Brixton Beach (25 page)

‘I’ll try to telephone, before you go,’ he had said. ‘Before you leave, I want to hear your voice one more time.’

‘Don’t promise,’ she had told him quickly, ‘in case you can’t. I’ll write. Every time the boat docks, they post the letters. It will take weeks to get to you, but I’ll write.’

Kamala was calling. Breakfast was ready. It was no longer possible to bear the dazzling light coming in through the bedroom window. I am nearly on the other side of saying good-bye, thought Sita.

Alice avoided looking at the sea. Instinct made her turn away, strangely restless to be gone, to be done with the waiting. The servant opened the shutters; there was the smell of milk rice.

‘Has Janake come yet?’ Alice asked sleepily.

‘Not yet, baby,’ the servant smiled, coming in, pulling back the mosquito net around the cot that Alice had slept in since she had been born. Suddenly she felt stripped of identity. The wardrobe door was open and in its mirror she could see the stag’s head with the bowler hat still on it. If she opened the door a little wider the sea swung into view, sun-lit and very clear all the way to the end of the horizon.

A good day for sailing,’ she told herself, just as she had heard the grown-ups say.

The wardrobe door moved and the sea and the sky and the large black spider on the edge of the ceiling tilted out of balance. Somewhere there was another house and another school with a new best friend. But she couldn’t imagine it looking any different from this one. Her grandmother was waiting with a breakfast of the milk rice and half a paw-paw and some fleshy rambutan. An auspicious meal for a journey. Soon, Esther and Dias arrived noisily to say good-bye. They had presents.

‘Here, I’ve bottled you some of your favourite
seeni sambal
to take on your journey,’ Dias said, handing Alice a jar of her famous vegetable pickles.

‘You won’t get this in the UK, men. This is to my own devised recipe, child. Your mama will be glad of it, too, especially if any of you fellows get sea-sick!’

Alice had no idea why they should get sea-sick.

‘I’ve got you something, too,’ Esther was saying, and she handed Alice a record cover.

‘It’s my favourite Elvis cover, child.’

Esther, Alice noted, was still trying to be grown-up.

But she was being kind.

‘I’ve got two, so you can have one. And if they sell records in England, you could buy one and put it in this cover.’

Nobody knew if they sold records in England, but Alice thanked Esther, anyway.

‘Here, let me write on it,’ Esther said, snatching it back.

And she wrote in small curvy letters:
Be good, sweet maid, love from Esther
.

‘Wait, I’ll write something too,’ Esther’s mother said.

And she wrote,
Refuse to promise anything you cannot do, from Aunty Dias
.

Alice took the record cover from her. Then, in the awkward silence that followed, she picked up the jar of pickle from the table. Esther and her mother watched her. The day shifted from one warm tone to another. Orange blossom and temple flowers drifted in from the garden as with a slight squeak the gate opened and Janake came rushing in. He had been cycling with only one hand, he told them, grinning.

‘Look what I’ve found you!’

He gave Alice a small turquoise tin with a lid that wouldn’t open. Esther giggled, covering her mouth.

‘What on earth would she want with that on the ship!’

Janake scowled.

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Janake!’ Alice cried, and she threw her arms around him and hugged him. ‘I love it!’

Janake moved away uneasily, glancing at Esther, but Esther had gone to talk to the grown-ups.

‘I can’t stand her,’ Janake whispered. ‘I’m not going to talk to her when you’ve gone.’

‘I’ll write to you,’ Alice whispered back, ‘when I’m on board ship. And I’ll send you things, too. Will you wave tonight?’

Janake nodded.

‘We’re all going to stand by the rocks and wave at six o’clock, so make sure you’re looking!’

From inside the house there was a noise and the servant gave a cry. She had broken the clay pot with water in it and Kamala was scolding her.

‘Oh my God!’ Janake said. ‘Let’s go and see.’

Alice felt a small shiver run down her spine.

‘Don’t worry, child,’ Aunty Dias was saying. ‘It wasn’t very full and the water fell near the door, so it doesn’t matter.’

‘Is May meeting you at the jetty?’

‘How are the newly weds?’

Everyone was talking at the same time as if to cover up the awkwardness. A neighbour had placed a devil offering across the road. The woven basket looked fresh and tempting. It was filled with mangoes and ambarella fruit and spilt over with rice and freshly fried fish. Beside it was another basket of cut flowers.

‘There are new people coming into this place,’ Aunty Dias said in a loud complaining voice. ‘Everything is changing. Yesterday there were two army trucks in Main Street. And they say the curfew will be back now because of the general elections. You know, Sita, it’s a good thing you’re leaving.’

‘How are you feeling? About going, I mean?’ Esther wanted to know. ‘Are you feeling anything?’

‘No,’ Alice said.

‘What a stupid question,’ Janake scoffed.

He looked suddenly in a bad mood. But it was true, Alice couldn’t feel anything. Janake turned to her.

‘Thanks for the bike,’ he said shyly. ‘I’ll look after it till you get back.’

Alice nodded. Her chest felt tight and she was finding it difficult to breathe.

‘You weren’t meant to find it till we left,’ she said faintly.

‘It’s nine o’clock,’ Bee called. ‘I’ll put the luggage in the car.’

‘Thatha, I think I’ll leave this other holdall. We’ve got too much stuff,’ Sita told him.

‘Is this war definitely coming?’ Alice asked Janake.

‘Maybe. But I’m coming to visit you in the UK anyway,’ Janake told her. ‘Just wait and see. I’ll turn up one day!’

The bravado in his voice did not escape her and she wanted desperately to say something more to him. She wanted to ask him what this war would be like, whether he and her grandparents would be safe. She wanted to assure him that she did not want to leave, but she seemed to have lost her voice and in any case instinct told her it was too late for such sentiments. She looked at Janake as he stood squinting anxiously at her and saw with horror that she was going to miss him too.

The morning with its mists rolling in from the sea, its fishermen shouting, ‘malu, malu,’ and the rush and panic of getting to the station, finding a seat and forcing the window open, was too absorbing to leave room for anything else. They snatched at words.

‘Have you packed your new Enid Blyton book?’ ‘Don’t forget to look out to sea tonight and wave.’ ‘We’ll write as soon as we’re in London. In twenty-one days!’ ‘Look after yourselves,’ the grandparents said, smiling funny lopsided smiles. Standing close together, not like her grandparents at all but like an old married couple. Bee and Kamala left their hugs until the last possible moment.

‘There’s a new merry-go-round on the hill,’ was all there was time for Alice to notice before, with a shrill whistle, the train began to move.

Suddenly, when it was too late, when their faces had begun to move away from her, she started to cry. And as the faces on the platform passed swiftly by, she saw, also, that all around and beneath her was the sea, huge and wide and filled with sunlight. In a few hours they would be on it.

There was nothing for it. Sink or swim, thought Sita grimly, her arms and legs aching as she climbed. They had said their good-byes to May and Namil and Uncle Sarath. Neither sister had cried. Something had stuck in both of them, stopping them from doing so. The noise and the stifling heat, Sita’s tiredness and tension were inexorably caught up in a turmoil of confusion. She saw that May looked well. Her honeymoon
was over, but there was still the excitement of the house being built and then there was the choosing of furniture to come.

‘Now then, darling,’ May told her niece, ‘mind you look after Mama for me. She’s all the sister I’ve got.’

And that too was it; once again the swiftness of departure was what they remembered. All around them people were crying. Sita watched impassively; she could not cry. Not even when they were on the launch, moving unsteadily across the bay, not even when May waved and called her name was she able to respond. The small motor boat took them out to the furthest tip of the sun-washed harbour, close to the breakwater. Then the boatman helped them, one by one, on to the narrow gangway. Children screamed as they stood up and the boat rocked madly. Before them, thin and insubstantial, was the rope ladder, each rung seeming higher than their legs could ever reach. Would it hold their weight? The sun beat relentlessly on Sita’s back and her head throbbed as she followed Alice higher and higher up the gangway. Reaching, it seemed, for the sky.

‘Hold tight, Alice,’ she said faintly. ‘Hold tight.’

Everything happened too quickly. I wasn’t ready to leave; there were things I forgot to say. And now, she thought, it will last forever. They reached the top of the gangway. Below was a mass of swaying, saried women, their oiled heads bent in concentration, their voices a sad chant of farewell. In front of them were the neat dark ankles, the bright patterned silk of an unknown sari, fluttering like a useless flag in the breeze. And far beneath them was the sea, turquoise and restless. There was no going back.

Hands reached out to help them up the last steep step and she saw humanity hanging out of every porthole, from every deck. Ribbons floated down into the sea, someone was flying a kite. The strange unfamiliar smell of diesel mixed with the salty air made Sita nauseous. From somewhere inside the ship they heard the faint strains of the national anthem, its sad sweet melody, haunting and full of all that they loved, all they were leaving. The music, heard only at state funerals and other such occasions, drenched them in sorrow.

Alice,’ Sita cried in a panic, ‘where are you?’

But Alice was beside her, her small face streaked with grime, her mouth firmly shut. In silence, somehow they managed to find their cabin. It was in the bowels of the ship.

‘C Deck, next stop the engine room,’ said the steward jokingly, pointing them towards the door.

Almost instantly they noticed the deep bass vibration, the vast hum of the engines. Staring at their small cabin in dismay they saw that this was all they were to have for the next twenty-one days. Two bunk beds, the sea, and each other. They made their way back up on deck again, negotiating the maze of stares, wrinkling their noses at the unfamiliar smells, staggering a little as the ship creaked gently. Pushing doors almost too heavy for them both, they went out into the fresh sea air to feel the warm breeze of their home and the painfully broken light. In the distance were the bare slabs of white-hot sand. Beyond was a coconut grove, sharply defined against the extraordinary sun. And it was then, suddenly, that Alice wanted passionately to get off the boat. She had had enough. Sita found a space to lean out over the edge, but the harbour and May and Namil were no longer distinguishable. In this way, slowly, with a creaking heaviness of metal and hearts, the
Fairsea
inched its way out of the harbour towards the open sea. Ahead was the pilot ship guiding them as far as the breakwater before it too turned back home. It was how Alice became aware, watching the island’s sandy beaches recede, its dense coconut palms vanish, that the raised voices around her were broken by another, unfamiliar sound. The sound went on and on, rhythmically, unnoticed by everyone in the confusion of the moment, but as she listened Alice heard it clearly and was rendered speechless. For it was the soft swish of the waves as heard from a boat, pulling them away from the land where they had been born, washing over her mother weeping.

Night came. A night with no tomorrows, Bee thought, standing at the water’s edge. Far away in the distance was a ship that moved flatly on the horizon like a child’s drawing. Was it them? Was it their ship?

‘Eat a little,’ Kamala said. ‘Try.’

His heart was hanging on its hinges. Broken. They dared not speak for fear of conjuring up the evil spirits of the day. Should they have gone to the harbour? Should they have stood and waved like May? I can bring nothing of this back, thought Bee. Every room seemed to describe an unfinished act. The presence that had filled the empty spaces of the house,
that
presence, had gone. May and Namil arrived, as planned, with tales of the last moments. As though it had been an execution, Bee thought.

‘No, Father,’ his daughter, the only one left to him now, said. ‘It happened so quickly, they hardly had time to say good-bye and they were bundled on the launch. You would have upset yourself needlessly. As it was, no one cried.’ Bee disagreed silently. It would have been better if they had cried. Better then than later, with no one to comfort them. May sighed. She could see her father was beating himself with a stick.

‘How will Sita manage Alice?’ Kamala worried. ‘She has hardly recovered herself.’

‘Stanley will be at the other end to meet her,’ May soothed.

That’s generous of him, Bee thought, bitterly. But he didn’t say it. And the child, he had wanted to ask May. What about the child? Tell me? Did she grieve? But he couldn’t ask that, either.

‘She sent you this,’ May said, knowing how it was for him.

And she gave him a drawing Alice had done in the train, going up to Colombo. It was a self-portrait.

‘Wait, I’ll put the date on it,’ Bee muttered, going out to his studio.

They let him go, nodding at each other, saying nothing.

So now it was night. Bee’s grief walked silently with him along the narrow spit of beach. He was too old for grand demonstrations or declarations. He knew when he loved and he knew about those things from which he would never recover. Here she had grown, a child with only small hints of what she could one day become. He would walk with that small child for what was left of his own life, here on this beach. Every night. Across the water a sickle moon trod a pathway of light and suddenly a sound carried across the breeze from the next bay. It was the long, lonely hoot of the night train as it rushed along
the line. How often he had heard it. But tonight the sudden sound, this silhouette through the trees, was Bee’s undoing. It was how Janake, wheeling the precious bicycle Alice had given him, hurrying to make a shortcut through the trees, found him, leaning against an empty catamaran.