Brixton Beach (31 page)

Kamala said no more. In the mood he was in she had no hope of stopping him, anyway, but she went to the temple after he left for the station. Bee was hoping to avoid the rush hour. It was the crowded trains that were dangerous, he told Kamala. The suicide bombers wanted maximum damage for their efforts.

The road was empty. The flower-laden bungalows that perched along the hillside were silent, their shutters closed. Bee could hear the soft sounds of water sprinklers behind closed gates. Pink and white oleander blossoms lined the walls. He passed Dias Harris’s house. It too was shut, for Dias and Esther were now in Colombo. They still owned the house but visited only occasionally. It’s a dead town, thought Bee, brushing past a branch of orange blossom that overhung the road from the Harrises’ garden. Perfume filled the air. When Alice had been here it had been a fine garden. Now all of it was overgrown. Seagulls floated lazily across the sky, calling to each other, swooping down on the catamarans as they were dragged on to the beach below. Gihan the station master, watering his bitter gourd, raised his head when he saw Bee approaching.

‘Ah! Bee,’ he greeted him, smiling. An early bird. Come, come!’ He shook his head from side to side, looking pleased. ‘Haven’t seen you for ages, men. There’s half an hour before the train arrives. Come and take some tea with me.’

He could not refuse without seeming churlish, so Bee followed the man into his office where the peon was making tea. Gihan eyed Bee openly.

‘Still missing the child, eh?’

He raised a hand before Bee could speak.

‘No, no, don’t say anything. I told you not to let them go, men.’

‘What was the alternative?’ Bee asked quietly. ‘Watch my granddaughter be beaten in school because she has a Tamil father?’

It was the only reference he made to Sita’s marriage. If Gihan was surprised by Bee’s bluntness, he did not show it. Instead he turned his oleaginous smile on his old friend and continued sipping his tea,
considering his friend over the rim of his cup. Clearly, Bee had no idea that some months ago the rumours around him had started up again. One such rumour was that the Fonsekas were in the habit of hiding Tamil refugees trying to flee to the north. It was common knowledge that, in spite of the army’s presence in the town, several Tamils had escaped being caught.

Bee was talking to the peon in Singhalese. His Singhalese was elegant and old-fashioned. The sort of correct, grammatical Singhalese that wasn’t often heard any more in these parts. Gihan didn’t know what to think. In his opinion, Bee was capable of almost anything. It had been what he had told the plain-clothes man from the army who had visited him.

‘Yes, sir,’ he had said, ‘I
have
known him for a very long time. Yes, his daughter married a Tamil. No, no, they are in the UK now.’

The plain-clothes man had been very interested.

‘So they send money to arm the Tigers, do they?’

Gihan had been dubious. He didn’t think Bee and Kamala had that kind of money.

‘But your friend, Mr Fonseka,’ the man had insisted, ‘would you say he was pro Tamil policies? A threat to the government, perhaps?’

It was all a game, Gihan thought, uneasily. Boys playing a match on the cricket field; nothing more than that. But he agreed to keep an eye on Mr Fonseka all the same. For his own sake.

‘Have you heard from your daughter recently?’ he asked, now.

He wondered if Bee had any idea that he was being followed. Bee smiled. A light hovered faintly across his face.

Alice has started school. She’s learning French, imagine that!’

His voice was full of wonder. French had not been a language that had occurred to him.

And the school is taking the children to France for a daytrip.’

He shook his head, amazed.

‘Well, England is a civilised country, why am I so surprised?’

Don’t, thought Gihan.
Don’t
say things like that.

At least she’s getting a fine education, men. Look at it that way.’

‘Yes,’ Bee said faintly.

He stood up and walked to the door, facing out to sea, his face remote and withdrawn. He must be coming up to sixty, thought Gihan, his unease growing. What harm can he really do? He was thinking about the comments of the army official.

‘Men like him are what stop this country from progressing,’ the man had said.

‘Where are you going in Colombo?’ Gihan asked.

‘Just to see Suriesingher. Take him two new prints. Do you know what time the curfew is today?’

‘Six o’clock from Maradana to here. Can I see?’

He pointed to the small portfolio Bee was carrying.

The etchings were called
Dangerous Games, 1
and 2. And both figures bore a strong resemblance to Sita. In one of the images she appeared to be balancing the skull of a buffalo with one hand, while in the other hand she carried a bowl of curd. Gihan stared. Buffalo skulls were not something found in the south of the island. Buffalo skulls and curd were a speciality of Jaffna and symbolic to those parts. In the second image Sita juggled six bags of money while screaming in terror. In the background was the Sri Lankan flag, ripped and partially obscured. The station master was genuinely shocked. The likeness to the real Sita was staggering. It was as though Bee had taken a photograph, he thought, momentarily awed by his friend’s talent. The train was approaching. Bee packed away his portfolio and tied the ribbon.

‘Come and see us, men,’ Gihan called, without conviction.

Both of them knew he would not.

‘And don’t forget the curfew. The four o’clock train will be crowded. Try to get an earlier one.’

Bee nodded. He stepped into the compartment and was lost in the grime and dust of the dirty windows. Gihan waited for a moment. He waved his hand and blew the whistle. With a heavy puff of smoke the train began to pull out. He went back in to his office and picked up the telephone. Then he dialled the number on the visiting card the man from the army had given him.

When he had found a seat facing the sea, Bee opened the filthy window, using his handkerchief to do so. The carriage was almost
empty. Below him was the beach, fringed by cacti and coconut trees. Most of the fishing boats were still out with the night’s catch and the sky was made transparent by a subdued sun, not quite up yet. Once again the air felt fresh with the strong smell of seaweed and ozone. A hiss and spit of waves flowed towards him, bringing with them a strong current of memory. The sense of bereavement cut deep into his flesh, its wound would never heal. Like a lost limb, he felt their absence constantly. Looking out of the window, he saw the view and the place, unmarked by his loss, unchanged by his pain, and he marvelled at the indifference of the land. The long, wide stretch of beach was completely empty. Only the waves moved, rising and falling regardless, while seagulls sailed against the rising sun. Closing his eyes, Bee began composing a letter to Alice. Across the aisle a man in a sarong picked his teeth systemically. When he had finished he stood up and spat out of the window. Then he began combing his hair with a thin broken comb. Bee opened his eyes and watched him for a moment. There was dandruff in the spaces between the greasy strands of hair. The man put the comb away and began wiping his nose. Humanity grooming itself, thought Bee, wanting to draw him but resisting the urge. The man shifted his feet. Underneath his sarong Bee caught a glimpse of army boots. The train rattled on, winding its way across the coast, rushing towards Colombo central station. Carrying Bee and his sorrow along with it.

S
O THIS WAS SPRING, THOUGHT
S
ITA
. Soft and acquiescent, with its sudden squalls of rain, its nearly warm breezes. Birdsong pierced the air. Like love. And with their repeated call she realised she was not going back. They were here to stay. For Sita, April was indeed the cruellest month. Looking at the young green leaves sprouting everywhere, she remembered last year. In Colombo they would be celebrating Vesak. Alice was now ten years old. Silence issued from abroad. Sita had not answered her father’s first letter in the manner in which she knew he had wanted, and she had not mentioned Kunal. It was impossible for her to think of his name, let alone write it down on paper. She had no idea if her father understood, and she no longer cared what he or anyone thought. Dangling by a thread, existing by invisible means, Sita ignored May’s last letter, too. The longer she left it, the harder it became to express how she felt about her sister’s pregnancy and the birth of her baby, a boy they had called Sarath. What did she feel about her nephew? She had no idea. Working at her new occupation, sewing, endlessly altering grey trousers, turning up hems (she had begun to get some white customers, much to Stanley’s relief), Sita thought only of the next row of stitching. She seldom went out. Alice, returning after school, found her exactly as she had left her. Silent, her sewing machine whirring.

‘Is there anything to eat?’ Alice would ask, eyeing her mother, watchful.

And more often than not there was nothing. Eventually Sita would put her bright red Petticoat Lane-coat on and hurry around to the local shops, only to meet Alice on her way back from the same shop, eating chocolate.

Stanley worked late most days. He had begun to hate the house. All his plans to decorate it, to remove the dark wallpaper and paint the rooms white, had fizzled out through lack of interest. What can you do with a pokey house like this? he thought. The windows were too high to be cleaned properly, the carpets were so brown that they always looked dirty, and he had become disheartened by Sita’s lack of interest. Even the garden, if it could be called that, with its filthy dustbin and broken outhouse, was a mess. Sita refused to do anything with it, complaining it was too cold to go out there, and he had no time for it. Days passed with Sita glued to her sewing machine, leaving the house only to shop for food.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Stanley asked, fuming at her stubbornness. ‘Why don’t you go out? Why are you behaving as if you are a coolie who can’t speak the language?’

Sita shook her head.

‘It’s too cold,’ was all she would say.

‘For God’s sake,’ Stanley said, losing the temper that was always close to the surface. ‘Have you
no
interest in the country you’re living in?’

‘Not much,’ Sita said, refusing to be drawn.

‘I can’t cope, Rajah,’ Stanley told his brother privately, holding his head in his hands. ‘She’s going round the bend, men.’

‘Well, get her to see a doctor, then. Or leave. One or the other.’

Stanley did not know what he should do. Increasingly, the sense of alienation within his own house was becoming unbearable. Spring was beautiful but cold. In May, he would have been away from his homeland for a year, but the strange new and impenetrable atmosphere that surrounded him only drove him mad. When she wasn’t sewing, Sita spent her time washing and ironing. What the hell was
there to wash so much? thought Stanley. He was being driven insane by her. Then, when he thought he would explode with pent-up rage, one Sunday morning, without any warning, she went out. One of her customers had told her about the Sunday street markets and this had interested her. She bought an
A to Z
of London and, armed with an umbrella against the threatening rain, she went first to Petticoat Lane and then to Brick Lane. Stanley was speechless with astonishment. Elated, desperate to find some common ground, he decided they should all go as a family. The following Sunday they took the tube and walked in the rain amongst the noisy crowds shuffling between the stalls. But the markets with their endless rows of shoes, their cheesecloth shirts, their stalls of love-beads bored Stanley. He would have liked to nip into the local pub for a pint of bitter, but Alice’s presence made it impossible. A few more Sunday trips went by and Alice began to find them repetitive. She was no longer a rebellious child but even she had grown bored with the markets.

‘Do I have to come, Mama?’ she asked Sita.

‘Isn’t it better than staying at home?’

Alice shook her head. She did not want to hurt her mother, but she preferred staying in her room, drawing. Sita shrugged. It made no difference to her. She enjoyed wandering through the rubbish-strewn streets listening to the voices of the stallholders, smelling the frying onions and beef burgers, while picking up a bargain. No one knew her, no one even noticed her, but in a strange and uncomplicated way, in spite of the dull soot-ridden rain and the lack of sun, the place reminded her of home. She could not explain why this was so. London in itself had no significance for her except as a constant contrast to her home. She walked with her sights turned inward. Occasionally, as the months went by and a stallholder, recognising her, smiled a casual greeting she raised herself as though from a dream to acknowledge this strange place that she had landed in, under the railway bridge with its roosting pigeons. Soon it became accepted that she would be out every Sunday from seven in the morning until midday. Stanley and Alice stayed in bed. By the time they woke, Sita was back and with a rare show of energy was cooking lunch.

The house now began to fill up with random objects. This new obsession had clearly replaced the one of waiting for the post, Stanley decided, not knowing whether things had got better or worse. A set of pillowcases with bright pink flowers and a pair of turquoise towels made for the beach.

‘What do we need with more towels?’ Alice asked, staring at them, puzzled. ‘There isn’t any beach.’

Sita unpacked some sheets.

‘But they don’t match the pillowcases,’ Alice observed.

Sita ignored her. She bought framed maps of Britain, which she put up around the house. She bought soap, boxes and boxes of the stuff. Bargain plastic containers, small Chinese lanterns, ornaments. As the weather began to improve and the Whitsun school break arrived, the house continued to fill with all kinds of junk.

Stanley was struggling. He felt he was drowning under an excess of rubbish. He could no longer have a proper conversation with his brother about the sorry state of his marriage. The only person who seemed to understand his dilemma was Manika.

‘I can’t just abandon Alice,’ he told her. ‘She is my daughter, when everything is said and done.’

Manika raised an eyebrow. Then she put holy ash on his tongue and pressed a peacock feather on his heart and slowly, in this way, summer returned.

Alice noticed how the evenings stayed light for longer. Coming home from school on these early summer days the earth had a smell that she liked and would always remember. Although now there was a small group of girls who tolerated her and allowed her to hang around them at break times, she had made no real friends. No one questioned her; no one took her into their confidence. When she heard about the new school she was going to in September, she was driven by a strong impulse to write to Bee.

I will be starting my new school
, she wrote.
Mama thinks I will like it
.

She paused. The mention of her mother made her uneasy, so she crossed out the sentence. She wondered what she might say instead.

I’m reading a book about a painter called Constable
.

It was a lie. She was only looking at the pictures.

And I’ve been drawing a lot
.

That at least was true. She wrote a few more sentences, but because she censored them so heavily, even she could see they were dull. Almost without thinking, she withheld all information of her parents’ rows or her mother’s remote air. She never mentioned her own loneliness or the fact that the house they lived in was constantly cold even on the warmest of days. Neither did she tell her grandfather that she was always hungry or that she quite often prepared her own food with whatever was left in the kitchen.

Sometimes Stanley took her to her uncle Rajah’s, but her uncle, Alice sensed, did not like her much. Their own house, so empty when they had first arrived, was slowly taking on another, different kind of bleakness. In that first summer in London Sita discovered the vegetable and fruit markets of Balham. This was closer to home and full of the exotic produce she had given up hoping to find. Joyfully she began to buy boxes of over-ripe mangoes and ladies fingers that had to be thrown away before they could eat them.

‘I can’t eat this shit,’ Stanley bellowed, pushing the crates of rotting fruit off the Formica table so they crashed to the ground. ‘Why are you wasting money on this rubbish!’

Sita watched him silently, making him apoplectic with rage.

‘Why don’t you open the curtains, for God’s sake!’ he screamed at her.

‘What for?’ asked Sita calmly. ‘There’s nothing to look at outside.’

In answer Stanley stormed out of the house and headed for Dorset Road where a prayer meeting was under way in Manika’s bright brass shrine. The lignums, the picture of the beloved Bhagavan, the smell of incense and cooked rice was a comforting compromise.

The following September Alice started at Stockwell Manor School. She was the youngest intake in the school. It was further away from the house but still within walking distance. She had felt lost in her primary school but this new one was so vast that she found disappearing in it was easier to do. By now the winter came as no surprise and another
Christmas came and went unremarked with a sprinkling of snow followed by a series of bitter grey days when the wind blew harshly as if from the Steppes. Sita bought Alice a pair of fleece-lined boots from Petticoat Lane market and a thick coat for herself. There was no card from Esther this year and no letter from Bee either. Looking at the unmovable blanket of clouds overhead, Sita felt her mind stretch into a perfect blankness.

This second winter seemed endless and spring, when it finally came, had no effect on Sita. The young green fritillaries, the pale glow of cherry blossom, the delicate tint of a sky becoming lighter, earlier, all these things were of no interest to her. She felt only the cold north wind, drying her skin and making her bones ache. It was the final straw for Stanley. After a particularly protracted row he told Sita he was leaving. Consumed with guilt, he glared at her.

‘I can’t waste any more time. I need to have a life.’

And me?’ Sita asked him, her mouth twisting. ‘What about me?’

She knew the answer.

‘I don’t know,’ Stanley cried in despair.

He was taken aback at how painful this was proving.

‘Go back, perhaps.’

She saw his guilt before he did. He thought it wasn’t his problem. In the face of Sita’s blank, helpless face he just saw freedom, tantalisingly close, strained at the leash.

And so the door to their marriage clanged shut. Without fuss, without tears, with Alice watching, wordlessly.

‘Don’t!’ Stanley cried, seeing his daughter’s tearless reproach.

Oh God! he thought, she’s becoming like her mother. Oh God! Two of them are too much for me.

‘You can come and visit me, I promise,’ he told Alice, slipping up, giving Sita another handle on his guilt.

Rubbing it in. Ending what should never have begun, after breakfast, with the taste of Ceylon tea still on their tongues. It was a bittersweet moment, much to Stanley’s surprise, with his brother’s don’t-be-a-fool voice ringing in his ears and Manika’s buck-toothed smile. That was how it was; both so easy and so hard to leave. On his way out he noticed
he had taken Sita’s smile with him. Her early-on-in-their-marriage laugh, her I-am-going-to-defy-convention determination. Unexpectedly, leaving behind his own convictions. Becoming even more disorientated than this migration had already made him.

So there it was. Done. Hope you are satisfied, he thought, looking at his brother with a new indifference. Giving money to the Tamil cause without passion, and finding himself saddled with a Sri Lankan servant woman. Ringing the changes while persuading himself of her worth. Had Sita discussed it with him she could have told him there were no winners in this game. But Sita was too busy with the voices living in her head to talk to anyone very much.

Alice could never quite remember the actual moment of her father’s final departure. The emptiness of his presence was simply replaced by his absence. They had been rudderless for so long that a further drift was hardly noticeable. She saw that the most important thing for her mother was the fact that the shoebox could now come out of hiding, its contents displayed like market-stall wares on her unnecessarily large bed. Perhaps the most significant change was that at last Alice could daydream about her grandfather more than ever.

‘Do you remember the eclipse?’ she asked out loud. ‘The way the darkness swallowed up the day and came rushing into the house?’

How wonderful it had been when the light had faded and the sun disappeared over the sea. She remembered the darkness muffling the bird sounds. A solitary crow perched on a gutter pipe in the gloom. Growing afraid, it had begun to moan like a lost soul, until at length, gathering what vestige of courage remained to it, it had flown away.

And then it passed
, her grandfather’s voice reminded her in the daydream.
And we had two dawns in one day. Don’t forget, it passed as all of this will pass too
.

It was a conversation she was to re-run regularly.