-sticks and brought in vases of mimosa in the hope of banishing any evil that might be lurking. She sprinkled rose water on the threshold of the front door and she polished the mirrors and the floors so they shone and the Fonsekas slipped as they walked.

‘Not quite so much polish, Nauru,’ Kamala said, amused, knowing what was in the woman’s mind.

Since the curfew had been lifted and the army dispersed, the drums could be heard clearly at night. Occasional bouts of fighting broke
out in the nearby villages, but by and large the town retreated into itself and became what it had always been, a sleepy backwater of no importance.

May had decided to keep her job after she married. All that would change would be her name. She had been waiting impatiently for the month of June to arrive and now here it was drawing to a slow languid close. At last her wedding day approached. She had invited six of the senior girls from the convent school to chant the
kavi
, the traditional verse, at the ceremony. The girls were all from Singhalese families. On the day they would wear half-saris and carry their
kavi
books. But before any of this could happen, a few days earlier, the astrologer arrived with his list of auspicious times and then the house was blessed all over again by monks chanting
pirith
. It was only then, the servant told Kamala, satisfied at last, that she could relax.

Bee and Janake began fixing coloured lights in the trees and Alice poured coconut oil into small lamps and placed them all over the garden. It was just like Vesak.

‘There are going to be fireworks,’ Alice told Janake excitedly.

‘Catherine wheels?’ Janake asked, his eyes round with amazement. ‘No? Like at the fair?’

Alice stared at him, surprised. She had forgotten all about the fair.

‘I had my cards read,’ she remembered.

‘So did I, when I was at my aunt’s house. What did yours say?’

She wasn’t sure.

‘Water, I think. She said there was a lot of water.’

Janake nodded.

‘Mine was funny too. The lady card reader saw orange cloth and fire. And she saw water too.’

‘Maybe she told everyone the same thing.’

‘Did she say if you’d come back?’

Alice shook her head, doubtfully.

‘She didn’t even say I was going!’

They both laughed and Janake did a cartwheel.

‘Good!’ he said. ‘Then maybe you won’t!’

Sita saw with satisfaction that Kunal was on the mend. Every day he became a little stronger. Now she no longer needed to sit with him all night they both missed it, although neither confessed this to the other. Both looked forward to Sita’s morning visit to his room with his breakfast of fresh fruit and string hoppers. Must be because I’m hungry, thought Kunal as he turned his face towards the door at the sound of her footsteps. Sita coming in felt her heart leap. As the wedding drew nearer, because of the constant stream of visitors to the house, it was impossible to allow Kunal out. So in order to keep him occupied Sita began to take down her old books from her father’s room and read to him several times a day. Apart from reading to Alice in the old days before the baby, Sita had not read to anyone. Stanley had never been sick or interested in this way.

‘You have a beautiful voice,’ Kunal told her, staring at the ceiling when she finished reading
A Girl of the Limberlost
.

As a young girl it had been her favourite book. Sita smiled briefly.

‘I’m going to read you some poetry next,’ she told him, unaware that his eyes were on her.

‘Why don’t you start writing again?’ he asked.

‘Maybe,’ Sita nodded.

She did not want to talk about the future. She did not want it to invade the calm certainty that had come to her, like a gift, since Kunal’s arrival. So she read him poetry instead. And then she peeled a fresh mango for him, unaware that Kunal was unable to take his eyes off her hands and the juice running through her fingers.

Afterwards when they remembered May’s wedding Kunal was the first image that came to all of them. He was the hidden memory, the prelude to the ceremony, hiding in the annexe, practising on his crutch. Tap, tap, tap on the unpolished floor. The day itself arrived swiftly. A morning of dazzle and light without a single cloud in the sky. It had not rained and scents from the jasmine and orange-blossom trees had intensified in the heat. Today was a Thursday, an auspicious day for a wedding. Everything that happened today would do so at moments ordained by the astrologer. It began with the servant sweeping up the
fallen petals at a particular time. Watering the jasmine bushes that he had planted when each of his daughters had been born, even Bee did not complain. As usual he had awoken early. After he had finished the plants he went into his studio. He had done no serious work for weeks and his studio was strangely tidy. Kamala had given him strict instructions: no work today. Naturally, Bee ignored her. Lighting his pipe, he picked up one of his drawings abandoned before Kunal’s operation. Kamala had told him there would be no smoking in the house today. She would have hidden his pipe had he not got to it first. Outside, the sea pleated itself into acquiescent folds. He heard footsteps and, turning, he smiled, thinking it was Alice. But it was Sita who joined him. A Sita he hardly recognised; happier than he had seen her for years. In a few weeks they would be gone. How had the time passed so quickly? he wondered apprehensively. The eldest following the youngest. Taking the child with her. God knows when he would see them again. No, not now, he told himself firmly, not today. Looking at his eldest daughter, in a rare, awkward gesture he put his arm around her. Then, feeling the bird-like sharpness of her bones, he kissed her forehead.